Board of Education Instruction Work Group 5/4/20 - Open Session 6pm

001it's those that it's live on YouTube on your screen but it's not yet loaded up so I'll let you know Thank You barb okay we are live Lisa I would just say if your when if you're ready we don't have all staff here yet but I'll continue to let them in as we go along I believe we can start the meeting Thank You barb thank you everyone for your patience I like to call the meeting to order and before we get started I wanted to acknowledge that yesterday you started the teacher appreciation week and it's a very special week every year but I think this year in particular in particularly I think it's it's it's yeah I think I can share a much greater appreciation for for all our teachers and in that spirit I

002wrote a poem that I like to offer to all misty teachers but also educators everywhere dear teachers we moved from the classroom to zoom we moved to your lever room we struggled we made mistakes I was to love you you became learners so we can have instruction you reinvent an instruction so we can still be a school we asked you we asked of you a considerably amount of creative creativity and innovation during a time of world crisis we asked of you to reimagine education while witnessing unprecedented times we have asked you to be superhumans caring for your families and our families during a time of extreme uncertainty we have asked three of you to trade in person connections to virtual one one's hallway conversations to zoom checking's office passes to emails and in the midst

003of frozen camera slow connectivity and innovative virtual backgrounds you persisted doing the best that you can always you are showing up for our students for families and for our communities you are redesigning education and for all of that we thank you so I hope that was great thank you so much Ananda for that was beautiful thank you for letting me be the conduit of such important appreciation so moving on to our agenda next is I move to approve the minutes dated March 2nd don't get a second yep I got a second Gloria a second Mickey Lauria Anika your divisor you vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed minute meetings passed thank you 7-0 thank you Thank You barb next we are going to have some updates and a discussion around Idol

004one health education and sexual assaulted mandated reporting I know that all those topics are very important and for some for some of us very close to our personal and professional lives homes so I ask that as Lisa are going through the presentation that you just take notes of your questions or considerations if you have questions about a particular document that is linked to a particular slide that you remember which slide it was and the name of the document so we can easily know what document you're referencing to after those three presentations were gonna ours we'll have a moment to reflect on what could be something helpful for the team and then answer any questions and then we're gonna move into the back policies and some recommendations for adjustment in different parts of the of the

005reporting I'm gonna check in to see if there is are there any questions about how we're gonna proceed our meeting so hearing none Lisa thank you so much to you and your team for putting this together and then whenever you're ready just go for it okay can you all see my screen yep yes excellent okay thank you so we have a team of folks from the teaching and learning department here with us tonight we're going to be talking about the proactive and educational work that we're doing around title 9 and mandatory reporting and we're also going to be talking about how we respond and react when things happen and what kind of training and supports we provide for school staff then we will end up the presentation with a summary of our policy revisions and

006have a discussion and gain some feedback around that so tonight we have with us Eric testin our affirmative action officer title 9 investigator and contract compliance coordinator Ashley Riley is here our Fayyad health and wellness coordinator Gina a ghoulia is here our coordinator of cross systems and critical response Brynn Martina is here our coordinator of progressive discipline and jf Feld is here our executive director of student and staff supports and I will drive the presentation so folks can do the presentation to the board so I'll move the slides along great so this is Eric Heston and I'll be starting with tonight you can just move to the next couple slides Lisa if you like and I'll be starting with just an overview of title 9 which is the federal law and this is the part

007of the whole laws rather lengthy this is the part that is pulled out which says that on the basis of sex people can't be excluded from participation denied benefits of or subjected to any discrimination in educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance every public every public school district across the country falls under that category and as I'm speaking tonight you might hear me say male female under the current administration federal at the federal level sex is defined as binary male and female with the previous administration it was a broader definition which included gender identity but technically that's that's not how this current administration defines sex under title nine still tight aligned at the federal level is just restricted to that next slide please and so but that being said in the district that online

008complaints of the district apply whenever a person believes are treated differently and the action could be related to someone's gender and gender identity so well federal law doesn't apply to gender identity at the moment were still using the same process if it come up under for someone's gender or or gender identity and the requirement the enforcement part of the law his files under the district's none is captured through the district's non-discrimination policy next slide please so this is where title 9 would apply and against related to sex discrimination there's harassment discrimination harassment is quid pro quo is the idea that someone will go to a student and give you a better grades I'll do this I'll do that or a staff member I'll give you promotion or raise or the the classroom you want if

009you do this for me sexual assault violence I think is self-explanatory hostile environment is the concept that an environment becomes so severe so pervasive so the harassment so persistent that someone can no longer really process in the space retaliation occurs when somebody has filed a complaint made a complaint regarding just sex harassment or discrimination or participate like been a witness in and then someone's taking action against them because of that and then discrimination obviously acid sex gender gender identity program equity is the concept of a lot of times as far as internal liner out athletics but it also an athletics that's around the opportunity for males and females student and then it also goes towards different classes and not a specific class but like advanced learning or different opportunities in that way is where that

010would fall next slide please so again title nine address the sexual harassment discrimination by teachers other employees students third parties coming to our spaces we have a responsibility as a district they take prompt effective action once we know about once we know about it next slide please so it applies when we have control over the alleged bad actor whether it's a student staff etc and the circumstances school trip school property anything like that when both of those two things happen that's when it specifically applies although what's come up often in my time being here this is my sixth year in the district is where it says the bottom that slide downstream effects so what's come up before is you'll have two people that are friends it's summertime they're hanging out someone's houses someone's house and

011someone assaults the one student assaults the other student we have no control over that as far as disciplining the student but they come back to just school were made aware of it and sometimes what has happened is like both students will be in the same class and a seating chart sitting next to each other under those circumstances like I said we can't discipline the bad actor however we do have a responsibility to try and still support this student the other student and so that's when we might have responsibility to do something if it happens it falls over into the school so under federal law federal guidance our obligation is we'll become aware of a complaint we're supposed to investigate it we're supposed to stop debate the action from occurring prevent it from occurring again and

012then we're supposed to remedy it and with supports next slide one of the differences between title nine and other investigations and this slide in the very next slide are from federal guidance just idolize the federal law and everything we do with Thailand is wholly we're following the federal law so one of the differences is when we become whoever situations we have to sum we have to consider something called interim measures and that's measures to support the part the reporting party during the course of the investigation depending on what is determined in the course of the investigation these measures may stay in place they may change they may go away it kind of depends so these are factors that the federal government says to consider they're not all-inclusive but it's including what the reporting party asks

013for the age of students involve the specific allegations what are some things we could do in the same classroom same recess time and how it plays out is a very fact-specific and it could look like putting kids in the Euler and sharing your class maybe separating them within the class or different classes and we'll always has put in mind is we have to minimize the burden on the reporting party and should inconvenient aching steps if you go the next slide please and continue with the interim measures these are examples that are from federal guidance and such as providing services to the reporting party different seating schedules assignments one thing I'll say is and I have this on here again about minimizing the burden to the reporting party using their alleged perpetrator language is sometimes difficult

014language but the reason that is there is that is the language that's used across the board in federal guidance and so that's where that that's that's where this came from that's the language that's used there why do trainings and talks around it and support people we still talk about not lay there by letting that biases particular investigation now at the end of the investigation we assuming a violation is found this is our further responsibility under federal law ha we have to take steps regarding the impact to support the reporting party and take steps also for the responding party though title 9 really focuses on the reporting party and supporting that person so that anything that's happened someone they can continue to be successful in school going forward create a support plan and something else that's

015very important along with the interim measures under federal law is we have to do check-ins with a reporting party a target and the family to monitor the investigations and they want us to check ins at 30 days and 90 days and the idea of the check-in is since we've taken steps to help them still be successful in school we have to actually check back in as a district and make sure that's working this all happens for the most part at the school level and so when their support plan is put in place what I was recommended with schools generally do is they identify a trusted staff member at the school usually someone from student services principal assistant principal to work with that family and of course always document everything so we can follow up with

016it as necessary and then this is just general additional information around title 9 the federal government has created new title 9 regulations they created over a year ago they went through a comment period they have not been released yet I don't know what the final ones will look like it also civil rights are part of education my understanding from the last article I saw isn't gone to the White House and been approved there are some people based on the current with Colvin 19 asking that we that they they don't release them yet once they're released my understanding is rumor on the street is there's going to be a lot of requirements for K 12 and right and they'll be requirements that we have to have deadlines by the time we have to make those changes

017I don't know specifically what they are what the deadline is but that will impact it may impact some of what I just said to you in addition to that Mars doing ongoing training and support so for the for those who don't know I'm in the legal services department every year the legal services department does a conference in August generally in August for principals and assistant principals all of them across the district four of the last five I have done a specific training on title line so all the schools know their responsibilities I've also gone trainings for student services staff at different schools I do a lot of support around this and talk to staff who are doing investigations all the time to help support them help them figure that steps to do Guardian is saying

018that she'll be will be coming online at some point next year and what that is is a database to help us specifically track title nine complaints pad online liaisons the saying that is created year and a hat almost two years ago now and what that is is even if I'm the friendliest most approachable person in the world hypothetically I'm so far away separated at Doyle and so we want to know what's happening and we want students to have someone they can talk to so the idea of a silent liaison is a person has been identified to each middle school in high school most often student services sometimes assistant principals and they're getting special training fair training each of the last two years that I've done with rape crisis center Brynn has been part of that

019training to help bring people on and help them be a soft landing and support these students in the building and as it says besides this timeline Lee is on training I've also done other trainings throughout the years I've been in the district with the rape crisis center thank you thank you so much Eric all right now moving to health education as Lisa said Ashley Riley fight health and wellness and I'm going to talk about some preventive measures that have been put in place to talk about consent and sexual assault for health education the first step about a year ago we revised the four K through 12 human growth and development progression of learning this document identifies skills based instruction around topics relating to understanding bodies identity healthy relationships Ally behavior and personal safety so within

020personal safety concepts that are developmentally appropriate around boundaries unwanted or unsafe touches consent privacy power dynamics etc are in those learning outcomes and specifically as far as curriculum and instructional resources we have second step that is in grades K through three currently right now in the child protective unit and then rights respect rights respect responsibility as another curriculum that is used for other grade levels that have lessons around consent Penza next this last welcome back week for nineteen twenty we had secondary health education teachers come together for professional learning and the topic was around building consent culture in the classroom or we had G Saif Ali the executive director of G safe come in and present around consent culture and there we were able to provide educators with concrete examples of different activities that they

021could do with students to talk about consent and then during that professional learning session we also had time for teachers to connect around learning more about the title nine liaisons and the building's learning about just different rights that students have and staff have around title nine and then just making sure that we're providing instruction that students are aware of who their liaison is in their building and what and why they may reach out to that person this third step is increasing connections with community partners so currently we have guest speakers come into classrooms including rape crisis center G safe days and also the district collaborates with a sexual reproductive health alliance of Dane County to make sure that we have our students connected to community resources but then also making sure that our curriculum resources

022are up-to-date and aligned with the professionals in the community and lastly we wanted to make sure that we're increasing student voice in specifically high schools right now but trying to move towards middle schools a little bit more next year but trying to gain input from students on how and what their experiences are around human girls and development sexual education and specifically around consent and so so far the the groups that we've been working with a little bit more closely as memorial east lafalot gender equity associations and then also West High School's empower our and again just trying to understand kind of what kids are needing with their experience and how we can continue to better our curriculum Thanks okay so my name is Gina Julia I'll be talking about sexual assault mandated reporting both preventive

023and some responsive stuff that we're doing Ashley alluded to the Child Protection Unit which is part of our second step curriculum it is currently in grades K through three but next year we'll be adding grades four and five so we're excited that it'll be available for students grades K through five each grade received six lessons and the lessons really revolve around protective behaviors they are focused on identifying unsafe situations unwanted and unsafe touches and as you can see that little picture right there focus on how to recognize that something is unsafe how to refuse it or say words that mean no and then how to report it so that's the first step that a lot of our students get around recognizing safe in unsafe situations and it's really the foundation for teaching more about consent

024physical and sexual abuse establishing a certain assertiveness stuff like that and then as Ashley said with our healthcare our health curriculum continues on past with grade next something else that we have been working on this year in MSD is creating an overview of all the different ways that we are putting documentation together around prevention of response to sexual violence in schools this is now part of our district-wide safety plan and it is connected to the behavior education plan and it has an overview of all of our community partnerships our MOA s and everything that you're going to hear about today is all connected into that overview then we also have a more specific detailed guidance and that is something that we created specifically for school staff and even more specifically for administrators really to help

025them be grounded in decision making when they need to make a decision around a potential incident of sexual assault we have trained our prints assistant principals Student Services staff which consists of psychologists social workers counselors and nurses and then also our school security assistance in this detailed guidance and then the next yep next slide is a little bit more information on the detailed guidance the reason again even though this is a little bit more detailed this is still an overview of the guidance but the idea behind it like I said is really to help administrators know what to do first which is to make sure that we have to be appropriate people taking the critical first steps and also making sure that anybody in the school knows to involve an administrator right away when they

026have reason to believe there was a sexual assault on campus or that a sexual assault on campus has been reported go ahead next slide because we're talking about sexual assault it's very important that we also talked about mandated reporting so every staff at MMSD is a mandated reporter this is this means that if they suspect that there is abuse or neglect going on that they are required to make a report we do encourage staff to consult with student services or student support staff specifically social workers or administrators even though we always tell them that consultation cannot delay a report so we want people to connect and and talk about what might be going on for a student but we also want to make sure they know that they are required to to make those reports

027if they suspect child abuse or neglect the protocol that's linked in that first bullet there is a protocol that was done in collaboration with with CPS with child protection services the group of social workers and staff from across the county not just MMSD but other school districts as well got together to create that protocol the protocol is the first page is focused on just it's meant to be a support has phone numbers that are helpful for for staff to have both district level as well as ours like county wide numbers the next page is a oh sorry I meant on the protocol just trying to share a little more about the protocol so still on the last slide before this one the it has guidance around what to do as a staff member it has

028the board of education policy reminder reporting it also goes into types of maltreatment and then has a CPS follow up flowchart and so all those things really are important because they help this staff member that is making the report just think about like like what what needs to go into making a report what are the cultural implications are they making sure that they have the that they're just using the facts that they know what the definitions of maltreatment are and they're thinking critically about their own individual biases and again we really that's a big reason why we want if possible for people to connect with school social workers because they are trained in child protection laws and policies so we want to make sure that that if it's possible that that they are staying connected

029the last thing down there just one more link and that is around a decision-making tree around sexually or students that are in sexual contact not necessarily students that that there is sexual assault because again there is a difference when we're thinking about consent versus not consent so that's another decision-making tree that's really helpful for staff okay next slide when we are having to make a mandated reporter on sexual assault it's really important for people to know that if you're going to make a report just to CPS it will likely get screened to law enforcement CPS deals with caregiver abuse and assault and if the and yeah obviously if if the assault involves a caregiver then CPS and law enforcement will be working together but if it involves a non caregiver then it would get screened

030to law enforcement we always want to make sure that when students are making reports that we inform them of confidentiality and information sharing a phrase we use often is that we'll need to tell another trusted adult to keep you safe so it's really important that students know that even though we want to make sure that they that they're disclosing something very personal very serious but at the same time that we might need to be sharing it with someone else to make sure that that they are in fact safe there because of this you know there might be some situations where we make a decision of whether or not to involve CPS or law enforcement right away and again that's why it's so important for student services staff or social workers to be connected and in

031support around that we also have lots of community partners that I know our school social workers and other support staff work really closely with and they're you know they make up a lot of the support within our buildings like the rape crisis center days and safe harbor to ensure that the rights next steps are taken for students on specific situations we have a variety of different possibilities that can happen obviously nothing happens in a vacuum there's always a lot of different things that happen but when thinking about student disclosing something that's happened on campus there needs to be an assessment for immediate safety and then we need to contact the administrator as soon as possible if a student discloses something that was a past situation or it was off campus err kind of alluded to

032that earlier we again would assess immediate safety but then potentially offer support to listen if appropriate and then as soon as possible contacting that student support staff for next steps as always with key considerations it's important to note the staff member that's receiving the information making sure that we are involving family when it's appropriate making sure that that we are abiding by all confidentiality and information sharing and also taking into consideration cultural implications follow up also always will be setting up a plan for support and safety with both at school and then with community partners trusted adults or support staff and family outside of school and as we know the best support approach to sexual assault prevention is to create a school culture of consent respect so that's really important to teach kids about safe

033and healthy relationships as soon and as early as possible and our teen question is how can the board worked with the district leaders and school teams to help establish and maintain a school of culture a school culture of consent respect in all of our schools thank you thank you so much Tina and Ashleigh and thank you again Eric before before we engage into this question I am serious if we can it may be I'm gonna call in order that how you are presented how your body of work is showing up in a virtual world and Eric can you start talking about that like what is like what's happening what is the problem of practice how is it how is title 9 showing up virtually for you what is opportunities what it might be a problem

034that we gonna have to figure it out or what are some of the things are working really well or they have translated well so thank you for the question I would say that much of title 9 and how it's come up is people in the buildings in contact with each other so by obviously the touching and the things lack of that nature so by virtue of the virtual environment it's gone down quite a bit and and frankly I've heard much of anything since we've gone back to school and I know why it's so I didn't say this before I have a middle schooler and a high schooler in the district myself and I know for the most part they're do their activities that those 8th grade 11th grade they're not even really interacting with other

035students except their friends are the normally interact with so they're not even the way at least in their classes or teachers are teaching they're not engaging with other students ways that it might come up is if kids are using school property or emails just like that to somehow harass other kids so that could point to making kids aware of one that's a problem that there's there's places they can go to respond to that and that reminds me one of the things I did forget to mention is besides training for staff I've done a lot of work over the years with students I've presented to different high school classes around title 9 and I've presented to a number of groups around that and so maybe that kind of thing this so kids are aware that it

036could be in general it hasn't and it makes sense because again most of what we're talking about would be kids touching being in contact with the close physical contact each other thank you and you said that you have I got to Nicky when you said that you have a training that scheduled in August is the trainings to happen is it gonna happen virtually so that's a great question and I think that's still under process and what its gonna look like depending on where the world is in Wisconsin at that time but what works so that's a legal services conference where the legal services team presents are on different issues which would include title 9 what we've already talked about is recording those presentations so that if we are a live environment environment we still played

037them later and even if we're in person like if this wasn't happening we've already talked about the idea of recording it so it could be shown later but if it ends up being completely virtual then we've already a query start having those discussions about what it will look like so yes it will go forward regardless of where we're physically located at thank you thank you thank you can you talk a little bit about how we're supporting our teachers and our staff in regards to health ad in a virtual world yeah so the high school's curriculum looking at what's essential moving forward most of the high schools hadn't yet gotten to human growth and development sexual health and healthy relationships so we have bi-weekly meetings with the high school health teachers right now where we're kind

038of just collaborating and and kind of seeing what we're all doing as far as online instruction so high schools kind of other than reducing curriculum and load on students it's the the content as far as consent hasn't really changed I know that coming shortly should be a video or like a zoom recording from RCC so normally rape crisis center comes into a lot of our schools to present and I believe they are creating a presentation that we can still share out with students even though it you know it's different and then for middle school I would say that's where some questions were raised like where some of the content around human growth and development without a direct instructor there how that would look and there were some questions but I will say that when the

039teachers came together so middle school teachers also have been meeting bi-weekly and they have said that consent out of a lot of the topics with human growth and development that's one for sure they're focusing on so that was awesome to hear that that was kind of the plan going forward because that is that is something that we'll have to consider depending on how things move forward as far as human growth and development instruction in younger grade levels as well because we want to make sure that there's adults there present and able to answer questions and things like that when kids are learning Thank You Ashley and Gina thank you so much for your presentation in the world of sexual assault what is how does it how does it how is our showing up and virtually

040especially because we know that the going going in virtual instruction has limited the contact between social workers and students and what what is what are you seeing what is a foreseeable opportunity for us yeah I know it's a very good question we have seen lots of articles and and news reports and everything around just the concern around children being home more and what that's what that potentially looks like we also know that when when man data reports are made they're off they're the two top reporters are educators and doctors and we know that kids are not in school or regularly going to their doctors right now so so there is that that bit of concern so what we've done so far is made sure that I've been pretty closely connected to CPS making sure that

041we're both in alignment with how our reporting process is going to go you've decided it's it's very you know going to remain constant the same that that it has been we then made sure that principals and the principal bulletin got information around reporting requirements we we we give out a little mini presentation and the protocol every at the beginning of every year but we resent them out just as reminders around best practices for mandated reporting and then specifically for sexual assault we're you know we're like we said earlier especially for like younger grades the Child Protection Unit is a really great curriculum because it does talk about safe and unsafe touches wanted and unwanted touches and really starts to talk about how to how to recognize when something doesn't feel safe or doesn't where or

042isn't wanted and so I know a lot of our social workers are recording themselves and continuing to deliver some of those lessons or sending them to to their teacher teams so that we can have some of that but we're going to continue to push into other options around additional you know ways to to have some lessons available virtually ink you so much that for that Gina and I'm gonna open to Lisa before I open to to everyone Lisa is there anything else you like to add before we take questions from board members um thanks Anandi no I think that um this is a really thoughtful and collaborative team as I think you can see and I think they are certainly ready to answer and give feedback based on the other questions that the board members

043have at this time all right thank you Lisa so we're gonna go Mickey Chris and Allie Nikki you muted can you hear Bart Lisa can you take out the screen share so it's easier for me to see everyone's questions yeah yeah you got it thank you my question for Eric is on the Guardian system the database that you mentioned of keeping track when does that start it isn't mandated thank you for the question so it's something that we've recently purchased a few months ago and we were in the process of training we trained one that I trained with the high schools with it and the vendor trained one of the high schools and we were going to be rolling it out with that high school the second semester as what it does is it has

044steps how to do the investigation everything's included in there so we're gonna roll out what the one school first to make sure it works and meets their needs and helps us gather and Gaya tubes were meeting all the federal guidance and then the their plants so the plan was to do that right now this last couple of this during this time period and then roll it out next year to the high schools and then expand it beyond that so we're gonna go the slow thing to make sure we had it right or went to everybody we haven't discussed yet what that's gonna what the current circumstances if that's gonna change that yet or not so there'll be conversation to have a story yes I'm I'm just worried about for civil rights violations in case in

045certain situations especially on students with disabilities who may have certain safety risks so yeah so this so that this you know that that Kolia we're totally agree and we're very aware that and for those concerns inspections so the database is just like the people who have access to it will be the ones who are actually doing that like the related investigation and there's levels of permission so like I can see whatever would go in there but if I was a principal whose assistant principal in school who's doing the investigation I could only have access to the actual investigation I've been assigned to not to even any other investigations in the system itself it's good to know and then you stated there's detailed guidance for sexual assault for administrators or we set that as well give

046the guidance so so the guidance I was referring to was federal law they've got tons of yeah guidance out there for title 9 and my last question is on I know that some of the sectoral soap and complaints have been down on Zoom bombing though have we had any increase in harassment because of zoom bombing or people harassing other people who aren't supposed to be in the rooms that's a great question I'm not I'm not aware that happening either from schools or from other people at central office of become aware of it or principals or anybody so I've not heard of that happening yet thank you mm-hmm thank you Chris Peruzzi is the background noise too bad right now it's piano night in my house fine okay good I just had some questions and comments

047specifically around the section on sexual assault and mandated reporting and my first comment was about the second step curriculum um it's not like a really good curriculum but I do have a clarification on the portion of the curriculum that's focused on refusal skills um I think a good consent curriculum will of course encourage kids to be assertive but we have to get away from the notion that consent involves refusal and move kids to understanding that consent is the presence of a freely given yes not the absence of a No and so I just want to make sure that you know when I saw that little graphic that went with the second stuff curriculum and I saw the emphasis on like say no loud and clear even though I know that kind of fits with Wisconsin's

048legal definition of consent that's not a good definition of consent I hope we're also teaching kids the notion the idea that consent is a freely given yes and silence doesn't imply consent I don't know should I just keep going or with her response to that I want me to respond to that I'm sure yeah I agree with you I think that that the that refusal and consent are different things and the curriculum I have taught it myself as a elementary school social worker and it definitely is developmentally appropriate for that grade level to really see like the different things that are unsafe and too slowly to be able to you know use words that mean no and kind of it kind of moves moves chronologically towards towards more of the idea around consent but again

049yeah obviously we would want to be teaching consent along with recognizing refusing and reporting and I know that that is something that we're bringing into our health curriculum so so this is it's kind of a double dose the child protection unit is is is not just focused around sexual assault that's it's focused on all unsafe behaviors there's a really fun song that you can look up around the different safety rules but it is around safety and so there is a component that does involve safe and unsafe touches and wanted and unwanted touches but it is definitely around safety so the consent we're really definitely bringing in in our health curriculum thank you for that I appreciate it um the rest of my comments are about the document that was attached to the slide after the

050second step slide it was this slide that was titled what are we doing in MMSD and it's the document on preventing and responding to sexual violence in schools and a few comments on that one my first one was about training that staff are receiving I'm really glad you're getting like in depth training to staff who might be the main responders to an incident of sexual assault or sexual violence however I think it's also important that every staff person in our schools get some level of training in consent and what that means and how to teach it if someone's been sexually assaulted or is experiencing other kinds of sexual violence they're gonna go to whoever in the school feel safest to them and for that reason even though the response of that person might be to

051get the student to someone who can really provide them the services they need they need to have some initial training and what consent is and also how to talk to somebody who is the survivor of sexual violence and how to do that in a sensitive way that you know affirms that you believe that the survivor and all of that and important information so I would highly recommend that if we're gonna create a culture of consent all our staff get consent training and all our staff are trained and how to respond to student who might come forward when it comes to an prevention um I think in addition to ensuring that all of our staff are trained and I really love that we're also working with student groups I think we also have to ensure that

052our buildings are safe and by that I mean making sure that areas other than you know places where you really don't want a security camera are covered by security cameras you know in particular stairwells any place where sexual assault might be able to happen we need to make sure you know there are cameras in place I think we need to make sure that we're saving security footage so that if somebody comes forward you know awhile after an assault takes place which is pretty normal and it's hard to report a sexual assault and it could be a delay we haven't like the waste security footage and I think the work that we're doing in our high schools right now to ensure that students are going to class and not wandering in the hallways during class time

053is a good step forward to helping ensure that we have safe buildings and finally um I think we need to lose I could use more clarification about the BEP and specifically how the BEP is addressing verbal assault and particularly at a time when as you pointed out the sexual assault or harassment you know particularly harassment could be happening on MMSD owned email or MST zoom account and is verbal my understanding the bps there's really nothing in there that directly addresses verbal sexual assault so I'm kind of wondering what part of the IEP that would fall under and how were educating kids about verbal sexual assault so that it doesn't happen and finally I'm just wondering if we can see the detailed response guidance for sexual violence that you're providing to staff Thanks Oh Gina and

054Lisa yeah so I know Bryn's about to talk about some of the behavior education plan and stuff I know we Brinn heads created a whole document around the behavior education plan in virtual learning I don't know if that weren't I don't think she's nicely gonna touch on that but I do know that is available as far as the detailed guidance we I think that's a question for her Lisa and J we were at this point it's a it's a guidance for administrators so I'm I would be open to what they think there thank you um Lisa Gina Alisa or J yeah thank you Lisa I actually J where is that detailed guidance housed hey everyone that detailed guidance is just something that we hold in in Google Drive that we would have shared with principals

055during our through the principal bulletin it's not a public-facing document that it's detailed procedural guidance on how we'd like them to respond and believe it also includes phone numbers of district staff that they should report to you and specific procedure there and so are there parts of the document that can be shared internally to us yeah Lisa and I can for sure discuss that we'll review it and then figure out what level of that we could release thank you thank you for your questions Christ and then I have Aly and sagen and Gloria yeah so first I want to thank you all so much for your work it's really important work I also want to point out that MMSD had trans inclusionary policy and gender expansive inclusionary policy long before the Obama administration so we've

056been committed to supporting students outside of the binary for a really long time or the second School District in the state that passed it trans inclusionary policy and I think that that is an important thing to keep in mind when we talk about title 9 the other is that school districts have tried across Wisconsin to infringe upon the rights of young people who identify as trans several young people have sued their school district ash Whittaker won a really important case at the Seventh Circuit that said basically he had the right to use the facilities that aligned with his gender identity so I think there is there is legal precedent for for supporting all of our students and and allowing for all of our students to navigate their bodies in dignity I have a few questions

057but I want to speak to your question first so the question how does the board work with you all to do this work every time we have this conversation it becomes more apparent to me that the board needs to do training around the language of consent and around what's developmentally appropriate we talking about consent I agree with Chris refusal is a complicated thing to do you cannot have consent with the absence of refusal if you do not have the right to refuse or the skills to refuse you can't have consent simultaneously we can't just teach consent as if young people are going to be assaulted we also have to teach consent as if young people may be perpetrators and so as important as it is to be able to say no it's also very important

058to be able to listen when somebody says no the other thing about that is is that developmentally you don't want students to think that if they didn't say no that its consent or that if they did want to play the game that that is consent because you can't give consent as a child consent is developmentally appropriate and so driving home the idea that certain touches you know inappropriate for a child is a necessary conversation to have and an expensive conversation to have I think the board has to take responsibility for having a greater understanding of consent and you know being able to champion and support the really important work that you all are doing one of my first questions is for you Eric so you talked about I'm sorry actually my question is going to

059be about mandatory reporting the title mandatory reporting suggests it is not an option not to report what happens if if someone does not report if we're made aware that a member of the staff had information about an assault that took place and did not report it what happens if if we Jade did you want to take better do want me to yeah that's a great question I think typically if if a principal or a district staff member becomes aware that a staff member didn't do something that they should have done in policy we typically consult with legal services and then with Human Resources to determine what happened through investigation and then figure out if there is any sort of staff discipline that's needed it okay there was a little bit of emphasis on sexual assault

060that happens on campus and I am curious how that translates to field trips or off-campus events I would I would say that when it's a school-sponsored situation then it would be the same as if it was on campus so a field trip or a football game or anything like that I think that would all constitute the on campus and again Brin might have more being able to share more about that specifically around the buff implications but then as far as off-campus stuff it really does depend on how we often get in for me because students something's happened to them and they trust the staff in their buildings and they come to them and tell them that something happened you know maybe it was in the summer or at a party last weekend or something like

061that and in those cases even though it is also very important that we assess a safety immediately and that we take the next steps for supporting the student and and really want the student to be the one in the driver's seat here to like you know make sure that they're feeling okay with what they've just disclosed and what the next steps are but we don't necessarily have the same imminent need if if someone just comes to us and says I was just assaulted in the bathroom just five minutes ago you know so so on campus happening very recently has a little bit of different you know immediate need versus student comes and and discloses something that might have happened to them previously my next question is you all did not speak to the generation of

062nude imagery or pornographic imagery as something to report whether or not that imagery is being exchanged between a student and another student or a student an adult how how do we monitor that activity report that activity advise students or prepare students to engage with support if something like that becomes a problem I can try to take that one the Beppe does cover viewing pornographic material and I don't know if Britain wants to touch on that at all but certainly I think if a school team becomes aware that that's a pattern for a student they would provide necessary interventions working with that student and family in terms of you know and certainly in this day and age and with students use of social media it's also not inconceivable that a nude or inappropriate image of a

063student might be shared on social media that can could then absolutely be determined harassment in which case we would follow our same usual protocol in terms of reporting investigating and then protecting the victim in that case applying the Vepr we have jurisdiction but applying title 9 and all circumstances where we believe that discrimination has happened I have two more questions so my next question is we talked a lot about reporting or if a student comes forward to talk about sexual assault what do we do if a student shows signs of sexual assault in terms of behavior or injury or chronic discomfort how do we support staff in noticing that and taking action to address indicators of sexual assault that are not a child reporting yeah thank you for that question that's definitely something that that

064does happen as you know especially for our younger students that don't you know they don't necessarily have the language to discuss what might be happening to them it's really important that you have staff that are trained in in knowing some signs and symptoms a lot of times that is when social workers are our school psychologists bring in the nurse or ask for our student services team as a whole to to discuss what might be going on for a student it's always important for us to be you know involving family when we can so really trying to understand what might be going on for the student what might be you know how can we connect with not just the student and what let me go and for the student but what might be how it might

065be would be able to support the family as well not necessarily making any assumptions or anything but just really trying to get a good understanding of what's happening especially if the student just isn't able to verbally express why they're feeling or you know having or you know might be having some indicators that something else is going on thank you so much I really appreciate that answer my last question is how are we utilizing the ER OS safe-harbor as some as folks who special to specialize in working around sexual assault and particularly sexual assault of children and how frequently are we mandatory reporting yeah the other thing is yeah I guess that's where that's what I'll stop so how are we including euros how are we including safe harbor and how frequently are are we seeing

066people come forward and report abuse we I mean at the high school level if a student is comfortable and does want to talk with an SRO about what might have happened a lot of times that's a really great opportunity for a student who you know maybe doesn't want to disclose something to a police officer but has but knows the SRO in the building and can at least you know start with that connection so we use we utilize Aceros in in that way but again really wanting the the student who's coming forward to be the driver of that as far as safe harbor we definitely work very closely with safe harbor it we've even tried to increase the connection we have between safe harbor in our school social workers because a lot of times we if

067a if something happens in law enforcement since EPS is involved and we aren't involved as school staff we might not know that a safe harbor interview has happened or has been scheduled and so then a student comes back and says said their school social worker hey I just had this interview and so we have been working a lot with safe harbor and obviously abiding by confidentiality and those constraints but also informing each other of students that we might be sharing that are involved in this process one so that students aren't having to like share their story over and over again and to so that we're collaborating around best ways to support the student after the safe harbor interview thank you so much can you how many mandatory reports we received are receiving regularly I would

068have to get that data from CPS we we have a way that we documented but we don't have I haven't gotten the updated data so I can definitely look at our data and then I can ask CPS for theirs and we can look at both thank you I greatly appreciate that Thank You Ally I had the same question and it's ad and I'm coming to you and to you any car next I am wondering if we could get if the board can get a report on this year's numbers on the reporting Randi reporting and then some coding of what what was the reporting thematically the best our ability and similar to also title 9 reporting to I'm specifically curious because I think this year is going to be a really outlier er in regards to

069our numbers so I think would be an interesting piece of information for us to scrounge ourselves into in regards to a baseline stadion and then Anika thank you oh sorry so you didn't Gloria and Anika and then DQ yeah I feel fortunate and lucky to be able to serve alongside hake and another host of topics so I do have three questions number one [Music] say break him up a little bit do you mind just you and I just turn off your V you and then ask your questions and then when you're done with your video you put it back on just so we can hear your question entirely yeah so my first question number three is can you talk about the work we're doing specifically with young men and boys about the issue of consent

070there are a lot of images of a healthy or unhealthy masculinity that we have to be aware of and you know our problems with sexual assault are not for a lack of victims than building off for refusal but with perpetrators not about what we're doing to specifically teach boys about consent save you and I don't know that I'm the best position into this but I know that there's a boys group at La Follette that's doing quite a bit of work in this area and making sure that that that group of young men is providing some leadership to drive the school culture there I also know that there's been quite a bit of consultation with days working with coaches and then coaches working with their athletic teams making sure that they're also using our extracurriculars as

071places where we're reinforcing the types of culture and climate that we want to create but if others wanted to jump in I just aware of those two very clear examples of work that we're doing proactively with young men thank you I did have the opportunity to visit the group that will follow and I think that's great work to answer that or the reflection about what the board can do to work with I think that's something that I'm certainly interested in helping out with further my second question is particularly about the downstream effects are we providing any training of early signs for human trafficking I know that a lot of data and research especially out of Dane County shown that victims of human trafficking that starts oftentimes at the high school level there are any title

072nine implications Eric you could talk about I mean I can talk about human trafficking and MMSD but if you have specifics around title nine know you don't know go ahead okay we have a human trafficking committee that we've had going the last few years it's made up of nurses social workers legal services and safety and security and that group has met to talk about different ways that we can you know kind of there's three different ways to support students around human trafficking you know one is prevention early intervention like lots of teaching and helping kids understand what what it is because a lot of times it's very confusing what it is and then helping students that are in fact you know at-risk or who are being trafficked and then third would be to more on

073like a policy or a larger systems approach what kinds of bigger bigger systems level things are we doing to reduce the likelihood that that's going to be continuing to happen in in Wisconsin specifically in Dane County so a couple of things that we have done Ashley Riley and I have looked at a few curriculums that dpi has vetted and approved around human trafficking that could be available for health health classes at the high school and middle school level we also have a partnership with Dane County's neighborhood intervention program there is a person she I was gonna say social worker but she's not a social worker she's a youth worker she as part of an MOA that she works with our students that are either at risk of or are being trafficked she also is a

074great resource because she she's she's a school official but she doesn't have or she doesn't she's an employee by Dane County so there's an option for her to really support students without necessarily meeting for students to have any kind of break of confidentiality or have anybody kind of know their business so she's a she really comes from a really great like almost like a peer support style where she's really assessing safety making sure that the students that she's working with her okay and then making sure that they feel safe and that they're confident she's protected so it's a really great program thank you yeah especially in Dane County where the population is so transient at least folks at risk for being victims of human trafficking the issue is multi-jurisdictional so stepping up there and are

075we able to provide mental health other healthcare types of resources that we can offer for victims yeah Thank You Sadie and in Gloria and then Anika and then we're gonna move into the bath conversation I want to make sure oh and Chris Gomez Schmidt and then we're gonna move into the bath conversation Gloria you made it mine my question mine is just in response to the question of how the board can assist and I think you know it's our responsibility to ensure that policy matches practice and practice manages policy right it matches and and I think our role as a board is really looking at you know our policies around this and around the practice of investigations and the process and and all that and I just want to ensure that you know during incident

076reviews that I'm sure we're doing incident reviews after each situation that we are documenting trends and situations and ensure that our policies surrounding that match right and so it is not necessarily a if you have an answer to this question that's great but is evaluating our practice around how we respond to these incidents matching our policies and you know things are happening and changing quickly in this area right with technology with the way assaults happen we have to really be on top of this to ensure that we are you know overseeing our policies around this so if you have an answer I mean I think yeah the question Gloria J or Lisa um yeah Gloria thank you I agree it's a great question I think that's I would summarize that as our way of working

077that we're constantly trying to review especially complex situations making sure that we're doing a formal after-action review and then certainly when we notice any trends then we would either adjust our guidance or adjust you know any of our guidance if need be we would actually come back to the board and ask for a policy adjustment I think actually you know some of the the bet policy recommendations are making tonight are reflecting on a year's worth of action and where we feel like the policy doesn't quite fit the way that we believe we should be responding and so I think that's just maybe an example of that but certainly in this area it's complex work I'll also add we spent much of last spring working in a very interdisciplinary way I mean even tonight you're hearing

078Eric from legal services and Ashley from curriculum and instruction we certainly also worked at the communications department Human Resources and then even within even within our own department of student and staff support it's very complex there are a number of board policies that are in play with this work there are a number of community partners and agencies that are in play with this work and it's just certainly complex and we we want nothing more than to get it right and kind of reflecting on everything that that we've dealt with to make sure that we've learned everything we can from them I think is critical and just wanted to show that from my perspective we're prioritizing Network great thank you Thank You Jay Anika and I was wondering if you could speak to the ways in

079which the larger Sheen of body is informed about like what a mandated reporter is who they are as well as their title nine liaisons especially for like students just entering high school or MMSD - I hate the title I'm late liaison piece to that so we're still we're working through that and we did give information to those that were identified as tell nine liaisons that information they can put outside their office that they can make students aware there's a freshman day that I think a lot of the high schools at least do and they talk about it a little bit but it's a great place where we have to do some more work to make sure all students are aware of who their liaison is and one of the challenges even though normal circumstances is

080depending as when staff transfer or get different jobs in the district we have there might be someone who's won this year and then a new one the next year and a new one the following year so we're still working through that but those are some of the steps that we're taking and we're also aware of it so thank you for bringing that up thank you Eric and you could you have any more questions and Christina before I go to you I'm realizing that I may have cut either save Ian or J question regarding mental health supports I'll jump back in save you I'm really sorry I'm sure that I'm seeing everybody and I'm managing and I wrote it down so absolutely whether it's something that happened on campus or off campus taking care of the

081victim is most critical to us and certainly the layers of support that we'd wrap around that student include mental health resources as needed that could come directly from our own student support staff or could also come from consult with any of our community agencies including rape crisis center for example and all of that would be trauma-informed mental health support Thank You J this is what it is to be a mother and chairing the meeting and doggie and teenager okay Chris you know let's do it last question and then we'll move into that yeah this my question sort of build my main one builds off of what Gloria asked about how the the policies and practices fit together and trying to figure that out which I was looking at the the board policies and board Docs

082and it seems like there's like five to eight different board policies that cover some element of harassment inappropriate behavior or violence so you know there's a student feel of rights there's a safety policy there's a classroom code of conduct there's an anti-bullying policy we have a non-discrimination of students policy so it seems like there's a lot of pieces policy wise that affect I'll and Jay talked to that a little bit but I'm sort of wondering - in the presentation there is a lot of different words that sort of go between a plan a practice a procedure or protocol guidance that's offered to staff and I'm sort of wondering is there a way to easily show how those pieces sort of fit together and flow together and how we provide consistent either expectations or guidance to

083staff for example the preventing and responding to sexual violence in schools document says that they're all schools teams are provided with a detailed response guidance for a wide variety of incidents so I guess I'm curious if there's a flow chart or something that shows how all of these pieces sort of fit together can I jump in there it's a very good question and it's something that we've actually had on our mind pretty much all year since the beginning of the year and sherry and I know some other board members have been looking at I mean we really need to take a an overall look at our policies and what happens is we do them as they come up date-wise and then sort of after a while we haven't really gotten that good alignment so I

084think it's a very good point to bring up in something that that we are aware of and want to work on and sherry I don't know if you had anything you wanted to add to that or Gloria yeah yeah I mean I think we need we need as a board right I mean I don't want to get into a discussion now but I really have that as a board we have to figure out a way to review and update our policies and we are talking about different ways of doing that everybody here are very busy people and I know we just don't have we need some help and to review and bring those policies up to date and I think that's a conversation for another day but this is one of them right I mean

085we can't we can't afford to wait to look at a policy after the fact and I think we have to stay on top of these policies and then what's the role of the board great and I do think it's a larger discussions that would probably don't want to and them get it tonight yeah thank you Jane and then the reality is that like we needed like a dedicated like we can have like a full-time person just looking out our policies and then making recommendations and then and then Nikki and I sit in on a policy committee I think part of your question Chris you know was also only goes to how like those multiple darks talk to each other and then how staff interpret five different documents around the thing and then and then the

086implementation part of it which i think is important do you feel is there anything else that needs to be added from that implementation component no and I'll take that one Chris I think you're absolutely right that you know what we're trying to do in central office leadership is make sure that we are fully informed of board policies recommend edits to those policies if need be but also then translating that into effective guidance to make sure that our schools are implementing those certainly we can't expect all of our school staff to be fully aware of any you know subtle language changes to policy and so what we're trying to do is streamline that into an efficient could be a slide deck it could be flowchart could be guidance documents we want to make it as easy

087as possible for them to understand exactly how we want them to respond to certain situations and at all turns we also advise them to consult with central office so that those of us that are more aware of the detailed language of policy in the detailed language of our recommendations and and guidance documents we want to consult with them and that's our job the central office to support so trying to try to break things down to make it as simple as possible for our school teams to handle things the right way is what we're trying to achieve but you know it's complex and and I think we're doing a pretty decent job but but certainly having a conversation about streamlining district policy is something that I think would be would be helpful could I just if

088I could just add real quick all of us have presented here together tonight this is not the first time we've met we know there's a challenge a lot of different policies and the schools might reach out users we talk to each other all the time and so we're clear and how we go how we work with each other and who's supporting which policies so we we talk to each other with different things that come up and then we go back to the schools they're getting like one message you were to talk to there are specific questions working with the policies that we have mm-hmm yeah I just wanted to make clear that I think the the guidance and the protocols and what you're using is much more cohesive than our policies look and so that's

089that's where I'm trying to understand better where that guidance and those protocols lives so that I as a board member can understand what the schools are actually using if it is bits and pieces of policies where are the significant guidance documents that are that are guiding the the actual important work that's happening at the schools thank you Chris let's move thank you Eric and thank you so much to Ashley and Deana looking I was looking for Eugenia on my screen for their presentation and let's move into Babb because I know people are gonna have questions about that too and Bryn did a fantastic job and with the present make sure that we get to that and I know it's getting a little late and I want to make sure that our brains are as fresh

090as we can to have this conversation and just so you know I think what I'm gonna try to do is first facilitate the next part of is I'm just gonna call people on my screen so that reduces my having to be attentive to what people are saying and also making sure that I call everybody so everybody's gonna get a turn based on how you show out on my screen and Mickey you're gonna go first and so Brynn whenever you already just take it on thank you so much and I'm gonna I'm gonna let Jay do a super quick big intro and then I'll dive into the slides sounds great and Barbara at least I think it would be great if you could just pull those slides up but after after we just click through those

091couple slides then it would be great if you could also pull up the red line document of proposed changes so those of you who are on the board last year know that we had a very formal year-long process to completely revised the behavior education plan significantly changing the entire front half of the document shortening it making it more user-friendly and making some adjustments as well to the grid or the actual language of the behaviors and the response levels prior to that in this year it had been more of an annual process after reflecting hearing from stakeholders throughout the year and after kind of looking at trends where certain things seemed to be happening more frequently and noticing where the language doesn't quite match we would come to the board in April or May to then

092make a couple of subtle policy revisions specifically to the language and that response grid around the way that behaviors are described defined or the response levels and so bring-bring will talk you through those couple of change recommendations tonight great thanks um and also just wanting to set it up as this is a this is a narrow proposal that we have in front of you about specifically written changes to the policy so you know earlier in the year we had our president in on bap implementation in general to you all and had a great discussion and we look forward to you know further discussions on bap implementation i think we all probably agree that's where a lot of the most important work goes on and then we also want to make sure that the written policy

093is still up to date and current with what the board wants and what the board intended when you all passed the last version of it so our limited revisions are really just we really try to just focus on those things that where we felt like either the language in the policy just needed a little updating just to be current with what's going on so like vaping as an example of that and then there's a couple other changes to sort out so that policy is accurately reflecting and able to respond the situation that arrived in school so these and and also I just had to do super quick these hopefully everybody recognize this are the guiding principles of the BAP and we are always always always referring back to these discussing these with school teams looking

094at how is what we're doing in schools and as a district tying back to these guiding principles so I just want to remember that broader framework as we right now just focus in on a few written policy changes so just the background quickly the context as you all know there's been a significant running and put gathered over the years related to the bet there's a very long list of links there on the back web page which I do look back at regularly we all look back that there's a lot of great information there that's been gathered over time which includes input that informs what we do not only with guidance but also what we think about in terms of what written changes are needed so um and then as Jay mentioned the the really in-depth

095process last year I think yielded really great results a very user-friendly document by and large that's been it's it's been working well that that revision and has been clear to school and I think I'm really clear to students and families so we are just offering some tweets this year uh the tweaks that we're offering are based on input from throughout this school year as well as looking back maybe the last do you want going back to last night just for one quick second thank you so yeah we've gathered virtually I just wanted to mention it just in the last three weeks we've gathered a lot of input on these specific changes virtually from many many many school teams focusing in on those mobile response to you so schools who are the folks in schools who

096are regularly responding to behavior delivering those interventions reflecting on practice so this is really informed by by schools and we also got a lot of great information from schools that informs what we want to do with guidance going into next year the and a few revisions generally pertain to the secondary level so now we can go to the next slide thank you so the this is all that we're this is all that we're talking about here and I will ask you to pull up the specific revisions and I will I will literally just walk you all through them I think we might as well just jump into those perfect all right so hopefully this is helpful it sort of looks like more than it really is because we included everything in the alcohol drugs in

097tobacco section even the things we weren't changing just so you can see the whole section in context um but what we're proposing for your consideration is breaking out possession and use of electronic smoking device so that would be a vape or vaping device we there's an asterisk there because we are proposing also adding a definition for that term that definition is taken from the model model policy that defines what electronic smoking devices are and and what we heard from school teams first of all and what we feel very strongly a department students staff support this is still an issue that we want to address as a public health issue it also does fall under the behavior education plan and we want to make sure that it's progressing in a way that makes sense given that

098vaping has become so much more prevalent in schools across the country we regularly collaborate with within our department our assistant director of Health Services Sally Armando Ashley and I have regular meetings to talk about how are we addressing these issues collaboratively so the the most important thing here with vaping is to address it from a public health perspective and to make sure that we have really strong guidance for our schools in terms of how they intervene what we're we're posing for the progression with the vet with vaping in that is and I'm actually if we can scroll down to the proposed secondary that would probably be the most helpful this is by and large where this behavior comes up and in secondary a level three right is the first level where it could lead to

099an out-of-school suspension so what we're proposing with vaping is that possession of a vaping device stay where it is now which is at a level two it does not progress to a level three use of a vaping device at school this is the change is that it would now progress to a level three but we would add this behavior as one of the behaviors falling under alternatives to suspension where schools are required to develop a plan that they will offer anytime that behavior rises to a level three so ideally this will not lead to more out-of-school suspensions they will offer an alternative to suspension if the behavior is repeated and so that's that sort of why that Falls there I'm sure people have questions so baby I do we want to pause after each behavior

100I'll run through all of them and then we'll take questions yeah just because it's it's late and I want to make sure so people I've been already directing folks so like just write questions and then make sure that you putting a reference to where is the question so then we can go back to but yeah thank you for that but I just a little worried about our okay I'll try to I'll try to hustle and then we're you can see where marijuana is highlighted down below there that's just highlight because that's a change we took out possession of any marijuana paraphernalia because it was listed also in the behavior right above so it shouldn't be listed under two behaviors that's almost more of a like you know editing revision there it's not it won't change

101anything substantively it'll just make it clearer okay we can go down to the next category of behaviors and this one I'm going to go past really quickly in the proposed elementary you can just see there's a line added for fourth and fifth grade and this does get back to the question of how our I think Chris had asked about verbal sexual assault or how our verbal comments that might arise to you know a disturbing level in terms of the types of comments that are being made this is where inappropriate language is captured in the back and so there's verbal written nonverbal threats or written verbal put-downs and those progress for fourth and fifth grade those can progress to a level three they're in elementary that's a different response level so that's also important to understand

102and then it's a lower it doesn't necessarily pension but we had needed to add another line here under swearing cursing or making for fourth and fifth graders that could also progress to a level three just like the verbal written put so that's another fix and then the language around serious threats is really just a clarification the way it was phrased it made some people confused thinking that it had to be a threat made over social media but really the phrasing is just it's serious threat including those made over social media that impact the school environment so that's another sort of cleanup we can go to the next section and so this is the last of the behavior changes and this I want to make sure to go over so this is instead of having one

103behavior that's described as use of physical force against staff its breaking it out into two behaviors so right now we have one that is a level four or five that's use of force against staff we are proposing and actually let's go down to the secondary as well Oh it didn't make it oh yeah yeah sorry it's right there I'm sorry it's right there for post-secondary thank you so having two there one pick progresses from a level three to a four that's defined as incidental contact so the the sort of most standard example of that would be I'm in a fight with another student a staff person comes in to break it up as weird sort of dispersing I I'm still kind of maybe trying to get in one last hit at the other student and

104I end up making contact with the staff person um then we would have separately defined a physical attack against a staff member which would start directly in level five and I think the thing that's important to point out about differentiating these two is we we think it's more supportive of both students and of staff in terms of not lumping the wide range of behaviors that could fall under this into a level four or five but allowing it to be broken out and more accurately capture what's going on there and the difference between the types of force against that that can't occur at school now I'll just go over the last few little bullets and then I'll take questions so you can see alternatives to suspension that's something I've had the pleasure of presenting to you

105all about a couple times that's been a really promising practice that we've seen this year we've seen great uses of it we're over 200 total uses before we went to virtual learning so that's a really promising practice we are proposing expanding the use of alternative suspension so if the change to the vaping levels passes if you all vote to make that change then we would propose also including that behavior under the list of required alternate suspension we would also suggest adding a couple more under the list of behaviors where schools are encouraged to develop so specifically calling out making recordings of fights because we did have a number of schools choose to offer alternatives for fights and so they also want to be able or encouraged to offer alternatives for people recording fights and then

106the incidental contact of against staff that could be another behavior where schools might choose to what they wouldn't have to but they could choose to and they also wanted to put in any other behaviors we feel like we're at the point where schools are getting the the hang of this and they're liking the option of adopting elltrev suspension and we'd like to open that up so that they could choose to offer it for other behaviors um oh sorry the definition of distributing drugs is also a clean up one it had the word sharing in addition to selling or giving away and sharing was really confusing people in terms of how broad does that go we know students students cannot sell selling drugs at school or giving away drugs is still alive but the word sharing

107was was really tripping people up and making people worried about certain it's it was catching certain behaviors or if a student was was using a very small amount of a drug say marijuana at school with a friend that that was getting caught up in the same level as selling drugs at school okay I was hoping the verb can you stop the sharing screen so I can see everybody Nicki you're gonna go first just say thank you so much Ben for all the work and revising that for us and I really appreciate the the split-screen document that shows extremely well like what parts are you recommending to us I will start out by saying like I have this love and hate relationship with the bath because the bath came as a as a much-needed response to

108addressing zero-tolerance policies but every time I see it coming up for us he feels that we're trying to capture every single human behavior and you know we know that is technically impossible so I love to hear from from my colleagues where folks are at in regards to just overall revising of the BAP and recommendation so Nicky take it on and then Chris Carosi I'll go with my question can you hear me mm-hmm my question first and then answer yours and under on the on the fight on the videotaping fights on Wisconsin statute 968 point 31 States as a one-party state that in Wisconsin you can that you are legally allowed to record a conversation you are contributor or with prior consent what are one of the involved parties barring any criminal intentions which means that

109legally they're allowed to table otherwise it's a First Amendment violation actually you see the Alvarez case is the Seventh Circuit involves taping of a police officer you will find that again that also would violate the First Amendment rights of the student because they are allowed to tape therefore I am worried on the First Amendment issues because as much as I don't want sharing fights that I don't like fights in with and what a a First Amendment suit at last first serve in this they don't thanks Nikki and or J either of you are taking this yeah I can do that and yes art obviously our school discipline policy is crafted in compliance with the First Amendment and recognition of students very important First Amendment rights so that's why our jurisdiction statement in the bath applies

110to write any of the behaviors that were responding to under the bath they need to so that so in short the substantial disruption standard right so if the students bill Mena is a fight at school and it's substantially disrupting the school the reason I think why that was largely put in place is the student who records a fight then she chairs it on social media and it leads to more fights retaliation and spreads that disruption among the school environment so it's limited to those those situations and our jurisdictions even and the back covers that I'm just worried about a chilling effect on speech because courts have found that anything that has a chilling effect that prevents a behavior that speech related courts have found to overturn and I'm just honest I'm just worried on that

111situation based on our history and what we've had previously in this city were rights to Rivet City we're very politically active we're very socially active I think one optics wise and to legally I just I think we're had shaky ground but that's my opinion I'd love to hear what my other board members think as for what I think it would be EP honest to god I think the adventure for good um is the implementation we're still suspending over 61% of the disabled and over 51% of African Americans so clearly we still have some work we have to do or I'd love to work on that more than it would change it I want to change it to address those things first thank you so much Nicki and Chris Carosi and then Christina so thank you

112so much for bringing these changes to our attention I appreciate the focus on vaping as a public health issue I'm glad that were more explicitly looking at that and I was wondering what was the rationale for use of electronic smoking devices being a level four at the elementary level and a level three at the secondary level so that's my first question my second question is around on inappropriate language and the conversation we just had about sexual harassment essentially you know the two pieces of language in there that I think would probably address verbal sexual harassment are making obscene gestures and protected class references is protected class references enough to really capture the range of verbal sexual harassment that our students might experience particularly around gender identity so those are major questions being with you I'll

113take them in turn so yeah it's that actually to be honest threw me off to when I was looking at the changes with vaping but the thing that's important is that for responsible for an elementary does it never requires out-of-school suspension the language is up to three days about a school suspension for fourth and fifth graders so we would still be requiring for elementary schools that they use and all they always offer an alternate suspensions it would basically never lead to an out-of-school suspension but the level four is up to one day of in-school for any grade so it's it's almost equivalent to a level three or even with the younger grades a level two at the secondary level so that's why that progression it looks steeper but it's really not in terms of the

114consequences that come with it um oh gosh and then is the language enough to capture like sexual harassment the types of language that might occur I I will ask if if junior Eric have comments on that just because I was not here when that language was first put in place I'm sure there were discussions about it and you know it's always that balance between how much do you spell out in the written policy and how much do you do through guidance I think your point is is a great point and I made a note of it in terms of how are we offering really strong guidance to schools around how to implement those and then the range of language that might fall under that behavior Thank You brain I'll just jump in I'm not sure

115if Eric wants to add but this is a conversation that started last year and it came specifically from MTI where a number of staff members have reached out because they felt that they had been victims of students using protected class language and obviously this is a very good example where we would never capture the full range of of terms slang words that kids were using and so we felt like the cleaner policy language was to say protected class but I think the more important is that we help students understand the importance of using respectful language in a school environment and understanding what protected class language refers to so that they understand you know I think critically making sure that our students understand what protected class languages and so there's a teaching component there for sure

116Thank You Jay Chris are you done your question yeah Kristina and then CDN yeah I guess one of the the confusions that I've had going back to again policy or plan is you know the the behavior education plan is what it's called but is it really a policy that the board is following and it looks like a series of three policies for elementary middle school in high school and Brynn's naughty and so I'm just gonna say yes it's a policy okay gotcha I guess then um you know I appreciate the changes that were made because to me it does clarify the language and seems like it would clarify the guidance that we're giving around those things I guess my question goes maybe to the looking at the data again and when that's gonna be available

117I know that we were I think going to look at the third quarter data and that didn't happen I'm just wondering when we go to the whole year data and compare it to other years if we can make sure that we're comparing three quarters of data and we're not comparing a whole year because then just to make sure that we have a fair comparison and what we're looking at for numbers thank you that's the that's a great point yeah and these are all great points and great questions um J I don't know if you want to speak to the data piece but that that is a great point yeah Chris thank you for that we were not doing a third quarter report just because of obviously all the uncertainty and we when we ended third

118quarter we were not in session we hadn't yet started virtual learning now that we started virtual learning it's obviously just been kind of this heavy lift to get everything up and running we didn't feel that there would be a lot of validity to reporting on third quarter simply because the last couple of weeks who weren't in session and if we had done a third quarter report comparing even against the last couple years of third quarter we even have been off by a couple weeks and so what what I'll work with research accountability and data to do is we'll do a kind of a year-to-date based on our last day in session but I also feel that we should look at the full year of data in that we are still obviously documenting when things are

119happening during virtual learning is just a completely different kind of never seen before type of thing but we'll try to put together a report that captures accurate comparisons from year to year for up through when we were in session but also reporting out on things that have happened since then at virtual learning thank you thank you so much Jay and then it just made me think that like moving forward when we are looking at this year data or a three year data like how we're gonna take it out this time in history in order for to so we can continue to look at data in a way that is consistent so next is Savion and Anika thank you so I really because this is a crisis of a coffee issue and there's a lot of

120research and evidence that shows that punitive punishment does not change behavior it does not get some more desired behavior and so when we're talking about teens you know using vaping and possibly being a digital vaping I am really suspicious of the notion that the threat is tension in school or out of school will encourage more healthy behavior so what are we doing for for education of thinking as a public health crisis and you know how are we educating our students that you know vaping is not a healthy habit that you might develop I agree with you and I think I think that's a great point it's always hard to figure out how to make sort of progression in the back you know appropriately match like the behaviors around it right at this point if vaping

121does move to where it's proposed it sort of hits this middle ground between tobacco and marijuana the way that they progress and and that's obviously that's something that's come up you know you don't always know what is in a vaping device it can be THC or it can be can be nicotine but the important point that you made which is how are we addressing it I there are others who are not here who can speak to that better but I collaborate with Sally's herbal garnish our assistant director of health services and her work with the nurses we've really gotten really well coordinated too in terms of just the guidance that we're giving school teams so that nurses feel really empowered and supported in in focusing on that health response right and making sure if a

122student is reported that they're under the influence of at school that the nurse can support them and check in if they're okay and get them home if they need to get home or support them at school if they can stay at school and then the principals or administrators who have to apply the bet that they that they're applying it fairly and that they're really focusing on that intervention piece so if you are using an in-school suspension are using an hour of time to have the student engage with an online module or with a school nurse about the public health you know about the health effects like I think we can always do more and I think there's also a lot of great work that you know Sally and the nurses have been doing and really

123in my role it's it's pointing everybody back to that work and Armando also um as assistant director of integrated health looking if if a student is appropriate for something like s pert or one of our like motivational interviewing based interventions where we can use that moment where a student has been caught using a vaping device at school to focus everybody on getting that student connected to a meaningful intervention yeah because you know fourteen or fifteen year old has developed a dependency on nicotine or marijuana I don't think it's in that person's best health interests to give them a one-day suspension and say oh that's been solved yeah you know I'm thinking of you know broader school-wide campaigns that I went through you know there was the stop saying gay is enough with the campaign that

124change behavior stop the and those education strategies that we can use to encourage healthier behavior and then my last question is what are some of the challenges we have to scaling or expanding some of the alternatives to discipline um you know I think it's part of it is just people getting used to it and so I think that you know we we've made huge steps forward this year in terms of it's something people know what you're talking about generally when you refer to it you know this is the first year we actually put out this district-wide so now we have a lot of examples I think that can be really powerful right examples where this has really actually helped plug the student into an intervention or connect a student to you know some meaningful restorative

125process or another something that will address the underlying behavior so I think the biggest are you know really having a just the range of model interventions but that's work that we're really engaged in in our department especially and also cross departmental but I think the more like tangible models we can give people that they can just pick up and run with the more people can just get started you know using more alternatives to suspension restorative justice district-wide you know it's just a way of life thank you so much say again Anika and then oh yeah sorry your lowest um I don't think I have any questions or comments huh okay thank you Lauria yeah so I don't have any questions I think it's just the thought around the bat I think you know we have

126come a long way I'm glad we're making these changes I think that you know this this is where practice really matters and I think that we can sit here and develop these you know policies but I think practice in the involvement of our teachers and staff and our students around this is so important in getting voice in the process right and and you know and I agree with everything that's been said around restorative justice practices and so and I know we've moved in that direction right is getting feedback from from people who are most impacted by this these policies and where we're changing right it's it's almost a living document that we're like continually evaluating and changing and so it's not perfect but I think you know I think it does help our teachers and

127our staff the more they are informed and entrained around how to respond to these situations the better I think that you know this helps in alleviating the quick response to calling police for everything right it is a some guidance around how to deal with behavior that is outside of calling police or every incident or situation and so I think that's the important thing here and that's the direction I think that the host the the entire school district and our board wants to move towards thank you so much Gloria Ally Brinn I want to ask a question about a comment you made so the comment was you can't tell whether or not a babe is nicotine or another substance that same idea would be true for a water bottle right you can't tell if a water

128bottle has water or vodka in it right so is there a reason why not being able to tell what is contained whether or not it's an illegal substance or not is is particularly relevant to this conversation if you can't confirm whether it's illegal or not we can't act right oh yeah definitely not know I like I like that point and I we don't want to put schools and especially not nurses but really anyone in schools having to test anything right we don't we don't want to put schools in that position so no I think it's more just about the nature of how much nicotine or how much of any other substance can be delivered into someone's system through a vaping device versus say a cigarette okay I I appreciate that that clarification because I think

129they seem to really know what we're talking about well the other thing I want to say is I I grew up in Madison I went to East High School there was a smoker wall at East High School students who get in trouble for smoking or ingesting a variety of substance are disproportionately LGBTQ and african-american the behavior education plan report replaced the Student Code of Conduct the number one offense students were suspended for during the Student Code of Conduct was insubordination it was not a violent offense and it was not a offense related to drug use what is the number one offense students are disciplined for under the behavior education plan for in school or out of school both so I don't have in school off the top of my head I believe out of school

130is fighting but in Czech I can check on both of those I wouldn't greatly appreciate that yeah the other thing I am concerned about is when you talk about alternatives to suspension and being discretionary again when you get into the racial dynamics who is more likely to be provided an alternate option is something I think we should be keeping track of so if students are committing the same offense and getting a different punishment we need to know why and who and I I think that's something we need to talk about to to a great extent the last question I'm gonna ask both you and Jay to speak to Burren is what are the benefits of suspension academically behavior wise what is what is so great about suspension that we just got to keep doing it

131and we need we with it's it's a tool in our toolkit because it gets us where i'm unmuting i I could go like four more hours on that last question I'm gonna answer first one quickly which is absolutely and from my past work in youth justice we know when we're offering a diversion we have to make sure that it's offered in in the same way that are more punitive offenses are being offered to students so we've got this super close on that like almost week to week this year and the alternative suspension have actually been offered it's almost exactly the same but even slightly more to african-american students in proportion to their ratios of out-of-school suspension so we are seeing alternative suspension as having potential for reducing disproportionality and it is being offered yes that's

132such a huge deal and we're keeping a super close eye on it and then oh my gosh I see I mean I see it's 8 o'clock I love your question about suspension I totally I think we have to have that disguise why are we using it and when we are using it why yes but really would I bring Britain what I really want to know is what's good about it so tell me about the benefits of suspension tell me everything that's going great after we suspend kids well I think I think I mean that's a great question it's a question we should be asking we should have that discussion the times the only times when I've seen where it makes sense to me is where a school team is using it as a break as

133a one-day break 2 pause do prep work for restorative circles if we are using it at all I think we should be using in that way to get an intervention put in place to take a quick break to fix things put things back on the right track but I'm not gonna I I take your point and hear your question I would love to have that discussion and I will let Jay get a chance to answer it Jay can I get a little more specific with you are there academic benefits to suspensions do kids come back from suspension and do better in school does suspension result in improvement of attendance all the things that we kind of talked about wanting to see our kids be successful in how does suspension impact those things and form those

134things what results is our suspensions producing it's a great question I just wanted to point out some of the shifts so when I was a student at Memorial High School and then when I first became an assistant principal prior to the Beppe if I found a student with a cigarette in the parking lot we sent that student home for the day and so we've I think we're we have continued evidence that we're heading in the right direction in terms of the actual benefits of suspension I think if we look at the larger school community the bet means that we are now only sending students home for more significant more disruptive more dangerous behaviors in most cases we have a victim who's involved as well and I think I think the schools are at a point

135now where they're doing everything to mitigate the negative impacts of a student not being at school by balancing that out with using more thorough intervention when the student comes back from school I do have some examples of you know from my time being an administrator where a student confessed to me afterwards that until we got to that point where we actually had to call home and send the student home and the conversation we had when the student came back that they didn't actually get it or take it seriously we did see some change in behavior and I'm not saying that this is necessarily that we should be using this more and that's the only way we get to change behavior the other thing that schools are doing is doing almost everything they can to change

136behavior before we get to that point but I think in terms of why as a district you have a policy that does include out-of-school suspension in certain circumstances as a consequences recognizing the larger duty we're serving to create safe learning environments I greatly appreciate that explanation it would be really helpful to have data that showed whether or not students who are suspended are more likely to graduate whether or not suspension impacts students grades or feelings about their school just so we get kind of a broader perspective but I will say going back to the questions the conversation we were having earlier about sexual assaults that I I went to school with somebody who was molested their entire life and part of the way that they expressed that was through um getting into fights and then

137getting suspended where they would be trapped at home with the person who was molesting them and so I think really getting at the root cause of a behavior and really making sure that we're supporting students in ways that are sincerely a question needs to be the priority of the behavior education plan especially when we are disproportionately disciplining suspending referring students of color students with disabilities LGBTQ youth out of the classroom thank you so much Ellie I wanted to Oh Jay did you have something else that you were going to say no I I just wrap up by saying that you know following our conversation with you all in February taking a much closer look at out-of-school suspension talking with kids talking with families understanding exactly how that impacts things and also just recognizing that we

138now have a lot of experience as a district with virtual learning which also means that a day of out-of-school suspension does not need to be a day without learning it's just layers of complexity but it's it's exactly the conversation we need to have yeah thank you so much for speaking to that and also kind of putting this conversation on context of a timeline that like potentially this the sort of break that we're taking from being in a bricks and mortars can provide a much greater level of creativity and reimagining what does it look like for us to be doing you know school and supporting students as they're learning their mistakes I just wanted to share a couple of things that I think some of my colleagues highlighted in different words but for me is when

139I look at the map it gives sort of this really extensive and intense language around policy and accountability and disciplining and you know what we don't have is a is a grounding document about how we're going to build community we build community continue to stay in community and how that is the center of value of our ways in which we want to engage with our students and our families and so it's been looking at both documents right like we it's if there's a mismatch our values we're like wow attention of like how we discipline students we mean wait less attention to how we actually stay in a space of love and compassion for the learning of our students also highlighting how you know I think some people have mentioned the impact disproportionate impact of students

140of color the disproportionate impact on students with IPS extremely disturbing and I appreciate AJ mentioning like like we have come a long ways and I think that potentially have kind of catapult us for greater change we have I think six years or seven years of bat depending in where you think you know whatever the timeline or implementation is what is next right like what is okay we did that like what is the the evolution of how do we what is the evolution of a holding students accountable for their behavior in a way that they were responding to the community versus this your typical status quo no the the other thing I was wondering actually there was a question from out Lehane regards to the most most common in school suspension behavior and I thought I

141thought I heard in another meeting that was the again the language around defiance or disruption is that correct or do you need to get back to us we just want to confirm yeah I do believe that it was in the February presentation but we'll go back and look and share that with you yeah and I mean and just to add one more language to sort of how we can creatively move and I'm really grateful to to be sitting in a board where there's a threat assessment of really wanted to do things differently and wanted to provide a platform for staff to to propelled this change really what does it look like for us to have you know like nine hour and this break where no one is getting suspended what does it look like to

142you know when we get back to the building so translate that into moratoriums of suspensions you know what is that what does that even mean when we are really imagining what what that looks like so I want to just to get Lisa back for any final words and then we're just gonna if there's nobody a little more questions for us to close our meeting for tonight thanks Ananda and thanks to the team for presenting I do believe we will have an end of the year as Jay said report for the board as we have always done for you that will do point in time comparison date at a point in time so people will have that that they can take a look at by the end of the year as we've specified and just appreciate

143the conversation tonight feedback and a chance to collaborate about the work really supports all of our learners and schools as well so thank you Ananda thank you Lisa and there was one more point Nicky had brought up in regards to the recording and I just reread it like how it how it is that I have been someone that been my daughter has shared recording from from students at school I'm just really curious about for us to explore that a little bit more I think Nicky brought up the the sort of the the legal compliance issue but for me like when like recording is part of like this generation my daily court like we saw her like how immediately after school clothes like this surge in tick-tock we're like and so that now we're saying like

144don't record this thing when it's part of their it's like drinking water like it you drink water and you're doing a tick-tock there's gazillions of tick tocks happening every day in my house right and so you know how do we translate that into like a document our saying I vote don't record it it's gonna be a punishable offense with your record when it's it is in a DNA in the nature of this generation and me as an educator I'm thinking to like you know when there is a recording what is this saying about the student recording that is an important data for me and also you know the data that can be given to school around like what is happening to our students in a ways that we wouldn't otherwise not know by and so

145to me although I don't want to encourage students never would encourage anyone to record any act of violence like ever when those recordings a map like what they provide to us in regards to an opportunity for us to increase an intervention or address an issue or bring students closer to us so I hope that gives justice to what my colleague was trying to bring up and I hope that you all take that under advisement so it's been a long night thank you everyone for the participation the presentations and for the attention and I would like to move a motion to adjourn I'm meeting and a second and an EKU advisory vote aye all those in favor say aye i motion carry meaning adjourned thank you everyone have a good evening you