Work Session - October 15, 2025 - 15 Oct 2025

001{Music} Getting thing. You need. Me? You need. To stay. Up to. Time. Text me. My site of my. It's a nightmare. It's. That's the healer that you write up. I definitely like. You guys have to go back to 2022. I'm trying to focus on. And so I don't. I just. Lost you. I wasn't able to quarantine, so that's. Over a. That's what we just get out of. Here, Melissa. I'll be ready to go. Okay, let's get started. Thank you all for being here. Good afternoon. The time is a little past 4 p.m.. It's October 15th, 2025. In accordance with your consent decree electronically. That I'm coming. Director OTT and I saw Director Huber and the bankers here, so they should be joining us. All seven board members in attendance in person. And, Superintendent Garland Stevens

002are presenting as well. So the work session on 20 topics today, it's going to start with, the Unified School Improvement Plan. And, the school that is in front of the board, is Rogers Elementary School. We are going to look at that unified school improvement plan. It does. And I'll turn it over to Superintendent Gall in a minute. It's my understanding that the initial plan was to, appeal the. The, designation of the school in the, school Performance Framework. After further analyzing the data, it was decided that, not to pursue that option. Superintendent Gall, I'm going to turn it over to you. And I think Rogers. Administration staff. Who are in Jennifer's here, and Sarah's here as well. And I have David here to explain a little bit why we're late. Because we had to put in

003a request for review. I'll let David cover the technicalities behind that. I just want to give my strongest vote of confidence for Jennifer on what's happening in Rogers. We went earlier this year, and I actually left with this incredibly powerful moment of seeing KLA be, briefed with consistency, not just, I should say brief taught not just within Rogers, but across the district. And I remember leaving, I think I was either with Nicole or Carol that day, and I was like, it is the first time I saw us bring a curriculum to bear. And I believe that was your third grade, your third grade team. And it was great. And that was my introduction. That frog and toad is still and, and sets of curriculum, as I remember reading, pretty famous, reading Frog and Toad to

004my kids. And so with that, I'm going to ask, David to start us off on why we're here late for him. Yeah. So thank you. As you can see on, on the screen, just a really quick overview of the request to reconsider process. We utilize Devil's K2 data. The idea behind that being like, taking into account the foundational aspects of students coming into the tested grades of grade three. So utilizing K-2 devolves. It requires a 95% participation minimum. In each grade level. And for achievement and growth. So it's kind of laid out in a similar. Way that the SPF is breaking out achievement and growth individually. The gross, Adds the extra caveat of requiring a beginning of year assessment and end of year assessment for the student to be counted into the 95%. And so

005what happened was, after, go through the worksheets that CDE gives us to, do the initial. Threshold of participation, Rogers did not need that. I want to emphasize that, it really becomes a function, an indirect function of small school and high mobility as well. Because they didn't meet that 95% participation rate in growth, meaning simply there wasn't necessarily to the two assessments. Part of the kid on the, you know, on the on the back end, it was like about a division of about 4 to 5 students. So at a small school. 4 or 5 students, really all five for those schools matter. In any school. But in this case, it really affects it to get both of those growth scores. So, the real takeaway here. They did not meet the threshold, not out of. Lack of

006effort. And lack of giving levels or utilizing levels to. Its full potential. It was simply, was was really a function of not having two scores. To measure growth on and not do not meeting the 95% participation. So any questions on that. Happy to follow up with anybody offline. But I'll hand it over. So so what you're talking about is basically the double score we didn't have. Yes. You're allowed to use tibbles as another point of measure, but due to the small size of the school and the mobility within that grade, the Devils didn't qualify for that number. The number that we saw for Dibble said. Oh, totally invalidates our ability to get the extra couple of points. But when then digging into those numbers of the kids that actually took it in the fall and

007in the spring that became a non entry to the request to review. Okay. All right. Well hello. Good afternoon. I've got some teachers over here that were able to step out, but most of my teachers are doing parent teacher conferences right now, so they couldn't be here. But I do want to give them all a huge shout out because they are working really hard and doing a really great job. So thank you. I'm Jennifer Morrell, I'm the principal at Rogers. This will be I'm going into my third year there, and I snapped this picture early in September and was walking up, to school in the morning. And I had actually been kind of following that hot air balloon for a while. And as I was walking it, it was like the perfect shot right there,

008because that not only does it look like like our school and our emblem there, but it it really as you walk in our doors, you'll see, hot air balloons painted on the walls and the sign that says total as possible, which means anything is possible. And I really feel like we are set up this year to meet that, that goal of what we want to meet and that everything is possible for our students. And so I wanted to share that. Picture of our kiddos in action here. Last year we were, very fortunate to really get our curriculum, unified, meaning that, for the first time since I've been there, we had curriculum in both English and Spanish, and we are in our third year, a pathway program at our school. And, having our curriculum really, just

009aligned. It has been really a big, big thing for us this year. All right. So 2425 data, where are we now? You can go ahead and go to the next one. Came into this year feeling pretty devastated by looking at this data. Typically we over the past year that I've watched before I got there, we've been read in the top. But where we shine is in our growth and it's been green all in every subcategory. Unfortunately, this year we did not make the growth. And, we are we are, you know, just far away from where we need to be for both Ela and math. And we own that data, and it's unacceptable. And it's definitely, something that's right in the, in our forefront as we're moving forward of how, how are we going to make

010that different for next year, this this year. All right. On this slide, as you can see, a 2023 green is where we want to be performance school. We went up slightly in 2024. And then we took a pretty big big dip last year. And once again that dip is because we didn't make the growth needed to to get the points to be a performance school again. 50 is that magic number we want to be at and to make a year's growth. But really as a, as a school, we want up in the 60s. If possible, because we know the skills gaps that many of our students have are very large. And to to close those gaps, we really want to way above 50. So in reading we were at 46 or for four points below

011that 50. And in math we were three points below that 50. And if you look to the side, we have a teacher one, two and three. And this is our fourth and fifth, fourth grade teachers. And the reason that was brought up as such a an interesting point is with growth, it is really about our fourth and fifth grade teachers and then those students and their data. And if you look at teacher three in particular, you see an 11 there. And that really brought everything down. And and to be honest with you, we were tracking data, heading in that direction, but not nearly where we seen that. And so we would have made changes a lot sooner had we been tracking data to show that, that we would have those kinds of results. And so

012we have put things into place. In fact, we are doing star, monthly rather than three times a year as a progress monitor and then other progress monitor pieces as well, so that, so that we can in more surprised that we got those kind of results will not happening yet and and so once again, we really want our, our medium growth percentiles to be up in the 60s. And that's what we're, we're going to push for, for this upcoming year. And I talk a little bit about coaching up here. New teachers. We can say that that teacher three is no longer with us. Yes. That is true. But yeah. Talk about. Yeah. And, and the new teachers to make sure we don't have. Absolutely. And my partner might be coming in here with my notes that

013I left on my desk. So, you know, so, so far so good. But we'll, we'll try to make sure I remember every piece that I wanted to hit. So thank you. Sarah. Yes. The teacher, teacher three is no longer with us. And, you know, I think we we've really had to think about how do we make sure that we don't end up with this again? Already this year, we've got some really amazing new teachers. One is, teach for America teacher that we have in brand new, really young, so energetic. So we ended up with a really tough, tough group. And almost immediately we started reaching out to our our school embedded coach for support, I think. Oh, good. Maybe I won't miss much. Thank you, Mr. Green. That's our assistant principal. We reached out to

014and got coaching started almost immediately. Just knowing that we have to get procedures in place and in fact, our coaches with us. Jen, can you can you wait? Yeah. She's amazing. But we also realized, you know, that was kind of like a tier two, but we wanted to also add a tier three because her learning curve was so deep coming from Washington into Colorado and and all of it. And so very quickly, I have to say, reached out to, to my, my group. And within the next couple days, we had a district embedded coach in there as well. And so she had tons of support wrapped around her. And along with another one of our newer teachers. And I feel like that shift of being able to do that as a principal this year is

015and doing it early, not waiting until, you know, it's it's March. We're worried, I think it's going to change the trajectory of that classroom and so, I am very thankful for that. In this area, you know, we always want to grow the green, shrink the red. Oh, I was very happy that we grew the green a little bit, but we also grew the red. And so that's unacceptable. And, we need to look into our subgroups a little bit deeper and make sure that what they are getting for not only core instruction, but our tier two and tier threes are serving them better because, and I'm not just saying our subgroups are down there, but we've we've really got to, ensure that that doesn't happen again. All right. This is our star and Eli. And, it

016is making a, an upward slope over time. But we'd like it to be more like this for, for to meet the achievement and where we want to get to. One of the things that we're doing, we've already kind of seen that that group that we saw earlier, they had an 11 median growth percentile. We're seeing them struggle in math in fifth grade. And so starting last Monday, this first semester, we decided to use the strengths of our teachers. We have a new fifth grade teacher in from Texas who was a math interventionist. And he knows math back and forward. And so we made the move to departmental eyes right now starting Monday, so that, that teacher can just focus on math with all of our fifth graders and then our other teacher is focusing on

017reading, and we're already seeing some good results of that even in four days. We're thinking that was really a time. And so making moves like that right now, as we see things come up, are essential and, and making sure that that line goes up faster in the future. Right. So this is our five key climate and culture. And and you'll see in 2023 there's a lot of gray. And it's gray when there's not enough data. So the yellow part on 2023 is what the students thought. And then in 2024 you see again, our students were pretty happy and we were all green and ambitious instruction and supportive environment, which I'm extremely proud of. But once again, we were in gray and and then in 2025, we are colorful, which is wonderful because it means that

018that the teachers gave us feedback. And one of the things going in as our principal I really wanted to build was trust and and a lot of the feedback I had is that teachers don't do surveys here because we don't trust what will happen with that data, or that something might happen by being honest. And so, you know, we are just thrilled to have data because we can do something when we know how teachers feel about their environment. It's hard to read their minds and change things without that. And so we we once again, we're really happy to to have that data. And we're looking forward to doing it again this year so that we can see how we're improving. And just. All right, I, I talked a little bit how how important coaching has

019been. I think, you know, at the beginning of the year, it wasn't quite ingrained in our school as much as it needed to be, for sure. In fact, we we really relied on our, our embedded coach to do the coaching. This year, both Jeff and I are coaches as well. We have Claudette coming in into coach and help with DLI. And so instead of, you know, all of our teaching teachers getting one coaching, the cycle we've already done or we're getting ready to go into cycle three where all of our teachers are getting at least one kind of touch point or some kind of coaching. And, and it's made our culture much more collaborative. And, and it just, it's made it so that it's safe to have everyone in your classroom. I what I really

020love is somehow, magically, our preschool teacher is now going and into kindergarten, and they're they're giving each other peer observations and some coaching feedback. And so it's growing in a really positive way, which is also going to really support our student achievement. All right. This is our our actions and response. Our our missed one is all about high quality instruction instruction and really elevating that rigor. I think it's incredibly important. As a teacher, I like to see it in action. I like to go into other people's classrooms and see what does it look like, what what is best practice. And oftentimes when we get, you know, new resources, it's just a piece of paper, right. And and so to go and see it modeled is is huge for especially for our newer teachers. We are

021really lucky to have a model teacher in our building. Her data back there when you saw a 63 on the median growth percentile, that was her data, we know, and we picked her brain. What did you do? Why did you get that? But she's here right now, by the way. And so and what she said it was absolutely true is that she does all the components. She doesn't skip things. She keeps her pacing right where it needs to be. She has a timer. And so she has become a model teacher for not just our teachers to go watch her, but a lot of, external teachers are coming in and watching her. And it's just it's making our environment even better. And and she's not only math, but she's really strong in clay, too. So we're

022doubling down on also with our primary students. We're a school that had when I first came, I think we had the highest number of read plans in the district. And a replan means you're two years behind. And a lot of those were in our upper grades. And to me, it I mean, when kids are at the point where they're two years behind, it's like, whoa, what are we doing? Unfortunately, we're spending all our time intervening. And so what we're really trying to double down on is making sure our kindergarten, our first and our second grade students before they get to third grade are at grade level so that we're not playing this catch up game and they're not in a hole. And I will tell you, one of our kindergarten teachers who's been a kindergarten

023teacher for a long time at Rogers, we were a pilot for KLA last year, and at the end of the year, she made this remark of, wow, this is the first time I have kids coming out of kindergarten that are reading this high. And so once again, that says to me that instead of going into first grade, we're putting kids on read plans, we are going to put less kids on read plans. And the ones we are on, we can focus on. And then for our third, fourth and fifth graders who currently have that gap, you know, we're going to we're going to continue to try to shrink that gap. But in the years to come, we're not going to have all that. And I think the curriculum as well as because it is, articulate

024comes in English and in Spanish. We call that caminos. And once again, it's unified in that we we have it in both languages for the subject and everybody's doing it. So it's going to pay off that. Oh, you did okay. Student agency is growing quickly in our school. Student council. I had the teachers, ask for two student council members, and we met with them and we asked them to go back to their classes and talk about what's going really well at Rogers that you always want to have happen and then what's not going very well. And then they brought back their top two things, and we brainstormed on what they would be. A lot of suggestions about school lunch that we have control over and don't have control over, but it was really, really fun.

025They loved it. They love they love a lot of they love our teachers. That came through very clear. They focused on bullying and people messing up the bathrooms. So our next step on that is I'm going to put that into their hands and ask them, how are we going to solve and make it a problem that that they're solving and taking back to their class. And so putting kids in the driver's seat of their education is incredibly important. Or having all students track their own data, making goals or having student led conferences. Tonight, which is new to Rogers. And so when kids own their learning and are doing the cognitive load of their learning, that's going to result in higher achievement. It's just. All right. And this once again, we're going to use those model

026teachers and be in each other's classrooms. I think for Jeff and I this year, we're laser like focus being in classrooms. We're doing admin walks every Monday with different points of view. We built capacity to be able to deal with some of our attendance and our behavior issues so that we can be in classrooms more and focused on what's happening every day. And so with all that, I really think the sky's the limit for our students. And that's all I have. Any questions? Okay. Hang on. Okay. You have anything to add? We're good. Okay. Did I hit everything. I even needed? To have. So the student led conferences that you just. Talked about, what. Does that look like? And are your conferences at 100%? Well, they we're going to call and call and call and

027call. We did offer them as a WebEx in person or a phone call. And so our goal is 100%, so it differs. And I gave teachers the autonomy to decide what that looks like. They also spoke to each other a lot about what is that going to look like here and there. And what we're doing is having the students show their parents their data and how much they've grown already, and where their what their next goal is going to be. That's what I've seen the most. And, you know, this is my classroom. This is the work we have beautiful art on and, and work on the wall and just touring their parents around to show them just to be proud of what they've done so far. Partnership. That's awesome. Good for you. Thank you. You're

028welcome. Any other questions or comments? I'll come to you to. So, how is math tracked in grades k three? And can you talk about the coaching and feedback? Yeah. As that relates to that and it seems like there's is a two cycles for all teachers quarterly or with the originally that's where we were. But we've found that we can do with Jeff and I able to go in there. It's it's we're doing more than that. And so at a minimum two per, per quarter. But like I said, we're already on cycle three and many of ours have had even more than that. Three math. We're using, our, our resources that we have, Eureka. They have beautiful exit tickets. They have, and if mod, they have quizzes, they have those things that we are having students,

029take and then the teachers are gathering their data and then we're looking at the data. Please. And so we're using that kindergartners a little trickier. And I don't know that we completely found the answer to that. But it's something we're definitely talking about. We are bringing work samples and comparing them. And right now they're, you know, the counting. So it's pretty, you know, they're, they are buying those things. But that's something we're definitely having conversations about. Data collection in kindergarten is a little more observation, right. Yeah. Yes. Gold goldfish. Yeah. Yeah. But then, if you use it bringing that data, teachers are bringing that data to their PLC meetings to analyze. Like what what have kids learned and then how are they adjusting the either the intervention or the next instruction to meet whatever that

030gap is? Or if kids already know it to, to, help them be going. In that one. Yeah, I think that's excellent. Things are being tied to the standards. Yes. Is that being tied also to the 2025 agency tool? And then there's like a I saw an element of peer observation in that as well. So I just had some questions about like what does that look like. Well absolutely. And and one of the things we really, as a team, as our instructional leadership leadership team worked on, was really being as we're building this culture of trust is being able to go watch each other, and especially when we bring exit tickets to a PLC and we're like, how did how did you get those results? What did you do? And come watch me teach it. And

031so some of those things are happening, grade levels and teacher to teacher. And I miss anything. Okay. I'm sorry if I did. Thank you. Petra. Thank you. I was curious about coaching frequency as well, so great question. Current attendance trends. Are you noticing any differences that we put a ton of time and energy into attendance? And, our overall attendance has gone up the area that has us worried, is our chronic absenteeism, which is missing ten days or more. And that's the area that, I'd like to get, like a, a group together to help figure out. I know we're not the only school, but we're at 46% of our students are chronically absent. And when you're not at school, if you miss ten days a year, you've been to ten days of instruction. And and so

032and that that has been kind of the trend over time in Rogers. And so it's something we just we've been working on different letters we're sending home, being proactive, offering any services we can possibly offer, wraparound services. And so that's something we have not completely figured out. But we're having that problem and trying to see what we can do and what we what we do have control. And also we actually. Just talked about this this week, really trying to look at like, I mean, there's a lot of kids that are chronically absent, but how do we how do we understand their story and what is causing them to be chronically absent to support that family and the kid to in a way that helps address what that problem is? If a kid is sick all

033the time, like, okay, do they do they have to go to the doctor? If the cost of going to the doctor is a barrier to coming back to school, maybe we work with them on like what is too sick for school and what is not too sick for school. Just as an example. Now every story is very different, but we need to dig into each story and and see if we can help. Kind of really to note, the my main note to myself is to ask you about the current culture and climate trends, but really, I think the team you mentioned in you said been in the action plans. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah. Who's on it in your school and what resources you're using? Yes, we have two

034major teams, an instructional leadership team, and then we have this climate and wellness team, and then a little sunshine team that is on the other side of that, which is really important right now. And our climate and our wellness team, we talk about, events we're going to have coming up for parents. You know, that's a big part of it. What we're going to be doing for children is far like we just had, our Hispanic heritage, night, our fall fiesta. We finally called that. So it's doing some of that planning because we are a title one school, but it's also looking at our overall culture for kids. And what can we do to really have a positive learning environment environment for all students, for example, the team, really wants to point out when kids are doing

035a really good job and so talking and we have to give Toby a shout out for that. He talked about how he does Golden, these golden tickets. And so we decided, you know, we're going to start giving these golden tickets out. And then we added, Roger that, the Wildcats that you saw a picture of who's our new mascot. And, we have these assemblies in the morning about. Okay, our word of the day, our word of the month is break and launch it from there with morning meetings every day. And then when we see kids carrying it here, choose your golden ticket. And then we celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. So they come up with different things in the building that we can do. Some of them are working on, like right now we're doing a step challenge

036as a school and and how we can work on self-care. As a staff to, to also take care of one another. I think. Oh, did you wanna know about instructional or do I want to touch on an issue like, okay, okay, I'm running out of time, but I didn't know anybody else had any other questions. Well, and that that team is looking at data and that team is looking at, our practices. We are doing a lot of kick up, which is giving us a lot of reports that we will then take to the instructional leadership team and look for trends and then ask the questions of what support is needed and what are we not seeing, and what do we need to do for PD to support teachers? Great. Thank you. Any other questions? I

037just want to give a shout out for your, he's going to request of all forms. Thank you for coming to your community. Really showed up. I believe he started, serving at five. An hour later, people were still in line. I think you had everybody. In the community there. And I want to give you a shout out because as the kids. Were running. Around on the stage performance area, when it was time for them to take a seat, your voice came over. You had a very conversational tone. They all heard you and they all went back to their parents. I just as well. This are going to have some magic and we we utilize all the time. Looking at your five year and their school. Culture, it's easy to see. That building that trust will lead

038to that interaction and that. Opportunity to cut short the chronic absenteeism, because I know this is a place where they want. To be, and this is where their friends are. Yeah. And it makes it easier. So Thank you for coming to you. That was what I was excited. Yeah, they were good tacos, too. I thank you. I was looking at my calendar. I think the board got an invite for a medieval festival that's coming up on Friday. Okay, great. I just want to. Confirm that that's. Yeah. Awesome. I feel free to dress up if you would, but I. Know that's up to the board members if they, want to. But thank you for the invite. That. Now, hopefully, some of the board members, based on their schedules, will be able to stop by. I don't

039see any other questions. Thank you for coming. Thank you for something like that. And also owning the data that is there sometimes, on self-reflection, you identify what are the areas that you need to address. And, this is not something new that I'm saying to you there are other principals in the audience have the beat up the same message. You being a first year principal and the first, first, first, not a first year principal. I meant like your school is first time on the watchlist. It's really imperative that you get off that watchlist on that first year, as opposed to because the process becomes really convoluted and much more challenging after the first year, everything that you presented that aligns with the district vision and the direction that we are going in. You've got teacher one

040year, I think it's 2 to 1. That was identified. Teacher one, by the way, is no longer anonymous. And. She would have called. It out if I had it. We're really proud of it. There's a great social media piece to on this or so. If you haven't seen that on our Instagram and Facebook, please can go see it. It's good celebration of all the key things that are happening. Keep us informed about how things are going. You talked about that, the chronic absenteeism, you have parent teacher conferences going on, and it's, a point in time where you can emphasize to the parents, especially if you are expecting 100% engagement with parents, to let them know how critical attendance is for their students. We need parent support in this. We can make this happen if these

041parents are not supporting kids, coming to school. And the last question I have is more direct to to, David out here. David, that essential survey since it was presented out here, is that going at this time during parent teacher conferences. The parent like went out. This week. Okay. And so that's being communicated and used across costs. There was some issues last year and so we had to wait till spring. I'm glad that it's going up early to stem it out. So hopefully schools are taking advantage of this during the parent teacher conferences and encouraging parents to fill that out as they come into our schools. Thank you guys. Thank you students that. School superintendent got to make you an opportunity to again. I want to throw in the one other. Thing about. What she's. Media.

042She's. In Texas to be able but. This matter doctor Reynolds was a teacher for many claimants and she applied for grants and. To go to the extent. That they are okay. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the middle school accountability update. The board has been having this conversation, exactly a thousand sessions, that this is the next step in the process, that the board is getting an update on. Where the district is. Superintendent call, I'm going to hand it over to you. We had, committed to the board last year. We appreciate the board leaning in strongly on, the desire for us to codify some of the ways that we are approaching the challenges that really start to amplify that middle school. And we're excited to bring forward the work today. I

043have, Darren Joiner lead the work, and I have, two of our strongest leaders, our executive principal and, Stephanie Leisure and our Jenkins Jaguars. And turning to give, which we will I'll give the selfless plug be doing our groundbreaking tomorrow. Yes. 10:00. So please join us there for the new academic. Darren, over to you. Thank you very much. So we want to jump right in. Just as a quick reminder, how students enter our system and then the supports that we provide our students, really excited for the work that we did last spring over the summertime, to establish the system, you'll hear in a little bit from, Principal Leasure, Principal Koski, the, case studies from our staff, from our students about what that experience feels like on their end. But I want to get into the nuts

044and bolts, some data, and then we'll turn it over to them, as the criteria is very simple. To build it out and to start the system this year, students have to enter, with two out of three criteria. So grades and F and math or Ila not end, but an F in math or Ela growth. Being below 35 SGP in staff or Ila in proficiency in star, Ela or math being below approaching. So a really high bar, I would say, which is where you'll see in the data a little bit, why we had such a large percentage of students, activated in the system to start the year. The support strategy is very simple, that when a student enters the system, we have a responsibility and obligation to intervene sooner than what we've done in the past.

045So on September 10th, we, did a data pool, to see how many students, meet that criteria. Two out of three. Really? At the September 10th, point of the year, we're really looking at grades because we've already had our star, proficiency and, and growth data from the previous year. And then at the end of the quarter. So our student scores just recently received their most recent report, for the end of first quarter, those check ins happened, for a student, every week, at a minimum, they're focused on work habits, organization data and goal setting. And then as a student continues in the system, the supports, will ramp up as far as frequency and the type of support that we provide. Other supports that we provide students could be in peer mentoring programs, customized class schedules to make

046sure that they have the right support in their classrooms, could be tutoring opportunities, and then encouraging participation in extracurriculars, for that extra layer of accountability, but also that sense of belonging and connectedness to their school. So let's get to the data. 34% of our students are qualified using that criteria, to start the school year. So as you can see there, 1368 students out of our 4019 students qualified. According to the September data pool, 133 students, a 12.84% of our students who started in the system did exit the system at the end of first quarter. You might ask yourself, well, how were they able to exit already after first quarter grades? Right. So some of the students who were in there for grades and one of the Start criteria, if they ended up with no F's

047in math or Ela, they were able to exit the system. This number will dramatically increase as far as the number of students, having an off ramp and exiting the system. When we come back to it at the end of second quarter. And the reason for that is, because of the middle of the year star assessment, where they have the next opportunity to showcase their growth and or their proficiency. So the system is built on board students with those weekly check ins and then exit them, or when they do exit, the frequency, goes from once a week to every other week. So even when a student leaves the system, we're not just saying that. Congratulations. You're doing great. Good luck. We understand that it still takes time for them to establish those habits, those good routines.

048We just, we'll we'll check in with them less frequently eventually, after second quarter, of being independent, they will be on their own if they continue to demonstrate success. Having exited the system. So at this time, I want to turn it over to, to Steph. She's going to talk through some case studies. These are anecdotes from staff, from students to really get into the experience and what our staff and our students are saying about the middle school, middle school accountability system. So I'm going to give you a second, just if you wouldn't mind taking a look, because I'm not going to read for you, but if you would just take a look really quickly and then I'll kind of summarize, but then give you a few extra anecdotes as well. So I think what you see

049in these first two, in these first two pieces are that that students are appreciating that there's someone consistently. Checking in with them extra than their. Than their teachers, and they appreciate that there's someone that's consistent on a weekly basis, checking in with them. And, whether they whether they appreciate it or not. We had a we had a bunch of kids in tears. They got tears now. So, so look, here's the thing. Here's what's not bad. There are kids who have good grades, but they don't meet proficiency levels. They don't. They're not they they. I'm thinking of one young lady in particular who does. She's lovely. She is great. But she's she's below. She's below, approaching and she's hasn't met growth. So she's in there. And the impetus for her has been. And I talked to

050some of my teachers today, one of my seventh grade teachers, and she said, you know, what's really helped with this is that it has it has looped some students in that aren't typical intervention kids. So they're not in they're not necessarily set to certain intervention classes. But but they they are recognizing that they, they, they have to get to proficiency at some point. They need to get there. And so she's as, as, as hard as it is to hear that sometimes that you're not there. It's brought in. Okay. So how can we how can we get you there? So she, the teacher and this young lady, like, we encourage your. Hey, we're going to be here with you for through this. You're. This is not forever. You can earn your way out of this. And

051it doesn't mean that you're a bad person. We love you, but we also want to make sure we're pushing you forward so that from also from that teacher perspective, she just said, I feel like they will actually take star more seriously. We'll know specifically what they can do because she said in teaching supported classes, a lot of my students, whether they whether they will ever get to that proficient proficiency benchmark or not, they can grow. They should be growing. And a lot of it is because of a lack of, I'm always going to be here. So she's excited. She thinks that this is creating like a little jumpstart in how they and how they're moving forward through even their assessments. I want to add one day, I think that this really demonstrates what Steph is

052saying is we have gone from such a passive experience for our students to an active, experience for our kids where they actually they they care about their they were educating them about what these numbers mean, why it's important to them for their future. And so when she talks about these tears, there's this ownership that they have never had to experience before because we never had any intentionality around it. I shouldn't say never. In recent years, we haven't had the intentionality around it that we really needed to have. Right. And so now the adults are wrapping around these kids. We're providing them with meaningful conversations and goal setting, around their data. Right. Next. Yeah. Next one. Just take a quick this is a bit about like numbers and then sort of like then. Some student like

053how they're feeling about the. Check ins as well. These case studies highlight just slightly different experience where, where, teachers and counselors are seeing that. Students are coming a little bit. Better prepared, like they already know what questions what the check ins look like. So already are ready to go with what their grades look like, and are also adding some test taking strategies or coping strategies that sort of thing for for how it works. In school and then in school and in your progress monitoring situations. And then, that students are just having they're, they're starting to experience just a little bit more success in how to do less. Or my action plan helps them help helps them proceed. We were similar in in ours. As far as our numbers are concerned. We have a lot of

054students who are in our system because of star, and their proficiency levels. So we had 15% who also earned their way out, because of because of their grades. And expect to see that number dramatically. That percentage dramatically increase and exit again. After. December after the December testing window. But we also are interested we've always been or has always been a school that schedules students into intervention classes based on their, on their data. So. Not only that, but we also. I'm excited to be able to, we are piloting a different online support. Mr.. Always talks makes fun of us for asking for something new. And we asked for something new and we're piloting something different. And it is very structured that students have a, have an individual. Path and it's related to star. So it will

055it gives students individual practice based on what their scores look like. So excitatory to see what that data looks like as well. So I think really the coupling of all these will really help to we'll hope to see that we get students on the right path. And moving out of the. System. First of all, thank you for having me here. When we take a look at what we're doing, what I introduced is a the staff, they they clapped, applauded and cheered at the start of the year. They were super excited about this program. One there's the accountability piece, but there's also the support piece as well. Right. We're providing students with the skills to be successful, whether it's executive functioning, whether it's organization, whether it's how they study or take notes. So what's happening through

056this process is we're identifying the students that truly need that support. Because just as Stephanie share, there are some students who may have not tried on star and what's going to happen. We're going to weave those students out because as you see in quote number two, some of those students simply don't want to be there and they don't want to be with Tony Jakosky. As awesome as I am once a week to have a conversation about their goals. So what we're going to see over time is we're going to see a shift of students that really need the support in the program. And this is a structured, intentional program where we're going to identify who those students are and provide them with the supports that they need. So this quarter it was great. Next quarter

057it's going to be 100 times better. And we're really identifying those kiddos that need support. And what's happening is the students who maybe have low self-esteem about a grade of thought. They weren't able to succeed or perform with the supports they're funding. Oh my gosh, you know what? I didn't think I could do this in language arts. As you look at the second quote and they're performing and it might be relative to their ability, right. They might go from an F to a D. But with that support from adults, we're helping them grow. And it's creating a positive feedback loop. Okay. You know what? I can do this and what we're doing through some of our programs as well as we're doing some pre teaching to help them be successful and continue that loop. In

058some of the cases, you know, there's those external motivators and their internal and intrinsic motivators as well, whether it's moving off of the program, and in some cases, as you look at the VIP passes of one school doing that, we're doing different things like Jac parties where if you're showing us growth, achievement, doing better in classes and getting your homework and we're going to support you in that process and recognize the work. So we're super excited about what we're doing. Kid kids are recognizing they do have the ability. They're able to do this, and they appreciate the support. And as time goes by, we want to see kids move off, and then we can hone in on more specifics for those individuals. And when we see scenarios where maybe we're not something on something. Well,

059as a system, how do we incorporate that as a tier one strategy in classes across the board? So we we've been hugely excited about what we've been able to do, with this at the forefront and intentional, we're doing it right. Sometimes what gets measured gets done. And this is the work. Like, this is what we can do and how we can support the kiddos. So we're super excited. Know. So reflections from this first quarter of implementation, staff are adjusting to their roles and where they fit, into this system of accountability, from admin to counselors, getting in and teachers as well. But getting into, I guess the right rhythm of, you know, how do you how do you feed the system and make it, better for kids. So from the teacher role, you know, many schools

060have intentional mentorship programs that have started as a result of the system that didn't exist before. And now we have kids with trusted adults having meaningful conversations around their academics and their future counselors being on the proactive side of things or the reactive side of things when it comes to goal setting, the executive functioning skills organization, really just helping kids to engage in conversations that they may not have ever had before, with their parents or anyone at school. You know, you got three missing assignments, this development action plan this week for how you're going to get that not only caught up, but how you're going to stay caught up with this week's work as well. Right. Things that we probably took for granted as kids, because of our support systems that we had that are

061not all of our kids have, you know, at their disposal. Common formative assessments need to have a place in the system to create an off ramp for students. So we received that board feedback as we were developing it last spring and summer. We weren't in a place we felt as a system just yet, at that moment in time, to have that as part of our criteria, that body of evidence, for a student to enter the system, but also to exit the system. But now I will say that we are very confident as a middle school group, in talks with the principals of adding that as part of the body of evidence. So, Eureka. End of module assessment, clay. End of unit assessment. You can see that entering the discussion that already has at our previous

062middle school principals meeting, we're going to start to figure out what are the metrics. How do we build that in to make sure that students have, shorter time span, between star, as you can see there, there's a gap there, right, that we recognize beginning of the year, middle of the year, end of year. It's just a long time when two out of the three criteria, to either enter or exit, take place. Right? And so, you know, as a middle schooler, we want to make sure that we're incentivizing and motivating students, giving them opportunities to show that, you know what I really don't belong there. Let me show you that I actually, can be proficient on the next Eureka test or the next weekly assessment. Now I'm going to turn it back to Tony because I

063want him to share, a spy there going to be our spotlight here for, for this month. When it comes to how they're implementing the system, how they got enthusiasm, around the middle school accountability system. So teachers bought in from the get go, right. And that's exciting because we already have the buy in to what we're going to do. And again, I talked about it being the right work. Right. Really supporting kids in real time. We're meeting with these students on a weekly basis. Right. So it's not two weeks to get a test back or half a year to get comes back. It's I met with you on Thursday. I'm meeting with you again the following Thursday. So we're looking at grades. We're looking at tests. We're looking to see where the zeros are, and they're

064getting immediate feedback and immediate support through that process. And again, it's real time or as close to real time as possible. In addition, some of those students are, for lack of a better word, embarrassed about being there. Right. They have straight A's and maybe they didn't try on the last exam. So those kids are going to naturally come off, and then we're able to identify those kids that truly need support. Some things we're doing in real time and looking at the data is we're getting them supports right away. Is there a student maybe is struggling at home? We're going to connect them with a mentor in the building. Right. But through these weekly conversations that might have taken a month to find out, we're finding out within days. Right. And we're getting them the supports

065earlier and faster and more intentional through this process. One of the other things that we did this year is through looking at our data on a weekly basis. We're we're seeing that there are some skill gaps with our kiddos in regards to math. And we had been reactive in our plans with our interventions. And why not be proactive? So one of the adjustments we made and we're piloting in four classes during our Jag time period, which is really an intervention time is we're giving the pretest three Eureka to see where those skill gaps are. And the goal is to really support those kids in learning where those gaps are not learning where the gaps are, but identifying where those gaps are for the adults and then teaching those skills. Right. Because if I'm not able

066to do this, I can go back to third grade and I didn't learn a skill here that's preventing me from doing this. So now we fill in that gap. Now when we get to that module assessment, the teaching, the learning portion, we may have identified that gap filled it in. Now that student has some success right. And we're hoping that's a positive feedback loop. Oh my gosh I didn't think I could do it because I didn't know this. I have a C. Now look I have a C and you know just continuing to build that. So we're excited about that intervention for our kiddos. But I think a major piece here is just real time pieces with an adult that's looking you on the face and saying, how can I help you? How can I

067support you? What do you need? You know, and that's, you know, you that's hard to turn away, you know, whether you have the skills or don't. So, those are some of the pieces that we're doing, and I can share more. But I know you have other pieces tonight, but, feel free to ask me questions or send me an email. Yeah, let's wrap it up. First. You have one more slide. Last slide here. Very quick future work. The grade book guidelines. This was one of the unintended consequences. You can go to the next slide. Yeah. Sorry about that. This is one of the unintended consequences of the middle school accountability system. As we started into the conversations around criteria like we shared with the board back in May, it was obvious that there's inconsistency across the

068system in the way that we're grading, and in every content area. So we will be focusing in our middle school principal level meetings on how do we get consistency across the board, though, when it comes to how do we weight our great books? The do's and don'ts of what should be in a grade book, and then making sure that what's in the grade book is connected to standards. And then the idea of the middle school academy build out. We have our additional design lab, scheduled for to begin in November. So we'll have more updates on that in, a future board work sessions and then more conversations around that criteria, and then making adjustments to add those common formative assessments around Eureka and see daily. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I saw your hand go up. So let's

069open it up for both discussion and feedback. At this time, director Hooper, you'll be influenced by this. You guys are considering great guidelines I have on time, right? That's middle schoolers at various schools. And there was a time where there is like they get a one out of four, even if they haven't turned into an assignment. And I'm like, has that been corrected? When we were talking about, you know, 15% of these students are earning their way out, is that correct? When they have F grades 13%, we had we had 15%. We are roughly at, I think 12 to 13%. As a whole. So I guess that means like 80 something percent of students didn't. Yes. And it was mostly it's a lot of those are related to start. Oh because they haven't been able

070to take it again. So there's a lot of students in the system because of starts at 15, just based on the X. Right. Okay. And then so all of those students are having weekly meetings with. You at your school. We divided among counselors and administrators. Okay. And then so has the system of meeting a higher level of rigor been fixed? It seems to me that it'd be hard to get an F if they can get a one out of or an assignments that. They're. Turning them out or not. And if they have unlimited amount of time to turn those things back in. So I noticed a big kind of gap when I'm having different kids come into my home trying to teach them, oh, high school is going to have a different standard for you.

071You're not going to have unlimited time to turn stuff in. You're not going to have people giving you credit for just being in the classroom. Has that been addressed? Our students don't get credit for assignments. They haven't done. Are they still kind of being carried through the system? That's part of the inconsistency across the system. Right? Right. And so that is an area that will absolutely come through as a team. Okay. So it sounds great. Not quite at the don't think that. That's our future work. Is there still great. Assistance Across the system. But you're highlighting the experience from a student power perspective that we will absolutely be taking into account when we're having discussions. Right. You're hitting on on the points that we need to tie to run. And then for you, do you

072go to multiple schools like you just said, out? How does that. Work? I'm, she's at north. I'm at Jenkins a dirty and Jenkins at Jenkins. Okay. I thought you're more than I thought you were in more than one place, so. No, just hyperbolic. Well, yes. But that was my main question. And then how they're getting those executive functioning skills was my other. Question was. Our sister, our discovery. Class. So we have an intervention. Like much like his like Tony's jag time. Ours is just it's called discovery. So it's we. Were pretty targeted. So our ours looks we do second step one day. It's every. Day. So we do a second step one day, which does some all but does some executive functioning as well. And. We do this I excel, which is that pilot I

073was. Telling you about the in l.a. Mass. Right. Yes. And then Wednesday we do our progress monitoring. So checking grades, setting goals, doing action plan, that sort of thing. So that happens that happens. Every week for kids outside of even this. And then Friday we do IB. What's up. Yeah. So that's all my questions. Thank you doctor okay. So you got assigned three. Huge. So this you had mentioned earlier that they meet with a combination of you and counselors and other administrators. I just want to ask that same idea more broadly because here it mentions, you know, mentorship programs, specialized instruction, tutoring opportunities. So I wanted to ask who is. Doing those extra interventions and where are. You finding the time to do those extra interventions? Sure. So I mean, we have a tutoring program

074already. So through this process, we may recommend a student to that tutoring program. A lot of what we're doing is already in place. We're adjusting sort of the focus a little bit. So that one intervention I talked about a Jenkins now that's solely for kids who have been identified in this program. But in some cases, if we've identified a mentor or that student would benefit from a mentor, we're reaching out to a veteran teacher that builds relationships and asking that person to be with that kiddo. So it really depends on the need of the child. And if we look at the resources available are just slightly different. So as I describe just that discovery. Process, the students who need who are assigned to an intervention class are in discovery for a specific class. So for.

075Math or Ela. So, so instead of. Having that structure that I just described. They do their intervention from a math or any lab teacher. Four days a week. And then they do. Progress monitoring IB on the first day of the week. So we have two teachers per grade level that teach an intervention class, a daily. And we're in the same boat and we use Siemens data, Eureka data, and also store data to identify where those kids go. And then we look to see where the skill gaps are. And then those teachers are explicitly teaching that skill during that time. That's once a day or a period day. Is it accurate to say that every middle school kind of has their own approach for solving those particular problems based on the resources they have in the

076building and the schedules that they have? Yes. That's an accurate. So I'm sure you're doing this. Already, but I would just strongly encourage you to share ideas that worked with between middle school principals, because I think this is one of the hardest things about education, where we talk a lot about tier one instruction. But it's hard. For students to get things out of tier one instruction if they're missing a bunch of, you know, kind of the fundamentals leading up to it. And then you have this problem of how do I break up the gaps while also keeping the actual grade level standards moving ahead at full steam. And so as you all are kind of working through ideas, if you find things that work, you know, spread those ideas around. I also I. Know this

077is future work, but I want to actually ask about the same thing that Amanda did. Do you have any preliminary thoughts about what kind of grade book guidelines you're interested in? Is this a place where you would like the board. To weigh in with opinions, or is this a place where you like us to kind of stay out of your chair? Yeah, I think we want to go through another semester. Let's get through mid-year to understand, if we're measuring with micrometer and cutting with an ax. So I don't want to go on an edict that says no classroom can have more than 3% available and extra credit activity to then find out that a third of our kids are meeting two of those criteria, like so right now, what we're solving for go back to

078the criteria slide is a third of our kids, particularly if you take the star data error 35 or below or are in the below approach same category and or have an F as a great. Yes. We need some standardized grading practices. That is an opportunity for us to lean in. But I think that's going to be the difference between an A students actually, then getting a 12 or 1300 on the SATs or SATs as they make their way up there. Does the grade translate into the equivalency of how other people measure us? Right now we're this is a bottom up measure and reaction. There is an opportunity. But I think we want to hold off and see. Do we clean up three quarters of this list by mid-year? If so, then yes, we need to

079get some standardized practices within our gradebook. If not, the gradebook is not the problem. The gradebook is not the problem. So I think we just need a minute longer to to decide how to come back on that. But you got. To consider. When you notified these 1300 students, a third of the students did that. Did they also did you also apply parents and saying, hey, we're going to file and and the parents aren't aware of that? Okay. And then I guess probably somebody to still cook out here is we do all the interventions. We have this extra, you know, support. And we've got maybe 600 kids at the end of the year who go into the next year and then when they go on to the next year, or is there and it's more long

080term planning. Are we planning for something like, yeah, we just can't get these kids caught up, but we don't feel good about the end of the high school. Is that still in the works or. I think that's understanding students and their situations. And so I'm going to start with students on a plan. So an IEP student all right. Are we delivering what's in the plan. Are there other supports that we need to build into that plan. Same with the student on a 5 or 4. Right. Or you want to be allow students. Everyone's got a story to them. Right. You know the thought of retaining 600 students right. Is that a student issue as much as it is a school system issue? I think that what we're we're trying to say, right now with the

081implementation of the system is we need to look at what we're doing first as adults to support our kids. This isn't all on the kids. And so over time here, that's why I like the middle school design, process for the academy idea is going to be very powerful as far as deciding what do we do to support our students in-house next year, or is there another idea beyond serving students in our school? So we need to pursue okay. Yeah, that's that's our reality, right? Is yeah. You see that number and you're like, oh my gosh, 1300 kids of our kids. And we'll celebrate if we get to 600. But we need to get to zero. That's the reality is we have to get to zero. Yeah, I appreciate having a plan and putting in place

082and letting resources around. I appreciate all of that. So thank you for being here. And I. I it looks like in November you're going to have a task force talking about the middle school academy. Yes, ma'am. That's what you talked about. We're going to run that through our design lab with, with middle school principals and a few other folks here to talk about what that might look like for next year. Yeah, like the bankers. And I have two questions that I hear early. On when you started to. Speak, that this program was for kids who that you thought you teachers, thought would benefit from it. And if they have, children just didn't buy. It at all that they would. Not be part of it. Oh, no no no no no. Okay. We had teacher. By

083him very early on, which always helps the process. But, with students who they may not buy in, we would work with them to support them, even if they were particularly happy with. That's a whole different. Set of interventions. Yes. And then is Abbott still available and is that a site along program or does this replace Abbott or. So that's really a site based decision. There are a few schools who still utilize Abbott. Some are Abbott School. I think we have one Abbott School in our district still. Connolly. Yep. And that's correct. And it's and you might see some avid strategies, being implemented in our support classes. But it's not a strategy that we utilize district wide in our middle schools yet. To, to double down, Abbott is an acceptable program. This isn't anything new. This

084is us just being very intentional. And instead of I heard the word passive to active, that's really the switch that we made at the direction of the board. That said, we can no longer continue to push non achieving or growing children into high schools without a greater depth of understanding where those gaps are, what we're going to do about it. And so there are differences at the schools level, because each one of our schools has their own personality and has their own way that they do go about it. What we wanted was a consistent set of guardrails that said, here's what our expectations are that building leaders can then rally their teams around the things that do work better in their buildings and for their kids. And so Abbott does remain a tool in someone's

085toolkit. But what we decided to not do, for a variety of reasons, was say, this is the way that you're going to do this. Okay. Thank you. You, you. Any other feedback? Just I recall when Holmes and Squire had their school, that school type of academies for some of the child, the students. But some say more student challenges. And so that might be something to remember when you're doing your assessment lab is that some of those folks have already been there, done that. I do remember that. Speaking of like time energy resources, that it was, a little more intensive financially. And so my question time related to, Director Harris was the financial side of it. And if this is costing us more and or if we it's our resources that need to be adjusted in

086the next budget. Great, great. But I do want to speak to that. I think that's with the flexibility of our school based budgeting, processes. You know, we're first going to look and see if there are opportunities, though, for us to handle that in-house at our school site before we tap into it and ask for additional resources. And I know that will come up in our design lab process. That'll be a big part of our conversations. But can we handle in-house versus is there something beyond our school that we need to, to tap into? Yeah. Good point though. And to your point, though, we have two schools with a history of doing something in-house. Right. So how do you take a model like what they, implemented, and replicate possible. And those which come from. Additional support

087from. The district. So it did not know that they were able to handle that in-house. Yeah. So I think Swigert wound up dropping theirs because they could not afford it. Yeah. That's correct. That happened the year that I came in because I remember seeing, gymnast and talk about that on the, tapes that I watched for the interview process. And then when I got here, I thought it was something that was there and it wasn't there anymore. So it is a consideration for us, as we head forward, move forward with the Academy's, idea. And we have this, a quarterly update. We'll be back to the board with our next update after we can process the mid-year data. So it will come in January as part of the mid-year data update, there will be a specific section

088on the middle school account. Connie thinks it's very encouraging. So yeah, it's. Any other questions or comments from the board? The board has clearly indicated on this board, especially that we need to do something that we can no longer remain passive and that was the word that you used moving from passive active. So many of our middle school students are falling behind for accountability in place. And then they get pushed to the next grade and the next grade and then end up at high school, several grades behind that no longer is acceptable. This is the first step in the process, so I'm glad that this is being communicated to the students. And students are taking an active role in their learning in themselves. And parents are involved as part of the process as well. So,

089superintendent, call to question to you at this point in time, is there any action that you want to transport or. No, we'll come back in January and we'll have, if we need more action from the board, it will be in our recommendations. But, one, I think really getting our arms around the size of the problem. I didn't think when we put that criteria out there that any of us really thought it would be consistently a third of our kids. It's almost exactly a third of the kids way across. Sixth graders are a little less identified, in that, obviously, because they don't have a chance to have enough in math and or early, but, and also maybe, our elementary strategies are working. But the size of the problem is pretty large. And I would just hats

090off to, particularly Darren Joiner for the work that he's done and stepping back into a middle school role and harnessing the middle school leaders together. And to all our middle school leaders that are here that are listening, that we started in middle school in this idea of how do we really get after this problem? Because they both, you know, they have they have an input and, and outputs. Everybody else is either on the front end or the receiving end and the middle school space. We thought if we could show and demonstrate that even in the very quickest, a win that I know it's only 12% of the third that have already exited, we got in kids opportunities of how to get them more focused and immediately made that course correction that that one small group

091of cohort of kids is, okay, I'm back. I'm back. And it's kind of like, you know, we all know a middle school kind of follow their eyes in the hallway. And if you can just get them for a second, they go, okay, Principal Lazer, I got you. I'm, I'm on track. And so, I think what we can demonstrate here can then bleed into our elementary and particularly in our secondary, because we do still have, a lot of kids that make their way into high school that are not prepared for. And what we don't have is the answer for what we do when we get there. So those are probably high school will be the next place that we come back to the board. It might take us the full course of this year to make,

092to look for those recommendations. So we make sure that we don't fire first and ask questions. Second. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the feedback. I appreciate the work that you guys are we I look forward to further updates as they come to thank you. Speak. Okay. The next item on the agenda is a draft policy, instructional materials and by training, resources, selection, adoption, acquisition and reconsideration. As part of, looking into the entire, I see these policies. We talked about this as a board at the board retreat, and, Director Jurgensen and Director Heffley offered to make a recommendation to the board at some point in time. And so, Director Joe considers bringing, certain provisions to policy. That policy, it, I will turn it over to, you going to quote director updates first? Okay. Time to so Director

093Jensen will set up this conversation and then ask necessary outreach out to you to superintendent call. So back to Jansen if you can update the board on where, things are at this time. And what is it that you are bringing to light? Thank you. Yeah. So in the retreat, in August, we mentioned to looking at the ice series block, which is instructional block, policy. There's a lot of, things that we can kind of consolidate and be more clear, in our continued efforts to move policy from over 400 policies to the more 30,000ft view of governance and then allowing, the superintendent and their team to operationalize our wishes as a governing team. So, when we look at this Ice series, the one we looked at with Greg and, excuse me, doctor X and Director Haley, is

094draft IJC. Originally we had IGL and then talking with doctor X, we mentioned, you know, being able to have some exhibit pieces and, keeping a couple of the other policies in place. And the more Greg looked at it, he was mentioning, look, we already have, you know, this used to be one policy and it's broken apart over time to meet needs. There's technology, media, internet, things like that all came about. So his idea was, what if we looked at a policy that, could bring everything for all of our instructional material together? And so I said, okay, well, that would be, you know, we had to edit the l that I first showed Director Haley and Greg. And so, we went to work on that. And so that now is able to, I'm assuming approval with

095some edits of, of whatever the board would like. We're gonna be able to consolidate about 11 AI policies down to this one. IGL within the effort of tasking Mike and his team with the regulations series for for this policy. So, this new EJ policy gives administration and families a clear and direct line to one policy. So in the past they had to, well, what is it for online media? What is it for? Library. What is it for? You know, movies and things like that. So one clear policy for families. Also one clear policy for our our admin team. You know, they're having to bounce around and look at different policies. Doctor X got feedback from Chief Rasmussen about having one policy instead of multiples. And that was appreciated. So this is something that I think

096will be easy for our admin and our teachers to use. If you remember, we already have security for our, our staff and students, whether it's, you know, blocked websites are our guidelines are buffer. So students are staying on task at school. And really this policy is consolidating and then adding language to help keep our students safe. In the in this media aspect as well for everything. So again, keeping that in line with that 30,000 30,000ft view, to guide instructional materials for all students and D11 is our aim here. Let's see if I have some other notes here before we get into it. So again, one singular policy that we're presenting here tonight and that's what we're looking at. It also add some definitions that were not there in the past to help align the media

097content of our libraries and schools with educational merit that we want to expect in our schools. So this doesn't stop libraries from having various history books. We've gotten some emails already about, you know, taking out history and, underrepresented people groups. It's nothing to do with that. This is purely about, putting all of our media policy in one place for online, for in print, for anything that students can access, making it easier, in that regard. So we are ensuring a way to protect students, just like we do have already done online from other obscenities or pornographic, content that they might be exposed to in our libraries and classroom collections. And so with that, I'll, thank you, doctor excellence. Anything. And then we can do what you'd like. Personally, I think. What I would add is. That

098there are obviously some statutory or statutory requirements for the board, in terms of what their responsibilities are for, adopting, texts, and also for, you know, and also for taking a look at the material, that is in. Libraries and, and. Curriculum. Prior to the start of the school year, Caspi had sent out a, recommendation. In one of their bulletins saying. That. We recommend that. You that you adopt an EJ policy. Prior to that, it was. Optional, until. The state. Legislature got involved and passed the law in 2025. It was an act of May 1st that said, by September 1st, you must legally have a. Policy i.j if you already have a process and a policy in place, this doesn't this doesn't apply to you. So this is why the board did not see us bring this

099forward, Prior to September 1st. To make some of those changes. So there is a legal framework to have a policy. That policy is EJ there is a subsequent policy which, is Kate and. C, which is for parents and community, to address concerns that they have that policy is not required by law, by the state of Colorado. And that policy we would prop would bring forward. After the adoption. Of this new age and potentially a regulation or a standard operating procedure, which we would then to indicate the same with provisions. So that's just providing a little context. That there is legal grounds to have, a policy. EJ and that, although there's a deadline, it's, it's our first we do not have to, meet that deadline because we already have, a current policy on the books. Okay.

100So, I know the board has received several emails from community members already about the subject matter to the community. This is the first work session that the board is discussing about this policy. So, we will engage in a rigorous conversation this evening and then, figure out the next steps. Doctor Jorgensen, from what I understand, and doctor X, you can also correct me, what we are, what is in front of the board right now is to repeal three policies AJ, Ijl, AJ, and C, and all the, regulations and attachments or exhibits that go along with those policies and what is being proposed is this draft policy, AJ, to replace those three policies and then direct the superintendent to adopt, to come up with the standard operating procedures or regulations that allow for the 30,000ft level. What's

101been stated in this policy that for summary, I think you did well. Okay. Thank you. With that, I will, open it up. For, questions or comments from the board and discussion about this, about the current, from the board on this, subject matter. Who wants to go first? Director. I have a lot to say about it. And so my concerns are reflected in the many, many emails we've received. The policies. But the most important thing, I think, that the board might not have seen the email that came up about 1:00 today from Caspi, and they are now recommending that there be, yes, policy issue, but also policy ijl and that they we separate the instructional and the library materials. So that's pretty key. I also think with EJ as written, we need to go back. And

102I think Casper's probably addressing this in their version, but there are the law addresses changes such as only if I have five rhetoric. And it's just a quick look this afternoon, only Karen, maybe students can. Parents in the district. Yes. And actually, can ask for reconsideration of materials. And so that's pretty key. Some of the other things for me, I, I the transparency aspect of allowing community to come in and look at the materials that we are offering that has been an excellent opportunity for awareness and this version says that it may occur that we. Will consult people. So I'm troubled by that. And I, I think there are so many things here. I would be happy to share my list with you. Just a rundown. The titles, the student interest and needs in IGL

103as we have it. It talks about the meeting, the needs of students and. And I think that's very key. And that's been completely left out. Professionalism it now says professional personnel are going to recommend. I think that's pretty key. That should be librarians when we're talking about are the librarian or a library material and people with curriculum background for the professionals that are suggesting our, instructional side, the inclusion, I think we can come back to maintaining the balanced collection with the diversity of of people and different points of view. That's ijl and the historically underrepresented and marginalized voices, because if we don't call it out, some of us are going to get erased. And I, I think we need to keep that in mind. The innovation aspect of the the proposed policy, leaves. Out. The

104option for school personnel to request temporary approval to track the effectiveness of alternative instructional resources. And so if this board is interested in continuing innovative, little experiment site experiments, we want to keep that. I think. I mentioned. The review upfront for selection of materials and are doing that every six months seems reasonable. I think that's how I feel. We see it around here. Well, hopefully that's reasonable still for staff when it comes to reconsideration, I, I, I wrote down a quote, the object objectivity side of it, I j l right now ensures decisions are based on professional selection criteria for merit and educational support, not solely on any logical or political pressure. That was one of our letters that we received, and it seems very reasonable. There's also an issue of timeliness. If the board

105is going to look at materials by itself, with not the literary background or any experience, why a particular set of materials was chosen for a particular book. And we're doing that every six months. That's not quite as timely as the current setup that we have, which is, of course, in regulation, not our own, policy. So just thinking back to governance versus policy, we have let's, let's add in the purview of the superintendent. And it's, it just seems more efficient. Otherwise I'm worried we're all going to every six months get you know, here's 20 books that you should review. And I don't know what you are. I want to review the majority of material or all of it. And that's a lot of reading. So just that. I mentioned the the legal clarification as well, that

106we want to make sure we're meeting the, the new law and also the definitions of obscene and pornography. I think that could be left out and instead just leave a little reference. For the new task policy. I did see where they talk about expanding the definition of obscene as defined in law. So I think. Just leave it at that. Because that might change to. So those are just a few. I know I just threw a whole bunch of things at you. I have a couple technicalities, of course. Different. Okay. I know that you think a lot of things should table. Yes. One clarification I wanted to come to topics first. It does go to legal by any chance before it became attributable to have. A. Done. Okay great. So at some point in time people

107go through that process at the bankers. So I have. A few things. So when you earlier. On and, and it's a discussion and I appreciate us being able to do this in a work session because it's not a one time. This is how it's going to be. And we move on. And I. Think this might be. A, a lively opportunity. For us to really get some clarity on. The direction in which we want to go. So let me just start. With the library resource resource collection, adoption, whatever. I also looked it up, and I don't see where it said that it should be separated out. It has. Its own, It has its. Own, I. L but when I'm looking at, I don't see anything that says that it has to be separated out from, the.

108The idea there. Is not a cascade recommendation that. Yes, that's thing. So that came through today at 1:00 Cosby's email. So I, I mean, any of us could be forgiven for not having checked our email and dug into it, but I was just looking at my email the right time. I thought it did come up today. They kind of gave us a link. And after I had to go through, did you click? Yes, I clicked on that. The one that says access the Special. Policy update here. And that's what I'm looking at. Okay. And so that's the time I, In the policy. And it's not ideal, but in no place does it say at least I didn't see it, that it has to be one. So when I looked at the proposed draft, that's so

109that was one thing when I looked at the, proposed draft and I, And I'll just go back to the different screen. Hold on just a second. Let me just find it here. When I go back to. The draft where, under definitions of, obscene and pornography, I did a computer search, and it seems like, based on prior, court decisions, there's a miller test. Not to be confused with Brad Miller. That a miller test. And so there are three points. One is to consider whether the average person looking at the whole works. So you can't just pick out a piece, which means I would have to go back to a book that, graphic novel is currently available, I understand, in our high schools. And go beyond that one page that I found so offensive, I'll have to

110make sure that I read through the whole book, because this first test on the Miller, criteria is that you have to look at the whole work. The second one is applying contemporary standards in the community. And would they find it lascivious and. I think that when we are a school district within a state that has local control, we do have. To make sure that we are in tune. With our. Community. And that we are reflecting what are the direction in which our community wants to go. And so I'll tell you something that's not quite so controversial. And that was, doctor Seuss's The Lorax. So if you know about The Lorax and I, it's taught in middle school, part of an environmental unit. And it is about, cutting down trees and, Wiping out forests. Well, there's

111a a town in, I don't know, Washington, Oregon. Where they have a mill and they have their economy based on. Forestry. They didn't want that in their community. So when I say that it standards in their own community, I can understand why it would vary within our community. When we take a. Look at what our community is looking for, we we get our emails, we are in election season. People are out there talking, knocking. On doors and getting. Feedback through that, and every other way. I do take the newspaper, so there's always letters to the newspaper and the, the next one is material question. Is it serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value? And of course, the fourth one. Would be does it apply to our, our standards? So that's the Miller's test. And when

112I look at these, it really speaks to me under the obscenity and the pornography one, applying contemporary standards in our community. And what our community expects. Out of their. Their library. The other thing, on this same note, the other thing that, came through in my research was First Amendment rights. And. There's no my opinion is there's not said law, but the latest one that I came up with or found, which was in Florida and it's recent as opposed to 1932. And that is, First Amendment rights on a case that was brought by a couple of authors whose book was taken out of a library, I'm assuming, in an elementary school, because it talked about penguins. The court ruling on that one was the First Amendment rights. In school, public libraries are not public, school libraries

113are not public forums. And curating books is not a violation of free speech. So there's some guidance there that says, again, we can go back to what our community and we represent our community because they elected us, what our community would would say, our standards that we would abide by. So while these obscenity and pornography definitions, are pretty specific, I also think that it gives us as a board, as an opportunity to say. That we are going to be intentional about what it is that we're going to allow in and out of our, libraries. I don't know if any of you remember, I school, school board here in Colorado when they had this issue come up to them. Couldn't define pornography. They the response from somebody on the board was, I know when I see

114it, that is so inappropriate. So I think that we do need to have some specifics here on how we're going to define, materials that we would include or not include based on, what's being presented to us. I'll stop there. Okay. You have some more points, and I really want to talk about it, but it didn't take them down. I'm writing things down, and there is a whole bunch of things. You know, this is the first step in the process that we are doing. And it's a draft, policy that's in front of the board. And I appreciate that, considering directly, hopefully putting in the work to bring something in front of the board. And now it, starts the conversation, whether it's with the board or the community itself, giving us, feedback. And to what you said

115that, we represent the community as elected members, and we got to reflect the values of the community as a local school board. Director Jorgensen. Oh, before. Okay. Go ahead before I relinquish the floor. So, yes, we had a workout session session at their fall conference. Book bans and curriculum selection. Who decides what students learn? And so this was out of Greeley, Evans. And it was three attorneys and one superintendent from Greeley. And in the legal framework, you know, Fort Pierce that they cited was, The board appointed a book review committee, considered consisting of four parents and four staff, to recommend whether the books should be retained. Taking into account the books educational suitability, good taste, relevance and appropriateness to age and grade level. We haven't talked about age appropriate, material, but I think it was

116mentioned I've read too much. It's in. Here somewhere. Isn't the. First I.G. Oh, sorry. Yes, sir. In the first six bullet points I really didn't. Thank you. And so I also went back to the material that we got from Casspi during that workout session. And they did go ahead and curate their library, inventory to. To reflect the community standards. I guess that's. Way I want to. Say it. Thank you I know it does. Thank you. So before I I'll come to you attacked. Okay. We had that sent up to thank the students. And in response to what I brought up and also some of the community emails that we've been receiving, the intent behind what you are bringing up in front of the board at this time. It is to consolidate some of these policies

117to make sure that it's not as convoluted or confusing as it is right now, with so many different policies and, attachments and regulations to simplify that process. And also as far as, what is it that we are curating or, reconsidering in our libraries? It is not something like revisionist history or any of those kind of things that you are talking about. You might be better in explaining what the intent behind doing this policy is. So there is some clarity. Yeah. I mean, just just to in the K-5 space, if, if you want to show a PG movie, a Parental Guidance movie, we have to send a permission slip home to our kids, to the parents to sign, see a PG movie. I never realized kids watch PG 13 and above and beyond and all that.

118That's again when they're in our hands. Parents and guardians are making us responsible for their children's education. So the fact that we've got permission slips for PG, videos or in, in our instructional spaces, but we potentially have material that is obscene or pornographic, or not age appropriate in those same K-5 libraries or heaven forbid, a, classroom where a teacher chooses to bring even more pieces of material to their classroom resources. This is what we're using to align that. So one thing that I think that you get out to your point, one piece that is missing here is the regulation that what the test superintendent with, and that'll be the superintendent and agent present in the future until another board wants to redo things. But giving the superintendent those 30,000ft guardrails, as director Bank has mentioned,

119so that they know how to build that review process. And the hopes are that we would come to agreement in some sort of sentence that talks about tasking the superintendent, or even it could be a line in this policy that says, you know, superintendent and or designated personnel, which would be anybody qualified to handle that space, that it's not going to be just some ESP or somebody that's reviewing things. So there's going to be probably a chief of curriculum or chief of something that's going to be looking at things. So to that point that you mentioned about just having the personnel, that that just says, hey, we're going to have an ability to have some sort of scale system or grading system that says these aren't appropriate at the K-5 level, but maybe they're okay

120at the middle school and high school. And that'll be up for the superintendent, his team, to decide, so that when we get to those twice a year pieces of we considering materials, there might be very few because we're constantly looking at that. Again, with the 9 to 1 policy to look at for everything. So thank you for that feedback. I know that a couple of people and I saw your hand up to, back to get your director, hopefully, who wants to go first back into the director here. I'd like to piggyback off of director Bank. It's a little bit, addressing the ongoing discussion about this issue. I've heard from a few people who who've I've spoken to in person. Beyond the emails, and I would like to assure everyone we are not banning books. Unfortunately,

121there are some individuals trying to incite others with non factual information, and that's regrettable. So I would like to go on record to clarify exactly what's happening. And I would encourage everybody to do their own research and their own due diligence regarding this matter. But for the record, there's no bonfire in the parking lot. There's nobody out there marching around enforcing censorship, censorship, censorship. The issue at hand is about age appropriateness. In our public school library. Certain books simply contain material that's not suitable for children or teens in a school setting. If parents want their children to access that type of content, they have every right to do so, and they can do that through public libraries. Or they can do that through online sources. But our responsibility as a district is to ensure that

122the materials available in our schools align with community standards and age appropriate learning. Taxpayers in this district have made it clear they don't want vulgar, graphic or sexually explicit material in the schools they fund. I'm one of those taxpayers. We're not trying to erase ideas, stifle discussion. We're simply trying to maintain appropriate boundaries for what belongs in a K-12 educational environment. Children are already exposed to far too much inappropriate content through the internet and media, and our schools should be a refuge from that should be a place where students can learn, think, and grow without being confronted with explicit or disturbing material. That's the intent, and that's the position I stand by. Thank you for the clarity. I'd like to carry. Just a quick question. First, you have kind of a description of the process

123for a optional semi annual reconsideration on the level of the board, where, you know, parents, guardians, you say community members. I just looked at the text of the bill, and it does pretty clearly say that it needs to be a parent of. Of the district. Yeah. But so they bring forward specific titles. You have to include the rationale, you have to reference these specific object level passages. Arguments are heard in public. So that's that's one. Process is, is our expectation that there will then be regulations for requests for reconsideration outside of those semi annual. Windows. I don't think there is no at that, but there would be the task to Mike and his team to use whatever the grading scale is aligned to this policy to go, okay, we've got, you know, three books in

124the K-5 level that don't align with this new policy. And so we're going to pull them off the shelves are we've got one book in middle school that doesn't align with this new policy, based on the system that he and his team create that rates it, that would allow it's his policy. So that again, so the point being that we're not bombarded, as director Rob mentioned, with, you know, 40 books twice a year, you know, it would be that there is some sort of scale that's built into regulation that would say, okay, it's, you know, there's got to be book rating scores out there or some, some sort of rating system. All right. Now with this in one spot so we could meet. And that would be something we would look into. I'll provide a

125little more context real quickly. Understand that. When ij lc ij NC Ijl, the ones we placed into the packet this evening were placed in there for week for. Reconsideration to be repealed and brought down. Superintendent Gaul has has realigned the district to be. Laser focused on instruction. And with that comes, some realignment of departments where we used to have some pretty large departments that could take care of some of this, approval and some of them we don't. We've realigned those resources to be under the chief of. Curriculum in the chief of instructions. And that realignment. Brings all. Of these items into. One scope. And that's why. When we discussed this, I recommended doing just one i.j for our team to say this is all of our materials and all of those materials that we. Put

126in front of students. This is the overarching. And then we'll have a regulation. So the regulation will come. It looks exhaustive. And I know the emails are. Saying, well, they're taking over getting rid of this. They're getting rid of this. Many of those elements will fall into. An operating. Procedure or a new regulation. They just will. Not be, they'll be more transparent for the public when somebody wants to. Look at, resources and somebody says, well, that's not really a textbook, that's a library resource. So you need. To go into this whole nother realm of. Process and regulation process. This will all bring it under one umbrella. And really, I spoke again with Chief Rasmussen this morning. We're just waiting on guidance to make the the regulation laser focus to the intent of the board. To

127help Tom's. I don't know. I'm still thinking. I think you can use the last briefing as an example. The board made it very clear that we needed a new set of ideas and driving a different experience at the middle school level, and then even the questioning was from director Bank. Is are we using Abbott? Maybe. Maybe not. That's an operational decision within one of our nine middle schools to be able to do your intent as communicated or as I heard, and I appreciate Doctor X's summary is, is to put an overarching statement of the board is responsible for resources that are in our buildings. Now, then I would take most of much of what is existing in the current regulation current policy, and turn it into an operationalized regulation. Clearly, we have to come and

128give a recommendation to the board right now. The way that that stuff is written is it doesn't really give the board the authority. And I think you're looking for a set of authorities, as the elected officials in the city to actually deliver for what you have been elected to do. Out of curiosity, Ijl. Are outlines kind of a whole. Process when a request for reconsideration is made? Has anyone used that process in the last, I don't know, three years? Four years? Yeah. I mean it goes like step and man and a step like that. So empty. Date Hebrews and yes. Okay. Personal experience. Okay. Well it looks like the process that is in place right now go step by step. It's first goes to the principal and then at minute just layers of it before

129eventually it may come to the board. I don't think we've had one come to the board. No we haven't had anything coming. To us three years. The last six years. I can see in the time that Jason and probably last eight years, in the time that director Art has been on the board as far, technically, are you good at this time? Yeah. At this. Time. Okay. Doctor Huber. Say thank you for continuing to simplify policies to make it easier for admin and teachers. But we don't want to see it sounds like we don't want additional barriers for our teachers to bring in supplementary materials and to have more simplified process to where we can understand what needs to be done. I have seen concerning content and want to reduce those barriers for bringing things to

130the classroom for the majority of materials that teachers are going to want to bring in, with potential changes in policies. And I know this is where we're talking about processes and regulation. But are we anticipating any kind of challenges if the policy as written is implemented, are we going to see a lot of problems with that, or will that be easy to execute? Who do you anticipate leading this? And I think you were kind of saying that's still a little bit up in the air on that. And then I would like to know a little bit more about the difference in Cosby's IJA recommendation and ours. And then, yeah, just kind of going into, is there an opportunity to report back on challenge materials like an a mars report or something else in a work

131session agenda? Personally, I don't want controversial text read out loud, in board meetings where I bring my children, and I think I'm just, I. While we all value transparency, it seems a little, I'll leave that at that. Do you understand the title of what I'm getting? There's a couple questions in there, so. I'll try to break it. Down. I think in terms of of legal. I'll go with EJ first. I did include Cassidy's EJ in the packet as well. As you can see, the original IJA is about three paragraphs and spend some time handing over, a lot of the work to the district professionals, which would would be tied into the written regulation. The proposed idea that, director Jorgensen put forward. Is clearly has definitions. And it has some, some bullet points about, and a

132bit more direct and a little bit more, let's call said, the board kind of driving that a little bit more. So that's probably the biggest difference. I have not, and I did not get the brief this morning. This afternoon from Cassidy. I have not looked to see if they changed. Anything in their EJ. This afternoon when they split out their new ijl. So I had not. Looked at that yet. Most of the work, most of the work. I think, and I think this might be part of your question, most of the work with, after we have adoption of the new idea, if that's the will of the board, that would go into the instruction side. In a lot of these would funnel up to the instruction side. I do know that Chief Rasmussen has lots

133of experience. And actually, Has already started to prepare a working document of what that regulation. Potentially could look like. And what that process could look like. So I had a lot of familiarity in different districts with that. So I don't know if I answered every one of your. Questions or not. Anticipating a large challenge in implementing the policy as Jason and the team. As I don't, I would not. Think so. And then I guess just my other question had to do with, you know, if we're going to be discussing and it comes forward, every six months in from the board and there's an opportunity for both sides to kind of see their case on that. Would that be a you ask it to leave the room. It's like, I don't know, Jason. You may know

134a little bit more about that tonight. I think that we can get into the process of fact at a later point in time. It's not relevant to the conversation. Not that I'm just saying we can figure that out as we go forward. Is there anything else, particularly in, you know, with the policy itself at this time, Director Huber, from you? I think it's a good idea to always simplify policies wherever possible. Okay, great. Great. Okay. A couple. Follow. Okay. For me. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm just following back up on you. Who who was consulted in creating this version of the policy. And I know you have the Caspi draft that they have changed. But when we when it was discussed that the policy committee was eliminated, the there was an assurance that there would be

135still inclusion of various choices. And based on the and for LTE enabling us and any LTE to get consulted in this policy. No, but I appreciate the email today. And as for the to mic so I can make an adequate conversation before tonight of just how do we incorporate some of their voice or concerns into the regulation cycle. So again, keeping just this policy at that 35,000ft you. So. And any teachers have input other than. Your night. Yes yes. Yeah. So in. Addition we just teachers. Who are actively teaching. Did anyone have any observations or anyone besides again, Chief Rasmussen, the instructional side of this. Director explained, I did. And then director are outward looking. So I had ijl pretty much edited, as it was within some definitions and, and adding language around libraries and,

136and classroom content. And then when we got together, doctor X is when the three of us said, oh, we could simplify even further, have one place, you know, meet the need of of aligning resources and time effort management honestly to one place. So that's where we're at. Okay. And I guess the other concern I have, that, that has that I would share with the folks, many of them who've emailed us. Which I got like five emails and one of them was like a template, one that copy paste. So just to set the reference for those. Like. It's not like it's been 20 minutes all perfectly. They're on curation. It's been a couple. Okay. I've counted at least 12 to 15. And I think I probably have more because some people have asked me to share

137things out. That's perfect. The. Okay. Now I'm like, where were we? So I'll cover something else. Then to your question, director Bank is in the cash fee under the reconsideration of library materials and special policy update. They say no to yes to the hundreds. Okay. To ensure compliance moving forward, Caspi has updated policy and Csea and introduced a new policy in the second paragraph, ijl, to reflect the requirements of the bill. And then so they've mentioned all of those, and then they further down say moving forward, Caspi recommends that boards of education, separate instructional materials and library, resources and policy. So then we should have three, to the point of IJC. Nigel, I think we should consider KSC as part of this little packet that we're looking at. Because that is the public concern site.

138So I think maybe at that, any edits to that section? Oh, gosh. Kind of what what's going on? You mean I can follow up on. Okay. You'd like to. We have no recommendation. Is coming back. I think policy is a. Recommendation right now because Csea involves. What it involves, how a parent would engage with the actual process. For challenging. Material, and that would be part of a regulation and a process that we would establish as a result of IJA. And once we have that done. Then we see that forward. It would require significant revision. Any way director out. Because if there is a change and there is an adoption, even an EJ or Ijl, we have to. Remove the probably 20 to 30, in paragraph references that were made by the policy. Committee and then.

139Okay. Yes. So that's that's part of the reason to me. We need to include it in our consideration because it's so deeply related. We don't have a process yet. So I didn't want to go in there and put in a. Community and do a community policy just yet. The process established, as a result of IJA. So put the cart before the horse, so to speak. Okay. All right. Then the other two things, one, the library programs version I, J and C outlined libraries for students and libraries for professional staff as well. I'm not sure we have that anymore with recent changes, but the library programs for students, one of the concerns expressed in. By some of the writers is that we will not even be supporting library programs. So I think to reassure people, as

140we do away maybe with IG and C is to build that into Ijl if we do that or I j but it really to reassure people that we do want to have libraries and engage students in libraries. For growth. And achievement. And just to make that clear, I'm happy to do that. Okay. Thank you. And just one follow up. In the beginning, you mentioned that you were taking 11 policies and turning them into one. Were you when you said policy three, including selection regulation? Yeah, yeah. All right. I count those policies because you guys like the room. So they're they're all there. It's just three policies. Well, that's what I was hoping that was just for three. But of course, even with the development of this policy. We will still need to write regulations. All

141right. Okay. Any other feedback from the board at this time? And I'm going to summarize certain things and the path forward in the next steps. But any other board member wants to, comment on specifics about this policy. You know, I think, yes. So get to your point, director. If there's things in there where you think that would make people feel more comfortable about, hey, we are consulting, but we want to have at least one sentence in there. Would you email us to me and I'll put them in? That way they can be the draft for, I don't propose two action items and or I we will change between now in the dais. I'm not action, but if you have the signs, it's really like it looks like a majority is okay with how this reads.

142But can we add a couple pieces to, you know, include other voice and, you know, the library programs. Let's get those on there for you. And then transition. Look at it before we pass it. I would I would double check to the recommendations for Cascade for high jail okay. Does it really I think it brings greater clarity. I know there's interest in bringing you all together to address together, but libraries and instruction, there are some significant differences. We don't, if we want to see and continue the transparency of putting out our curriculum every six months, it's a lot more work to include every last book that we have librarians trying to buy and put in for our students. That is just going to slow down the system where it's not manageable. So I could see

143the separation still existing. Well, hopefully our our admin will communicate that process with all of our LTE so that when they've got these things that they want to buy for the next school year, whatever program they want to do at home, that they can quickly go to Chief Rasmussen and ask whether to go, you know, cleared, or do they need to become before the board to get them approved. So hopefully they'll be, you know, streamlined once we get that more built out. But again. I try okay, I'm gonna try to ask what I was thinking about earlier, but now that I've thought about it more, hopefully it will be more coherent. So just to be clear, the semi annual reconsideration process is something the board may do, but the intention is not that that is

144the ordinary way. The intention is that just like with previous policy, superintendent will develop a regulation to provide a process for, as per the law, parents to kind of bring a request for reconsideration. Right? Do so. Do we. In. The policy, do we need to say that any more clearly because there's a sentence at the end, the super actually hold on. Give me one second. No, we're I think we're okay. At the end maybe, maybe, maybe we need to. Just be a little more clear that the superintendent is responsible for developing. A. Regulation that gives the process and that the. Board level semiannual. Reconsideration is one thing the board is allowed to do or be on this policy, but it's not like the normal reconsideration process and like the law would care about. This is

145what I'm saying. Some sort of oversight and authority, maybe adding language in there doctor X to to have something where. So what I would say, yeah. I think it's what is in the section where it says a reconsideration of instructional materials and library resources. There's a description of a process. The board may undertake. But I think what you might be missing is a sentence of the process parents would undertake, which would be something that Superintendent Galt would develop and a regulation. So it sounds like this. Sorry, I keep talking over your right because I know that the bottom, the superintendent or designee will develop regulations. Simple. Just policy. It just wasn't clear to me when reading it that that was one of the things Superintendent Gill was going to be tasked with. Okay. And I'll.

146Shut up. You're fine. Now, to summarize some of the discussions here, and to figure out what the next steps are in this process. A lot of things were brought up, and I want to also assure the community there is no intent about taking away libraries from our school. So that is not the intent. I'm not signing up for that. If, we are doing away with libraries as it was mentioned. Okay. That's not the intent at all. Libraries are a great way to get our students informed of what the board is talking about. This, the appropriateness of some of the material that, is in our libraries or should be in our libraries. So the next steps in the process, one, I know that this is the first draft version of the policy that's coming up. Okay.

147Director mentioned some know, statements that would be in there about transparency, statements that could reassure our community. That was may be that, previous policies. So if board directors have specific recommendations going back to even Director Carey talking about a sentence being adopted, that if they can send that directly to you and copy direct direction on it, then you can accumulate assimilate all that information into that policy with the general idea being that we do not want to, make this policy ten pages or something like that, the idea being concise. And then, superintendent got to come up, like, was superintendent called to come up with a regulation that aligns with that, to establish that, that policy as far as whether we need it and ijl that is a belief that came from Caspi just today, that

148a doctor hasn't even had an opportunity to look at that, that so, it's a recommendation coming from Caspi. So you may want to, look at that recommendation along with what is required by law and then see what is the middle ground out there. Is there a necessity for two different policies cannot be combined into one, for the for the, in the interest of not having confusion, is it better to have it in two different policies? You can also bring that recommendations to the, to the board. So, what we heard the next step forward is, it is coming as a non action item in front of the board, but the policy is going to see a little bit, tweaking between now and that time. It comes as an action item in front of the board. But

149the general idea being that we want to make the process a little bit more streamlined as opposed to what is in a yellow dash or at this time. Okay, not that jumping through all that hoops. But at the meet, same time having, clear guidelines to the superintendent. The definition of, the definitions that you have listed out there that aligns with the current law, and director Bank has talked about the Miller test and, your statement that was included in that, reflects that, state law. And then lastly, after all this was put together, before it comes in front of the board minutes, ready to go, if you can send it to legal, and make sure that, legal. Yes. Getting an ice on it and making sure that, it aligns with current law and regulation. Is the board

150comfortable with taking the draft? AJ as the original version? And then doctor X and I will work with the director feedback to give you the red line. That action. Yep. And then the clean proposal. Okay. You know what. Change is ready between now and action I don't. So by short thumbs since the board comfortable with that okay. Restate. Sorry you. So like if you've got a few sentences to add in this would be blue right. We'd have a we would add those to the I.j. If there's something you want to take out, we would have the red line through it. So this would be like our base policy to work from, so that then when we look at it for action, we can see where directors will add absences or removed a piece or so.

151That way when we get to an action item, whenever that is, we have the ability to see the changes from tonight's discussions. For your proposed AJ. As we propose. This proposed AJ would be the starting point and we would add it from there. Okay. You got to have a starting point that's on Hager somewhere. Okay, great. Yeah, that would that would be the starting point. And then look at Caspi recommendation and see if we need two different policies. Board members would reach out with concise recommendations that they may want to see added, into this policy and all of it. And then, you can add those or remove from it and bring that in front of the board if it is necessary that this has to come to another work session, you can let me know.

152It may be, easier to have this conversation in this setting as opposed to, having it term out there, but we can, my intent, although since and I'll share this with the board as well. The hope and the intent is that since this conversation started with this current seated board and elections were referenced, hopefully this board can end up making the decision as opposed to putting it to the new board, since we've already started a conversation up here. Okay. Good idea. Any other feedback at this time? Okay. Thank you guys. I appreciate, the conversation surrounding this. That's the end of the work session. We have other agenda items at this time. If there's nothing else that, Secretary you want. Yeah. I just this is my last opportunity to do this, so I just want to be

153really quick. Because we don't. We're not actually meeting again until November 5th after the election. And I just want to provide a really brief reflection from my own part on the strike action that occurred last week, because this is my last opportunity to do that. So on October 8th, last week, right, we had I don't know if we have the final numbers yet, but we had approximately one third of teachers that participated in the strike. That does mean that the solid majority of our teachers and staff showed up for students, and we were able to keep schools open safely as a place for learning. But I nevertheless, I think as a board, we have to kind of when there is an action like that, listen and try to understand what happened and what the strike

154was about. And as best I can tell, the strike had two major purposes. The first was to mobilize community support for the election. I have made no secret of my disdain for that motive. We will see what the community makes of that in about three weeks. The second was to protest board actions in general. And specifically the. Decision to allow the master ement to expire. But I really just need to emphasize to anyone who watches these that decision was made ten months ago. It's back in the news and discussion. Only because the SCA made a decision to time a strike to. Coincide with the election. The district has already transitioned to the use of an employee handbook, which again is the. System every other district in the county uses. You have to drive. 60. Miles

155in either direction to find a school district that does not use an employee handbook. Nothing about the strike changes any of that. And there are a number of things that. Occurred on that day that are. Dismaying. To me. I'm going to let Superintendent Gall and HR and admin handle all of that. I would just fervently wish that in the next three weeks, we can keep. Politics where it belongs, outside of working hours, and refocus on the mission of actually educating kids. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate your feedback on that. The one thing that I would mention to the community I noticed that is a lot of emotions involved in this. And I have, every time, community member, parent or even a staff member has been willing to engage in a conversation

156that are board members that are interested in having those conversations, I have not declined one opportunity to engage with you and the opportunity for me is to listen to what you bring to the table and to have an open line of communication that is, in this day and age with social media. There is a lot of misinformation out there and I am happy, and so would the rest of my colleagues in having those conversations with you, if necessary, to elect you to provide some clarity and also listen to you and also, and, just share the factual information that, is associated with, the board decision and that the consequences of it. So, please, if you have want to engage with us, please do. There are several emails the board received, and each one of those emails

157have, reached out and I've had, to, people that have taken me up on that offer. And I'm meeting with one, I think two days from now. So, but, we are happy to meet with you to to engage with you, to listen to you, to get your feedback. Okay. With that? We are at the end of our work session and will take about a ten minute break and then, reconvene on the board dais for our special meeting. Thank you. So. Oh. Oh. 0000. You you. And and and and and. And and. And the. And and you know. And. And and. And. And and. And and. You. And you. You. And. I. You. And.