Special Board of Education Meeting and Instruction Work Group 2/3/20

001We will go ahead and get started okay we have a special Board of Education meeting an open session workshop we only have one item and that is to vote on the superintendent contract it is moved at the Board of Education approved entering into an employment agreement for the superintendent with Matthew Gutierrez from for the period of June 1st 2020 through May 31st 2022 as set forth in the document prepared for the special Board of Education meeting dated February 3rd 2020 discussion so I'm back in June when the Wisconsin Association of School Boards came and talked to us about how to hire a superintendent and one of the pieces of advice they gave us was to look at the contract early in the process and we didn't do that and then in hindsight which is always

00220/20 I'm sort of regretting that we didn't do that because once you make somebody an offer there's you have to move so fast is something I learned in this process and that's just part of how it works I would love to see this group start a file for a board of the future about things we learned from these process things that worked well and things we might do differently because hopefully we won't have to do it for a while again and the board of the future will not you know maybe some of us but won't be all of us and we want to be able to inside that institutional knowledge and one piece I would include in that file is like look at the contract early in the process so that you can move fast

003and be nimble once you make the offer okay thank you any other discussion I would just agree and amplified someday I learned that I would just agree and amplify that I think that we make it a lot easier future boards on how to do it great Ally I want to thank you for your leadership in this process Gloria I think it has been an incredible incredibly informative process and I and very excited to get to work with dr. Matthew Gutierrez and so I think that this is the most official way to welcome him to our community and so I just want to intend to say that thank you for all that you've done to make this as clear and as efficient as possible and welcome welcome to the team dr. Matthew Gutierrez okay thank you

004do you know since we're like in the spirit of celebration that's also a put on record that celebrating this huge milestone for us thank you Laura Kay and praise for you know all the research the cause and all the extra work on top of all the actual work that we all share you all had very you know specific additional things and things Savion for also being part of the day as well and Anika thank you so much for all the contributions around I think I've learned a lot from you also this last couple months so I'm excited too look at the communications plan around how we'll bring the person in and how introducing them to the community in a much more intentional way and what does it look like the integration with the team maybe

005I'll add in thanks to to two sets of people that haven't been named the first is just everyone here at the table right we have all contributed a lot to this process and a lot of time in personal heart and so thank you to everyone for taking it really seriously I think we have a really good outcome for for the city and then the second is our our community we started the process in July with an intention to be very transparent and involve the community in multiple stages as we went and and I think we did that the community developed a leadership profile that we took to heart and then we were looking for someone who was a team builder who had experience working with diverse populations who could drive academic achievement and that was

006really community led the day that we brought our candidates in to Madison and several snowy days and our city our participated our schools participated so thank you to the staff and students at write at Franklin now at West East LaFollette I'm probably missing a school but there were a number of schools that participated and it was really material to the to the end result their their participation and time and input and thoughts so thank you to all of those people I think we have found a leader for the future for Madison and you're all going to be the benefit of that so thank you and welcome to dr. matthew gutierrez welcome to better subducted with us i look forward to working with you Mantha thank you goes to barb anyone can manage to keep sever

007diverse schedule state who order pizza make sure that all of us are fed at FSA meeting at the same time never get spanked I think enough even though we but that publicly so I thought we probably should so thank you Bob for everything yeah I mean I think um you know I'm just very proud to be part of this team you guys just really pulled this off everybody has full-time jobs and so I'm you know I never anticipate on hours and really stayed on target right and we came in with this very intentional focused and everybody you know put in there just came in it just gave everything to this process the administration was amazing Mike hurting Deirdre from HR and her staff really just helped us along the way and we couldn't have done

008this as successfully as without your support and experience right I mean experience goes a long way so I'm very proud of this board for this work and looking forward to welcoming dr. Gutierrez to the city its own all right anything else all right Anika your advisory vote all my favor all right all right post all right motion passes and can I get a motion to adjourn secular groups all the favor sorry I can't all in favor all right anybody all right we are general now we can go home you we are going to be reviewing a very exciting topic the topic that everyone in our community wants to talk about all the time and before that let's get to public comments and we have one person that I'm finding you're all like to come in

009and you know you have three minutes and then so you're ready I'm gonna start counting and then it will beep once it's done yep all right my name is Laura Ashley I am an MST parent teacher professional developer and developmental psychologist and I'm here to share deep concern about the handling of the East High School deca club child pornography case because I work closely with the children for one of the families affected I'm here to share that I'm concerned that the response of the school leadership may not have been appropriate so basically I employ you to fully investigate whether the obligations under mandatory reporting were fulfilled as soon as you can as a board it is my understanding that from the timeline that the first child reported that they found a camera in their Minnesota

010hotel room until they arrived via bus back at East High School fifteen hours passed and school administrators were informed more than two hours before the bus arrived yet no police nor mental health professionals supported kids or debrief them when they arrive back at East at the meeting that took place when the kids did return okay there were parents students and both chaperones including the alleged perpetrator in the room I urge you to fully investigate the details and timelines of what happened to see whether the response was appropriate prioritize students safety inform parents appropriately and upheld mandatory reporting requirements if that was done appropriately then perhaps this is an opportunity to reassess how those policies achieve or don't achieve our goals and priorities as a community this is not my story I'm not sending myself in

011this narrative but I'm here to support the victims and ask that you look into it so that our children can be school and in school-based activities so thank you for your attention supporting my kin we are going to transition to our presentation and I would like to get Jay coming in know if you're bringing your team but before that I want to share with y'all I know the presentation was lengthy the way that we were working with the team in regards to the presentation is to try to anticipate some of our general questions make sure that you know we're not missing anything there's in no way to scrutinize every single details we're going to make intentional pauses in between the goals we're going to explain the goals frame the goals and then we do intentional

012files in regards to the questions of the specific goals more detail or granular questions I would like to ask for us to leave or questions that are not being covered by this presentation to leave them towards the end and then that way we can have a more robust robust conversation that may take us a little bit to the micro level if you are in agreement I think we should start so great please thank you there's one more thing so I know this board has been really interesting to have questions around issues around sexual assault we're covering that next month so if there are questions particular around that just know that we're just going to table that on to we have a more comprehensive presentation excellent all right no Jake I will take it away giving

013everyone thank you so much for having us where you gir to share with you an update on behavior education and MMS the for the 1920 school year I'm J Affeldt I oversee the Department of student and staff support and I'll introduced to our team to my left is Cynthia Moore she's a universal system strategist for us and further to our left is Sarah Cooney be she is at Glendale elementary and his part-time a member of our team as a universal systems coach to my right is Ben Martina and she is our coordinator progressive discipline and we'll each kind of take turns giving parts of the presentation tonight and as a non dimension will you try to get through we arranged the presentation based on the goals of the BAP and if we could kind of

014chunk the presentation of section by section we'll handle questions at the end of each goal so first I will just cover our outcomes for tonight we're hoping that all involve you leave with a better understanding of the BAP goals and our implementation towards meeting those goals to date we're hoping to provide an update on our progress and next steps with our four foundational practices that are outlined in the plan we will give you an overview of our suspension data year to date and by that we mean first semester data so we're sort of treating this as our mid-year formal update and we are also going to give you an overview of our alternatives to suspension process which is now formalized for the first time this year and showing some great promise and then lastly we'll

015open it up for open discussion and questions and kind of determine what our next steps will be as many of you have noted there's been quite a bit of conversation especially through the superintendent search around the behavior education plan and we just wanted to make sure that all are aware that we went through a fairly thorough review process last year that resulted in in the three brand-new versions of the plan an elementary version for the first time a middle school standalone version and a high school version that process last year included student focus groups staff and family focused groups and surveys and resulted in an entirely new plan that's been significantly streamlined more visuals and making sure that we start with what we see as the sort of foundational components that a school must have

016in place in order for the plan itself to work we wanted it to be more student staff and family friendly and we also wanted to sort of differentiate and the reason for the three different versions is so that we can be a little bit more detailed about what some of those interventions include there are more graphics and visuals including flowcharts that we believe makes it more user-friendly we also landed on four foundational practices that you'll hear quite a bit about tonight culturally responsive teaching restorative justice social emotional learning and positive behavior interventions and supports we believe that those four things are sort of unique and worthy of individual attention within the school community but they also overlap and intertwine to become the fabric that is a school community and we believe that our priorities need

017to be on developing those four components to create the the culture and climate at every building that we know is necessary for success the new versions also show levels of progression again creating more visual to show how certain categories of behavior progress across levels and also highlighting ways in which students families community members and staff can get more information as a result of of that revision process and all of the feedback we landed onto three new goals goal number one is focused on making sure that all stakeholders in MMSD feel safe and a sense of belonging measured by the annual Climate Survey goal number two is holding ourselves accountable for development of those foundational practices integrating them into school-wide systems and also including the effective use of interventions and getting better at documenting those interventions

018goal number three has been a consistent goal for the BAP since it was first developed and we're focused on reducing the disproportionality and use of exclusionary practices including suspensions for our black our african-american students and students with disabilities we'll be reviewing some of data with you tonight we believe that if we achieve goal number goals number one into that we will also achieve goal number three there have also been some questions recently about resources to implement the Batman you can see that resources over the course of the last five years funding year 2020 is actually this school year the 1920s school year that they have increased it's just slightly as the years have gone by and there's just a slight of an apparent slight decrease from year nineteen into year twenty or last year into

019this year the blue bar represents personnel and in purposes those are primarily PBIS coaches across all 52 schools and also our behavior education assistance is just those two positions that are counted as that personnel the non personnel budget then our other funds that we use to to fund our partnerships and work on those foundational practices sort of centered from here in central office this is maybe an extra layer of detail but many of you remember the work that we did with ers last school year their recommendation after talking with principals was looking for additional flexibility with the way that they use their resources and so we allowed PBIS coach allocation to be flexed into other student support positions and so though our allocations were the same some of our principals took us up on that

020and converted some of that allocation into other support positions so the overall use of resources stays level in terms of personnel but if we look at it just in terms of PBIS coaches in beas it appears that there's a slight decline that would have then represented a net incline and other support positions this next slide just shows FTE or actual total number of positions across the district and again there's an apparent decrease which is again just the shift in classification to a different position the big picture here is that we have steadily increased by a couple of positions each year over the last five years or so shifting then into goal number one in sort of the the first chunk of our presentation goal number one again is focused on stakeholder sense of safety and

021belonging measured by the annual Climate Survey this is a quote that is on the back of Cynthia's laptop that I looked at every time we're in a meeting and I started using it at some point during our revision process last year the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth this is a reminder for our principals and our school teams of the importance of building strong relationships and strong connections and recognizing that quite often what we see and described as inappropriate behavior our symptoms of a student that is not engaged supported and connected and therefore our focus on safety and belonging many of you have seen this data before this is Climate Survey data from our administration district-wide last spring this shows students sense of safety up

022on top 16 17 and then 17 18 and 18 19 below that on the bottom we have our sense of belonging 16 17 17 18 and 18 19 on the bottom administration had previously for the so for those first two dots this survey was administrated later in March last year we moved it up so that our schools could use the data before they closed out the school year to do some of their planning for the following year so there are some inconsistencies in terms of the timing of when this is given this is also just due to the nature of you know whatever is going on when a student staff member or family takes the survey there are lots of questions then about you know what might have been going on in the school community

023that might have artificially moved these numbers up or down but what we're seeing despite or taking out of account when the survey was given we're seeing decreases especially in our sense of belonging and especially at our high schools sense of safety remaining fairly constant across the years but noticing that dip and sense of belonging resulted in almost every one of our schools planning heading into summer and occur summer four strategies to work on sense of belonging in their schools as we began in the school year looking at disaggregated data the averages just tell us part of the story regarding the question I feel safe at my school sixty-six percent of our white students district-wide agreed with that statement while only 58 percent of our black or african-american students agreed and for the question I feel

024I belong at my school sixty-six percent of white students and only 56 percent of our black or african-american students this next slide is a slide that our Chiefs used at the January meeting with with all of you last Monday this is additional disaggregated data around sense of belonging and around sense of value and feeling a part of school community including some family data and what I wanted to do is highlight that we're building a bridge between that new school improvement process and all of all of our work around safety and belonging and recognizing that engagement in that planning process and in engaging an entire school community and what each school can do to improve these numbers we're seeing strong connections and in that regard we believe that the sip 2.0 process is going to be

025helpful and helping move the culture Naida that we're also focused on I'll end with a quote I'll end with a quote here from the University of Chicago and doing research across all the schools in Chicago and they landed on the principle as the single most influential factor in the culture of the school principals who coordinate the work of teachers and school staff around shared goals and improvements are able to really move the needle and it's it's not surprising but it's helpful for us than we when we sort of reconsider our focus on strong leadership within every school and strong support for those leaders to create those conditions that we know will result in students and staff that have the climate and culture that they need to be successful so we'll kind of reach the positive

026and the goal number no questions just want to thank you for the father di P aggregating the data and adding the spent data so I found that really important really helpful thank you thanks Nikki I'm so you mentioned that you bumped up the the the service a little bit last year so that the the school leaders can review the data and then make changes can you share but maybe some of the changes were that some of our staff have tried to implement some of the numbers yeah I think maybe Cynthia and Sarah can give you some additional layers when they talk about our foundational practice and some of the work that came out of that but when I was a principal Memorial we would not get our Climate Survey data until right around the time

027when staff were leaving for summer which then meant that we couldn't actually sit down and unpack it as a staff we couldn't sit with student focus groups to help us understand that we couldn't sit with families in the same way that we could if it were during the school year and that left me and other administrators then over the course of summer trying to figure out what do I do with this data and in many cases we used it to then launch the next school year just to sort of help others understand that data but without having the collaboration around planning what those shifts and changes might look like so by moving it up into February and March still trying to sort of maximize partition participant or participation rate in the survey that allows that

028data to come out while a school is still in the middle of their school improvement planning process and I think you'll see culture and climate data used pretty prominently in the SIPP 2.0 process process this spring each school community is a little different and each school community landed on a different approach for strategies that they would use to sort of help students sense of belonging at the heart of it and consistent would be relationships between teachers and students and the way that teachers are sort of very focused on starting the school year to build a really healthy culture I think I think that's pretty consistent across all of those actions but the climate survey data is driving it now in a different way yeah I am curious cuz I thought one of your part of

029your question was specific strategies mhm is there something that is emerging and I know I'm looking at you sir because I know you're like close to the school level but I'm wondering if either Cynthia or Sarah has like give us some examples of some of the things that you're leaning and or you're saying that the schools are already how they are looking at this data and viewers really I can speak to some what some of the schools are doing along belonging so a lot more around student surveys so it's first of all reflecting on where they've been so what's gone on over the course of the school year when they get the climate data is that matching what they have thought and if it's not where's the where the gaps are where's kind of the

030misalignment happening and then actually serving in students in schools to see creating their own like climate surveys within their schools to measure student belonging so I've seen some of those strategies it's based on previous year's measurements of belonging so then they will create their own student surveys to look at like what our students saying and going deeper into what belonging means because belonging can be very broad so they're gonna go really granular and define areas of belonging and seeing how students respond yeah I think I think Cynthia captured it perfectly we got really curious about why our african-american students were reporting such a low rate of belonging and we could have assembled mostly a group of white people around to kind of problem solve that and we decided not to do that we decided to

031go right to the children and the families and from that we gleaned a whole bunch of information that took us down a very different path than if we would have just jumped into intervention so we did paper surveys but we also did focus interviews and what we primarily found this is a full school year and a half now what we primarily found is when elementary when our elementary black students reported their highest sense of belonging was when they felt most connected to the academic content and so they're reporting out of belonging was exactly running parallel to the opportunity gap so the closer we were getting the mark about internalizing identity a scholar and scientist and reader the higher the rate of belonging and so we kind of shifted versus like friendship groups are all this

032other little stuff that we might have tried we let the students kind of lead us in our next step and then teams over the summer planned for their learning to increase that sense of belonging and academic connection for the following school year only yeah so I had a similar question in terms of how you all got to the question belonging so why do you feel like you belong at school right because I'm like I think there's a there's a variety of ways you can honestly read that question even understand that right am I supposed to be at school any kid is like yes versus do you feel like you're learning do you feel intelligent and capable at school and and I think what you just connected is is that feeling like you belong at school

033is connected to whether or not you feel like you're you're learning and that was all the layers of the sub questions we had to start asking because to a nine-year-old do I belong at school did not have any significant meaning that they could put words to and so we broke it down so what is the alternate variation of that question has many parts it has relational component and again MT is speaking specifically to like going the next level taking the power question and then creating another survey that like gets at what's really going on so there was relational components connection to teacher connection to peer there was academic components areas are times in day where they felt most connected to the academic learning and then there were parts asking about how their family feels about

034them coming which is like a that was harder for kids to answer we didn't get as good of feedback versus just going to the parents but we really focused on relationships academic connection and then the family component and I don't know if we're getting it right it was we just needed to ask more questions so were you done I just wanted to add one thing cuz I I do think that there is there's some room for for more investigation around that as I remember I was supporting Spring Harbor a few years ago and they had done what you just said and I remember like the question being like you know around safety or bullying and then they would not you not see anything but then when you asked Pacific's like do you get teased by

035your clothes what were you wearing right and then you get more specifics around like an almost like an example right of something much more tangible versus like a larger concept you get you'll be able to get and I remember at that time like kids were getting teased by what they were wearing or what their hair looked like right and so those were proxies to financial capital those were proxy for a race ethnicity right and so some really curious about that was gonna be my question the the world of belonging as far as a framework it's further than you cares about like who is informing who like as far as bodies of work nationally or informing and no the Haas Institute which is now the other and belonging Institute is is sort of in the forefront

036of that but Kia Avella who is inspiring all to like really learning about the framework and how to articulate their belonging as a as a conversation yeah I think some of them were like locals so looking at what Minnesota Public Schools are looking at Minneapolis Public Schools so a lot of what we've been looking at is what are other school districts doing as well so looking at some of the work being done in Oakland in Minneapolis Public Schools how they are supporting the social emotional wellness of their students so using them as models to then think about how do we do something here similar knowing that we have to also be very thoughtful about our demographics and how we differ and how in ways that we're the same so I think we look at a

037lot of those things are what school is doing I think research is great don't get me wrong but I also like to see it in practice yeah I think the other resource something I've been drawing on is is this what's going to come up in foundational practices the social and academic and emotional development but particularly out of Aspen Institute they're convening a lot of national leaders in this in this arena and they're they're just studying they don't have an agenda other than to understand it better so I think we've been exploring some people call it transformative cells transformational cells other people call it seed social and emotional academic development which we're going to talk about here so I think all of those components roundabout way get to belonging thank you Chris I appreciate your comments

038about interpreting safety as well as how we interpret kids interpret belonging and if you look at those you know the kids who disagree somewhat or strongly disagree with our climate survey question about safety it's one in six kids who aren't feeling safe in school and I think it's even slightly more for staff as like one in five point five staff aren't feeling safe in school and so I'm wondering how people are interpreting safety because safety can be physical safety but it can also be a social-emotional piece and what are we doing to try to delve into that more deeply because until we get that number close to zero I'm concerned yeah I think I'm just reminded of when we were sitting here kind of hashing out what we wanted this goal to say specifically and

039it started out as just belonging reason being is that we thought that if a student had a sense of belonging they would be less likely to feel that they're being bullied harassed that they don't have friends that they don't have strong relationships with peers strong relationships with staff etc the group decided to add in safety feeling that that's also foundational that if you know if we're not feeling safe we're not going to really have learning we're not gonna have belonging or anything else beyond that and so perhaps safety is even more fundamental to the way that we want people to feel in schools I think you're right I think there are many different layers to safety as well in you know in some cases it may be physical safety in other cases you know it

040may have more to do with if they're a little bit worried about being picked on or if they see that a friend is being picked on that that to them translates this isn't a safe place this is also a school year where we've had lots and lots of conversation about safety in schools as we've redone our safety response protocol and so we also know that there's been a lot more conversation among students about safety and what to do if something really scary happens and so that's another sort of layer that I think makes it more challenging for students to truly feel safe relaxed and ready to learn every day we're ready to move on ok so let's move on to goal number two and I'll pass it to Cynthia and Sarah so Cynthia I have

041the good fortune of co-facilitating this group of staff that are really focused on lifting foundational practices and so our lift is to take all these disparate parts and make a cohesive whole schools have been doing trying to do this independently and on their own and so we are supporting that effort by finding the through lines because all of the components that we're going to talk about are essential and so we are shifting up how we support schools to really make sure all of those foundational practices are healthy and strong and so that's what we're going to kind of kind of move into I think the first place we're gonna start on a clicker the first place we're gonna start is this shift in a coaching model so the central office resource from this part of

042our work we've taken our roles and really holding ourselves as foundational coaches so that no matter which schools were assigned to that we can go into that particular school we uphold in Glendale and Alice happen to be my schools so that they can really see me as that point person to be able to help organize connect with resource broker for resource so they're not trying to like navigate a really complex system it allows us to really focus and get some data and support around what they're saying about foundational practices and then reflect with them together so that we can plan for the next stage of work so it's a shift in how our support down at central office feels out in the buildings okay so this is the model that Jay was speaking to earlier

043which is really our four foundational practices which is in service to that social-emotional academic development that MCO was talking about a little a little bit earlier we're we understanding that piece that social-emotional learning does not happen in the absence of academic development so these two are really apparent on where they go hand-in-hand so how are we more thoughtful about making that connection between the social emotional wellness and academic development and so they know what we're gonna do is go into each of the areas of the foundational practices you'll notice on the slide that you'll see some numbers there on the self-assessment averages those are from our cultural climate visits so that's when the teams did their own self-assessment of where they thought they were around each foundational area so it's broken up by elementary and

044secondary and once again it wasn't necessarily about a saint okay this is how you score yourself but really the team reflecting together and giving an honest assessment of the areas that they felt they were doing really well and what they need to into as it relates to the foundational practices so looking at our restorative justice we've just given an overview of restorative justice in Dean and then have Jay speak a little bit to the YWCA partnership shift in the time bank chef so Jay I'll let you take that piece in I think many of you know that restorative justice is is work that were partnered with a couple of a couple of different community organizations that we've been pardoned with for quite some time and we're learning together how to improve and kind of advance

045and develop this work we've also sort of shared in conversation and as we were developing this and landed on restorative justice as a foundational practice that restorative justice has continued to evolve sort of as the years have gone by and if we had a conversation about restorative justice five years ago it would have been far more about repairing harm when something has gone wrong and what we now refer to as secondary justice and we recognize that we've have some unlearning to do in our schools to recognize that it's a set of practices but that they are used more ideally it proactive to build the type of community that you want to restore and in trying to find the best ways to do that and move the needle I'll start with our YWCA partnership in previous

046years we had grown to actually have YWCA staff two days a week in six different schools in addition to having someone that was part-time with our central office team and in in conversation last spring with our YWCA partners recognizing that a lot of the models show that you need somebody that is more dedicated to building those systems and a consistent basis within a school and then kind of popping in for a couple days a week maybe more likely to lend itself to some of those like snapshot can you work with this group because something happened and then we're gonna meet with this group of students and so we're now focusing specifically on three schools Cherokee Blackhawk in badger Rock where they now have staff there four days a week and so it's allowing us to

047test out that model of what is it like if you have someone in a building that is much more dedicated to that sort of daily development of those systems strengthening relationships building capacity and students capacity and staff that's something that we had seen in other school districts that are a little ahead of us in terms of use of restorative justice in schools and so we worked with the Y to then advanced partnership to allow us to have the same resource expenditure but to try that out in a different way to see if that model helps advance that in schools I'll also shift and talk about our time bank partnership and I think many of you know that our time bank partnership started over ten years ago where they were the first to really push into

048schools with on a diversion to help students who could otherwise be receiving a municipal municipal ticket in school to then avoid getting that citation through use of youth court over the last couple of years and I think for a number of reasons we've seen the number of municipal citations come down in schools and with that we've seen the number of youth court referrals come down in schools we believe that at least some of that is as we've begun to further develop our use of restorative justice systems in schools that schools are being both more proactive and have better capacity to be reactive so that we even we avoid altogether the conversation about a citation or a referral to youth court it's time bank then like YWCA worked with us last spring to talk through ways

049that we could be innovative in credit and trying out how we're using those resources and so time bank is now partnered almost exclusively at LaFollette they actually have Alexis one of their staff members who is a La Follette graduate and she is their nearly full time and primarily focused on community development community building and a lot of those sort of foundational primary justice components through that work she's developing capacity and teachers to build strong community within their classrooms she's also building capacity and training both students and staff and partnered with Damita and Lori at the time bank to then help LaFollette through that kind of singular focus develop those systems time bank is still present in the other three schools so that if there is consideration for a citation they can make that referral for

050instead of what we refer what we used to refer to as Youth Court more of a restorative process that's driven by time bank and so they're still working across all four schools but testing out that model most exclusively at LaFollette to see what that looks like in looking up to that third bullet just interesting trainings and resources really looking at that piece of the practices of restorative justice when you think about the circles and conversations but also the training that has to occur on their mindsets so really grounding ourselves in that model restorative justice and education that talks about creating a just and equitable learning environments and responding to her and building relationships and community so ongoing training is done around that because it is also about shifting mindsets as well as the practices itself

051and along with that is there's a collaborative visioning group so that's on community agencies coming together and we had circle together we talked about the vision for restorative justice and implementation and sustainability throughout the district so that's enabling work with our community partners and also - currently to the next slide there are ten restorative justice cohort schools that are looking at the understanding where the main sets sustainability of restorative practices within the school and within your schools as well as on the use of restorative circles and processes around respond to restorative critical incidents that occur in the district before we move out I'll just add we just want to acknowledge that I think there's so much more we can do as a district to develop restorative justice and transformative justice in our schools you know

052when we've looked at other districts they've made a bigger jump in terms of what those resources are what resources are needed and what specific structures in schools help move that along that also isn't something that if you just throw resources at it all of a sudden you have restorative justice systems in your schools the timing has to be right the mindset has to be right and so we think over the course of the next six months the next year is a real opportunity for the board for this district with dr. Gutierrez to look at what is it that we want to do as a district around use of restorative justice nice job on a last name he's watching it on his watching he's gonna make sure that we all got his last night so I

053finish a badger I should know that I did not mention the scaling current climate sorry about that um as a scale from 1 to 4 so that is the scaling on that so that's where schools are raining so hold it we hold it that this is the responsibility and the work of our department and every single department and every single educators about working in schools the specific things that we're focusing on are being good champions of our own MMSD race and equity focus we offer developmental designs which is a four-day professional learning course for teachers about creating classroom environments that support healthy learning schools are doing their own cohort where based on the district strategic plan how our training of administrators through partners the SIP 2.0 has been mentioned including how we'll get more stakeholder

054voice involved to be more culturally relevant and then a shift that when we talk about social emotional and academic development Cynthia mentioned this we're trying not to see social-emotional learning here and academic development here but this bridge with where the learning happens and so all of the instructional coach and all of the PBIS coach professional learning is taking place together so that they were modeling from the beginning that this work is blended work and that you're not going to go to a workshop and just focus on academics you're not going to go to a classroom and just see social-emotional learning you're gonna see both and we're going to learn and collaborate together so those are some of the shifts that you that we've been embarking on for culturally responsive teaching there's just capturing some of

055the wall artifacts and then some of the teachers there from the PD where the instructional coaches come together with PBIS coaches yeah just a little bit more detail about divine role designs I think some of you are aware that our model had been that we would offer trainings and then schools could each school could have a couple of their staff attend trainings in an equitable way based on how many of their staff have been trained what we were hearing back from schools is that you know staff would transition to another school or they might retire and that we were struggling to sort of keep up and we were never getting to a point where an entire school can now shift and use those practices in classrooms and so we made a decision heading into last

056summer that we would instead try to prioritize entire teams that would come as a group with a commitment to then use those practices in their classrooms or in a couple cases an entire school during welcome back in their first two PD days we would get all teachers in an entire school trained up and so in order to do that well in order to reduce our cost we need internal facilitators to do that and I think you'll see that on consent agenda that we're hoping to train to more facilitators so that we can continue to sort of accelerate getting school teams trained okay so looking at social emotional learning and justice cut out that's an area that we've been really looking closely at this year or an exam you you know where we've been with social

057motion really where we would like to go and so as we think about on social emotional reinvention this idea of transformation of cell which is really looking at social emotional learning from the winds of equity and as an asset based strategy rather than kind of looking at what skills do we need to impart in students because they don't have it how are we also looking at what students have and cultivating in a building upon that so really looking at on practices and strategies that support that with that said we do have a draft definition of self or MMSD that is an alignment with our strategic framework and lifts some of the work around black excellence and anti-racist organization and so I'm just gonna read that quickly if you'll just give me a moment that's the

058process where children the adults acquire and apply the skills necessary to build and maintain authentic relationships central student identities and youth voice social emotion really engages they use in strengthen their academic and social/emotional skills develop it to protonate the innate abilities to understand regulate emotions set goals and feel empathy feel and show empathy for others and critically examine the processes of inequity and promote social justice so with that said we're also to a piece that was not in the book that we're hoping there will be in future iterations is the piece of adult cell as well so looking at that piece of what do our our staff and teachers need to also think about that social emotional literacy and wellness just some of the areas of highlight and this slide here is just looking at

059some of the work done at Black Hawk middle school which has created a very comprehensive cares 2.0 curriculum that really leaves in aspects of service learning as well as social justice and then looking at that as a transferable model for other schools so right now we're looking at using that to pilot some work with Cherokee Heights Middle School on with Nuala field as a council or consultant and also lifting welcoming schools which is now in 16 of our schools so continued the work around welcoming schools and also integrating that into the work we do so that it is who we are and not necessarily one thing we do but this is the language that we use in our schools I mean I'm just looking at highlighting high school promising practices um so as an area

060that we continue to push into I'm in high school so seeing a lot of promising work coming out of East High School and their algebra of Department integrating cell within algebra um as well as their Abbott program so looking at how they're using social emotional learning and Abbott just once again some examples from East High School the Blackhawk cares curriculum and then the integrated so welcoming schools PBIS cope at you storm window for us around the longest this is a reminder to staff that we've been working hard on using a systems approach that uses healthy looks at data and triangulates data and ask good questions around data and that it's a tiered approach there's things that are good for all some and a few and that we're hitting the right mark on terms of where

061we're putting our resource the big highlight here is the collaboration between PBIS coaches and instructional coaches and what that looks like when when we put those two groups of good thinkers together to support learning in the classroom and that is the line does that mean I'm gonna ask Brenda kind of to cover our next slide and talking about the resources that we now have on our website yeah which is quick so this just shows this is a screenshot of what we have up now in terms of the updated behavior education plan resources which will revised updated in collaboration with school based staff that was work that was started last year and came out of all the workgroup work with the board and with the workgroup and then we had teams looking at the guidance that

062exists already and then updating that where needed and really trying to draw those connections to other departments and work streams so this is you know you can see the foundational practices there it just links back to that work and really trying to make sure that as we get in to the deeper sort of progressive discipline stuff we'll always linking people back to the foundational practices and what needs to be there to support positive behavior for the school as a whole so this will continue to develop but this is the sort of supplement to pause all right Thank You Gloria Nikki and Christian oh the climate is I'm sorry thinking collaborative visioning group so you have partners that are with you on this outside partners yes so there there are a number of leaders across central

063office from including outside of our department that have been more closely tied to our restorative justice work along with our colleagues from the YWCA and our colleagues from TimeBank we're coming together consistently now to sort of build the trust and the understanding of what's been done what's currently in place what are best practices and where do we go from here so that collectively and working together we can work with the board to make a recommendation for what our next steps are as a district we the reason why I asked is Jane and I met with freedom Inc today leadership on freedom Inc and they have a lot of experience have done a lot of research around restorative justice and just wondering if how we can bring them in to this conversation moving forward is sort

064of just sort of meeting with them and just showing them what what you've done so far and where we're heading I think it would be a really good partnership sounds good we can reject them and then also how are SRO is involved in any of this if anything if any in our high schools yeah that is a good question our our SROs are members of our school communities and they participate in a lot of that same learning and that same culture shift that's going on in schools they've also worked closely with you know five years ago what had been okay so when you have a citation if we do youth core this is the direction we go we're now they've worked with the school to then reduce the conversation at all around citation and more

065into a restorative process that the SRO will help transition into and in some cases even participating in and so I think they're integrated in it and that they are a part of developing that system a different way of both proactively and reactively addressing challenges yeah I'm sorry just one more I mean it's just really another question is just a common yeah you guys have come a long way since we met as an ad-hoc committee and since I got a new board so really commend you for the work that you've your work it you're doing I mean it really is I think our biggest thing is making it user-friendly making it understandable accessible and so I guess I do have a question have we I know what came up and our ad-hoc committee meetings was input

066from staff and teachers and students on this process and just wondering what the feedback is so far in this work from teachers particularly right yeah I think last year when we use the formal input process to survey staff and then have focus groups in each of the attendance areas our feedback from staff this year has not been as thorough and you know more it's more anecdotal when we're in schools or when we're doing work with a particular school and and not surprisingly a lot of the feedback has been that this just takes time it takes a lot of time even if everybody is willing and heading in that direction and you have the resources we're talking about changing school cultures and we're talking about developing and evolving mindsets and you know we we've heard in

067some cases some frustration that we're not able to go faster and in some cases that's I think recognize the importance of this work and kind of wanting it to move forward as quickly as we can I was thinking of a concrete example of some input we did the universal coaches like Cindy and myself and Lana each of us had a certain number of schools where we did a long interview or we're sitting down in both numerically assessing their foundational practices but also each team each school team went back into the beliefs of the Beth and went back into reading those pages of the foundational practices it gave us just a really good conversation starter to say yeah you know when I look at the Beth implementation of the whole we've really neglected maybe cells or

068PBIS or we need to return to RJ so unearthing people's beliefs and how long it's been since they visited them and their practices has been really powerful it's given us that numerical rating so that we can check again at the end of the year and beginning of next year but it's also given us the anecdotal information we need to be better supports for them okay thank you very leaky two questions one comment on the time day you said the youth citations are down is that because of restorative justice or is it because they're beat charge instead criminally instead of so instead of municipally from what I understand of the data is just the number of actual like resulting in citations and youth court referrals has come down pretty significantly especially over the last two years

069I think there's lots of contributing factors some of it I think is developing stronger RJ systems in schools to proactively or reactively address things without the need to consider a citation you know it could also just be collectively recognizing that a citation is not at all something that's going to help a student grow and that we just need to move away from it completely just really you talk about the YMCA partnership is it the reduction for three four three schools working better than the six school model why did you say YWCA so far I would say yes and so you know the three schools that now have more more of a full-time presence where schools that were already sort of on the path and what we're hearing from all three schools is that it's sort

070of accelerating that development you know whether or not we would if we started in from scratch in a school with somebody full-time if they would see the same potential or same growth is somebody that you know goes full-time in a school that had already had some support in developing those systems but to answer your question yes I would say that this is showing itself so far to be a better model and third one comment and this is an integral but it's a comment how exactly do you believe actually can we really be a PBIS school for still having seclusion room system just by comment you are you asking you are D so I also have a couple questions and a comment and my first question is about evaluating different systems that we're using in the

071schools specifically I'm wondering if we've asked kids about this social emotional learning curriculum and if it's working for them how well they're responding to it if they like it it seems age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate and on the same vein have we talked to our staff about how the expansion of developmental designs is going like how how's it working to train that user train the trainer's type a model in MMSD so that weird you were internally building our capacity that didn't go in and train everybody how's that working out I can speak to just starting out with the social emotional learning piece and that student voice in that and that's actually something that we worked over the summer with with Glendale elementary school getting feedback from students who were like in 4th and 5th grade I'm

072using the second step curriculum and then finding that they wanted to see things that really were more kind of about what they were seeing in their lives so we spent the summer the Glendale team revamping the social-emotional curriculum at the 4th and 5th grade level and just adding some of the things that students felt that were applicable to their lives so and I know sir you can speak a lot more in detail yeah so we did based on student feedback there would be year six for them of second stuff and they're kind of done with the videos they're kind of done with the lessons and so we built out after asking students in the spring we built out new units on identity digital media my role and my social my digital imprint like we just

073did a whole bunch of different units that both upon their five years of second step but were uniquely customized we use resources like teaching tolerance welcoming schools we used a whole bunch of resources and then we grounded it in the cells standards to make a a new fifth grade version of social-emotional learning that's had much better much better received by the fifth graders will modify it down and do a fourth grade hybrid of second stuff and in our own curriculum and fourth grade next year and regarding your DB question I think that's a work in progress so this is the first year where we've tried and we've gotten a handful of schools to sort of a significant cohort of teachers that are now trained in using the practice the immediate feedback from staff participating in

074the training is that it's fabulous in fact one just thinking of one that highlighted as perhaps the best PD I've ever had you know in my 15 years in education but as is the case with anything having a really dynamic training only works if you then are translating that into your daily practice working with others to sort of refine how that looks and actually and actively working to build it into what you do one of the slides that was tied to that was a group of administrators that came together for an administrator one day administrators that are working in schools that are really pushing developmental designs practices so that we can develop sort of those leadership moves that principals can use to then further support the use of those practices because so much of developmental

075designs there's there's quite a bit of it that can be used anytime any day but so much of it is about laying the sort of systems and structures that make your classroom work we did two of the days before school started days three and four then were in October and December and so I think it'll be interesting to see what we see in terms of movement in those schools that have all of those staff trained as we launch into next year with a full summer to plan what that should look like at the start of the year I've also heard that fourth and fifth graders are pretty much done with second step so I'm really glad you guys and I should say food that that glendale did also offered up for district-wide and so it

076wasn't just like stays at Glendale is something that we will scale out to other it's so cool my second question is hopefully a quick one and that is just um in the new coaching model how often are the system's coaches in their schools like are you and one of your given schools two to three times a week go three or four times a month or it really is debated in very elite it's that piece two of you know depending on what the schools up needs were identified in their culture and climate visit how much support they need from us it may be very intensive it may be kind of a light touch so we really like talk with our coaches talk with the administrator really clear about what they're working on and what level of

077support they will need so it really does vary from school to school so in our really high needs school how much time at you be spending there once a week okay great Oh Chris add a little bit more to that a lot of this is just based on recognizing the importance of building trust in not only in sort of understanding each other but also understanding the culture of a school spending time recognizing and seeing how things work how things work when everything is going well how things work when there are challenges we also because there are those then developed in existing relationships that we have a school that faces a critical incident then through for our our restorative process we'll typically use the person that already has a relationship that can sort of help has

078existing trusting relationships and can help make sure that we get the right supports in place at the school with the right people I agree for coaching models to work well the coach really does need to be part of the community so it sounds like you guys are working on that my third comment has some questions attached to it but um I don't know if we'll be able to answer them and that is an you alluded earlier to the fact that behavior education assistants are a really key part of staffing the BEP and there are also some other lowest paid positions in the district so you know one obvious question is are we actually paying them enough for what we're asking them to do I think many of us would say no but in addition to

079that are they receiving the training they need you know we talk a lot about training teachers and giving them PD that are beas and they may need very different training so are we giving them the training they need do they have a voice and helping to identify the training they need and are they are how are we involving them in a meaningful way in this assessment and reflection of our foundational practices their voices I think are probably some of the most important to have at the table so sober terms of Trinko so it was terms of training the beas they do have I believe it's every other month by bimonthly meetings where well there's some a set agenda of things that we need to kind of discuss with them but as well as being responsive

080to what they're seen in their schools and what their needs are so it's a piece of that professional learning as well as getting their voice and what's going on in their schools and then taking that back and then as a team we discuss what's going on and what the needs are so there is ongoing professional learning for beas as well as a lead assigned to check-in in on our beas and provide them with support and any coaching that they need around that yeah so semaj Ciccone a is one of our systems coaches and she works closely with our B ei group and so like others she's assigned to schools but then she is also sort of a lead and a connector for all of our beas she's a part of all those conversations and helping

081us develop our systems of foundational practices and so when they're in PD that's what she's working with the b ta is to understand advocating for them and i would agree you that I think compensation should be discussed and I think it would be really helpful you know as a follow-up piece to it's some kind of a summary or indication of the kinds of ideas or suggestions that you're hearing specifically from beas that could help us guide our thinking about it BEP implementation and changes as we move forward toggle into that conversation around both our the units that are have the most diverse staff but also the lowest paying staff is also our security staff and they are often have really deep relationships with our students - one I really like to see the word security

082take out for the reasons that we already discussed around what means to secure and safety and all that and what is actually we're trying to accomplish and I have mentioned - J - like that is an interest around both figuring out what what does a reclassification looks like for them and then definitely a pay increase for them and then how they actually can participate in the in a response team in a much more intentional way versus they get called when everything gets escalated or when you know when so many other things have failed so I went on top of that but I have I was fascinated by the the data around the correlation around the belonging and content I mean I think that's something that I knew somewhere but it was just really fascinated to

083hear that and I was I was reminded by my former we should have just a student of mine didja mainly they which a lot of people know who is at now as Stanford University and I got Isha to present with me at a conference and she was talking about a short of justice and she was talking about how in her history class from her geography class or the English class the content was static but when she would come to the road of justice class that that that was for the opportunity to actually have a critical analysis everything that was happening right and where is the place where she could actually express her discontent with injustice as inequities and actually do something in regards to justice in her immediate community and so I and Lisa and

084I have had some conversation about the implementation of actor you want to elevate curriculum for indigenous students african-american black students and Latin X students in Hmong students I am curious and I'll like to offer that as a suggestion to the schools there are especially that we have a really specific schools that do more intensive restorative justice like what does it look like to actually bring a very intense culturally responsive curriculum that actually elevates also their idea their racial and ethnic identity in their culture I didn't need in a much more meaningful way so okay I have one more question but I have to say I'm surprised by the presentation we've gotten up into this point in part because my introduction to the behavior education plan was pretty specific right there's a narrative around exclusionary practices

085being utilized to the greatest possible extent disproportionately for students of color particularly african-american students and so I would imagine that a half a decade later the the real emphasis would be any shift in that dynamic and I have been pretty surprised that that hasn't been a salient point of the conversation that we're having around who is being referred out of class who is being suspended who is being expelled who's being you know arrested at school that information seems to be missing that's coming next on our next book so I'm like I'm excited for us to get into that space because all of all of our talking about right now is it drawing the connection to to that and so I'm curious as to why and I'm also wondering I'm seeing that there are things that

086were kind of shifting or changing but I guess we're not naming parts that are working or aren't working the way we thought that they would and I do think again you know after five years we would identify what what parts of this approach are our areas of struggle or concern for us so one of the thinking and I share that with Jay and I love to kind of give when we after we do the goal three to hear more and unpack what you said early was that the the BAP and I agree with you it was sort of the series of like how can I discipline the students and then you go to the pages and trying to find the many different ways and how we could you know discipline students and it wasn't about

087nothing about very little about behavior and was more about you know the discipline and the love of disciplining and I think this is a staffs attempt to like actually let's just start with the vision but like what our values and elevating in that and then moving to the next part I have one other comment before which was Isham should go three which is something that the state is also looking at there were two things one is the investment on trainer trainer that's something that we have been like totally investing on and in regards to and then I'm also curious about like what does that look like for the wider BCA to do some some of the trainer trainers as well and then the other thing when you are when you are talking about which school

088and how to it's a great level how do you look at implementation right and one of the things we're doing is like looking at the high school the middle school and the feeder Elementary's right like so what what could be different so if you look at the school like what's happening at the school level what how do we look at that and then the feeder but a school and then the from theater high school in a in a vertical way and what what could be different that we can start testing in that way that that could actually take hold is one of the things that I you know I've heard a lot when I was doing this work and then also when you know visiting detentions and things like that is that there's a significant

089shift when the student goes from elementary to middle school and there is a another significant shift when they go from middle school to high school in regards to the adults in your lives and how they'd ago she ate that those relationships and that support I'm ready to move the last though oh sorry sorry yeah so thank you for highlighting this connection between social-emotional health to academic performance I think that's really important can you talk about the relationships that teachers and school psychologists should have where if they think that a student in their class is struggling with something in life that the teacher can help them get the health care or mental health care that they might need like I can I can start an end on the edges here so recognizing that primarily what we've

090been talking about here are sort of considered Tier one for every student every classroom we wanted to sort of be you know the foundation that the school is sitting on but shifting the way that we approach PBIS is about also sort of steadily reviewing data steadily recognizing where there are students that are in need of additional supports and then developing really strong tier 2 and tier 3 interventions and in the background and so an offshoot of this work would be like all of our ment our spectrum of mental health supports and recognizing that you know there are things that a teacher will manage within a classroom to their own relationship in connection with the student but when they require or when they request support that can be like today I'm requesting support but can also

091be I noticed that so-and-so seems to be struggling a little bit lately referring down to student support colleagues to do some additional assessment and make sure that those additional supports are are connected and so those supports are available and it's done within schools that they develop those systems to make sure that the right students are getting referred for support and followed up on ok you can turn your mic on ok um so my first question is I was curious regarding like the student input regarding school specific policies about the behavioral educational so like when we get like the information about the plan and like our secondary class or like whenever there is giving it to us like after that what methods are being used to engage student input about how to revise the plan and

092ensure that like it reflects our own experiences about that yeah great question this is where we rely on our principals to value and create structures for student voice within a building I think if if you and your peers feel like you don't really have a voice in that process you're not sure where that came from or you don't see that it's being applied universally equitably or the right way or you just don't understand why that's there I would start with your principal to ask what structures could be put in place so that students can have more of a say and provide more input I think that's critical and and I can tell you that our principals have been focused on ways of elevating student voice in this conversation and so I think if our student

093leaders could help drive that conversation would help ok so my second question was regarding like restorative justice you guys talked a lot about that but I was wondering like what the engagement was regarding like student training of restorative justice and how students in turn can use that training on to like reflected in their own that's another fascinating question back to what Anandi was suggesting is sort of like vertical development I know that our YWCA partnerships have been focused primarily at middle schools and year after year after year after year training up cohorts of students that have really really strong skills and use of RJ are now in our high schools and so bill Mauldin who's a part of our team is following those students and then making sure that there's a capacity that continues to

094build where we're leveraging the existing skills that students walk into the high school with to try to build off of what we've already built capacity let's not have every school start from scratch with let's just find some students to train and so in that regard we're we're looking at it as sort of continued development of those skills in terms of then sort of empowering students that have those skills of the students that have that mindset a number of our schools are then using that for for peer conferencing peer mediation and we also know that quite often it's more likely that students in conflict will listen to their peers than they will the adults in the room and recognizing that we're trying to create structures for that that you know in in a number of cases

095our students are called in to help lead some of those conversations based on the skills they've developed so firstly what type of training do they receive regarding or sort of justice in that well I think that's gonna vary by school and also to by the teachers that do take the training for our cohort schools there is a model to support staff development and professional learning modules but then there's also district-wide professional learning that is open to teachers to take it so in some cases it is really like a teacher taking the initiative to go to the training but then with our cohort school schools there is support for coaching around for classrooms that want to implement and use restorative practices in the class so anything I do have a question for you so there was

096a year that the why trained group of elementary school students which was sort of unheard actually national it was one of the very few pilots and we've only able to do that one year because of funding but it was extremely beautiful to see fourth and fifth graders going through and then porcelain they go to middle schools and there's being part of the program but I'm curious about what from from your perspective whether or not students are getting you know have received any training in middle school right because if they were not in that track that meant that they'd gone to high school and they haven't received any sort of exposure intention exposure what how would you think that could be looked different at the school um so I didn't go to a domestic middle school

097but in high school at Memorial we have a restorative justice class on that I took and in the class we didn't actually uh it was a convoluted class in the way that it was hot which kind of in my experience has caused me to I guess sort of question the training that teachers receive in regards to restorative justice because I haven't seen it best reflected in the conflicts in the classes that I've taken so far in arguments among students or in the way that they're resolved also in the way that that BP is taught to us and then the conflicts that like happen in the hallways I haven't seen the restorative justice practices reflected so I think that it'd be interesting to see how the next generation of like middle schoolers that have received these

098trainings and can like help resolve these conflicts on if staff aren't like being obligated to take she doesn't seem you are just taking notes it's um I have another question to you about your first question around student voice right which is a which is I mean part of having you on this table is to not it's not only a symbolic fact but it's actually that we need that we need to always center that and that's why I like showing my colleagues here when you were talking asking questions because we really needed to hear from you know from your perspective and even what are the questions are you asking right now how are you framing those questions some curious about how has that worked out for you as your ears in high school in regards to

099the behavior plan and what would you like to see shaping up um so I think that uh regarding the behavioral educational plan um I feel like in my own experience um at Memorial there's been the sort of an opportunity to improve upon like contact space policy one of the things when I was like listening to the plan earlier and then you talking to like my friends and then my class is about it was that we have a policy where there's like a sort of fine line between like in the definition of a fight like if you're on you have to you can't act that if one person is initiating the fight and then you respond that's your considered as like fighting back against that person and you both are like trouble I guess which I

100feel like embrace a lot of thoughts with students regarding just context of the policy and what was being taken into consideration so I feel that I'm ensuring that there are supports to implement the plan on the way it's written in this document in different schools would be more beneficial and then also ensuring that students are continuously given a voice throughout this process there's an area of opportunity to do that at Memorial and then around the district in general thank you so much what is very second all right ready to move will now shift to goal number three goal number three is our focus on reducing disproportionality in use of exclusionary practices and use of exclusionary practices altogether including primarily suspensions for african-american students and students with disabilities who over the past few years have shown

101the greatest disproportionality we'll start with suspension trends year-to-date for those different groups and then I'll focus in and show you the disproportionality that we continue to struggle with this first graph again this is for semester 1 over the last 5 years on the left and in blue it's in school suspension on the right is out-of-school suspension and so you can see that from 1819 to 1920 we have about 1/3 fewer in-school suspensions this year year-to-date and we have somewhere I think 7 to 8 percent increase in out-of-school suspension again this has crossed all grade levels all student demographics this is for a black and african-american students you see a parallel decrease in in-school suspension from last year to this year and a smaller increase for out-of-school suspension but still up slightly from last year year-to-date

102this next graph is for our students with disabilities again a parallel decrease in in-school suspension from last year to this year and a slight and small increase so we're just slightly above where we were compared to last year in terms of out-of-school suspension this fourth graphic shows the intersectionality these are our black or african-american students with disabilities and you can see that we again see a parallel decrease in in-school suspension and with this group we actually see a slight decrease in out-of-school suspension recognizing that's a demographic group that had previously shown the great disproportionality we're showing a slight decrease here it's easier for us to show disproportionality in the extreme gap that we have yet to close when I go through these next slides this slide shows disaggregation by race so on the left hand

103side this time we have out-of-school suspension the middle three columns are in-school suspension furthest to the left 17 18 then 18 19 and 19 20 on the right hand side across MMSD 18 percent of our students identify as black or african-american proportionality then would mean that only 18 percent of our out of school and in-school suspensions are tied to that student group three years ago we were at 62 percent of out-of-school suspensions were from black and african-american students this year year-to-date were at 57 percent reflecting a 5 percent decrease in that gap but leaving right around 40% percent difference in disproportionality with in-school suspension there is a 1% decrease over that same time period this shows disability status 50% of our students district-wide are identified as students with disabilities from 17 18 through 18 19

104and 19 20 we're showing a 5 percent decrease in disproportionality but still showing a 37 percent disproportionality and in-school suspension remaining relatively flat and so our data shows painfully slow progress in the right direction but it will take us years at this rate to close that gap if it's okay yeah so I'm gonna turn it over to Brandon I want to ask her to talk through our alternative to suspension sort of a promising practice that we think is starting to move the needle a bit and then when Breen is done with these slides then we can talk through rule number three so this this is a new education plan it's a suspension so this is the first full year that we've had an intentional limiter on offering students alternatives to suspension where it was clearly

105set out and those again through the revision process last year to create a process where students would be offered an alternative which we mentioned and if they opted into a specific intervention of going up they would not be suspended and would engage in that intervention yes the parameters around that are the plan that we put in place of true communicated before using so at the start of this full year the Oval response training we had school teams together they crafted their plans they decided what specific behaviors they were going to offer alternatives floor and this was something that again the board had put out in the policy saying for these two specific behaviors schools are required to offer an alternative to to create an alternative suspension plan and then for others and yet here this

106one's there so schools were required to develop alternate suspension plans for taunting mania encouraging fights so for the first time that behavior would reach a level 3 with into an out-of-school suspension they they are required to offer students some alternative staying with introduction then schools are also encouraged to develop plans for the student but a number of other behaviors here and the swearing at staff was particularly important because that was a behavior that was sort of parsed out in a different way than new education plans swearing at staff in particular starting out of level 3 which would be anomalous suspension so schools put together their plans at the start of the year and we've been supporting them and monitoring their progress with the use of these plans so one of the things I just wanted

107to include this slice this is one of the things we talked about a mobile response training again we're trying to link our responsive work our work that's responding to behaviors back to our foundational practices and for any of this to work we need to have those strong relationships and strong systems in a school and so this is the data on these alternate suspension of so far so we've had 153 documented uses of alternate suspension this year that's for 124 different students all the high schools and ten of the middle schools and the demographics I'm sorry and the big screen it doesn't show up very well against the blue but you can see if you compare it to the data of who is receiving out-of-school suspensions and also seeing the state version airy approach being used

108in a similar and even slightly higher percentage of students receiving alternate suspension are black or african-american the behaviors that we're seeing it used most for are the swearing at staff and and then second the excessive physical aggression but as I understand it from the process last year that was the hope it's that with the swearing at staff that there would be some intentional work done by schools ahead of time to say how are we going to work to address this behavior to repair relationships to offer students some alternative to being suspended out of school when that behavior occurs and we are seeing it being used in that way linking back to first full of the bet being safety a sense of belonging looking through some of that data there was a an example from middle

109school recently where there was some swearing and other inappropriate language being used towards the substitute teacher and we saw from the write up and from talking to the school that sorry that the sub the substitute teacher shared back that through the process that they engaged and the students in this case were willing to engage in a restorative and educational process following the behavior and that the substitute reported back that the substitute felt supported and comfortable through the process and thanked the administrator who was facilitating it and smogula prices actually made me feel part of the community and so through taking this opportunity to treat this behavior as an opportunity for learning and for riparian relations they were able to sort of increase a sense of belonging for for everybody involved so yeah this this sort

110of wraps up the conversation in terms of sharing the data and technical components and I think now we can take questions on on goal number three and then on our prompt for the group so kay and Nikki hi it's good to see you guys thank you it's really nice to hear some of the implementation work you've been able to do particularly around foundational practices I I wanted to talk a little bit about the goal tree and just some of the other data that isn't here I am consistently frustrated by our use of this metric as kind of what good looks like or measuring success for behavior in schools and I guess I'm curious if you see any trends in non suspension data so level 1 2 3 incidents I know it's very early based on

111some of the work we've done but just is there anything there that would lead you to believe some of your foundational work is starting to kind of take effect I guess those should be leading indicators of suspensions yeah for sure I think it didn't when when the bet was revised the board decided as a group that the rule number 3 should focus on suspensions and therefore that's the data that we're reporting out out yeah our team and school teams are constantly assessing documentation what behaviors are we're seeing more of using those as sort of tools to figure out where we need to intervene where we can do things differently to try to be even more proactive and so I would I would say that there's pretty healthy use of data to try to be more

112proactive and I think improving our consistency with the way that things are coded so that you know level ones and twos are typically used to then intervene work more consistently and more early on before they get to a level a level 2 3 conversation so if I remember we had this conversation around kind of using because level ones through and right at one to three represents something different right they represent more of the classroom experience and because of the numbers I mean there's there's tens of thousands of these incidents every year kind of depending on the data kind of hygiene that folks have and how they're interpreting what of what each of these things means it's trickier to use I were I mean and I saw it earlier in this presentation I guess we talked

113about using interventions as a measure to understand right we have a series of inputs and we have a series of outputs and you have a very broad series of implications because we can just through and the foundational practice we don't have great information about what's being used and therefore what may or may not be working and the only output we're measuring is suspensions which is actually a very small fraction of what is going on in our schools and so I'm just I'm trying to bring us back to the conversation of what about the kind of classroom experience and Towery understanding is that trending in a direction that we wanted to trend and how are we understanding what interventions are more or less successful in a world of limited resources sure that's work that we're right

114in the middle of like this year and trying to get that figured out we've categorized what what someone responding to a classroom or to something in the hallway what they might do that day if we consider a response meaning like so we worked at the student and we tried to you know do our best to sort of restore things once we shift into more of a Tier three we're gonna you know set up a series of follow-up meetings we're maybe going to use a specific and more formal intervention with one of our student support staff members that's how we're defining intervention and then we're developing now more robust systems for documenting those more formal interventions edgy climber allows us to document those more immediate responses and so as we're then gathering this data around the

115responses used the interventions used and then translating that back into the data that we were generating around behavior and then in on behaviors there's there's a lot to be learned and that's work they were right in the middle of I won't be here but the next time we see this I would I would love to see some measure around you know what's what's actually happening in schools before the suspension stage I just I think yeah I'll move on um two other questions or comments one is the the ad hoc that we did focus some on kind of specific areas that weren't working so friction points with particular policy components actually Anika there was quite a bit of discussion as part of that ad hoc on the very policy that you just raised are there other

116friction points that you guys are coming up against or that you are hearing back from staff students this this isn't working from a policy perspective yeah that's exactly sort of how we landed at that list of things then that we discussed in committee to make changes there are a couple of things that I you know and it's normally the situation that doesn't fall neatly into anything that's described there keep in mind that there's now been you know five years of those kinds of revisions to sort of adjust and clean up language and generally speaking it's much better than it has been I would say that there are still a couple of things that when we get to the policy discussion a little later this spring that we would like to propose us us or a

117red line version of like we think that this should actually be broken off this way instead and that the language here should be tweaked and then have that conversation so there are a couple of things that have popped up this year through practice not nearly to the scale or scope of things that we were dealing with last year in terms of her prose revision but there are a couple things that I think could be tweaked in policy for sure okay and then the last question may be similar to the first point I made I love that you started this with a connection with academics similarly would love to hear more about how are we interacting Lisa with other parts of your team and kind of accelerating doubling down whatever on curriculum redesign the the culturally

118responsive teaching component here really focused on still a little bit that swimming of behavior right so the the words we were using we're still kind of within this swim lane and I appreciate that it starts to get like boiling the ocean but to the degree that we can engage and accelerate the work you're doing with wholesale curriculum redesign that you know has math and English and reading as some of the words that were talking about I just think the that would be beneficial for all of us and you guys are laser focused on that I know you are but to the degree you need help from us to champion a pilot or you know really take a step forward there I think you it's it's work we'd love to hear it and ask for so

119two things one I mean alternatives to suspension I didn't see any a disability data is it because it's too small the list or was just not included I'm not sure but I would like to know and that we can provide it yeah and the other one was a practice that was going on for the past few years of which kids whose disabilities were severe enough that they uh if they were able to opt out as a BEP because they are don't plan we're still getting letters saying your child will be would be suspended if then if they did not have disabilities are we still sending them those letters go ahead do you do is it clear is it the question clear how do we have students that are can opt out of the BBS is

120there a thing oh there are students who special education students right as you know that who have part of their behavior support plan alternatives written in the IEP team sits down discusses for which behaviors a student might say receive an in-school in a particular intervention instead of an out-of-school for those they don't have to send a letter saying your students getting them in school instead of an out-of-school because for a while they were actually I would do some background because it's before lounder you were on the board but what they what they were doing was there was an actual letter that was being sent to parents that stated your child has committed this offense your child is not under the BEP if your child was under the BEP they would be a they would be

121up for expulsion or they would be up for suspension i and i want and it was scaring a lot of parents of kids with severe disabilities and I was wondering if that practice is still continuing yes so with the letters I think I know you're talking regarding exemptions from expulsion because there are certain behaviors that can reach a level five that then may be written into a student's behavior support plan that that student would be exempt from expulsion so I know that last year they were able to allow parents to opt out of that well we're we're trying to find that balance between meeting our legal requirements of providing notice to parents when certain things occur but then also respecting that that certain parents are saying I don't don't need or want to see that

122letter every time one of these behaviors occurs so there's a process now where parents can opt out of receiving those letters yeah thank you so I'll just start out right now with my um questions on goal three and then maybe I'll come back and do my questions on our bigger prompt later um I want to know what Kate had to say about we're looking at um if I dug into the numbers this began a data dashboard and it looks like 90% of our behavior incidents are level 1 and level 2 I mean that's the bulk of what's getting recorded and yet we do tend to focus on suspension and expulsion which is just a tiny piece of what's going on so I'm wondering if we could actually as we look at revising the you know

123look at opening up the BT PD for suggestions and how we evaluate it if we could broaden that the metrics that we're using to look at what's going on in particular I looked at the the incidence of disrupting instruction and the learning of others and I don't know if I was looking at data dashboard right maybe I wasn't but like a quarter of our incidents are disrupting learning overall does that sound about right when you're the person doing the input which I do frequently you are you have a year forced into a coding situation and so if some of them are really specific like he threw something and so that's not gonna fit many things and so disrupting the learning of others is probably the most general description we still have left in the code

124we used to have uncooperative there's something else we had three years ago refusing to cooperate so those are all gone so if you get in a situation where it was like a sustained disruption of learning over a course of many many many minutes then it's gonna get coated about that one and it also looks like black kids are six and a half times more likely to get coded that way than white kids so you know again that's a disproportionality a piece that's not suspension or expulsion but I think is important yeah yeah in terms of you know what's the quality of this data at the end of the day like is are we really disrupting learning or is it just becoming a catch-all and is a catch-all where there are clearly pretty severe racial disparities

125from our history to say let's not just like throw away that code because they'll find another code but they're I should talk about what's going on together and and see what we can come up with that actually is more fair and just and it seems like a code that could somehow be linked to what Kate was saying earlier changes in teaching changes and academics ensuring that kids are able to you know they're caught out there up to grade level up to where they're supposed to be so they're not if you're in class and you are behind you know I'd be more likely to act up because I don't understand what's going on I don't feel like I belong in the classroom and then we end up coding it this way and it doesn't seem fair

126in many ways so how we teach kids seems like you could have a direct effect on this disproportionality and just the use of this one code and so linking academics to reporting out on these metrics I agree would be really really helpful and also I just wonder how often like especially for level 1 and level 2 behaviors teachers just don't even bother to report them because it's too hard to sit on the computer and do it yeah Chris I'll take that one I think you know I mentioned before that it was just the way that the goals are written that we're focusing on specifically those exclusionary practices is the data that we're trying to improve the the ones and twos of the data that school teams are looking at to try to identify trends identify

127hotspots classrooms that are struggling etc but there's just much more inconsistency across documenting and in some cases you're right if a teacher feels like I'm dealing with stuff but this is you know part of my classroom and I'm making more mental data on what I'm doing in that at the end of the day we're not going to then enter all of that data because it's unlikely to rise beyond sometimes if that teacher will handle that's different than a school where maybe a classroom teachers are asked if everything's got to go in because that's the data that we're working off of where then it might it might seem to someone from outside the school that the school is really really struggling in this other school isn't and in it's just two different approaches to sort of

128documenting level one so to speak and so that's why I think we've we've even there's there's far more consistency with the way that in school suspension and out-of-school suspension is applied that I think makes it better data for us to truly analyze because we believe that that is consistently applied across schools the way we choose within a building is the data that they're mining on a daily basis to try to figure out where they can be more supportive it's just trickier for us to use that as a district level because of because there's just morning consistency that way following up on that I've been wondering if it would be useful and informative to correlate um behavior incident data with school climate data you know I'm kind of wondering if schools that have more calls would

129have lower school climate scores I might actually have higher school climate scores because those schools are acknowledging that kids have needs in there meaning their kids needs as opposed I'm just really curious it was are those two pieces of data not solid enough to actually give us good information from from my eye and looking specifically at that it doesn't correlate real well and we've got extremes in both cases but it does speak to the fact that we're really leaning into how do we look at qualitative data as well because that also tells a story in terms of how we triangulate our data so how are we also capturing the narratives in the story and anecdotal things as well as looking at the numbers because so much of our work is around belonging and relationships how

130we then build qualitative metrics to also support our work as well can you go back to the slide where you show disproportionality based on race so looking at this representation of suspension in in-school suspension I'm having a hard time understanding where we what we're calling progress particularly in terms of disproportionality if black students are over-represented times three at this current point and I have argued over and over again that we don't have any behavior of data we have discipline data we have responses to specific students behavior that result in discipline right so there are K to show up to class late they don't get sent to the office there are kids who consume any legal substance on school property and no one knows we all know that as a reality so what we have here

131is not about how students behave it's about how we behave it's who we respond to and how we respond to specific groups of students this says a lot to me about how we feel about who belongs at school and it says to me that we are less interested in black students being at school and so I'm wondering how we use information to examine and analyze our own behavior examine the tendencies of our educators I'm also wondering who generates this data right is every teacher and every classroom engaging with their students in in a way that breaks down like this what percentage of our teachers are interacting with or referring students for discipline and are we looking to the kids who are being suspended and asking them specifically if they feel like they belong at school

132the impression that they have around their success at school and whether or not that is a priority because I get the impression that somebody is more interested in disciplining me or correcting me or monitoring my behavior than teaching me I'm less interested in participating and if I get the impression that that person is also really interested in monitoring or policing the behavior of not only me but everybody who looks like me there's a breakdown in trust so I think there's there's a lot to be discussed in terms of this this particular slide and I think it's a somewhat disheartening representation of where we're at although I think it's an accurate representation of where we were at my major disagreement is how we're framing where we're at and who we're saying is responsible for where we're

133at right if we say this is about how black kids behave I'm like I think that's a problem if we say this is about how we interact with black and african-american students then I think we're having a more accurate conversation I think what's fascinating about this board and I'm really glad is that I think there are people on this board that actually have gotten through the system and so when I hear your story early I know you're evoking or telling my story well when you're hearing or when I'm hearing your point I'm I'm I feel the vocation of the stories that actually happens everyday in our schools are you gonna say something yeah I I spend almost all my waking hours thinking about this and so where I've land where I've landed are my start

134and the reason and I want to be contributing and working and teaming down here is for this conversation I think we do have schools where the data doesn't look like this and I think we need to be so much more curious about those schools in those classrooms and study what it is that students are feeling in those spaces in that relation or rapport between teacher my experiences we spent so much time admiring and being not pleased with the outcomes and I do know there's pockets of success and how can we lift that I say which then ties this back to our race and equity and our black excellence excellent work we have not talked about educational practices in this way in this candid manner in my time here so yeah I think it I think

135we can study some places where the data doesn't look like this um and how to have some conversations about how to get other places there so that's doctor Gloria's work that dr. Gloria ladson-billings work I like where and I think also continue to frame on adult practice right not just like where we're students feeling great but like where we're like the adult practice is so much more yes I'm sorry I have a sir one pretty specific question which is how are we using this information to examine ourselves right and so how are we using this information to talk about adult behavior so in my particular school we sit down with teacher teams and put this data of their classrooms in front of them and ask really hard questions of each other when it is incredibly

136disproportionate which puts the onus back on teacher and teacher practice right so if we see a teacher who is only asking their black students to leave class is only disciplining their their african-american students when do we intervene that specific data that you just references that occurs before this occurs because a teacher that's you know regularly struggling with students requesting support asking for help and we notice or know that it's the same group of students are the same the same particular group of students with any given teacher that's data that a response team and a behavior team would notice and then that's coaching work that someone on that team will do with that teacher which involves looking at that you know classroom response data to help help that teacher understand the reality of you know of

137what's going on in class everyday so it's it's it's data that schools are using to reflect with a focus on changing adult practice okay because you can look at this and say there's over-representation of african-american students you can also look at this and say there is under-representation of white students you're right we are really excited to discipline black students and seem far less compelled to discipline or suspenders white white students and I'm imagining that they're the range of behaviors we're talking about are present for the entire student body interrupting class doesn't seem to be something that would be uniquely racialized unless we consider things that are uniquely racialized to be different disruptive yeah so a lot of this going back to like the slide where the majority of students being diverted out of suspension was

138for cursing at teachers kind of reminds me you know could be you know we know that drug right usage between black and whites is roughly similar but black folks are disproportionately arrested for drug usage and so when I think about asking students so I feel like I belong to I feel like I'm safe maybe worth asking do I feel like I'm treated fairly because a student could observe hey I'm doing something but my and being disciplined for or being sent out of class or being you know as a black male being perceived as being insubordinate or disruptive on my peers doing the exact same thing but getting away with it see I think fairness comes into play here and whether students observe that they're being treated fairly or not curious about the swearing because it

139says swearing at teachers or at staff so this around stuff it's about that that's that was my that was my question and I think along the same ways some points that I'll be brought up around I know when one Chris we're doing something when I swear me something different money salience where everybody is responding a very different life right and I think I think about that I also I have concerns about the level 3 and level 4 around around that I also um we did not have we didn't touch that in there so I wanted to touch around increase of less Mac students on the data to has just been like a upward mobility and you know this district has has talked about black students in absence of lesson X students and I wanted to

140make sure that we bring that forth that conversation and we'll talk about black excellence that means that Latino students that snack students among students indigenous students are part of this conversation right it's not it's not mutually exclusive to them so I'm also really curious about what is a comprehensive adult practice rubric around all the data work that you are doing in the sort of this the priming that you are setting up around the back so aside from the hard conversations and I know that you have Sarah because you know of the work that you are doing but your school which is soon to be dr. Imogen and this is school is you know it's lucky to have you but you know that is not like all over the school all over and where is the

141early alert systems for those educators right we will talk about all those early alerts we're talking about students what is it early alerts for teachers when you start seeing it but you know like oh you you know this is what's happening you know in your class so more conversation more questions about data and then we move to the prompt can you go back to the tie line page that were just on which one the so take the data page that we were on how you brought us to you I just I mean I - - one question one comment one is just it might be nice to see it as normalized for enrollment our Latino populations going up our african-american populations going down so some of these trends you would expect from just a pure

142enrollment perspective so I mean the the ratios you wouldn't but the overall increases or decreases you could we looked at that and thought about adjusting that was within a percent across the years for both both Gucci reference and so not as significant as you might think in terms of you know other factors driving the data okay the other is just I mean there's not it's very difficult to see progress in a timeline page like this and we spent on oh gosh we spent over a year right 18 months kind of digging in and listening Sarah as you commented to some of the success stories and trying to understand what we should do and I know you guys are super early in the work of implementing some of those ideas but just it's an open question

143for the whole team and what else if anything do you feel we need to be doing changing talking about implementing to be to do something to this curve right like this is there's a lot of work going on we're spending 5 million bucks just on direct resources not naming the broad ecosystem of work that touches the classroom experience for kids so like what else and I know we spent 18 months on this so it's not I'm not asking you to rehash all of that but is there do you feel like in 12 months time we're gonna come and have a very different conversation based on the work we've set up and the foundational practice work that you're starting or do you feel that we need to be doing something more aggressive or different yes I

144will say that I think our strategic framework lays out the conditions that we want to see in our district to move the needle on the very stuff that we're talking about it couldn't possibly be more complex in terms of all of the pieces to the puzzle we've talked about curriculum we've talked about relevance we've talked about rigor we've talked about authentic engagement we've talked about fundamental skill development we've talked about relationships relationships with peers relationships with adults culture and climate across the school family community engagement foundational practices and ways of interacting among kids and among adults we also know that having a really good response system and having a really good intervention system that seamlessly plug students that need additional supports in the tier 2 and tier 3 interventions having resources for all layers of

145the system effective professional development and ongoing and supportive way with space for teachers to apply and practice what we're talking about where we have pieces of all of those things in place I think we collectively understand that all of those things could improve to move these numbers in the right direction at the heart of it all is mindset and that's work that this district has been very focused on for the last number of years the question is how long does it take to change mindset so if you had to pick you just had a laundry list of things that we've talked about right and arguably not all the things we've talked about have resulted in kind of changes in a classroom for kids here to pick two things each of you of what are the

146most high priority levers for us to focus on what what would they be okay this is a next impossible question but I can't help but come back to relationships there's just no substitute for it this begins with our hiring practices and finding people that come in with the right mindset and core beliefs and ability to really really get to know kids to make sure that they know that we love them we expect a lot of them and we're not going to let them slide sideways and sacrifice their academic development okay so the input is hiring the output is relationships I'm just like what what you know yeah people who show up to work get to do one thing and again okay and you know yeah I mean if we if we can continue to focus

147on that that drives the rest of the system from my perspective it's helpful so we're gonna have one more question on our data so just the data I mean I think just based on what we just talked about Kate and and really thinking about culturally responsive right approach this I mean I think that that has to be a very intentional I mean this is about trips right and I think it's important to focus everything about race sometimes we make broad take a holistic or broaden approach but specifically here it really has to be about race and how our teachers and their staff are responding certainly is based on race right and I think that that's gonna I mean I think that that's what you're talking about it's going to take a while I mean it

148takes right time but I feel like we're we have a sense of urgency in there and we need to be able to provide that up do the relationships right a belonging component of this to capture and now do we continue to lose our children every year and I'm not sure they're they're missing the boat here right we've been missing it and I know it's not I think this the the school I mean I knew all schools are doing what they can but we're missing it and I don't know where it's at but where where are we missing is it because we're not intentionally focusing on race that we're not catching up that we're not I'm not sure I mean it and so that's the conversation I think I want to have right and so in

149really implementation quite a view you know we got to sort of the exterior color policies like process and but I don't think we've really got uses every issue is raised here and I just really want us to get it there right because I think that that is what's gonna take us so I make a quick comment so appreciate your framing this sure this with Jerry I mean if we can we have back to the investment I know that is it's not that right we have invested a lot of money if you continue to have this sort of dismal progress it's gonna and nothing else change it's gonna take us about 15 to 18 years to get to a proportionality and that's absurd right and I think that that is the level of urgency that we

150need to be talking about and articulation of being anti-racist despite between a lot of despite you know amazing people that we have despite the amazing students that we have and so I think I just wanted to allocate that and I can remember which one was first Jane and Holly yes I think another kind of question that specific to data is is suspension in school or out of school working so are we seeing positive results as outcomes from suspending what happens when we suspend students are students who are suspended less likely to be disruptive more likely to catch up what is the profile of the students that we are to spend suspending beyond them being disproportionately african-american so how is this how is this intervention in terms of behavior working to create positive outcomes in terms

151of behavior well because I think if we're we're gonna suspend so that it should mean something and then I think the other thing is and I appreciate both Ananda and Gloria honing in on kind of the relational eyes dynamic but how do you all talk about this it within the framework of equity or anti racism within the district because we do we talk about races anti racism we talk about equality we don't name phenomenas that illustrate racism as a reality of this work so I'm wondering how you all are talking about this within within the context of anti racism and racism I think there's two pieces it's one how we talk about it as a department so what we do with our department work around race and equity and looking at how we not only

152disrupt you know white supremacy and how we talk about that in our department but what are we replace it with because it's not enough to say oh we're gonna disrupt it but then what are we gonna do after it's disrupted and how do we support our schools I think an understanding just like you're saying with this data supporting our schools talking about bringing the data and having those discussions about okay so tell me you know what's going on with the data telling you about this what conversations are you having you know with staff and I think a question for me is what does accountability look like if people are not engaging in the work so we're not necessarily to the place of being able to say we're noticing these trends that we're noticing this this

153effect I dedicate our participation in helping us to generate this data and we know how we're intervening you think we're in a place that we know that we had the data and we know but I think it's that case of then what is that plan then how do we support and you know the teacher with those practices to either say okay this is what we're noticing how are we going to work through this but then what if what is the next step that that's not and see I think that that is something that I've noticed is that when we talk about a teacher passively discriminating against students on a regular basis in terms of discipline we talked about how to support them to take it better to not do that anymore we talked about how

154to make that about learning for the adult when a candidate interrupts in class we don't seem to have that same attitude and so I think right right there to me there's the disparity right so when one person makes a mistake that harms another person from a position of power we support the person of power in reconciling that we don't use that as a means to define them or exclude them in fact the opposite we become more inclusionary and so I'm like how do we translate that attitude mm-hmm to children this is a great conversation and I I really appreciate the concerns and that things that have been brought up here and I just want to point out that when we think back to last Monday the presentation around the sip planning you know it's at

155the center of that is race relationship and rigor and I think when I hear the concerns that we have there is definitely a connection there in terms of using this information to inform what that plan is moving forward and I know that we're working to make those two things you don't really inform each other so I don't know I think that's one place that we might be able to see some movement forward thank you James for that but I do I do remember in 2010 when I read proposed achievement gap race plan and it was when we've had the most explicit conversation about race and we are about seven years from that plan and we're still doing this right so it's it's not just a century or acknowledging the we have a very significant issue

156in regards to how we teach our black students is what we're doing what we're willing to do about in order to actually have somewhat a proportionality conversation about data and sorry I just want to um I just want us to really think about how you know we as we're talking about race right I mean I think we I do want to say that we have some strong teachers and staff in our schools who are really doing some good work around this right you need to capture that and so along with you know Ali's point is I want to capture the great things that our staff and teachers are doing in our schools around us right I want to see that I mean along with this right along with the dad I really want to see

157that I think we can't forget that right I mean I we want to demonstrate and support our teachers who are doing a staff who are doing really well around that around this area right how are they intervening how are they supporting their their students and relationships and so we want to continue to push but I also want us to recognize all the great things that are happening right and and the complexity around this issue that this is a community issue right our teachers and our staff can only do so much around the challenges that they're experiencing in the classrooms our kids are coming to school hungry they're living in poverty sometimes homelessness I mean we have to really consider all that right and so our teachers are being placed in a lot of you know

158they're being placed don't look at me like that they're really our teachers are being they're faced with a lot challenges in the classroom I want us to to recognize that but it's a it's this is all very complex and it's all over it's all about race it's about you know the challenges that our students are coming in with in their classrooms and there are a lot of great things happening in our schools thanks for your comment I wanted to move to the okay I was still talking about data to move to the last slide and I want us to just do a round-robin around how can the board work with the district leaders and school teams to have to help establish a positive culture and climate in every school and I'm wondering who is ready

159to start responding that question I'm one look to you in person are you so my answer to this isn't too long but um I you know the two big lovers that the board has to work with our policy and budget and so I think the first thing we need to do is make sure we have good policy and part of that is making sure that our behavior policy is high quality and it's working and that's easy to say and hard to define I think a big picture question for me is how do we compassionately and respectfully and fairly or equally hold everyone in our schools to high standards and do that using a growth mindset for everybody and that means students families and staff not looking at anybody through a deficit lens and again that's

160high level it's hard to measure but it feels like a starting point to help us think about what's working with the BEP and what could be better about the BEP and that said I think there are other policy things we could do that could help relieve stress and our schools either changing policies we have or maybe writing some new policies that might reflect themselves to changes in behavior over time because we know stressed kids and stressed Athens just families might not behave in ways that we think that they should so some ideas um you know one that we're doing is reducing the amount of testing standardized testing that we're doing in our schools and with that I think trying to make a very concerted effort to stop labeling children as fail I would go a

161long way towards improving behavior in our schools and maybe one thing we could do is stop giving kids their math test scores when they finish the test so they aren't all comparing and thinking oh I got a 500 and he got a thousand I suck I mean that would take some stress out of kids lives um we could really focus hard on instruction in getting kids to grade level to reduce stress when they get you know they move on and they're not a great level on their that you know they're feeling like they don't belong um more recess more learning through play for our youngest children might take stress off kids who maybe aren't developmentally ready to read but are ready to get those reading foundations in place to play I'm looking at the amount

162of homework stress going on in our high schools I think would be a really productive thing to do I think it's there's a lot of homework in high school and if you have to take care of siblings and if you have to work after school it could be overwhelming um considering this quality of school meals that we serve kids and how that might reflect in kids behavior what we're feeding kids is gonna directly influence behavior and how that gets to a budget decision as well because right now our school meal program is you know it's supposed to be self-supporting and we feed our kids really bad food because that's all we can afford um looking at how our transportation offerings and MMSD might be stressing kids out and possibly causing them to be tardy when

163it's not their fault you know I know that the the Metro bus that my kids would ride to Memorial if my oldest kid didn't have her license gets him to school late often and then they're like completely freaked out about going into first period late when it wasn't their fault how many kids are facing that likewise kids who are homeless and riding cabs to school and four or five years old like what does that do for behavior and how does that influence families we could also look at like things that are happening in our schools that might be negatively impacting relationships or could positively impact relationships I know we've had conversations about mixed grade classrooms as a budget I was a waiter like managed class sizes and improve our budget but I know and we

164had mixed grade classes at my children's all three schools it also did phenomenal things for relationships my kids had the same teacher for two years and everybody another grade knew everybody else because of the overlap between you know kids got to know kids a great above them and a great below them same for families and it really helped the school feel like a tight-knit community where people were looking out for each other and the flipside of that could be you know the staff turnover is probably having a negative impact on relationships because it's hard to build a relationship informally of school for a year or two and then you move on so those are just some ideas about things that the board could talk about in terms of policy and you know things that we

165make decisions about that could actually make things better in terms of behavior and then when it comes to budget I think we need to ensure that we're providing adequate resources to successfully implement the BEP and also that we're allocating them equitably so that our schools and that our children who are have the greatest needs are getting resources unfortunately and that is both money but also community services like behavioral health in schools like how much do we do at that program so that all of our children in schools with high need are able to access that program do we need to look at expanding that to also include some drug and alcohol counseling for some of our schools I don't know budget question thank you Chris where is your this question yeah okay you want me

166to go back to you know we're just doing around Robbie it's good okay um yeah go ahead come on yeah okay so thank you Chris I was very comprehensive less I think there's a lot of good ideas in there I'm going to be really short um one I think we've had a couple of requests to take up literacy and our literacy early childhood kind of curriculum and we have a new superintendent coming in that is it's probably a good time for us to take that up and that's brought that's mostly administration work not board work um but I think it may be worth us having a discussion around that and then I heard Jay you say hiring we hired a recruiter no Moki we hired a recruiter we haven't gotten an update on how that's

167going that would be another area for us to kind of lean into I'm just thinking of kind of concrete I honestly I think you guys need some time to do the work that we spent a lot of time kind of coming up with and giving you the space to build systems which in some of the success stories that you told us were two years in the making right so I'm a little bit loath to tweet a bunch it feels like we've been doing a lot of tweaking and we'll keep tweaking but I'm not sure tweaking is gonna get us to a different slope of the curve the other maybe area for us is you know Paris I keep wanting him to be at the table when we're talking but there is this idea of innovation

168in pilots that I would be curious about us picking a couple of schools and doing something that's not tweaking right and again that's for you to steer where there is something that is a step change that we could support but I think it would be worthwhile for us to learn more in in a more urgent way and again up for you to kind of NIEM and decide but um that feels like potentially something we could gain more from then then we're tweaking and I think I mean I think that when we come back again to talk about the bat gonna be popped for policy or budget it really helped me during the ad hoc committee of to hear from staff and teachers principals to get their perspective I really would like us to move in

169the implementation phase in a teacher centered innovation approach right we're okay we're here now I want to hear from the teachers and staff who are on the ground who are doing this work every day in getting their perspective and while also keeping race at the center right and so I would really like to hear from them that was really helpful to us it wasn't not that you know you guys are great right but how do we I would really like to get some teachers in here and/or get their voices in this space so as we are moving forward right and assessing and planning and keeping them at the center particularly during this phase one we have to work on hiring more teacher of color with showing that's what change the needle is when people react

170to the curriculum react to things that are culturally relevant and and work with people who look like that I never had a disabled the teacher until I went to college never saw someone in a wheelchair until I went to a university basketball game when I was a kid I didn't realize they existed now people color I'm not sure they're seeing the same way I can't comment on that culture I can only comment on my own but I think that would be a start what we need to do though now right away is this more honors courses to make sure that people actually feel that students belong there provide the tutors and the mentors that are needed for students to succeed and can we please quit calling it behavior data it's not behavior when it's how

171you handle it is it truly how someone's behaved occurs it how they're reacting if we're going to honestly look at it that way then at least we should realize that psychologically you're not when you look from one no typical not divergent view you're going to miss a heck of a lot how can the board work with the district leaders and school teams to help establish positive culture and climate in every school I think that it's really tempting to just talk about things that the board is doing or to just lean into elements of our individual platforms that we think are our solutions to large-scale issues I think what qualifies us as a board to have a say in in this process is pretty specific in terms of policy and an ability to allocate resources I

172think when you look to policy and how what is developmentally appropriate and best meets the needs of students is utilized within policy I think we have a lot of work to do I think there's a lot that we need to reconsider in terms of when is a discipline and appropriate thing and what are the flags that allow for us to identify when just when discipline isn't being applied appropriately or within the realm of equity and so I think that that's an area that we we need to explore extensively I think if food was the answer if transportation was the answer if parental education involvement diversity of staff if all those things were the answer I think least you know one school in our district would be producing significantly different data right you see schools with

173different makeups producing really really different outcomes I think what we see over and over again is that the most salient factor and whether or not a child will be able to read at grade level or whether or not a child will be suspended is race and I think our our board is obligated to examine practices that are that are inherently racialized so I think we have a lot of a lot of work to do and I think looking at this as somebody who this is my first year on the board and looking at some of the data I looked at I'm looking at well that you know it's three years worth of data for certain people on the board that's their entire time on the board so the question in my mind becomes what has

174the board done right what have you already done what have you already talked about that hasn't changed the outcome because doing more of that what you say not change the outcome so I think we have to look at yeah we have to be honest about the things that we've already tried about kind of where we're shifting our efforts and our focus and the material consequences for our students and I think having as flesh out an understanding of that as possible is part of our work as a board is to enhance our own understanding and interact with information effectively and remain critical and hopefully you know look look outside ourselves to solutions that are the most impactful but I think a starting point is saying that where we're at is not acceptable and so an outcome

175kind of driven approach that says this is how we're going to change how much we're going to change how we to create that change is something I'm I'm attached to realizing together Savion and then you say yeah sometimes in this conversation were triggering and I was labeled antisocial disruptive a detriment to learning and you know a few months ago recently Dane County declared racism a public health crisis looking at some of that data it is evidence of racism and our schools and I'm interested in looking at this through a lens of Public Health and in terms of our capacity as a board I think it's really important that we look at this holistically and you know off the top of my head how do you get more health professionals in our schools more psychologists and

176therapists in our schools for students who are having some challenges at home or wherever outside the school I can help teachers inform their practice on how I can be more empathetic educators as well so just wanted to say of respect that always says I was on this board for almost three years some things we did well some things we didn't do as well we thought what we could but that was a different board this board is more poised to change what we need to change and go through and what we need to go through I'm not gonna point fingers and say we did everything right I can't do that no more but I'm willing to take on this change and I'm glad to do some so I wanted to say I really appreciate the voice

177and the emphasis throughout this entire conversation on that but I think that in regards like relying on students to advocate for themselves I don't think that's like necessarily something that should be the burden upon students I think that we need to figure out a balance between like students advocating for themselves but also realizing like it's not our job as people in the schools like I guess push forth that change like the burden shouldn't fall upon us but I think that through this process on questions that like who you would need to consider to continue to ask would be how to engage students and get our input at every point in this process and empower our voices to come through so I wanted to say I really appreciate everyone's insight and also the framework in which

178you're speaking to my positionality around which you're speaking with I'm also to elevate this again very humble by the board members there were there are current MSD shoes and there was that have been an MSD students and how we have this legacy of pushing students out in a very specific and racialized way I think there are there is this this narrative that you can look at you know Ali and Gloria and Savior and look at them they they made it to the school board and they have you know pretty significant influence on policy and decision-making they did they are in where they are now through a lot of struggle and that's not what we hunt right we don't want we want to interrupt the this this constant struggle and and some in the rest of

179us some of us have also students in schools and I I often feel my daughter's a junior now and she attended K through through 11th grade and I came in with oh they not have attended us scary have it have been always someone that have had some level of social capital and of course you know my my own academic back around the my involvement with schools I have I feel like I'm I have had so many different relationships you know with with this district right like as a parent as a partner as a employee you know like working the state and the board so I had like this like I've been so many different roles in relationship to the district and still like I often doubt like the success of my child as it relates

180to the school right not the only thing that she's a successful and amazing child but our district's ability to actually see her success and her brilliance and the amazing which we measure her brilliance the way in which we look at the style that says like well she speaks three languages she works you know two different jobs she does all these things and I she doesn't feel that I don't feel that and I have a lot of capital and so I often feel like what about like the majority of our families that don't participate in the same sort of asset base spaces that I tend to be a part of you know it's hard for me to generally say like that people actually have a chance right they're black children actually have a chance the immigrant

181children actually have a genius the children with disabilities actually have a chance right the families that are negotiating all our systems can actually feel hopeful of change and when we talk about retention of staff of color retention of our students systems change you know we have to this broader conversation about how do we want to talk about our district and our children in a different way and that's it is it is it is really hard to reconcile where we are now where we have been and and still like don't feel like I can honestly say that this is you know that we're like okay we got it right I feel maybe that there is some there's some cracks in there and there is some there's some spaces to to feel like okay this sounds like

182a good way to go but if we want to change from 54% to 18% you know it takes more than just one thing I also appreciated the way in which everyone responded and interpreted the question two other ways that I have thought about which this was the sort of the earlier conversation about how do we highlight the amazing teachers the amazing schools the amazing initiative and we all have a set of schools that we are part of it this is has been an anomaly year I mean I feel like I have tried to meet several times with different people but had to have to reschedule because you know of different things that we have but thinking through like is there a protocol or you know or things that I know Tony and communication had wanting

183to explore some things with us for us to have a better communication with our teachers better communications with the families of the schools that we are signed even like help people understand what that means you know to be extra something significant in a ways that can elevate to the entire district above the students the teachers and that and the school community in a in a in a very intentional way so with that any last words from your team Jay I will just say thank you from us as well for the work that you're doing for your support for this work and just look forward to continuing to just shift everything in the right direction thank you so much thank you everyone you know for the presentation like to entertain a motion to adjourn please device

184whirs all right all those in favor all right motion carries thank you everyone