Board of Education Instruction Work Group 11/02/20

001foreign okay good to go thank you thank you so much Barb um I'd like to open our instruction work group and our first order of business and is written registration and uh any in-person or virtual speaker and I wanted to confirm that we have none Barb is that correct that's correct okay so moving on from public appearance we uh looks like we don't have any minutes to approve yes we do we do for June first yep okay so let's entertain a motion to move to approve the minutes for June 1st so moved Nikki Vander wheel second Ali Muldrow moved by Nikki second by ali uh any discussions all those in favor signify but oh Julia your advisory vote hi uh all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed here none uh motion carried

002thank you at six uh so we're gonna get started with uh the presentation but before that Dr Jenkins do you have any words uh of wisdom or how we went on to center it and then I uh I have a couple of things before Lisa gets started oh um you turn your mic on please thank you so much I am very excited about tonight and to hear our presentations that we have on all of the topics actually as we've been working behind the scenes to make sure everything goes well but this first one on early literacy and uh what you're going to be hearing in terms of our next steps I think uh Lisa and the team they put together uh a plan of action that's going to really be in alignment with what we

003have in terms of our strategic framework and our core goals um core beliefs here so let's just get started I'm ready to go all right great thank you so much Dr Jenkins uh I just wanted to share with my colleagues that this work has been extremely inspiring uh to see unfolding uh we definitely had a um a detour or a pause or something that got us you know a bit distracted and experiencing over the last six seven months a pretty consider considerable impact in our schools and our students and our staff with the with our Global with the global pandemic um but I'm really excited that there are the Lisa stayed on course with what was needed and prepared uh for a comprehensive Early Learning structure that were have been discussing since the last time

004we met we also uh have managed to energize and motivate so many staff at MSD and so it's really exciting to see school staff and also Center office staff that are going to speak to many different parts of our presentation today I know that this is uh this is a topic that many of my colleagues get really excited and we have lots of things to say so the way in which we're gonna go over the meeting today is please take your note take notes uh and uh we're we're going to have a pretty comprehensive slides on on data because uh I know also so many of you and with a lot of appreciation uh really want us to ground into like what is the data telling us in order for us to be making uh

005the the most Equitable decisions for our students and across the district so surely after our our data slides we do we'll do a brief pause and then go around for uh from some questions uh this you know this work is is exciting and we are just gonna get like a really good preview of it and then of course there's so much more uh learning that we're going to be continue to be doing uh specifically because we are still in 2020 2020 it's not done unfortunately uh so we're still uh under a lot of the rest and and still negotiating a lot of new uh a new landscape um with that I wanna to pass on to Lisa and then to many of uh former colleagues but people that I uh know and appreciate and care

006a lot and then when uh Lisa when your staff is coming on and turning their their camera on if they can please take a moment to just introduce themselves and what their role is their names and their roles uh mmsd so with that Lisa please take it away thank you Dr Jenkins and thank you Ananda for the the welcome and the introduction to our work we are really happy to be here tonight this has been a long time in the making and it is important that we're all here to talk about our focus on early literacy this has oh something is happening with your audio and it's it's getting chopped up a little bit is it have you been and I can see your video is also not the best quality right now it are

007you can you move somewhere else let me try something okay foreign as Lisa's preparing that I would just like to say to you what she was beginning to see in the beginning it's been a long time coming and walking right in the door just hearing all the great work that's going on but having our team here tonight to hear directly uh from the people who are closest to the work I think it's just going to be amazing and we are not there and I appreciate you saying that and then in the beginning we're in the emphasis of where we're headed with this there's going to be a much larger discussion um continued and it's going to be very collaborative if we as we're going to include the voices of not only our staff here but

008we're going to be talking to parents too and parents have been in this discussion about reading this is it uh early literacy itself and the design of elementary schools and what we can do to maximize to take an equity focus on the work um that we're trying to do so Lisa's back now but you're going to hear all of that in that so uh Gore at Lisa okay is this better Ananda excellent okay so we are really happy to be with you again thank you we have got a great team with us here tonight and you know I've been in this business over 30 years and I have to tell you that the people on this group tonight have taught me over the last couple of months about the importance of this work and the

009work that we've already done so it should be a really um just a really an opportunity for us all to hear from our experts that we have here on staff and also hear about what some next steps are for us as we move through this work I do want to make one special introduction tonight of a new staff member that we have we have a new interim uh director of literacy and Humanities and that is Gabby Bell Gabby can you shine your face to us all here welcome Gabby has stepped into this position with Grace and professionalism and she brings with her to this position a really Keen Eye towards biliteracy so we have this dual focus on English learning and also by literacy and we are so happy that Gabby stepped up um in

010a bit of an organizational shift in curriculum and instruction and omge and you'll be hearing from Gabby a little bit later in the presentation so we are really happy Gabby that you're here we also have tonight Kaylee Jackson our executive director of curriculum and instruction that will be um chatting with us also about early literacy and then I want to just um call out Jackie Smith the principal from Gompers and also Sarah Larson principal from Elvia my home school long time ago I was there and Sarah is making it just better every day so thanks to the principals for sharing their work as well so the PowerPoint deck that we have for you tonight is is full and it's a long PowerPoint deck but it's important and when we get to the data you're going

011to see why this work really matters why early literacy matters and why it's the game changer for us why we think it's a game changer this work is big and the impact that it can have is very big so we're going to go through the data slides we're going to go through pretty quickly we're going to tell a story about the data and then as Ananda mentioned we're going to pause take some questions we have Andrew with us to help answer any questions and then we'll finish up with a draft phased approach um that we'd like your feedback on but we are very important we're very happy to join with you and partner with you in this important work so Barb I think we're ready for the PowerPoint if you're driving got it okay and

012we can go right ahead to the next slide foreign we have done a great deal of work around anti-racist practices courageous conversation Equity work but this work tonight that we're going to talk about this is an example of moving from talking to actual action this is about anti-racist practices and high expectations and those two cannot be separated they are one and the same this is actually a strategy of offering students a grade level text and foundational skills that raises the bar for all of our children so that students can be successful accelerating learning to disrupt the gaps that we see and actually make a difference in the learning and trajectory for students next slide so this is an investment in our children in our staff and in our community and it's rooted in our commitment

013to Black excellence this as I said is a strategy for black excellence and we need to help our teachers our families and our community understand the science of reading understand why it's a game changer and understand what the research says this research has been out there for years it's been out there for a very long time and as we commit to students receiving grade level high quality and standards aligned accelerated instruction we have to really take the time to understand what the research says and apply it to our practices I want to be sure to say something we discussed this in our team actually last week that this focus on black literacy does not hold any student down the focus on early literacy excuse me does not hold any student down it is a strategy

014that supports students with disabilities our English language Learners our Advanced Learners and our bi-literacy Learners Gabby's going to talk a little bit how foundational skills for bi-literacy are actually a little bit different but there's still a science to it and we have to pay attention to that and I'd also like to say that the science of reading and what we're going to talk about by no means disregards the love of learning right this gives students the skills that they need to enjoy and love learning and love reading it does not mean drill and kill instead it promotes confidence it's rooted in both decoding and word recognition and also language proficiency that leads to comprehension we still believe that children need high quality read-alouds and that it's important for children to engage in hearing literature with

015their teacher and of course always high quality independent reading texts are also important so we see this as um as a both and in our in the way that we're teaching reading it is both about high quality foundational skills as well as language acquisition that leads to comprehension next slide please so these are the big rocks the big components of what we think our early literacy strategy um will be um composed of is we focus on the science of reading as you can see at its center it's an equity imperative and as I said moving from talk to action well educate and partner with our entire Community we plan to have a task force and I'll talk about that at the end of the presentation where our purpose is really uplifting voices and talking to

016some experts both in our community and Across the Nation we want to learn from schools and from teachers who are piloting materials and using letters already I did a presentation with the student services staff gosh about a month ago now and so many of those folks out there are ready and actually are already doing this and are saying to us it's about time that we widen the learning that's happening we're going to talk about a phased approach and we're going to show you what a phased approach could look like we don't know if that's exactly right yet but the message is there's a short and a long-term strategy here and there's also a big culture shift right it's not just about the technical aspects of this and the stuff it's also about the culture change

017and the Adaptive piece of this that we want to think about moving forward we wanted work to identify measurements of success along the way and I'm going to talk a little bit more in the presentation about this really exciting partnership that we're going to have with UW Madison and the dean of the Ed School Diana Hess and Gloria Ladson Billings who is willing she is ready she asked for our commitment to this we are there with her and we are honored to be partnering with her around what does culturally relevant pedagogy look like how is the science of Reading part of that and how can we best train our teachers as they teach our children how to be readers next slide please so we wanted to be sure that when thinking about this that we

018also included the larger impact of 4K through 12 impact and the bullet points on this slide really sort of um they widen really where the conversations happen in a couple of different ways right this is also about strengthening the transition between our youngest four-year-olds as they move into five-year-old kinder and strengthening that summer experience for them and as we talked with secondary teachers they talked about the importance of this text-based teaching and learning strategy always grounding children in text and continuing to build vocabulary and provide time for students to talk to each other at the secondary level as well we want part of this to be an increase in Reading certified staff across the district who are qualified to diagnose and provide appropriate intervention we want to also train our secondary reading interventions and special

019education staff and we want to implement these grade level screeners these short probes into skill areas that give us insight into how children are learning foundational skills next slide thank you Barb as I said before we're going to be partnering with local experts and we're really excited about this again Dr Gloria Ladson Billings will be working with us around professional learning and Equity audit curriculum development so all of that is going to be happening very soon and also working with Diana Haas on collaborating around teacher certification teacher development support we actually see this work around the science of reading as being a prerequisite for teachers before they start in Madison to actually have new teacher training on this before they even come to teach in the Madison schools next slide please so as we start

020to launch into the data slides is data matters right and there's a story as I said um and this and um I wanted to start with sort of this National um trajectory that we're seeing with the data so why are we focusing on early literacy data Across the Nation from the nape test indicates to us that there are very sharp sharp disparities in Reading achievement for the student groups that are listed here and we see those same performance trends for students who qualify for free and reduced lunch have disabilities or who are English language learners there is a need Nationwide and as we pass the next set of slides off to Kaylee our executive director of curriculum and instruction she's going to give you a look at what data looks like in Madison and then

021what data looks like for different subgroups so Kaylee I am going to turn it over to you wonderful thank you Lisa again I'm Kaylee Jackson executive director of curriculum and instruction we are going to go on a data walk together we can go on to the next slide all right so as Lisa just showed us and informed us there are disparities Across the Nation um as nape is showing us in student groups as it relates to uh literacy and comprehension that those disparities we also see here in mmsd so what you're looking at here is uh our Pals Benchmark Pals measures early literacy skills and development and you see that we're already in kindergarten first and second grade seeing disparities in Pals Benchmark Readiness between all of our students and our black and African-American students

022next slide in looking now zoning in the same assessment we're still looking at early literacy which is what we're focusing on today what we are zooming in on here is second grade and what you can see here is that our Top Line are orange those are the performance of our white second graders on this Pals Benchmark and at the bottom we see our blue line which is our black or African-American students and their performance at second grade on our Pals early literacy Benchmark what this says to us is that we need to stay true and true to the course with our third goal in our strategic framework which is really staying true to our goal around the performance of African-American students and black Excellence this slide here shows us where that Gap lies in mmsd

023in second grade next slide this is that same data that same data with second grade we're still looking at race and ethnicity but it's giving us a clustered view so that we can see a benchmark performance across time and across the years still showing a disparity between our black and our white students next slide so nape told us and this is the last slide that Lisa just had with us Nate told us that yes there are disparities for black students for African-American um for Hispanics latinx but it's not just um those populations of students those with their racer ethnicities but we're also seeing Across the Nation disparities between um different populations of students again that is true in mmsd so what you're looking at here is the same those same disparities in kindergarten first and

024second grade but we're looking at how our ell students low-income students and students with special ed services are also underperforming as compared to all uh all of our students in our Benchmark readiness next slide and so this is a really interesting slide and two very interesting and Incredibly telling data points this slide here illustrates the role early literacy plays in later reading proficiency okay so in mmsd our very own District if a student does not meet the pals or early literacy Benchmark in second grade they have a 47 chance of being reading proficient in grades three through five if they are not black or African-American okay however if they are black or African-American and they have not reached that second grade early literacy Benchmark then there's only an 18 chance that that black and African-American

025student is going to be reading proficient in grades three through five so this further drives home the point that we have to get early literacy right across the board but even more so for our black and African-American students next slide so now we shift gears just slightly and we look at map proficiency we're no longer looking at the pal screener which is giving us information on early literacy but now we're looking at comprehension okay and what we're seeing here in third fourth and fifth grade is even wider gaps between our students and our our black and African-American students in our reading proficiency again we're going to Zone in we're looking at the same data we're still looking now with Proficiency in reading but we're looking at third grade and we're looking again at the disparities

026between our different racial and ethnic groups okay and what you see here um is again the difference between our orange line at the top which is our white students and then the performance of our black students and not only are black students but our Hispanic and latinx students at the bottom of this uh graph here and this is our proficiency for these ethnic groups at our third grade next slide again this is the same data the same exact numbers as we saw on the slide before but it's giving us a clustered view again further illustrating the gaps that we have right now in our district as it relates to reading Proficiency in the early grade levels again a further need to focus on our you can go ahead to the next slide on our third

027goal in our strategic framework focusing on black excellence and the performance of our African-American students so here we're still looking at map Remember map is uh there was a linking study to predict proficiency okay so again just as the nape is telling us that there are disparities amongst not only black and African-American students and uh Hispanic students and latinx but also with our students who are ell low-income and special ed students what you're seeing here is that there are still Stark disparities between the the grade level proficiency the reading proficiency of all students and other students and we're also even with our all students we're maxing out in fourth grade at 46 proficient all students next slide so we will pause here for questions for Lisa myself and our data team Kaylee before we launch

028into questions I want to say thank you for going through the data slides for our team here tonight and want to just pause a minute um to see if Dr Jenkins would like to add anything before we open it up for some questions I think I'll reserve my comments for the and uh thank you Kelly and thank you too Lisa you guys did a very nice job explaining not only what we have before us but why we must move in the direction that we're going thank you so much for the way that you've laid this out hmm thank you oh sorry Lisa Barb can you when you get a chance can you uh take us out of uh sorry Lisa go ahead no I'm already Ananda you go ahead and open it up for questions

029okay so I see savian and Gloria thank you um and we got a glimpse of this especially some of the Cross tabs and the annual report and the appendix especially for black students with IEPs I'm wondering you know as you go about this phase implementation um 40 to the 46 Benchmark that all of our students are meeting we absolutely need to raise that standard um we're breaking up okay I trailed off at uh your second sentence we saw it on the annual plan got it yeah and so obviously we want to have a universal goal of raising a minute 46 which is below you know 50 even um you know from your expertise and experience are there strategies we can employ so not only do we raise all boats but we really Target the groups

030where gaps already exist so for example we could raise all Tides but we may see you know the gaps get larger because some groups accelerate faster than others are there and just curious about your thoughts on that in general foreign I think first and foremost what we need to do is to arm ourselves with the language right and arm ourselves with the understanding um and get in first to just teach the strategy right and teach the science of reading um I think first when we do that and we are all speaking the same language we have a common approach we are truly staying true to the research then we course correct along the way right we look at our data we continue to look at the groups that are um accelerating at a faster rate

031um and then we'll go in and and do targeted uh you know interventions and supports and all of that but I think first and foremost it's it's getting this uh this approach and strategy um throughout the district foreign thank you another um you know my question in concern is that um you know we've always known that early literacy is um really brings right positive outcomes particularly for African-American children and I'm really happy to see that Dr Jenkins is really driving this home like this is one of his priorities I mean this is the first thing he said in his one of the first things he said during the process and when he come on board and he's moving through this and I'm just wondering like why it's it's taken us so long um and when

032will we see I mean why now um why not before um and when will we start seeing results and my other part of the question is what are we doing for the kids who we've lost those kids who are older uh who are in our school system Middle School um and you know so that we capture and intervene um you know I get their early literacy um component but also is there an opportunity for us to really focus in intervene for the older children in our school so we don't lose any more particularly our African-American students Gloria um let me take part of this and um first of all I want to say thank you for asking those questions I think they're really important and ours I'll start off with you know I think that

033the teachers that we have in mmsd including myself as a principal right we were balanced literacy um you know we believed in Balance the balanced literacy approach small group whole group independent time where the uh small group time was very much focused on reading at a child's level you know you heard text reading level you heard that a lot and you know a child could be in the same text reading level group for a really really long time and not have an opportunity to hear grade level vocabulary so Savion you asked a question earlier and Gloria this goes to your question too this is about giving kids those strong foundational skills right explicit structured phonics and it's also about um giving kids the strata energies then giving students the strategies to decode more complex texts

034more um complex words words at their grade level we always have to be sure there's an opportunity for children to engage with grade level vocabulary when you keep students in those small groups that are only at their level right they don't get to hear as many words and um they don't get exposure to as much vocabulary and we know that students need lots and lots and lots of exposure um so that they can practice and use those words um with their classmates as well so with that ex strong explicit phonics first and those are skills we know what those skills are we know they need to be taught we want to give them those strategies and Gloria you're right there are some middle of the high school students who don't have those strategies yet right

035as a matter of fact they move from grade to grade they actually graduate from high school um and they develop coping strategies but they develop coping strategies actually sometimes of poor readers you know we tell kids if you don't know a word that's right you hear teachers saying swing the wording yes what do you think the word might be and then what happens is you have children right that graduate high school they move on to post-secondary and they um don't have the confidence and also don't have necessarily the skills base to go into credit bearing classes so they take you know pre-college English or pre-college math which is non-credit bearing and it's still at the same cost for families families continue to incur a financial cost so we want to really be sure that um

036we're developing our teachers K-12 because all of those folks have a place in this to bring students up to the bar around explicit structured phonics uh I'd like to also add a piece to this and yes uh those things that Lisa said and when as we're approaching this and as you heard a lay out the part in terms of the training that will go on for the older students in terms of what we're talking about with the science of reading particularly those students who are receiving special services the catchiness and you heard Lisa talking about uh we in our era come from this balanced literacy Lucy Calkins the guru on it I had a conversation about an hour-long conversation with her on Friday and we were talking about it because she just made a shift

037in her thinking um or her practices I should say that's all it good Educators do we do things and then when you learn better you do better and we talked about this explicit uh phonics and the use of the science of reading at the earlier levels which if you go and look at her work now in practice the queen of balanced literacy has two made a shift at the early level and this is what we're talking about the science of reading the difference with a lot of all of the groups that's been listed here that have been a part of marginalized populations not succeeding that language be it if you come from poverty be it may be a different language that you're coming from not that those languages are negative in any kind of way

038but it's just that expansiveness of the vocabulary also when we talk about bringing in glory last and buildings the queen of culturally relevant pedagogy this is not just about our children this is about adults too shifting in our thinking and understanding and having a different level of appreciation not that our teachers have done um a job well just the bottom line is this the evidence is there for itself that says that we have not across the country you saw the nape you see it here in Madison it's not a put down on anyone this is an opportunity for us to take what we have not done and start doing and I believe here in Madison with us intersecting with the work of the science of reading still understanding what is the best of balanced literacy

039but then intersecting that with the work of Gloria Lassen buildings and when you start talking about the culturally relevant pedagogy that's going to be good great work for everyone you know and so this would be a different way for Madison to do it and I'm very excited about it and we're going to bring the best minds of the university the critics as well as the supporters of this because we don't just want to go 30 more years and find out that we've been doing something incorrect so as when Lisa mentioned the task force the task force is going to come together and keep the best practices in front of us as well I'll stop there all right thank you for that um Dr Jenkins and Lisa um and just just a quick follow-up um it

040sounds like Dr Jenkins like that we're talking about uh targeted universalism right by um you know I learned this through Michelle and I know um Ali and Ananda are really familiar with this right is is it Jim Powell you know it's this concept where you're really focused your strategies uh to benefit all right but you're using these focused strategies and I think that when um you're talking about Dr Gloria Ladson buildings coming um it is really a culturally relevant um strategy that we're using particularly for um for professional development for our teachers uh in teaching are black and brown children is that correct that's part most things in the approach is yes and it's that's a part of it and the other part of this everyone who knows Dr glass and Billings knows this she's

041a no-nonsense person she's going to put it to you and she's going to train you at the highest level and have the highest expectation that couple with the fact that we have an equity strategy knowing historically that our black children and brown children have not succeeded we're coming together with intersecting with our high expectations of how we're going to move forward and I will say this too um I would say um Dr Odom okay he talked about this the late Dr Odom and for us focusing in on black children and the strategies that we needed to lift them up when we start talking about the phonics the whole phonemic awareness the science of reading it goes into our Equity strategy of giving those children explicitly the tools that they need in terms of being able

042to compete and go beyond and really when you look at the nape data in our local data even the white children who are high middle class benefits from these strategies we're talking about thank you and I'm not gonna say anything else but this um Dr Jenkins thank you for bringing up John Odom um in his passing I think that um if we can and on that at our at the end of our meeting if we can just do a moment of silence he has um been so um he has been critical of mmsd he has pushed us to be better uh and just I I just really would like the time to remember him in silence tonight yeah no for sure Laura thanks for reminding us I think there is a part of your question

043Gloria that I really appreciate which is also like okay we we had a lot of intellectual capacity before 2020 we have had a lot of plans we had had a pretty intense data analysis what is different now in the way in which we are framing and what was the root cause that had prevented us from achieving what we were planning to achieve now yeah that's exactly it right I know that I think that's where my line of my questioning I think that's a great question let me jump in on that one because this whole world of reading and I'm telling you I used to be the champion of balanced literacy right I was just trying to get children to read uh in particular black and brown children just seeing their disparities over my 30 plus

044years career and we all a number of us took great pride in balanced literacy watching it seeing some children coming to schools with certain skill sets already continue to thrive here in Madison it's been an age-old discussion we have produced more National Merit semi-finalists if you go back and add it up over all the years at the same time in the same building we had children who were some of the lowest performing students in the country or in the world with reading so now we're coming to a new understanding and I encourage everyone out there listening and everyone here if you have not taken the time to try to understand the science of reading please do so now don't get caught up with just science we always say to science right but these strategies we're

045talking about are very specifics in building the phonics and it's not just that in isolation we're going to give children choices to individuals who have been critics have said well the science of Reason doesn't give that's not so but we're very early on being very explicit by how we try to increase the phonemic awareness you know the delivery of instructions teachers understand this is not just about children fixing children this is about us shifting too we were the ones who done this we're the ones who've done it not just the children the children come to us as they are but we have to shift our thinking so Ananda that's what's happening now you're seeing this Wave It's a movement of individuals understanding and wanting to do something about it we're very fortunate to be here

046in Madison where it's a big discussion and you have the teachers a number of teachers number of Administrators who are interested in this but we're still going to take our time and engage everyone have the intellectual discourse and we're making a commitment that goal three you can't find that in many places across the country when we say black children and youth will excel not many people are that bold Neil Heineman said to me people well this is bold we're going after this we're going after the enough I am willing to die on the crossover period if it means the end of it that's fine because it's no reason that children all children should not be able to read it is their right as being an American citizen it is their right to be able to

047read and it's time for us to do something about it Dr Jenkins may I just because I can't help myself you guys are singing my song here oh I just want to answer to the powerful questions that have been posted instead like why it has it taken us so long why now and I'm just gonna tell you like a little story Caleb please don't let me go over 40 seconds because you know I could do this for days I am a general education teacher at bilingual teacher a World Language teacher an ESL teacher I have seven licenses I am a professional student and I can tell you that these concept this idea of the science of reading is not something that has been readily available to All Humans that have been in education for always

048and forever I can tell you honestly as a human being that became a reader in English later on in my life and then decided to be brave enough to have children educational system that I did not understand that I have cried over this because I cannot have one more person tell me that my kids just need one more summer to grow up am I right like one more summer so they can let you like if they were fruit so that they can become readers am I right because what they require is something that is very explicit and that it takes this has not been readily available for all of us many of us have been able to have three four five seven licenses and having to go into like Alice in a in a hole

049and look for more and more information and go to the reference of the reference of the reference of the reference to be able to find something that has assigned scientific backing something that has been true and tried so I'm going to talk more about that in my slide but I just couldn't help myself thank you uh Gabby and uh Nikki and Chris I appreciate um the discussion I'm wondering on the uh pales on on the um nut Palace excuse me on the map scores with the 16 uh proficiency for individuals with disabilities that the predicted rate or is that the actual rate that is the actual rate Nikki that's what I was afraid of and um is that and that's not solely because of for example non-verbal it's I know certain way yeah if it

050is a non-verbal uh a student that has um you know needs related to non-verbal um that would be a separate assessment it wouldn't be it wouldn't be as measured by the by the pals Vicky it's why we're getting after it right I I see I see the commitment on your face it is why we're getting after it and that that addition to the law not that long ago you know that children who have reading goals in their IEP can receive those services from a reading specialist right we want to be sure that um students with IEPs also have access to highly trained individuals around reading around diagnosing reading difficulties so we want to train up our cross-categorical teachers and reading Specialists so that we are all partnering with our children around us and one other

051thing the science of reading I'm sorry Nikki if I may it also helps the students with dyslexia and even when I talk to Miss Hawkins hey we were on the same page and that's what I told I'm not looking to disagree with her I'm just looking to get the best of her thinking or whatever is going to work with children so we're not looking for any one person or one answer we're looking for the best of it but when you talk about dyslexia this is big for children who has dyslexia and you know and another you asking the why now we're now just learning more about dyslexia that wasn't something that we screened for early enough and the children receive the services early enough and now with this we're going early after it and uh

052and I just know it's going to make a big difference for us and I'm thinking that you guys for accepting the Oregon Gillingham method as part of the the teaching because that's huge for individuals with dyslexia and for a long time people like that's not how kids learn to race like how a large group did and still do I just appreciate that thank you Nikki um I see Christina Gomez Schmidt and then Ali mudra thanks Ananda and let me know if you can't hear me because my internet connection's a little unstable that we've already experienced that tonight so just stop me if you can't hear me um I just wanted to say that I really appreciate this comprehensive approach in this presentation um about early literacy that is so much more than adopting a new

053reading curriculum which is where we started um started this work and that second slide that you had that showed the comprehensive approach from learning from within our schools from teachers who are already using new strategies I'm grounded in the science of reading to the larger work of a task force Partnerships with UW and reaching out to engage the larger community and Community Partners in this work it's all so important and um I just like to say I this really has the potential to be transformative in helping students have access to learning with literacy as the key skill and the foundation for that access and so I'm I'm very excited about this work um and I have a few questions around the data I also appreciated the the presentation of this data and looking um from

054the pals data to the map and by different subgroups and looking at the gaps visually the way you showed it I guess one of the questions that that I have is that we've seen that there's a disconnect between Pals data and map data and I know we have talked before about um changing Pals to a different measurement for the K to two so I'm wondering if you could update us on where that's at and um I'm wondering if that we have considered using maybe the map primary which is a k to two that aligns with the three to five grade level map that's available hi Chris let me um get to some of these questions that you had um and just I'm really thrilled that you're also interested in partnering with us I'm really looking

055forward to that so we did you are right we replaced Pals with fast Bridge um that's our replacement and as an early literacy screener it's actually the first year we have used it it's also the screener that we use um that um informs um any sort of IEP or disability around a certain content area so we use that also it's also used as a progress monitoring tool but um you know the first year with any kind of new assessment right you have bumps in the road a little bit so it's our first year with fast Bridge we've had some bumps on the road and we're in the middle of a pandemic so we have tried we have had some we are learning we've had lots of other conversations back and forth about which subtest is

056the best one to use it is interesting though um you know some of the information that we're getting from Fast Bridge is um is is based right it is based on the science of reading and we have some teachers that are trying to figure out how to use that so the new assessment is actually telling us something about what might be happening in schools or what might be missing from schools so more to come on this Chris um it's a little bit of an uneven implementation I'm going to be totally honest um it's brand new we have Grace with that as well I will say that all of our student services teams have been trained in fast Bridge because of the relationship um that they have with um also psychologists social workers and cross-categorical teachers

057but this um this measure fast bridge is um it's similar to Dibbles what you might have or Ames web what we used before so more to come on this we're going to do a presentation later in the year on the comprehensive assessment system but I'm going to be honest you know we're working through it and we're working through it together lots of partnership with MTI and staff out in the field on that great and I would like to recognize staff who are trying to implement this new assessment in the midst of a pandemic when your students are not in your classroom and you're trying to do this virtually um for every student out there so that work is appreciated and I know it'll look different once we're able to bring students back into the school

058buildings yeah um my last question I just wanted to highlight what um Gloria asked about too is um wondering if there are applications to um of the science of reading fundamentals that are applicable to the middle and high school learners who are really needing to boost their literacy skills um and I know it got mentioned in a few of the slides but are is that work going to happen in tandem with what we're doing at the at the K-5 level um I just don't want it to take a decade for us to catch up we have a lot of Learners who yeah we have a responsibility to help them with literacy skills I'm with you on that um and we do have to work together with those secondary teachers to also number one build the

059awareness that it does matter right and we want them to know that and get that training you'll see a little of that in the slides that are coming up that's great I also want to say that you know lots of our for a long time our primary strategy at middle and high school was System 44 and read 180. we didn't necessarily go to the pedagogy or the science of reading we went to those two interventions and actually when implemented with fidelity they actually do get great results with kids but what happened was the read 180 System 44 it was a struggle to fit that into a master schedule when there were so many other options for kids so um more to come on that more just just um discussions on that but you know we

060we shouldn't be relying on a technology tool like um like is in read 180 System 44 is our whole approach to the science of reading right the most important piece in a classroom is the teacher in a highly skilled teacher and that's what we owe um to our secondary um secondary teachers as well and right we're learning more we know more we do better materials are better now so um so definitely that has to be a priority for us yeah and I would also like to add to that Chris uh oh yes everything Lisa just said but also we have to be very careful careful with our capacity and what all we're putting on teachers at the same time we don't want to wait 10 years for the students to improve but how many things

061can we demand and are we prepared to give the appropriate professional development the resources the support uh when we think about our budget we are going to have to have some strong conversations in our next budget season about what we're going to do but we have to provide that support for the teachers in doing this we can have all the expectations in the world but if we don't give them the appropriate support so that they can manage it we're still in a pandemic we're still trying to make sure we take our students and our staff doing all of this and overload is overload thank you so much I'm saying thank you um I'm gonna go Ali and then Chris Carusi and then we're gonna uh finish up this presentation foreign thank you so much everybody

062for the presentation and I really appreciate uh Gloria the strength of your questions in terms of kind of our our long-term approach and really what um it looks like to have different outcomes Lisa one of the things I want to emphasize in my comments is just that you continue to talk about how we're going to bring the strengths from other uh approaches to literacy into our new approach so we are not just kind of abandoning what we've learned but kind of uh bringing the accumulation of sound strategies um to our students which is a really exciting place to be um and allows for us to kind of really maximize the benefits of our prior investments in in early learning and literacy um it is not lost on me that the students we are most likely

063to suspend in elementary school are the students who are most likely to struggle with reading um and so if we are and suspension is one kind of discipline right there's a lot of kinds of just discipline that certain students are more likely to be subjected to than others on black students in particular including things like not being able to see the board because you're turned around and looking at the corner or being sent into another classroom to tap out or calm down this idea of high expectations and low expectations it seems as though we have low expectations academically and high expectations when it comes to behavior for black students who are four or five six years old how are we uh you know using this this data in a holistic way to reshape the experiences

064of our students um and and how are we you know looking to other gaps that are um you know part of identity right like the fact that our our girls are less likely to be recognized as talented and gifted in the area of math right um so how are we learning um from this addressing this Gap in a way that it allows for us to address all gaps academically and make sure that a student's identity uh doesn't make them more likely to get suspended uh does it make them less likely to be seen as talented and gifted in the area of arithmetic mm-hmm Ali you know I was thinking about this today as I Was preparing my notes um for the board meeting and thinking about how important it is that our children are confident

065Learners and they can um right they can solve problems on their own and they also um right once they know how to read once they can solve and figure out complex text grade level texts right their world is open to them they have all these opportunities and they feel confident and they might actually find out they have an interest or a talent in an area that they never knew they had before um you know we want to give students the capacity to as they encounter more rigorous words as they get to first and second and third grade and the rigor of the standards gets more difficult if we help students to feel confident with that their world can open up and they can have all kinds of different opportunities and feel confident about those things

066right we want our children to see themselves as good readers and we want our children to know you know what are the skills that a good reader possesses and that they can read to learn more so it's not just about learning to read but they can read to learn more and they can be excited about about what interests them so um it's it's the opportunities and the doorways that open for children and as they feel better about themselves about the real work that they're doing and they're not continually struggling with the language and there's language in math right some of our young women that that don't want to or don't feel confident in math it may be because they're having a hard time figuring out the language that goes with the math so I think

067that the possibilities are endless and I'm looking here at my team um Kaylee's or anything you might want to add to that yeah I think you know Ali you bring up an incredibly you bring up an incredible point and I think one of the things that Dr Jenkins mentioned is we want to be sure to do this well right and that's one of the reasons why we have a pre a phased approach and one of the reasons why we're taking our time and we don't want overload and part of that is uh it's changing it's changing some of our practices right and like it's challenging some of our mindsets and it's challenging some of our beliefs and so Ali when I think about like well what would I do what would I want to do

068with this information as a building Principle as a building leader I would want to look at this data and I'd want to triangulate that with some Behavior data right and I would want to like challenge the mindsets and challenge um like discipline strategies and challenge the approaches that we're using in in the classroom and seeing where those where those intersections are um so I think it's just that right I think it's putting this information in front of the board in front of our leadership teams both at central office and within our schools and it is asking those challenging questions of find the why right find the why find the relationship and therefore what are we doing about it you're absolutely right yeah Kaylee and Lisa I want to thank you very much for for speaking

069to that and I have one more question and I was going to direct that specifically at Kaylee and Gabby um looking at the modification of this curriculum and how we will modify this curriculum to work with students who are hearing impaired students who you know access literacy from all different points um what does it look like and mean to to modify uh early literacy for students with disabilities as we move in this direction I actually think that uh Amanda would be best to answer that question for you hi Amanda hi Holly so I apologize I was having to take care of my dog and of course caught the last six words of that I can do it yes um uh I completely understand we're we're all juggling our our home reality with this meeting um

070so so thank you for for being transparent about that and the question was how are we modifying this curriculum to meet the needs of our students with disabilities as we move in this direction how are we going to make sure our our students who might struggle for whatever reason to access phonics specifically um are being supported to the greatest possible extent uh so such a great question and I'm so happy because I could kind of like to Gabby's Point earlier go on about this for days so for those of you who don't know me I'm assistant director of professional learning and student services and um I've had a variety of roles but right now on my team uh lead this work all the time around how do we keep our Focus around high quality core

071materials and also ensure that our students with disabilities are getting targeted instruction to deliver or to me meet those skills that they need so that they can be engaged in that cortex similar to your point earlier around to me when I think about kids being kicked out of classrooms if it's often engagement right and that you can't do something that you don't have the skills to do if you're not being taught how to access it because no one likes to do things that you can't do none of us even as adults we don't like doing things we haven't been taught or that we aren't good at and so what we've been focusing on within my team is thinking so we've actually implemented letters through student services first with really focusing on teams with both special

072ed teachers as well as then classroom teachers to make this work as enriched as we can seeing that we have to have it in core instruction and that then our special ed teachers are able to also take that same knowledge and understanding to apply it within specially designed instruction when they're working in small groups and one-on-one with students and so as someone I've done letters one through four this last year three of my team members have done the facilitator training this past summer we have tons of Team conversation around this and really see and are just excited that this really is for all kids and is especially supportive for our students with disabilities who we know need that direct instruction opportunities for practice and feedback along with that connection to text so that they can

073be successful so this is very adaptable to a variety of needs and then we do have kind of a different range of programs and tools that we already use and the letters knowledge will only lift our staff ability to use them in more targeted ways so that they can be as successful as we hope they can Amanda I loved your answer to that question that was entirely the information I needed so thank you so much that was very very helpful my last question is for Dr Jenkins and it's really about the future of early literacy um as literacy and the nature of literacy shifts and changes um how are we going to make sure that we're not just kind of keeping up with yesterday's metrics um not just kind of reflecting on the data we've

074produced previously but also pushing our students um to have new relationships with letter literacy as as literacy becomes more inclusive of things like computer coding um and and opportunities within technology how how are you as a leader of this District going to make sure we continue to move forward and push forward and make sure our kids have skills that are relevant for the future in terms of literacy and that's it for my questions yeah that's that's a great question too Ali I mean I just think as leaders and as a long time educator and just knowing when things come along you heard me say I was about literacy Champion for years but what you learn better it's my Angela said right then you do better but it's a matter of us being willing to do

075better and at some point we have to know we have to continue to look forward the children that we're going to get tomorrow may be a little bit different than the children that we get today and then we have to say are we still relevant are we still meeting the needs of the children we're off to try to meet the needs of the adults and we have to stop that we have to truly say the children that we're getting they're going to be so digital ready the children who are just not even conceived yet they will come into this world with a whole different level of being able to be a learner like we've never been before so and this is what we do in education we have to understand the root of what are

076the fundamentals but yet give our children the skill set so that they can pivot as necessary as our society the jobs of Tomorrow we don't know those jobs in full so if we're just saying what we're doing today is going to be good enough for 10 years 20 years out that may not necessarily be sold but today what we do know that what we have done in invested billions of dollars in is no longer what's needed for all children and if we continue to do it we're going to continue to have these gaps persist so that's what I say we have to give the resources and continue to be cutting edge around the world not just in Madison take the science off the hill from UW and other institutions who are willing to partner with

077us take what our parents are saying and look at our youngest Learners and then prepare for that where could they be 40 years from now 50 years from now perpetually learning that's what I would say it's crazy and this presentation um I just have one question about the data which I Look to get clarified if possible um if you look at the two slides that you presented on um Pal's benchmarks and map proficiency across the board you have fewer kids scoring proficient on map than you have meeting their Pals benchmarks however the percentage if you compare white kids and black kids you have a much lower percentage of kids black kids who meet their Pals benchmarks but then score proficient on map then you have of white kids who score proficient or meet their Pals

078benchmarks and then score proficient on maps specifically if you look at the numbers I think it's 87 of white second graders are meeting their Pals benchmarks and 64 percent are scoring Precision on map which is a 23 drop and if you look at black students 56 percent are meeting their Pals benchmarks but only 17 percent are scoring proficient on map which is a 39 drop and um that's almost not quite but almost double the drop of white students I'm wondering if that's telling us something about the tests I mean you've got kids taking the same test in second grade and the same test in third grade but a lot fewer black children are scoring proficient on the map test which makes me wonder about bias in the map test and I think that's a really

079important question to put out there because as we roll out a new curriculum we're going to have to measure the impact of that curriculum and we need to make sure the tools we're using to measure that impact aren't biasing our children of color so I just thought I'd just put that out there I'd love to know if you guys have thoughts about what that drop is about and what it means Andrew do you want to start off there I have a couple thoughts too but I'll let you go first I Thank you Lisa uh so not being introduced earlier uh this evening Andrew stats executive director of research accountability and data use and on the data side we also have joinings and terrible sounds tonight yes I am sorry about that if you turn off

080your camera it might work with her I will try that thank you it's been a struggle all day so hopefully this helps okay the answer while you're while you're Gathering your potential I can I can start here a little bit um Pals is an early literacy it was our early literacy screener right it measures specific skill areas um in literacy that children need in each grade level map um on the other map measures um different items and um if you not sound in your early literacy strategies and your early literacy skills your comprehension on a map on a map test and how you're going to do on that um is going to be impacted I would also say Chris um you know we don't have another measure other than map um to use right now

081so um as we look at our comprehensive assessment system there are some things that we have to figure out right we have to figure out what are good standards aligned um assessments that tell us about our next moves in the classroom um what are good formatives that we're using to tell us next move in the moves in the classroom but I think the message is if a student does not have the skills on Pals that they are going to fare worse on the map test with comprehension um and that is actually a predictor there so Andrew do you want to see if you're back on track here hey we also could have Dr McGregor go ahead and weigh in while we're waiting on him to come back in Dr mcgregory I I am able to

082use my phone uh so when you're ready yeah I would I would also um ask us to look at when we think of any assessment as one particular data point that tells how well our system is aligned in terms of instruction in learning and we also have to also be mindful of that even the assessments that um allow students to get into say college or into an articulated skilled trade or what have you they all have a certain amount of bias and so we we still try to have us a teaching and learning system that performs so well that students can be successful in these assessments as a residual understanding that there is there is building bias throughout um any assessment but we should still be working in such a way that more students can

083show that they can do the work of the standards as a residual of good teaching and learning not not that the um an assessment is the total answer for everything and so so that's why I would always help people to be mindful of those things when you're looking at assessment in a holistic manner all right thank you Dr mcgregory how do I sound now thank you all right so the work around here is apparently my phone so using multiple Technologies I'd like to start over so good evening uh thank you for taking out this uh this item tonight and I'm pleased to join you I'm Andrew stats executive director of research accountability and data use and also joining us is Dr orianna eversole director of research and program evaluation um a couple of things here

084are actually technical as it relates to the types of Assessments and the way that we look at them so Pals is a screener its intention is to identify students that need interventions they they are known to need assistance and Pals is the screener that provides you with the information so in that sense it's one bar when we look at our map results that is uh a a prediction of proficiency on an upcoming State assessment and when we look at our map proficiency we look at two proficiency bands so that is proficient and advanced so if we are seeing uh a difference between the Pell's administration's results and the maps administration's results the very first thing to consider is that they are different types of Assessments for different purposes and then therefore have different thresholds um

085because we look at proficient and advanced as it relates to map results we typically do not include then uh basic results in that snapshot so what you're likely seeing here if you do see a drop that is larger for one student group than another from Pals to map is because more students than a disproportionality of students are that are landing in the basic category just south of the proficiency cut score so some of this is the the effect of the assessments themselves and what they're for as well as the way that we've looked at them historically you're bringing up cut scores um and I I really think as we move forward with um coming up with a plan to um you know over the long term assess the impact of whatever reading program we choose

086and um whatever um broader interventions we choose making sure that um the tests themselves are not putting children at a disadvantage I think is important and cut score could be a part of that so thanks I appreciate that explanation thank you uh Chris and thank you Andrew for um this comprehensive uh review on on assessment uh savian you want to say a final word to Julia do you have any comments or questions I'm good right now thank you thank you CBN say you're far enough words and then we'll we'll move on thank you yeah I just wanted to highlight Gloria and Ali's question uh particularly with um black students in the classroom um and just want to say how impressed I am Dr Jenkins and the team for bringing in you know the doctor lesson

087buildings and members of the community to make sure that this is culturally relevant because the other piece of this is engagement for black students in the classroom and if we can also use this as a window of opportunity to improve the way we engage with particularly our black students or students with disabilities I think that can be a game changer down the line as well especially when we look at the data and the who literature showing that you know if a student not constantly literate and not engaged in the classroom what that means in terms of the school of prison pipeline as well and as a final one I just wanted to or in the early grades so I Got That explicit phonics instruction thank you so much Vivian I think we were able to

088capture most of what you share and I really apologize everyone for the technology um Lisa would you like to wrap us up on this presentation please you bet um we're going to move forward now that we've gone through the data right and the purpose of that was to add to why this is an equity imperative part of our why and our narrative about where we're going and I'm going to turn it over to car Electra Stanford our elementary chief of schools and she's going to talk a little bit about what we're hearing from some of the experts in the field and what some of the big points around the research are when it comes to the science of reading Thank you Lisa good evening everyone um we just wanted as Lisa said to highlight on

089some experts Timothy Shanahan is one of those reading researchers that we have been um looking at some of the best practices that he's suggesting and just wanted to lift this quote from him that states that research is the only tool we have that allows us to determine the kinds of teaching most likely to advance our students learning common sense and past experience are useless before such questions and so really just lifting that to say that we know that what we have done in the past has not exactly hit the mark of where we want to be um for closing those gaps and we are moving forward by using that research of the experts in the field of reading as our guide in examining best practices so as Lisa stated earlier we must know what the

090research says and then be able to apply that to our practices next slide please and we know that you have seen this before this is some of the research findings that we've presented to the board and just wanted to put those in the space again today um and essentially the research states that reading is something that must be taught and we also know that there must be intentionality within our approach so intentionality around our focus on the early grades knowing that early intervention is critical as we understand the role early literacy plays in students meeting reading proficiency intentionality and explicit reading instructions specifically with reading foundational skills and also intentionality with our materials alignment and approach to instruction so in the next few slides Gabby is going to delve further into the power of the

091science of reading next slide thank you so much caletra I literally got the best Lights of the whole slide deck so let's talk about why why the science of reading and why is this so powerful so the first thing that I want to do is to orient Us in looking at the graphic representation that is currently on the screen and that is uh the graphic representation for a theoretical model that is commonly known as the simple view of reading and the simple way of reading is of critical importance as it relates to the science of reading because it conceptualizes reading comprehension as the product of two predictable variables and I want to say that again puts it really important it is saying that we can predict reading comprehension if we attend to the first one

092being word recognition and word recognition is defined as the accurate and fast retrieval of decoded words and then we're going to take this whole recognition and then we're going to multiply it like if it was a mathematical formula with the second that is language comprehension and this is language comprehension that is beyond vocabulary this is language comprehension that attempts to the true linguistic processes that are involved in the comprehension of oral language so please really think about these as a mathematical formula and in a multiplication if either one of the pieces either the word recognition or the language comprehension were zero then reading comprehension would then not happen so if a student cannot decode a word they cannot comprehend it am I right and if a student cannot comprehend a spoken word let's say they

093shouldn't have decoded but they don't have a meaning to attach to the word there is still not comprehending it so this is important for us our as we're thinking about the science of reading to understand that we're attending to A and B and A and B are equally important what is absolutely beautiful and it's very um powerful and feels really new uh in relationship to the science of reading is that the simple view of reading is true for monolingual settings but it is also true for multi-linguistic educational environments so those of us that have the great pleasure of being able to be literate and reading com with comprehension in more than one language I was still using these two variables and monolinguals are doing exactly the same thing so since the simple view of reading

094was conceived in around 90 1986 to now it has been proved to the test in this theoretical model now has been scientifically tested to understand that it's a true model for Effective teaching for all students can we do the next slide please thank you so why the science of reading so powerful okay so the science of reading is really really powerful because of a couple things perhaps the first of those things is that it explicitly calls the teaching of foundational skills as an important part of a robust reading program and he's saying that he's not only very important and it needs to occur but he's telling us what are the characteristics of this teaching of foundational skills and it is telling us that the teaching must be systemic that means that we're going to have

095a sequence of phonics then it's going to be a progression from the simplest to the most complex that is going to include review and repetition within the scope that is going to be explicit and completely intentional it also said that we're going to provide a student with sufficient time to be able to practice it says and it calls out for us to be very intentional in saying we are not going to tell kids about foundational skills but we are going to engage in a true pedagogical practice of productive struggle we're not going to tell kids we're going to engage with them and to be able to do that we must interact this has to be interactive in English to support them so what you're seeing in the slide you're seeing under word recognition you are

096seeing these blue strands and it's explaining what is it that it means when work saying what recognition we're talking about phonological awareness we're talking about decoding we're talking about um side recognition and we're saying that all of these strands need to intertwine with the rent strands that are the language comprehension and as I said we're going to go beyond vocabulary and we're going to talk about background knowledge about vocabulary of course about language structures about verbal reasoning and that these instruments are going to intertwine to make this rope and that this rope that is also known in theory as the reading rope is going to then allow us for fluent reading and for reading that it is attentive to to um that is attentive to um to comprehension which is ultimately what we want could

097we go to the next slide so how are we going to get here so I was sharing a little bit early that despite the fact that the science of reading is not something that it is new it is not something for which all of us that have engaged in a professional practice in education have had access to so letters is a professional development opportunity that is part of our long-term commitment for our teachers our students in our community at large it is important to know that letters is not a curriculum so it's not a curriculum but rather it is a way for us to increase our Collective Professional Knowledge and Skills to improve upon our pedagogical practice and that these skills and knowledge that we are going to gain through engaging with letters are going

098to be flexible so as we continue in our journey and as you know years come you know come happening uh that that these skills are going to be able to use with regardless of the curriculum that we have in front of us along this curriculum is a standards aligned so this is an investment and we want to be honest about it and this investment is going to require for teachers to engage with us in online instruction that is going to be about one or two hours per week for each of the grade levels and we're proposing that these online practice is going to be paired with face-to-face training that is going to be about four hours a month and that overall we're looking about a 100 hours year investment in our teachers and I am

099going to pass it along to I think back to Lisa foreign please thank you Gabby for explaining to us um where we are going with letters training and what that system looks like is we prepare teachers and again hearkening back to what Dr Jenkins said this is what we're talking about around capacity and phasing the work we want to be sure we do it really well knowing that there are two separate phases for the letters training and we want to really um build a culture that is um that is really founded on the science of reading in our earliest classrooms and then always all the way through second grade or secondary education so I'm going to chime in here a little bit um and talk just a little bit about what happened with our core

100materials adoption that we started last year um so one of the things that we did last year when we started to look at core materials is we engaged in empathy interviews surveys and focus groups in MTI worked with us on this we actually trained a Cadre of people to administer the empathy interviews and we learned some things from our children and our families and our staff um the number one thing we learned was we needed more time to hear the voices and lift the voices of our reading experts Our Community Partners and our staff they wanted more time to engage in this dialogue our teachers wanted the resources and the training if you look back at all of those comments that teachers made many of the comments um directly go back to high quality structured

101explicit phonics and they wanted to learn more about it and do more with that in classrooms schools told us they wanted standards aligned research-based and historically accurate core materials we knew and I know that we talked about this last year when when we were all together that there were some materials in our classrooms at the elementary middle and secondary that were actually historically inaccurate and so we wanted to be sure that we we heard that and we are working with Gloria LEDs and buildings Billings to develop and take a look at do an equity audit of our materials our parents wanted to know more about how their child was learning to read right they wanted to know too how are we going about it how can I help my child at home and I actually

102wanted some specifics about some skills they could be helpful with or some ways that their child was actually learning right and then families are talking to their child about what they're doing in reading and how they're learning and then we also learned that our students deserve and our families wanted their child to engage with grade level texts and grade level vocabulary we heard from families that that they did not want their children held down they wanted the expectations high with support um and that's the other piece that language development that Gabi was talking about that you have that along with a really strong foundational skills program leads to reading comprehension next slide please all right so you're all gonna have to bear with me through these next couple slides and in complete transparency in in

103the pacing that we talked about boy there were some meetings where we sped the pacing up there were some meetings where we redid the slides and we slowed back a little bit so we're here today to tell you this is an example of what we're thinking around pacing and we want to talk with more teachers and the task force to inform this so there are some things that we left intentionally open a little bit so that we can try things and see how they go but you will see sort of the complexity of this work and um the different job alike groups and folks in the district that we need to bring along and my main message here is that we have to be thoughtful we have to think about capacity and we have to

104think about high quality implementation and professional development over just doing everything all at once so these next couple of slides detail what we did in 1920 so Amanda Kidwell who shared with you a little bit around the special education use of foundational skills um she and a colleague um have put together the science of reading and letters training as early as last year and you can see the professional development that occurred and then the tandem work that was done in our core materials selection process that we began so we did the empathy interviews we did some data collection about what people said and we're still doing and we started last year a small pilot in two schools for El education and the foundational skills components and lessons in that set of materials where are we

105at now we're continuing the cohorts of training some are in the new units units one through four some are continuing with units five through eight of the letters training and you can see that lvm and Gompers are doing some of that work and those two principles we'll be sharing with you shortly we also have principles central office and instructional coaches excitingly we're going to have a literacy Symposium starting this summer and moving forward I am really excited about this targeted work and we're excited to be working with Gloria Latson Billings to put forth a professional development series that is really valuable and energizing and builds right that culture for this work and then we're also planning a principal letters training this summer as we move forward with core materials our El education Pilots are continuing

106and thanks to Gabi and her um her Savvy skills in working with some of these vendors we think that we're going to secure a new pilot for our bilingual classrooms around foundational skills for a few teams that are ready and then we want to revisit and get some more feedback into a draft core materials process and timeline and I would like to say um just at this point and it might be obvious um but the the primary work right the first work on this is the culture shift and the professional development and the capacity building one set of core materials is never going to be perfect one set of core materials is never going to be the answer we have a scope that's what we work and teach by core materials are tools and resources

107um nothing is perfection we will do our very very best um but we will be working together over the next couple of years to finalize this next slide please so this is an example of 2122 again there's an asterisk this is depending on budget we know this will require a serious commitment of local funding and resources so this is an example of how we build that capacity over the years with coaches starting off with K2 teacher teams early adopter school teams a symposium and continuing with awareness and training at the secondary level and then you can also see a bit of an expansion around core materials and a timeline for a phased approach next slide so now we're two years out in 2223 um hopefully not in the same pandemic state that we are in

108now again dependent on budget again dependent on investment of time and talent and funding you can see the staff groups continuing with multiple layers of training another Symposium and then another phased approach for core materials so this is an example of what our best thinking is and we want to talk more over the year with with you our partners on the board our task force and staff to really get this fleshed out but there's a lot of detail here that we'll take coordinating and we really want to do it well next slide please okay so we're going to take some time and have Sarah Larson principal at lvium and Jackie Smith principal at Gompers to share the work that they're doing with their teaching staff and how they as leaders are talking about this and

109leading their work in schools so I will turn it over to our principals hi everybody good evening I am Jackie Smith the principal at Gompers I thank you all for taking this time tonight to listen to kind of our Journeys towards this work they're definitely still a work in progress but I'm excited to share with you what we're doing so at Gompers our work began with an unwavering commitment to educational equity and high quality literacy instruction is one of the most Equitable practices for students our work over the last few years has been aligned with creating a culture of learning which first includes leader learning done with sblt and teacher teams we are always striving to do right by our students all of this learning and collaboration has also been supported through our partnership with

110the achievement Network an area where we continued to learn was around the calibration of what common core literacy aligned instruction looked like and making sure that we were incorporating the shifts of the Common Core into our instruction our main work around this has been a shift to text-based literacy Approach at Team meetings we made sure we read the text and unpacked what would be challenging for students in a complex text our goal this year has been for students to read write and speak about complex text all grade level teams engaged in this work over this summer even among a pandemic so I want to give all my teams a huge shout out of the process of looking into the complex texts they work to identify text-dependent questions as scaffolds to support students in referring explicitly

111back to a complex text also we continue to learn about the components of the Common Core Ela black and the importance of a foundational skills block specifically at the kindergarten and second grade level due to children's brain development while we know we also need to reinforce these foundational skills for students who still need to develop them at upper grades letters came to my attention through one of my kindergarten teachers desire to further learn about the skills within the reading block has led us to where we are now in the process of letters learning for teachers in kindergarten through second grade including our instructional coach interventionist a bilingual resource teacher across categorical and myself as I've heard you all say it's essential that we take anti-racist actions to supporting students in our focus groups and this

112is one step that we can take around changing how we've taught Literacy By immediately knowing where our students are at in their literacy trajectory and then being able to teach them immediately Sarah and I am Sarah Larson I am the principal at lvm elementary school and I also want to thank you for this opportunity to share with you about our work at lvo um our school has been doing much of the same work that Jackie just shared about um and so I want to share a little bit about the collective efficacy and action that is taking place at elvium the interest in the science of reading and the reading curriculum process started with one of my first grade teachers who volunteered to go from third grade to first grade this past year and she was

113really motivated and inspired to learn more about the actual Act of teaching reading she's shared what she was learning with her teammates and together they came to me with some different opportunities that they wanted to pursue over the course of the year so they offered a voluntary book study of the knowledge Gap by Natalie Wexler which helped a group of our staff learn the importance of a contest content-based literacy curriculum in which we start building content knowledge academic vocabulary and background knowledge on a variety of topics as early as kindergarten and first grade they then came to me asking about letters PD kind of like Jackie was sharing with her teacher as they learned more about the science of reading and we currently have a very similar cohort to Jackie with our K2 teachers our

114interventionist my instructional coach bilingual resource teacher a cross-categorical teacher and myself participating in this learning Jackie also mentioned the achievement Network and I think my work with this partnership over this past year having a coach both for myself in literacy and leadership as well as someone to support our data-driven culture has really helped us to get our systems stronger than what they were um and through that learning we have explored rigorous complex texts with our teachers through professional development and they realized that we needed to make some adjustments in our practices and they wanted to start hearing more about the curricular resources that I was looking at as part of the adoption committee and I had some teams approach me and ask if they could try some just to see what a content-based literacy program

115would feel like in the classroom and they immediately were amazed at what the kids could do did everybody just read like everybody just froze for a minute there so that was okay you guys could still hear me yes you're fine okay so they started exploring these different um curricular materials and realize that we need some support within our classrooms with complex texts and explicit foundational skills um so like Jackie's teams over the summer we meant to further our commitment to literacy as an anti-racist strategy and as a leadership team and the entire um K-5 staff decided to look more into the Expeditionary Learning curriculum or El curriculum um and so this year they are working together with K2 teachers doing the letters PD and K5 teachers trying out some new curricular materials to provide us

116some feedback and that's what brings us here to our collaborative partnership with Gompers for the 2020-21 school year so you can go to the next slide please and on this next slide you'll see the work that we have developed or that we are working through this year together um strengthening our data-driven culture with our anet partnership really looking at the complex texts um reviewing assessment data having conversations about what does that data tell us and what's our next step in the classroom to make an impact on our students learning the letters training and our text-based literacy approach and so we're very fortunate on these next few slides to bring our teacher voices into the room and I'm thankful again for you allowing us to do so so the next slide please um this was one

117from one of my first grade teachers I'm really enjoying learning the science of reading I knew there was science behind it but I didn't know exactly what it was I know it's early in the process and I'm excited to start using some of the things that we learn with kids when I first started in the District 20 years ago it was all about balanced literacy at times to me it seemed like a throw as much as at them as we can in as many different ways as possible and hope that it sticks this meaning the science of reading seems like a more precise science that I'm excited to learn how to use with any curriculum and next slide please and then a second grade teacher added in we're really loving the Expeditionary Learning skills lessons

118especially for second grade Mondo was okay for first grade but I imagine the El skills for first grade and Kinder would both would be better based on my experience with both we haven't gone far in the letters training but it really makes sense and is so informative it is refreshing to understand how kids learn to read and I believe we will have the skills to teach every child to read when we are done I am so excited that our district is investing in their teachers which is a true investment in every child that will come through the district and I'm going to lift into the room the voice of two Educators at Gompers phonics and spelling instruction may not make sense to students unless they are developing a fairly high level a proficiency with phoneme

119awareness knowing this the best way to help our students is to educate teachers about phoneme awareness and how to teach it with skill accuracy and engagement this is one of one of the many benefits of the letters training that was a kindergarten teacher from Gompers and a second grade teacher I knew reading was hard but I didn't know that it requires several major regions of the left side of the brain to perform in addition I learned that we cannot understand by reading what we cannot understand by listening listening in oral language are major sub skills needed to become a proficient reader thank you all right um I just want to thank Jackie and Sarah for their contributions and their partnership in this presentation tonight as I was thinking about this and listening to these two

120leaders I thought about the power and write those two schools working together as they learned and as they tried something new you know as they encountered successes and challenges it's been important that they have each other to work through on this and I'm just thinking to myself about how that pairing is something that might be really important to think about as we continue to move through the process so thank you um Sarah and Jackie again just appreciate you and continue to learn from you okay just a few next oh that I wanted to come out before we end the presentation next slide please so our immediate Next Step that we want to talk about and that we want to start getting calendared is our task force um the charge of the task force is to

121lift the voices of our staff community members families local experts right Dr Jenkins said some right here in our backyard and our children our students we want to hear diversity of thought we want to hear what bring what people bring to the table from what research base they're speaking and to really think about and learn from multiple people coming to the table this task force will also do um some learning about the science of reading we have just started that learning here tonight share perspectives I as I said that are based on research and results and help us with examining materials and resources seeing what children will put their hands on helping us to figure out timelines right a timeline fits within the overall work of the district and we want to be sure that

122we have capacity and that we are doing our very best as we move forward it's hard to balance the urgency of this right with also doing it really well and we know that that is just a natural tension that we have in any system so we want to keep talking about that and help people to understand why we're making the collective decisions that we're making moving forward next slide so this is a draft of what we think will be a budget it's in year one and this was also something that we discussed in a passing referendum passing budget and as we said before this commitment to early literacy will require significant investment right of time this is the right work overtime and um an investment beyond what local funding can sustain for just one year

123so these are the kinds of areas where we'll be investing in materials including materials with explicit structured phonics professional learning and then those pieces we talked about that are in The Wider approach right strengthening that transition from 4K to 5K something around increasing reading certification for our teachers and then also we had talked about a full day 4K pilot moving forward right all of these pieces fit together in an early literacy strategy next slide please okay so that is it um for us we have um talked a lot thank you um for participating in this with us and I say with us knowing that we are together um I want to thank the team um some folks on this budget presentation or the board presentation it's their first time presenting to the board I want

124to say thank you to the team for doing that I want to say and acknowledge that we have three bilingual staff members on this team moving forward so we have all kinds of diversity of thought and knowledge of how children learn to read from multi-lingual backgrounds as well and we appreciate all of those perspectives um brought to the table so looking forward to more more to come and I will turn it over to Dr Jenkins here as we round out our presentation on early literacy hey I just want to say thank you to everyone who presented tonight you guys were fabulous really were and I think the new additions to our team has just strengthening us and I we do take seriously the questions that you asked tonight I think you're going to make us

125better even with the questions you asked tough questions tonight you guys must have stayed up all last night thinking of this presentation but uh I I tell you Gloria the the work that we're gonna have to do with children Beyond just early um our early Learners we know that's serious work and that's historical but it doesn't mean that we can't start looking at that and we are and you started the presentation uh Lisa thanks for laying it out and I have to say kudos to Lisa the way she's taken this bull by the horn and she's running with it and the team that's supporting thank you Kaylee uh for your work and those principles and your staff voices thank you to all thanks Amanda for giving us so much time this is the main thing

126learning this is what we should be about in the instructional work group thank you so much thank you so much Dr Jenkins and thank you Lisa for modeling such a beautiful gratitude uh to our staff and and uh and particular our new staff uh they came in and and spoke uh so beautifully about telling our story I think Lisa and I have been working over the summer on like what is this instruction group uh uh could look like from uh from not just a Content holder and but this place where we um learn together as board members but also get really meaningful and intentional uh feedback to our staff in order for them to to continue to do the work um but that those spaces are also uh the spaces where there's a lot of

127exchange and a lot of growth happening for all of us so thank you Lisa for emulating that extremely well I also wanted to give thanks to our building staff we don't get to hear from our building staff as often I think as we would like and that's another change that Lisa and I have been talking about to both highlight the work that our buildings are doing I know that people are going to be saying well go Gompers and Albion present into the board whenever next I am pretty sure that that's going to happen and that's really exciting because I think that's gonna make folks in the building uh uh get excited to come in and highlight some of their work and I really appreciate uh Jackie and Sarah really telling the story and also sharing

128about uh some of your building stuff as well with all of that gratitude I want to to pass on to to my colleagues and I think I'm just going to do around Robin because it feels a little bit more efficient and I'll start with you and then Gama Schmidt foreign so um thank you for all of this it was great to hear from all the new um staff thank you for being here and for presenting and also I'm really really grateful to Jackie and Sarah for bringing in the the on the ground perspective of what's going on in our schools and the voices of our staff um that's so important as we move forward with this um I also really love that you quoted um Timothy Shanahan in this presentation he's one of my go-to

129people to read um his blog what I'm thinking about where we're headed literacy in this district and he has a really good quote about the simple view of reading which I found and I'm going to read and that is that the simple view of reading has been very useful but if you take it too literally you'll stray from evidence-based reading instruction real fast um I think we need to be cautious when we talk about the simple view of reading and acknowledge that what we're doing right now is anything but simple if it was simple we would have like solved the achievement Gap many many years ago um I think we need to make sure that when we talk about the science of reading we're um not just using it as a catch-all phrase but we're

130actually like starting to get specific about what that means like what are the different evidence-based strategies we're going to use to meet the needs of children who were failing at this point um it's I think it's really easy to throw around terms like science of reading as if they are um you know in a glib way like a glib solution and I know that's not our goal here I think we just need to be cautious to to make sure that we're always focused on evidence-based practice and um you know specifically what that means for different kids with different needs um Shanahan also talks about grade level texts in his work um I think his basic stand is that um grade level texts are very useful when children are learning decoding skills and once they get

131those skills under their belt which is I think an average of the beginning of second grade it actually makes more sense to give children challenging texts than grade level texts and he does distinguish between those two um challenging texts give kids more of a reason to try out the strategies that they're learning grade level texts may not Inspire them to use those strategies because they don't need them because the grade level texts they're able to use they're at their grade level um I think as we move forward we have to be really mindful of what makes kids want to read um kids May read because they want to learn they may read because they want to understand their identity and their history or understand the identity and history of others they may want to exercise

132their imaginations or expand their ideas about the possibilities of that they have in this world um I hope that as we move forward with this we won't just focus on making sure all children have access to grade level curriculum but make sure all children are inspired to read and find the joy in reading and I'm super excited that working with we're working with Dr Lutz in Billings because I think she will help make that happen for many of our children for whom that is not happening right now they're not seeing their identity and their culture and their history reflected in the materials that we're giving them um I also want to just um kind of hone in on the next steps um I appreciate all the information that you've given us with your ideas about

133implementation timeline and budget um I think we need to really focus in on what we as a board are going to need to decide moving forward as we do this important work and support um you know work work together to support each other in this important work and I think that boils down to some budget decisions that we will need to make and also some accountability decisions and accountability metrics that we will need to share um in terms of the budget um you know I think that comes down to curriculum professional development and engagement and as we're able to um get more detailed information about that I think that would be really helpful for the accountability piece um I think it's really important to take the information that we got tonight and as we move

134forward hone that into a plan with strategic goals and metrics to measure those strategic goals um so that we can like as I said hold each other mutually accountable to making sure that we're making the progress that we want to see not just in terms of number of people trained a number of curricula deployed in a number of schools but the actual impacts we're having on children and I know we won't know that right away but we need to be thinking long term um I also think it would be really helpful to um I don't know what kind of evaluation y'all are doing of the pilot at lvm and Gompers but to get more in-depth results of I know it's a one-year pilot and there's only so much we can learn from it but knowing

135as much as we can I think will help us with those budget decisions and also with strategic goals and metrics as we move forward thank you again for all of this I'm really excited about this work it's Chris Schmidt yeah thank you and I'll just Echo the sentiments uh Emma thanks for all of this work in this presentation tonight um a special thanks to Sarah and Jackie for elevating the work that is happening at Gompers and elvium and I have to tell you I'm very excited to hear um that its whole instructional staffs and schools that are being trained so it's the instructional coaches it's the teachers it's it's um The Specialist in the school and the the only thing I want to highlight and this is not a criticism um but I think for

136a long time the advanced learning department has been working in isolation and so I I would I would just like to say let's make sure that we aren't putting a grade level ceiling on this new effort and literacy and that we're really working to make sure that when students are ready to move they can move and they can keep learning and growing um as they go and however that looks for integrating um that department to support that work I would love to to see that happen and be part of the conversation going forward because we really are going to find students from all demographics who are Advanced Learners once we start adding this comprehensively into the work we're doing um in every area oh thanks he only looked like she had a comment there she

137had jumped on I just want to Echo what you're saying Chris I absolutely uh agree with that I think that's absolutely right I just wanted to hop on and just let you know I am hearing you I'm hearing um the need to just continue to work with Al um I will say that Sharon is doing an incredible job leading that team and is doing as fully immersed in these conversations along with um our other directors um and everyone else who was in this in this work so yes absolutely taking an approach with Al that is fully integrated and not seen as an add-on um but someone who is at the table um and in these conversations at the complete course absolutely that's great just to highlight what Ali had said before about the the gender

138gap in in the early Elementary years for girls in math I think we see the flip side of that for boys in literacy and so really you know taking a look at that too as we're doing this work thank you Chris um savian and Ali foreign I'm going to okay Ali thanks Steve Young for those okay I think Savion said that he was gonna pass okay um savian definitely let us know if you want to chime in I'm sorry I don't know exactly what happened um I really appreciate the second half of that presentation what's going on um within School specifically so thank you all for for flushing out kind of the on the ground work of early early childhood literacy um in alignment with some of what Chris Gomez Schmidt was saying I think

139you know as expansive a perspective we can have is as how is as helpful um and I think you know looking to the Arts and things specifically like the Performing Arts and our students ability to engage with music and all of these other things that are known to enhance uh reading right if kids have more creative outlets in school their behavior and overall performance is impacted but also uh you know when we talk about the Arts we talk about literacy we shouldn't treat those areas as mutually exclusive a lot of us learned the Alphabet by singing about it so I I really appreciate the broadness of this conversation the inclusiveness of this conversation um and I can't thank my board colleagues enough particularly Chris uh crazy for her question about the bias within passing um

140for challenging us to really uh think about these dynamics of race in ways that are critical um and and make us accountable for children in ways we haven't been historically so thank you all so much for your contributions today thank you Ellie um looks like we are experiencing still some really challenging technology here uh Gloria and Nikki and then I'll I'll move it to you save you I know that I'm going to pass I think everybody's answered the questions today okay Nikki well you turn your mic can you hear me now yes okay um one I want to thank everyone for the presentation the 16 and proficiency is a scary statistic especially because I don't think it shows the true number of individuals who are black and brown with disabilities who are often included it

141also probably doesn't include Native American individuals who probably are too small population even be on the list I really appreciate what the department what you guys are doing you're working incredibly hard on it and I'm enjoying the science of reading here's the one thing I would change would be to please include someone on the planning or decision-making committee who's either has dyslexia or some type of disability to increase that perspective because oftentimes that perspective is overlooked and there are 35 million people in this country with disabilities but oftentimes we especially people of color with disabilities are the last ones included and that's not acceptable and it will never be acceptable the other thing I want to say is thank you Chris Gomez Schmidt for bringing up the floors and ceilings on Advanced learning I remember

142being in second grade reading is an 11th grade level who couldn't write my name getting a D in Reading because I couldn't write and I was told I wasn't supposed to read books like that so I couldn't go to the library in school because I read books I wasn't supposed to read I to this day just like libraries with a sign that says kids Department no how to read wherever they feel comfortable reading at whatever level level I don't care if that's Comics I don't care if that's newspapers I don't care if that's word peace let them explore but those that always bothered me so I really appreciate it most importantly thank you for including our staff when I first started on the board and no offense to any any staff we had a lot

143of canned focus groups and they were good they just kept saying the same things and now I'm actually hearing from teachers I'm hearing from principals I'm hearing from people who are actually being affected by decisions and that to me is incredibly important so I appreciate it and Lisa I'd love to meet with you further on this issue because regarding task force and several other things because I think there's some things we could discuss and I think you're doing a wonderful job and we need to focus on this phonics at the science reading is clear that what we did before isn't working and what we're doing now is necessary for that our calf or get rid of the achievement camp but not just that have we give our children a chance to succeed not just academically

144but in life so I really appreciate it thank you thank you so much Nikki for such inspirational words um Savion thank you for the whole team uh for the whole presentation I can see how hard and passionate you've worked on this let's turn that video off yeah I can see how hard I'm passionate uh y'all have poured into this work um and we'll be definitely looking forward to seeing uh and you know the hopefully improve results on engagement as well as reading um as we try to bring more culturally relevant lessons for students to improve that uh engagement for students and seeing how it's aligned with our 4K strategy as well our entire early learning strategy I think will be really transformative from for the district from the bottom up and bringing in you know

145principals and teacher input it makes it move the movement really Grassroots and can help us achieve that culture change that we're looking for so thank you and looking forward to continuing the work foreign thank you so much Savion uh uh Lisa anything else to wrap us this uh part of uh of our evening before we move to the next item no I think um that about covers it for our evening tonight again just really want to thank you all for your partnership in this it's really exciting um and looking forward to continuing this discussion often and um learning together thank you so much Lisa thank you everyone for for uh that presented um we are moving to the next item but before we do that because we've been sitting for two hours and I I

146know every time I tried to get us at a break I'm gonna insist that we take at the very least two minutes break and week 10. did you say 10. um until 7 10 you know if you don't want to take a break that's fine but uh I would recommend people's just stand up stretch you know go grab some glass of water and then we'll come back at 7 10. thank you all bye Jackie good to see you foreign my thumb hurts really bad all right everyone let's come back thank you Barb for transitioning us okay uh Savion you said uh 10 minutes right yeah 10 minutes no two minutes oh two minutes okay I thought you said 10 minutes I tried to get 10 minutes nobody ever wants to do 10 minutes and then

147we skipped for about an hour so I'm like can we just take a little just a short break so people can stretch out like a little bit you all I think oh no it looks like most people are back okay yeah uh savian um yeah okay thank you Steven so uh for our next item uh it was something that came from our our uh last board meeting uh and I'm just I'm just excited I think uh there was an opportunity there we heard loud and clear from many of our uh teachers and School staff around uh educator Effectiveness and it was it was really interesting uh because I shared with my colleagues that the DPI had released a a version of educator Effectiveness uh doing covet which mostly highlight um coaching and support uh and

148all the things that we need uh uh to be provided for our teachers and our Educators and um I understand that there was a lot of um a lot of support in making sure that we bring this conversation to this group so I want to to honor that and I'll I'll pass to uh Dr Jenkins to to cover a little bit more on this on this item and uh the intent on your memo or anything else that we're discussing today yeah well first of all thanks for bringing this out here at this particular meeting I just want to say it was a lot of conversations at all levels from the teachers administrators um MTI the principal group we all came together and really collaborated we had started the conversation actually before that particular board meeting

149and it kind of culminated in us having a joint release in terms of the collaboration that we were doing in right in alignment with some of the things that DPI was saying too in terms of what we should do during this particular time to guide us that they laid out and you heard all of that what's going on right now in the previous presentation and our teachers and principals and all of us just trying to work together to get the maximum outcome for our students this is not about at all and you you would you can kind of see it in our memo where we're saying it's not about lowering any expectations it's about taking care of the well-being of our students of our adults as well and continue to have high quality learning but

150we could do it differently we didn't have to do all of the things that were there in the evaluation tool initiative so I'm very pleased with the outcome and so um I have my other colleagues uh speak to that now at this point but that's basically the wind up in a very good place that I think we all pretty proud of where we are right now thank you Dr Jenkins if somebody else is going to come and speak or uh I think we have hoye here tonight he was going to speak to that particular piece go ahead hello hey good evening everyone um yeah thank you Dr Jenkins and yes so um yeah so in in taking and looking through um the release from KU Rainey and the DPI team on the flexibility around educator

151Effectiveness we really took um all the considerations and the flexibility from the document that was released um I think what was really I think what was really helpful was meeting and collaborating with um MTI as well as our principals and um hearing from staff as well as our supports uh through our ee strategist and just thinking about what would be the best way to lean into the flexibility and also be able to support through this time so I think what you see in the memo um is really capturing um you know just really what what staff uh asked for in the regards of like the flexibility but also really leaning into as Dr Jenkins said you know still having high expectations still thinking about uh you know our impact on students um and really thinking

152about how we can lean on our educator Effectiveness strategist for support and also have a little bit of um efficacy where you can see in the memo uh staff are able to to engage in choosing um to opt into a supporting year this year if they are in a summer year so um yeah if there's um not sure if Lisa you wanted to add anything um but I know much of that language is in the memo and I think one one thing that I will say before Lisa shares is that you know when you think about um the language within the DPI uh flexibility and the document from for ee it really talks about how the the a components that that were looked at that they were really important in thinking about engaging students and

153their well-being and and also uh racial equity and social justice so I just think it's important that um yeah we call that out but it was all you know again just really happy that we're the process uh got us so Lisa is there anything you wish to add Dr Jenkins all right Lisa go ahead first and then I'll close it with that no I guess um I would reinforce Jorge that um the process was really important um talking with the principals talking with MTI having a real honest conversation about what is best for our students and staff and really paying attention right to this adaptive work that this is as we all learn and grow in this pandemic and as we have all made promises right to our children and families that we want to

154be sure that um we do our best um at working towards as well so again just want to thank you all for your patience with us you know as we learn through the process and I'm looking forward to partnering with MTI as we move through this yeah and I was just closed by saying it really was a great process and the intellectual exchange uh it was it was beautiful and I wanted to also clear up there was some uh communication that came out in the State Journal in terms of perspective that maybe Mr Jorge had and that I had with the initial memo where we were going before we got to the point of waving but we're all on the same page and I tell you this process uh the intellectual exchange I don't think

155that we should and could agree on every single thing that we do we should push one another and I think uh the work of Dr Hicks uh bring her voice to the table uh Dr Ebby uh MTI and I just think we came out with the best possible product than the fact that we collaborated the way that we did and that's what I'm looking forward to us doing in this District as we move forward and any and everybody in our district if you have a voice you can lift the boys and then through the process we'll come out with a final product so thank you thank you so much Dr Jenkins and I I feel like I'll speak for myself but I'm sure some of my colleagues have this a similar sentiment around the collaborative

156nature and even with this last three months that we've been seeing your leadership and and uh with four months that women uh senior leadership and and seeing how you are uh managing the districts like that is for me one of the highlights of how that's being translated this collaborative nature I re you know I certainly really appreciate MTI uh putting their name on this on this uh on this memo and then also having uh to a very steamed um principles uh in in in that memo as well so thank you so much so open the floor Nikki I see your hand um I got a lot of emails of uh teachers being told that their evaluations were still mandatory I've gotten due emails saying that um educator Effectiveness is still required for first-year teachers is

157there a way we could just clarify that these are guides and not requirements so I can yeah I can speak to that Nikki um so the the process right so we're talking there's a couple of different pieces to educator Effectiveness when we think about it as a process and then the evaluation has sort of the culminating summative part of the entire process so what we're saying is that we are not requiring teachers um in the sense of they get to opt into a summary or which at the end which at the end culminates in an evaluation what we're saying is that they can opt into a supporting year where that wouldn't be the case the process as it's laid out in the memo and the way we've been discussing it and the way we've shared

158it across all the different groups and um the way we've collaborated is that uh the professional practice goal would be something that teachers will be engaging with as that is supportive of their professional growth also during this during this time that's super critical and important and this part and is really lifted up in that um the the guidelines that Katie Iranian DPI put out in regards to the flexibility around the ee process the other part is that we also took and this was part of the um collaboration and the conversation that we had with principals but also with Andy and his team at MTI where we looked at the the uh the student learning objective so in looking at the forms it's themselves we took out the bulk of it in in the sense of

159that we basically said we're right all this is this is a lot of um you know compliance based work and we really want to focus as we said on the professional practice on that adaptive work and so we left just the SLO statement so really it's focused around the professional practice goal having a student learning objective that is tied to the plans that schools are making around their school Improvement plans and their support to students based on the very discussion we just had um earlier and so yeah so there are some options in this um but in terms of the professional practice goal um and the SLO statement those would still be completed and Nikki also if I may add really quick have whoever it is go see whichever level if it's principles go see

160Dr uh Hixson Dr Ebby if it's teachers go to MTI we did this jointly that was the purpose of us sending out a joint communication if it's a misunderstanding just go to one of them and I tell you Andy and Ed and uh along with the principals have been fabulous as we work through this together and it still may be a misunderstanding it's just a matter when people read things they interpret it one way what I'm thinking is what happened yeah when you read it people may misinterpret I know I do it quite a bit yeah and that's perfectly fine but just come to us versus talking about it out in the E for somewhere just come straight to us and we have the Wednesday meetings that we've had come to us and let's just

161iron it out and keep it moving and no I didn't see the State Journal article so yeah I didn't know they did but thank you Nikki um is that the one that I knew the one at the end but I didn't did they do two or only one anyway not relevant yeah um thank you Nikki um any anybody else uh any comments oh yeah Chris Carusi so um thank you for putting this on the agenda and for um clarifying the flexibilities that we're offering our staff this year given the pandemic um I would love to put out there that I think this is an opportunity for us to um evaluate educator Effectiveness um I know that we're legally required to do it in 2011 and the Wisconsin legislature passed um you know a bill that

162put this in State Statute we have to do education cater Effectiveness and the state has adopted the Danielson framework as the framework for doing that um however in 2016 Charlotte Danielson herself wrote an article about rethinking teacher evaluation where she questioned some of the aspects of her own framework and how effective they are and um I think this is an opportunity for us to you know well we have to follow the law well you know we can't break the law to also talk about um you know how we can make educator Effectiveness better um I know one of the concerns that Danielson raised about her own framework was that building administrators don't always understand the nuances and the Art of teaching because a lot of them actually haven't taught or they haven't taught the grade

163level that they're supervising or um I think that happens in mmsd I hear that from teachers all the time that they're being evaluated by an assistant principal who has never taught or who may be taught for one year and they've taught for 22 years and as Charlotte Danielson said in her own critique of her framework that it feels like somebody who has less experience than you is coming in and reducing your very nuanced and difficult job to a checklist and checking off the things that you meet or don't need um I would love to see mmsd um maybe take advantage of the fact that we're in a pandemic we're having to rethink things anyway and think about how we can uniquely do meet the requirements of educator Effectiveness in a way that doesn't look at

164teachers through a deficit lens um you know Danielson pointed out that only you know six percent or fewer of teachers are actually like not meeting standards most teachers are you know we need to look at them from a lens of exceptionalists we're taking good teachers and helping them do better um can we look at how we can do that better and can we also look at um you know teacher there are also had some teachers who said that they don't they haven't actually been evaluated every time they're supposed to be that their principal or administrator never got around to doing it um and if we're moving towards educator Effectiveness being a more high-stakes decision point in decisions about um tenure and um Surplus and layoff we need to make sure everybody's getting an evaluation so

165just want to put out there this might actually be an opportunity to figure out how we do educator Effectiveness better in mmsd yeah Chris and I would just I would just say and reiterate what Dr Jenkins has said you know if there is and this is something that's come up you're right in regards to folks feeling um or saying that they have not been um they haven't had an evaluation or haven't had observations in feedback I think to Dr Jenkins Point it'd be it's a perfect opportunity to reach out we can certainly we can certainly make sure um and check that that's not an issue on our end um of of the work um the other part I wanted to say was yeah I know that you bring up so you bring up Charlotte Danielson

166and she also says too that when you're thinking about teaching teaching is so complex and to be distinguished in in the work is really that's I mean most teachers are proficient in their craft it's it's moving into that distinguished realm and I think that to your point um I know that she's been she's also been talking about the the the cultural uh responsive teaching aspect of it so I know that these are ongoing conversations and just so just so that everybody's clear on this you know in mmsd since day one we've we've committed to this work of of helping teachers grow in their craft knowing that it's so complex and working with principals in ensuring that they're following um the the practices and learning and leaning on it um so we have our two educator

167effect and the strategist that not only support principles but also support teachers in completing the work working through the observations and we're also part of the team that meets with Katie Rainey at DPI so it's kind of so I think that there's definitely an opportunity to continue to push in on what that looks like especially as we think about a growth model right asset-based growth model because that is what Charlotte framework is it's a growth model so um yeah I think that I think those are definitely great valid points and I definitely think we can continue to look at that I really appreciate those comments and um State Statute also says that um educator evaluation not educator Effectiveness specifically but evaluating Educators is a board role it you know it explicitly gives boards responsibility for

168doing that and so I'm wondering if we should actually think about an ad hoc committee on this topic um I would just want to put that out there as something where you know we could pull together board members and teachers and administrators for some really good conversations about how we can grow as a district in terms of how we like as you said Jorge get Educators to go from great to distinguished um so just want to put that up there yeah thank you Chris I think uh I've been um Lisa and I have been talking about it I think that I wait I really appreciate the way you connected uh because you're also expecting you're speaking about educator Effectiveness in the context also of virtual learning uh which you know we um yeah we're still

169we're still in it and it likes like looks like we're gonna be in them for a minute longer uh so um I think I think that like thinking about how sustaining educator Effectiveness what are some of the opportunities to to transform and to get an effective I I do know that Epi has done significant work around that uh so you know it may be a matter of like and I also know that in 2016 ee got a really bad rap so uh you know maybe it's it's coming coming back and to see like okay what is what is the work now and maybe that is part of our virtual updates uh that we go um that we do every every uh instruction work group around uh what it what does it look like for this

170transformative ee but I I I've heard your question I heard you I heard how you said it so and I really appreciate that Ali foreign yeah Chris I greatly appreciate you speaking to kind of the broader criticism around educator Effectiveness and I think talking about you know uh how how folks are evaluated the fairness of an evaluation and who's being brought to the table to have this conversation is really important I do want to highlight uh the inclusion of Angie Hicks in this coordination in this conversation um Angie Hicks is is definitely somebody who was a teacher in our district she was also a janitor in our district but uh she was my brother's third grade teacher you know and so I I don't want to generalize our administrators as people who haven't spent time

171in the classroom or don't know our community or don't love this District I think the selection of her in particular um and I know her personally I don't know the background of every principle we have um but I think that that shows that we're including you know the voices of women of color we're including folks who have experienced our our district um from multiple lenses right as teachers as custodial staffs as administrators and also people have sent their babies to this District so um I think we can always benefit from a broader perspective and a critical analysis um but I do uh greatly appreciate the teams that came together to have have this conversation including MTI um and and the members of our faculty in Jorge thank you so much for your your remarks this

172evening foreign I just wanted to make a quick comment I've been doing some reading with Charlotte Danielson too um to learn more about educator Effectiveness and I think one of the things that she said is if you know using this for evaluation if you're going to use a framework I want you to use my framework um because I think it is the strongest and so it's not it makes it sound like um you know she's doing work to to evolve about how this might be used or that's part of the the conversation going forward um I I guess another thing that I'm curious because we are in this such different year with virtual instruction um is is there a way we're incorporating that into how educators are reflecting so that we can really learn um

173from what they're learning along the way and I don't know if that's appropriate for you know I'm just thinking about the the professional practice goals and how that would be um different in this this virtual you know teaching environment um just to make sure we're capturing that to to learn um from how this is working this year Jorge do you have any comment yeah no I I think that's a and you made an excellent connection I mean when I'm speaking to staff and I'm speaking to principals a lot of it is through the professional practice goal and there's opportunities throughout the year to really reflect on that professional practice goal so when they're meeting at the beach or when they're going through if they're not meeting with their principal they're going through the process and

174engaging with perhaps a teacher team um or or another colleague or a coach perhaps um and they have time to think about what does that actually mean for them and as they go through the process itself it's laid out so that you can be reflective um which so then at mid-year you'll have a reflection and at the end of the year you'll have another reflection and I think that just reflecting in general is that that's also in itself a practice right being a reflective practitioner it's not something that you just do it's a practice and so this is also something that where this is part of the culture that we're rating here in mmsd in creating uh reflective practitioners and that's a part of the process that we Embrace and you brought it up yeah

175perfect example is through the professional practice goal so yes and there's always that growth around reflection so thank you I would just like to lift something in this in particular with uh both Chris's questions and comments around Danielson someone who's been training Danielson and trained others in it um it's a guy and Danielson is no different than any other uh former practitioner now become uh someone and produce the model like Lucy Calkins for years I was balanced literacy hey I'm telling you but as we learn we do better enduring this pandemic not only are teachers asked to learn administrators and if you remember when I said ee I woke up one morning at 3 30 I'm saying Shucks if I was a principal evaluating the teacher right now how do I account for all these

176other things so as I'm telling you I'm a first year educator now after 30 years I'm back to being a first year because I've never experienced this pandemic you guys are back to being first-year board members and at the end of the day we all want to put out some accountability for ourselves the one thing that I do reject a little bit and now I love Danielson but I reject the fact that 90 uh 4 95 of teachers across the country are too proficient I think there's something in the evaluation system which you brought up Chris I think we do need to look at it because if we had truly 95 being proficient where's the direct correlation between higher children are performing and proficient you know and so we as Educators have to continue and

177we just can't let numbers like I don't think we should just let the evaluation be the only thing that we do but we should hold ourselves accountable for children learning but you don't use any evaluation to as a gotcha moment it should be professional development for the teacher and the administrator who are involved in the process so that we can inform what we do to improve outcome for students Dr Jenkins when you said like go for board members to go uh first year I I got a little dizzy some of us it's been a hell of a year forward not go back but I appreciate I appreciate your your comments and uh and I appreciate like also like always your sharpeners around you're really thinking critical there there's also uh an array of other things

178that we haven't talked about ee that ee does in regards to the racialization of our teachers in the way that they experience uh the district the interactions between racialized experiences of our teachers with different principles you know principles of color and and white principles when when there's a teacher when it's a white teacher and a teacher of color there's so much other uh really interesting data that illuminates uh the climate of our schools in a way that I think it's it's really positive and we're we're still yeah with this conversation is is too kind of narrow so I do want to to for us to kind of uh experience educator effective in a much more expensive way um so I don't see anyone else oh Gloria do you want to like final comment and we've

179we move to the next item yeah I mean I think um so just on educator Effectiveness I think you know I always Center I always when I when I'm in these conversations I always Center myself on those who are who we are serving right um and so and um you know Dr Jenkins gonna laugh at me again but it is really centering on I always think of when I think about educator Effectiveness I think about those students and families that we fail every year and how we are evaluating um our teachers upon that right and I'm not saying it is solely on our teachers but it is this cultural uh component that I think is missing and when I think about educator effect Effectiveness I do think about that that is where my mind goes

180right because they are part of the pro they are part of the puzzle to the success of our students in learning and um my I'm very narrowly focused I think for the broader student body I think it's it's it's it works but what about the focused uh on our students of color who um are failing every year like you know I mean how do we measure that and do we measure that like I don't know if this is just a bizarre question and I'm just like totally out of it's part of the conversation I don't know why did you have yeah no I mean so your question being do we measure that yeah we we I mean I think that we have metrics to think about like how our students our students uh who are

181our students of color our students who who are English language Learners our students who are who have um IEPs and special needs like we we look at all of that we do when we're thinking about this and I think what's also really what we've also done is that as we're thinking about this this purpose and this process of um growth and educator Effectiveness in the in the process we also have all of our supervisors um trained and support them when they go out into all of our Alternatives as well so in thinking about um we know we've done we've done sessions and observations and safe part we've done observations um in in all the alternative sites we've gone out there with administrators and worked with teachers in those sites so I I mean it's definitely

182it's definitely not I'm not saying listen I I more we've talked about this and we talked about it just in the last presentation when we look at the disparities in our data specific to our students of color and our students language Learners and our students special needs and we can go across the board there I'm just saying that these are definitely conversations and this process allows us to begin and have those conversations and I think that that is something that is a big part of this this is what Dr Jenkins was just saying in regards to when we look at our data across the board because our right we're looking at students and Student Success and thinking about our students and we're looking at where is that where are our students and their growth and

183their achievement based on how our student how our teachers are performing in terms of their instructional practices and how our principals are providing feedback and how are they doing that with um all calibrated and and all and so there's it goes throughout the entire organization and I think it just allows us to begin having this conversation around why it's so important to have feedback why it's so important to lean into growth why it's so important that we start to have these discussions where we maybe perhaps haven't leaned into them enough so I mean there's lots more to say there but I'll stop hopefully some of that resonated and answered some of your question and I don't know if Dr Jenkins would like to to add anything yeah I would in terms of first of all

184a lot of it we have an imperfect evaluation system it is point blank I don't I have seen no evidence of a perfect one and we have to do a million shift of what's the purpose and everyone thinks it's just feedback we have to just like we talk about the science of reading we have to talk about the science of questioning the appropriate questions to get individuals to reflect on a practice the fear when you say evaluations that individuals this is a tool to use to get rid of me we've got to somehow start having these conversations just like we came together on ee it needs to be a larger discussion going back to Chris Cruz's question in the beginning we need to have a larger conversation now in even helping DPI is this the

185right way to go about improving learning and we've been doing it we have the worst outcomes in the nation what's up this is an opportunity for us to just change that trajectory by just coming together and say what do we really want to do for our children and bring the voices of everyone to the table and and move forward and I'll stop right there but this is a larger discussion we need to have though yeah thank you for Dr Jenkins and um for that I mean I I think you know we oftentimes look at the deficiency of the student right um and when we talk about um you know education and I just I like I like the conversation we're having around educator Effectiveness I think um it I I really like that we're having

186that that this discussion um there was another question I had but I lost it I think um yeah I'll come back if um if uh if it comes to me I'll come back but um I think my point in that is that is is is part of the evaluation right is really a focus um it has a focus on hearing from Dr Jenkins those parents that we met with last weekend right uh are a couple weekends ago um you know our our most vulnerable students is part of the evaluation um of educator Effectiveness right like in in a very um culturally relevant and responsive way right is having that Focus right if we are going to be about black excellence and um that that that measurement has to be in there um and or you

187know it's some component of it um so okay that's that's what it I have thanks Square uh Nikki and Chris Carusi and then we'll move into the next item Gloria brings up an excellent point but I come from a district in which a few black and brown students were put in special ed and sent to the school for the severely disabled which was also by placement because no one would teach them because it affected their teaching scores they fought over who got stuck with them they fought over who got stuck with me I don't want to recreate A system that does that because no one should and that's what I'm afraid if we do it the wrong way is going to happen Lakeland is one of the oldest institutions of the state of Wisconsin that

188is that's a segregated learning environment solely for the disabled and it's primarily black brown and severely disabled and it's become a place in which those who people don't want to teach because it might make them look bad that's where they tend to be placed and that's what I'm afraid of that's my fear your point is excellent I'm just worried that it'll be used in a manner that it will make it worse while we're trying to make it better and I'd love to work with you on trying to make it better I just have seen in the other side thanks Nikki and then Carusi um Dr Jenkins I really appreciate your comment about this science of questioning um and I also appreciate your consistent focus on the need for coaching in the district I completely agree

189with you and feedback I've gotten from staff is that sometimes the administrative requirements of educator Effectiveness get in the way of that coaching that needs to happen for educators to get to the next level and help our kids have better outcomes so I think just to clarify that's kind of where I'm coming from in this conversation about rethinking educator Effectiveness is how do we coach and work with staff and the best way possible so that we get the outcomes that we want and if we can continue this conversation and continue to focus on that I think it will help us get to a better place in terms of the work that we're doing if our Educators actually showing the outcomes we want to see Chris I'll tell you Carolyn Downey uh the Downey walkthrough method

190and you look at that process for asking the right questions to get teachers to reflect I've actually applied that to administrative central office people are just asking questions the science of asking the questions to get individuals to reflect and that's what I believe a lot of the evaluation models I believe they're Antiquated we might as well go back to Madeline Hunter because and I'm glad to see that Daniel said in which I knew that she has been reflecting because yes she went in a different direction but it's being applied very much similarly to the Madeline Hunter and we're just in an environment of fear right now and individuals who are not trained appropriately in Danielson they don't carry it out so I I understand too those comments some of the teachers that's coming she's making

191but we have to come together and refine our process though for what we're doing and and I agree with someone said earlier too I think it may have been Ali said we don't need to throw everything out but how do we refine it really you know so the investment we've made that that's not all wasted but there needs to be a shift and every time there's a shift it doesn't need to be always drastic but in this particular case we're getting learning outcomes we do need to make a very hard shift to get to the outcomes that we need which Gloria's always talking about black and the brown children the uh most marginalized children go in the direction we're doing now going now it's going to be tough but we can get there though thank

192you Chris and thank you Dr Jenkins um anybody else any comments okay uh we should transition to the next item in our agenda uh which I is also I am of great interest uh uh for myself and many of my colleagues uh is regarding sexual harassment policy and I see Eric um already put his his screen in there I am curious Lisa if you have any opening remarks before we move to to Eric's presentation sure thank you Ananda I think that Eric's um presentation is going to be um really about the new policy that we have as a district around sexual harassment and how federal law has informed that um so I'm going to let him start he's got um a few slides that will guide the conversation and then if we have questions um

193or other concerns we can certainly engage him in that there you are Eric you're on the other side of my screen there welcome yeah I don't know how I bounce around in Zoom so uh good evening everybody uh I believe everyone knows me but just in case uh my name is Eric keston I am the affirmative action officer title line coordinator and contract compliance coordinator for the district and uh right before I started I just want to acknowledge that this is a shift compared to what you have talking about tonight and so it's this is just a difficult topic uh because we're talking about people kids adults that this only as I often say people never call me when they're having a good day and so that's what we're that's what we'll be talking about

194and so just to frame the conversation around the policy what I want to start with is just to say that this policy is a standalone policy uh responsive to the federal law I presented to you briefly in August talking about how the office of civil rights and introduced new regulations for the first time in like 40 years and so that's specifically what this policy is about also everyone who was protected last year is still currently protected through the district's current non-discrimination policies those are not changing at all and I can talk briefly if you have questions about how the two would interact um so but if basically if a situation might fall under Title IX then we go through that policy and we have to be compliant with the regulations and then based on the

195regulations I is the title link coordinator or my designee which um I will train and have to make an assessment of a particular situation to see if it falls under the regulations and again this is the first time this specific policy is coming before you so in brief what happened is thank you for moving forward Barb uh the challenges are and I mentioned this in August the regulations are highly prescriptive the old ones basically the previous regulations under office civil rights basically said you had to have uh my position had to exist in a district and you had to have a policy and procedures this one is extremely highly prescriptive um regarding steps in the process regarding roles in the process uh which is going to influence how much time everything takes which is the

196reference to the additional District resources um a part of that the one basic change that's a challenge is the definition of sexual harassment they change that definition and the way they change that is as it says on the screen is the definition is currently it used to be severe or pervasive or objectively offensive and now under the new Thailand regulations it's severe and pervasive and objectively offensive and based on that and now alone that narrows what falls under the definition of sexual harassment so one of the challenges that I've had to deal with putting this together and one of the reasons why there's a standalone policy is Title IX applies to school districts um and colleges universities put Title VII for employment also applies and Title VII has the previous definition of sexual harassment so

197we actually have to for them and so that's why the solution is we have this Standalone sexual harassment policy that is specifically responsive to Title IX and title and Alone um but the old definition that I mentioned is still captured under the other under the district's non-discrimination policy so in fact what happens if something if an adventure situation comes up I organize this in my designated which I'd have to train um would make an assessment to see if it might fall under title an island under this definition of Title IX and if it does it has to go through this process now if it either doesn't or if we go through this process it doesn't meet this definition then they have to go put it through the other process that definition that's why it's confusing

198but that's why everything was protected before is still protected in the district's not discrimination policies and why we're still not touching those other policies um before you move to the next I just wanted to check are people doing okay understanding Eric is just because you're breaking up a little bit oh I'm sorry I'll turn my we'll see really bad sound quality I'm so sorry is that any better uh we'll see why don't you move to the next fight and see so far as it's is doing okay I'm sorry okay so this is simply the breakdown of the sections of the policy so we have the definitions up front uh just so people know what they're reading going forward um I will acknowledge that there are some definitions in there for a language we are trying

199to move away from such as complainants uh respondent because uh complainant is a person who would bring forward a complaint but that sounds like someone's complaining which lessons what they're bringing forward however these regulations require this terminology if you read the regulations they have complainants they have responded in the regulations they use terms victim they use the terms of perpetrator and so the definitions are up front then there's just general provisions and then a basic about the reporting and investing in the complaints and you can see uh my role and then it acknowledges that there will be valid violations discipline sanctions if there's depending on what's found and then the notice is just making people aware of the policy and again all of this um while the order is not dictated by the new regulations

200all of this is compliant with the new regulations um that's pretty much the presentation I have uh this is again the first time you're seeing the policy and it'll come back before the for the regular board meeting thank you so much Eric um um we're gonna just quickly just also do around um I'll uh Gloria um and then Ali I have nothing another Ali yeah uh I wanna thank you for for presenting uh Eric um I think the the revisions are are pretty complex I think it's really reassuring to know that mmsd has had lgbtq trans-inclusive policy um for decades and so uh our ability on the local level to make sure our kids have access to you know um facilities and spaces that affirm their identities um is is more and more is more

201and more important given given these guidelines um and I I can't help but say they're they're disappointing um to see renegotiated into this so I guess uh any words of encouragement to our students who may be in a position to have to come forward and talk about something awful that's happened in their lives um around our ability to support them um at this time as Title IX shifts uh would be incredibly helpful so oh yes thank you and I uh completely agree with you uh what I will say uh briefly is unfortunately as we all we know the current Administration defines gender in a very binary manner um however it is extremely important to support Oliver communities including the lgbtq community and uh that's again one of the reasons why all those protections are still

202in place in the regular in the district's non-discrimination policies and if a concern comes forward it won't go through this it would go through those other policies so the uh it would be protected any situation to protect it the same way they have been protected and it's really important to me uh just this is a personally these are hard policies people don't look at these until they're they have an issue which just raises anxiety because they're complex and they're difficult and they're in a painful situation so it's always really important for me to be as transparent as possible to be as much of a soft Landing as possible so one of the things I have done in the past and I will do with this policy is once it's finalized it's put together materials hopefully

203there's some videos I got to make it as easy to understand as possible so people know not only what makes sense for this specific policy but where else to go and when to go there to hopefully support all of our communities thank you so much thank you Eric for doing that work I greatly appreciate your response and and the the work that you're doing to make sure folks have the support they need to navigate some pretty complex policy thank you thank you Ellie Chris and Chris Carusi and then Chris uh gomeshmet um thank you for that question Ollie I think that got um at least part of my first question which is um I would actually like to know more about how um the new sexual harassment policy and the two non-discrimination policies we have

204will interact um I appreciate the illustration of gender are there other examples you can give in particular of how you know I agree that this new definition of sexual harassment is challenging to say the least and will our non-discrimination policies help us protect students and staff and anyone else in the district who is encountering sexual harassment For Whom the new definition could be an impediment to um addressing the problem so it's a hard question I will do my best to answer it the problem the challenge is how prescriptive the um these pot these regulations are and the reason I say that is if something the way the regulations read is if a situation so first of all this only covers gender um in binary gender the way the federal government clearly defines it so anything

205else runs through the other policies so everyone I mean everyone's supported all the other protectors we're not touching them all the protected classes are still there they're still supportive everything is still there um and this specific regulation so Title IX actually covers sex which means sexual harassment and sexual discrimination the 2000 pages of the regulations only cover sexual harassment they don't even cover sexual discrimination so we still have to have other policy to still support Title IX um the challenge with this policy is if a concern comes forward that might fall under Title IX it has to go through this process and as much as a soft Landing as I want as transparent as I want as supportive as I as a human being would like to be for for other people the challenge is

206is that what these Pol what this policy requires is if someone comes forward with a report I would talk to them to see if they want to file a complaint if a complaint is filed I have to we don't get to just talk to the students we have to pause a letter has to go to both parties so a lot of the concern that the stated concern that ledge these regulations is the lack of due process for people that had to respond to complaints and so what that means in this process and I haven't figured out and no one I've talked to a number of people in my world who haven't been doing title Line work who haven't heard how to work around this is a letter would have to go out saying exactly what

207the person is accused of who is accusing them when it has it's very specific which putting the definition aside that alone is extremely scary for anybody but we have to run it legally under this law these regulations we have if it potentially falls on our title line we're required to put it through this first so yeah sorry on my end he cut out when he said the letter have to go I know what you're saying because we've already talked about it but I think that was a critical point he needs to see that part again so that everybody can hear it so I apologize so what would happen so here what used to happen is okay I'm not talking about anything criminal at all um just just general things that would come up inappropriate touching

208of some way um it would be looked at it could be handled usually relatively quickly with my support in a school what has to happen now is there's a pause if the person who was touched wants to file a complaint a letter has to go out to the other person saying this is the person that is accusing you of something this is exactly what they are accusing you of you are going to have every right to defend yourself in addition to that the regulations say so we used to tell people not to talk about it for the integrity and the investigation and weak welfare everything else but these regulations say you can't say that to the parties in these situations because that might hinder their ability to find potential Witnesses so there's all these things

209beyond the definition that make this very oppressive and and difficult but how it would work is if someone chooses to go through this process and it doesn't fall under the definition of this this narrow definition of sexual harassment then we could run it through the previous definition of sexual harassment but they actually have to go through those Hoops first we have no choice the regulations are very clear that if it might Ponder this policy we have to run it through this policy so the end result that I fear is that the vast majority of people who I will talk to will choose not to file a complaint and under the regulations we're not allowed to do an investigation if they choose to not file a complaint so we don't even get to confirm if it's

210happened or not clarification it's disturbing to add to that I our BEP does not mention sexual harassment could that actually help us so um so I've worked with bran and I know they have it around uh sexual contact and I get notifications when those behaviors end up in at your climber uh but yes I mean Britain and I've already had conversations about these policies working with each other and and what that would mean and how we can make it as simple as possible for everybody and as supportive as possible for students for disturbing Nikki oh sorry um I had an order but go ahead Nikki because I know you can you hear can you hear me yeah um Eric two legal questions one can we use the title 10 can we use um the 10th

211Amendment try and argue a state claim because we can have we could go but we could have stronger laws but not weaker I'm gonna say I mean I would defer to Sherry I'm going to say no because there have been Mal there have been multiple lawsuits already I might I know I mentioned this in August and the Wisconsin attorney general is already in some of those complaints and they were everyone so far has been tossed got it my second um question is that that how it's coded matters I'm not if it is multiple things can you code it one way and not the other as in you're saying if okay I'm sorry if for example it's sexual they accuse of sexual harassment there's also an assault let's say physical touching with which could be considered

212illegal fourth degree sexual assault and we focus on the physical Behavior not the other one and therefore use it under that statute to go around it or is that not going to work no if it could possibly if I mean the regulations are pretty clear that if it could possibly fall under title possibly follow their Title IX it has to go through that process sorry just had to ask no no thank you I appreciate it Fabian and then uh I think Chris Carusi asked my main question on how Title VII on Title IX um will comply it is pretty depressing that this puts a lot of the the onus of labor on the uh on the accuser um but yeah thank you Ananda close yeah my questions um you know think thanks for the work

213on this Eric I guess one of my questions is what you mentioned in the presentation additional District resources needed and I'm sort of curious what that means and then I guess you know if if we approve this policy at the end of the month how do the changes and this edition of this policy and how it interacts with the other policies get communicated to our schools our staff our students um thank you for the both questions uh so resources are a few so the the the part of it is just time and and positions as far as what people are doing now what they would also might have to or if it requires additional positions and we're trying to figure that out now that the issue with the the regulations is that um again the

214previous one said you have to have a policy in a process this says you have to have a Title Nine coordinator you have to have an investigator to investigate it that investigator doesn't get to make a decision it goes to a decision maker to just to decide it so every single complaint that comes forward has to go to at least two individuals an investigator and a decision maker and then um if there's an appeal it has to be somebody else who does the appeal and all three of these positions have to be specifically trained and Title IX so it's a question of and we're I'm working with Sherry and other people trying to determine if we're able to do this with what we currently have on staff but if we are then that requires taking

215people away to get specifically trained and not just investigations but specifically around Title IX these cases with all the additional letters that have to go out and the investigation and the planning and the meetings and the between the investigate when you get to the decision stage you don't get to just make a decision you actually the investigators findings have to go to both parties and then both parties get to submit questions to the decision maker to send to the other side then they get to get those responses and they have to give each side another chance to respond to those I'm saying that that that all that takes time and someone someone has to do that and so that's the kind of resources I'm talking about is figuring out how that can happen and then

216around the communication um working on it so uh the reason if you look at the policy when it gets to like my title under website or is actually a question mark at the moment because I'm working uh with Communications and either we're going to probably do a separate Title IX website that has all this information and so once the policy is approved then we're going to hopefully open it up and put it out there and uh send it out and make people aware of the fact that it's there I'm trying to figure exactly how to do that but we're going to let people know that it's there and they have to follow it and I will say that um at the legal services conference in August all the principals and assistant principals were all trained

217to know this is coming already so they're at least aware of it at this point okay thank you that that helps I think the the posting versus people actually knowing it's there and how we yeah make sure that both of those pieces happen is is important so yeah thank you yeah thank you Chris um uh Ali and then Savion um I guess I'm wondering if there's anything that speaks to uh kind of Developmental appropriateness of these processes uh especially since we are you know we're talking about kids like applying this to to kids in situations where both parties impact it um are all parties impacted uh could be children ranging from the age of four to the age of of 18. so I I'm wondering um how we're modifying this or how how this speaks

218specifically to developmentally appropriate processes uh for for children of a range of Ages and abilities a great question uh the regulations do not the only difference the regulations make to uh K-12 is that you have to make sure you include the parent or Guardian and that I mean that's pretty much the end of it so uh that being said that sort of process that I mentioned has to go for for all of this for any any level age group developmentally appropriate uh that being said investigators will still need to be trained on who they're actually investigating not just trauma informed but also uh uh age obviously questions uh would be it need to be age appropriate on some level and they have to understand and then the investors have to train to understand that but

219that's I yeah I wish I had a better answer I wish I had a decent answer that's they really are this prescriptive and I apologize but you know Eric I think we can't ask for anything more than that than an honest and accurate answer and I think if they're you know I think it's important I think it's important for our community to have the greatest possible understanding of of kind of the federal guidelines of of Title IX under the current Administration however I think the longer we have the conversation the the more disheartening it is yeah this has been my summer I I understand I'm sorry yeah thank you and one thing we I forgot to mention in the very beginning I know Eric that you've been working on this since the summer and just

220really waiting uh to present to the to us when things were uh firm um so we didn't have to go back to have lots of different questions about uh incomplete things that already were not making sense in the summer and now it makes even less sense so I I really appreciate all the work that you've done this on on getting the language and trying to uh play out different scenarios and then your ability to also network with folks across the country to making sure that we are doing everything we can to um to support our students um savian and Chris carmuzi I guess my last question is what's our flexibility uh to go back to the old policy if we have a change in federal leadership uh that's a really good question uh so I

221don't have the best answer so it kind of depends the the issue is is that uh when this Administration put forward these new regulations they followed all the processes and procedures and what that means is they created the rules and regulate they created the rule and regulations they put it out for comment as a draft which all this takes time and then they have to take in all the comments part of the reason these regulations are 2 000 pages is the government's required to be responsive to all the comments they receive whether they actually change anything or not they still have to acknowledge they receive the comments and they received I think it was like 120 or 130 000 comments regarding this and then once it's done then they can finalize the rules so the

222current one we have has been in process for like two over two years so it's a law to change the law the if the administration changes and I will say that um uh Vice President Biden has acknowledged that he would change things he's already said that but to change it is not going to happen overnight that being said if he changes what I'm not sure is what happens if he changes the emphasis like if he tells people we don't have to investigate this or you know not to do that I'm stuck a little bit with that and when it depends on what he says because at the end of the day it's still the law so I'm not exactly sure how that would work out um and I would I belong to a Professional Organization

223that's big into this and like I said a work with other people across the country so I would work with them to see what exactly we could do with that but the regulation itself is probably going to be here for I'm going to guess at least two years before right if I if if the administration changes before they could actually get into effect of changing that I I'm just having a really proud moment about my colleagues around this this discussion Chris did you have another question yeah this um goes beyond the policy but um often when sexual harassment is happening it doesn't just affect the person who is being harassed it affects all the kids in the classroom if it's happening in a classroom and this policy very much approaches it as if it's just

224two people who are involved and not a community and we know that often it affects a community and negative ways and impacts the learning of a community of Learners in negative ways getting beyond the policy what can we do to ensure that despite the letter of the law we're able to continue to support a positive learning environment in mmsd particularly if someone is being sexually harassed and chooses not to move forward with a complaint because this law makes it very difficult and potentially puts people in a vulnerable position to do so so um as you I think all know the district works with the Rape Crisis Center they've been in some of our schools there's that kind of there's that work going on um and I'm happy to work with with anybody around with any

225group and I've met with student groups and schools around different issues that come up the one thing I will say that is in the regulations that I have not mentioned is uh they do have the term supportive measures and so supportive measures are they're still not what they used to be but they're they're designed to to support students so the way or anyone who brings forward a complaint so if someone brings forward a report even if they choose to not file a complaint they still will get support they can still aren't even under the regulations can get supportive measures the Restriction is what we used to do and actually what the guidance used to be from the office of Civil Rights was if someone came forward you would inconvenience the alleged bad actor and not

226the student or the person who's coming forward under these regulations you can still take steps to support that person even if they don't file a complaint the limitation is you can't really do anything against the alleged bad actor because that goes against due process because they haven't had an opportunity to respond to an allegation um but that's the other thing that is built into the regular that still exists in the regulations so we'll still be able to support the measures and the vast majority of times I work with schools schools I mean that's what schools do they work really hard to support the kids the students in the environment so they can keep all the kids in the environment so they can keep doing their best to stay present engine stay engaged within the learning

227environment and support them however other resources are available to them so that can still continue to happen thank you Chris and thank you excuse me thank you Eric um I don't see anybody else's hand it is for for voting in the next at the next meeting and I don't see us making the type of progress I we would like to see uh in this order uh Dr Jenkins any final world words on this item or anything else oh Gloria I just I just have a question I mean like what if the board doesn't pass this on on our board meeting it's a good question legally on compliance I mean like laughs I mean being disruptor and not following the rules what happens if we don't get we don't support this oh I I'll answer it

228if Sherry wants to anything she's she's welcome to it's federal law we still have to follow it and there's actually language in there that if we choose not to uh technically they could take away our funding so but uh what if the board um vote does not does not vote to support this you still follow it but what if the board does not support this I mean so it's going to come to us right at our regularly scheduled board meeting right oh no I mean you guys still follow procedure right yes we have yes I'm not sure if choosing not to file out how that would impact like the federal funding or anything like that but I'll defer to Sherry Gloria it's likely that they would say that the district is not in compliance um

229because the board has voted not to follow the law which is basically evidenced by the passing of the policy in the posting of the policy because technically if the board does not pass it we cannot post the policy as a policy of the board actually if I could add one thing to that that then goes towards some of the questions about transparency and informing people because then we're being a position of having to enforce this without having the the ability to point to a policy and let people know what's actually there for them to find it yeah I guess my my um concern about all this is that this is a federal mandated policy or law right that we have to follow so why does it come to the board then I mean why do

230we have to um vote on this I mean particularly if we don't support it because we have to change the our policy book right because yeah it's similar language within our policy to make this right so like I said the original regular I'm sorry like so the original regulations said that we have to have a title line coordinator position and policies and procedures we still are required to have the policies all right sorry yeah it this is a tough one for me but for me too it's been it's been really hard it'll be interesting to see what happens tomorrow don't take anything um I also feel like there is a there's a strong sentiment here that if Sherry you wake up at three in the morning thinking about uh ways or language that we can

231say or whatever in protest of this uh uh and or uh mechanisms that we can Empower specifically our young people around navigating this I I would fully support uh and I I'm sure I've I've seen some nods here from my colleagues as well it is it is extremely disrupting uh disturbing yes particularly if we have to vote on it right um in affirmative like majority to pass a policy that we don't support I mean generally we are able in positions to support you know vote Yes or no as elected officials on a policy change um and have that Authority but you know so this just makes it uh different for us okay one last thing I'd add is finding different ways for the board as a whole to like collectively Advocate the federal level that

232this is not in the best interest of our students so our staff our district yeah that's true for sure you could always issue a board statement stating we're required by federal law to pass this however we're doing it under duress oh I like that a lot Nikki thank you appreciate that wow everyone um it's glooming Dr Jenkins uh I just tell you it's sobering in a sense I just don't see any good of this and Eric I want to tell you first of all excellent job explaining this he and I had a conversation prior to this uh and it's just really we as a district have to continue to uphold what we say in terms of our core values and making sure that we're protecting all of our students making sure that they know that

233they belong in our district at all time and I think uh the public statement it does too come to the board for a vote uh I think what Nikki just said is something that you know we really need to consider because it's just a bad position to be in Period and uh when I think about all all of our students all of our staff this is not a very positive message uh I'll just be very Frank I'm I'm disturbed by it to be free very disturbed that we are being put in this kind of position thank you Dr Jenkins um okay we are also closing our evening tonight with another sat news um Dr John Odom who has been uh one of those strongest advocates for education in the Madison area um has passed away

234over the weekend uh Dr Odom was the first affirmative action uh uh uh officer for mmsd and he was also the first black principal at Cherokee Middle School uh and most you know he has his own he had his own consultant and he was one of the leaders for the Charles Hamilton uh Houston Institute uh through a lot of where a lot of his advocacy um uh was was being done um I um I think he would have really have appreciated the early part of our meeting today specifically talking about early literacy um I do want to quote something that he had uh whisper in my ears several times and I know it was also um a theme of uh of some of of his writings uh he published many many articles and he says

235let's Converse last and do more uh so with that I would like to um invite uh my colleagues to take a moment of silence the memory of the uh immense uh body of work that Dr Odom oh please I'm I'm been holding out tears um in memory of all the advocacy that Dr Odom um have done over the the decades uh for for this community uh relentlessly and in all the ways that he supported many of us that are in the board right now and many many many Educators across uh our district with that I would invite everyone for a moment of silence thank you everyone um I do plan to send um something to to his family um maybe we can if everyone is in agreement I would love to send in all of

236our behalf and maybe Gloria you and I can connect and that and you can send on our behalf since you're the president uh I'm sure his family would really appreciate um that gesture um this is also uh wow this is a really gloomy evening for many reasons because we are it's also the eve of what soon to be a reckoning in the continuing of the Reckoning of 2020 so I wish you all um a lot of love and a lot of compassion and I really hope that you have not just a plan to vote if you haven't voted uh but also a plan to uh find spaces for Rest bed and five spaces for ex to experience some love and connection with others um I know tomorrow is there will be a 24 hours of

237a lot of uneasiness and I'm pretty sure we'll leak throughout the rest of the week so with that I just wanted to close our meeting today and ask for for a motion for closing but I I'm appreciative that the this evening had some really positive things in it um something to look forward to um after um after the soon to be a lot of uh uncertainties uh for us in our district but all over the country can someone entertain a motion to uh uh all those in favor signify I say I um emotion carry thank you everyone and thank you Barb and thank you Dr Jenkins for a really important meeting tonight