06/06/2022 MMSD Board of Education Instruction Work Group

001i lost everything i okay recording [Music] no all right we're gonna go ahead and get started good evening everyone welcome to the instruction dated june 6th 2022 uh tonight we do have a somewhat packed agenda we will be conducting the academic year in review to discuss the progress we've made this year we'll go into a wellness check with an update update on some some clovid metrics uh in our community we'll then talk about uh two high and intensity partnerships uh with our district and district partners and then we'll conclude by uh just discussing two [Music] policy changes to our behavioral and instructional strategy uh so let's get started with the wellness check uh dr esser and nurse kerry are you with us yes awesome thank you take us away hi welcome everyone so just giving

002a quick update in regards to our community metrics we have definitely reached our peak in dane county when we look at our number of covid cases although our numbers are still quite elevated but they are coming down we are experiencing the same thing in mmsd i actually think our numbers look really good um this week so far compared to last week we had quite a high number of cases the tuesday after memorial day but they have come down quite nicely so we're continuing to watch that closely when we look at our testing we are doing just under 2 000 rapid antigen tests per week and 2 000 pcr tests per week so we are continuing to have a very strong testing program here at mmsd just a reminder to everyone that we all of our

003sites will remain open through june 10th and then starting next week on monday june 13th only our summer school sites will be open but they will be open to our entire mmsd community so even if you're not attending summer school if you're an mmsd staff student or family member you can get testing for free at any of our sites that will continue um through the entire summer school so they we have testing on site through the end of june and then we are still in the planning process for next year of what the testing will look like we do know that we'll have some sort of covid testing we're just not sure to what uh degree and capacity what that will look like so we're continuing to partner with acl for all of our covid

004testing in our schools when we look at vaccines you've probably all heard the five to 11 year olds are now eligible for their booster shot as long as it's been five months since they've received their second dose of their uh two dose vaccine series we are continuing to partner with public health medicine dane coney they are offering pop-up vaccine clinics at three of our elementary schools during their food pantry drop-offs these sites are open to the entire community you don't even need to be an mmsd staff student or community member it's open to everyone in dane county could go there and receive a vaccine if they wanted to and then most exciting we are planning a district-wide a vaccine event at lincoln elementary school on june 23rd from 9 00 a.m to 3 p.m and

005this is open to all mmsd students staff and family members but we're particularly targeting our five to 11 year old students that are eligible for their booster so we'll be holding that clinic all day on thursday june 23rd at lincoln elementary school in partnership with ssm dean st mary so we're excited about that and that is all for my update thank you thank you okay uh any board member questions uh board member gomez schmidt yeah thank you um thank you carrie and leah for this update um one thing that i i did notice um in in the um memo that you gave us was the climate survey of students and and it references that this will be shared with schools um is this also going to be shared with the board and can you tell

006us like timing wise when we might expect to see that and also the family and the staff climate surveys that went out as well let's see if cindy or beth are here cindy you want to take that one you want to start it at least absolutely uh good evening everybody and thank you uh for the question uh board member gomez schmidt our staff and our family climate survey are still underway and they do not close until this sunday the 12th we also just closed recently the student climate survey and are planning on providing an update to the board in the next few weeks so that you can have a comprehensive look at that tonight you'll see a couple highlights of just initial analysis around our student survey but we wanted to provide a more comprehensive

007report to the board after we have a chance to look at it ourselves and then similarly you will receive an update from us in terms of the findings of our staff and our family survey which are still open and still active if people are listening and want to give us feedback hopefully that answers your question it does thank you very much um and then i just have one more quick comment and and question um you know um carrie i'm i'm happy to hear that you know the cases are mirroring what we see in the community as far as we're seeing a decrease both in the community and in mmsd and you know one of the things we talked about in the metrics meeting last week was moving away from a zero risk strategy so really

008looking at how we can lean forward on some of the things that we're doing um and and move on some of these things can you is there anything you can sort of update the community on that and what we can expect looking forward so i think you know we as usual we continue to really look at everything and we know that kovid is going to be here and it's going to be here for a long time and so it's trying to really find that right balance of where we are still being safe but we're also allowing kids to be kids and be able to experience school in the way that we all know it and so we know that we're never going to be able to get to a zero risk just going out into

009the community there's risk everywhere that you go to be able to contract covet 19 but i think it's being able to look at that risk and really making sure that we are doing everything that we can but knowing that we're not going to have a zero risk in our in our school environment and so one of the things that we'll be talking about at metrics hopefully tomorrow will be um an update around masking and looking at summer school and making decisions around that so um expecting more to come after metrics tomorrow all right thank you carrie i appreciate it all right thank you so thecube is board member simpkin followed by board member vandermellen followed by board member nicholas my question was specifically around masking in summer school so it sounds like after tomorrow you

010should have more information on that and what is the um what's the data point you're looking for in order to make masks no longer mandatory but i'm too recommended yeah that's a great question we get asked that a lot and there's not really one data point that we use we look at a lot of different things of what are happening in our community and kind of where our our numbers are but also where are we seeing spread and kind of what's happening in our school district that also includes staffing we look at our staffing ratios and our ability to be able to keep our schools staffed and open that's our ultimate goal is to make sure that we have kids in schools learning and so we take kind of all those things but there's not

011one particular data point that we we use for an ultimate decision maker it's really looking at things holistically and really trying to make the best decisions moving forward thank you board member mullen yes um i know you guys do an awful lot of work during period you all do a very good job is it possible just to save you guys some time if you just give us the results of the survey so that way you don't have to write another proposal i mean that way we could still see the data and without overburdening the team so they can work on important things such as budget okay yeah nikki i appreciate that i i believe that our research um and evaluation team um has a pretty comprehensive plan and has has carved off the time in

012order to get the board a summary of that information um but i appreciate that consideration um as we think forward and would be asking follow-up yeah if without discovery if we needed to could we see the full data i will defer to cindy perhaps on this one i apologize could you repeat your question please oh absolutely um i was wondering if we could see the full besides summary of the data which as i said takes a lot of work could i also see the full data if need be yeah i will get back to you to answer that question specifically if i recall there is access in some of our tableau or dashboards for that but let me uh follow up with our research and innovation team uh board member vande muellen to confirm that

013and we will make sure to get back to you thank you all right board member nichols great um two questions one um also about the climate survey i know in the past um pre-covered there have been quite a bit an effort to have continuity in the questions or statements that were being asked year to year so that you could kind of see a trend over time i'm wondering um with the newer version of the climate survey would you all be able to provide the questions that were asked for students staff and families or will that be part of the the report that research and evaluation uh provides we can definitely do that and to your first point we kept some of the questions excuse me questions consistent to be able to see those historic trends

014great and then the second question is going back to the um health services update um i was happy to see that student services is going to offer a summer conference in august i'm looking at the team of folks that will be included in that and i'm wondering will there be any work like this offered to principals because it seems like there's a big focus on the foundational practices um and i'm just wondering if where principles will be um regarding that that same opportunity for reflective planning and knowledge and training i'll kick this off just from a student services perspective and then we'll lean to my colleagues regarding our administrator institutes um uh nichelle you bring up a really a really good point it's it's so critical that when we are training our staff on on

015certain practices setting expectations around that building schedules resources etc that we keep our leaders looped in and part of that process so i think it's both an information sharing um opportunity to really get them the information um at their level that they need around what was what was taught at that institute but also ensuring that we have the time and space for uh administrators to be working with their culture and climate teams and really talking about um their their plan and their work and their vision moving forward um i don't know if anybody else wants to speak to the larger institute and what um that will be um but but michelle that's good feedback and now we'll take that back to our team for consideration all right thank you board member gomez schmidt myself with

016cube thank you um i just had one more question for clarification i've been getting a lot of questions about um masks at graduation ceremonies that are going to be held at venues outside of our mmsd schools can we just get some clarification on that as those are coming up this week sure so massa required it's an mmsd sponsored event so all of our mmsd sponsored events maths are required even if it's located at an off site location so mass will be required at graduation and we will be offering them out to people if they don't have them at the event okay i'll just say for the record i i i'm not sure about that decision given its venue's outside of ours and and the size of the venues and it's not required in dane county

017but thank you for clarifying the decision all right thank you um okay uh my question was um i really was interested in reading about the school-based health centers that we are going to open up next year and when we think about our strategy of focusing on the whole child um i think this this is a a promising aspect could you share a little bit more about the job descriptions that were posted i can start and then carry please uh feel free to jump in um so thank you to the board of education for approving two positions on esser for our high school uh school-based health centers um this uh this effort has been a long time coming um somebody on the team was joking that they were so glad somebody else was not in a

018wheelchair yet um when they are when we're implementing this because it's been we've been waiting for so long so we're beyond excited that today is the day or now is the time um so there are two positions for next year one is a school-based uh health center planner with a mental health focus and one is a school-based health center uh coordinator project manager with a nurse practitioner um background so next year's efforts are really going to be focused on building the program and building the um the financial um plan to make this a stable option that we can continue um to have year after year in all of our schools next school year tangibly what you'll see in class in in our schools are is the addition of a of a therapist um who will

019be the start of the school-based health center um so we have uh again thank you to you all we have funding for that um and are able to uh jump start that work um and then we will be working this year to secure funds grants um a funding stream whatever that might be working with the insurers et cetera to really build up the whole clinic with the physical health aspect as well so it's a it's a slow and steady process but we are so grateful to this board for giving us the opportunity to get going we really really are excited about this thank you um one immediate question i have is do you know how uh adding these additional therapists will impact our ratios of uh by high school our ratios of therapists student ratios

020in our high schools um so i we don't necessarily have a therapist to student ratio when we think about um ratios we're thinking about our psychologists social workers counselors and nurses um and not necessarily outside therapists um but what i can say is we're going from zero therapists technical therapists in our high schools to one um so we're increasing that in in four in four places across the district so this will be an external partner um who we uh an external agency we partner with and they hire the therapists and provide those so they're not necessarily like available for anyone there would be a process a referral system etc and a last question then board member nichols uh what kinds of services will students be able to access gary do you want to take that

021on the type of services they can access in our health centers sure so um in regards to physical health so that really hasn't fully been defined yet it really depends on the model who our partner is but we are looking for full access to all services which would include laboratory if needed um pharmacy services so if anybody needs a medication for that so it'd be basically like a full primary care clinic and it's really meant to be a bridge so that we can get people access into a medical home but until that time that that school-based clinic would be able to do that so we have not gotten into the great detail of what all services are going to be provided at that site again a lot of it depends on the partnerships that we

022develop and who specifically we partnership partner with in regards to the medical services thank you and so do we know if students will need insurance our goal is that all students will have access to these services whether they have insurance whether they have m.a whether they have no insurance it won't be dependent on that i think it's not even just a goal it's really our expectation we we certainly want to support families to get insurance for a variety of reasons so we do uh use internal resources to support um that coordination but ultimately the the reason for bringing this to our schools is to remove those barriers to access insurance being one of them so similar to our bhs program um that is not a condition in fact in some respects we want to serve

023uninsured kids more because they're the students who are not getting access to what they need in the community thank you board member nichols i'm so glad you brought this up because i also am super excited to see this happen one of the things and this is more of a logistical um question and if you don't know the answer yet that's fine what i recall one of the things we learned through behavioral health in schools was that in order to have a therapist working in the school they needed an office that they could lock a secure filing cabinet in order to protect records of our students um and and also to hold confidential meetings and sessions with students i know that the high schools are going to be under construction do you um foresee that there

024might be any issues securing kind of the basic room uh or office structure um in order to have a therapist meeting another therapist on site a great question i i think i would be foolish to say space is not a limitation in our district however i will tell you that our high school student services staff are so excited about this they are guarding the spaces that they have identified very very fiercely in addition we are meeting with principals um i can't remember when sorry um to really go through this process and this um what they can expect moving forward and the resources that that will that will go along with it and the resources that they will have to provide so space being one of those um i had one psych tell me she was

025like guarding it with her life anytime anybody asks that she's like nope this is ours so um we want to make sure that's the case in all of our schools thank you all right thank you so much dr esser and nurse kerry we really appreciate this update and that work um and so now moving on to our uh academic year in review we have cindy with some of our associate superintendents thank you chair castro and good evening again board members uh jesse could you do me a favor and share the screen wonderful i am going to go over a few slides and then i'm going to pause for a minute to see if dr jenkins would like to chime in before we get into the heart of this evening could you go to the next

026slide please jesse just a reminder of our vision as a school district and making sure we focus on every school every student thriving in our district and graduating college career community ready ensuring that through everything we do we are centering and uplifting our three goals i apologize i have a tickle in my throat so i'm gonna try and get through this can you go the next slide please uh jesse and our core values and i think tonight when you see some of the content we have uh to share with you in our year in review i hopefully uh will have you see how we really are trying to live these core values and not just have them live on paper but live them in the work that we are doing every day so i am

027looking forward to sharing that with you in a minute and so our outcomes for tonight as uh chair castro shared with you already we have three kind of large outcomes for the evening one we are going to look at our year in review uh we have two policies that will be coming forth at the end of the month for your approval and uh two requests for an extension of uh two of our high-intensity partnerships so those are outcomes for the evening and before we kick off our year in review there's a few things that i just wanted to uh mention we are going to be sharing some emerging data with you this evening um i think it's important to note that much of our traditional academic data will not be available until uh the end

028of june sometimes early july so we're excited to be able to bring back to you through an instruction work group and through weekly reports that kind of comprehensive overview that outlines all of our strategic framework metrics but what we are going to share with you tonight some of the accomplishments that have happened throughout this year that has been a year like no others they where we have been able to continue to center on the whole child continue to make some very um important uh system decisions together and we um also have a lot that our staff as well as our students have accomplished this year so i'm looking forward to that um you'll also notice that uh tonight does uplift many of our young people we know that the rest of this week after tonight

029is definitely about focusing and celebrating our seniors so i wouldn't want to leave that out but tonight you will see more about all of our young people 4k to 12. um and before i just uh turn it over to the start of the presentation let me see uh dr jenkins if there's anything else you would like to mention uh before we really get started i'll just say to the board and to our community we're really excited to present this uh particular data and also thank you at the beginning of the meeting for those particular questions so that we all can get clarity in terms of how we're moving this data tonight is just emerging data it's not all the data as mrs green has said we're going to come back in august once we have

030all of our data in and just to everyone knowing that we are not necessarily out of the pandemic we're emerging out of the pandemic and so things are data that we have now we're still waiting to even begin to move into next year as we're leaning forward but now building momentum about things that we have learned during this past academic year so i know miss uh mrs green and the team you all are ready to present tonight so let me step out of the way thank you we are ready thank you dr jenkins next slide please and so here we start with some of the significant accomplishments that have been made this year some of you were able to join us for a historic movement that has uh really happened in mmsd where we did

031a land acknowledgement i'd like to start uh by showing a video from that day uh to really get us going thanks jesse america was built on indigenous land i would like for all of us to begin to look within ourselves we don't get it right with human decency until we correct it for an individual we had our indigenous people here on this land living peacefully before it began to be colonized it's really acknowledging the history of how we came to be here in america hello i'm carlton d jenkins a proud superintendent of madison metropolitan school district my name is marina fox baker i'm a junior at madison east high school my name is tara tindall i am the native american teacher leader for madison metropolitan school district my name is issa saees i am a

032part of the ponca tribe of nebraska hi i'm carolyn stanford taylor i am deputy superintendent of the division of engagement diversity equity and inclusion at the madison metropolitan school district my name is marlon white eagle president of the ho-chunk nation the ho-chunk nation is a sovereign tribe here in wisconsin and i'm the leader of the executive branch of the government today the madison school district took some time to recognize acknowledge and think about the history of the ho-chunk people and the the land base that they occupy that it is our ancestral land of the ho-chunk people this is something that was long overdue the acknowledgement of our indigenous people and today we brought together many people very diverse group elders we have community leaders city uh city leaders we have various school board members our

033board chairman so to speak the special thing about this event is that it was student-led this idea bubble up from our kids and we always encourage them to lend their voice because this is their school district we want them to feel like they're included in everything that happens here they have a sense of belonging a sense of ownership native american student association main goal is to raise awareness about indigenous invisibility in schools especially it's important to have these kind of events to i guess like abolish indigenous invisibility this was amazing i'm super glad that ho chunk nation members could make it out and make sure that we keep our promises for them so i'm really glad that i was able to speak it's the first time that our community has gotten together in person in

034two years it was also the revealing of our plaque all of our schools now are going to have this amazing plaque now there's a permanent marker you know here in the city of madison within the school district where where it's going to shine a light on ho chunk history as long as these uh markers stay in place together as we saw here with this event then we are apart it's time it's time it's time it's time it's time and it's time thank you jesse i uh just want to say two things before we go on to the next slide um it is intentional that we use the word movement and not a historic moment because we are starting and we must continue with the work that we started over at holtzman that day uh with

035the land acknowledgement and the second thing that i think is really important uh that was mentioned is this came from our students and was led by our students and when i think about some of the accomplishments we've made this year many are because of the voices of our young people so uh really proud of the direction we are going and the movement that has begun thanks jessica you are the next slide and so with that because of all of you and the decisions that you have made we have had some uh significant system accomplishments this year and while they may have been short-term investments we believe they are going to have lasting and long-term impact for our students uh the first started with that literacy material adoption that really came out of the literacy task

036force uh that was developed and wrote the report for um the community um back in the fall uh we believe that is not only going to be impactful for our students that will be um in grades k to five next year that will have long lasting impact for all of our students an improvement in uh literacy and reading outcomes we also had facility improvements we have shared with you a few times but of 40 plus new playgrounds across the board that are going to continue to have our students thrive in our outdoor spaces and uh during physical activity times the 4k expansion again another long-term impact of expanding uh 16 sections for next year so we're really looking forward to the continuation of that and providing the board updates another huge accomplishment this year is

037not only some of the investments we made for this uh current school year in relation to our student services staff like counselors but the uh intentionality we have for the expansion next year for more social workers for more social emotional learning supports mental health millions of dollars that we have committed to and because of all of you on the board are able to be able to provide more supports for our young people and also thinking about adult uh social emotional and mental health needs as well and then last thinking about engagement and i think that video showed a really good example of uh ways to think about engagement and ways to lift our young people's voices to bring them to the table to help us make decisions um that we know are going to be

038really important for their future and for our future so just a few of the system level accomplishments that have happened today could you go to the next slide please one additional um accomplishment was our first ever that early staff signing day that i know many of you were able to be a part of as well and from that able to have some of our student teachers and others uh get contracts early on and secure their spot to work in mmsd next year so a real huge huge accomplishment for us next slide please jesse thank you and then here is just um a few of the accomplishments that have happened where we are continuing to uplift our commitment to black excellence and show the brilliance of our young people i won't name everything on this slide

039but one critically important thing to uh remember is that we had two uh of our seniors that earned a fulbright scholarship which is a full four year scholarship to prestigious universities one of those is uh one of our very own student reps uh gordon allen we also had many of our schools think differently about how to uplift and showcase black history month we had others um with with our seniors in terms of some of the brilliance that they have done um but but just a a small example here of some of the commitment we have to black excellence and uplifting all of the brilliance of our young people could you go to the next slide please thank you and with that i am going to turn it over to our associate superintendents of elementary school

040carlatra stanford ennis harvey and chelsea tubbs and they're going to walk through some more of the accomplishments at the elementary level good evening everyone i apologize i'm having some internet issues so as i am talking if i break up feel free to please let me know that so that i can repeat if necessary any information so good evening and it is a pleasure to join you here today to share just a fraction of the remarkable work and accomplishments that have occurred this year in elementary schools our leaders and staff have led with excellence equity humanity and intentionality throughout the entire 21 22 school year and so we want to start again by putting the voice of our scholars into the space by highlighting one of our marquette scholars messiah rose and so we were on

041a visit to marquette and misawa was at her locker writing something on her white board and we stopped to have a conversation with her and asked her what she was writing and she said that every morning she writes herself a motivational message and on this particular day her motivation her motivational message was you can do this and so when we asked her about that she said that she just makes up um motivational quotes or she uses some that she has seen other places and she also asked her mother for those quotes because that is the way that she likes to start her day and when we asked if we could share her picture and this information with you all for the board meeting her response was yes i would love to inspire so tonight we're

042introducing you all to miss messiah rose abernathy an mmsd scholar who was and does inspire and we know that we'll be hearing from her in the future next slide i don't know if it went because i can't see it y'all so okay um we also wanted to lift uh into the space black excellence and just by talking about two of the um accomplishments from leopold elementary school and also hot or lakeview excuse me leopold elementary modeled because of them we can by capturing students as african american pioneers activists and change makers from the madison community and students not only had a photo shoot as that person but they also learned about their contributions to the madison community and beyond and lakeview elementary welcomed local artisan activist lolita g to their school to learn about her

043art and inspiration for what she does next slide and speaking of the arts schools held concerts on the oh sorry that's the peg group we're gonna go to the peg group um as we navigated through the mini twists and turns of covid parent engagement and connectedness was and continues to be a top priority and two parent engagement and empowerment groups are van heist that you'll see here on the left hand side and also chavas these two parent and parent engagement groups are great examples of the work that we are doing with our parents again as we navigated our way through covid um and back to in-person instruction and for the past three years the van heist peg group um has been led by an sca that is a 24-year veteran in mmsd and in 2020

044ms chanel who the students um call her along with van heist principal mary seidl launched a peg group for families of african-american scholars and ms chanel and the van heist team have done a wonderful job in connecting families and deepening relationships the chavez peg group was recently recognized by a local tv station for their work with the celebration of [Music] children's day and children in latin american countries and students and families enjoyed entertainment food fun and plenty of laughter next slide so sydney you can help me out because my slides aren't there we go they're not changing with the with the time so um again with the arts our school celebrated concerts on the black top to celebrate and demonstrate fine arts in our schools miss felton who is a phenomenal strengths teacher at mendota

045elementary school that not only teaches students the basics of strengths but also instills in them an appreciation of the art by working with them to compose and rearrange their own music shorewood music teacher held choir concerts on the blacktop with all k through 5 students with having them or giving them the opportunity to sing accompanied by local musicians next slide which one is that one cindy is that the renaming that is the renaming not change okay thank you all for your patience so um the renaming ceremonies what a phenomenal way to celebrate and honor our school name changes both miss malay chacasta anna and dr virginia henderson were african-american women who dedicated their lives to the schools district madison community and beyond from the singing of songs dancing and student speeches about the importance of

046their name change for their schools the events brought the community in school together it was a true testament to the pride that scholars and staff have for their school those are live links so that you can read about and also see some of the fabulous singing and performances that occurred by scholars during those ceremonies next one and this slide should be mbe and before starting off and just giving general general information i would like to acknowledge and thank the teaching staff of madison virtual elementary they were a true example of resilience flexibility creativity dependability and passion for educating our scholars they stepped into a challenging situation that had several bumps as we learned together to support our youngest scholars so we are forever grateful for the work that was done this year and kudos as

047well because she would never take credit um to deputy associate superintendent chelsea tubbs um and mary kay for their day-to-day work with the mve program next slide we also just wanted to lift mve enrollment as it fluctuated um throughout this entire school year so at the very beginning of mve's and self-conception there were 517 students that were enrolled um you can see from this well it's kind of hard to see but from the slide that there was an increase in enrollment for second semester with mve growing to 623 students as of mid-may in room enrollment dropped to 374 students and our ability to transition students from virtual to in-person instruction was a true testament to our parents belief and support of the mitigation strategies that were put in place by mmsd as well as availability

048of vaccines so again this is only a glimpse of the work that occurred in elementary school and we know that this is always an intense and busy time of the year and as we look to learn from the past work that we've done continue to stay grounded in the present and plan for the future we just wanted to let you know again of the work that was done by our scholars our staff and the coming together of our community and our families and so with that i would like to turn it over to dr hicks who will bring you the accomplishments for middle school thank you you miss stanford for that um great um presentation um i'd like to begin by just speaking about how wonderful um it has been to be in this role

049as associate superintendent of secondary middle schools and be able to see um the greatness that is happening across our district um some of the things that have occurred this year um our advance our advanced learning student and 8th grader angelina chang from hamilton she won first place and emma kadarsta from spring harbor won second place in a math festival this may against students from sun prairie and middleton um we were excited to have 48 of our fifth through eighth graders compete against students from sun prairie and middleton school districts back in april and um mmsd hosted excuse me hosted a total of 144 students at the goodman community center here in madison on on those two days the mass competition consisted of individual and team competitions middle school did a fabulous job also improving on

050time ieps um throughout this throughout the school years for our scholars with disabilities um for the actually this is the second time last year um um their our district um had a national avid speaker um virtually uh johanna gonzalez eighth grader who is now 9th grader from wright middle school and then this year um again on june 28th in san diego california maria sabota a 7th grade student at wright middle school will be the first mms student ever to address in-person avid summer institute and then also the avid coordinator and elective teacher linda bernhardt was also chosen to address the national avid virtual professional learning conference this summer this year there were over 1500 students in the avid elective class from grade 7 through 12 and then the avid tax partnerships additionally supported almost 700

051avid tops alumni who are currently in college this um was the first year i have it school-wide implementation um was at badger rock middle school i'd also like to highlight restorative justice leaders at um in our district at wright middle school who increase student leadership and centered student voice through a more comprehensive use of restorative practices which includes daily circles and on classrooms um with students as circle keepers and leaders as well as included scholars as circle keepers when conflict occurred especially peer-to-peer or to help prop process and take action for an issue which arises in their school community or at large um they trained uh 28 scholars um for that program they ascertain members from a variety of groups um in the school um bsu gsa hoventude eye to eye light next club as

052well as um to ensure that they were able to support and um facilitate and make sure that all voices were represented within the school community um also this group of scholars um did uh some training um in teaching with staff in order to help them to understand better um what restorative practices um and restorative juxt justice is to help them to begin to shift their mindset and then as um was spoken about earlier around our playgrounds um just the joy that um these new programs have brought our middle school scholars and providing an extension to their classroom learning environment which allowed them to show to continue to be young people enjoying the fruits of life and being able to express themselves in ways that are not so conducive to being um challenged or locked up

053in being able to be free and open and um express themselves openly i'm now going to turn this over to nelson render all right good evening mmsd family i'm excited to bring you just a few of the accomplishments that our high school scholars have achieved i could not be more proud of our high school leaders the dream team for their commitment to making high school scholars dreams come true through graduation as denoted in the pictures that you see we have some of our scholars here featured we have china iselle an lhs scholar whose acceptance is a first time acceptance in the college and her she's the first member of a family who plans to go to college and she plans to study early childhood education we have east with a culinary class got a surprise

054virtual visit from the owner of dukey chase restaurant while making the founders famous gumbo and i know some of us on the screen remember that gumbo and it was delicious at belle phillips memorial we have three of our seniors who received four scholarships to the same university and hbcu tennessee state university and also memorial winners of the 2022-100 black men african-american academic challenge at west we had the return of our homecoming festivities students and staff had a great big celebration i was there and it was just so awesome seeing the drum line out there seeing the students smiles on their faces through their masks it was just so awesome and shabazz we have some of our students enjoying lunch this was the first day of school in their comfortable space and then we have some

055of our pgt students paddling on stark water creek next slide please providing the opportunity for scholars to participate in co-curriculars was just another way of bringing our scholars back to in-person learning we celebrated highlighted and uplifted our scholars achieving excellence in co-curriculars with the breakfast with champions we know the powerful and positive impact co-curriculus had on our scholars well-being and their belonging to school and so we were so proud to have this celebration next slide please again here's just a few more tidbits as far as major accomplishments for this year we had over 200 avid top scholars who announced their plans to attend colleges and universities all across the united states and abroad and we have 26 semi-finalists for the national marriage scholarship at memorial over 70 scholars received the i am black excellence award

056this is the second annual award ceremony and we have seven students who apply to receive rotary scholarships all receive the scholarship and that's the first time in school history and antonio thompson he received the hbcu scholarship at the milwaukee's bucks game at east we had two student-led groups gsa and the sexual violence prevention group they were they spearheaded and made sure they created presentations and posters around sexual violence and sexual assault and they even conducted professional development for the staff and the students and i have to say i was over there this morning and the posters that they hung up were just so professionally done so again excellent job to those scholars at shabazz first time we have reading scores by using the achieve 3000 level set diagnostic we saw an average increase of 47

057in lexile scores during the year amongst all grade levels and over 100 of those scholars were participating in the field-based learning opportunities and partnered with community members also at west and again this is a preliminary data point but the ninth grade on track to graduate data the students data rose from 65 percent to over almost 86 percent at the start of the semester as you see this is a great increase and we want to make sure that we understand that as we plan these type of events and we plan to make sure our scholars are on track we have to start at the 9th grade and so again an excellent data point from west from lafollette 15 bsu students secured almost 900 000 in scholarships with one of our scholars who receive the gates millennial

058scholar and this is with over 80 applications and 30 acceptances and then finally a capital the on track to graduation data that's provided to us to from february up to june it has improved from 47 to 57 which means more of our scholars are definitely on track to graduate so thanks to the team over the capital finally as we continue to lean forward together and we're headed towards our breakthrough with excellence equity intentionality and humanity to provide more scholars access to post-secondary opportunities i want to say that we are specifically excited for our school communities our principals and our staff as they have completed preparations for our commencement ceremonies that will happen this week again we're very proud of our scholars and our school communities now i will turn it over to langston greetings board

059members um and i want to take what nelson was saying about our high schools what they're doing and give you an update on really how we are changing uh our measure of success um as educators as to not just give students meaningful and powerful experiences in high school but to have them prepared to be successful and know where they want to go and have the skills and the confidence to succeed in their post-high school paths and so we want to celebrate that at this moment we know in the class of 2022 uh many of them stepped onto their high school campus in 2018 in a world that does not look like the world we have now um and so this year we came in and we intentionally doubled down on supporting our seniors we created

060more structured resources and guidance to support our students across six paths of where they might want to go after high school and we were very intentional about creating resources to support them wherever they want to go whether that be employment two or four year college a gap year apprenticeship military or job training programs um we we asked ours we empowered our staff to have our seniors complete a post-high school plan that not only included the path that they chose to take but the essential steps they need to take while in high school to be successful in their particularly chosen paths um our very preliminary data showed that over 85 percent of our students at this point not only chose a path and communicated that to a caring adult in their school but have completed critical

061steps to be successful on their chosen path after graduation and so i want to share our gratitude to our high school staff because we know it takes a village of our high school staff working with families working with our community bringing in resources like uh fafsa fairs and post-high school weeks um an apprenticeship and skilled trades into our schools taking our students on field trips to make sure that they understand what the multitude of opportunities they have before them after high school and so we know we needed to lead with relationships but end with success and that is uh what we have doubled down on this year making sure our students have a plan and the steps to be successful in that plan after high school and i will turn this over to dr nancy

062moffatter thank you very much i have just a few highlights for our scholars with an iep as we wrap up this 2021-22 school year um so one small caveat that a couple of these numbers i'll point out um may have changed just slightly um in the last couple of weeks um but only in the right direction so this first bullet point um you'll probably remember that back at the beginning of the school year i spoke about the implementation of our anti-racist iep criteria and i wanted to highlight that with some connections that our staff um nikaia wiley and others have made the department of public instruction and other school districts have asked for that information and are now planning to implement an anti-racist iep criteria as well so um much gratitude to those uh scholars

063in uh student services and their families who have been part of this process um but more than 350 of them have had that and and i'm sure that that number has gone up a bit the next one um we do in the district just in case anyone isn't aware after an iep meeting is completed and the iep is archived in our system families get a link to a post iep survey and we've had about 425 of those completed this year which is a little bit more than 10 percent and 95 of those more than 400 were fully positive so while it's been a challenging year that says to me that our staff have made amazing connections with families and scholars and scholars uh many have gotten the support that they needed and families recognize that

064i will say that one of our goals next year in student services is going to be to increase the percent of family members who complete that survey and particularly making sure that the demographics of who completes our survey match our students and family um students and families in the district the next one again may change just slightly before the uh before the end of this week but it would only be going in the right direction so this 35 out of 40 um this is 40 of our scholars who remain in transition services beyond their 12th grade year they primarily are comprised of scholars who have what we would consider to be higher support needs they stay on for these transition services and out of 40 who are going to be graduating from their home school

065transition program campus connect which is a program that we support at madison college or project search which is job training at our hospitals 35 out of 40 of those graduating have either secured paid employment or have additional college planned or both in some cases and then lastly i know that i was joined by a couple of you last friday night for the foundation central graduation which is scholars with an iep who are not necessarily in these traditional transition programs but did not graduate after their 12th grade year and then were came back into the fold in our school district and graduated that was what a a wonderful occasion to be part of last friday night i'm going to turn it over to dr lee esser good evening again thank you um before i begin with

066our celebrations i do want to take a moment to acknowledge and apologize for a comment i made earlier regarding our school-based health centers as a special educator and a disability advocate i'm deeply sorry for the flippant comment uh equating the long-awaited start of our school-based health center project with aging and wheelchair use it was not my intention but the impacts of my words were harmful and i am so very sorry so i just wanted to to make sure that i shared that with the group um before uh i took time to celebrate our culture and our climate so thank you uh for your grace and understanding and allowing me to take this opportunity to apologize for that mistake that i made i have learned from it and i appreciate you all all right let's jump

067into some fun things with our our students um i have the pleasure of sharing um some culture and climate celebrations through pictures um you'll see uh toki middle school is prioritizing and centering restorative justice principles to support their students in non-punitive ways opening up what they're calling a green space where students will have the opportunity to connect learn grow reflect and make plans for the future lakeview is centering culture and climate using outdoor spaces for students to learn and grow um they set up a whole storybook walk around the property which was enjoyed by students and staff alike i too um loved the um outside orchestra i think it was orchestra concert photos that they had as well on their beautiful outdoor campus um at lake view um toki also um was part of uh

068is part of a big idea through um the esser funds and they are working to improve the educational experiences of our students particularly by particularly by poc youth and those who identify as lgbtq plus ultimately working to make space that meets their needs student needs and addresses their well-being mendota elementary school held a kindness retreat for fourth grade students students and staff had the opportunity to come together and engage in games and community building alice had an event called mercado where students created art to sell to families and each classroom created something to present at the mercado and lastly um you can see this photo it's just too cool um sandberg had an event called carne asada which was essentially a big end year party celebrating their community um and had a great turnout um

069and i can i can tell why if you if the food uh tastes as good as it looks next slide so in the wellness update i provided or the health services update i did provide data around um the culture and climate survey but really wanted to highlight it here as well um as um oops i gotta get to my right slide here um as as as you know we will be sharing more comprehensive data um around uh culture and climate um shortly once we're able to to uh look through and make sense of the data on the three surveys i did want to just give the the group and the community a quick update on our our initial look at the student survey um we know having a relationship safety and belonging at school is

070critical when we served students earlier this year um or this spring i should say they share they shared the following information 90 percent of students 93 percent of students agree or strongly agree that one that a teacher wants them to do really well in school 80 percent of our scholars uh feel safe in their school and 75 of our scholars feel like they belong um i uh i want to enter this sort of glass half full and glass half empty sort of uh from from that perspective 80 of kids feeling safe at school is excellent that's that is a high percentage and i'm concerned about the 20 as well so i just want to name that that uh we we want to build on our strengths and what we're doing well for 80 percent of

071the kids our scholars for for the remainder similar to the belonging um we also continue to invest in culture and climate um through our resources so this year there were six new counselors and four rj coordinators in our high school and as you know we will be continuing to add staff to our school-based student services teams next year as well we've talked quite a few times about curseless i'll just highlight this once more um carosales is a mental health navigation program and there have been this year 280 referrals uh warm handoff so essentially care solace to a provider and a hundred people in mmsd who have had at least an initial appointment with a provider um as i think most of you know the the um access and availability of mental health services and supports

072in our community um is significantly um less probably supply and demand issues and so any um any appointment is a is a win and a victory and we're grateful for that lastly um we uh uh our um bounce back and c bits are our um small group interventions for students who have experienced trauma bounce back is at elementary um we screened seventeen hundred eighty students at elementary mostly at the third grade level and nearly three thousand two thousand nine hundred and twenty at the middle and high school levels um then uh any student who comes up um as as having concerns are connected to an intervention um and uh support from a licensed clinician and i will hand it off i think i'm handing it back off to cindy is that right that is perfect

073thank you excellent thank you um so you heard just uh as people said a small portion of some of the accomplishments today we're gonna open it up for a discussion but before we do that i'm gonna turn it over to dr jenkins to uh close us out and then back to uh uh board member castro well first of all let me just say thank you again to all the board members for giving us this time to bring this type of an end of the year report and i know when we look at traditional successes sometimes we do not necessarily account for all the other wonderful things that's really making the schooling experience really helpful not only for students but for staff and for our community i could not uh close this out without saying i'm

074still having a heavy heart about what has been happening in our communities uh just around the country and i said it at the end of my talking uh to the community that we really are in some trouble sometime and we have to give more love i think it's a strategy am i putting a love up it's acknowledging the great things that are happening with our students and i think sometimes as a part of healing as a part of making things better we have to overpower it with love and our students need to know that we see them our staff need to know that we see them in our community and more of us wake up every day with great intentions rather than bad intentions and i really appreciate dr esser you stepping back up right

075in front of everyone and correcting your previous statement that's someone who cares and we have a staff full of people who really care we have a board that cares into our community i hope that you two take pride in a number of these things that we've shown you here today and as we continue to emerge from this we are going to get better yes we made some mistakes i would be the first one to tell you your superintendent makes a lot of mistakes and i think all the people who are around me who hold me up and uh hold one another up so that we can move forward in the best interest of all of our scholars to be the best that they can be so thank you miss green uh you and the team

076for the great presentation that you guys shared tonight you all share tonight and let's uh have a discussion thank you all right thank you so much uh dr jenkins cindy dr esther all of our associate superintendents um let's get started with questions and or comments um i think i saw a board member vanderbilt raise your hand uh we can start and jesse i'm so sorry real quick jesse could you take us off screen share just for this portion thank you so much i just have one very quick question and for some reason my i'm off screen but that's okay but my question is just for nancy um mo fender on the paid employment for disabled students are those all competitive work jobs or any um um non-competitive withdrawals great question they are all competitive jobs

077in the community at uh minimum wage or higher so um nothing nothing less for sure thank you for asking though thank you uh okay can i say that to the next point of the group the reason i asked the question i did is because most disabled could be paid as little as four cents an hour because we are not subject to the fair wage labor act so it is common now to ask if it's competitive workers versus shelter work employment to make sure that individuals are getting paid thank you i have one request and a question um my request is for the anti-racist iep criteria i am really interested in seeing that and seeing how that compares to what we have been doing and i'm wondering if we can get that sent to us yes

078absolutely thank you for that question as well um i believe that the board of education has gotten that information earlier in the year but prior to your coming on board so i will be happy to send that um via jesse gagnon and i can do that sometime in the next maybe this evening maybe in the morning but very quickly i really appreciate that um i mean that's been obviously a long time coming in our history that we've needed to have that happen so i'm excited to see that and then my second question is related to avid i know that avid is demonstrating a lot of success and i'm wondering if we currently have waiting lists to get into avid or if we are able to serve all students who are interested that's a great question

079i will let langston evans answer that in general it varies a little by school but he can definitely give you more details on that as a start and associate soups can also answer that if needed but langston you want to go ahead and answer that question yeah absolutely um the simple answer to that is as as uh cindy said um the avid elected class is in one piece of how we're using avid in the district but um there's a great deal of interest um and so uh in some cases there are students that are interested that don't experience the avid elective class so that there are in some cases waiting lists i think if if i may just follow up on that so um i want to make sure i understood so is that that

080they um they're interested but they chose not to sign up or that we didn't have space for them that they may not be able to join at this time so there's an application process that happens but there's ongoing opportunities for students to fill seats so sometimes students aren't able to fill the avid elective class at the time they first apply in many cases particularly in our high schools students are able to join it at a later point and if we look at next year do we have anticipated the same situation or i know that there was some increase in capacity um [Music] what what are we looking at for next year for that that's a great question there's still ongoing placement for students there's there's certainly a movement um within our schools we look at

081uh all six all 15 schools that have the avid elective class um um there may be some students that um aren't able to get into the class this year we don't have those final numbers yet um board member simkin i would just like to add at the at the middle school level um it's similar there there is based upon the level of allocation that we have limits the number of students who can who can participate and um yes there are um some waitlists and um as students move out we do um invite scholars off of the list into um into the classes as as they become available are we able to um get an idea of the size of the waitlist we're happy to provide more information and also provide a little bit of a

082historic perspective in terms of where we've had larger number of students on a waitlist by school and where the fluid nature comes in but we're happy to provide a more detailed report for you thank you uh board member nichols yes um first of all let me just start off with appreciations for um your presentation tonight and for one lifting and leading with stories um it's i think an important part of how we help show all of the things that are happening inside schools that are very hard for most folks um that aren't in them every day to understand so i really want to thank you for bringing stories of our students um and lifting those up i very much liked the land acknowledgement video that was really nicely done and love the fact that we

083are in this movement to uh get the plaques and to to really acknowledge um the land that our schools sit on i think an important part and i know you will agree is that beyond just the plaques is also the curriculum and educational part and so we do have wisconsin act 30 which is the teaching of the holocaust and other genocides which is the social studies curricular um requirement and that is supposed to be updated by july 1st of 2022 so at some point uh not necessarily tonight i i think it would be great to get an update on how that social studies curriculum is going so that we're doing more than just the acknowledgement but also doing the education uh that all of our students deserve the other thing that i noticed in your

084presentation tonight is that you talked a lot about the conditions that seem to help our students learn and thrive um i heard a lot of examples about affirming identities the power of family partnership the strength of celebrating students achievements and collaborating with community and i think those conditions are critical for students my question as you are thinking about uh the academic plan and the strategic uh recalibration moving into the future is how do we better ensure that those conditions are more systemically created and nurtured across all of our schools and um you don't have that there's nothing for you to answer to tonight i just wanted to lift that up because unfortunately i think we see a lot of variants across our schools and so while you lifted up some great examples of individual school

085or individual students uh that ends up often times being an inequitable experience for too many of our students and families so i want us to be thinking systemically about what would it take for us to really create those kinds of conditions in more of our schools and classrooms and then i'll um follow up with just a couple things thank you uh chair castro the one thing you didn't notice i mean didn't mention in your presentation tonight was the investment of time and energy of our staff to complete the letters professional learning and so while we you mentioned the curriculum adoption which is great there's a whole ecosystem around teaching our young folks to read and so um i think that was a it's a missed opportunity and maybe something that you'll want to go back

086and include later the other thing you did not mention um is that we did a critical investment in helping to mentor new teachers i believe there's been an investment of time and energy in leadership um training this year i think um but i didn't hear anything around any of the systems for professional learning and supporting staff and and while i appreciated that most of your presentation was focused on students which is what it should all be about we also know that without our staff being nurtured and supported along the way we don't get the outcomes oftentimes that we're looking for for our students so please don't forget them i want to tell you about an amazing opportunity that i would love to see you all grab a hold of we had a west high school

087graduate about four years ago her name is diana murray she was uh used her at many of our leadership institutes as an inspiration this um this graduate selected education is her field she went to uw madison she just graduated in may many of you may know her and she's already been hired to be a sixth grade teacher at sherman middle school i want y'all to grab a hold of diana murray and you need to showcase her because she's one of ours she's one of the first team scholar graduates and she's coming home and this is more of what we need to talk about and there are other team scholars out there that haven't quite finished yet but um she would be an amazing story to highlight about how as langston was talking about that post

088high school pathway and us building our own um you know talent pipeline diana murray is an amazing example all right now here's the last thing i will say uh culture and climate data i'm just going to be honest with you dr esser um and i know the data is still emerging i it's just not sitting right with me that 80 of our scholars are saying i am safe at my at my school and that 75 said i feel i belong i'm looking at the budget book for 22 23 and we have the 20 20 21 um climate survey results um i know it's still emerging and i want to be proven wrong i want to be proven wrong but let me just say this to the administration we are going to have to embrace and

089accept whatever the culture and climate surveys tell us because we've been through a year and a half of a pandemic and if the numbers are low it tells us something about the experience that folks are having and it's not a judgment right it's like it only will help us redesign a new response and look at our system holistically as as we design a path forward so if those numbers are as positive as you say they are i will um come back at some point and apologize i'm just telling y'all right now something about that those percentages seem extraordinarily high um based on what i'm hearing but but maybe maybe things are um better than than i know thank you i know i took a lot of time thank you uh board member gomez schmidt yeah

090thank you and and thank you all for these present presentations like like michelle i i truly appreciate the the snippets of the events that are happening in in our schools um to bring celebration to bring experiences to our students and highlighting that at the elementary the middle and the high school i really appreciate that um i did want to say sort of building on what michelle is asking about the culture and climate data i was surprised to see just tiny snippets of of the academic data come through as well we had achieved level set diagnostics for just one school um on track ninth grade data point for just one school um on track to graduation one school and i i really do think it's really important for us at the end of the first year

091coming back from the pandemic where we had our students in person to set a new baseline for the academics and know where we're at um we've been talking about that a lot and so i guess my question for you is when you're bringing this data back to us what are what are we going to be seeing i know that we have the achieve 3000 for middle school high school what other data points are we going to see how are we measuring the reading levels in our elementary school how are we measuring math levels um i feel like we sort of got lost along the way in the middle of covid um with what we were able to measure and how we were able to measure it and i'm trying to what i would really like

092the context of is how we got back on track this year um with our own evaluation and our measurements to set a new baseline for our students because again wherever we're at that's the point we need to start at to go forward and i really appreciate nichelle talking about the conditions that we're creating for our students to learn um but from my perspective we really need to take a comprehensive look um at that academic data to know where we're starting and cindy maybe you can give us a little background on i mean what we're looking at overall snapshot for the data to be coming to us i will be happy to and i will also uh see if dr jenkins or others want to chime in so first thank you um board member nichols for

093all of your pieces one thing that i just want to notice diana murray was one of our uh early contracts uh hires that we did through that signing day so yes that is amazing and we will continue to leverage that amazing young person um uh thank you chris so two things that i want to point out is that data that is shared uh tonight was emerging data and is um in progress if you will because the school year has not closed out what you will get in august to remind everybody is we do have a whole set of strategic framework metrics that we will use to provide that end of year report so forward uh that the state requires uh measures reading proficiency so you will see that for grades three through eight uh math

094proficiency as well we have graduation um completion rates that you will see you will see act data so that list i i can definitely make sure we provide a reminder to the board uh in terms of that full list of strategic framework metrics but those are the items that we'll be able to report out when we receive that data back from the state which usually doesn't happen until july which is why early august is when we will come back with a more comprehensive update but let me see if dr jenkins wants to uh add anything to that or others i think for the most part you're saying it uh accurately how i would describe it i would just also say to the board members and that's what we had this last live discussion because we

095want to hear those things we couldn't include all the successes we've had this year but i think we've been so much in the last two and a half years of this pandemic all of us are like looking just at what's in front of our nose just a little bit to we forget some of the wonderful things that we've learned through this pandemic we said we were going to lean forward together and now we're trying to build momentum we only highlighted some things that the various associate students may have thought been important to their areas i have a thousand more things i could have lifted and i really appreciate the part that you said about the professional development and how the time staff had to give up to do letters or whatever we decided to do

096uh the many wonderful things that tough decisions you all have made as a board we didn't lift all of those we looked at some of those things and i think at the end of the year we're being celebratory reminding us that there are some things that have been accomplished but when we come back in august we want to lay that out but we don't just want to lay out the accomplishments i think through this budgetary process right now we're going to we also talk about some of the challenges and those challenges uh be that uh i can't miss a conversation without saying you know the zero and zero uh i can't miss a conversation without saying that those are things that destabilize public education but i think it's our opportunity to say too that we're

097still leaning forward and making things happen for children for our scholars for our staff and for our community so i think all your questions in particular around the specifics around the data and showing it systematically i think that's critical i would be disingenuous if i didn't say as an educator during the pandemic we've all experienced a higher degree of social emotional and mental health which i think we've covered like the six million dollar investment we haven't covered at all but we made some investment in that area because we know everything is not well we can't pretend everything is well with uh our students or with the adults or with our families or community but i wanted to say at the same time we have to begin to say and i think chris you brought this

098up about the metrics discussion okay within the metrics discussion yes we know we're in a pandemic yes we know that the mitigation strategies all those things are necessary but how do we begin to move forward to bring some degree of excitement back in our lives so i'll just say that peace but uh cindy from uh a traditional data standpoint we're gonna get those various uh data points in august but i hope that we can even learn from that we don't need just the traditional data points because it's going to really be a reinforcement of a lot what we already know that really depicts us in a very bad way overall and doesn't give the whole child so that's what i would say thank you thank you dr jenkins and i have somehow gotten bounced out

099of the video of this meeting so i'm hoping she can still hear me even if you can't see me um i'm glad dr hicks is on here i see you on screen dr hicks i wanted to ask you there was a picture in the middle school simpson street free press um i know that they have been working really hard this year in engaging students in those extra academic type experiences that they get to do through journalism can you tell us just a little bit about the partnership and that particular picture so that actually was a picture from the um [Music] hinder the henderson um renaming um celebration and those scholars um were their um writing story for that and the partnership with um right free press continues to um to grow and be well and

100it also and and actually you know there are there are several satellite sites there's a site at henderson there's a site at wright um i want to say there is a site also at um elementary bethlehem and hawthorne so there are there are some sites around madison scholars are still um i'm writing wonderful pieces um simpson street street free press is doing a great job of giving our scholars um phenomenal experiences broadly not just in um our community here in madison but across the state um getting them the exposure of writing and communicating and being and understanding um the purpose of writing for practice for practical applications so um and um jim cramer who's the director of that program is um has been a partner um with us for years thank you so much for

101explaining that i really appreciate it okay i'm sorry um any further questions um i had two quick questions um in the parent empowerment group at what was it um chavez school um can you explain what what makes that parent involvement group different from other ptos sure i believe it was at van heist and i'm going to see if carlotra can come back on and so van heist actually has two parent groups so they have a general parent group but they also have a parent empowerment group um for parents of african american students and so that group is meant specifically to create space opportunity and voice for for those parents and so that was what we were highlighting that group started in 2020 um and again is led by ms chanel who is an sca um

102and she's doing some phenomenal work with that group by bringing parents together they actually went on a trip together um i think it was to the jumping i don't know the exact name of it y'all um and then also i had an activity and then game night um at the school and provided dinner again opportunities for parents to connect us also with each other did that help board member castro yes thank you and i'm sorry uh board member mulder observer muldrow your hand do you have one more question no okay cindy my questions are going to be directed primarily at you um chris i want to thank you for for speaking to the data that we see specific to students i have a question about achieve 3000 specifically um so for a long time i've

103really struggled with the data we get around achieve 3000 because of what i hear students saying about how they feel about acting a teacher at west high school recently did a survey with over a thousand students asking them to talk about their relationship with the chief 3000 in the relationship with lexi at the high school level if you're going to give us additional information about uh the results of achieve 3000 are you also going to pair that with the survey that that teacher did [Music] yeah so that survey was across the schools and we're happy to provide more information on both what students uh have said their experiences as well as where staff are in terms of that um in addition to that i think it will be important when we provide that update in

104terms of what our intent and use of that data and that resource is as well but happy to uh do a deeper dive into that uh president mulder if needed cindy is there anything in that survey that was that was conducted by an educator and given to students across schools that would make us rethink our investment and achieve 3 000 yeah i think that is a great question um i have been working very closely with our high school english chairs as well as the curriculum and instruction department to think about our use of achieve 3000 next year both in terms of a assessment screener to provide us with literacy data for students in terms of where they are when they enter into high school as well as kind of progression throughout the year and also

105as a potential supplemental resource for classrooms so those conversations uh have been happening we also met with mti last week to discuss this as well and are kind of taking all that data in to think about the direction for next year so i don't have a an answer for you i would say that through this data collection and some of that that is um where we're considering next steps thank you so much um i have two more questions i really appreciated that you all broke down for us on slide 16 kind of what the enrollment looks like in the elementary program for virtual learners i want to thank dr t.j mcrae for all the work he did on that elementary program especially because that really came together um rapidly uh we we hadn't anticipated needing

106that program um to the extent that we did um and he was able to create a program that i think a lot of families really needed and deeply appreciated that being said um the enrollment did shift from 517 at the beginning of the year to 374. that is not a small number of students um but i'm curious about how we're using that information to anticipate what the elementary school enrollment in virtual learning or i'm sorry online learning um will look like next year and the other question i have very specific to that is how are we giving kids academic credit for demonstrating their ability to engage with technology while learning virtually so i will let carletra uh start on the mve parts and then i i'll come back to that second question thank you and

107um thank you board member that was um a missed up on my pardon so thank you again for lifting the work that um dr t.j mccrae did in conjunction with uh um in collaboration with the elementary team so much appreciation for that um the the enrollment for mve fluctuated a great deal um during the year mostly mostly because we wanted to be responsive to the needs of parents and of scholars with mve and so again while there was um a significant shift from how we started and again the numbers that we had for second semester and where we are now um we were excited that we were able to return students to or have students return to in-person instruction we did and have been meeting with dr t.j mccray as we bring both programs under

108one umbrella of madison promise academy to determine how many students will be served in fourth and fifth grade we're also doing some additional outreach as a matter of fact during our fifth grade promotion ceremony today with mve thank you board member um pearson for being the keynote speaker for that it was a wonderful event um we actually again made sure that parents were aware of the opportunity for madison promise for next year so learning um many of the many of the important lessons that we learned from mve this year and um bringing those to madison promise for next year and how students will be served so we have been in collaboration and partnership with dr mccray and we will continue to do that throughout the summer as this program is becoming up and running for

109our scholars and president muldrow would you mind did you need further information board member module i very much appreciate your answer carlotra i do want cindy to answer the question about how we're giving kids academic credit for their ability to interact with and navigate technology yeah could you could you say a little more outside of the courses they're taking you're talking about just their the functionality and what they do every day through the right so if you think of the computer as the tool and a young person is mastering that tool this is a school skill that's going to be relevant to their ability to engage in the workforce um it's a skill that is strengthened through virtual learning and yet we're not greeting students on that skill we're not measuring that skill as far

110as i know um and we're not giving academic credit for the initiative or ability to master a tool that is a computer um you know especially our young people in elementary school who you know have really advanced their capacity to work with technology um during this time we've talked a lot about learning loss um we haven't emphasized the areas in which our students have actually strengthened their understanding how are we thank you for that thank you so much for clarifying that um we are we are not giving credit for that at this time i think you bring up a really good point for us to take back and think about both at all levels as as also in terms of what that might look like for high school uh carnegie credit units as well but

111that isn't um currently happening outside of the way we identify some of their skill development through our traditional report cards so i appreciate that comment i really hope when we have this discussion moving forward that we really do start to recognize our ability our young people's ability to navigate technology and we start to to measure their growth in that area because i think it's significant to their learning it's significant to their ability to interact with a competitive job market of the future my last question is also about the culture and climate survey um and i guess it's more of a comment i think asking our students whether or not they feel like they belong is very different than asking our students whether or not they see their identity uh as part of what they're learning

112whether or not they are reflected in their books and materials in the classroom um and so i hope that we have a question that broadens what we what we're saying when we say do you feel like you belong um if you don't see yourself reflected in who we're calling a mathematician who we're calling a scientist who we're calling an artist that's a problem um and our young people are keenly aware in fact part of what came out of the land recognition was young people saying we're sick of not seeing ourselves in our curriculum and so uh i think we need to gauge who sees themselves in our curriculum and just not and i think we need to reconcile that through uh truth and reconciliation and that's my my last comment you think you share castro

113for the time all right remember nichols all right thank you i just have one quick follow-up um for the students that are have been in the madison virtual elementary program um sanford are they still getting the same elementary report card and does it does it signify anything different that they were virtual for maybe half of the year or a portion of the year before going back um i know the the elementary report cards if i'm not mistaken were kind of wasn't it like developing emerging uh i can't remember the letters but like is that report card style still happening and yeah just overall wondering how a virtual portion of the year might be reflected on their report card yeah thank you board member nichols so yes they did still receive that same report card what

114um teachers were able to do is to indicate in the comments section of the report card um their length of time and mve and the work that they had done in mve so in addition to just the standard piece of any additional information specific to mbe okay thank you all right thank you so much uh moving on to agenda item 6.1 um a uh extension for the moa with the early college stem academy partnership i believe on hand for this one we have cindy and langston yes that is correct we uh we'll move on to our second topic of the night jessie can you share the slides and could you just skip yep could you skip forward to right here thank you so much um all right good evening again everybody and uh on to

115our second topic so tonight we wanted to bring forth a discussion around two of our high intensity partnerships uh both avid tops with boys and girls club and the early college stem academy with our partners over at madison college and this is to provide a high level overview and then to have you vote at the end of the month on a one-year extension for both of these moas the main reason we are interested in an extension is because both of these partnerships started right around uh when covet hit or right before when covet hit so both of these partnerships while we uh have had great impact and success for our students these high-intensity partnerships also require an evaluation at the end of the moa cycle and because we haven't been able to really have a

116full year of uh data and or learning without some of the disruptions of covet we wanted to create a one-year extension for both of these in order to have one more year to provide a more thorough and comprehensive evaluation but with that we're going to just give a high level overview of each of these for any board member that may not be as familiar so i'm going to first turn it over to langston evans who is our director of college and career readiness and he manages this high intensity partnership jesse could you go to the next slide please and one more please good evening again uh board members and so i just want to go through uh a few slides that round us in uh what avid hops is with the district the power of

117the partnership um as it were i don't want to i know many of you have uh some familiarity with the partnership um so this is meant to be a cursory overview but really make sure that we we ground in that and so um just the why which is not what's on this slide is why we do have the tops is because we know that uh we want to provide systems to give our students what they need to be successful and all of our students particularly those that are in the middle and those that have been historically marginalized in our education system and society and so with this partnership what we do is we boost high school success college readiness and post-secondary degree attainment for first generation college students um and we know that this works

118but we also know that during the disruptions as cindy mentioned we haven't been able to fully evaluate what we've been able to do in the last three year cycle so we were asking for a one-year extension to our current memorandum of agreement so that we can have that opportunity for a thorough evaluation and reflection about what's working with this partnership and how we can leverage this to support all of our mmsd students next slide please um the history of avid tops uh the partnership uh between boys and girls club and the madison metropolitan school district goes back to 2008 and really before that when the conversations began um the reasons and rationale why we need to lift up our first generation college students our students of color and our students who come from families with

119limited economic resources is not a new story in madison but the avid tops partnership from a community school partnership want to address that in a holistic fashion to address students not just as students but as members of their community as they can discover who they are and connect with opportunities that go beyond high school um and so as you can see through this timeline which i will not speak to every point on the timeline and we started um with 75 students in uh and now we have over 1500 students in our uh 7 through 12 programming we have a 9 over 900 almost a thousand students in our avitaps partnership in our high school but what's even more impressive and important as we move through this timeline we realize that just providing students with an

120opportunity to have high quality engaging instruction with uh relevant uh and relevant material and adults who care about them was great but we needed to hold ourselves to the measure of what are we doing to support them after high school and so with the boys and girls club we support over 700 students who are in college um who are working on their next step um with college coaches and support and resources um and so this this is how we have grown this from one classroom to a 7 through 16 support system for our students next live news uh this is just a snapshot of the numbers uh as i mentioned um we have the high schools which is our four comprehensive high schools which are our avid top students um in our middle schools we

121have avid the avid elective class in 11 of our middle schools just two of them are represented in the partnership um and then we have badger rock which is implementing avid school-wide um i would like to note that um we have uh really focused on maintaining that in this we are targeting these this class for services for students who need it but we are applying what we are learning in the avid tops elective class for all students in mmsd uh next slide please um and so how does the partnership work you've got a little vision about the why and what we want to give students what they need um that we were looking for this boost in academic performance connectivity to their schools opportunities during and after high school and how that's connected to their

122lives and they are and how is really through a very very refined integrated partnership with boys and girls club who are wonderful partners and invest a great deal into our school and community to make sure that all of our students are successful specifically through the avid tops program you can see in this venn diagram the resources that we provide in general mmsd are providing those teachers and counselors that implement a system of learning and connecting knowledge for students the boys and girls club being in the community they're bringing in mentors they're bringing in uh career readiness we've got 70 students that are doing internships just this summer be managed with boys and girls club are avid top students um uh college coaching which i previously mentioned um i should also mention that that diana murray

123who we talked about earlier was an avid top student um and uh and her success uh being prepared to take that step at uw-madison and being prepared to connect her learning and come back to mmsd also part of why the partnership works together we provide college tutors uh field trips to colleges uh guest speakers from our community um some of you have been our guest speakers and i thank you for that um and then college and career readiness which we we celebrated our 200 over 200 seniors who have chosen where they will go to college next year um and i want to thank board member castro for being the emcee of that wonderful event um next slide please so just to highlight some of the impacts and we could i could highlight so many more

124but i've been told there's a time limit um avid top students have higher attendance in gpa than their similar peers we've done a rigorous one of the most rigorous evaluations by the university of wisconsin and consistently have shown that the students in this partnership that are they're having these experiences not just in the classroom but also connected to what they're doing in their lives have higher gpas a higher attendance we've had a 100 percent graduation rate in our habitats seniors for the last four years and over over the life of the program our graduate our seniors graduate at a 99 rate uh currently 84 of our avid top seniors take one or more ap classes um and our avid top seniors and going back to this evaluation which we had done by the university of

125wisconsin um 20 that our advertisers are 25 more likely to enroll in post-secondary than their similar peers so peers that look just like them in the in the eighth grade except for that they did not have the avid tops experience they are 25 there's a 25 percentage gap in whether they are going to go on to post-secondary education our researchers and evaluators that they had not seen anything like that any of the research done on college repertoire programs across the u.s and our and our alum have earned over 250 college degrees and we're counting um and so we believe in the impacts of the program we believe it's powerful not just for the students who are in the avatars elective class but avatops provides the energy and synergy to be a model classroom about how

126we connect systems in our schools community partners in our schools and so we can learn and leverage that across our schools um and so that all students may not be in the avatops elective class but because of our partnership with boys and girls club because of the resources we're able to bring to bear we are learning things that we are able to create experiences for all of our students that are powerful um and that that that are meaningful and that lead to outcomes that present them with opportunities and pathways after high school um and so next year uh we are we will have our third party evaluation uh and really examine closely our data uh and how we have experienced the avatars partnership through a pandemic there really is no president to understand how this

127is impacting our students and how uh this that what we've learned during these unprecedented times might carry us forward i also want to know and and and you did mention um that there we are adding a a third freshman section um at western memorial for the 22-23 school year and this is to meet the demand of our students um who are experiencing really positive outcomes and experiences and relationships and they have a top selective class and our plan is to grow currently we have this year we had eight sections two per grade level in weston memorial and then our plan is as we add a third section for the 22-23 school year um to add a section in the subsequent school years until they build to 12 sections and then we're also using our average

128strategies to support connections and alignment with not only the avid elective class but to support all of our students in secondary um with literacy social emotional learning and culturally linguistically responsive practices and we know it's through the alignment we've been able to do and the avid tops elective classes that have provided insight and opportunities for staff to take that to their colleagues and for parents in our community to understand what that can look like sound like and feel like to have a connected experience uh in our schools and so that is why we are proud of what we are moving forward with with the avataps partnership could you go to that next slide please jesse thank you so much and thanks langston i am going to quickly run through the early college stem academy and

129then we will pause again for any discussion or questions um so the early college stem academy began in 2018 and we are currently um in the middle of our high intensity uh partnership memorandum of agreement could you go to the next slide please and just a reminder of what the early college stem academy it's a dual enrollment opportunity for our students while they are in 11th and 12th grade to take college courses full-time over at madison college in the areas of stem or stem-related fields so students earn not only the high school graduation requirements that they need to earn a high school diploma but simultaneously are earning college credits along with the high school credits we have a target population really focused on students of color and females first to really grow those groups of

130individuals in the stem and stem related fields because they're underrepresented in addition we know students that are able to access and take advantage of college college coursework while in high school um are able to persist and at a higher rate in post-secondary so we want to ensure that that is an opportunity for our students we also focus on students that come from a first-generation college going household and students that come from a low socio-economic background next slide please so while we are going into our fourth cohort we have had three cohorts thus far our first cohort only started with 25 students over at uh east and lafallet and then in the second year grew to access across all six of our high schools and we had entered 100 students at that time we have now

131grown that any given time we have 211th and 12th graders in the early college stem academy and to date we have had 199 students graduate i was uh able to attend the graduation a few weeks ago and it was the first time we had an in-person graduation which was super exciting um all of our other cohorts had some impact of covent and we had to do a virtual graduation we have 200 students currently enrolled for next year and we have had 49 of our students earn an associates of science that means they are graduating with two degrees in hand right a high school diploma and an associate of science huge huge huge game changer for our students on average our students have left the early college stem academy with 48 college credits we've had 168

132of our students that have attended the early college stem academy be part of the the phi theta kappa that means that those students have to carry a 3.5 gpa or higher while they are in the early college stem academy 58 of our students thus far have been identified as female 54 of our students are identified as a first generation college going student or the first in their family to attend college 52 of those students come from a low socioeconomic background and 77 percent of our students have been identified as a student of color so that is just a a glimpse of the data we have provided a full end of year reports to the board in the past and we'll be providing an end-of-year report to the board in the next few weeks when we

133have our final set of data could you go to the next slide please so i am going to pause here for a discussion uh or any question so i will turn it back over to you uh chair castro all right thank you so much um any board member comments or questions former simkin followed by board member nichols thank you call um thank you so my first question um i guess i have questions about both programs i'm really excited to see how successful they both are and so i want to make sure that we're we're learning from from both of these programs and figuring out how we can um can use what we're learning to help all of our students and so my first question is for the urban college stem academy are we seeing a

134pattern of classes that the students are taking and have we considered offering some of the more popular classes at the high school yeah thank you that's an excellent question um is the short answer is yes to both um we want to begin to grow the course offerings on our own campuses that apply for dual credit so what i mean by that is students are able to earn both high school credit and then the course also earns them dual credit currently we have many courses that run in our cte area we have a few in reading and language arts and in math that students are able to access on our campuses similar to the same ones the kids in the early college stem academy take we want to grow that one of our areas of need

135to grow that is what we call qualifications for our teaching staff so in order to have a course be a dual credited course there's a different set of qualifications that the higher learning commission requires than what a dpi would require for k-12 certification um we want to uh provide more opportunities for our staff to be come qualified so that we can run more of these courses on our campus through what i would call a universal access right easier for all of our students to do that we are in conversations right now about thinking about that for certain programs like the education academy that madison college offers that could happen there as well as thinking about where we would need to um uh partner with madison college for what i would call adjunct professors uh where

136they could come teach on our campuses in the event that there's courses that we do not have qualified staff for so um that's a little bit of a longer answer that but i would say yes this is definitely in our future plan about growing those opportunities and specifically in the areas of english and math because those are courses that we think have high impact for post-secondary and also are transferable to most post-secondary institutions as well in the content area of english or math to um to offset the uh requirements that they would have to take in a post-secondary um are there certain courses that students are interested in um i would say yes but i don't have a named course i could tell you right now there's about six different kind of stem pathways that

137students can take over at madison college health services is one it is another um manufacturing is another so our students do a lot of universal courses that first semester of their 11th grade and then after that they start to take courses in the area that they are interested in exploring more the stem area so i think all courses they found interesting but again for us some of those more general english and math courses are the ones that we want to think about more deeply for universal offering in mmsd i hope that answers your question and i didn't exactly i think that was confusing okay no it wasn't confusing i'm actually surprised you didn't um raise up computer science or i.t as being something that you could be expanding on we have dual credit opportunities already

138for computer science and i.t in our schools through our cte courses as well as industry certification opportunities i am happy to share kind of more detail at a later date for that as well as many of our students take advantage of madison college academies that have an i.t [Music] programming opportunity through what's called start college now which is state legislation opportunity for students to take college coursework while in high school so we have a kind of a few different ways that students access that um and in that area specifically okay okay that makes sense to me um so and then my second question is um again going back to avid and tops i'm i'm wondering if i can get a sneak peek as to what you think that you're learning so far that we can

139be expanding throughout our schools what what are the successes that you're finding so far yeah i'll give you a couple because i think um we have learned a lot over the years of implementation and i want to i'm remiss to not have thanked the board for the years of investment that uh that madison metropolitan school board has given uh to this partnership and to those students who who really need and value that investment i would say there's a couple of areas one of the things that when we listen to our students and we're able to have focus groups of our students every year and not just look at the data about the numbers the quantitative but also understand the stories behind that um it is when our students are successful it's because their learning is

140connected we've been able to create a community that allows them to understand and value and express their identity and have adults um that actually have high expectations with high amounts of support and both of those things are important and that's what we've learned in some spaces um we are able to take those learnings from our students and from our our avid community and our partnership um and provide opportunities for more students for example um what experiences do all students need in college and career and community readiness to help them make their coursework or classes feel meaningful in both middle school and high school and we're learning how to expand what we are doing for all students whether it be through an advisory or whether it be through opportunities off-campus um that engage our students we've

141learned that because we've been doing that in the avid tops partnership for 14 15 years and so now as we are working with our whether it's youth apprentice students or creating opportunities for our middle school students to go on to a college campus we've been able to leverage uh what we have learned working with our avid top students and so the sneak peek to me is is really take now that hopefully we're in a new phase of whatever uh this pandemic is we can re-engage in that connected type of learning connecting students identities experiences and beliefs about their future to what they are doing in the classroom right thank you so much for member nichols followed by our enrichment followed by board member pearson all right thank you i'll try to keep mine um short

142um i noticed for the avid tops um high intensity partnership agreement the current one is 2019-2022 you're asking us for a one-year extension is the one-year extension just so that you can get to the three-year evaluation or is it um is there any other reason why it's just the one-year extension is it to be with i guess what i'm asking is i know we have a board policy on partnerships and high-intensity partnerships and the evaluation piece of that and so i guess is the one year just to get us to the point where you all can do the three-year evaluation yes and it also allows us to draft and reflect on a new moa or updated moa language um when we are not um when we have had a chance to to have a year

143that is more normal so we didn't feel prepared or comfortable drafty um a renewal based on what we had seen for the last couple of years we also didn't feel like that data if we collected it this year would have reflected what we wanted to learn got it okay thank you so when we get the board uh item later this month will it also come with i guess like contract or is it just the mou piece yeah i'm happy uh links and i'm happy to answer that if that's okay uh so it will not come with the contracts at that time it will have uh just the current moas if people are interested in looking at what the current moa is and language just for a one year extension contracts would happen after that and

144we'd go through um a revision of this moa just to extend it for a year if that makes sense okay thank you uh one more quick avid related question and then just a real quick logistical question about the early college stomach academy so for avid i mean a big part of the avid model is having avid tutors and yet we closed schools and told people externally they couldn't come in and um you know for for covin protocol and mitigation i guess i'm curious how did our uh you know need to kind of close schools from external volunteers did that impact our avid tutors and are we on the upswing are we returning back to uh avid tutors if we had lost that for a while uh yes it significantly impacted our avid tutors but i

145want to lift up how amazing and flexible and adaptable our school staff were we shifted to virtual tutor also but because of the scheduled shifts we weren't able to offer the same intensity of tutoring that we had in the past so it was a significant difference um also because of the availability of tutors uh students mostly and the students were more scattered when they were doing virtual learning um it affected the number of tutors we could hire we are on the upswing i'm happy to note and we were able to second semester this year return to in-person tutoring um but with but with the prop appropriate protocols um that were in place to make sure that everyone was safe we also in this time period explored and really went deeper into peer tutoring and allowed

146our leadership of our students to really uh allow them to be both teacher and learner at the same time as they're developing their leadership so we tripled the amount of peer tutors that we had we instituted uh universal peer tutor training in our avid elective courses to continue to build out that model wow that's amazing to hear thank you for that um for early college stem academy i s it correct me if i'm wrong i just looked in board docs it looks like the last high-intensity moa partnership agreement that we that the board had was in november of 2018 and it was a four-year partnership agreement that would be ending this june um this green is is that typical for the early college stem academy mo mou that it's a four-year mou to get a

147couple of cohorts through at a time or um back to a three-year yeah that's a great question i can answer if we'll be coming back to a three-year we do have dr larkin that was just hired who is over on strategic partnerships and i know he's kind of using some time to orient himself and think about the future so i don't want to speak to that but um yes michelle it was our first and only um moa with uh early college stem and we decided to do a four year which was something we hadn't done with our board in the past we had always done a three year but we were trying to be uh clean with two uh full cohorts going through since it was our first um partnership agreement with them and so

148we wanted to try and gather as much information as we could on two full cohorts before having to cycle back again for a renewal um so that was kind of the intent of the four that is correct that the first time uh we came forward with this high-intensity partnership was november of 18. okay great thank you so i just would like to just say to chair um castro and also to dr jenkins that i i do think it is time for us at some point um in this upcoming school year to come back to a conversation about our strategic partnerships policy um that original policy was created probably back in 2014 or 15. the district was in a completely different um in a different place then around not really having a good handle on all

149of the partners i think that we put a lot of burden on our high intensity partners to do these three year and three year evaluations and we're more than likely going to renew them anyway and and so i'm i just think that we should get to a place where we are more community partner friendly we are more progressive in our uh collaboration and really save that energy and those dollars um for things that might give us a bigger bang so um maybe that can be a topic that we can discuss in the near future thank you thank you so much i can uh agree more board member nichols you certainly bring a lot of experience and expertise in that regard so thank you uh board member gomes schmidt yeah thank you um and i my

150first question is about the the avid tops and i have the report from 2017 pulled up that was done with um wcer and the wisconsin education collaborative and it had like four guiding research questions that were part of it i'm wondering as we look to do this again in the external evaluation are we going to follow this model um that we already have and are are we planning to work with wcr and wek again to do this um sort of extending what we've already done and adding in additional questions uh thank you for that question um we definitely are are going to be learning from what we have done in the past at this at this juncture as we go into the next evaluation we are sending it out for a request for proposal um

151and so we want to see uh what expertise that we have from evaluators um i think those core questions are are our guiding questions in terms of what are the impacts for our students um and and so i don't anticipate those being uh different or changed um but we are going through the process right now of uh accepting proposals for the evaluators great um i i just want to say thank you and i and i see your name on this evaluation so i want to say how much i appreciate that that you are involved and have been involved in the longevity of this program um going forward and so i i guess like michelle i would also like to see the the memorandums of agreement to take a look at what those entail um for

152the high intensity partnerships um yeah that was my one question about the avid so thank you very much on that um my question on the early college stem is around i guess in the same way are we looking at doing an external evaluation of this and just a quick question about this this whole thing started in connection to the pathways program do we are these only pathways students that are there are having access to the early college stem academy or is it any high school student um and how do we see this sort of connection going forward um yeah and i guess another question is when is the whole larger discussion of pathways coming back to us so i'll start with the first questions uh this is not necessarily directly connected to pathways and was

153not directly connected to pathways so i just wanted to provide that clarification in terms of the evaluation we will consider an external evaluation that is a conversation that we are going to have with madison college and it is also kind of wrapped up in our policy process and will be engaging in that conversation this summer all students across the six high schools um are invited to apply to the early college stem academy the first year it was limited only to uh east and to lafallet and that was really due to proximity to madison's truax campus that was the year prior to goodman's south being built and as a reminder one of the main goals of madison college goodman south was to have a space for this early college stem academy so what the the first

154year where we had 25 students it was limited to those two high schools but the year after that it's always been opened up to all six of our high schools um your last question i don't have an exact answer for you right now we will be thinking about the instruction work group calendar for next year uh really uh now through uh the remainder part of the summer i think definitely in conjunction with you and also led by uh chair castro so more to come on that question okay thank you and then my last question really quick um we have 200 fewer students in our high schools because of students accessing the early college stem and i have heard this asked before by previous board members how does it affect the has it affected um the

155class sizes in our high schools or electives that are available or anything like that or are they so spread out among the high schools that the impact is small it's it's a quite a few students when once we get up to 200. yeah i would say overall the impact is small because of the number of course offerings we have and because of how students are spread across the six schools so on average at a given year you might see 30 students from a particular high school that are attending the early college stem academy and if you think about the number of course offerings that happen so we haven't seen direct impact in terms of uh the class size yet we did create through um a model of trying to think about our sustainable budget and

156how that was going to work with our high schools and their allocation we did provide that to the board in the past and i'm happy to share that again to how we were thinking through the funding model for this if that would be helpful the one additional thing that i just want to mention that i'm not sure um because i didn't say it in the presentation and it reminds me chris when you ask that question is we do have two of our mmsd staff members that teach at the early college stem academy and that was part of the original design and intentional to ensure that we were thinking about both the madison college teaching staff as well as our staff so uh it's really exciting that we have two of our own that are over

157in the early college stem academy as well for part of their time hey thanks for that info um cindy i would appreciate the the extra information you said that you have to share with us that'd be great thank you all right thank you board member peterson uh thank you also with just the stem academy since we were just talking about that um i know that we've had this conversation a lot uh cindy about how are we connecting our middle schools to programs once they get to high school and having those options for middle schoolers because they're kind of the group that gets left out from all of the conversations around external partners and partnerships and programs and such um and so yeah that's pretty much my question is how are we connecting the stem academy

158um in ways that middle schoolers have access i know when i was in middle school i took like algebra in seventh grade at west high school and then went on and did some other stuff but you know but i don't know if that is still something that is happening um but it'd be great to see or know more about if those options are still available to our middle schoolers yeah thank you uh for that question uh board pearson uh we're gonna talk a little bit later tonight about uh high school credit in middle school so i'll hold that piece but we are trying to um do a few things one we're trying to just do better information sharing for students while they're in middle school because one of the things we've learned is waiting for

159students to find out about this opportunity in the middle of 10th grade sometimes is too late both in terms of how they're thinking about their own high school trajectory so that is one thing in addition to that we're doing something right now with a few of our community partners about uh stem and i.t opportunities for middle school so we're starting a few this summer through our director of cte and pathways is working directly with uh middle school students and then we are looking at a program that is helping us collect data on our students in middle school that are interested in i t and or stem and focusing on underrepresented we're seeing that we have many more students that identify as boys that are interested still in i.t and stem and so we're collecting this

160data and then working with some of our community partners to create more opportunities for some of those underrepresented groups so um those are just a few things we are at some starting points i'm excited about getting back into doing a lot more of this um as we're kind of coming out of covert i would say um and starting with a few programs this summer the coursework opportunities exist for our middle school students i'm going to talk a little more later about um some changes to our policy that we're really excited about that i think are going to create more uh universal opportunities for students and i think that question can come back up again if it doesn't get answered in that part okay and then my next question or i would just say a comment

161about the stem is that i think one thing that we need to start looking into is being a little more innovative and not necessarily focusing on just i.t um in stem but more so of like where um technology is moving into um into uh ai and web three um and finding ways that we can be innovative i think that that's an opportunity for us to attract more students but then also give young people a path to something that is still being developed like you know middle school age in my space and being css like coding and putting marquees on your web page and all that stuff and um i think somehow getting our youth to understand that you know the next wave is now web 3 and artificial intelligence i mean figuring out ways to

162invest in that as well um so yeah that's just a comment um and then going to the um the avid tops program i like to know just like what the racial background or breakdown of the students that are part of that program and then also how many of those students that are accessing that program are on ieps um and um my last question for that is just we said that 70 of the 900 students have access to summer internships that's only like seven percent of the students how are we ensuring that more students are having access to internships because i think that um for a lot of students of color and at least in madison uh they're they're they might be um helping with their family household income and things like that and so how

163are we making sure that they're paid internships and not just only um experience internships those are great questions let me try to take them in the order in which i remember them um firstly um the the demographic breakdowns of of the of the students um currently in the high school uh uh avitops partnership um we have uh 10 of those students identify as asian uh 27 identify as black or african american uh 43 identify as hispanic or latinx um 10 identify as multi-racial multi-ethnic nine percent identify as white in terms of students with ieps we have seven percent of the students who are in the high school at the tops elective class have ieps in terms of the internships you bring up a wonderful question and so one of the things i want to say

164is that the internships are only one of the career experiences that are avid top students have access to and so there are multiple ways that our students are accessing career experiences there's a digital career experience program that is targeted to our sophomores and in fact all the students who are interested in that are able to engage in that um and then there's a variety of others that we can share with you um but uh we have um there's two levels of career exploration one for ninth and tenth grader um each of the those students all get stipends um there is uh a building opportunities for student success um that's open for ninth through twelfth graders those are also um those students also get a stipend um and then there's a variety of of internships we

165talked about in that number um and then then um through our partnership with boys and girls club they have social media ambassadors um which are students that want to take on leadership opportunities and those students make 15 an hour so yes we at this point working with our community we would love our community to have more internships and more investment in our youth uh particularly our first generation and college students and so it's a call out to our community to join us in this work and join us with uh boys and girls club to provide these opportunities um but we're we are providing what we can with the resources that we have and trying to give students a variety of opportunities so that when they get to the internships they've had previous experiences and have

166the tools and skills to be successful in those internships yeah thank you for answering all those questions and i'm glad that i see that breakdown it'd be nice to see that like in the future just for both of the programs because i think it is important to have that context of like who we're actually reaching um especially students with ieps like we know that you know there are a large student a large amount of students who have the ieps who um are not um who i would say not necessarily recognize as having the potential to do some of this sometimes with some folks so it'd be great to make sure that they have access as much as possible as well i mean i would like to see the the number increase like you said and

167have our community partners come along board with us um and have more internships for uh students because it is important for them to have that whole real world experience and career exploration so thank you all right is that it uh i did have another question but i'll just ask it later or i can just say it and then you guys can figure it out later but um i know that boys and girls club is a is a dane county program um and so i was just asking of just um how are we ensuring that the avid tops program um is serving mmsd um and is it serving our other schools in school districts in the in dane county area but you don't have to answer that now you can follow up thank you uh four

168members i want to elevate what maya said um seven percent of students with disabilities being involved is quite low i would like to see a larger amount also on the paid internships which are maya raised there's a statistic which i probably have said before but i will say it again that providing two paid work experiences for disabled individuals triples the um cripples the opportunity for them to work in the community in a competitive work environment and they've shown that in high school therefore i think it's crucial that these internships be there and people do expect certain things they assume incompetence often first but we have some great employers in dane county one actually pittsburgh liliana's has 12 individuals with disabilities on staff it's one of the best ones and their model is wonderful i strongly

169suggest that we work with businesses such as that to try and provide those services because our students need actual real work experiences thank you thank you so much um i have one quick question the langston and or cindy uh i'm wondering you know in the coming year uh what what what plans or thoughts actions do you have to further develop avid at the middle school level yeah i'll let langston answer that but just as a reminder to the board uh avid at our middle schools for us as a district is in 11 of the middle schools and then recently added to badger rock is more of a universal model based on their structure but langston can chime in a little more here on details if he has it yeah i and this is this will

170be a little bit of a recapitulation um for remember castro but one of the areas in our middle schools where we are really doubling down our efforts is connecting what we're doing in the avid uh and in our middle school two partnership schools the this college club but the boys and girls club partnership is the college club avid college club partnership is how students are accessing information and affirming their identities outside the classroom and so it's through leadership opportunities it's it's through college and career experiences one example one concrete example um is is that there has been a past practice for our avid classrooms bring in community speakers but they're really not just bringing people to have students understand what they do but build a curriculum around how are we developing inquiry around what i

171connect with to what we are bringing into the classroom and making that experience something that we then do further research about and that is something that we are bringing to um classrooms outside of the avid elective class in our middle schools into uh content area classrooms and advisory classrooms and so that's just one area where we're trying to take our years of experience and our resources that we are able to have with our partnership to learn about how we can connect our scholars to their learning and their futures in a more positive and engaged way thank you one last thing i would add to that that um links and i didn't mention is the focus on our early literacy and beyond as a district and thinking about how we're going to leverage average critical reading

172strategies next year as our universal approach across our middle school classroom so we're really excited about that as well what's happening in our middle school avid elective class and in our high school avid elective class how we're spanning that to all of our uh classrooms as a universal strategy to support all of our students is just one additional thing sorry uh savion i think i accidentally cut you off no it's all good um yeah i was gonna say the sooner and younger we can expose our students to these career opportunities co-curricular opportunities um and mentors in the community in those roles i think is the better to just really nurture their imagination for what's possible in their life so thank you [Music] uh moving on we have two proposed policy changes tonight one regarding the

173bep and the other regarding our students in middle school being able to um receive college or i'm sorry high school credit uh and so i think we have cindy on task for that for sure yes jesse if you could please share the slides again our last topic of the evening thank you for uh hanging with us next slide oh sorry yeah you gotta go backwards i apologize uh right there i'm going to uh turn this over for the first one on the behavior education plan to uh dr leah esser good evening again everyone let me just grab my talking point quickly all right i am going to quickly talk through a few slides um related to the behavior education plan so to begin i just want to reiterate the guiding principles that that we hold

174tight to when we think about the behavior education plan these principles have remained constant since the start of the bep in 2014 and remain uh concrete tangible and thoughtful grounders as we consider culture and climate and behavior in mmsd additionally i want to just reinforce and share the goals of the behavior education plan um there are three one is to increase the number of students families and staff who feel safe and a sense of belonging two to improve the successful development of foundational practices and three reduce disproportionality and exclusionary practices for our black students and our students with disabilities so we continue to hold tight to those principles and those goals and are constantly reflecting with them them and mind next slide so as we've talked about a couple of times in this meeting um

175there will be uh full data available on a variety of topics um in uh august i believe the bep will be one of those um areas where we will provide you a comprehensive assessment or analysis of the year's worth of behavior data i want to just center us on where we've been and where we are going as we continue to navigate the complexities of two pandemics racism and covid19 next year we're really working to center social emotional learning and mental health and recalibrating our foundational practices that we know work so when we look at the bep really thinking about goal 2 and getting um getting re-grounding and regaining our footing um given all of the disruptions related to the pandemic and the pandemics um additionally i want to um so take you uh to thinking

176forward um thank you to esser funds and to all of you um we are able to pull together a representative group of community partners providers and school and district staff to engage in really comprehensive visioning and implementation planning around culture climate behavior um for 2023 and beyond so one strand of that comprehensive work and reflection will be on um the behavior education plan informing substantive and transformational changes to the behavior education plan um you can expect that we will give you updates on that our progress uh with that visioning and implementation planning throughout the course of next school year additionally we anticipate um uh substantive as i said subsidy and transformative changes um to the bep um as we uh reach the ten almost ten year mark um of this policy in our district um

177specifically tonight next slide um in your packet you will find a comprehensive summary of the recommended changes to the bep for a red line an actual red line of the policy will be provided to you when you vote to approve the recommended changes right now you have a grid for elementary middle and high school that that mocks that up for you to see um the changes uh to the elementary vet you will find to be the most substantive um as a reminder the board voted at a moratorium for out of school suspension in october but that was an addendum um it wasn't incorporated into the bep so we needed to go in and remove references to out-of-school suspension for elementary students with a couple of exceptions related to expulsion and mandated required expulsions with a

178suspension that would go along with that so really working throughout that document to clean it up and remove elementary out of school suspensions you'll notice that a couple of the progressive discipline charts are not there like they are in the high school and middle school behavior education plans um those will be redeveloped and that reconceptualized as a part of our big edit but really given um the way that those are structured right now it's really about intervention in school suspension and out-of-school suspension um and because there's not an out-of-school suspension option um it's not the most helpful tool for our elementaries at this point so you'll notice that uh other more substantive change is related to title ix um since the bep was updated in 2019-20 um there have i'm not exactly sure the timeline

179but there have recently been substantive changes to the title ix regulations um and how we address sexual um sexual behaviors and sexual contact um in particular our big edit is the update of the progressive um discipline graphic for sexual contact we actually repurpose that and it will instead outline the title ix process and and what happens at each phase so that will be clearly documented in the bep and you'll be able to see the intersection between title ix and behavior and how and when we proceed um through the title ix process how and when we proceed through the bep process and where they relate um etc um the um uh also um so so it also in addition to that um we're more clearly delineating behaviors um with title nine expectations so you'll find we're

180trying to move um behaviors that are title nine uh related together highlight those and uh and uh um redirect people back to the title ix procedures um you'll also see a a a a serious misconduct related to sexual behaviors as an added um as an addition to the bep that um is there in order to give the title ix coordinator and decision maker the latitude and authority to apply the consequence as determined appropriate by title ix versus just the bep lastly i just want to highlight some small minor changes we survey staff and we collect feedback annually related to the behavior education plan much of what we hear is practice related and things that we can provide buildings to make their their experience um easier and student outcomes uh stronger um so for example um

181i lost my train of thought um let's just jump into the the small changes so we survey folks to just really have an understanding of oh sorry the practice guidance so we would um apply and provide additional practice guidance concepts um but little little was needed um or shared with us from schools as it relates to specific behavior response levels a couple of small things emerged elementary leaving the school building without permission used to be at levels one and two if you recall level one is classroom um teacher handled behavior and in nine out of ten times a student who leaves the school building is not going to be supported by their teacher in that moment but instead they'll be supported by an out of the classroom person so moving that up to more authentically

182align it with the bep we also find uh there are middle school student scholars who who choose to leave the building for a variety of purposes similar to their elementary peers um and and in an obligation of safety and learning and engagement we need we need them to stay on campus and so there was the request to add that option as well as a reminder that when we are documenting behaviors such as this it's not just or exclusively to apply a consequence but rather to to track a trend to understand a student's experience and be able to use data to support them differently or better so if we see a middle school student who is leaving the building multiple times a day what is happening in their world what is happening at school why what

183why like and being able to dig into that um more intentionally will also be very important and then lastly the seriousness of setting a fire or attempting to set a fire um i believe there have been a couple of incidents um this year where elementary um schools uh felt very strongly that the severity of the behavior and the safety risk that it poses would benefit from a change in levels to push that up one level um the last thing i'll speak about on the next slide is just the work that we're doing next year related to implementation planning um the policy is one aspect um but really what is the real the real work is really in that practice and an implementation um so we really um want to think about as i already talked

184about that deep comprehensive school culture and climate visioning and implementation planning we need a road map for all of our work and a true picture of what it takes to implement the bep but more importantly what it takes for our scholars to feel like they are safe welcome and belong in our schools so we are going to tend to that larger systems issue as we move forward um the other thing i want to just reinforce um is and i talked about this early about getting back to the basics and building our foundation so really thinking about our data practices and recalibrating our data practices and uh and bringing our student services staff back into the fold for professional development making sure that they have access to all of the the key learning and resources they

185need to implement foundational practices in their schools and then lastly we want to keep expanding and increasing our alternatives to suspension options so thinking about meaningful alternative discipline uh meaningful alternatives to discipline um that can be implemented in a school that not only allow a scholar to reflect on and um address any uh anything that they are experiencing or um uh have experienced in their school and learn um learn a different way um or surface an issue all sorts of things really wanting to get at the root of issues as opposed to simply removing students from the classroom we are a teaching and learning institution and any behavior any um any challenge is an opportunity um to learn from from our mistakes and try things differently so a big focus on our practice next year

186really regrounding and what we know works and ensuring that we are constantly and authentically expanding alternatives to suspension and learning opportunities for kids and that is all i have thank you uh board member vandermellen yes um i'm a bit disturbed in the b.a.p it's been here 10 years it's better than the code of conduct i will agree with you on that only but what i have to admit it still doesn't work and our students who are most vulnerable are the ones who are getting bullied the ones who aren't feeling safe at school are the ones who are paying the price often and i have a problem with that any plan of the behavior education plan needs to be formed with the board who runs the policy of the administration it has to be done with

187us together because we can't be comprehensive coordinated well-oiled machine if we can't work with our administration together to create a document that is best for our students that can't be voted on at the end of the month that takes several two i'm worried i'm going to take one example i'm worried on the raising the punishment i'm walking out of class you take a student who's been bullied who runs out of class because they've been bullied and goes outside so what's the next thing that's going to happen if they get disciplined if they're outside either a they'll be afraid to come to school or b if you're black brown or disabled the police are going to be called because you're a nuisance are we really willing to do that to our students because that's what's going

188to happen i've practiced criminal defense for 16 years almost all of the juvenile our kids behave the way they behave because there's something wrong they are expressing emotion and they're expressing trauma sometimes they're expressing their pain in the butt okay i could deal with the last one but i don't want to lose the ability of our kids to actually talk to us by focusing on what level their behavior falls under when you deal with cults like this you can end up causing more harm rather than not already we have increased the we were not even fully in school this year we were in school for most of it here's the problem we have an increased number of seclusion and restraint debt on elementary students i'd rather focus on that why are we secluding and restraining

189third graders fourth graders why are we doing that shouldn't we be focusing on the behavior of our of the people in the schools as well as the children create a safe environment not trying to stand at a stop box or give a speech here but if we're going to do this and make this bep work we can't do it together we have to do it right and we've got to work on this retreat together as new we can't pass this piece by piece all right thank you board member vanderville and i see board members simkin up thank you um so being very new to the board into the system i maybe i'm really off base but i'm i'm really surprised lack that urgency around this um i think that um the behaviors that are going

190on in our classrooms are incredibly impactful on our teaching staff and on our students ability to learn and i would want to see much faster movement on this than looking at waiting for another year to make changes um i recognize that there is a really big disconnect between the policy and the implementation piece and so i appreciate that you're recognizing that and i think that as board we need to know you know if there are resources that are making it so that you cannot implement the policies as they're written i have a number of questions i'm going to say them all and not expect that you're going to answer them right now for the sake of time and um because each one of these would be a full conversation um first of all i'm wondering

191if i'm assuming that the policy related to the use of cell phones or computers for leisure activities by students in the classroom is covered under the use of unauthorized items um okay so i'm seeing a yes for that and so we have in place a policy already that says that students should not be using um any non-educational required device that this that detracts from or disrupts learning of oneself or policy is often not um implemented in classrooms and i want to know why it's not implemented and that's not to say that teachers are doing it wrong but i assume that they don't have what they need to be able to implement this and this is greatly impacting the learning of students it's also impacting the experience that teachers are having i've talked and talked to

192a number of teachers that are incredibly disillusioned and frustrated by the process of being in the classroom because they only have the attention of several students in their entire class and i think that this is something huge that needs to be addressed this summer i don't think this is something that waits until we work on implementation you know over the course of next year we need to talk about the disruption of these devices in class i also want to lift up the data that was shared earlier that only 80 percent of our students say that they are safe in school which means one out of five students do not believe that they're safe in school and i think this has got to be connected to our behavior education plan um so we need to know

193why we need to know what's going on we need to address this i find it really unacceptable that one out of five students say they are not safe that's scary um can you imagine if you were working in an environment where one out of every five people felt that they were unsafe um adults don't put up with that and i think we owe it to our children to address that now and figure that out now um the same statistic the same thing around the statistic about feeling like they belong one out of four students don't feel like they belong and again that could be that could be connected to a lot of things but i think we need to look at how the behavior education plan connects with that for a quarter of our students

194next um i am interested to know and you started touching on this dr esser um what the self-assessment data and the intervention data tell us about the implementation of the behavior education plan to date and i would like to know what adjustments have already been made based on that data and what adjustments can be made now based on that data next i'm hearing that we're going to be doing some robust data collection practices and i'd like to know what data you are collecting because at a minimum i would like to see anatomy anecdotal and qualitative data on what additional supports teachers need and school staff need for this effective implementation of every level of the plan as it exists right now um and with a special focus on the actions that are supposed to take

195place in the classrooms without additional staff support so those level one interventions i would like to see how often each of these consequences are happening and data on that change over time um also i'd like to see data on the impact of restorative justice um what has been collected to date what have we learned and what have we adjusted based on that data i'd like to know when spirit of justice is happening um how many students have been involved in restorative justice process um and what are the metrics that we use to determine the way i'm also interested in um as you're changing a lot of the wording right now um to where the process to using in school suspensions i'd like to know what happens during an in-school suspension at each level and then

196for level two offenses that refer to a mobile response system i'm wondering with the staffing shortages that we have and that we might anticipate for next year how might we be adjusting for next year um to the um to the category two where we may or may not have individuals in place to be able to be responsive when needed um and i think i meant finally yep finally um i looked through the elementary school one pretty carefully and was really confused that we are including four four-year-olds and fifth graders with the same set of consequences when developmentally we know that four-year-olds aren't at all in the same category as our older elementary school students and so i think it is critical that we re look at that elementary school plan and decide whether it is

197even appropriate for our preschool children to be included in it um and so that's those are my thoughts thank you all right thank you i would like to uh remind board members that we can send emails for we have a comprehensive list of questions additionally we are noticed for a few narrow changes to the bep uh and board members can certainly request that was by fault sorry more broad conversations about the bep [Music] uh i think cindy had a comment as well as dr esser and then uh board member nichols icu followed by board member commissioner yeah thank you uh chair castro i think you said it i just wanted to remind the board that tonight we were focused on a few of the policy shifts that we are going to make and uh can

198definitely work with chair castro if we want to bring this back for a larger more comprehensive discussion at all at a later date i do know dr esser was going to chime in and i know our associate supes are here as well to provide additional information if needed but just wanted to uh kind of provide what that update for tonight was about so thank you i um just want to share two quick things uh board member simkin i know we still have an onboarding meeting at some point for you as a new board member so some of these things i can help contextualize but we'll be happy to provide um answers to the board in general um i also just wanted to mention and and again reinforce this is not about a lack of urgency

199it is uh uh the reality being that we have we've we've lost not lost our focus but our focus had to shift um due to covid and as we think about coming backs next next year we really just need to reground in what we know works and what our schools need in order to make that happen um so much of the issues with the bep or almost all if not all are related to how we implement so the first half of the the document as opposed to the dots and the grid and so while i i recognize and i hear you um from the urgency perspective i actually think one of the things that we have done wrong in the implementation of the bep um is just react and respond and go too quickly um

200so without strong consideration of of really what will work and what our schools need um and how we do that in a coordinated and thoughtful manner um so i do completely respect that that sentiment but i do want to just reinforce the importance of us getting this right as opposed to doing it quick my dad always says the hurrier you go the behind her you get i think that's actually a famous person and not him but nonetheless wanting to really think about um think about that as well and that level of intentionality that we need to put in place in order to do this right thank you uh board member nichols fellowed by board member gomes schmidt uh thank you so i'm gonna try to also just keep my remarks um concise i wanna just

201say that i am trying to respect the fact that as a governing body and as a board member i am being presented with policy and some policy revisions that you have you know outlined at the same time the behavior education policy is very detailed about the how right and so it is very hard for me to take just the policy revisions that you have brought forward without thinking more deeply about the how so i will just say this and um i will follow up with an email so don't feel like you need to respond to anything tonight i do need you to know that i'm not certain that i could vote for this um this month later this month at this board meeting um because there are some critical things in my mind that have

202not come forward one is i am concerned that we are talking about policy revision without data data informs not only some of the policy language but also some of in my opinion what you might be shifting and changing in response to behavior um so without the annual climate survey data that goes directly to goal one i have some hesitancy related to goal two um there is a lot of uh language around the kind of teaming that needs to happen at schools right and you know my concern at this point is i'm not sure how many of the teams that are outlined on page seven are still in place i don't know if teams have actually had times in school to meet and to also have school-based professional development that they're leading i think we've had

203we have faced so many shortages with staff i'm concerned about a contingency plan like if we were to come into next year and we did not have all of the beas or or the other support staff that are needed to make this policy kind of come to life and to re-ground as you said dr esser what would be the what ifs um what might we shift and what have we been learning in particular this year around some of the things that have been the hardest or the most challenging uh for staff to respond to um and and that we've seen from our students so i'm i'm i'm trying not to get into implementation because i know that's your role um but i i think i have questions that kind of impact the policy piece of

204this and so i just wanted to be clear about that um and so there are a couple of areas within the behavior grid um that i'm wondering if you've had a little bit more insight about uh particularly around disruptive and uncooperative behaviors i don't know that that would shift any of the response levels but i don't know that we've had that conversation and if you have had it previously and i wasn't present you know my my apologies so um i can send an email with more specific questions but i just wanted to let you know that yeah i'm i'm not sure that i would feel ready to vote on this although i do want to say that i think what you've outlined the things that you have outlined are very clear it just feels like

205there's still something missing and so to me maybe it's a matter of timing um and maybe you could just share what the implications would be if there was not a vote that passed in june yeah that's a great question that's exactly what i was going to jump in and say nichelle i know you don't want need answers to everything here's what here's what i would recommend um i do not feel wedded to any of the changes on the grid like in the response levels those sort of things the two things i feel really strongly that we need to address one is just codifying the moratorium on a suspension at elementary so adjusting and making those changes to make that live for real the second thing would be to align to title nine um to ensure

206that we are in compliance i'd be very comfortable saying that the other items can wait um until a future conversation when we can give the board a more comprehensive look at data practices and just an overall bep sort of reorientation so we could be very flexible in that but i would encourage us to try and get those two items addressed so that we can move towards training and um updating all of the resources um that need to go to families thank you for that all right board member goldman schmidt followed by a board member moldreal and then board member yeah thank you um i i guess i i just want to state that that i agree with the guiding principles of the bep and the bep i think there has been general consensus that it

207was good in theory but there have been huge challenges as you all have acknowledged tonight with the implementation um i guess what i'm surprised with tonight is that we approved an addendum um to put a moratorium on um out of school expensive suspensions at the elementary level this year i was expecting when this came back to us that we would definitely have data about how that has been working this year i'm sitting here with a bep report from 2019-20 and it hasn't broken down like even just the number of in-school suspensions the number of behavior events like we don't have anything that you have given us to show us what what these changes in policy have done in practice in the schools um you know there's page 17 um it talks about alternatives to suspension

208um for fourth and fifth grade but it doesn't give any indication of what those actually are and so i guess i'm needing more detail before i would want to codify something like this because i think having the addendum is is in place to have changed the practice right but i i don't feel comfortable making a bunch of changes that codify this and switch like the progressions and everything without actually knowing how this is working in our schools and the effect that it's having um so i i do want to better understand the data and i think that's a really necessary step um before we go in and make all the changes to the elementary you know bep um i understand what the title ix changes being necessary um to get us into compliance um and

209match that up um i guess you know some of my questions that i have written down is you know when when we take away or change um and make um out of school suspension no longer an option um what are we doing for those level three and level four behaviors like like what are the alternatives to a suspension that are happening in our elementary schools um and is it consistent across all schools or are schools kind of making it up as they go um or are they at different levels of of practice um based on the expertise of the building principle or the leadership or or the staff and so i i feel like i have many more questions than i have answers and and i don't think i would be ready to even vote

210on the on the codifying um because i i feel like we we have it in place in order to have put some things into motion but but we need some information about how it's been working this year all right board member mulder thank you so much for the presentation you also i want to hone in on the areas that we talked to we talked about changing specifically um so we we talked about changing um our relationship to title ix and sexual assault the greatest preventer of sexual assault is education um the the age of consent in the state of wisconsin is 16 which means that developmentally understood that young people have a hard time navigating consent how is our process in response to sexual assault sexual violence unwanted physical contact developmentally appropriate and what are

211we doing on the front end to prevent sexual violence how are we giving young people information about consent um what is our what how does our sex guide um give young people the tools um to to prevent this before we talk about you know punishing um interactions between students [Music] we all direct the question at you did you say me yes okay cool that's what i thought sorry i was just slow to unmute there um that's a big it's a big question that you're asking um and i i want to do it justice um here but i'm gonna probably do a quick high level summary um the whole the the bep is is built on the idea of teaching um teaching and learning and so our obligation is to put our resources and our efforts

212into prevention and proactive work um so uh consent culture um being one aspect of that um it's no longer acceptable for no means no it's really this concept of yes is yes and that we need to teach that and reinforce that in our schools and so we are as a team um a cross-functional team not just my department but thinking about title ix safety and security etc working to comprehensively consider what that preventative work looks like and where we where we draw in our community related to that so reinforcing um just the teaching and learning being really important um as far as our response i think that um i'll just reinforce the importance of us thinking about title ix um and holding the investigation and the the sort of decision weighing that equally with the

213importance of supportive measures and ongoing supports for students so it's simply not enough to investigate and discipline but we have to recognize that sexual behavior and incidents regarding sexual contact or actions are incredibly impactful on young people and can can change the trajectory of their world yeah i i want to emphasize how we have a developmentally appropriate approach to sexual assault and sexual violence and giving young people the tools that they need to report sexual assault and sexual violence as well as addressing that in ways that are developmentally appropriate it is different for a young person who is developmentally nine years old to come into contact with the parts of a body covered by a swimsuit versus a young person who is 15 years old developmentally and so really leaning into how does how does

214the policy you all are asking us to adjust and our relationship to title ix how is that coordinated with developmentally appropriate approaches to teaching and learning around you know assault and consent um so thank you for speaking to consent culture i'm hoping to just get kind of a little bit more information if you can follow up about kind of lonely between what we're teaching um and the and how that you know is developmentally appropriately tied to a response um when these behaviors take place at different ages the other thing i want to talk about is fire setting um in part because it makes a lot of sense to me that we would take setting a fire at school incredibly seriously right so the idea that we could move that from level two three to level

215three four i think makes a lot of sense however i've looked at data around behaviors in schools for a long time and never has starting fires been one of the dominant behaviors um happening in schools sexual assault also is not a commonly reported behavior within our schools under the student code of conduct the most common behavior reported was insubordination under the behavior education plan the most common behavior reported has been dishonesty so the students we don't trust and the students we want to dominate and those students just happen to be african-american on a regular basis um in in thinking about it like that i'm wondering how many instances of students setting fires in schools we've actually experienced or seen this year in terms of justifying this shift and what we're hoping a more severe punishment

216will do to discourage young people from setting fires is there any data that would show if students are aware that they are going to receive a more severe punishment they are less likely to engage in starting a player at school point well taken president muldrow i think what we know about suspension is that it doesn't work to change behavior um it is an opportunity for some recalibration and planning but it's their data does not show that it that it impacts student behavior um i i can't speak to the specific data right now um but can share that we um are are responsive to uh feedback from those school principals and staff who are implementing the code and that feedback came up a couple of times um but i do uh your points are well taken

217and as i said previously we would be comfortable setting those aside for the time being um in order to really um think through this more comprehensively thank you so much that's it for my questions um my uh first question is um with the title nine is that going to be affected by the will lawsuit depending on the outcome of that that's my first question my second one is a comment but can you answer the question first i will defer to uh sherry tyrell webb or charisse perry on that one um the will lawsuit will not have uh any implication on updating the bep to be in compliance with title ix requirements so you wouldn't make us remove our welcoming school or anything if that came down the other way correct no that that's not included

218in the bep what we're talking about is the fact that we implemented a title ix policy without updating the bep to provide a level of discipline that is required by the federal government with regard to title ix okay that part i understand um the comment i have is this our students are sexually maturing at younger ages where in this culture in which bodies and consent will become very important topics and very simply kids need guidance not punishment i'm really worried that if we increase punishment on certain things that are we're going to punish biological urges of people of non-binary of trans students of students who are just trying to figure out how their body is working period and i worry about that since i've been on the board and this is the controversial part so

219please don't throw anything at me but since i've been on the board we've got three four two former staff members arrested for pornography and one who played and one who um was uh accused of putting a camera in the east hotels if i can't expect the adults to do it right how am i going to expect the children to without any guidance i need to guide these kids into what they should do and how we can help because right now i have teenagers who are terrified i get kids who are going is school safe i'm afraid i'm gay this is a problem i had two clients last week by the way ali i will send them to jesus because they're terrified and i don't know what to do so i'm hoping that we can discuss

220this without rushing it that we i can't vote on this i just i know we need to be in compliance i'm an attorney and i get that but i just can't i can't do it yet without a lot more evidence and a lot more ways to be alternate if we could find the alternatives to discipline the alternatives to suspension on these things then i think i could be more positive on it but as long as that is on the table i have a really really hard time but that's me and thank you for forgive me for anything that makes you sounded it appropriate it sounded better in my head thank you uh dr jenkins uh go ahead and then i have a few questions in a comment yeah first of all thanks for all the

221comments because this helps us again to calibrate again in terms of what we are and i'm glad that uh dr esther said she would meet with the new board member in terms of uh trying to just bring up the snuff but most of us have been around now and this is what we have you know when we're coming out of the pandemic and we're really concerned with social emotional mental health and even some of the behaviors and acting out but i think chair motor was going in a space that i think we all need to come back and re-engage in in terms of knowledge is what's happening but why it's happening and how it's disproportionately happening and i just want to caution us on rushing to increase our response to a young person's choice by

222suspension um really i just want to caution us because i know how the justice system responds and has that been beneficial to us i know how we have responded prior to the pandemic and i asked let's look at that data and was that really really responsive to our scholars i think we have an opportunity be it not perfect uh with this bep because i have some questions too about it i think uh chair i mean board member uh vande miller said about us looking at this together i think we do need to look at it and go deeper and see what do we want to really come out of this do we want to continue to perpetuate the disproportionalities that we've seen over some things that just needs guidance you know and i just want

223to put that on the table let's approach it with love in mind i know that yeah i'm telling you you're right climatically in some spaces hasn't been everything we wanted to be but there are a lot of spaces in our district i'm talking about in madison metropolitan school district that's going exceptionally well that could be a model for other places but those environments that we have that we know that were troubling before the pandemic they just were exacerbated by the pandemic because there are other issues outside of just learning math and science and i just really want us to look at it deeply together and see how can we do better i know we can do better even this discussion tonight the things that were raised let's just go deeper and how we can get

224to the point where we can kind of mitigate those strategies like we've done this pandemic and i believe would be in a better place because of it and that's you know i just know we can do better i was excited as a pig and slop when we said we weren't going to have suspensions at the uh elementary level and who wants to go back and start suspending the children who've been impacted the most by the pandemic starting in the fall so yeah let's work now let's work this summer let's work before they come back to us to make sure it's a better experience for scholars and for staff and for our parents thank you all right thank you uh first of all one question um if we do not modify this moratorium on suspensions will

225it expire at some date sherry you might want to jump in here i don't recall it having an end date um associated so i would assume it would continue but sherry i'll let you weigh in on that it will continue it doesn't have an end date okay thank you um i just want to say acknowledge that i understand all of our requests for more data um but just to kind of ground ourselves in this in another space so to speak is that i view this as a strategy to deconstruct the school to prison pipeline so we received a board memo on december 2nd reported on the cap times december 24th but in that memo we saw that bear with me here uh our total number of out of schools suspensions dropped from 441 out of

226school suspensions to 356 students that's down from the last year 2019 i'm sorry in the first quarter of 2019 to 618 given to 472 students so we saw a drop there however disproportionality for black students persisted of our student population is black 51 received out of school suspension of the students who received suspensions 51 received obvious school suspensions for black 48 for in-school suspensions uh that was a decrease from fall 2018 59 percent of students who received suspensions were black 56 and school suspensions were black um and it only uh gets worse as you go further in time also in that memo uh from december 3 we saw that there had been 94 documented uses of alternatives to suspensions for 87 different students that was on pace and tracking for prior years and so uh

227i'm wondering what limited our use of more alternatives to suspensions and look i am eager to see the data from reporters two three and four we have data for quarter one um but i'll be honest there is a volume of research education research that demonstrates the bad effects of suspending a child from school it leads to more suspensions it does not lead to more academic learning it leads to a greater chance of being involved in the juvenile justice system and then the adult justice system and i don't think a quarter of data is going to contradict those decades of research uh some national data this week new york times conducted a survey of 362 school counselors although school school counselors surveyed 86 percent they saw an increase in trouble focusing on classwork 94 saw the

228uh morse 94 saw increased signs of anxiety and depression that's consistent with dane county data every every few years dane county the government does a youth assessment survey every year we see increased signs of anxiety and depression said that they saw increased uh instances of students having trouble solving conflicts with friends and the u.s surgeon general called a national emergency for student and youth mental health so i am down to have this conversation about the bep but i also want us to also connect the dots with some of the resources that we're doing we talked about these the high school health clinics that we're putting in our school i think that's a piece of this we've talked about how we've hired more social workers and school therapists i think that's a huge piece of this

229we've talked about partnering with people uh with other agencies in the area to address these health care gaps that we're seeing i think that's a piece of this um and so i want us to dive in on the bep but i don't think i don't think we should treat the bep as a panacea in terms of this issue and expect this one document uh and and the last thing i'll say is that we've got to have 360 degree accountability in our schools for students and for teachers i've talked myself as a student as a black student in this district and when i talk to black students in the district it frequently comes up that they say i see myself being punished for things that my white peers aren't punished for i think that's something we

230have to address thank you yeah i just wanted to to go back to the fact that when we're talking about codifying the the um moratorium on in schools or out of school suspensions we're talking about the elementary bep right and so all the data you're coding without a school suspensions we have changed something significantly at this k-5 level and all i'm saying is i think we have to understand how it's working before we codify it and make more changes permanent changes to the bep so so that's kind of where i'm coming from with wanting the data at the k to five level to really see what this has meant in practice for schools um i i think that's a reasonable request definitely we have it for four quarter one uh and we will get it

231for quarters two three and four dr hicks i see your hand yeah i would i would just like thank you um board member uh castro i um i'm going to come from a lens of a principal who has done a lot of work um pre-bep during bepp and um also had a school who is predominantly students of color um and um did not have a high rate of um suspensions um and i think that when we talk about it it is related in in a lot of ways in a lot of spaces and from me even going into school seeing it it is race-based on some levels um lack of understanding mindset shifts all of those things have to occur and uh an expectation of of of excellence um and rigor and learning on the

232front end and i think that as a district um we need to go back to those pieces and and also there is still a great deal of trauma um from people and their experiences with the bep and um what they thought the bet was was was not doing when it was shifting them from being reactive to being you know a progressive discipline and being proactive on the front end a great deal of education for our staff a great deal of education for scholars and a great deal of education for families have to be ongoing and often and not a one-and-done um and um what are the values how are our values as a district being lived um in action in our buildings um because from my perspective if those are that those are non-existent um

233then we're going to get a lot of anything and everything um and then people will start operating out of fear which then puts our scholars at a deficit because they're not doing the right thing for right for for for the right reasons but responding in ways out of fear um of of of lack of um um i guess um what's the word lack of being um um truly looking at the whole child because if we're really talking about educating um young people as well as adults because as we know and in my experience there are lots of adults who are in our buildings who do not know and understand how to interface understand work with love on young people and i think um they're they're not clear about parts of their entire role of being

234um responsible for the care of all of our children and what that means and what that looks like and so as we think about the bap or any of their parts of it or if we went back and thought about the code of conduct it wasn't about the punishment um sometimes it was it was also sometimes about what do you we want children young people to learn how to like like i started out in earlier this morning i mean earlier this evening when we're talking about a restorative justice how are there are young people out here helping to shift the adult mindset around what that is if that's not happening consistently across the board so there's so there's a level of coherence that needs to be built um from from pre-k through 12 right there

235has to be some communication around what bottom lines are yeah we get middle school scholars who are becoming you know sexual creature human beings and not really understanding what's going on how are we educating around those things not just once not in a unit but ongoing because hearing something once we know what happens with young people it goes one ear and out the other right we need to keep coming back around and coming back around and coming back around so that we're not putting all the onus of our of our children of color's education on the few staff of color that is in our buildings and that's what i'm seeing in a lot of spaces right now um and um as i continue on my journey in this role that will be being addressed across

236the middle school level across this elementary level and across the high school level because that whole level of consistency and coherence this before we could even begin to move and there is a sense of urgency around that right but the sense of urgency can't be so what much that it then ends up um harming um young people harming staff and harming families so so so we have to really take an intensive look at the entire process um before we you know yeah we want to make sure that we're in compliance um around um excuse me title ix and other things but where's the education that where's that coming from because i'm just gonna tell you i've see i've i've had issues with young young third graders you know doing some inappropriate things to other third

237graders and where's the education around i'm this is this is girl's weight a little a little ways back but it's about education right and and it's about what is it's not just the academic pieces because these are strategies and things that need to learning that needs to take place that will allow us to get to the academic pieces everyone doesn't come with the same level of um understanding um same level of resources even when it comes to mental health it's it's all different their access what's going on in one school and different from the other but we have to build the bridge of the entire madison community and really be focused on what is it that we want young people to know and be able to do how are we going to help them to

238learn that and then what are we going to do when they do not right so that level of understanding um and the level of support needs to be there otherwise um that that pipeline again as well as you know we have a level of responsibility that we want young people to have we have a level of responsibility that we want staff to have we have a level of responsibility that we want um families to have but we're not doing any educational robot around the responsibilities that we um um are looking for then we can't change anything and i think that that's where we need to start um before we start thinking about you know trying to you know not dismantle change or or however however but there needs to be a level of coherence pre-k

23912 um around all of this work all right thank you um so moving on to our next policy change talking about a plan for middle school students who take high school level reports thank you so much and um i am looking forward to continuing this conversation with the board and hopefully uh having the conversation on the right uh topics together on how we really make this change we're happy also to provide that end-of-year data if needed um but i just want to make sure as we continue these conversations we're focused on the right conversation for our students jesse can you please share the slide there's a single slide left it is our last item for the evening is it this one policy 3541 yep it's just not showing up on the screen the the additional

240policy that will be coming forth uh to the board at the end of the month is policy 3541 which is about our middle school scholars being able to earn high school credit while in middle school i alluded to this a little uh before when we were talking about the early college stem academy this is a policy where the changes um are really exciting for us and are really creating and opening up more opportunities for our students uh there's just a few minor changes that i'll highlight one that uh the policy as we are uh recommending be changed is that credit is granted automatically for any student that takes a high school credit bearing course while in middle school the current policy requires a family to opt in to that credit opportunity versus making it just

241a universal opportunity these opportunities are available for 7th and 8th grade students only based on dpi legislation the second component is that under these changes we believe it becomes a much lower risk opportunity for students in that dpi recommends that students earn the high school credit for the course but that the grade is not factored into a student's high school gpa so that means a student taking these courses in middle school may earn a b or a c in the course which gives them great exposure to high school courses which gives them a safety net of a bank of credits going into high school but that that gpa does not have to follow them into high school and affect their high school gpa in any way we believe that's a low risk opportunity for more

242students to take advantage of taking high school credit while in middle school we also believe that some of these changes are going to really open up universal opportunities across our middle schools for for many more students to take high school courses in middle school which in turn then creates many more opportunities for our high school students to take college coursework in middle school based on this policy change so i will pause here uh chair castro to see if there's any questions or anything coming up as we kind of round out our night questions from boardmap members and jesse would you mind taking this off-screen thank you all right from my commercial this is a really question um when i'm looking in board docs i don't see the redline version it's just the changed version i

243think so can you just give us provide us with the redlined one absolutely i'll work with sherry to make sure you have that thank you okay and i think um this is a really important step to removing the barriers so families don't have to opt in it's just an automatic thing so i really i really appreciate the changes thanks all right i'll say real quick i think this is a great opportunity for our students to take take take risk in their academic and intellectual journey uh get exposure to new concepts um and also uh through our system more successfully and faster so thank you all right uh before we adjourn i want to say thank you to jesse our new uh board secretary um thank you so much uh this is a long night but

244we are so thankful to have you on your team so thank you uh may i please get a motion to adjourn second move second okay all those in favor we are adjourned permission to hit