001Ladies and gentlemen, it is now 7 I'm sorry, not 7. It is 6:47 p.m. and a quorum of members is present. So, the meeting of the board of education of the school district of New Berlin is called to order. >> Please call the role. >> Mr. Erand, Mr. Helmer >> here, >> Miss Kik >> here, >> Miss Peterson, Miss Schultz >> here, >> Mr. Cidle, Mr. Zinski >> here. >> Mr. Cidle let me know he's unable to attend this evening. And uh Mr. Arend and Miss Peterson are here. We're just going to be meeting up with them in a bit. Um so then I would uh entertain a motion to recess to close session. You got it. All right. >> I move to adjourn into close session pursuant to section 1 nine decimal 851 CE
002and F of the Wisconsin statutes to consider approval of close session minutes of May 11th employment performance and compensation matters pertaining to staff. >> Second. Second. >> Okay. I have a motion by Mr. Zillinsky and a second by Miss Kik. Please call the role. >> Mr. Zillinski? >> Yes. >> Miss Kik? >> Yes. >> Mr. Helmer? >> Yes. >> Miss Schultz? >> Yes. We're moving into close session. Return to open session around 7 o'clock. He changed his career. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Very good. I walked in, right? Yeah. I'm filming. My parents are It is now 7:00 p.m. and we are returning from close session into open session. In recognition of the serious and important nature of our efforts here, we will join in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. For all those who
003are able, please rise. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> And now for those who wish to prepare for the meeting we will have a moment of silence. This is a public meeting of the board of education. Prior to this meeting, notice was given to the public last Friday by providing by providing the agenda to the city library. The agenda was also posted on the district website. A copy of the agenda was forwarded to the journal Sentinel and the Walker Shaw Freeman, all of which have have filed requests for all public notices. This evening we have some special recognitions. >> Yeah. I'd like to start by um having Amanda introduce uh and
004recognize our World Affairs Seminar participants. >> You get to stand right here. >> Oh >> yeah. Yeah. Welcome. This is Angelina everybody. >> Hello. >> Um so hi I'm Amanda Murkitz. the director of student services for our school district and I just want to tell you a little bit about the world affairs seminar. The world affairs seminar brings together peers from around the world to learn international relations and develop skills in diplomacy, communication and cooperation. I am pleased to announce that two students have been selected to represent the school district of New Berlin at the upcoming world affairs seminar. Their participation is made possible through the generous joint sponsorship of the Rotary of Wauaaw and our school district. These students were chosen following a thorough application and essay review process. This year's world affairs seminar
005hosted at Carol University has a theme of uniting for peace. Congratulations to Angelina Zveda who's here tonight and Nadia Reuovic who will be our representatives this year. Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. You're welcome. >> Uh every year uh well, first of all, congratulations. Um, every year there are a hundred teachers selected to be uh a part of the Herb Cole award uh scholarships and um annually we have some great candidates that we highly recommend and once again we have um actually 6% of the total amount of eligible we have six winners from the school district of New Burlin. So, uh, at this time, I'd like to introduce, uh, Principal Kevin Gmani to come up and recognize our staff from Popular Creek. Thank you. Good. Good evening, everybody. Yeah. Um, I will look at
006my good friend Matt Buckley to say I never thought I would get to introduce a Cole Award winner. I've been to a couple of lunchons. I got to sit um, as a co-pilot, if you will. Uh, as as Mr. As I said, every year, uh, the six buildings are asked to identify teachers, and it's hard to do. High quality teachers that inspire learning, uh, inspire their colleagues, uh, bring a love and a passion to their classroom. And so, this year, Pablo Creek uh, has two, but I will say one we share. So, the first uh, New Berlin staff member I'm going to introduce is Shannon Weissaki. So, Shannon, come on up. So, Miss Wisaki is our school social worker. Uh, we share her with Elmwood. So, as proud as we are of Shannon, Elmwood should
007take equal uh share of the pride as well as the hard work. So, everything I describe about Shannon, it it's happening at Elmwood, too. Um, of the many things that Shannon brings when it comes to being student centered, uh, there's a variety of activities. This year, she helped spearhead kind of a recommmit to our behavior expectations, uh, meeting with students, empowering them to help create some of the visuals and to post them. So they own their own community and and had a part in our behavioral expectations. Active member of our student services team uh with a social worker. A lot of times you think of those outside resources for families. Uh but Shannon is very in tune and a lot of contact with our students. In fact, member students will seek her out uh for
008any small, medium or large crisis, right? Um great listener when it comes to her colleagues, excellent collaborator, really speaks to the values of Papa Creek. Um, the biggest thing I would say of lead, believe, and achieve right now with Shannon is that leading in year two. She's really taken uh the reigns on on all types of different things to really impact the learning and the overall community of of New Berlin, especially at Papa Creek. So, I was very proud as well as Dr. Manson to nominate her. And I'm not surprised that she's one of the winners. So, this is for you, Miss Wisaki. Thank you for everything you're doing for the school district and for Papa Creek. >> And I know Jamie V and Ryan Sams feel the same. >> You're welcome. You're welcome. Uh,
009the next Cole Award winner is Jackie Shoemaker. Come on up. Also, school district parents doing her job to keep the enrollment up. So, that's another great thing for for Jackie. Has a has a student in 4K that is coming to PC next year and another 4K student on the Y on the way. Jackie is uh a member of our fifth grade team. Um, again, similar to Shannon, does a lot of the little things that really make PC what they what it is. Uh, a couple things this year, especially going into the school year, uh, Jackie saw a need for flexible grouping and math. The theme that we have at Papa Creek, making sure we're meeting all our kids where they are, but challenging them, not just with literacy, but with math. And so, she brought
010the idea uh last summer to team teach with a colleague, so they would have uh all of their students have access to a teacher, reteing practice, you name it. And so she and her colleague Olivia Miller kind of revamped how we do uh fifth grade math while still providing the accelerated math program for our fourth graders. Uh in addition, she's been a wonderful mentor. Uh has a very young group of teachers on the fifth grade team. Very young. Yeah. And you know, you can see Jackie's a veteran in a lot of ways, but she's not that far removed from their age either. But wonderful mentor uh for that team, mentor for all of our teachers as well. She also has shared her learning space with one of our case managers, Marine Fleming, for the last
011two years. So, when it comes to that co-planning, co-serving piece, uh Jackie is all in. Uh and has also helped Marine with her own um student teacher this year. So, always willing to step up. Uh last year when I first joined PC, Jackie was one of the first teachers to come in and greet me, but also for the first two, three months of the school year during prep, she would always come in and check on me. So, um her fingerprints are all over PC. So, on behalf of PC and School of Berlin, Jackie, congratulations on a well-deserved honor. Thank you everyone. Just uh Mr. Garza, you foster a great environment for teachers to do what they do best. So this is just another feather in the cap of the school district of Berlin. Thank you.
012And now I'd like to introduce Principal Angela Patterson, principal of Ronald Reagan. >> Hey, I'm not as tall as everybody else, so I apologize. So, I'm going to bring that down a little bit. Hi, I'm Angela Patterson, proud principal at Ronald Reagan, and I have the great honor tonight of introducing our Herb Cole Fellowship winner, Miss Lindseay Hendris. Lindsay is a fantastic speech and language pathologist. Um, in addition to our assistive communication technology coordinator for the district, we are incredibly lucky to have her. This is her third year in the district. So, another young upcoming wonderful staff member that is leaving a huge impact on our students and our staff. um this last month, I think it was, she partnered with our early childhood special education teacher to create um assisted technology supported readalouds for
013our all school read, which were very very appreciated by our families of students with disabilities and communication needs. Um, the thing that always makes me smile when I think of Lindsay is, uh, a few weeks ago we found out we're getting a new student at our school next year who has some significant communication needs and some significant disability needs. And the first thing Lindsay said is, "Oh my gosh, I can't wait to meet him. This is going to be so great because that's how she approaches everything and she approaches all of our kids that way." and we are incredibly lucky to have her in the district uh supporting not just Reagan but all of the schools especially with our assist of technology. So congratulations Lindsay. We're lucky to have you. Thank you. And now I'd
014like to introduce Principal Mark Otto New Berlin West. Go back up a little. Thank you. Mark Otto, principal over at New Berlin West. Uh it's my pleasure to be here tonight to introduce four educators from West who are Herb Cole uh fellowship award winner recipients. Uh we're truly honored and humbled to have these educators in our building and the students and staff benefit every day. First I would like to call up Jacqueline Jacka. What I found in preparing is that the teachers that we have do a lot and so I'm at the risk of listing everything. I'm going to try and go through some of the highlights of things that our amazing teachers do both in the classroom and out. So, Jackie has been with the district for eight years in our social studies department,
015teaching AP, US government and politics, philosophy, world studies, and at times eighth grade social studies. Uh Jackie is a leader within her department and her curriculum and leadership have been recognized nationally. Her work has been published by the Harvard Journal, National History Day, PBS Learning Media, PBS Wisconsin, the National Park Service, the Retro Report, the Davis Center, and the Center for Civic Education. Also, the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance, and the Milwaukee Soldiers Home. Jackie has done work for the Center of Civic Education, attended the uh Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute, and has participated in the National Constitution Center Summer Teacher Institute. She serves as a media literacy consultant, a national presenter, as a judge for the Presidential 1776 award competition. She's a James Madison fellow, and director of the George Washington Teacher Institute at Mount Vernon, where
016she designs professional development for educators nationwide. Jackie presented at the National Council for Social Studies, served as a teacher ambassador and contributor for the Ken Burns American Revolution Project, is an education ambassador for the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2024, Jackie took a New Berlin West student to Normandy to research a fallen D-Day hero, conducted archival research at the National Archives, and published a biography now archived at the American Normandy Cemetery. This June, Jackie will lead a student trip to Washington, DC, actually later this week. Uh and in July, Jackie and another New Berlin West student uh will participate in the Young People's Continental Congress in Philadelphia through a National History Day in Carpenters Hall. Congratulations. We are lucky to have Jackie uh on your Herb Cole distinction. Next, I'd like to welcome Leah Ragnaby.
017Leah has been with the district for 11 years as the sole middle and high school French teacher at New Berlin West. Leah is an expert collaborator and integrates language skills creatively across a number of departments and she serves on our staff BLT technology team. Her dedication to the students language and culture of French is evident in her work outside of the classroom as well. Like I said, there's a theme here. Uh Leah has led a number of overseas trips with students to explore cultural immersion and encourages students to foster a worldly view of language studies beyond the classroom. She advises New Berlin West chapter of French honor society called Envogue where students are involved in service locally and inter locally and to international communities through projects such as raising money to support Heer International which
018is used to purchase animals for families to help them sustainably farm and break the cycle of poverty in French-speaking countries. Additionally, her students teach French lessons throughout the school year at Orchard Lane in Ptherler Creek. She also leads the French club for students of all grade levels, hosting opportunities for cultural immersion. Uh Leah involves the staff, myself included, on judging and often tasting the I don't speak French Leouch Denu, which is a holiday cake. Uh her students participate in the speaking competition, postcard contest, and have achieved multiple state awards and scholarships for college and global travel. Leah has presented numerous years at the Wisconsin Association for Language Teachers Conference, has served as curriculum adviser to the American Council on Foreign on Teaching of Foreign Languages. In 2025, Leah earned the AATF Wisconsin Distinguished French Educator
019Award. And finally, Leah's in the process of finishing her master's degree, which will allow us to be able to offer French 5 for college credit. Congratulations to Leah on your Herb Cole distinction. Next, unable to be with us, is Tyler Stevens. At least unless he snuck in. No, he didn't sneak in. Uh Tyler has been with the district for nine years, both at Eisenhower and New Berlin West, serving as a special education teacher for students with significant disabilities. In his current role, Tyler is dedicated to giving students experiences, life skills, and confidence to help them be successful as future adults in everyday life, their work environment, and the community. Tyler spends significant time collaborating with general education teachers to adapt curriculum so students with significant disabilities can safely and meaningfully participate in classes that may
020otherwise be inaccessible. This year, for example, Mr. Stevens encouraged a student on his case load to enroll in a construction course and proactively partnered with the teacher to design appropriate accommodations and modifications to ensure the students full participation and success. Outside of the classroom, Tyler coaches baseball as an assistant varsity coach, and he also leads a district-wide fishing club, organizing events all summer long to build student skills, promote conservation, and foster responsibility. Thank you for all you do in and out of the classroom, Tyler, and congratulations on your Herb Cole distinction. And lastly, but certainly not least, we'll bring up Nicole Zeski. Nicole has been at West for 12 years teaching middle and high school Spanish at many levels, including leading the our district's CAP program for Spanish 5, where her students have partnered uh
021excuse me, have partnered her class with first and second grade students at Hawthorne Elementary in Wauaaw exchanging letters. Nicole also teaches and advises academic decathlon for New Berlin West, earning the division 2 state championship and eight subject medals at the national competition this year. Nicole has developed achievement based grading rubrics and curriculum for all levels of Spanish. Is a board member of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. is a frequent contributor to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and has presented numerous times for the Wisconsin Association of Language Teachers. Nicole advises a dedicated chapter of the Spanish Honor Society called Elsoul. Within this club, she has coordinated two donation drives for Nourish MK where she and her students can often or be often found volunteering
022on Saturdays. Elsoul volunteers at the Christmas Clearing Council of Walkshaw County and hosts an annual language department fundraiser. this year earning over $7,000 to sponsor local families and has sponsored over 25 families annually for the last six consecutive years. Elsoul has developed a partnership with Global Partners Running Waters, a nonprofit organization that works to bring clean water to communities of Central America. She advocates for enhanced learning. Most notably, four juniors have won the Birdie Green Junior Travel Award and multiple seniors have won the Joseph Adams Senior Scholarship. Her students attain high honors and distinctions on college placement exams, the national Spanish exam, and the speaking competition. Nicole serves as co-manager for the Spanish honor society advisers Facebook group and has led and chap chaperoned a number of international trips for New Berlin students. Congratulations, Nicole,
023on your Herb Fellowship distinction. And Thank you very much for our distinguished guest. Congratulations. Um, and at this time would be the appropriate time for you to head on out if you'd like. >> All right. So then next we have privilege of the floor. Is there anybody this evening speaking? >> No. >> All right. Um, then I have my message. I just want to recognize that we are shifting our usual Monday schedule here to a Tuesday and that was because we were observing Memorial Day yesterday. So, it's only fitting to open with the significance of that holiday. Yesterday, our nation paused to honor the profound sacrifices of the service members who gave everything for our country. As we gather this evening, we carry that spirit of gratitude with us and remain deeply thankful for those
024who protected our communities and our freedom. Next, we have our administrative team report, um, which includes the Eisenhower update, the superintendent's update, and the student representative update. Yeah, >> I'd like the members of the Eisenhower administrative team to please come on up. >> Did you need something or >> whenever you're ready? >> Good evening. Matt Buckley, principal at New Hour. I'm going to step aside. I'll be back in a few moments. We have a lot of people that want to share some really cool stuff about Eisenhower. And uh I'm going to start with one of our associate principles, Andrew Gerlock, uh leading the charge. Sir, >> hello. Andrew Gerlock, associate principal at Newberlin Eisenhower. I'll be uh sharing some uh information this uh evening regarding our school report card and our sale our sale plan.
025But I need a clicker. There we go. All right. So, uh up on the screen you can see our uh school report card. Uh overall score of 88.8. That's up from 83.6 uh in 2324. Again, significantly exceeding expectations. Of special note are the student group data increases on the right there. Um you can see uh those are two subgroups that typically you know require extra support uh from our staff. Our econ economically disadvantaged students as well as students in special education. Uh the word advanced there refers to a proficiency category. Okay. So students can be at benchmark which is good or they can be advanced which is advanced. And uh you can see that students in those categories increased uh this past year by the percentages you can see there. Those typically a smaller population.
026So you know we're particularly proud of the work our staff are doing with those subgroups. Uh this year I I expect that most of you have heard about the the sale plans from other schools a bit familiar with it. Um yeah, one way to think of of what we're doing with sale is in education, you know, at any given time there's there's maybe like 16 good things that a staff could be focusing on. There's so many area. Well, should we do this? Yeah, that's a good idea. Should we do that? That's also a good idea. So, h how do we decide kind of where to put our energy, where to put our focus um as a staff in our professional learning? So through the sale plan, uh we asked our teachers at the end of
027last year, you know, where do we want to see our students grow? And a theme emerged and it's that we wanted our students to get better at critical thinking, problem solving, perseverance, uh endurance, being given a task and being able to to stick with it for more than, you know, a couple minutes. Uh so that kind of drove our our sale theory of action. We asked what what could we do as a building? What is a you know a sole focus we could adopt? You know this whole menu of good things we can be doing. What is one thing that we can collectively focus on to try to you know move the needle in that area. And that process yielded the theory of action in front of you right now. um which really really boils
028down to the areas of focus on the right. We decided as a building to focus on worked examples. What's a worked example? Well, examples are all over the place in teaching, right? Like if I'm teaching uh as an English teacher, I want to teach you how to write an introduction kind of famously hard for students. Um I could put up a bunch of examples of introductions on the screen and say, you know, do it like that. Right. Ready, ready, set, go. But, but when you do that, students, you know, become somewhat perplexed. You know, h how do I how do I get from a blank page to those examples you show me? So, worked examples are, you know, if I'm the teacher, I've got my my computer in front of me, and I'm going to
029write a write an introduction paragraph live in front of you going through the thought process that a writer goes through. Um, modeling confusion. what what do I do once I get confused? Um what does it look like to to maybe look at an example and apply it to my own writing? Um what was cool about this area of focus is it can be applied across all content areas um for solving multi-step problems. That process uh over the course of this year was broken into three 100day segments give or take a few days. um they are up there on the screen, but really what it boils down to is that across the across the building, we've been focusing on this one particular area throughout the year uh as well as collaborating uh around this area. And
030in addition to that, uh departments have continued focusing on um areas of interest and areas of of uh focus for them in our English department. Uh through over the past few years, uh the focus has been morphology. And with that, I'll I'll introduce uh two of our teachers, Miss Aaron Creed and Miss Brianna Racer, as well as two Eisenhower students, Emily Ma and Edviti Vamorei, to talk about that work. We're going to have to see which slide to know. >> Okay. Lovely. >> Middle button. >> Uh, >> forward. >> I'm terrible with technology. >> That one. So, the question that we always get when people say, "Oh, we're going to be studying morphology." Is, "Well, what is that?" Right? And so, this is actually a poster that I have up on the wall in my
031classroom. And a morphe is just the smallest unit of of meaning, a grouping of letters, not even an entire word that carries some form of meaning in a language. And so I often tell the kids, it's a little bit like these Legos here in that each one carries its own meaning and then you can sort of put them together in different ways. And so one of the things that we found, I came into New Berlin four years ago, right at the same time as the start of the Amplify curriculum. And after a few years, one of the things that we noticed was that it didn't really contain any specific vocabulary instruction, but the texts that it did contain were really, really high level. And so we wanted to focus on some strategies for how to
032get kids puzzling out those highle vocabulary words. And so the sort of my basic theory is this. If you you can't well you could give a list of 10 words every week memorize these words figure out how to spell them test on Friday these are your words and that's fine but if you teach about the different parts of the words then just like exponentially more vocab growth because you know the different parts you can put them together in so many more combinations and then it gives you this really handy strategy for puzzling out unfamiliar words when you do encounter them because that's what happens when you read. You find things that are unfamiliar and you say, "Well, if I can't figure it from the context clues, could I use my morphology skills to figure out
033what that means?" And so, for example, this is this was a a Brianna creation. Um, but it's part of the slide sort of presentation that she made for our students. And so, we'll have a word and we'll say, "Okay, intersect. What is that?" And then you can look at the different morphes connected within it, right? To intersect means to cut in between. And then I think other words that I know intersecting lines and intersection. And then we can think about what does it mean? How do I get to that meaning from looking at the parts that it contains? Um so we do a series we have a roughly a morphe a week. I'd say we do eight morphes a quarter. Um, give or take Thanksgiving, Christmas break, testing windows. Um, and we work with all
034of the different words that you can make out of those morphes. Um, what might that look like in class? Um, I used this one as a warm-up in my class the other day. We're reading Frankenstein. Um, first page talking about his dad. He goes, "Well, he was respected by all for his inddehaticable attention to public business." this and the kids go, I don't even know. We had an argument. Where's Mr. Garlock? Because we had a whole argument about how to pronounce this word. Um, and we're like, sure, it looks intimidating, but if you break it down, we know that in means not. We know that able means able. In the middle, you see fatigue right there. You're not able to get fatigued. And then suddenly, it makes a lot more sense. And then you're unable
035you're then you're able to sort of understand his approach. Um, we have lists of words we know and words we want to focus on. um breaking down specific words. So that's kind of that's what that looks like in the in the classroom on a daily basis. I think that was my three minutes. They told me ahead of time that pass that off to you. Um so Erin kind of touched on this uh before, but we had a why behind this. Um vocabulary is obviously an incredibly important part of the science of reading. You can see in our reading rope that it is an essential element. So, we knew that we needed to do something to kind of bolster our vocabulary work um within our curriculum. So, you can kind of see as Aaron alluded to
036before um Amplify does include vocabulary work. Um you can kind of see this is the exact text that uh Aaron was talking about as well from Frankenstein. Um so, they do have a lot of highlevel vocabulary which is excellent. Um, and they do include some definitions with that, but as you can see, students are not going to get the same amount of understanding by just looking at a word quickly to understand the text versus digging a little bit deeper into that actual meaning. Um, they also have great uh vocabulary apps, but as you can see, uh, a little bit more based on context, um, versus again understanding the word. And we know that explicit instruction is incredibly important, but it's extra important in vocabulary. So it was really important for us to kind of interweave
037some more explicit instruction uh in regards to our vocabulary. Um so you can kind of see for reading comprehension to happen, we need two things, word recognition and language comprehension. Morphology is great because it actually helps with both. Um it helps you see a very long word and understand how to decode it, but you can also see a very long word and understand the meaning behind it based on looking at uh those different morphemes in it. So super important across the board for our students to be successful in reading comprehension. Um it's also important especially at this level in that seventh and eighth grade level in particular because a lot of the words that they're going to encounter in fact like around 60% are morphologically complex meaning that they're going to have two or more
038morphes um in the word that they might need. Um and again you can see this is across the board multiple age groups different ability levels. It's all really helpful for them. and it also covers a lot of different categories such as spelling and vocabulary and that reading comprehension. So all around really helpful. Um and so this is actually our second year of implementing um we kind of took principles from um a curriculum curriculum a book called Morphe Magic. Um so we implemented it starting in seventh grade last year and this is the first year we've done seventh and eighth grade. Um so you can kind of see the results. Uh this is from Fastbridge auto reading. We looked at one of the subtests of that, specifically morphology, um, and looked at how many morphes students
039were able to identify correctly. So, we're looking at the orange and the blue from 20, uh, to 29 out of 30 morphs correctly. So, you can kind of see the difference between um, fall and spring and how much growth we were able to make um, in just those first full year. Now I'd like to ask our student volunteers to come up and share their experience working uh through this morphology work. >> Hi, my name is Edvidi Vimuri and this is >> Emily M. I am Emily Ma >> and we're here to talk about how morphes have been used specifically outside of just an English setting like for example using in like foreign languages. For example, Emily's going to talk about how she's seen the morphes that we use in English and French as a lot
040of words and morphs are derived from other languages like Latin, French, all those. and and I'll be touching on about science and like math sometimes about how we see the words and how we're able to make those connections based off that. So, all right. So, um in foreign languages um in the romantic languages um the morphes and the word parts um they all um came from um the same area. So um the morphes um could be used to um decode translate into um other word the words in foreign languages. Um for example in French there is a word um vis and um we could um correlate that to um the morphine viz vid which means to see and um we can then um figure out the word um vis which means um the face to
041see and that connects to um >> for languages. is so for specifically a math or science setting, a lot of where it comes from in like at least the science course that me and Emily take is that a lot of the work comes from packets comes from like reading comprehension and learning how to read the words which comes into English. So which when we might be reading like one of our content packets and like trying to decipher what they mean through the questions for like for example we're in our physics unit right now. So the word acceleration, the act of acceler accelerating the suffix specifically shun. So the act of it it comes up a lot in sciences especially like physics like gravitation the act of gravitating towards and specifically like that and like fractions
042fra the act of fracting like fracting a word I'm breaking up I'm trying but um like similar to that go ahead you're concluding oh come on Emily we talk about this so um we this is how um we can correlate the use of more instead of um in English class um it can also um apply to our um daily world and um our school learning other than English classes. >> Thank you. >> It's one thing to talk about morphes, you know, when you're in class, but to do it in front of people you've never met. Well done, ladies. Well done. So I get the pleasure of finishing up our literacy portion here and some celebrations this year. Um one some of our big celebrations partially because of our work with more this year. Um but
043we really want to look at a reading and auto reading. So the A-reading is really looking at comprehension. Um auto reading is that fluency piece. And if you take a look the very top is our A-reing in fall and winter from last year. And so you'll see for a reading and auto reading from last year. And then you go down to this year. Now, I didn't put last year's spring in there as well because we just finished our spring testing on Friday. So, I just threw that in there for you guys. Um, but you'll notice that for fall and winter, for a reading and auto reading, when you compare this year to last year, we went up. You usually tend to see a little bit of a dip in the winter because that is right
044after winter vacation. It's right in the kind of those doldrums of winter. And you know what? Our kids rocked it this year, especially a reading. They went way up. which was fantastic. And then if you take a look too, you'll see that our kids this year continue to increase as well. So we're seeing not only growth within the school year, we're seeing growth from one year to the next as well, which is really exciting. Some other literacy celebrations, we started looking at our data for ACT. We don't have hard numbers at the moment. Um, but on doing some basic internal analysis, thus far, we have seen an overall increase for our ACT reading scores, which is very exciting. We're hoping to have some more of that hard data soon, but we've seen a lot of
045growth in that this year. We also have an exciting literacy highlight. I know at the very beginning, Mr. Garlock talked about how we've seen some of the growth within some of our smaller, more focused groups. This year, we've dismissed five students this year who received that specialized instruction in some of our more targeted groups. Two of those students were in special education and then three were regular education students receiving that tier three, that high level support. who are really excited to have five kids this year who are getting help specifically for reading and they've done a nice job and been able to be exited. The last piece for literacy, we always have to look for a place for growth. Again, looking at our ACT data, one of the areas where we notice that we need
046to continue to grow is the ELA portion. Different from the reading, ELA really focuses on the grammar portion. There was a significant difference in the test this year in all areas. Really looking at this portion, this used to have around 70 questions, 70 75 questions. Now it has about 35 and the way that is actually structured changed significantly as well. So I along with some of our um with Todd Barzac who is one of our literacy specialists and then Fran Lesniaak is our math one. We kind of helped create some ACT sessions this year to work with our students to help them prepare not knowing fully exactly what that first round of the test is going to look like and we noticed this is an area where we do need to continue to do some
047work. So something that actually I was talking to an English teacher about on Friday as a place where they want to really start focusing more especially with juniors um on how to adjust that tier one that basic level of instruction for all students to help them with kind of that shift in the test and continue to grow their grammar. So, next I'm going to turn this back to Mr. Buckley, and he gets to talk about some math. Hi. >> A fun fact about the Eisenhower administrative team is all three um the two APs and the principal all are former English teachers. So, when it comes to talking about math, they make the guy in charge do it. Um which is fair. So, uh just real quickly with math, um Eisenhower traditionally has and will continue
048to have uh incredibly good math scores when compared to our peers around the state. Uh just some things we wanted to pull out and and highlight for this group today. Um what you have on the the chart in front of us right now is our current nth graders. Um so and their their growth from 7th to 8th grade on the forward math assessment. Couple key things um that we had almost 88% of our students who were in the developing category move up at least one category. So uh you talk about the great work that our teachers are doing. We're highlighting that in the English department also in our math department very much in our science department as well. um doing great foundational work moving students who are uh the neediest uh up we had in
049on the right sorry your maybe left side I don't know the one with two arrows over there uh real actual students beyond percentages 15 students uh in our math curriculum moved uh up to meeting from approaching uh in that time frame and we had 27 students move up from approaching into advanced so those are real bodies real students who are making real progress every year so it's exciting this uh chart is almost a re almost a replica of this one just laid out a little bit differently. Um, this however is every student in our building grades 7 through nine who's taken the forward exam. So this is math 7 students, math 8 students, math 7B8 students and algebra 1 students. So all of our students and over uh the this chart with three graphs uh
050is just this school year and you can see that we are lowering the number of students who are um high risk while we are increasing the number of students who are advanced. And then the chart that has five lines on the right side is just uh that same growth for those grades over the course of two years and you see that trend continuing. Uh we're moving the right students up all across the board which we're really excited about. Great work by our teachers. Just another great wonderful thing that's happening this year is that we uh are fortunate to have a small number of students who are in math intervention. Math intervention uh if you may not know is the students are identified through our MLSS MLSS intervention program uh who need intense supports uh sometimes
051in reading and sometimes in math. Um this year 75% of the students that we had in math intervention graduated out. We always talk about intervention never being purgatory. It's not a place students are supposed to go and stay there for the rest of their their careers. We're supposed to move them through and out and get them better. And our statistics this year are telling us that we're doing that. In fact, the only two students that didn't on that list, and it is a small group of students, are still making really impressive growth. Um, just not enough quite yet to graduate. So, we're not going to let them graduate until we're ready. But we have every anticipation that they will finish next year and move on, which is outstanding, outstanding work by our staff. Uh, with
052regards to the ACT, I can't show you current ACT data because we don't have it. I think Miss Springer talked about that. Um, but our area of growth, I think, in mathematics, uh, for us is our functions category. uh and what you have in front of you is the percent of students who met that CCR benchmark for functions and at Eisenhower unfortunately that number has decreased over time. So that's an area we're looking at and saying well what can we do differently and what can we do better uh what are functions uh on the ACT about 15% of the questions are functions related that's about seven to nine questions on the whole exam functions are analyze notations they are analyzing graphs they are evaluating equations and ironically if you think back to what Mr. Gerallock
053shared at the beginning uh they it's the ability to solve real world multi-step problems which is exactly the goal that our teachers identified as primarily what our sales team would do. So it's something that we're attacking holistically but also within our math department it's going to be a focus of our tier one instruction moving forward for next year and um it is our work. I'm very brief because I know Mr. Fitzgerald really likes to talk about his co-curriculars and we have a lot to celebrate in that realm as well. So I'm going to invite Mr. Fitzgerald up for his portion. Mr. Fitzgerald. >> Thank you, Mr. Bley. You also told me to be quick. So, what's it going to be? Um, Kevin Fitzgerald, director of athletics and activities uh for the last 13 years. Very
054proud athletics and activities director and what we've been able to do here at Eisenhower and um yeah, appreciate everyone's support throughout the years. Uh like Mr. Buckley said, each spring I I get excited about the opportunity to boast about our co-curricular programs and we have a lot to celebrate. Uh first off, as you probably heard, our academic decathlon team uh won a state championship, not in just division two, but had the overall highest score in all of our Wisconsin schools, qualifying them for the national competition in California, which they did very well in. Uh second in Super Quiz at the Wisconsin State Competition, first in music, uh and had 22 overall individual honors. Sorry about not clicking over yet. Um our DECA chapter continues to be one of the higher achieving chapters in our entire
055state. maintained gold status for service initiatives. Again, this year had 51 district qualifiers and 23 state qualifiers and then 13 medalists at their state competition earlier this year as well. Uh, another high achieving club is our HOSA chapter for future healthc care professionals. They've increased to over 100 members this year, which is a a big milestone for them. Um, it's a it's a co-op between New Berlin Eisenhower and New Berlin West. uh 45 state qualifiers and 14 international qualifiers for that group which continue to do outstanding work. Uh leadership and character continue to be a focus for our sports and our clubs here at Eisenhower. Uh continued our tradition of doing charitable miracle minutes um primarily during our homecoming football game. This year DECA and Change of Mind Club raised funds for the World Mental
056Health Awareness Day in honor of a former Eisenhower student. And just this afternoon, we hosted New Berlin West in a charity soccer match uh and did another Miracle Minute where we raised over $1,100 for a New Berlin West student. Um our boys basketball program continued their partner partnership and working with the athletes from the New Berlin Special Olympics. Um, our girls basketball team and our Best Buddies chapters here at Eisenhower partners with Pewwaukekey's girls basketball team and their Best Buddies chapter for a Best Buddies night earlier this season uh for our two chapters to uh get together um for friendship and fellowship and and an opportunity to connect those two chapters. And then the Eisenhower football pro program completed their annual uh volunteer project which was at the Forest Home Cemetery um which they've done
057the last couple years as well. Uh, moving on, since we last met last spring, uh, we celebrated four team conference champions, baseball won their first in over a decade. Boys soccer won their second straight. Uh, boys volleyball won their 11th title in the last 13 years. Uh, boys swim and dive won their conference relays meet. Then we celebrated seven regional championships. Uh, then we went on to celebrate two sectional championships. Baseball won their first ever sectional title, advancing them to the state tournament for the first time. And then girls cross country won their third consecutive, excuse me, their third sectional title in the last four years, which is very impressive and that fun. Um, moving on with our celebrations, as we had several teams and individuals qualify for their state championships. Uh, like I mentioned
058before, baseball made their first ever trip to the state tournament. Girls cross country earned their record- setting fifth straight trip to the state meet. Track had 15 individuals qualify for the state meet and had two top three finishes at the state meet. Girls tennis had two individuals qualify for their state championships. Girls diving had one state qualifier. Boys swim and dive had four individuals qualify for the state meet and then our cheer team were crowned state runners up earlier this winter. Uh and then last but not least, we celebrated two state championships. Uh you may remember baseball coming in here and us celebrating them. They won their first ever state championship in dramatic fashion with a walk-off win. Uh and then our dance team won an incredible 10th state title since 2017 and they continue
059to be one of the higher achieving programs in the entire state. Um so congratulations to all of them. Um uh one of the things I'm always most proud to share is our continued commitment to high participation rates and then that strong correlation to academic success. This year's participation rate is actually a little bit lower than it has been the last couple years and it's at 79% which is very very good. So about eight out of 10 students walking our hallways are involved in at least one co-curricular activity. Um students who are involved in at least one co-cur activity have an average GPA of 3.55 and then this year's average GPA for our student athletes is 3.52. Um, with my time as director as athletics and activities coming to an end soon, I can't help but
060reflect on the last 13 years and some of the things that stand out as proud achievements are, like I said before, our participation rates that have hovered around 80%. Um, when talking with my colleagues within our conference in the area, that's just as high or higher than those schools that we like to compare ourselves to. um the sustained academic excellence that we have here at Eisenhower. Eisenhower con consistently ranking in the top five of the state in a lot of different categories. Uh we won the WIA's award of excellence in 2020 and 2024 and then being a part of addition of key clubs and activities here at Eisenhower, giving students the opportunity to be connected in the school in some way, shape or form, adding to those high participation rates. Clubs like HOSA, Skills USA,
061Best Buddies, Build Team, Change of Mind, Ike Care Club, and there's so many more. Um, I think robotics was just getting going when I when I came in, but to see the amount of opportunities that we provide our students in a medium-sized school is incredible. Um, then we added the following sports to our offerings, boys and girls lacrosse, boys and girls hockey, girls wrestling, and then esports. Um, and then this is in addition to 73 conference titles, 25 sectional titles, five WI state runners up, and four WI state championships. Um, just to put it short, I it's my greatest professional honor to have served the community in New Berlin. It's been a pleasure and it has everything to do with the support of this board, district administration, administration at Eisenhower, and then of course the
062families um in our New Berlin community. It's a incredibly wonderful place to work and live. Um, and I'm going to miss it. Yeah. So, Mr. Buckley, thank you. He stole my thunder because I was going to make everybody thank him for his years of service and he did it himself which is kind of how it's been. I've had the the luxury of having Kevin for the last 13 years where I would just turn to him and say take care of that and he would do that whether it was on stage or backstage. So I just want to thank Kevin for all of his work for New Berlin. Thank you to Miss Springer, Miss Racer, Miss Creed students. Fantastic fantastic work. Mr. Gerlock, thank you for your help. And that's the end of our uh presentation
063except for the uh Morphemes quiz that we slid under your packet. So, if you could I'm kidding. Um, but take a moment if you have any questions or if there's anything we can clarify for you. We appreciate your time and and obviously uh the the length uh of our presentation went a little longer than we wanted to, but appreciate your attention. >> Yeah, I do. Um, first I want to say congrats Mr. Fitzgerald. Best of luck to you. >> Um, I do have a question. I don't know if it's for admin or for Mr. Breckley. probably could answer it. My memory is failing me. Are we moving math curriculums or we have we decided not to? >> It is temporarily on hold. Okay. >> Um the rationale behind that was um there is proposed legislation
064that's uh that's been circulating. Uh it did not make it during the current or the last legislative session, but it may be coming back shortly. So, we didn't want to adopt a I mean, we obviously are we we think we're we've been quite successful with what we currently offer just based on our results, but certainly don't want to make a decision that would not align to what the proposed legislation would be. I think we have looked at what the legislation could include and we are looking at things that we can already do without it being legislated to us. Uh and so, uh nonetheless, that's why we're holding tight at this time. >> Very good. Thank you. And then didn't uh Miss Crosby um be a part of that committee? Do you do you need board
065a board member to volunteer on that? >> Yeah, once we uh once we kind of get that back up and going uh because again we we had done a lot of research uh kind of got to a certain spot and then we hit pause. So yes, certainly I guess I would ask Janet to or if anybody is interested in in being on that math committee, please let me or Janet know as soon as you can. I asked. So I guess I'll volunteer myself. Yes. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. Appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> And at this time, our guests from Eisenhower. Feel free to uh head on out as we know we have another long day tomorrow. Uh I don't the only update that I would want to
066share with the board at this time is I I wanted to remind you of the uh federal uh student scholarship tax credit u that I had shared previously with with the board. Um, essentially, uh, the the Trump administration has developed scholarships that actually could impact public schools, not just private, not just voucher, uh, and so on. And I think part of the issue is that the media uh, the mainstream media may not fully understand what what's what's at stake. And essentially there there's talk of uh about a $1,700 federal tax credit uh possibly up to uh $3,400 for the you know for a household and that's still all kind of in in play. Um but the the issue is the the governor needs to opt into this program for our state to be eligible for
067these available funds. these available funds. Uh it's actually part of the uh part of the tax code kind of specifies the things that these that these scholarships could be used toward. Uh which does include things like special education. It includes things like tuition which we don't charge tuition. Obviously private schools do and I think that's where maybe the misconception comes in. Uh but it's also for technology. Uh, it's also for transportation and other things that uh that I know that Patrick and I if we put our heads together, we can creatively come up with ways to utilize those dollars should they be made available to us. Um what's interesting is originally this started getting opted in by many uh by many uh Republican governors, but as of late that's now taken a shift where actually
068Democratic governors are doing the same thing. They're opting in. They're recognizing that there's a potential opportunity for these dollars for public schools, not just these choice schools. um specifically Colorado and then I believe New York. Governor Hokll uh recently has opted in or has ankled that she would be opting in New York. Um, our governor has has has not opted in. In fact, in fact, has voiced his opposition to it uh because it could enhance uh opportunities for kids that do choose uh an alternate path to their schooling, which would may not be a a public school. Uh but again um I I am I am advocating uh with our legislators and I do I do know that there was legislation that was proposed. It did pass but then it was vetoed at the governor's
069level. Um and so I just want to make sure that uh our board is at least aware. Uh I do know that I will be uh working with Janet on the bringing a proposed uh resolution for this board to approve it. I I believe in working with the W Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty uh would be one of the first resolutions to be approved to be sent to the governor's office and to other legislators. Uh and you know just I was interviewed by the Badger Institute last week as it related to this uh this work. And if you just do basic math and you let's assume we have 4,500 students, you just take that. Let's assume just half of our parents, so like 2250 of our parents actually opted into this tax credit and
070opted in our schools uh for this for these scholarships for our students. That totals almost just over $3.8 million. And so we're not talking like a small amount of dollars. We're talking about a substantial amount that could make a positive impact for our students and their families. Um, and that's just assuming half of it right now. We would put on an allout blitz campaign to try and encourage as many people to opt in to our schools and this federal tax credit. The other thing that I want to mention is if Wisconsin doesn't opt in, taxpayers are still eligible for this tax credit, but they won't be available for our students and our families here in Wisconsin. So like if Mitch, you had a say a nephew in Florida, uh you could still get your tax
071credit, but now your nephew in Florida would be getting that as opposed to like your own children here in the school district of New Berlin. And so, uh, again, uh, we want to continue to push push this issue, advocate for this issue. It's an important issue. You know, we've got, uh, school districts suing the legislature right now for not having enough money. Uh, we've got school districts that are, you know, disheartened at the fact that the bipartisan effort for the the surplus dollars to go into special education and for tax relief that that didn't happen. Well, here's an opportunity for additional dollars that we may be missing out on and that would be a travesty. And so, um, again, just wanted to at least keep you in the loop as it related to that and
072there will be more to come. Uh, so with that, I would like to make the final announcement of your West student rep, Oliver. Oliver has is is uh finishing up his two-year term. Uh Oliver was highly recommended and and sought after uh by the uh West uh staff uh as being a leader at West uh both in the classroom and beyond. Uh he's done a fabulous job of of representing West and uh we certainly are going to miss you, Oliver, and but we do have something that we'd like to give to you for your two years of service in working with the with the board. Congratulations, Oliver, before you get into your last update, could you share with us what your plans are now officially? >> Yeah, so next year I'm going to be attending
073W Milwaukee for nursing. Um, actually something cool that I get to do is I get to go in as a sophomore because I took so many AP credits through the school. Um, yeah. So, I could save a bunch of money there. But yeah, um, thank you for everything. It's warm and summer is around the corner and many students are excited. AP testing was held from May 4th through May 15th and students across the school worked extremely hard in pursuits of fives and college credit. In class, many fun learning activities are happening. AP Chemistry students made candy and learned how heat changes bonds and sugar to create different textures of candy. AP Calculus students are solving numerous math problems. The solution of all will be a cookie recipe that will be baked and shared with the
074class. American film students are in their movie marathon unit where they will be watching significant movies and learn about the themes that make them popular and relevant. Clubs are preparing for new and exciting opportunities next year. NHS hosted a blood drive through the Red Cross, which was selected to be one of two in the state to be Space Jam sponsored. The blood drive raised over 80 units of blood and had great rewards like Space Jam t-shirts, Red Cross beach towels, and a pint of Culver's ice cream. DECA hosted a board crossover pizza party where the new board members were announced and all members got pizza. Best Buddies participated in a friendship walk at the Doh Stadium promoting friendship and love between all people. And sports are also heating up as postseasons are approaching. Softball and
075girls soccer are heading into playoffs this week with their seasons on the table. and boys tennis went to conference last week and have multiple singles and doubles teams heading for regionals. This will be my last board meeting as you said and thank you for all the opportunities you've given me. Thank you Oliver. Not only are we, you know, has the board given you that crystal award, we're also going to give you the rest of the night off. >> So feel free to head out if you'd like. Thank you. >> Thank you. Okay. So, now on to district reports. We have our incident report, enrollment report, the suspension report, and the donation report. Mr. Arend, please read the donation report. Uh, Orchard Lane PFC donated $5,12512 to support a staff grant, an art grant, and an
076all school play. Uh, Mark and Marjgerie Krueger Rev Trust donated $1,500 to support a school play. Popppler Creek PTO donated $1,000 to pay for a fourth grade field trip bus. Steel Sports Incorporated donated $1,000 to support the Lego League. Wisconsin Health and Physical Education donated $2,000 to purchase physical education equipment. Ronald Reagan Home and School donated $1,950 to reimburse bus funds. Uh they made a second donation for $584.91 to reimburse staff funding. The CAF America and Cyber Grants team donated $500 to support high school band activity and CNM fencing donated $7,500 to support an athletic sponsorship. Thank you to all of our donors. Then we have the consent agenda which includes notice, the approval of minutes of the board meeting of May 11th and the financial reports. Are there any items that should be pulled
077out for separate consideration? Do I have a motion for the consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> I have a motion by Mr. Helmer and a second by Miss Kik to approve the consent agenda as presented. Any discussion? Hearing none. And all those in favor, raise your right hand. Motion passes. Onto the regular agenda. We have a presentation on our digital learning and engagement update. >> Yeah. I'd like to ask Caroline to come up please along with Brandon. Uh did want to let the board know that over the course of the last year or so uh we have engaged in research uh related to the hot topic called screen time. Um the one thing that I will share with you is certainly there there are kind of mixed items as it relates to this
078work. You know is it you know how how do we you know how can we maximize uh digital tools to maximize our students learning and preparing them for their future. while at the same time there's now brain research that suggests that too much screen time may not be a good thing. Um and when we talk about screen time that I want to share a couple things. We don't have the students 24 hours a day. We have them in a limited capacity. Uh we went to the the will uh board summit uh about a month ago or so and an interesting statistic by one of the speakers said that approximately 40% of 2-year-olds have their own digital device by 2 years old. And so some of these some of the you know as we get kids
079now at four years old for 4K or for those entering at at 5-year-old kindergarten they've been using these digital devices uh already uh and and to what degree. Um, and so while we are sharing with you some of the things that we've learned and we are doing and what we're responding to heading into next year and potentially future years, uh, there's also not a lot of guidance out there, uh, on what what is it when you say less green time, like what are the suggestions? And it actually wasn't up until last week, cuz I think we did have some guidance for like 5year-olds and below, if I recall. Um but now as of last week uh Robert Kennedy Jr. has now put out some things as it relates to some some guidelines related to this.
080This is the first time that we are coming across this. What I will also say is this somewhat contradicts what Donald you know President Trump shared in his state of the union address when he was talking about enhancing AI and AI needs. I believe also First Lady Melania Trump, I think they they actually mentioned a uh an AI school where they're at at minimum uh actually taught through AI with a minimum screen time of 2 hours a day. And so, you know, what does this mean for us? That's to be determined. Uh but know that we are aware of the issues. We are researching the issues and based off of the the research not just uh you know high level research or empirical research but also internal data uh surveying our staff uh uh auditing
081how much screen time is actually occurring by grade level and so on. So um this will be of our our first presentation but know that we will be bringing this back probably at least on an annualized basis uh to inform the board of our work our efforts and also uh you know get recommendations from board members. Uh the other thing that I want to share is that screen time is not just uh like right now we have iPads and we have Chromebooks. screen time is also talking about phones and and other things. It's not and and and uh it's not just the schoolisssued devices. Uh and so we are trying to kind of pull all that together and this is our initial uh conversation related to that with the board. >> Okay. Thank you. I'm
082Caroline Hig. I've worked in the district for 11 years. >> Brandon, >> I'm Brandon Castoni, director of technology. This is my 13th year in the district. And for today's update, there's some key things that we're going to go over. We're first, we're going to define screen time within the context of teaching and learning in New Berlin. We are going to really share some specific examples of estimated student digital engagement data that Brandon has reviewed and collected as well as show you examples very concrete things and reports of what our teachers are saying and students are saying of how they're using technology to support learning. So give some real life to what that is when you look at the numbers that Brandon shows. And then also we're going to talk about action steps that we're currently
083taking and then we'll continue to take uh next year when it comes to a balanced purposeful use uh to technology for teaching and learning. And really when we talk about the educational setting, it's about how do we use technology strategically? How do we use it in high impact ways to develop digital literacy skills for our students? And well also to look at what are purposeful uses to support learning outcomes. That being said, uh when it comes to screen time, it's really about when are students and educators using digital devices and online resources to do things such as access materials for learning, conducting research, engaging in collaboration, as well as to create content to show artifacts of learning. And you'll see more examples of those later. >> Okay. So, I'm going to present two slides that
084uh represent uh digital enga engagement data over a seven-week period beginning in March and ending in April, excluding spring break obviously because that would uh kind of uh skew the numbers a bit. Um the first slide basically shows the uh average engagement across grade level bands for all of our students at all of our schools per week. So kindergarten for example averages 1.7 hours of active digital engagement per week or about 18 minutes per day. Now remember these are averages so we have outliers on either side. Um interestingly enough uh some of the key takeaways here um you have a maximum of about 60 hour or excuse me 60 minutes per week uh in grades seven through eight. Most of this is observed um internet activity on school devices at school. Um the amount of
085activity at home is somewhat insignificant compared to what the devices used at school in relation to this the total data that we have here. Um the other interesting thing that we um pulled out of the data and I I we weren't actively looking for this but it is something that uh certainly is informative. Uh we had this this is data that basically supports kind of what we're doing. um we categorized the um sites or the applications being used based on the type um across the district and the majority of usage which is somewhere around I think 35 to 40% of the total usage is for um curriculum aligned applications that the district provides access to amplify canvas epic Alex campus there's others too but they didn't make the top 20 list which you see here.
086Um the second largest group is obviously the Google suite. We're a Google district and so that encompasses everything from Google Docs to Sheets, um let's see, Slides, um email, um Google search is included in here too. And so that's the single biggest individual um data point that we have. And then all after that we of course have gamified learning and engagement which are also curriculum supported applications that try to um use gaming a gaming scenario to engage students. The other key finding here is that again this is really important to our work because it informs what we're doing instructionally from a technology standpoint and where we're moving. So, in addition to what Brandon collected in terms of engagement data, we also think it's important to keep a pulse on our teachers professional practice and working
087with our educators to report out so we can gain insight on what are their beliefs about using technology for learning, what are specific actions they're taking uh to strategically integrate it. And in order to do that, we recently did a survey broken into different grade bands. So teachers, I'm going to show you results from teachers K6, 78 and 912. And specifically, I want to show you two highlights. Uh one is how are teachers leveraging technology to support student engagement. And then also how are they leveraging it to support really developing that student understanding and looking at learning over time. So starting off with supporting student engagement at K6 we see the most uh reported use of technology is to support active learning. So at different and I'll talk about the examples in the pictures in
088a second um but also not only to engage in active learning independent skill practice and skill development. Uh being able to engage students in research using a variety of online databases. uh academic resources, websites, as well as just support whole group learning and provide feedback. And one thing I did in putting this presentation together is I actually when I wanted pictures, I didn't email people and say, "Hey, what's going on?" I actually went and walked around because I wanted to see like catch them in action like to see what what's happening. And um the first uh picture is at Elmwood where we have a student creating a math extension activity. So this is when our groups of students are able to apply what they know and then create a scenario for other students to problem
089solve. And then the other photo is from our computer science program where students are using technology to create an authentic computer science program. When it comes to seventh and eighth grade, uh we also see technology being used for independent skill development such as in that first picture uh where a student is engaging in math p practice, active learning, uh collaboration and research. So, and then also technology being used in tandem with analog activities that you can see in the picture where the teacher is having students do their graphing on paper in a science class and then being able to show and share out those examples digitally for all to see. And then um the last picture is uh some students creating study materials which we know is important with retrieval practice and using once again
090digital and analog together to accomplish that. And then for our 9 through 12 teachers reporting once again uh technology strategically being used to support active learning uh research as well as creating artifacts. So it could be anywhere from a paper to a presentation to in the photograph here I saw a student working on creating a documentary to show what she had learned in her social studies class as well as um a group of students in our library centers uh creating a collaborative research project together and presentation that then they were going to give. So we do see a lot of uh commonalities across how technology is being used and teachers making choices to use it purposefully when it comes to using technology to enhance student learning and understanding. Um four key takeaways that we saw
091in the survey. Our teachers are using technology to provide differentiated uh instruction as well as materials. uh providing ways for students to make thinking visible like you saw in some of those other examples I just showed scaffolding. So how do we help get students from the beginning um to that higher level where they need to be and then also to present uh information and also access a variety of analog and digital sources. So, when it comes to really creating that balanced, purposeful use of technology, some things that we did this year is we kept the kindergarten iPads on carts at school so they don't go home. Next year, uh, grade one will be following suit with that and we will continue to evaluate where devices are kept and stored um, as we move forward. We
092have a no cell phone or personal communication device policy during instructional time in place. And we also empower teachers with tools to be able to monitor and support um student responsible use of technology as well as continued options to share resources with families to support you know purposeful use of technology at home because some parents want that guidance. And then also making sure that we're offering direct to student learning opportunities about purposeful use of technology and balance um K12 as well as in our elementary libraries having curriculum that make sure that students are moniing critically about how are we using our devices what's healthy um pieces like that. And then to wrap up, as we continue to look at where we're going as a district with our AI enterprise plan, we will continue to think
093about what is a purposeful practical use of these technologies as as we engage in this work. That's what we have for now. >> I have a question. >> I I I'll go first. >> Okay. >> Well, I want to make some comments, too. So, um, so first of all, I want to say I do support the, uh, digital devices. With that said, what I've been hearing from, uh, mostly parents. This is the most talked about issue right now in the district, one of the top ones, if not the top one. Um, the numbers that are being quoted are much higher than what you're saying here. So, maybe it's because you're showing an average and there's a dispersion of of data. Maybe there's some outliers, but uh your data was showing roughly no more than an
094hour per day. I'm hearing two, three hours per day from certain parents. Um most of the concern is being voiced in the elementary schools, K through probably K through five, really third, fourth grade is where I'm hearing it, but I'm also hearing it from a second grade class as well. So, um, with that said, um, it it's been multiple families that have expressed that. So, the the the last thing was, um, YouTube, just access to YouTube general. There's a lot of concern being voiced of, uh, what what are the restrictions, what are the regulations, because if the kids are able to watch anything on YouTube, they're they have access to a lot of material. Um, some not so good to see. So that that's a lot of the things that have been thrown at me
095as a board member in the last um this this issue has been pretty hot for about six months. >> I was gonna >> Yeah, thank you. I I don't have a I I don't have a concern. I have I have a question. We'll just go >> the the survey that you um had the teachers complete. Were there any questions around where we can improve on our policies for classroom devices or technology and how we can support them? >> So one so I'll tell you what we asked and how I think it relates if that's a good starting point. Um, one question that we included in there in addition to just like more detail like how it's being used and how teachers are using technology was I asked them a more open-ended question of what do
096you consider a high impact use of technology for learning? What do you consider a low impact use of technology for learning? Um, because I wanted to kind see where where is their mindset at, right? And when it came to that low use, um it wasn't specifically about I think because you have teachers who are already critically evaluating when they want to use it when they don't. >> And and I can relate to that as an educator because just because you have it doesn't mean you want to use it all the time or should use it all the time. And within that question, seeing things like, you know, just having kids be on an app or device um just because or they they there were comments like that or more consuming information rather than purposely creating
097or engaging with um like in the examples like the student making the video, the presentation, like that active synthesis of what they're learning, right? And so, well, there wasn't a no one was putting comments about like, hey, you know, I don't think they should go home or stuff like that. It was really more about like what did they see as like that purposeful use? And then on the flip side of that, you know, how would they not want to see it being used? >> Okay. >> Um, >> were there any themes as far as how they wouldn't want to see technology used? A lot of times it was mo the big trends that we saw were really using technology just for the sake of using it. Not seeing it as like a value ad, right?
098Like how can we build a digital literacy skill set through say using the technology to create a presentation or using uh digital media in order to put something together rather than and that's a very basic example. Okay. um you know there's more to it or like for example computer science being able to develop and write programs and coding sequences like intention of why we're using it. >> Are you done? I'm sorry. Yes. >> Okay. Before we move on to to Mitch, I sort of want to go back to what you had asked about um the YouTube. What type of filters are there being used to make sure kids are not getting at content that they shouldn't be seeing? Well, first of all, YouTube is restricted K3 and then fourth grade through 12th grade we use
099we enforce safe filtering that Google provides. Um, and that's pretty effective. Um, there is some uh filtering that can be done. We use a product called securely for internet filtering. That's a cip compliant product and um some of it is detected and restricted there. But to be honest with you, nothing is 100% effective at um restricting content that's may or may not be, you know, objectionable. I mean, again, certain things that are potentially offensive to one person may not be to another. So, it's it's a best effort. Um, but we do have everything in place that we're required to have in place. Um, and other than outright restricting it, I'm not sure there's much else we can do to restrict content at this point. >> Go ahead. >> I'm going to stick to the YouTube
100a little bit. I mean, is it possible for us to just turn it off and allow 20 minutes or whatever whenever a teacher has that required time that they need to do that? I'd like to I mean I know that we can't block it entirely because there's some educational purposes but the fact that that was was it 10% no >> seven and a half >> I don't know that my children are doing that much on YouTube that's educational um so I if we can find a way to block more of that I think that would be a lot better or restrict it to fourth grade even I mean keep creeping up I think on that and then the Google Docs search and Gmail I'm guessing there's a bucket in there. That's anything else that I
101I don't see on here. So, I know there's a popular football game that a lot of kids are playing. Like, where do those games and stuff fall in here that are not educational? They're not Google Docs or search. Is that buried in the 30% for the Google Suite? >> No, that's Google productivity suite. Um, that sort of thing there. I I think >> once you go off to Google, there's another bucket of websites or whatever. our so what we measured was observable um activity um most of those sites are not allowed through our system however students are pretty resourceful at finding ways through um I know >> technology continues to improve and we continue to be able to see that sort of activity and deal with it um as far as the data points go
102there's about 10% so the total that you see on on the data I provided is kind of the most impactful 90 right around 90% of what we see. The other 10% would include anything else that would be access. So that also includes you know curriculum aligned tools that um may not be used that often but it can possibly include sites that are not categorized yet. Um I forget what the number is but there are a lot of sites that come online every day like thousands and um iterations of the same thing once they get blocked. um students find those those resources. So um yeah, it's probably within about the 10% remaining if there's anything that we can see that they're doing um would fall there. >> Could we get a report out on that of
103what those other websites are, what we're doing to block those so that we're not allowing those? I mean, like I said, I know it's whack-a-ole. You're going to block a new website every single day, right? >> But as you I mean, you can use AI to see the trends of what's coming in in the feeds. If all of a sudden every kid in the entire school is on a website, it's probably something that was shared that isn't that isn't age appropriate from kindergarten to 8th grade. >> Sure. Well, we continue to evaluate how we or what the data we get from what we see and we continue to try to find solutions including through our existing filter and other means through our firewall rules, through other things to restrict these sites. Um I mean that's
104it's an ongoing process. It's it's a continuous thing that we do. So >> and then the average estimated digital engagement per student is that just in school or does that in does that include outside of school as well? I was a little bit confused on that explanation. I wanted to make sure >> it said more most observed activity occurred during school hours. >> That's correct. It includes everything. But I think a few key points that need to be remembered here is um now this is anecdotal, but our students have overwhelmingly told us they prefer their own devices over school devices because of the issues trying to get to things that they want to get to. >> Y >> so um that aligns with the usage being skewed heavily toward in school. Um, I don't know
105what the percentage is off the top of my head, but again, it compared to the data that we pulled that was in school, it's it's relatively insignificant. Okay. >> And then could we also get some markers on there for what is the mean? So, I think Matt alluded to it of it's 4.2 hours for a fifth to sixth grader, right? >> But I'm assuming there's a couple kids that probably only use theirs for 15 minutes or not at all. and then you've got it. That means another kid's using it for nine hours or two kids are using it for seven, whatever it is. >> There's certainly going to be outliers both ways. Yes. >> Yeah. If we could see like how many it's a difficult data point, but and I'm open to other suggestions, but
106how many students are using it zero and then what is the mean mode kind of some of those numbers to help give us a better understanding of what is the real consumption by some students. >> Sure. We can take a look at that. >> Sure. Next. Yeah. >> Can ask him the standard deviation. >> Yes. >> Uh first of all, thank you for putting this together. I know it's a lot of work to do this audit and figure out what all this means and what's the best best path forward. Um it's a brave new world and we're trying to figure all this out together. Uh I just went through campaigning for school board and this was the number one issue that I heard from a lot of parents. Um they talk about low taxes, they
107talk about retaining the best teachers, but this was the thing that seemed to hit home most for the most number of parents. Um the numbers I heard similar to Matt were significantly higher than this. Um you know that's anecdotal and you guys did the audit so I'll trust your numbers. Um, I guess the presentation seems to focus on here's the amount of time that the devices are being used and here's how they're being used. Um, I guess how would we know if the devices actually help students learn math and reading better than just pen and paper in textbooks? like if students were really struggling to pick up basic math concepts or reading comprehension or whatever because of the devices, how would we know that? >> We So there's a lot of ways to think about
108this. Um, one, we know that there's research that shows that being able to practice, so retrieval practice and having programs that help track and um, adjust to the level of that practice is really um, not only does it help us meet that retrieval practice piece in terms of I'll use math as an example as one example, right? But there's other subjects we could definitely apply this to as well. Um, and then being able to adjust and have that student then level up to where they need to be. Or on the flip side of that, if they are below benchmark, like how do we continue to help with that practice? It one allows us to kind of make the best of both worlds using our analog sources. So, doing things with paper and pencil, but then
109having that additional practice to improve automaticity and being able to really get, you know, depending on your grade level and the the work you're doing, right? like how do you use that practice to then continue to build that knowledge and improve and take feedback. So being sometime in some cases when it comes to that type of use of technology we're able to have feedback that not only gives insight to the teacher but also then to the student about hey where where are my gaps and what do I need to do next. Um, so we know that it there's uses of technology that are seen to be very effective for that type of work. Also, when it comes to helping students think about the future and how am I able to communicate, how am I able
110to put together presentations that are succinct or visually engaging and to show and demonstrate what I've learned. Um, we know that there's that digital literacy piece that's really important as well and that without technology we wouldn't be able to do that. And then looking at what are industries using, how are we preparing students not only for the work they're doing here, but then also higher education. We want to make sure students are able to use devices in purposeful, meaningful ways. I mean, if you've ever logged on to Zoom after not using it for a while and you're like, "Oh my god, where how do I turn this on or off?" It can be kind of alarming. And we want to make sure our students um are familiar enough with technology in a sense that they're
111able to use it productively. And also our testing that we're using, you know, required to use technology for, we want to make sure that there's also this baseline of purposeful use and being able to navigate. Obviously, that's a very basic thing. Um but it's it's a relevant piece to the talk of technology in schools as well. Those are just some highlights. >> Yeah. Yeah. Matt, can you add to that? >> Yep. >> Thanks. Hi, Matt Seski, the director of elementary schools. So, one thing to add to to what they were talking about was um the supplemental programs that we use for math and literacy, there's research behind those programs that if you use them for a certain amount of time per week, students literacy and math scores will increase. And so what we do is
112we take that research and try to provide students with that time. And for the most part what you from what you saw is they should be on those devices that long for that amount of time, you know, during the week. And then we compare that to the actual usage that they do. So the research says or their their research says have kids be on there for, you know, 30 to 45 minutes a week. They should increase reading and math. So then when we look at our own usage reports and we see if those kids had actually done that, you know, accomplished this many tasks, completed this much of your pie and Alex, you know, whatever it is, well then we compare that to their screener scores. We compare that to their last unit assessment. And
113so when student support teams come together every six weeks and they're looking at students in intervention and they're looking at the students that are in targeted support and the kids that are getting extension, they're looking at the activities that they're doing to see if it's making any impact. So really to answer Matt's question is they provide what they think is going to help the students but then we kind of cross check that with their usage and then their essentially their achievement on whatever data point that we're using at that time whether it's fastbridge as web the unit assessment if it's a forward exam and then if those students aren't proficient what have they been doing and what can they do now and sometimes it's a formal intervention that's led by a teacher with you know
114paper and pencil curriculum Other times it is like Caroline said, something that's adaptive because that engages a student that meets them at their level. >> Yeah, thanks Matt. It's helpful. Um, second thing I was going to ask about is if I'm interpreting this correctly, the only change we'll be making going forward is that for K, kindergarten and first grade, the devices will be kept on the cart at the end of the day rather than coming home. Is that correct? We won't make changes for beyond that. Kindergarten did that this year. First grade will do it next year. And then we're looking at >> the following year having second grade do that as well. >> Okay. >> And then as Brandon said, YouTube is blocked kindergarten through third. We're looking at blocking it for fourth grade
115as well. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Um I guess would you have significant objection to extending that through fifth grade at this time? >> I think the hard part is that those supplemental math and literacy, they utilize YouTube and the teachers do as well. some of the some of the instructional videos are accessed through YouTube. So, we just have to make sure that we are able to get that content in a different way. So, when we essentially when we turn it off for K through three, >> teachers were able to embed some of those videos just into docs or slides and then kids could access it that way instead of on their device. So, that worked out. We just have to make sure that we're able to do that because the curriculums that we have
116purchased are utilizing YouTube in in some way. >> Yeah. Yeah. because I'm just doing the quick math. And so like grade five and six, they use it 4.2 hours a week. So say 45 minutes a day, easy numbers. Could we just keep the device at school then? And that total 45 minutes of screen time is just during the school day and they don't have to bring it home then. Um or you could say that about any of these grades if it's only, you know, less than an hour a day of screen time. Yeah, I think those are things that we continue to review and analyze. Um, again, we've been doing we've been having these discussions for about a year and then it's just, you know, navigating, you know, like what how will we lessen that
117screen time and, you know, is it is it necessary? you know, and or um finding solutions, alternative solutions like we've had to do before. I mean, I think part of the issue is like you can't just turn on access and turn it off. It's not that simple. Uh it'd be a like a living nightmare for Brandon and his team to do that. Um uh it's just it's not it's not that simple. Uh and it takes a long time for us to actually get things to where we need to get them to. But these are the things that we continue to focus on as a team. Uh we're going to continue to talk to our teachers. We're going to uh you know eventually have more conversations with our parents because that's another piece that I think
118um you know we have done but what what can we do better? And so that's just the the idea of all of this. What are we currently doing? What can we change? And what are we going to do better? And then again, like I said, we now have actual guidance that's being provided us that was not available to us until now. And then the other thing that we're working on too is, you know, what are other districts doing? How how are they, you know, are they limiting access? Are they how do they, you know, how do they rate compared to our utilization rates? So, this was an internal audit and now we have more work to do. Um, and so what are some of the other districts doing? I you know I've heard of scenarios
119where districts have just eliminated all screen time. I don't think that's a way we can go um for for many reasons. Um but at the same time again what are we currently doing? What can we address and what can we do better? Joe, do you feel like there is an appetite from our educators within the district to restrict personal devices at this point? I know that what you said that it it we do to some degree, but we do we need a more formal policy. >> So, we are forced to develop a policy and we'll be bringing that to the board. Right now at the elementary level, Matt, kids cannot utilize their personal devices. >> Correct. at all throughout the day. And then 7th through 12th grade, uh they have limitations where they can only
120use it during passing time, lunch, and study hall. Uh quite honestly, the feedback that we received when we implemented that process, was it two years ago that we started doing that? Uh it was positively received by our staff. We've not actually, you know, I've not heard and we actually just put out a staff survey, but in mo the most recent surveys that hasn't been a concern that's come up as far as additional restrictions beyond what we already have. Um, but you know, we have the new the survey actually the staff survey just went out, so we'll keep an eye on that to find out if that isn't, you know, a concern, but it hasn't uh raised a level of of that level. Are there any questions on the staff survey? >> I think there's just
121open-ended >> opportunity of like what can we be doing better? >> Okay. >> Um and so uh that's where we would find out but again nothing's permeated I mean >> to us about doing anything more with restrictions >> that and that's what kind of why we asked as well. So Caroline survey when we before we turned off kindergarten through third grade YouTube we talked with staff we talked with all the fourth grade teachers and specialist teachers about a month ago talking about fourth grade. So if if we if we're not sure if we're not getting that answer from those surveys we're going to we're going to ask you >> Mandy did you have anything? >> Hi I have a couple things that haven't been answered yet but okay. So one of my questions was actually
122going to be about that extra 10.6% on slide seven. So, when you guys define screen time and you're talking about the learning and the teaching, do you think that is it safe to assume that a group of that 10.6% goes against your definition of screen time? Like maybe the apps that Mitch was talking about? Like how much of that do you think actually is a part of that percentage that's not on that slide? If you don't know the answer, I understand that's a big question. >> Um, well, I think it's probably all of it. >> Okay. um we pretty much tried to discount background or content type delivery processes when we put the data together. So again that's observable active >> sites if you want to call it that okay that we were um >>
123taking a look at. Okay, that makes sense. And then where's the next? Okay, so we talked about YouTube and I I know that at least in the elementary schools, Safari is very hard to restrict on an iPad, but is there anything that we're doing as far as Safari and the camera on an iPad to like limit how like kids are taking pictures on their iPads? >> Um, a lot of that comes down, I guess, classroom management. Okay. And I guess teacher management. So, um, Apple Classroom teachers can look and see what every every child's screen is doing at the same time. Securely classroom does the same thing for Chromebooks. >> So, some of those things and some of the concerns that you brought up about what you've heard from other parents, >> it kind might
124some of it might come down to just classroom management and just the monitoring of it. And that's an area of growth, right? If you're hearing about it that much, then that's definitely an area of growth for our staff is to monitor it and manage it and figure out different ways to engage kids if they can't >> if they can't go to independent work and stay on task. Then we have to do something different, >> right? Okay. Sorry, two more. Thank you for bearing with me. Do we have a policy drafted for AI for the future or for now? Like is there anything >> I think we just had one approved? >> Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. and we developed that. Uh, you know, Brandon was obviously heavily involved, Caroline was involved. Um, Kelly Kowski, who's
125actually our one of our local experts in AI. >> I've also been uh involved in some of the training with AI with uh with some of the others. >> Okay. >> And so, uh, yeah, we did recently just approve a policy uh that's consistent with best practice. >> Okay. Um, and then my last one is I know that there's a lot of research talking about and we've talked about like the detriment of screen time and what it could do. Do we have any research on if we were to actually take away these devices? Like all of our testing is done for the state level on these devices. Like my concern about like not letting them have them is like how is that going to affect their test scores from a state level? Do we have
126any research on that? >> That's a concern of ours certainly. It's just the the practical pieces that go with this. Obviously, it's a balancing act, but >> yeah. And so, like all of our screeners, uh, all of our high stakes tests are done except for the actual ACT, which in some cases can be done digitally, all of them are digital. And so that is certainly a concern of ours that uh you know a device you know kind of like Caroline hit it on the head is ensuring that those kids can actually utilize it to so that when they are taking the test it's a secondary issue. It's not like a the primary issue that could actually draw down their testing because they can't answer questions because they don't know how to navigate the actual device.
127>> Right. Um, so you know, again, that's the that's the struggle >> that, you know, we're getting pulled in these polar opposite directions because of how we have to do things with maybe what we want to do. Um, certainly uh things that continue to keep us up at night as we navigate these waters. >> That makes sense. Okay. Thank you. And I just want to say like I know it's a balancing act. My daughter does come home with abundance of paper and pencil homework every day. So, I know it is being done, but I think we could all benefit from >> conversation and moderation and you know, >> yeah, I think that's the other thing is um you know, we do use paper and pencil a lot >> in the district. Um and and that
128is something that we continue to push. Um, also, you know, just providing this professional development, which is again, I guess I'm going to consider ourselves this internal task force of recclarifying expectations with all of our staff. Uh, and then meanwhile, what are we doing as a system differently to move the needle where we think we want to? So, again, I just want to clarify that this is the start of the conversation. Just wanted to update you with the work that we've that we've been doing and that we will continue to do over the course of the next several years. >> Would it be possible to get not until the end of next school year, but maybe since this is first starting? I don't It would it be possible to get like a midyear review by
129chance? >> Uh, if that's something that the board wants, we can certainly do that. >> I think we do because >> I just like waiting a full year might be a while. So maybe, you know, as we're navigating this and trying to figure it out, like maybe a midyear. Mhm. >> Yeah. I I definitely I think everybody agrees because it is such a hot topic that we probably want to come to this before a full year. >> Yeah. And sorry, I know you're not you're not done yet. I'm done. I was just You haven't heard from me yet. I was just going to You're good, Janet. I'm finished. >> Thank you guys very much. >> Thank you. I Yeah. Thank you for putting this together. And I'm definitely not one of those that says let's
130eliminate all of all of technology. Um I know I've had discussions with Joe. knows that I am supportive of of using technology as a tool for sure, especially in this day and age and our students do need to know how to use it. Um, and it does seem I just want clarification because it does seem like the examples you gave us where technology is being used in the classroom, it's more of like applying what they've used and obviously if you're doing computer science and you're putting together like a slideshow, you're going to use technology. The kids are going to do that. Um my concern is especially for the young ones who are learning foundational English language and foundational math. Are they be are are they being taught the foundations the the initial part of it
131using technology because you know from from the articles like I've been writing reading articles about this too where there's there's a lot of that neuroscience behind it too. There's something about writing that just sticks in in your mind better and students learn better sometimes by actually writing it down. just want to understand like where >> Yeah, I'll go first. >> Um, we still have workbooks. We still um there's lots of like if teachers are using it during that first initial learning mode, it would just be using the smartboard to maybe put up a text, right? The smartboard taking the place of the chalkboard. So, obviously, >> right? Because that but that also is a piece of technology >> that I know sometimes we take that for granted. It's like, oh, we have a screen. Okay,
132not there for this purpose even, right? Like that's also included in um like even one of the examples I showed, right? So making sure that kids have a balance of that because we do agree and I'm going to let Matt talk to this more that there is a value to being able to write, right? And then there is a value to also being able to strategically integrate that device or digital tool when needed. >> Yeah. So, as Caroline said, there's a there's a workbook for math and literacy >> K through six. Sixth grade is a separate thing. I can talk about that in a second. But K through K through five are utilizing paper pencil. And that's the lesson. That's the start of independent work. And then once the independent work is done, then there's
133that chance kind of for that extension either that Alex um or Redbird is the younger one for math or then Boost, which is the supplemental literacy. So everything happens at the carpet or in your desk or as a whole group or then small groups before the shift to the technology. That's typically how it is. >> Um even the even the text. So our our literacy curriculum has readers. So students have a workbook, but then they also have a reader that story that goes with that unit, you know, physical book that they're reading through. Now when they go to independent read time, they have book bins and there's a lot of library a lot of books in the classroom libraries. So that they're utilizing those, but that might be a chance where they maybe go on
134Epic and then read some things digitally, but a lot of those things are, you know, physical materials in their hands. Sixth grade, a nice thing of the literacy program is that the kids work on tabs. So tab one is some of the learning and reading. Okay, we're going to all highlight this together, use their highlighting tools, and then tab two is now start to write your introduction paragraph. Tab three is write, you know, find the evidence from the text that you highlighted and write your sentence about. So I'm I'm bu so it builds >> by tab seven. They have a paragraph written. >> So there's an example where it's it's a purposeful use, >> but that same lesson isn't a journal workbook that could be used. >> I think middle school maybe uses the journals
135more than sixth grade does, >> but it's there for kids. And there's there's kind of goes back to Matt's question. What if that's not working for those kids? Well, when those kids are brought up at these student support team meetings or just in general, hey, I'm having a really hard time with this student. Well, have you taken them off the Chromebook and just have them use the journal? We probably don't do that enough. But those are some of the conversations that happen is why aren't they engaging? And some of it's behavior management. Some of it's they can't handle that because they're clicking somewhere else or they're going to a different browser and they're their kids are very crafty with that. But then we have a journal to we could give them a journal and some
136students have done better with that. And then to your point about the handwriting and strokes, we teach strokes in kindergarten. The literacy curriculum teaches vertical line and diagonal line and that starts with them you know paper pencil and a lot of time and actually in in all those grades the independent practice is a worksheet before they go off into something else. So it's carpet time, it's table time, it's individual worksheet and then maybe it's supplementary. >> Okay, good to know. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> All right. Anything else? So then what we'll do is uh obviously we're going to probably listen to this video several time not watch it on the screen you know we're just going to listen to it. Um and then uh I think no note has been taken not only on
137your comments and your questions but then also about bringing something to the board midyear next school year. And so uh we'll pull ourselves back together and we'll be prepared to do that. I I really appreciate Caroline's work and Brandon's work. they've been uh uh kind of our key players in in this in in these efforts supporting you know Matt and Kelly and Amanda. You know because the other thing too is you know you're going to find some of these kids that are on the screen time like for hours on end that are because they they need it for because of their disability. Uh, and so, um, th those are things too that, you know, you you you kind of heard our speech path earlier say that in order for a kid to even communicate, they
138need a device and that they're literally on it as they need to communicate. So, >> did we put um the special education students, are they included in this? >> All students. >> Yeah, it's all >> it's all students. Okay. So that also could be an outlayer and skewer of time because they are on them a lot more often to speak like proquo was that that would be on there. >> Could we see or whatever they're speaking >> I don't know what they're using these days. Is it still proloqu? >> Sorry it's one of many. >> Could we maybe add that as a slide for the next presentation so we can kind of get a better idea of like if that is something that would skew the screen time >> assisted technology. >> Yeah. Like because
139that's I mean they need that. That's vital. like we can't get rid of that. But that'd be interesting to see. >> That's something we'll uh I mean again that's something that we continue to monitor. >> Uh but yeah, I think that's something that we can >> like at least how much time are they using for communication because that we can't get rid of that like that that's their voice. Okay. Thank you. >> Wouldn't it make more sense for those students to just pull them out of the data then at that point because they're going to be outliers for using it a bunch >> or if someone's not using it at all? I think that goes to that. >> It might be. I don't know. We'll have to talk about it and see. I'm not sure
140that >> I mean, we're trying to provide a >> a broad >> broad picture of all of our student body >> um and the usage. So, I >> I think that I think that initially gives us a good understanding, but I think where that data lives is you guys looking at and saying, why is third grade at this school using it 12 hours a week and third grade at this school is using it four and then where are the outcomes from it? and is it students with disabilities and what what's driving that I think is and that's you can probably provide the large data set >> and put it in a database or whatever and disseminate it to the principles or whoever. >> Yep. >> And those are our plans. >> Okay. Excellent. And >>
141I think this is probably a good time to also remind parents that if they feel their child is on the screen too much in their own classroom to first talk to that teacher >> about it because like you're saying it could be classroom management >> or go to the principal as well >> need it. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. >> Right. >> Okay. So let's see. We only have then left action item discussed in close session. Do we have a motion? >> Yes, it is. Mr. Zalinski. >> Mr. Zalinski. >> Move to approve the uh employment performance and compensation matters pertaining to staff as presented. >> Second. I have a motion by Mr. Zinsky and a second by Miss Peterson to approve. All those in favor, raise your right hand. Motion
142passes. Do I have a motion to Oh, wait. No, not yet. Hold on. I'm reminding you future meetings and dates. So, they're held the second and fourth Mondays beginning at 7 o'clock p.m. here in the conference room E. Um, so our next one is June 8th. Um, I will not be here that evening. I'll give you the heads up on that. And then June 22nd. And then we have um other important dates to remember. June 12th is the last day of school as well as the Eisenhower graduation. And June 13th is the West graduation. So now, do I have a uh motion to adjurnn? >> So moved. Second. >> I have a second by I'm sorry, can we guys are too fast for me? I have a motion by Mr. Helmer and a second by
143Miss Kik to adjurnn. All those in favor, raise your right hand. Motion passes. This meeting is a