Work Session - September 17, 2025

001In this video, you. All. Oh. Oh oh. You. Must. It's recording and stuff. And it's Julius Caesar. Just. It's everyone. Okay. Thank you. Okay, I'm going to get this started. Good afternoon. Okay, let's get the work session started. It's September 17th, 2025. Time is 4:02 p.m. in attendance. I see six board members here, and, I did see Lee, at the beginning as well. So she will be joining us along with Superintendent Call and this team. We do have, at least one person from CDC joining us as well. Thank you for being here. I appreciate everything. I've got to know you a little bit over the last couple of years. So it's glad that you can join us. Simple assembly and that of, about a couple of schools. And then we have this call back here

002as well, and then a plethora of district admin people who are in the audience, just to provide some context, as to what we are looking at today, we are looking at other specific schools that are after the, mass testing that took place and April, where, identified, through the initial school performance framework, some under the state watchlist, either as a Priority Improvement school or, turnaround school. The, timeline at this point is this is a research and discussion where we are looking at those school improvement plans. I'm sure the school staff is going to join us at this discussion as well. And then, the timeline we are looking at that is that at some point in time, probably by the end of the month, this will come as a non-action item at a, at a board agenda.

003And then, followed that by an action item sometime in October. And so, that's that timeline I have. I don't see superintendent call yet here. To lead off the conversation. So, I'll kick that. I will, do you want to lead this up, or do I want to show the program is call back? I'll start real quick. Okay, so Mitchell and Galileo are both on the pathway plans that we know were approved by the state Board of Education last spring. So February for Galileo and then Mitchell in May. And part of the reporting requirement after CTE, the Colorado state of a Department of Education board approves the plans is that Andy Swanson, our turnaround partner, comes to our local board and shares context on what they've seen since the pathway plan was implemented. So that's what you're

004going to hear first for Mitchell and Galileo tonight. Okay. We've met. Perfect. I know that we started so fast here all night. It would be great. Oh it's a good impression of you hours here. So but I to turn it over to you a perfect introduction, for Andy and Andy represents dozens of people and decades, if not centuries worth of experience at, at CTE. I've been in this game a long time. I came into this game and the state turnaround effort in the state of Michigan. So we reported directly to the governor on the lowest 10% of schools in the state of Michigan, which all happen to be in the Detroit Public Schools portfolio. And so I've been through this report to the state role before, in Oakland. We certainly had our challenges in Washington,

005DC. We had many failed schools. We reported directly to the mayor. This is the only time I ever had support from the intermediary. And Andy and his team have been with us from my first day in the district to tell me the things I didn't know about the history of some of our schools and the challenges they had. And he's actually been through every step of the way through how we were and what we were going to present to the state, on how we think that we can improve outcomes for students to be able to be in a place where we don't have to come back to the state board. But I would say that Colorado's got something in both its process and certainly in Andy and the team that you represent. So it is

006actually, although it's an awful space to have to be in, it is with great honor and privilege that I introduce you to our Board of Education. Andy, over to you. So before you get there to the board, we have not only Andy here, but we have several other schools to consider as well. So we have a lot on our agenda this evening, along with executive session to, adhere to that timeline. I would encourage you to, wait until the presentation is done and then prioritize your questions so that we can keep moving on in a timely manner to the next item on the agenda. With that feel great. Thank you. Thank you all. Good afternoon. Good to see you all. Board president Michael, pack up to the medical directors. Very excited to be here with you

007all. As Superintendent Cole said, I've had the opportunity to be the, support lead, as we, refer to it for Colorado Springs District 11 for the last four years. I think at this point, and so it's every step of the way been actually a true pleasure to be able to work with your district staff, with your school leadership, with school staff. That's so honored to be able to be here with you all today. And I'm going to go through a handful of things. And then, of course, at the end, questions of what concerns you the most, what are areas that you all really want to get some more information on? Within that. So a couple of things that we're really going to focus on today is updates on projects for Mitchell and Galileo. And then what

008are some key next steps and focus for kind of first semester for those two sites as well as anything else throughout the district or as, as CTE supports? Go with that. So, looking at the district as a whole of all, performance frameworks, as you all know, were released earlier this month. Here you can see the district's overall performance frameworks from 2022 to 2025. While the percentage of points earned did go back a little bit this last year from 24 to 25, as you can see, still accredited with an improvement plan type. Happy to talk through any of that a little bit further. And, a higher percentage of points earned on 25 than either 22 or 23. A couple of data trends at a very high level, would be some of the decreases if we were

009to narrow it down, or mostly due to decreases in elementary growth across the district in math and Ela, as well as lower growth for multilingual learners. A couple of bright spots. When we think of district wide trend data would be at the high school level, where we saw an increase in PSAT and SAT reading and writing growth, as well as an increase in graduation rate. And, just as important, a decrease in the dropout rate, which all of those were, contributing factors to actually a little bit of an increase on that side. Thinking of the district overall. Happy to dive in further, at the end here. If there's other data trends that you're curious about that, pivoting to Mitchell and Galileo overall, as, Miss Hopper mentioned, both schools came before the state board this last spring.

010You can see up here I pulled out a couple of relevant pieces when it came to the state board order, for each of those, as a reminder, when a school gets to or a district gets to be five straight years, a priority improvement or turnaround, state law indicates the need to come before the state board and get a state board directed action, which would be a one of the prescribed pathways that's within statute. As an aside, and happy to talk to you further if you, find this interesting, we just recently had an education accountability bill pass, this last spring that goes into effect now, this school year, in which some of the options have shifted a little bit. In a way that's a little more flexible for sites that might be a little more contextual

011moving forward. And also the plan requirements and codified within law. So we actually think these are really good developments. And will be really helpful, especially for sites like Galileo and Mitchell. So as you can see up there, Mitchell's order was to continue their innovation plan and add in the partnership with instructional empowerment to be an external manager with a focus on academics. Both of these aspects were right in line with what was presented by the district, for Mitchell High School, the state board. Overall, if you had a chance to to hear their comments and their questions overall, was very impressed with the plan that was put forward by the high school. Just as a reminder, this is Mitchell second time before the state board. They actually came forward first in 2022. And that was an

012early action in year four because the district was putting the innovation plan in place. So this would have been a rehearing for them. In February, Galileo came forward for their initial year five hearing, and proposed a conversion to a community school with a partnership with instruction or empowerment. I will say the state board was very impressed with that. And, presentation, one of the state board members actually said it was the strongest turnaround plan they've had come forward. So that is a good foundation, something we are very excited about. As they start to compute, as they start to execute on that plan, both schools, I would say committed themselves very well for the district in a good light. The state board was very impressed with the ability of superintendent goal of of all the principals and

013district leaders, with their ability to name the issues at hand and a strong plan moving forward for, for both of those sites. Talking about specifically the progress monitoring of sites with state board directed action. So you all know all sites that have state board directed action, do receive CDC progress monitoring and then reports to the state board. So all of them receive at least a minimum of four visits. Fortunately or unfortunately for your site, they seem more, they can tell you offline about. That's a good or bad thing. Like, typically on site, a lot more than that, in order to provide further support, for them. And then twice a year, I provide formal updates written and presented to the state board that is in March for mid-year and then in September. So I just I

014was just in front of our board, either last week or before, to talk to them, to talk with them about Mitchell specifically. Galileo had not yet started progress monitoring, so I did not do a report on Galileo at that point. And then we typically have a presentation to a local board, which we're doing right now, for most of the sites, our visits typically follow the structure that you can see up there. So regular support and planning meetings with the district, I meet usually at least monthly, actually, usually every couple of weeks for Sherry, to just discuss what's the support plan for both of these sites as well as the district overall. And then I try to just join the instruction of how instructional empowerment is. We don't feel that there's a need or it's a

015good use of anyone's time for them to just meet differently with me when when I can just join in on those meetings. Both sites in instructional empowerment have been great partners for. I joined those reappraisal learning walks, in order so that it's not extra time away for school and district leaders, because we know their time is so valuable, they should be getting in the classroom. They should be helping out with instruction. They don't need to be pulled aside by state bureaucrats to do separate work. That's going to take them away from from the vital work they're doing for their school. So our goal is to prioritize existing meetings for any of this. Both of these sites, as I said, have state board directed action, within their order from the state board, there are return terms,

016which is if the sites do not show improvement, coming back before the state board for a hearing, we are all committed to that happening. But if it were to happen, it would be due to the 2027 SPS. So that would give two years of implementation of the plan. If either site has priority improvement or turnaround on the 27 SPF, then they would come back before the state board. During the 27, 2018 school year, for another hearing. Getting a little more detailed, about each of these two sites. Mitchell is priority improvement year seven. As of the 2025 SPF, the school did show improvement. If you remember, on the 2024 step, it was a turnaround plan type that moved up to priority improvement with a 4.5% increase on points earned on the SPF. I've had the opportunity

017to work with Mitchell, I believe, for about four years now. The first 2 or 3 years of that was significant staffing instability, as you all know. And this year has brought much greater stability on that front, which has allowed the school to really focus on core instruction. I would say starting in October last year through last year was the most focus I've seen that leadership team be able to provide to instructional leadership and some of the most improvement I've seen there. The instructional coaches and the staff have been able to help support teachers moving toward grade level learning practices, and there has been an evidence of stronger implementation across classrooms. I was able to be there, a couple of times already this year. And it's been great to see the level of urgency, momentum that's

018starting off this year stronger than I have seen in prior years, specifically around instructional movement and the work that's happening with teachers. And that, the state level data at Mitchell has shown improvement across several areas in increasing growth. Although across all of those, we have yet to see the 50 medium growth percentile mark, which is where we need to see at a bare minimum, to really see some strong growth for kids to be able to get where they need to get, achievement did decline, PSAT, but Rose on sat, and while the results are modest and in need of improvement, I would say Mitchell is in a better position structurally. But it has been in years, and I am very optimistic about the momentum that I saw. At the start of the school year. Shifting to

019Galileo, the school is priority and permit year six. Caveat to note on that the school did earn enough points on the SPF, an increase on the SPF to earn and improvement plan type, but was decreased due to participation. That participation rate meant that they were lower than the 95% accountability participation rate needed on Ela and math. And so that decreases them one level. And the SPF. I was actually just talking with doctor Colicky. We are looking at, the request to reconsider process that we are, encouraged at the possibility we may actually the district may be able to get that raised to improvement, which would be, which would be an exciting change for the school if that were to happen, that would move Galileo to on watch, which would mean that if on the 26 SPF

020Galileo got improvement or performance, they would complete the exit performance watch. They would completely exit state board directed action at that point. So we will know the decision on request to reconsider in December. Within that, we're going to work through. So we'll be working through that process. I worked with the Galileo team a lot last year. I'm sure they were happy to not see me quite as much, so far at the start of this year from that, but I did get a chance to visit the school in the first couple of weeks, despite their principal transition. I've been very impressed with the level of urgency that I saw by school leaders and the focus of their work with I. We had a chance to walk classrooms like culture in the building when I was there,

021the focus of instruction, the focus of their leadership. I was very impressed with the way in which they started out this year. I would say from my limited vantage point, it is the strongest start I've seen at Galileo in the four years I've had a chance to to visit there in August or September. So excited to see that, momentum continue, across that building. Looking ahead to our work together, focus on implementation. As I said, I will be joining rigor appraisals, rigor walks, some of the work with IEEE when I can and to provide supports that I can, for the schools. I want to make one short note about Schweiger Middle School. I know you're going to hear from here. Later this evening, they did move to year four on the accountability clock. In slipping down

022from improvement to priority improvement this year, I'll be meeting with, Principal Cockrell and director, Kovach. Actually, Friday we realized, in a couple of days just to talk about supports for the school. So the school will need a state review panel visit later on this year. In the in anticipation of the possibility of an accountability hearing in 2627. So we will be discussing what are the needs at school. How can we best support, within that? And then finally I will be helping the district prepare easy grant applications opening this fall and having discussions about how any supports that might be needed across other schools, across the system. I am personally very excited for the work in the district. School systems are getting in place. There's some momentum around, some strong streamlined work, across an instructional vision

023for the district, and some infrastructure in place that I don't think we've had for the last few years. And so I think there's going to be some accelerated momentum, this year. And with that, that's, the end of my, kind of presentation. And so happy to open up to any questions or any areas you want to you all want to dive into. Yeah. Thank you so much, for your active engagement and district 11 schools. Looks like you're a constant presence in some of our schools. So, I appreciate your feedback. And the overarching, feedback that I'm getting from you, is that the momentum that you see at. At least I've got Leo and Mitchell and possibly even Speicher. The momentum that you are seeing at this time is better off than what you saw two, three, four

024years back. Got it. Even last year. And the focus on instruction, the, sense of urgency that is there in that school all of that, positive feedback, that, that's the feedback that I see you delivered to the board at this time. Yep. Absolutely. Yep. At both statements, I'm very encouraged about the structures and systems and urgency. That's great. And the next, next year at this time, it's going to be you that they are going to hold accountable the superintendent because, you know, we are ultimately accountable. That is good. We're going to be next year at this time. We're going to be celebrating the, the academic growth exam across both sides. But open it up for questions. Comments? On what, Mr. Swanson presented and generally speaking, about, other questions that you may have for have a spin

025on the, state testing. SPS any of that nature wants to have a stance, carry no doubt up. Thanks. I just have a on that last slide, support for any incoming easy grant applications. Can you just address briefly what the benefit of an easy grant, would be to a school and any schools that across the district. That might be interesting. Yeah. Great. Thank thanks for that question. So easy for those who might not be familiar. Acronym for, Empowering Actions for School Improvement. It has many roots and many pathways that are open to any state or federally identified school. We it because of that is a very comprehensive grant. It is actually anything but easy. If there are people who are, who have figured it out or been in that system, with that, it really does provide

026a multitude of opportunities depending on where school is at. So if a school is in need of a diagnostic review, for example, there's funding grant funding available for for an external provider to possibly do a diagnostic review to see what are the issues right now within the school, there's district design and LED options that are a little more open to evidence based possibilities. Within that, there's CTE supports such as our transformation network, or other CTE LED supports that might be good fits for schools, depending on what their needs are. And then there's, school turnaround leader development grant opportunity that the district's taken advantage of. So the UVA work a lot of that was, was paid for through easy grant funding. So we will look at anybody that's better identified, I think just went out today

027or yesterday or yesterday. What's going to happen is federal identified state identified schools, depending on how far those are on each of those blocks or what their designation would be, get a level of prioritization points. We'll see what those prioritization points are. What we do is the district can submit grant applications on behalf of any site that is identified. And then we score all of those. Every application that meets a threshold of being, fundable. We put from the highest priority, lowest priority and just go until the money runs out. So we'll look at which sites have enough priority points that we would typically see being worth. And that was important. And see what those needs are. With that. So there is a wide variety, but it's a lot bigger that. Well, I hope that answers

028your question. Yeah. Generally I just I worry about the schools that are not priority or prone that that are sinking or might sink next year to. And maybe we anticipate that already. Yeah. So our, academic strategy is not dependent upon access to the easy grant. We certainly use that where we can. Cherry has been managing that and seeing wild variation of how it is awarded over, the three years that we've worked together. But it is then, a place where we supplement. So the strategy is consistent to the needs of the school. The easy grant gives us the ability to either get deeper, further, or more sustainable over time. And we will see what our application meets this year. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Anything else? Doctor Huber, I think one of the concerns with

029Mitchell, too, is, you know, we have feeder schools that are also struggling going into that includes so when you are in Spygate and Galileo Galilei. So we're talking about a bit of that pathways and that springs giving you the opposite. Can you explain more about what you're looking at US incidence. And if that's going to be enough to turn these elementary schools around that are going, well, you know, it's a great question. So the state review panel itself is statutorily it's a body of external educators that apply to be a part of this. And it is solely for kind of the report to the state board in preparation for a possible hearing, based on the statutory pathway. So statutory pathways for a district run school, or possibly school closure, conversion to a charter, innovation status,

030partial or full external management conversion to a community school or the brand new one this year. There's a more flexible pathway with a few options underneath that. What they'll do is they'll come into swagger probably this spring when we get set up. And they will talk to teachers, they'll, walk classrooms, they'll talk to leaders, they'll look at documents, and they will write a report about which of the pathways they think would be the best fit and were swagger to have to come forward for a state board hearing. So it would just be for swagger. And it's for that kind of tailored purpose. I would say, take the heart of your question of like, we have a whole PTO pattern of need. So that's where we would look at what are the easy grant opportunities, not

031necessarily state review panel, that might support some of that aspect of things. And then of course, the other things that the district is doing. I do think having a more holistic strategy, like instructional empowerment across sites and having a vision of instruction along those lines that is common among schools that have that shares kids is very helpful for kids going through a system and for improvement efforts across time. So that's very encouraging of that kind of aspect that makes it that helps very much. So thank you. One more question on that. We can see the attendance rate on the CTE, state Colorado. Is there a reason why it's 2324 when we get to some 2425 on there? Because I was really impressed by the attendance numbers at Mitchell. 2324 very interested in to see how

032that aligns with the over a recent out of this task force. Yes, that's a great call. I can follow up on the exact timing. I want to say it's December January that that gets updated right around the same time that we'll get some of the updated graduation rate data, dropout rate data. There's a nice set that we will get somewhere around semester time. One I think you any other questions from members on this topic? And I do have a couple questions, just for clarity. Schweikert, it's on the fourth year on the state watch list. Is there anything at the local level that we have to do at this time, or is that a year? We got to worry about that next year. Yes. They continue. Great question. The only additional requirement other than the typical

033you have to send a letter home and so I will present to you all is that in the UIP process you do need to do an initial table or chart or discussion of how the pathways, each of the pathways may or may not be a good fit for the school. As an initial look, you have to do that for the state review panel. Anyway, I know district and school leaders a good example. School closure. Why is that not a good option for swagger? Right. And those kinds of aspects, the things that's about the only requirement other than obviously we're going to be working through. What are the improvement efforts. How can we help support? Okay. And having starting a deep dive on what might be the good pathway plan, if it does get to a

034year five situation? Okay, so that happens in the current school improvement plan. And then you will do the review state review and then give us a report on that. And then if necessary hopefully it's not. They will accept then. Thank you. Second question again, this is from my charity. If a school is and a second or third year on the, state watchlist, then they have to go through two successive years, showing improvement of performance before they accept that clock. Right. That's right. Any anybody year two or later. So that so you one they can exit next year. That's right. So all they have to do is one one year of improvement or performance. Yes. So it's really important like Wilson would fall into that category. This is year one for them. So they don't go

035to year two because if they go to year two then they have to show two successive years later. Okay, great. But the Wilson staff, it's important that you get them out of I know in the past, we have received several, I'm not completely clear about this, so that's why I'm asking you the third page in the high school, SPF thing, the post-secondary and workforce readiness rating. It's always, I'm sure the district staff, is reaching out to you, and you can provide the support. So that is data that is lagging behind sometimes. And we want to make sure that that accurate information is reflected, that, okay, it's not something that you see happening down at our specifically at my children's time. Yes, absolutely. So with the district, I think every year and every fall we've had

036conversations about making sure, especially the matriculation rate data of making sure that is being, reported accurately. And to your point, one matriculation rate, graduation rate, dropout rate has the year lag. So the information you see on the SPF for Sam Mitchell, for example, is from the 2324 school year. We'll get that updated information in December, January. And so we'll know what that looks like in the SPF. One caveat on that one as well. That new education bill, 1278 that I mentioned is the some of the more, I guess, extreme or larger changes that are have going to happen due to that are in that third page of the high school. That's not happening this year at the earliest. That will happen in 27. But there are some changes happening. What we know is the SAT,

037which currently sits in our will, shift to academic achievement. So it will no longer be in the space and then, matriculation rate will be its own. But there are also be another measure. That's the measuring how students are doing in high school with post-secondary workforce readiness requirements. So students are taking AP classes, concurrent enrollment classes, CTE classes. The state board will undergo a rulemaking process this year of exactly what that looks like. So it's worth paying attention to that. But that should drive some substantive change. Probably in high school programing. And what does it look like to get points on the SPF? And so just to get that on your radar, like, what's he paying attention? I'll make sure obviously district staff gets the information as that's there, but those are some pretty significant shifts

038that we want to make sure. It's not easy to shift high school programing on a dime. So the earlier that any of that shifts as you want to, as you see it for your students, but also see, in order to shift those expectations, it's can be helpful. Thank you. Just to add to Andy, the district has been working and believes we're well positioned, particularly for the latter part of that change. As you see as we start our board meetings, we are always celebrating our seats. So, opportunities for our students in ways that I think are really not just Pike's Peak leading, but maybe even state leading. So we do think that that will be more reflective of the overall experience and how that positions kids better for life, college, career and whatever comes next. There

039will be a larger challenge, though, for us on the achievement side that that now kind of stands alone. And that achievement. But, but I do think our page three will be better served by the work that this, district court and community have committed to for really for decades. We have stronger CTE programing in the state for our district of our size. Thank you. Appreciate you being here. I leave you with this, and this can be, something that you can provide as a source of information for the board. The educational accountability bill that you talked about. If there is some information that you are putting from the CD level, sometimes that seemed like helpful videos and stuff, that is easy for us to digest, and we don't have to delve into 20 pages of education. I

040think we do that. Yeah, sometimes it's easy to watch and with the timeline constraints, it makes it easier for us. If you have anything like that piece forwarded to me, I forwarded to the board. So it makes it a aware of what is coming in the next year or so for the board to keep focus on it. Up to your feedback. I don't see any other questions from the board. Yes. May I add just a piece to remind the board of before we leave this topic for Mitchell and Yellow Lail? Under state's guidance, the pathway plan for each school, the ones that were approved last year by the state board are these schools use. And so you'll see that uploaded to CDs are used for a separate need for you to approve a separate use

041from the pathway plan. Correct? Yes. Correct. So, so they have one plan to help streamline for everybody. Yeah. Perfect. And thank you again for being here and being part of our schools and providing the feedback as often as you do. I don't know if you are going to hang around for the rest of the, schools. Use the presentation. I don't know what your schedule is. Your welcome to stay here and answer questions or if you've got other things on your agenda. So here I will stay listenable from the audience. That said, I think you're still around. I was asking questions if I'll put a mustache out, so I've heard a fine, thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. And the Mitchell staff and, Galileo's staff, if you were here, are you here? Just raise your

042hands if you like. Here. Thank you. I appreciate both of you being here. And come, we've had opportunities to visit your school and see the actual engagement that is taking place in the classroom. But the sense of urgency that about this is really important. So, we need to push towards you shown improvements, the supports and culture, and everything is in place. Now. We need to cross the finish line and move both schools out of the state watchlist next year. That those are the clear expectations. You've heard from the board. You've heard from the superintendent as well. Thank you for being here. Appreciate, if you guys can stay here to and listen to that, hanging in to support the rest of your, peers that are going to be joining us. I'm talking to the Mitchell Gallery

043staff. Or you can go ahead with the rest of your, the, So I'm going to turn it over to you. I think we have us, Adams up here next to do and their school improvement plan. I'm super excited to see Caroline at the table. It's been just a lot of fun to watch. Caroline go from one of our strongest assistant principals and jump right into the fire, taking over Adams, knowing that these challenges were coming, and then really leaning into the district strategies and really being an exemplar of if we do our best to implement. Well, we can show that we can improve even in the most challenging environments. A walk in the building at Adams is completely different than it was this time last year. The staff is there, the staff is well-trained, the

044staff is continuing to lean in. And Caroline actually demonstrated a great example of, with the pressures of the superintendent walking into your classroom, it's not always easy. And Caroline gave the teacher of record an opportunity that, why don't we exercise one of these strategies? And as soon as we did that, the class flowed right back into how we try our best to deliver high quality instruction and so much appreciation. I and the, microphone and the clicky over to Caroline Grant. Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you all. I appreciate all of you listening to our story. And, we're going to start with this slide right here. I'll jump right in. Last year we were facing that. We had a little scary little people. I thank you guys all for being here from Adams I appreciate

045to everybody else in our center and everyone from Adams. Could you put up your hand screen. Oh, I think I'm here. Thank you. So this slide right here, I do want to start with just some celebrations in terms of bright spots for our school. I know we're going to enter into some data that's not what we want to see yet. So I do want to highlight that we have we are 100% staffed this year. That's amazing. So when I came on board the year before, we were looking at, oh, gosh, 14 openings that were being, filled at the time of my, arrival. And so you can see here we brought the pride at the beginning of school, and this is our wolf pack, we call it. And so we have our students outside, and we

046have just amazing teachers smiling every day, sharing our story. So I thank you for the warmer wolf pack. And then, with all of this, and another bright spot is you're going to see that we were building conditions last year. So starting off in a situation, we had 60% new staff. So we had ten out of 15 teachers that were brand new to Adams. And seven of those ten were brand new to teaching. So this year we, have 13 classroom teachers, and we have two of those teachers that are new and they are brand new teachers to, education as well. But some of them can be here tonight. They're in induction. So six of them are over at induction right now. So we're just still continuing to grow constantly amidst all of the the actions that

047they're being called to and the work they're doing, they're still saying, hey, let's take on another thing so and get better at getting better. Our attendance was, in August last year. At this time, we're at 89%, this year at 91%. So that's exciting. Speaking about attendance, we have 136 students that have a 90% or higher attendance rate, and we have 77 that have 100% attendance right now. So that's exciting for us. So yeah, we celebrate that. We've done a lot of work behind the scenes APIs. Great. And tracking all that and leaning into support. Our story. So our data analysis, with this story, we do have a sense of urgency. And so I do want to go through that. But I do want to say that, panic is not in our game plan because panics

048driven out of fear. And so we're going with urgency because that's a belief in a faith that you can't change something. And so it is my job, and I am fully aware to elevate that urgency and keep it at the forefront of our work. And so we'll be doing that. And that we just had an annual team meeting. So sorry. That's all. I popped in right from that. So we literally just reviewed some more data. Are our star data our data. So we are in the trenches. Our teachers understand the urgency in the list that they're being asked to do in full. So, please know that is part of our culture. We're all committed to it. It's not just a meeting trying to pull them, on pushing, and they're going right along with it, and

049they're leaning into all the work. On this slide, you're going to see that at the top. Which I have my glasses, that, you know, you can see that our cut scores here, they're not where they need to be, obviously in achievement, in, or math or science at this point in time. But you can see that we do have 5 or 6% scale score points that we could have prospectively gotten in a lot of these categories. So that's about equating to ten children. So we're doing a lot of work this year. And we'll get into that later on. What we're doing to our call to action neural network. And then if you go down to the growth section right there, you're going to see that we are for based on our growth now from last year,

050we can say that we do have approaching growth in L.A., and we did a lot of work with Texas planning and leading into that work. And so they did pay off for us. Even though marginal, it's still a win. And so our work is slow and steady. It's on a trajectory and it's on a positive trajectory. Math, you can see here too that we do we do, we do have a call out for math. And we are also doing, some work to make sure that we are addressing those pockets of opportunity for us and our students. I think, you know, looking, this slide right here is going to be addressing, you can see by our teachers and by the breakouts that we are, it's just basically reiterating the last slide that we do have a

051serious call out of action for math. We were very close in a lot of categories to get to that 50 in Ela. But we did not make that even, the cut scores for even to get to 50. Excuse me 40 on math. So math is definitely a work that we're going to do systematically. It's not teacher by teacher. It's going to have to be through our entire system. And so we are well aware of that, and we are breaking down the pieces to get to that work. We've already started that work actually, so we're really excited about that. And we understand as a school that in our population right now, 50 is not even enough, right? 50 is only one year's worth of growth per student. And we're looking to get to 60 or higher.

052And that is a big lift for us. But we are all committed to the work. We're running toward, the work. We're not running away from the work. Everybody's invested in our school that works there. We believe in our students, and we believe in one another. I'm going to talk more about coaching later, but on this slide, too, it's going to take not only our teachers coaching teachers and helping each other. We, we're able to use our site based budgeting opportunity to bring in another coach. So that's going to help alleviate that pressure as well, and just really plan those intentional lessons as we go. This is also a breakdown of our score here. So you can see that we did increase the top by 3% on our Ela. We decreased the bottom, still marginally. But

053we are looking to still elevate that because you can see that we left 26% of kids on the table in LA. So that's an opportunity for us. And then math same thing. We grew by 1% still leaving that 15% on the table in that approaching category. And then decreasing the bottom by 1%. So we're moving in the right direction. It's like, marginal, but it's, it's going and we have every intention to make that happen. And we, like I say, are very urgent in our work to do this. And we're very excited to do this not work. Looking at our turned over time in our data story through this piece, you can see that we do, we're not able to sustain our overall trajectory is flat. And we're going backwards in our growth on that part.

054So what we do need to do is we need to this is going to take a lot of work, again, trying to trend in the right direction. But our our increases are seasonally not growing and shrink over to the next assessment. So it's going to take some more intentional work on trying to get a sustain and not anticipate. If those dips are into being anticipated, we can call we can just make, quicker pivots. And what we're trying to do to get those scores up. Our data story here through the five, as you know, if a school scores, reading in three categories, they're 10% more likely to be a successful school. So I'm sorry, ten times you for these. So we are, we grew up, Group two of our measures right here. And those are effective

055leaders and collaborative teachers. And inside of that work, I mean, that's all part of building that system and that culture and the conditions we were trying to impact last year. And so one of our highest reading scores was a 98,100. And that falls under the collaborative teachers for PD. And so we included the Wolf Pack Academy, and we personalize our learning, every single month, to what we need based on our data in real time. So that's a win for us right here. We are targeting some critical moves and supportive environment, which we'll talk about later. But we're really excited about this work. This says we're trending in the right direction and building that culture and that climate we're trying to achieve to get to that hard work of instruction. Our first regular appraisal with instructional

056empowerment occurred on September the 4th. Plotted on this bar graph. You can see since last October, excuse me, the 1st September to now we have our trajectory is still increasing to, get those conditions in place. So we have to use every single classroom. Teams are being formed. We have tasks in place. Every classroom has a focus wall, or I should say focus board, focus area. This year. So we all are aligned to standards driven instruction posting, learning targets, our success criteria. We've added vocabulary this year into resources so students know what to do in their learning. And teachers are driven off that work through planning, that they do in their PLC groups. You can see some kiddos here. We implement roles, we have norms, all the processes that we're doing or structures we're building on

057a consistent basis. We practice daily so we can say 100% of classrooms are offering this on a daily basis. Kindergarten all the way to fifth. Some of the challenges we face, in five specifically, first, when you look at supportive environment, it's not only do kids feel safe, but we have uncovered that kids are reporting that they do not feel safe. And under that layer is walking home from school, in the bathrooms, in the hallways. When it's deeper than that, too, it's do my peers value hard work? Do they do their homework? So when you break those questions, you do it all the way down. It's the culture in the classroom and at the school level that says hard work is important. And so we're finding that kids are not yet resonating with that. And so

058like through our hard work, that's one of our goals, is to just elevate that kind of rigor. And so that's the minute you walk in the door to the minute you go home and expecting high things of them because they can do hard work. They can or they can do hard things just like other children in other schools. So we want that to be the message that we're sending to them. So that's work. We're also working on. I spoke to the Wolf Pack Academy a little bit, but this is something that's a great opportunity for us. It's two times a month after school. Right now we're reading fostering Deep Learning. It's a book provided by Instruction Empowerment. And so we're working through how to create culture, that culture of rigor in classrooms and in our

059school. It's, we've been through chapter three, so we're continuing to read the book, and then we are customizing our PD based on math. So we'll get into that in a second. But, our comments, our one is all around data driven instruction. With that, I, reflecting on myself because despite all the, wraparound supports I received from the district, which were immense. And I appreciate all of that. Our whole school, our staff does, I was unable to lead our school to higher results. And so I own that, because I focused on when I review my professional practice rubric. I lived in standard one, which is all of operational leadership, and I had to learn how to run a school. And, this year, my goal and my professional growth plans are to pivot to standard three. And so

060that's where it's all about instruction, right? I'm in classrooms, I've set my schedule. We've done our daily stand ups to reflect that. Like I'm very proud of the work we're already doing. But it's just going to continue to get better. And inside of that work becomes a student agency. So I was elevating what kids need to know and be able to do on a daily basis. Already reaping the benefits of that. I had a kid walk in this morning, came to tell me, shook my hand. You're like, Mrs. Graham, how's your day today? And I just took it as it's great. And he thinks he's the mayor of Adams, so she totally is. And so, he just said, you know, my reading scores are going up, and I'm like, that's awesome, buddy. So we just

061struck, you know, shook her hands and went about that, gave high fives. But I kid to come say that he's struggling and really knows like that speaks to our teachers like they're already in the data folders. They're already talking to these kids about where they are and where they can go. And I don't want to get emotional, but it's working. It's just working at a slower rate than what we like. But we're going to keep accelerating. We're going to keep our foot on the gas and keep the urgency high. And every minute matters with that. So we looked at our class earlier today, my kid actually in our IELTS, this is our example. And so we looked at kids that could do the work but maybe didn't show that effort. And so trying to make

062that connection of again going back to the five, why didn't they do that? If they can line up, how can we get them to get motivated to value that hard work will pay off? And so that's just a correlation. We want to continue to foster and breed and go through that, realm and working with our teacher and trying to create experiences that are going to empower them to make the real world connections, because right now, they don't think they know math exists out of school. So we're trying to make that bridge District benchmark in coaching. This is exciting for us too. Like I said, we were able to add another coach, big lift for us having a lot of new teachers still. Being under your, three, you're still learning the ropes. Are you learning how

063to be a teacher and being an Adams as you can. So like I'm more into this topic sometimes, but, we have divided our coaches in the K-1 planning classes and teaching and observations through look and learns with instructional empowerment and also doing the kick up platform that the district is utilizing. So we are every teacher is in a coaching cycle. We're about to end a coaching cycle. Number two, that's exciting for us. And I myself have coaches, so we model that coaches are it's a gift. It's not something. And one of the beautiful things at our school, I've never worked at a school where every teacher was invested in coaching and asked for it. Our teachers are all on board with coaching. That is not one of our like hurdles to get over. And that

064was built from last year and it was the same way. And it's just it's amazing to continue to carry that that culture over into this year. We are good. We just facilitated a rubric in our Dei. So we're going to be looking at where we are now. We created ourselves and we're continue to grow on that rubric from the district. How can we become more data driven, instruction oriented and all that? We do all the time, all the way down from CMAs to sorry, you asked to star to the end of module assessments, down to the topic quizzes, down, exit ticket to the daily, daily, daily grind to formative assessments. And that intent of tracking the IEP requires and is asked of us. And so we have five new plans to get those lined up

065and get them rolling. Formative assessment kind of toggle between those two. Excuse me for that. But formative assessments, just making sure our exit tickets are in play every single day. We just talked about that too. And teachers are all aware and to get into tier two. So every teacher has tier two math now in their schedule, which we don't have last year. And so that is based on a daily exit ticket. And so kids are got it. Almost got it. Do not have it sorted quickly. And then they're passed out. And so we're trying to gauge right off the jump every single day. And I want to speak to the last one because that was most exciting. Well today today's Wednesday is PLC day. So today was all about that. Got so I had teachers

066and I heard that answer, but I want to go back to so every single PLC today, it was landing. We got down to item analysis and four out of our six PLCs. That is so big for us. Teachers were saying, hey, our teaching at 03.3, they're talking about standards like it's the language. No, it's not just, hey, I think it's magic. Does we want to get down to that standards level, because our vision this year is to create a culture of excellence through agency collaboration. And do you know, it's it standards of instruction. And that aligns truly to the theory of D11 that we're trying to get to. And we mapped it out, and we are identically aligned to what the district is doing in our school work. It's not isolated work. It's truly the

067work that is threaded through the district's vision. So we're there. We're there. With this came the whole idea of looking at math and having an MGP of 25 as a school, right. That's disheartening. So it's a it's a huge call of urgency and a situation that we just can't be in. And so what we've decided to do is look at, all of the standards and math. We picked five. So we're looking at fractions multiplying, dividing decimals and then geometry with measurement and down and going through that piece. And we're going to we I've already identified those eight buckets of standards. We've knocked them backwards all the way down to kindergarten. And those are going to be the standards we work on. And we're going to pace that out in our curriculum, and we're going to

068really hone in and laser focus on those specific standards to try to elevate and move our whole culture in the right direction. And so we can take that model and then we can replicate it over time and say, hey, we got these five down, let's tackle five more, because this is not a lift for only a fifth grade. A team of teachers to do in on a fourth grade team. Teachers like you're only getting girls out of fourth and fifth. But we're all responsible for the students here, not just fourth and fifth grade teachers. So we want to take this to the systematic level of understanding our lift and what that looks like. Every grade level. Student agency. Our promise right now is every student at Adams is hurting, valued and loved. And we can

069tell you in all and all of these and all truth that every single classroom 100% has agency happen every single day. That's amazing. So our professional learning communities, those are grounded in all of the data review that we're using. We have they're using the DDR protocol from the district. You can see the classroom up at the top. This is a first grade classroom in our school. A lot of our schools are actually pivoting to digital works. But this is a focus, for example, where we have CTE, schools, knowledge and Eureka all mapped out. So when teachers are planning, they're getting all the way down to that level for every single lesson. And that's a big ask. It's a lot. I mean, there's no time left. They're maximizing every minute of time they have. You've given

070them an extra plan, time to get every kid access to science this year, which is a huge win for us. And so when teachers are planning, kids are using, our steam lab and they're engaging the science kids. And our team was able to do that. So, for us so that's great. Is that planning? So coming a week ahead planned and being intentional. All the things we're asking them to do because we're using with integrity our clay curriculum and also the Eureka curriculum. And, you know, on top of being in the situation we're in learning a new curriculum. I mean, that's that's a big lift. So they're doing amazing build. They are crushing it. And they're using every minute that they can at the waking hour. We appreciate the Staffing sustainability grant because it allows them

071to use their flex time on top of that to go into these standards and then plan the lessons that they they need to what they're doing. I want to keep extending, 100% of our grade levels are based at the they are within the D11 pacing guide within four days, and they are paced together. So I've never worked at a school where I could go in a classroom. That teacher has the same exact learning target as their teammate across the hall, and not only does that allow them to, just work at their own high level of rigor, but now the grade level is working at that same level and expectation. And so you can give individual feedback, but this allows us to give PLC teams feedback as a whole, which has been powerful. So you're moving

072elevating two teachers to coaching versus one at a time. Excuse me pacing. We have teaching calendars that we're using and every single grade level level. So they can go in daily and poster lessons where they are the poster quizzes their assessments when they're doing their data folders down to the the nitty gritty of what they are doing every single day. They have it at their fingertips right there. They customize their PLC now to become what they need it to be. So if they're ending a module, they're going to engage in that analysis and do, the data reports for that particular content. That's what they're going to do. So they have agency to lift what they need to. RPD is amazing. The Wolfpack Academy is going on every two weeks, at our school. So our big,

073big push you can see the goal here. It's out there. We're mapping out those standards. Every, teacher at our school that's agreed that in our ilt that using our, one of our MSL, the collective MSL to become one of those mass standards will be that that's what they're going to lift up to do is one of their muscles. You can see on the left that is our daily stand up board. The leadership team needs that. So myself, the AP and the two coaches. So every day on the left, the second column that you see on there, it's every single day. So they map where they're going to be the coaches and myself wanting to elevate my instructional leadership. I put a magnet on. I met my whole day. I present what I have gone for

074the day, and then every time I have a pocket, I'm in a classroom with one of the coaches. So that's our model. Now we're shifting to that piece right there, the bright green on the far right. Those are our coaching cycles. And so we're going to be mapping our coaching cycles down to we know where everybody's at by what goal they have. So we can all support them together. Not just one coach at a time. This is the pre-work we did. Those are where we hashed out the the standards. I've been working with Liz Jordan. She's been an immense support. I mean, everybody's been in a bit support, but this the standard work. She's taking that now and put it into a more, much more beautiful document than my chicken scratch, on the right side.

075And so we're going to work off that document. But it's, it's a formal piece of evidence or, a planning tool we're going to have forever now that we're going to keep going forward so that we can map out that whole standard by all grades. It's pretty impactful. That's our first goal. Academy live. We've engaged in that to talk about seniors and break that down. I do feel that teachers need to understand what the lift is for a fifth grader, even as a kindergarten teacher, and just the same as design process, because then you know where you're trying to go and how to pick the lift up for, the students that you're trying to teach. Am I to is all around like, we talked about earlier, a supportive environment and our five. So we've added a

076storehouse for safety for PBIs. And that's the kids actually, told our AP outside that they heard her, that we were listening to them as a school and that they were excited about that. And so that was, in context, one of the conversations I had outside is when the kids were trying to get the other kids to get in line because they're like, they're listening to us. They're kind of asked for safety. So they're they're it's resonating with them at that level. But it's working. Every kid has a data folder. We just self assessed on that as teachers in our IoT today. So where are we? Implementing those with kids? We're trying to so slowly roll out so every kid will have access to their own data where they're coming, whether it's double star math, third

077grade or secondary. Excuse me, was adding math in their in the module assessment. So that's the first thing we're going to put back in tomorrow. And it's just nice. And so when Dakari comes and tells me he's the mayor and his scores are growing, I know where that's coming from. It's coming from a 1 to 1 conversation we had with this teacher, that they took the time to tell him because they want to know no matter where you're scoring, kids want to know. They're like little adults that we if they say if you're saying my score is 1050, they don't know what the 1050 means on right. But they know that if I get five more points, I'm going to be at the next level. And so we really want to hone down the behaviors

078of what is going to get you those five points. So is it taking your time on your test? Adding more minutes. Is it rereading the question, is it using working paper. So getting them to identify that a behavior can have a positive outcome on their own. Learning. Let's see. We have a rack weekly, which is amazing. We've been, teaching rock to follow the implementation of fidelity in the district expectation. And so we do have once a week. We do have on Tuesdays, where every grade level is taught through random acts of kindness curriculum to support self-regulation. We have calm down boxes in every classroom. Now. So we do want to teach kids to self-regulate. What's a calm down box? So that's a, it's a content area, I guess I should say. But we provided them

079all with a box, and then what? They get outside the box was their own option. But it's an area where a kid can say, hey, I'm not feeling on my best right now. I need to take a break instead of eloping. We had a lot of kids just the classroom running, getting to severely dysregulated before they had that place. In that pause, we call it where they can calm themselves. We need them to calm themselves first and teach them how to take caring themselves so they can learn. If they're not in the classroom, they're all right. So teach them how to use the timer and how to follow breathing strategies to just calm themselves down, to re-engagement and to get back into their learning. And so I've seen that work in classrooms. The kids will

080go to the corner, take a little break, watch the timer and go back and engage. And then it takes that pressure off the teacher of having to go over there and support that kid in a severely dysregulated situation. And if it is severe, then obviously, we'll leave the classroom to support them. But, our dean and our on the system resolution are going in classrooms and really, truly supporting, teachers one on one side by side, helping make phone calls, our mentor teachers, helping make phone calls to parents in those situations, sitting in and listening to them and offering feedback. That's huge. And I've seen mentors. I've seen teachers coming across from primarily all coming into intermediate to seek support from a teacher even before they go to the admin. And so that's that induction program at

081the heart of its work right there. And that's what I feel the value of that is. And it's evident we're elevating our own students. They're doing announcements now. They're the ones taking the show. So we're trying to tap into their passions and show them that it's not just all just sitting here and being bored and getting in a textbook, right? Like there are options for you, and there are ways you can have a passion and find an interest out for yourself. And so student council also they run a store, kids earn tickets. So just having their voice heard in our school and letting them know that we do hear them, we have Mitchell coming in. They just came today I'm sorry. Yesterday they come in and they support with kids at recess and they play

082into them and they build that partnership, mentorship and so once we find kids that want to sit with them, eat with them at lunch, we let them do that. And so just having other adults that they feel they can resonate with, we need more adults, right? Because they they just want to be loved on like everybody else, and fostering grit. So again, going back to those questions we dug down into, into finding that kids, we want them to take school seriously, wanting to take homework seriously. We have Wolfpack ready, we call it. So be a school on time. Bring your backpack. Bring your take a folder. Read 20 minutes a day. That's our ask. Be wolfpack right? Our outcomes. In our stuff. I just want to say thank you to the dog for giving us

083feedback on this and the tighter alignment between our actions and our root causes and call outs between those two. And so I went in reserve. You did, fine, fine tune those things. So thank you for the feedback. You can see that we put a 10% increase in year one on our math scores. And so we had 16.8% of kids scoring at grade level in L.A. And we had 14.4 now for every level. And so increasing those by 10% in year one and then another 10% in year two. Yes. Overall though, our school we're working on the TV and so myself being included in that, you know, working on my instructional leadership capacity is to improve our data literacy as a school. And so what we're doing through that is really just working on the structures

084of that, the system of data analysis, going to the items, setting up our PLCs, getting to the Ed to take us through formative assessments. And so really just becoming aware of our, our, our actions can just drive by the minute and by every single day matters. We can't wait till the end or wait till end of unit assessment. So it's it's a call to action that has to be occurring at the five minute daily level. And actually by lesson excuse me, lesson level. So yeah, our focus is really on, we do know that when timely intervention will not save the world. So tier one definitely has got to be where the biggest bang for our buck is and where we invest our our highest stakes for our biggest moves are with leverage. And so we

085are all about that and we're working towards that, to get there, get there, and we will get there. Spring is. Yeah. Okay, great. Great. Thank you. I appreciate your feedback and that. And while you were talking, I think more of your staff members walked into the meeting. So it looks like the whole host nation is becoming about, this brand is amazing. Okay. You didn't mention that at feedback. And that's something that I would start with as a comment and, open it up for questions from the board as well. I want to thank the DAC and the type appropriation committee, because they took a lot of time and effort to, maybe just send a signature. And then Courtney Hoeppner as the backpack coordination chair, she has been keeping the board up for all the feedback and,

086and just providing it, providing it not only to you, but all of the principals. So I'm not repeating this again with the other principals out there. So, they put in a lot of time and effort as the board, committee, please look into that feedback that you get from them. And try to incorporate it as best as you can as you go through your school. And once again, thank the whole of that team for taking the time and energy to deep dive into this plan and provide that feedback. With that, both, comments and questions back to back. Thank you for your information. It was great and comprehensive. The question is on Kayla, are you in your first year to Adams? Yes, ma'am, but we are. And it's a lot of material. So can you give us

087some hint on how it's made more. Piece by piece, as opposed to the whole elephant? How is it that, you've approached implementing cyclic CLA so that, teachers feel. Yes, it's new, but I have a handle on. Yes, sure. I think having the embedded coach added, is a huge support for our system. And so, one of our coaches takes kindergarten, first grade, and then the other one takes second through fifth. And so they divide out that way and they go to there's four planning sessions a week that teachers go to, with their teams. And day one specifically, the coach goes in day one of math, the coach goes. So on that day one, we've made a planning agenda. We want to make sure we hit all of those pieces to get through that. And so one

088of our coaches, both of our coaches are excuse me, have talked to Healy before. So that's huge for us. It helps a lot. And so I heard a teacher, running through the holidays. She was so excited. I said one time, she's like, I made my pacing today. You tell me. And so that's a win like this. Right now, we're focusing on getting through the curriculum and getting through it every day and sticking with it. We have a long to this year is one team, one vision. And stick with it because we knew that has it working. We can't trust to get we got to stick with it because they know what is going to work. So it's just continuing to tighten up every day. And it's they talk a lot about getting skinny, but don't

089skip. So we're not skipping. We're just seeing where we can get tight and where we can expand and, work with the kids we have in front of us and what they can and can't do. And so I know there's some frustration and anger. There's no small group because traditionally that's what we've done. Right. And so when there are those days, option one and option two, utilizing those and really trying to use those pause days or putting them on the calendar of what I'm seeing in class, here's what my assessment says. We went through the assessments and and three of the PLCs, and, Mr. Bailey and Miss Hall walked in with a card. He said, these are the five standards that my kids don't know right now. Once you go and use the items they don't

090know on the test, and we went through every single one of those, we were able to debrief on what we could do. So then it's when do we do that? Right. And we get back in. And so we have to think outside the box of like, well, we have to when we line up, we have a one time pocket into the one time somehow. So it's really trying to get creative because you only have so much time in the day. So it's how can you get creative to reengage in the moment? You may not have thought it could have been the moment, but maybe it is in the lunchroom or it is going down the hall. So we try to maximize every little second. Thank you. You could talk to my kids. Okay? Okay. Any

091other thoughts? Back to Hooper. You talked about a ton in the classrooms where teachers assisted in getting student tested and how students engage with that or any of the classrooms. And you talk about small agency and how you've witnessed that and how students are participating and what they're getting out of the process. Yeah. First grade is a good example, too. I was in Mr. Butler responsibility, and the kids were talking and and we sent pictures all the time, even at night of like, things that happened in the day. So he had maps out and he had written on them that he's teaching them how to have an interdependent task. Right. So that's hard for first graders and five and six year olds and seven year olds to figure out how do they lift as a

092team? And so he had to he had to scaffold down, though, and break out each section of the mat as I'm digging that and give them a task to do to contribute to the whole. So they all had to solve a problem using a different strategy. But the strategy was identifying the kids. You could see them showing the finger count, the key diagram, they all had a different strategy. And then they were talking about. And so we have to be very mindful. We can be the delimiter for kids sometimes if we don't let them do the thing. And so even Regina, his teammates spoke to that about, she's amazed every day what they can do when she lets them do it. And so we are just like, yeah, little people can do hard things. Well,

093one more question would be, what do you think will be the biggest barrier to your success as a school? And if you feel mid-year that you need that agility, what things are going to come in right, right at that moment to say, hey, this is this is what's going to happen. Because I know they've been talking about agility across the district. So when you say, hey, this isn't going the right way, what is your next step? I mean, you know, honestly, we do have a lot of brand new teachers, right? Like I didn't learn how to become a teacher. I don't know, I was probably five years. And I remember the first thing that taught me my first lesson about how to talk to a kid. Like, I can remember moments where I just, I

094grew and you grow again and you grow again, right? And so having a new curriculum in year two thrown at me or you're one on top of having the data we might have at the time, and maybe the population working through some hard, I think the, the hard part might be just making sure I address those teachers needs immediately and on time. So I met with fourth and fifth grade teachers last week and asked, what do you need? The assistant principal and Kathy did that and said, what do you do now? I want to know, now we're getting you all this, and sometimes you don't want to overwhelm with all the supports, but I want you to tell me what you need to want to do. I want to help you now. And so it

095could be maybe bringing in some of those district coaches on top of the ones if if they're spread too thin, it's maybe just tapping into some more. I know we brought back some retired teachers, so something like, I think it would be some more of the coaching pieces just because you got to be able to. And we talked about this all the time. But agency is it works. But when you have kids that need it, we need to elevate content and get scores that they may not be able to read at the higher level. To engage in a task, we have to be able to do those simultaneously to make that magical. You know, really that leap we need to make. So we have to work in tandem together and we're we're nailing that agency,

096but we've got to make sure we understand the content. And so that's hard. That's been every school I've been to. So understanding our standards, digging in for the kids have to know and be able to do. And then how can I make sure they're able to show me that and help ensure I'm teaching them that right? Because to focus on the learning, we have to get through all of the harder pieces to and deal with that behavior at the same time, or the agency lift that we want to make sure we're playing those tasks. And so they're working extremely hard. I can't, I cannot I love this app. I love the school, I love the kids. I am proud to be the principal at a John Adams elementary school. And I am so grateful that

097the district let me and me do this opportunity and have this, because I love everything. These teachers work harder than I've ever seen, harder than I've ever seen. Great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? And, just for the framework that we kept, the 30 minute presentation, your presentation plan, a little bit longer, but I do want to give the board the title, and the opportunity to ask questions. I don't want to skip over that. That's really our oversight. On and accountability. Part of that. Sure. Can you just describe the support you are getting from instructional empowerment because you had them there last year, and I realized there was great turnover last year. This year. Let's turn over. How has the support changed if it has how are they assisting with development and the structure

098of the classes? Yeah, we appreciate their partnership greatly. It's truly helping me as an instructional leader become stronger and that regard. And so setting up the board and making sure I'm diligent about where my time is spent, just have to look at the calendar. Right. And so we do is we do a regular appraisal. Then we have a 45 people based off of that result. And so we decide that as a team to ask myself, this is a principal and the two coaches and, Christy can be the lead of our entire team. So excuse me, but it's the end all be all with that. So she comes in. We need about that. Then we break that and plan backwards. And we have sprints. And so right now we're about to wrap up our first sprint.

099And so that was 70%. Excuse me, 70% of classrooms will have standard online learning targets posted. And so our next sprint will start next week. And that moves into the teaching tasks. And then you know we keep going from there. So we we start with a large goal and then we break it down. So it's bite sized chunks and actions that we can meet using our regular walks. And so she comes in we have oh she was just there yesterday. So we need I think it's 12 half days of year total. It's it's trimmed down a little bit. But she's really trying to build that agency with us to release eventually. And so we are aware of that. But when she comes we walk classrooms together. She gives me her feedback. She talks me through

100how to conduct. I really want to make sure we're aligned just for that calibration. And we do have the coaching, coordinator that works with our two coaches. So she comes, watch us debrief so they'll do a look and learn. Then she goes in and they map out inside of the program on the the progression of learning on the debrief. And then they go and they plan that in the middle administers that with the teacher in a collaborative nature. When the the teachers are available within 48 hours is our goal to get back to them. And then we keep moving to those desired effects. So everything is it's very sequential in the way it builds. So it's exciting because you can see what kind of scores are going up. And creating the conditions within is all

101about the conditions upon which you can get to the higher level of learning. It can do we do those structures with roles and rules and norms and our TLC, excuse me, our embedded coaches, now, both of them are amazing. If the teachers need a resource, they're brainstorming. How can I tweak this? How can I create this one to make it a little bit more user friendly for a five year old versus what it looks like for a fifth year, fifth grader? So we can you see in the system that we can ask the same thing of kids just at different levels and still trying to push them. And so the coaching is what it's all about. It's really what thank you, thank you. Any other comments on getting something outside? Any other comments or questions

102from the board at this time? Appreciate your feedback. Yeah. I'll come to you. Okay. I just want to wrap up something, a couple of things. If you can pull back to the classroom level, but you have the teacher, one teacher to, my feedback to this is more to the district that I have. This is my sixth year at the board and, eighth year for director art, and Jason has been here with me as well. I've not seen this type up, down, right down to the classroom level in any of the past presentations. When feedback school come in front of it. So that level of regard, it's good that you didn't identify the teacher, but I'm sure you guys know which teacher needs help and support. But this level of looking at the teacher level and

103that like directly down to the student level, this is the first time I've seen it. So, appreciate you guys providing that type of feedback, at that level. And I know that you guys are doing the deep catalog and all those things. So a couple of things I do want to, give, but kudos and positives, from what I heard, but that you are from the start of this year, that was a big, problem a year back or two years back, whenever I visited, items that was like logged on some that, that that, you don't want that static, superintendent calls, opinion on long term substitutes about students. Not one thing you could say. But, until you have an instructional environment, you know, and everything that I heard from you was in the past. Think I can see

104your passion and the excitement in your voice? In the use of itself. And this was not just for you, but for all that the principals that are out there, just check to make sure that your, that, information is accurate. I'm not going to point out anything specifically, but just review that video to make sure that you have the most up to date information on that. And to overall to the district family Adams staff that to say thank you for being here. We talk all the time about putting our best teachers and the way we talk about this, the best school in the state of the country. I've been attacked. I've seen the challenges that you guys face. It's not the challenges that, some of the schools at the northeast or northwest part of our schools

105face. You deal with a lot more on a daily basis, so you guys have to work overtime to get our students up to proficiency level and closing those gaps. And that's what I see when I visit your schools on the, and the classrooms that are happening. So, with you moving from operationally to the instructional leadership that you mentioned out there, that's going to help support the teachers. That's what we look forward to. You getting off the, state watchlist. In, and keep us updated. And one of the things that I would like to see is, information that, as we go forward and we get the media report and, data that are you practicing in the right direction so that we don't wait till the end of the year to make the changes? We got to make

106those changes in October and November. That sense of urgency has got to do that. Thank you. Yes. Go ahead, go ahead. I just want to note again on the annual or the action planning that you're actually tracking, I love that we get to see where you what you've completed already. That's in progress. And not everybody does that. Look at you. It's schools. But and then some of them have. But I just love being able to see that you are actually keeping track, making progress. Okay, so, I'm going to break some protocol if you're here from Adams to stand up, tell us your name, your grades. Teach. Start over here. Fifth grade teacher Trevor Brumley. Been there for 15 years with this school group. Great. Mandy Miller, reading interventionist for a second year. Capital as, like,

107assistant principal, second year. When we look at second year kindergarten, what's in my first grade year? I am Harker, fourth grade. Ten years. Elaina Bieler, fourth grade, my first year at Adams Kyleigh Hicks. Special education. This is my second year. We marketed resource teacher for years and it helped native student ten years. Sarah Bathgate, speech language pathologist, 11 years first, third grade, second year at Adams. Heather Bowen, instructional coach, first year at Adams Kim Clifton, our staff assistant, second year at Adams. I can hear you. The last one. I can't see that now. I believe was awesome. So thank you. There are countless others, particularly in central office staff that have leaned in. I hope that what you see in the usage that come forward is a lot of alignment to the leadership and to

108the prep work we did over the last couple of weeks to show you the things that we're doing differently academically. Data Lee and, Area Superintendent Lee, I'll make up my own words to ensure that all these incredible educators get the support that they need. I could think of no better, description of who we teach, how we teach and what we teach and what Carolyn presented here today. It is a triangulation all the time. There are no silver bullets. There is no if we just move to this, it will be better, right? This idea? Yes. We are Arcola and Eureka curriculum for, Ela and for math. We use agency to activate the learning in that space. I is a partner for us in our schools that have presented the greatest amount of need for us to

109be able to show that acceleration in the classroom. You all are doing that work. You're exemplifying that if we do implement a strategy, well, it can make a difference. And so thank you for being here. I thank you avoided large enough help satellite for a moment there. We were going to have a lot of claim forms. But thank you for thank you, thank you, thank you. Yes. That's. My favorite. I got think we got. All this. So I'm stepping. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to the next presentation. It's going to be swipe with the school. So I haven't got that time to talk with you. You introduce. That's okay. And looks like we have some good stuff up here. Awesome. We're going to let them funnel in as well. Thank you all for being

110here. It's great to have a Doctor Cockrell here at the table. Rainn, I have known each other year. Now since, my time in this point. And, as we just celebrated some of the successes early on of what we heard at Mitchell, I have to acknowledge that Ray gets a lot of the credit for creating this foundation of adult learning in a turnaround school. I can remember when Ray was the assistant principal at, Mitchell High School, literally leading, PD for the entirety of a high school staff by herself. And for all of those at the secondary level, can imagine the challenge of how do you get all departments to agree, really what he was leading towards this commitment to standard. Ray came into, swaggered where we knew we needed a change and we were excited for

111that change. And much like you have heard and seen in some of our other schools that have been on the watch list, getting the stability of the staff to then get the staff to believe in the strategy. Is that critical part? We anticipated that swagger would actually be priority improvement last year they were not, and Ray was already working on these types of plans without being on so and so. Although the first time for you, this is really the second time that she has been this deep and what it's going to take to lead differently, we've coined a new term, which is to make, middle school sweet again. Because when we were on the first day of school and our new sixth graders came into swagger on the first day of school this year, you

112saw nothing other than children that were eager to learn that were, invested in being at swagger, that wanted to be a part of a learning culture. And so we have come up with these ideas of just get the eighth graders to go down and look at how great it would be to be a sixth grader again if we could go back in time. But I'm super proud of the work that Ray has led and all of the staff to have those sixth graders in a space where they are ready. And we do believe that the culture is right for, seventh and eighth grade to be sweet again as well. So over to Ray. Thank you. I thought you were going to say that the new term you made up was Data Lake, that that's going

113to catch up. Yeah. So thank you so much for the introduction. I am Ray Cockrell. I am a proud graduate from high school. D11 schools, product, D11 schools, and I'm a first generation college student who has lived firsthand the promise of public education to break patterns of generational poverty. And I think that's completely relevant to what we're here to talk about today. Jack Spire Middle School is a title one middle school in the southeast area that proudly feeds into Mitchell High School. We have 370 students and scholars and Jack Swagger Middle school. We believe that every student is capable of achieving and growing at high levels with the proper supports and challenges. And we also believe that every teacher is capable of instruction that fosters that achievement and growth with the proper supports coaching, learning,

114and accountability. We know that our students are limited only by the quality of instruction that we provide to them. So jumping into our, story where we are in our data analysis now, as Superintendent Cole shared, we have dropped under my first year of leadership from improvement to priority, and that, I have to own it. And, I appreciate the standard that, Carolyn set, the principal, that, our students get the instruction that they needed and deserved in order to get the outcomes that we want to see from them. In my leadership, I made some missteps in my first year focusing very intensively on coaching, and growth. And we certainly have made a lot of progress in our systems in that area. But missing that vital element of ensuring that we're focused on student outcomes as the purpose

115and, the be all, end all of the coaching, not only, the teachers support and growth, for teachers, we provided a lot of feedback and coaching to our teachers, but not yet acted quickly enough to really restructure our approaches and think bigger and really just hit pause and change everything, as needed to get the results that we needed. Some context in my first year, leadership coming in last year, at the beginning of the year, 80%, over 80% of our licensed staff turnover. And so in a lot of ways, we were in school, with some die hard, folks who have hung on through the changes and are here to support tonight. The majority of our new teachers, our first and second year alternative licensure teachers. And that's in some of the context of the learning and coaching.

116That we have a lot of folks who've taken that courageous leap into a new career in instruction. So I'll share implications for moving forward in the data that you'll hear me speak to, really restructuring the way we're supporting instruction and focusing on student data in a daily, granular, tightly focused way to the standard and student, to ensure that every students getting the quality of instruction that they deserve. So the high level school performance framework results and take away you can see in the bottom right, this is the shift from 2024 into 2025, a drop from improvement to priority improvement. The bottom line is the takeaway is that we have very urgent work to do. And the deeper story behind that is the opportunity that we're seeing in each of these areas in achievement, the top

117half of the SPF that you see there, we have not met, achievement expectations in any areas in growth, which is the bottom half. We have met expectations in only one area, which is our English language on track to proficiency, for our multilingual learners. So the big picture tells the story about the urgency of the work ahead, and the opportunity. But I want to break this down into deeper into looking at specific standards, specific teacher specific students. As we are moving forward, so you can see some classroom level data here. This is our gross data, our map median growth percentile by teacher. And you can see, on the right our C math data, shows MGP of 29, three for English language arts and of 36 for math. it is not meeting meeting the goal to hit

11850. Right. And, Carolyn, speak to that. That simply means you're middle of the pack. And so getting one year growth in one year's time, we know to close the gap that we need to close, we need to see mid-sixties. For m. S so you can see out of ten teachers that, none of them hit that target. None of our classrooms. Yet achieved in English or math at the level needed. And eight out of ten qualify for intensive coaching and support based on having an MGP under 40. These growth numbers make it clear that our students aren't catching up, fast enough. So we want to take a look at the, overall achievement data as well as the growth data here. So there's a danger when we speak in percentages, as you'll see on this slide. I

119mean, we've seen that English language arts grew 1%, in well below right. And percent pass grew by 1%. Essentially, it's flat, right, that our achievement remains flat. But there's a danger when we speak in percentages that we might forget to acknowledge that every one of these children that's part of this percentage is someone's precious child. And we speak about that in our school and keep that in mind as we are, looking at data. So the big picture trends in English and math show that it is flat. And the question for us becomes, what must we do differently? To change this trajectory? So we're moving into our formative data here. And you can see our star benchmark assessment beginning, middle and end of year over time. We've seen a decline over time from fall 2324 to

120fall 2526. In English and math is significantly lower in performance than, our reading scores are there's a persistent, achievement gap there in the math, to reading score, of ten plus percentage points. However, I do want to call out we've bucked the trend, that I understand to be a sort of district wide trend and to see, some loss from, spring to fall this year. We have some early indicators that some of our work around agency is taking root. Because we are now seeing, upward motion, here and the fall. So to really fully understand, the picture, it's not only our academic data, right, but our, culture and climate data as well. This five essential data is very important to us because it speaks to our students, our parents and our teachers perceptions about the learning environment. So

121you can see that we have a data gap in 2024. Unfortunately, prior to my, being hired, there was not enough participation in the survey in any group, to get any data. In 2025, we definitely saw rebound, with strong emphasis and focus there. 98% of our teachers completed this, survey to give us their feedback. We know that a red category is a barrier to improvement. It's the lowest possible rating and a consistently red category. Is a lower likelihood of us improving, in academics. And we do have that, you'll see over time a consistent red category, which is supportive environment. So I want to speak to that for just a moment. Because we're talking about our focus on student agency and the importance of student voice and experience. Because supportive and environment, our lowest measure is a

122student response. And so this is our students telling us what we must address, our highest element, and highest measure, ambitious instruction, our highest element within our sorry measure, within that element, is also a student response. And that's about the quality of math instruction. And the score was 83, which is very strong. And so I see that as an early indicator that we're seeing that growth area in collaborative teachers and ambitious instruction and the focus on instruction that we've leaned in off, however, we know, that from the voice of our students that we absolutely must, continue to focus on supportive environment and connection. And I will, before the end of this presentation, speak to many of the changes already underway. For that. So this this slide really shows you the shift. It's the the sort of

123breadcrumb breadcrumb trail right from the really big picture data all the way down to the more precise specific data points. So we start looking at what's happening for individual teachers, individual students and how they're performing on individual classes. So you'll see at the class level, what we're seeing in the big state data is low achievement and growth. And the need for much more rapid instructional pivots. Or we're talking about moving into the data. And then the district benchmarking is what's really led us to understand we must seek more data, and we must seek it sooner to make more decisions. Through data driven instruction. And so we have leaned in, all hands on deck in terms of amplify, Eureka and making sure that we're leveraging the quality curricular resources. We have to use standards based curriculum,

124standards based assessments to inform our planning and learning as staff, and to use that data to empower students themselves, to own their own learning. Our formative assessment data. I also want to just call out that we are leaning in on a very much tighter focus, on short cycle data checks to the point of looking at daily exit tickets within, professional learning communities, identifying the gap. What is the misconception? What's the gap between the exemplar and the student data that we are seeing? And addressing it quickly? We really are seeing in a few instances, we're seeing teachers getting, tightly into that in a way that's leading into actually addressing that in the moment, in instruction, not waiting until I take those exit tickets to PLC, or take back student work to my, data meeting, but actually

125saying, hang on, pops, I'm noticing a theme up we're all going to address this year in class, and that is the goal. So I want to talk about the actions that we are taking in response. Our first major improvement strategy is about cultivating student agency through data driven instruction, empowering students and teachers alike by ensuring that our instructional decisions are happening in the moment, not after it's too late, not after we've already created or reinforced a gap. So key actions, include, really focusing our professional learning opportunities around fourth instruction and, student agency teaching for student agency. We have, converted all staff meeting time to professional learning time. So this morning at seven, from 7 to 8 a.m., my staff was engaged in professional learning around student agency. And what happens in the brain when we

126engage students through teaming and how that relates to the instructional moves, that they are making. We're also using formative assessment, much more tightly. You know, I heard Carolyn speak to the, pacing guides that we have in place, but we're also tightening up in terms of following back up after we've made an adjustment, if we plan to reteach, and then reassess that as part of the next day's exit ticket as well. Did we get where we needed to go? With our students? Are we seeing the shift in their learning so increasing fidelity of that standards align curriculum? I've heard Superintendent Golf say repeatedly, it's not the curriculum, it's how you use it. It's how you implement it. And knowing that we're leveraging it for student data with a lens of agency and student teaming is key.

127So I also want to speak to, the way we've begun a partnership with instructional Empowerment. We are very excited. We've heard the testimonials. We got to hear, teachers from Mitchell High School come speak about their misgivings at first and then what their experience was. And those are our students and our families, and we know, if it works, they're right. It's going to work here. We've already seen a great deal of energy around this. We have ten staff members who attended an early adopter, training on, September 11th, and the rest of our staff will be taking that MRI 101, the model of instruction 101 training on October 10th, upcoming teacher work day. So much dedication to getting that on board, so much understanding of the urgency of building that student agency, that they are willing to

128work together to figure out how we can make that work for a teacher. Work day. So data and agency both really working together to empower students and teachers to act immediately in the learning process. Last little, tidbit I would add here about Miss One, is is a thank you in terms of the shifts that we've seen around, strategic staffing, around budgeting and resource allocation, we were able to change the way that we were staffing our school. I have two fabulous instructional coaches, two fabulous assistant principals, and they are in PLC. They are lead learners in our building, modeling that and in classrooms every day and supporting, teachers who are showing some emerging, promise to themselves, become model teachers with model classrooms in time. Our second major improvement strategy, is about building stronger systems of support

129and accountability. But again, there's a tie to data, and timeline. This is about getting students identified who need support much more rapidly and getting supports in place in a more agile, quickly pivoting model. And so we really leaned in, around the work, around the middle school accountability system, to guide our work for MTS this year. Using that tight timeline to rapidly identify and to get students the support that they need quickly, and to get parents and students involved in identifying the supports that are working and at the table, and figuring out what's not working and how we can move forward. The goal is absolutely to continue to develop student agency, and parent and family agency as partners in the work. Because we know when our students own their learning, that they will continue to accomplish

130things that we might not even have imagined for them. So integrating the middle school accountability system into our MTS system has resulted in students data no longer being monitored. But instead students are being engaged, powered with their data in the system. Ultimately, the measure of our success will be the outcomes, right? It will be the student outcomes, but it will also be the shifted adult practice that cultivates the student outcomes. And so we are looking at both. We are excited that we have our first rigor walk, coming up with, instructional empowerment in October. We are excited to learn, and I will just say that I have already learned a great deal just from the resources and the initial coaching visit. And it is having a great impact. The energy of the change, that we're seeing

131in our building, in our and our students, who are very excited about this work. So the, the key pieces I would call out in terms of outcomes, there's the teacher side, fidelity to the assessments, right, and the curriculum and the timelines. But the student side is seeing those improved outcomes for students, and seeing them in a tighter timeline. So decreasing the number of students who are eligible for the accountability system and increasing the number of students who are demonstrating mastery, their standards aligned formative assessment, in their classes daily and weekly, and then also really leaning into student and teacher, goal setting, for those learning outcomes and having students help us set the goals that they want to achieve. As we move forward, my closing, thought for this slide is really that when we see whether

132the outcomes are working is it's whether students are gaining agency. So all of the data we just reviewed should look different as we move forward. But we know that we need a much sooner data point. Not waiting till mid-year. Benchmark data. Right. So we have end of module assessments, underway, ready to go. And, Eureka and amplify coming up end of this week, early next week across different grade levels, different times for different grade levels. But we are very excited to see, the data that we have from students. I also just wanted to with a quick couple of thank you. So thank you to the board, specifically Director Carey and Director Haley for, supporting Vice President Hinckley for supporting the work around the middle school accountability system and the thought partnership and guidance that you offered.

133When we discussed that, because it ended up what the learning and the discussion ended up back with our School Accountability Committee, with our families, and into our, unified improvement Plan. And so thank you for that. I also want to thank the DAC, very Clawson specifically, for the feedback they gave, really detailed feedback on our action plans, which are movie documents, as you shared, specifically about how our time students plan on how we're using that data and, and pivoting, based on their data. And that brought us back to our ability to for students to be able to get out of that accountability system in shorter cycles, and demonstrate that growth. So I will leave it there for questions. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate your feedback and all of you that I hear from Speicher to open

134it up for comments and questions from the At bank is your first, I'm having trouble. Filling the gap between the wonderful attendance you had at the open house. I mean, there was not. I got the last parking spaces. There was no Kona ice left by the time you got there. You do. So when I look at your, five year and we're talking about supportive environment, when I walked kids or noticed kids, helping each other find, classrooms for parents about their friends or whatever, the patience at which, parents were lined up so that they could, give them schedules so they knew where they were going and the other being shifted off because I had two years in that school. So it seems to me a gap between this supportive environment and, and what I actually saw

135on an open house. And I know that, having it so well attended speaks well for the fact that people feel comfortable coming to school, parents feel comfortable coming to school, and in addition to that, if you did noted in here, I didn't see it, your English language learners because I was in, conversation. I was in conversation. I was in a room with, a student was interpreting for mom, and mom was interested. So what is your English language? Population in percentages or numbers, whatever. Yeah. Thank you. So we have. I don't want to misspeak. I'll speak in general terms. Yes, as far as that goes. So, I'll just the second question first. So we have, a quarter of our students, are receiving, multilingual learner services. So they are on plans, language learner plans. More than that,

136we get closer to the 30 to 40% range. Have been on track. So we have students who are considered fully English proficient or have exited the program and are being monitored, but not actively receiving services other than monitoring. So a very large population, and our on track to English language proficiency, that's going to be the students who are taking the to access, test in January of each year. And so it's a specific group of students, that's representing the students who are actively receiving those services and qualifying for them at that time. I appreciate them. Having said that, I want to acknowledge the heavy lift that you have in bridging that gap because when folks have not been exposed to public education here, they don't have experience, which they can draw to feel comfortable or to,

137know how to participate or, be able to be a partner with their child to set goals other than I'm going to send my child to school and I don't want to overgeneralize, but I think I want to acknowledge how well you and your staff have reached out because, as I've said, you were well attended on open house and people wouldn't come if they didn't feel welcome. And in the classrooms, kids are talking to teachers, teachers are talking to parents. There's dialog going on, conversations going on. So congratulations to you and your staff for making it such a welcoming environment for people to come. Thank you for being there. And thank you for coming to see that. And I would just share that the supportive environment questions, we're seeing that agency work directly targeting that as

138well because students are asked questions. In the survey we have a teacher team who's doing a deep dive in that right now and taking action for it. But some of the questions include questions like my peers, believe it's important to do well in the classroom. I trust my teacher to keep their word. So really thinking at that level of what relationships are we building and those student to student relationships in the classroom matter? It's not only the adult to student relationships. And so that empowerment work, we believe will help target that great deal. Thank you. And having said that, can you speak to behavior in the building? Middle school can sometimes be an opportunity for students to have freedom that they haven't had before. And at the same time, our job is to make sure

139the guardrails were in place so that they understand how they can be who they want to be, and yet they have to live in a community. Yeah, I appreciate that. My my philosophy is that discipline is about learning first and foremost, that it is education. And so when we, as you shared first time, I've had this level of freedom and maybe I come to stick with it, or maybe I make a choice that isn't actually representative of who I am as a person or who I'm going to become. Right? We always first and foremost safety. Absolutely. But then what can we learn from this? And sometimes we do learn from consequences, but also what else can be learned by the community, by the individual? How can we come back, process this together? And always reentry

140with the idea of we're coming back into this situation. We've had a conversation. I reflected on what I will do differently next time. And so I think that's the the most important thing for me. Right, that we think about, especially at the middle school level, right, that this is an opportunity for learning and growth for all involved. Me too many times. Thank you. Thank you. According to the CDC website, that you're multilingual learners is 28.5%. So you were really close to what you said last. Brooks and numbers and hope you, any other That talk and I'll come to you. Okay. I want to say thanks to you all to for having tracking and your, your action planning, document. Just one slide back on slide ten. There's a bullet. Yeah. The third one. Increased accountability for

141students not meeting expectations in math and reading what would look like. Yeah. Thank you. So that speaks directly. And I think I left a word out there I think you should say increased support and accountability. So I'm balancing those two. But that speaks directly to the middle school accountable system so that we know we've got those triggers, those tight timeline triggers with the support of doctor colleagues, team, and the data that we're running, we know this isn't working for the student right now. We have students who have had their initial meetings with administration, with counselors saying, hey, you're in the system with us. This is what we're doing to support you. Here's where we're having groups every week and your counselor where you're meeting, having to check in. We're setting goals. We're working on, we're

142working on executive functioning skills, how you learn in the classroom, how you engage the support, but also accountability. There are privileges that you may not get if you're not on track. And so we have had those conversations as well. And it's also it's the motivator that we're going to get you out of this system and you're not going to stay in the system all year. Okay. Next I have a couple other questions and I'll just follow up with email. Perfect. Like the Huber I'm going to share focus on these formative assessments. And the question will be is a battery of materials aligned to those standards. Because they're coming in and they're newer and they're working on how do I get students engaged? How do I work on these pieces? How am I handling classroom management?

143That might also be a heavy burden to say. At the same time, let's create these. So is there a battery for them to choose from if they're struggling and developing that, what kind of supports do they have to come in on these standards and have those ready to go for those types of assessment? Thank you. It's an insightful question. There is a lot that we're coaching around. Right. So there are a couple of things happening there. One, our learning as a leadership team, my my instructional leadership team is here at motioning in their direction. Our learning is also about how are we leveraging our curriculum resources to the highest level. What's in the curriculum? What also can we pull in to utilize? We've learned a lot. We had the opportunity to learn from Paul Van

144Santoyo wrote driven by Data 2.0. We, I studied this book together as a team, and we've learned a lot about how we can pull on existing resources, but we also have learned a lot about narrowing the focus. So we don't want to ask more questions. We want to ask the right questions. And a lot of that is just being super selective with the standard in front of us and focusing on that as teachers. In our data team, we also have pivoted already this year, with the area superintendents support, the Chiefs, support the curriculum and academics team support to bring in extra levels of coaching for areas of need where we're coaching on many different fronts, so that we can stay very focused in our PLC and data work to make sure that we're bringing that

145around to the learning. But we also have support in the classroom, whether it's school embedded, district embedded coaches, teachers, coaching teachers, or we also need instructional empowerment, additional levels of coaching, for our coaches. So attacking it on both sides. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Any other comments or questions okay. Again you had mentioned kind of near the beginning that last year you actually did do quite a bit of coaching, but that you felt like your coaching was misdirected or mis allocated and not sufficiently focused on student outcomes. Can you just say a little more about what you think went wrong last year, and what you're doing this year with respect to coaching? Absolutely. Thank you. I believe we did a lot right last year in terms of getting a system in place where we have,

146weekly meeting as our coaching team where we discuss every single teacher and their needs and what coaching touchpoints will happen. And it's, it's really tiered based on needs. So you might have one coaching touchpoint, or you might have five coaching touchpoints depending on what's going on in that week. But we what we didn't do yet was to really get tight on how we were using student data, formative data, daily data to drive the coaching and to see to evaluate the effectiveness of the coaching. We were focusing on teacher practice and missing many pieces of the student outcome, because we were waiting to see that end of module assessment data, or we were waiting to see the mid-year data and not getting tight with our timelines. That answer with, yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah, I'll

147jump in, to also, reset to the different way we're thinking about the academic team. Last year, coaching was on Rey. And so we are always limited by the capacity of any one person that is ultimately responsible for a team. And so now Rey is an instrument in how it is that we coach instruction, not just at swagger, but how we do this for every one of our principals and every one of our schools. So we want to get out of this cycle. I hope you believe in the quality of the principal that we put forth in front of you, and we'll measure it again in August when the results come out. And so, as you will see, as we've committed to the work, actually, Doctor Carrie, that you've led for the board on this way,

148that we are communicating our academic metrics more tightly and more consistently with more focus on what the expectation of those outcomes are. Every principal should be feeling that there is coaching, and then the enormity of all of the district behind it to support that. When you go back to director Bank, is this question on the leading and lagging nature of five? You could argue that either way, I have never seen all gray. It's the first time I have seen an entire community say we are not going to to to part, to participate. We're looking for words. That's my word. We have a little joke on who stumbles on what words the entire the of the instructional community said, we will not participate in this. Well, trodden and shared way that our district is used in

149the past. So not only starting from all red or red and orange, starting from. I am so divested from what you're trying to do, I won't even give you my feedback. And so that's a very tough place to coach from, which is how do you come into that space? I appreciate the structures that you put in place, but now there's depth into how that's happening. And it's not just on the incredible strength of a leader and the team that showed up here, but it's now the power of the district to come after it and get it as goes. We used to say Mitchell, but as good as any one of our schools that's on the turnaround. This goes district 11. We have to have a guarantee to access to high quality instruction. It cannot be

150limited by second year principal doing a great job as a second year principal. But a kid should never, you know, show up at 40 years old and say, well, the reason I never actually got to access the middle class was I had a second year principal on my seventh and eighth grade, and I went to a turnaround school for ninth and 10th grade, and then my parents made a different choice. Or maybe I had a change in my home life. We have to say that your tax base gets you access to high quality instruction, regardless of what zip code you're in, what neighborhood you're in, or who is the teacher of record or the principal. And we've done that now. And yes, we have work to do to be able to prove that. But the

151difference is, is it's not just Rey and her ability to provide an observation cycle. The other thing that's hard with that is remember that the state actually holds the principal accountable to the evaluation of their staff, and it's very difficult to be both a coach, a cheerleader, a champion, a counselor, and then ultimately the evaluator. Because as soon as you get to that space, you actually have to say, Ray has to say to miss callback, you're not meeting expectation. It is human nature for miss callback to say, I'm not really sure I'm taking these as coaching and observations anymore. They now become critical feedback. We have systems behind that that will now come in that says, you know, I know the oxymoron. Hi, I'm from Central Office and I'm here to help, but this is

152the year that when you get a visit from Central office, they are actually there to help. So I appreciate the clarity and the question. The cycle is tighter and the number of and differentiation of touch point is deeper and more specific to the need, not just dependent upon the strength of the individual leader in the building. Right. Thank you. Everything that we heard from you and from Superintendent call, it's giving us optimism that the school is moving in the right direction. Is there anything that you need from the board at this time? Other than what we've already heard, that you are an instructional empowerment school, so that's the first year that you are doing this. Anything else that we should know at this time? I would humbly ask that this board engage in conversation with

153Superintendent Gaul around opportunities for centralized hiring in the southeast area, schools. We don't always have the same level of access, to candidates, and that's something that could be a game changer for Swaggart and our area network schools. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. So that feedback, we take that into consideration, as we go forward, just summarizing, I did take a deep look at your data over the weekend. Some of your mean schools scale scores dropped significantly from last year. So this gives you an opportunity if you are at the bottom. This gives you an opportunity to only make the list to go up. So it gives you an opportunity to increase your growth scores, your achievement scores for this upcoming year. The plan is in place. The supports and systems are in place. So, I wish you

154the best. And we look forward to visiting your schools and having an opportunity to be in your classroom. Thank you. Yeah, I'd love to again, to do what we did with our, our last school. And folks can stand up, just tell you, who you are and what you do for us. And thank you for being here. Yeah. I'm Adrian, relatively assistant principal. This is my second year there. I'm Heather O'Rourke. I'm the other assistant principal, and it's my first year here. First look around the one of the instructional coaches. My first year and Stuyvesant Administrative the 11th year, as well as a parent of a student. Awesome community. Javelin, math teacher. It's my third year, right? And seems with our student scouts to ask them not be doing homework. Oh, okay. I have one in

155the hall doing homework in in addition to, Anthony and I'm a student that's to some of awesome. Thank you. What grade are you in? Eighth grade. Thank you. I'm your, future principal. Would love to have a conversation with you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you so. So hope we have one more school to consider at this time. Wilson. We've been about two hours into this. Do you want to take a break at this time, or do you want to continue with the Wilson? Continue. Okay, great. Okay. Invite the principal that is joining us. Superintendent. Call able, ask you to introduce the principal items. Yeah. I'm super excited to have Sheridan here. Sheridan is now entering her third year in the system. I'm really proud of the work of her resume that brought her here to, to

156district 11. I think we came into Wilson, coming on to the list is a bit of a surprise. Sharon Sheridan has really done what I call that groundwork of building a strong culture or having the systems in place, what we really have here. And, you know, I don't know, Sheridan's thunder is we just didn't pay attention to where we know we saw risks and challenges in the building fast enough. In, our K-12, lead meeting last week, we shared a similar slide that I shared with the board last week on the number of days that are representative of each quarter. We are now 13% of the way through the academic year already, and we are only halfway through September. And so by the time Sheridan started making really strong investments and turning some things around, we

157were well below 40 days left until testing, and it just wasn't enough at the time to be able to make that count. But Sheridan has been here before and not in district 11, but in another district. It's proven that, when the going gets tough, Sheridan and all of Wilson will get going. And so here's an opportunity for you to meet, Sheridan in a very intimate and personal way. And, Sheridan, over to you. Thank you so much, Sheridan Hershey, for all of this elementary. Well, Salvatore is a school in the southeast area of the district. Title in school, about 300 students. In my time at Wilson, I've been able to build upon a really strong foundation of community supports and work to leverage that to support student engagement. We've got a pretty strong, stable, committed staff

158at Wilson that is really just working on what are the instructional strategies that are great. But an exciting piece this year is we also have a core group of new and really highly engaged staff members in key areas that are also in the drive to work for it. Shout out to my Wilson team is here today. We had a couple people who had to leave, but I know there's people watching as well. So good to see you. And thank you for your support. So all right, I want to start this presentation with really echoing, superintendent call said I take ownership for our data moving forward and really want to talk about how we're going to, respond in this data. It's clear that I didn't act with enough technology and enough urgency to deliver what our

159students need to be successful, especially as I'll detail more in a moment. A specifically challenging and crucial principal band. That's my mistake to own, but it shouldn't impact our students in the experience that they have at Wilson or any other D11 school moving forward. So as we continue our presentation this evening, I'll detail what our specific missteps were, as well as how we're going to know for our students to make sure that we have vastly improved outcomes for our students. This slide details our current, staff and Wilson. In the past, like many similar schools, have gained a lot of points on the staff from that growth area. Right. When you're looking at a staff that hinges highly on points from growth, when you have those growth points coming from just fourth and fifth grade, right.

160And then a smaller school, things can unfortunately swing in a negative direction when you're not seeing high growth scores from those specific grade level bands. Right. It's important to see high growth scores in all areas. And then when you have a score that really tips the needle, you can see a swing like we did here at Wilson. I'll talk more in the next slide. Again around specific, teacher growth scores and where that kind of leveled out. But I do want to point out a couple of positives on this slide. We're really, really close to being out of turnaround completely. I think we're on one point of being or out of turnaround. Of course, this is not a place we want to be, but it is encouraging to know that especially in our areas around our

161math growth and our English language arts growth, we are very close. Next category and gaining some significant points towards our staff. That equates to about 10 in 12 students to move in fourth and fifth grade, into the next performance level. And we're going to do that and more at Wilson because our students deserve more than that. But it is encouraging to know that, like, that's the work that is really good for in this kind of speed format. Another exciting piece is really around the multilingual learners aspect. We did have a neat little score for our multilingual learners in our reading test. That is a, shift from the district trend, as Andy Swanson said. And it's something different that we're we're seeing. It's not in line with the district. So it's an exciting piece that we

162want to continue to capture and grow for our students at Wellesley. I think when I'm looking at our SPF, of course, that achievement is a huge area of concern for me where I think and we're like, I know we gave up the most points from our SPS to last year to this year is around our math growth. We've got to act urgently to support our math growth, to ensure that that we are moving the needle forward for our students. This slide details some specific teacher MDPs of concern, and I think this highlights what I was speaking about. When you have some MDPs that are really just unacceptably low, right? When you've got MDPs in the 15 and 14, it's really hard to account for that when you have other MDPs in the 50s and 60s,

163right. We've got to make sure that our students have a consistent level of growth across all classrooms at Wilson. I am excited to share, based on this slide, that the teachers who are remaining at will sit in a C mass testing grade this year have average MDPs from 51 to 71. So we're starting this year in a much better space. However, we know we cannot wait to act. We must act urgently, urgently to ensure that our scores grow and continue to translate towards that achievement for our students. State here you can see where we sit as far as color band division. It will say with both Ela and math and our performance, we began this year presenting this data to our staff, and we really did some deep reflection around what this means for our

164students at Wilson and our teaching practices. We absolutely, as I detailed on our previous slide, needs solid growth scores to support the growth of our students. But our students deserve a high level of proficiency, leading Wilson. That led us as a staff to really think about how do we set our sights on achievement and proficiency versus setting our sights consistently on growth? Right. We know that with achievement, when we increase our achievement, growth is inherent to that work. Right? But setting our sights and our conversation on what is the bar for fourth grade, what is her bar for fifth grade and how do we move our students to that achievement level? Is the conversation driving curriculum awesome. We see many of our students in that yellow and red or sorry, yellow and orange area, which

165tells us that we can move those students, that green band with access to high quality tier one on a consistent basis. Right. We do have some significant students in the red. So we talked as a staff around how do we ensure that our tier one instruction is very supportive of those students who are able to access? And then how do we work to get those students right in a red light? Work proficiency, urgent intervention at a time separate from the precious time that is tier one instruction to be able to access the high quality, grade level instruction. Our intervention work is about accessing our tier one instruction, and those two things lead together to support our students. Research has shown over and over that the best way to close gaps at schools, such as Wilson,

166is to really focus on tier one grade level, high quality instruction, the way that we move access forward and ensure that that's in every space for Wilson is around consistent teacher feedback with supports to implement it. I'll talk more about that in a moment. Here you can see our star and, our SA illion math proficiency levels over time. You know, I look at this and I see maybe a slight increase over time. I see, you know, a little bit of up and down here and there. But my takeaway from this slide is really that our proficiency needs to be the focus it Wilson. We have not increased our proficiency fast enough or with enough urgency to support our students as they move throughout the system. Here in D11, our students can deserve a really strong

167base of proficiency as they move forward, and we want to work to urgently improve this. This data, to me, cements the other work we've done in. Taking a look at our five e culture and climate data over the past couple of years, you know, we've had some maybe some areas that have bounced around some areas of improvement. But really looking at this last year, we I presented this data to staff in May and it was very interesting to dig into because the areas of ambitious instruction and supportive environment decreased. When you dig into the items that our, our five survey is asking. And as you know, this is going into teachers and this is given to our fourth and fifth grade students, right. As you dig into the specific items around ambitious instruction and supportive

168environment, the teacher responded. Items stayed stagnant or increased. Our student responded items in fourth and fifth grade reading was where we saw that decrease happen that led us to this result. I don't think it's an accident that our fourth and fifth grade students, some or many of which were in an underperforming classroom, reported that ambitious instruction in a supportive environment were a concern for them. Right. To me, that echoes the academic data we're seeing, and our goal is to how do we support those two areas specifically so that we know the environments, right. And it can really tie into our academic achievement. So our staff was alarmed by this data and really works to understand how the environment we had created was maybe not what our students were reporting or experiencing, especially in those fourth

169and fifth grade grade level bands. I had a staff member who I know was watching, at home say our students are reporting that we're not pushing them to achieve. We're in charge of that. That's our data. How do we take ownership of that? And to me, that that anecdote really speaks to the culture of ownership and distributed leadership that we're working to build at Wilson. These are our students. This is our data. How do we support them with moving forward? Speaking just a little bit about what we're doing to tackle both of these areas, really thinking about agency and curriculum use as I focus to respond to that ambitious instruction area and then overall work on classroom culture of belonging, to respond to that supportive environment area. All right. Summary of our current state, of

170interventions and challenges. Our CMAS data has both low achievement and low growth at this time. So that leads us to know that we need to act urgently and differently to support our students. We must ensure that we continue a focus on math because we had lower math growth than we did our reading growth. You know, everyone at this table knows we have a new reading curriculum, right? So how do we ensure that we keep a focus on our growth in math, even when that reading curriculum does take some energy to implement? So we want to make sure that we're really focused on math as well. Our formative assessments throughout our year really need to be higher and more consistent, proficiency level and star. So that can continue to translate to CMAs. We need to respond

171to that data, but we cannot wait till the star data comes out. We must drive that work through real time micro adjustments for staff every day. I'm going to go into much detail on that in a moment. We we can't wait until end of module data and big data. We must act in classrooms as we see adjustments that need to be made. As I talked about, our time Ed data shows a concerning disconnect between our teachers and our students, really indicating a need for a strong response to ensure belonging, and that our environment is able to work together with our curriculum, other resources to support student achievement. I think about the levers that are going to be really important for Wilson this year and the two that stick out to me, our coaching supports and

172our strategic staffing, when I mean strategic staffing here, I mean, have I heard the right people? Are they in the right spots? And I trained them and supported them in a way that supports their growth. Coaching supports are really where then we can come in and ensure that we see some really high level, growth from our teachers for this year. A little bit about how that looks in our major improvement strategy. Our action plans are very in-depth. I will not, kind of lead you through all of that, but I really want to give you examples around the first two items. And shout out to the DAC committee for helping me really understand what this looks like in a major improvement strategy action plan. So our AP, my AP, and I, we challenge our 50% of

173our time each week to be in classrooms. We do this work alongside each other to make sure that we're normed on what we're seeing and looking for in each classroom. We give feedback to every teacher at least weekly. That can be in-person, once their instruction stops and they're circulating, I give them a coaching point. I ask them to implement it. We see the culture or the mood of that room shift in the engagement of that room shift, or they're still instructing, not interrupting, and coming back to them at a later date and having an in-person conversation. Right. So those are those really short cycle, coaching cycles. So immediate feedback because again, we can not wait. Cannot wait till the end of the lesson. We cannot wait till the end of the week. We need to

174support our students, our teachers in the moment with supporting our teachers, but alongside those take place longer. Coaching cycles, right? We know that those longer, more focused coaching cycles where teachers can work on a consistent all over time, either with our school embedded coach or our district embedded coach, really focus on building a teachers competency in the areas that they need support in. So both of those things are happening alongside each other. Those short cycle coaching cycles and then those longer cycle coaching cycles we have are all class teachers on a longer coaching cycle already starting there and continuing there. As long as we need to, but also working to expand that workout. But as I mentioned, every teacher in the building is getting weekly feedback and immediate, instructable like implementable feedback. A couple of

175examples from just the past week that really let me up around this work, because this is to the work that's going to move us forward. Sheri and I actually visited a reading block in fourth grade, and I was able to she was delivering a sequel lesson, and I, gave the teacher some in the moment, real time feedback around an engagement strategy that I would like to try. She said, I'm not sure how to do that right. It was a great moment of, I'm not sure to do that, how to do that? I said, thank you. Can I please model that for you? Right. So I was able to model that engagement strategy in the moment. The teacher was able to feel the engagement shift dramatically throughout her classroom. And then I was able to close

176the loop with her and say, practice that strategy, work through that strategy, and I'll come back to see it next time with you. Right. So that immediate work of seeing the classroom shift with more engage, having more focus, immediately improved outcomes for students. Just this Monday, I got to go see a new teacher in fifth grade. She's actually a leader in agency cohort member. She's opted into that. She's showing a lot of leadership in our building already. And they were doing a math lesson around creating word problems for multi-step algebraic equations. Right. So the students were really working to understand what does this equation mean. And I'm going to make a word problem to get to that equation. Students were having a very collaborative and engaged discussion at their tables talking about what these word

177problems would look like, and then jumping out of there to try to get this teacher to call on them to share out what their word problem was. And this was especially impactful when I speak about these fifth graders, these are the fifth graders that really did have a suboptimal year last year with their growth. Right. And to see them engage authentically in a very high level math lesson was so exciting. So I was able to, get my phone and do some great videos that I can use to support with PD or coaching moving forward, because we need to show that this work can happen at Wilson with our students and really work to spread those quality practices throughout the building. My last little story here is our district coach is working with some teachers on

178some specific strategies. It's been really helpful to have her in the building, and she has an existing relationship with our teachers. She was able to meet with a fifth grade teacher to stop by and say, hey, I talked with this teacher about this, this in this. I want your support and helping her implement that as coaching cycle continues to move forward, we're able to go in the next day into that teacher's classroom. Knowing what we were looking for are these three strategies. Identify where those were going well, and give her some real time feedback around one of the specific strategies that we were hoping she might use for a little bit faster and then able to say to our district coach, hey, we saw this, this and this. We want to continue to work on

179this. So closing the gap, both in those short cycles and those long cycles around the feedback to our teachers, just keeping that up through line really consistent. So in summary we're just really excited about the work that's happening already at Wilson this year. We are ensuring that teachers get timely feedback as well as like that long term, longer coaching support action on our data is already well underway and continuing to move forward. This work is going to lead to significant increases in growth and achievement at Wilson. Because we're acting swiftly, we're modeling and pushing urgency for our staff and our students, and we're ensuring that all students have access to high quality instruction every day. But really, what I want to communicate to you and as well as my staff is that we can't afford

180to slow down or settle for what has been achieved as a school. Our students deserve more. They deserve a lot more. And it's our responsibility to deliver and moving forward. The message to staff in the thank you all is that 50 NPS beginning to knock the fall. So I thank you for your time tonight and happy to take any questions. Thank you, I appreciate it. I like the last sentence that you had out there. It's not the beginning. It's, it's the it's the beginning, not the, but, I've come to director and then to you, director, because, I just wanted to call out and say how much I appreciated when you were talking about, goal setting and when you said you were going to, concentrate on not only growth, but, academics and then broke it down.

181We're only talking 10 or 12 students out of a whole school, it's like, oh, these are the kids. In another way, without that analysis would be sliding maybe through the cracks. So thank you to you and your staff for making sure that it's not this whole big picture that has to be tackled. We need to continue what we're doing, and yet we need to bring along these 10 to 12 that. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank the units you mentioned multiple times the need to act urgently and differently. I know that we've I think here la this year that more direct instruction piece through amplify is that one of the methods you're, you're bringing on. You mentioned math in a vital urgency. What methods are you using there? Is it just here we go with

182fidelity. Is it, you know, bringing those that basic proficiency up and then having Eureka, is it double dipping? I think to start with, your first comment actually has, has really given some freshness to the system in some urgency and some needed change, especially around our Ela curriculum. So we are really working with really intentionally understanding what that curriculum brings to our students and how we support them and rubrics that we created. Also that I think specific to the math piece, we're ensuring that we carve out time for very specific math coaching around the instructional pieces. Eureka is a great curriculum, but it can be, challenging for students who arrive into a new module with gaps from the previous module. Right? So making sure that we're working with our school embedded coach and our district embedded

183coach to ensure that our pacing is correct, that our, students are engaging in a quick model, which is what the Eureka like pre module, to give them the skills they need for the upcoming module like that is in place and we're supporting during our intervention time is what are the skills they need to access tier one instruction. For a long time it was in the narrative around intervention has been we need to fill every single gap that exists for our students, which, is a is often a really tricky, impossible task. And especially when you're looking at a math curriculum like Eureka, that doesn't always circle around like when modules are out, Division in the next module is about something else, right? And so our shifts specifically around math is how do we use that intervention

184time to give our students access to the tier one instructional curriculum. Right. So how do we use that time to give them this is coming up. You're going to need the skill. Let's teach it to you right now in a small group. And we know that based on your star scores, because we've looked at the standards analysis. Right. So just making sure that we're tighter there and then following that through with specific, instructional and tight cycle feedback, like I talked about to teachers around math. So it could be that preparing for the next module Eureka pieces. Or it could be just math fundamentals. Yeah, I think that it just depends on the student need right there. Absolutely need for as far as behavior, goes, I know you had some I mean, everybody has struggled with

185behavior. What strategies are you using? You mentioned some of them in here, but, that can relate to behavior to getting that on task engagement. I will say that, significantly in my time, I will say that our behavior incidents have decreased vastly. Okay. First we get oh, sorry. In my time in our behavior, incidents have decreased significantly. I think with my first year there, we cut that incident. Count and half. Right. And that has continued to decrease over time. So now to say, like you mentioned, you know, there's always behavior. There's always students that need additional support. But that is not something that is impeding our instructional ability at this time. But I think in the past it may have been a bigger factor, but it's not as much, at this time at all. We do

186support, in many ways with behavior at Wilson. Of course, we have kind of our tier one positive behavior intervention system, like what is the behavior in the cafeteria and we teach that and we practice that and reward that. And that's part of our, kind of onboarding at the beginning of the year. We also have our social emotional curriculum around random acts of kindness and what it looks like to, get along with others and social skills and those kind of things that our students often need support with in a setting. And then we have a fantastic counselor who supports with that as well. But really, to me, the biggest lever is around classroom connection when students want to be in their classroom and they want to be connected to their teacher and they feel that connection

187with their teacher, we see a dramatic increase or dramatic decrease of students not wanting to be in class. I'm going to call out Miss Fox over here. She's patiently state, she has a student in her class. She's a new fourth grade teacher at Wilson. Just to give you an anecdote around this, she's a student in our class who struggled in years past, and we're not fully three of those struggles. Right. But the other day, she was frustrated at recess, and I said, do you need to? I don't want you to enter back into class mad. And no, you're not going to be successful. Do you want to come with me? We can talk and then we can enter back into class and said, no, I need to go with Miss Fox and do my math

188exit ticket. I'm ready. So he he looks like. So that just I think speaks to where we've come with behavior is that our students are saying, my teacher cares about me, my teacher supports me. I need to be in the classroom with her. Great. One last quick question. We heard from staffing, about staffing in the past two schools. How staffing looking? Well, we, had some really great hires this year. The first for the first year that I've been at Wilson, we are fully staffed with fully licensed teachers. We don't have any positions that are filled with long term subs or people who are, you know, trying to figure out licensing in any way. And our new staff members are so excited, so engaged in the work forward. I mentioned a story about a teacher who

189is in the Leader in Agency program. She's on our instructional leadership team. She's she's really leaning into the work. And that's the same teacher that I see, those really high levels of engagement. I still would echo Ray with, really thinking about potentially with this board, thinking about centralized staffing for the southeast area specifically because those hires, can be tricky. However, the people that we've been able to bring on this year are really high quality. Okay, great. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Doctor Huber, it sounds like you have a strengths when it comes to those short term cycles in coming into the classrooms and not making a negative, kind of threatening, intimidating experience. How does that work when you're trying to teach them how to teach different populations, such as like English language learners?

190You've got students with disabilities, because I know there's some populations where we're also trying to improve their scores and outcomes. And, well, are you giving different kinds of instruction towards different groups, or is it when you're in the spur of the moment things, is that something you do more in, like one of those longer cycles? I think it's a question. I think it varies. So we use our district coaching, or walk through forms to really like, anchor ourselves in the instructional practices we should see in the classroom, right. Our district agency walk or do instructional looks for us. Right. And we push those out to staff and we kind of understand, like this is our base level of what the instructional practices in the building aren't. Right. But when we visit a classroom, yes, we

191are looking at what are the specific in like scenarios or, or, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, but the specific aspects of that classroom that make it an individual classroom in a, in a different place for every student that's in there. And yes, we absolutely give specific feedback to those teachers based on the students they have in their room. And I think that comes from being in classrooms frequently, looking at the data and knowing our students, a piece it's like associated with your question is really around what I've found that it's a big lever is that when we're in classrooms as much, we're not only supporting with in the moment coaching, we be able to collect really valuable schoolwide data. So we're able to say, hey, I noticed we're struggling with

192having our second language learners access the vocabulary. And here's a teaching tool that I'm going to push out for school in my weekly email. It's going to respond directly to this trend that I've seen all week in classrooms. Right. So, it's been really helpful to be able to get, again, short cycle feedback that everyone around. Hey guys, we're all seeing this in our classrooms. Thank you, thank you. I don't see any other questions. Okay. So we're here in the last 30s and I saw your hand just okay, I know you have, engagement from parents because you're spending. Yeah, even, like, next week having a culturally. But, but in the improvement plan, I don't see specifically any reference to parents. It means stakeholders. A couple of times, can you address how parents might have been involved

193and will be involved in helping? Absolutely. So last year, I just want to back up a little bit. Last year, our Mr. was strictly around teacher involvement and he wanted to really focus on what our parents, how can we empower parents authentically in the education of their students? Right. And that work is not done. But like, that wasn't when we looked at Mr.. This year, that was the most urgent data piece to act on, right. That was really, really quick. Each one of our students, that doesn't mean we're not involving our parents with the engagement of our students. Right. I can add pieces to that action plan. It's it's a living document around the work that we've been doing. One of the biggest areas that we've really worked to engage our students is an additional

194parent meeting that we've implemented in the past two years called Bienvenidos, where we welcome new parents to the system, of education in America. And we talk about what that looks like and what different aspects of education that they may not be aware of, like how, you know, in schools canceled for a snow day, how do you call your child in sick? When is your child too sick? Right. And we've been able to build that group to talk about how do we then work on things like our major improvement strategy to ensure that your child is authentically engaged in school, how to know when something isn't right between them and up here, and how to support with that, how to know when, the feedback they're getting from their teacher, what that means, those kind of pieces.

195Right. So really just working to support our, our parents as well as they journey through the educational system here. And I think that's a big lever, as well for that strategy. Thank you, thank you. Okay. Thank you for sending that invite for the cultural event. Me coming up, a couple of things. Just this slide up here, the second bullet point. I really appreciate you saying your turnaround status. This is temporary. You heard, the urgency. Why you should get out of it. Oh, I see over frequent visits to the board that if you continue in the status next year, we don't want to see we lost none of this thing. Let's celebrate you. So it's really important that that first year that you are able to move away from the state watchlist. So, it's about to

196see a process. And secondly, it looks like you've got a strong group of teachers returning. It started in 2000. That's good to know that you are doing good work, superintendent, but I think you need to summarize, for again, I would love that. Anybody from Wilson, please stand up and tell us who you are and how long you've been with us. It'll be great to have John Suggs, fourth grade. This is my first year at Wilson. Awesome. Welcome. Andre Talamantes, intervention is my third year. Wilson, thank you for being with us. Sheridan didn't really get a chance to talk a little bit about Mountain Math, what we call mountain mass mountain. That. Yeah. And just as as another example of the power of central office kind of ideating that says a third of our our students

197are at a grade level for math. That's not just a student issue, that's also an adult issue. That's a curricular resource issue. And a deeper learning issue. Director Jurgensen, but I'd love for you just to kind of close this out and help me climb that mountain. So, so mountain math is a, consistent daily practice that our teachers engage in, either as a warm up or like a transitional, you know, activity. And it really doesn't take that much time at all. The purpose of mountain math is to keep skills that students are learning and eureka fresh and sharp as we move forward. Seems we spoke about how a module is around this topic and it's around this topic, right? But the beauty of Mountain Math is that, I wish I had a picture of it. Like

198there's there's a bunch of cards and the teachers move the card to the next thing and so they get multiple examples of a standard that they can practice independently and keep those skills sharp. So as standards are introduced for the grade level in Eureka, teachers introduce different components of Mountain math, and students spend the first five minutes after math after lunch recess, for example, filling out the first five questions on Mountain Math, saying, oh, I remember the graphing. I remember this and keeping those skills sharp, right? So just making sure that of course, we're having high quality tier one math instruction and we're introducing new standards, but we really have to ensure that those standards stay sharp. Because I was just talking with second grade about this. They had a graphing on their assessment. It's

199not coming back. How do you respond to the graphing part on their assessment? Well, we make sure that we are really monitoring the work that's happening in Mountain Math, and we're monitoring that forward. So it just gives us another layer of guaranteed that our students are staying sharp on the skills. Thank you. Thanks for what you're doing. You guys. Thank you I appreciate it. You, one final thought to you, Superintendent Gold. And this can be for the next week's work session. Something that I'm curious about is, a lot of, schools talked about the start testing data. How was that, like, went off the start, testing data to the class, test results like you saw. May becomes part of the district. But, yeah, generally, we saw a slip and our, connection between star and city masks.

200We haven't quite determined yet. Is that is that because of the small school challenge that we have last year, we were roughly 6.78 correlation. This year we were about 0.56. Is that right, doctor? County. But, we still have the map that out and see is are some of the outliers, as you saw, each one of these schools come forward with individual classrooms that were able to say that this is where we lost, the overall score of the building for us. I think if we filter some of that out, we might see the, correlation of start to see. Let's be a little bit better. What I would say and, what we're never looking for is, any excuse on why we're not performing on CMAs. And so correlation of start to CMAs is really just an indicator

201of whether or not that is a good cycle data point for us. We are now is we're just much shorter and much tighter on these end of module. These, these top end quizzes and all the way down to daily exit tickets. So we know more concretely, particularly at each individual classroom, are we are we not on learning trajectory for the scope and sequence and the pacing that we're asking for? And what is the percentage of children? I think you also heard from each individual principal today. Anecdote, evidence that we know, whether by learning standard or by individual student that comes forward, that it's a different culture inside these buildings now, and that the rigor is now being adopted by the students in concert with the staff. And that's where the magic happens. I think the

202relationship between the student, the teacher and the content is the center of anything that we talk about curricular resources, instructional strategies, deployment of coaching, everything is that is when learning happens. That is also when adult learning happens. Which is why as we go through these coaching cycles, I ask everybody to think, why is it that when we have a student that doesn't express their ability to articulate learning to a grade level standard, that we know that we have interventions and we know that we have strategies for it, we are now trying to turn a district on its head that says we do the same thing in an adult capacity as student is, oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Sorry. A student is never wrong for entering the space for not being on grade level. It is

203our work with the student to get them there. A staff member is never wrong for owning a low SGP. As long as we are open into an environment that says, how do we all improve in this work together? That's really the secret of what we're trying to do as a district is if we treat adult learning in the same way that we're tackling our student learning, then the entirety of the system grows and as the entire the system grows, the this, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. So with that. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it. The only reason I ask the question is that it an internal assessment that we have in staff, if it's working or if it's removal. And I like that, we're just tighter than that

204right now. So I think this year we'll be able to really make a point on that. What it is, is it's telling us what we know. Okay. Moving on to the last item on the work session discussion at this time. What's that? I'm sorry. We if the bulletin boards, if the. Is the board interested in taking a break at the starting before. Yeah, I'd like to raise. Let's take a ten minute break. Let's reconvene at 645. We still have one agenda item on the work session discussion. And then, Okay. Thank you for doing this. All right, I'm going to be. Back. To. Oh. Oh. Oh. Let's get started again. It's a little past 645. We got one more item on the agenda, which is the energy performance contract discussion. I'm going to give a little

205bit of context and turn it over to, Superintendent Gold. The energy audit was performed by Schneider Electric. And, school by school building by building the body to be able to identify upgrades which could translate into energy savings. The board looked at that information at the work session before summer break and discussed it as well. In August, as part of the bond conversation. At the board at the board retreat, it was requested that the board clearly, identify a finance mechanism, cut the spring, bring the discussion back to the table here, and identify a finance mechanism to, invest in energy upgrades if we want to move in that direction. So today's discussion is mainly about that, finance mechanism, and all of it in alignment also with, the potential pool farm conversation that we are engaged in as

206well. And that's the essential focus of the discussion today. With that, I'm going to turn to the superintendent. Yeah, I'm happy to hand this over to Deputy superintendent, the honorable doctor. Brandon Comfort, for his presentation. Brandon. So, before you get there, at the end of this discussion, we do need some board guidance on how best to proceed. So we have clarity that we can communicate to the, district in this regard as to how to pursue this. As we go further with that. Patty. Good evening, board. Thanks for having me. First, I will start by asking for some grace. I did add a couple of slides over the last 12 hours. Director Ott, pointed out the lack of a financial analysis comparing, going now versus waiting a couple of years with energy performance, projects. So I,

207I did build some additional slides. Obviously, we will post this, after the meeting, but I just wanted to ask for a little bit of grace because I think originally I had five minutes, I might take seven. But I promise I will be brief. Okay. A big picture here. What I what I want to what I want to make sure the board understands is we have two good options. There's not a bad option. And a good option. Right? We just have an option that we think is significantly more strategic. And that is now how we do things as a district. Our capital process is strategic. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Okay. So a little bit about how did we get here. I will again remind the board the superintendent brought the concept of

208energy performance contracting to the district. In 2022. I want to remind the board of where we were in 2022. We were shortly off of a bond loss. We had no plan to recapitalize this district at that time. We had completely different leadership overseeing our financial office as well as our capital projects. And so at that point in time, the FCC was, how do we demonstrate to our community that we are using our internal money in a creative way and also addressing utility areas? We have since done that in a significantly larger what has happened over the last three years, the most aggressive recapitalization effort this district has seen in decades. I will draw your attention back to every single, capital project presentation that we brought in front of the board. I'll remind you, a former

209cop, $120 million, that when we pass our bond, the community does is not obligated for it. We'll talk about that cost savings, not to mention what we were able to do at Jenkins. You will not find another district in this state that has been able to recapitalize outgoing to the taxpayers any more than we have. We have fulfilled that obligation. I also this is something we don't talk about often. We do energy savings projects in the district. We have for decades. Since the 90s, if you look at it, our estimates is our, our general, facilities or I'm sorry, utility budget would run about $10 million. We run about 7 million because we've been doing energy savings projects just over the last four years, even though we've been talking about it. Not in these silos. These

210are examples of silos of energy performance or energy saving, projects that we've done. It is what we do. We have an energy guy on staff full time. It's his entire job. You watch his utilities, he goes and checks thermostats. He does all of that work. We are in this business and we will continue to be. Okay. My persisting considerations again. You'll see there on the left we have two parts. Both are viable. But we think that something is more strategic. I realize the board, as did the superintendent. I received a very large presentation, from Snyder in the state Energy office. There is nothing in that presentation that we have not considered. Okay. I apologize to the board that I didn't bring you those considerations when we first met. I should have, but I will say

211is, even after that, our recommendation with the superintendent myself remains the same. There is a part there is a process here that makes more logical sense. And we'll get into the light. Okay. Some of the persisting considerations with an energy performance contract. First, the long payback period when we do internal projects, we don't have as long of a payback period. Any time we are looking at what is happening in this district in two decades, I have concerns about that. It doesn't mean they're not overcome a wall, but I have concerns. And so things like, the how long it's going to take to realize the full utility savings, things like the life expectancy of some of the things that we're going to put in. Well, while the project will pay for it, we're going to have

212to replace, well, we're still paying off debt. Not saying that the project won't pay for it, but we are going to likely have to replace while we are still paying off that debt. That's a concern for me. You also see the implications of bond projects. I will give Snyder complete credit. They are flexible. We have wanted to work with us to re scope projects in a variety of ways, to try to minimize that. Before we were talking about a bond. We are honest conversations about what schools I was uncertain of their future, and so we were smart about where we were going to put projects. When we do a $750 million bond, it is impossible to not duplicate effort. It's impossible. What I don't want is that $25 million of energy projects, influences or delays

213or changes to the timing of $750 million worth of projects is impossible, that those are not going to overlap. To give you a very simple thing, we're going to go and change lights in a hallway. What if I move that hallway? I have then I've lost the value of those lights. I have to do that again. It's not like I can move a hallway and somehow cut out the ceiling and then re put that ceiling in there. So there will be implications, regardless of Snyder's ability to be flexible with us. Then there's these assumptions. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I don't know more about energy usage than Snyder. I'm not pretending to. I'm using reason here. I'm not worried about the usage rates that we've projected or predicted over the next 3 to

2145 years. I'm not. I'm worried about year 18, 19 and 20. If the board saw last night the Colorado Springs utilities named that they're going to time of day rates. I don't know what that's going to do to my my personal utility budget. I just want to draw your attention over the last 20 years, look at the political landscape and our feelings on energy usage. They have vary greatly depending on who's certain in certain political offices, depending on a number of things. So I'm not doubting their ability to project, but they are that projections. That's a risk. When we get longer, our utility rate increases. Again, the same thing. They use the right numbers, they use the right data. I'm not saying I have better numbers or better data, but I'm saying is we are

215obligating the system to a decision for two decades. This is a board that has fear, that has been fearful of that, obligating future boards to decisions, facility footprint. Perhaps I'm incorrect. I don't feel like we know as a as a district, as a board and a senior governance team that we are willing right now to guarantee that every single one of our campuses will be here in 20 years in the same way that it is now. If we are, I'll take that feedback. And again, if we close the school in a decade, well, I want you guys. It'll be another board if we close the school to the gate. Of course we save energy because we're not paying the utility to. And of course Snyder is not going to take credit for that. But we've

216put value into that building that we're not going to then realize that for investment again, about the length of the obligation. Those are my persistent concerns about the project in general, that our partners, our external partners, are smart people. They built a good project plan. It's not about that. It's about how tight we have to be over time to ensure that we realize those guarantees. And I'm going to continue to draw down into this a little bit. Okay. This is a slide that came from, the Energy Office with, with Snyder in terms of the cost or the difference in cost of doing this work now versus doing this work later. I will admit, when you look at it through one lens, this makes sense. I've talked to the board before about the difference in construction

217rates over time. It is cheaper to do projects earlier. That's why we did the copy. That's true. Now I'm uncertain as to why that, tax incentive, goes away if we do it later, perhaps that's expiring. I haven't had time to, to really, explore that. I will find that answer, but I'm going to assume all their numbers are right. And actually, I use their same math in some of my calculations in a financial analysis. But I want here's what I want to tell you. It's not this simple. It's not one dimensional. This is what we do as a system. Internally. We evaluate all possible elements of this. That's not the obligation of the energy officer Schneider. They're looking at it through their lens. That makes sense. I have to look at it through multiple lenses because

218that's what you deserve as a board. So let's look at some of those lenses. First of all, this is the least important to me. But it is important time and effort. So if we look at financing this project now, we're likely going to finance it through a copy. Okay, I just went through this process. It is a significant time investment to go through a copy. It is literally on paper, financially, the exact same thing we have to do for $750 million bond. It's not like, well, it's only 25 million, so it's a shorter process. It is an incredibly intense process in which if that's the board's direction, I will divert my attention and my team's attention away from preparing bond scopes and planning for engaging the community. And I will I will directed towards this.

219Again, this is my least concern. But I do point out I don't flip a switch. I don't call a bank tomorrow and say, hey, I need $25 million in the ledger and will be there on Friday. It's an intense process. It will take time. Secondly, I want to I want you to I really want to have a conversation about the cost of additional copies. This first portion is about early call. So in the presentation you received, it was simple pay for it now and pay it off when you get the bond. In two years. I wish it was that simple. The shorter the call, which is the ability to pay off debt earlier, the less attractive a copy is to an investor. They're not guaranteed the same level of money, and when it's less than,

220attractive to the investor, the interest rate goes through the roof. So that $2 million that was, promised as being construction savings that's already impacted by a different interest rate. This is why when we did the policy op, I would have loved to have brought the board, call option at three years or four years or five years. We went through this dance over time of how early can we do that without drastically impacting the interest rate? We landed that on a target on a doc. We were managing that within a 12 hour increment to make sure that we sold the cops at the exact right time. And here's the other big difference. The $120 million cap for Palmer is an A guaranteed funding source in the MLA. Guaranteed never changes. That drastically helped our interest rate

221and the ability to sell off the copies. That's not what will happen with this. This is a general fund obligation. That's a whole different game. General fund is not guaranteed year to year. That will be a financial consideration. It's like when you go to buy a house and you're going to mortgage it. What's the one thing they tell you when you're actively in the process of buying a house? Don't make any other big financial decision. What they really tell you is don't go buy a car. You don't go buy a car or furniture. If we go on and take additional debt in any form, especially if we're obligating the general fund, it is going to impact our interest rate on the bond. It will. Because now we've obligated part of our general fund, obligated part

222of that fund balance on an ongoing basis. Again, we just walked this dance when we went through the Palmer copy. It's very, very, very delicate. Right. I know that Moody's rating agency now like the back of my hand because I'm like, just give me the Triple-A like. And it was I mean, it's an intense thing. And we were mitigating and managing it all just completely through the process. So it's not that simple paying off that, that you see how a two year call is not that simple. It will have implications into what we do in the future. Okay. Another thing that was brought up is the tax payer viewpoint. Is the taxpayer going to negatively view the fact that we decided to put energy projects in the bond, rather than using our own money to

223do this? Again, I don't disagree with this statement. Been there, done that. We've done this $120 million. I'll stand on at any microphone with any community member and say, you won't find another district in this state that used their money internally to fund something as large as $120 million. Copy. That decision is saving a $16 million at the same rate of cost of instruction that you saw in that presentation, 16 million, 2 million. Additionally, if we really want to talk about taxpayer savings, let's talk about every year the bond is delayed to do that same level of project. It's $37.5 million. If we wait ten years, 750 million is well over $1 billion in project. So I'm tracking this again. This is why we brought you the copy. In fact, in that presentation, they use

224my construction escalation slide. I believe in it. We've done it. And then here's the big thing for me. Again I have considerations about the project. I definitely have some concerns about, the financing mechanism. But then I just want to get to the bottom dollar. Okay. On the left. This is part of the Snider presentation that came to you back in June. And what you're basically going to see is over 20 years. They're going to guarantee that we save $46 million in utilities, and we're going to pay $41 million in interest in principal. So, well, it says $10 million is projected on the right. We're guaranteed a $5 million positive number. So that's great. Again, in other circumstances, I'll sign on that double line right now. But we have another option. This option, if we pay

225it in the bond we just realize those savings. There is no debt here. It's in the bond. Remember paying for something in a bond, in paying something like this to the general fund are vastly different things. And I'll give you an example. I'm going to draw you to 2045. No, 2044. None of you will be on the board at that time. The superintendent and I will not be here this year, but it's our successors are going to be here and if we do these energy projects, there's going to be an estimated, 3 million, over $3 million in utility savings that year. That's a great thing. And then those utility savings are going to have to go to pay off the utility debt, not anything else. I'm going to draw the board back to last year.

226We had to manufacture those raises. We had to build and cut and clean. We do all of those things to get to the raise level that that we that you that the board committed. We're going to have $3 million of available general fund money, and it's not going to go towards compensation, and it's not going to go towards other things that kids need. It's just going to go to fund the debt service again without another option. Worth it. It's not a bad idea. That's why the superintendent brought it. It's a good idea. We just have a better idea. If the board is so committed to wanting to drastically change utility prices or utility costs right now, direct the superintendent to direct me to bring you the capital budget that completely focuses on that. My team

227is ready. We'll take the project scope. We'll get as much done as we humanly can. We will run into the same concerns about duplicative work. That wrong? But we will do it. We have other mechanisms to do it. But I want to realize that for $46 million of savings over time and not 41 million of it going towards a debt payment, those are the options we have right now. We might find out in 13 months that the community says no. As the superintendent and I have said, we will absolutely bring this back. It is not a bad idea. We just have a stronger strategy right now. What? Okay, that's the end of my presentation. Thank you. Appreciate it. I appreciate the new slides that you had as well, which provide some context to the document

228that we received from the Energy Office, some with that comments or questions from the board. It looks like we have two options at this time. One is to fund it now, which is the left option out there and the debt that comes with that. And the second option is nobody's questioning the merits of, investing in energy upgrades. I'm not saying it's the finance. The second option is to include that as part of the bond package. Director Jenkins Stokes the only thing that the on the right side here, you're realizing that 46 million of savings, in the left side, you're paying 41 for the cost of the work plus interest, which I think the cost of the work in today's Rs 25 million. So really, can you take 25 million plus two years of inflation? Yep.

229So the 6 million. Yeah, I'm probably at 43 million, probably at 43 million. Right. If we and I'll be generous, add two years of construction costs. I mean, the numbers we saw were $2 million worth of loss. But I'll add to that a little bit. And then I'll actually I'll add to that because over the bond it will take a little longer. So that's half right. But again, the vast difference between 5 million and even 35 million in terms of of positive cash flow for the district. Right. So that's a gist. Just to realize the upfront cost, we still have to pay when the bond comes up 25 to 30 million. So really it's not a full 46 million guaranteed benefit, but it is a quicker savings over the fixed. Back to balance. When you

230talked about, duplicate projects or replacing those of us, I've lived in Colorado Springs over, period of time. How many times have, garden of the gods been torn up and they go ahead and they put out the, the water pipes. Then they come back and they tear up the road to do the next thing. And then they CA. How many times have we done that? I think our taxpayers will take a look at do what do you call it. Duplicate. You click it. Yeah I think it's the right ones, the wrong ones. So yes. Duplicate duplicate is projects. It won't sit well. That's part of it. The other part of it is, I had reservations about committing the district to this long term loan. And we have elections coming up in November. We'll have new members

231coming on. I'm taking a look at that and saying, I agree with. And I'm glad to hear that this project is going to go forward. What we're talking about is how we're going to pay for it. And as it came in our pay me later and I'm glad for the the comparison and thank you for, revising so that we get a better picture of how much it is that we are actually going to realize out of the savings. But again, it's an obligation that we don't have to take on when we. Are able to pass bond. So I guess what I'm saying is that I would like to wait. You have any questions for comfort? Thank you. And just adding on to it, I'm reminded about a month or so back up when the visit

232to the Jenkins Middle School and it was ready to open at that time. And one of the comments I made due was that we invested in that catalyst, summer back. And I said, like, I'm glad that we invested in the sixth grade wing because that the bathrooms have been at the seventh and eighth grade. It could be part of the rubble. Is that correct? And, and then we would have invested whatever amount, $500,000, and those bathrooms would have been part of the double. Okay. Yeah. That I'll come to you. Okay. So I have a few things. Ditto. First of all, to what doctor Bank has said. To me, common sense just dictates that we do this through a bond that we don't, put taxpayer dollars at risk by paying interest when we can pay cash

233next year. On top of that. I haven't heard anybody say this, so I'll say it. I haven't really felt good about how we've been receiving undue pressure to move forward with a contract from multiple entities. The state Department of Energy, amongst others. We didn't request their input and it lacks local context and just it doesn't feel good. It feels kind of gross to have that pushed on us. I don't care for that kind of way to do business. I personally, so I don't like being pushed around on that. This obligates future boards. I don't want to do that. All these assumptions, 20 years, 30 years. For me, it comes down to if you can pay cash for a car, why buy it and pay interest? So to me it would be more common sense to

234wait for the bond. And that way we don't have to mess around with taxpayer dollars and pay interest on that. So I I'm not okay with that. I, I need much more. For what doctor comfort presume okay. Thank you, Doctor Heffley aircraft. Thank you. Just some comments based on what you've mentioned. And then, Katrina, if you could bring up the thing that I asked, to be shared, I'm looking at page 21. So we've talked about past projects. We've been able to go forward without obligating the taxpayers. This allows us to do that. Again. This allows us to to move forward on a project without extra taxing of taxpayers. That's basically and on this slide, it mentions it's not just financial. We're talking about classroom upgrades that we can have sooner rather than later. We have

235not just I know, Superintendent Gall has spoken to a commitment to sustainability, but we're talking about changes we can do in one year versus putting out out at least a year. While we may or may not pass a bond. And then beyond that, we still have the financial dances he referenced. But those changes will be two years in coming at a minimum, the Schneider Electric was speaking with the district as late as July in how accommodations could made around the bond in the information. That has been shared with us which Director Hinkley I understand your concerns there, but personally, I'm really glad we have this additional information because as, Doctor Comfort mentioned, when I saw the slides that we had specifically asked for financial comparisons and there was there were no real true comparisons there.

236There was nothing for us to move forward on. So I can understand, the state's concerns that, yes, we have information. I'm not sure what local context is missing. It's very local. And they've shared how other districts have worked with bonds. It's not an unusual circumstance. Where was that information on how. I don't understand your point about other districts working on, going forward with a project like this and working on, sure, their bond. Can you go to page 29 for me or slide 29? Katrina. Okay, there you go. So this has been districts some bigger, some smaller than us that have worked with, an energy performance contract and a bond and how they have. Either coordinated or used the EPC to say, hey, everybody, you know, we've saved you money. Let's move forward. Okay. And the

237the obligating I want to address the obligating future boards, which I think we do all the time from urban renewal projects and the tiffs, the bond plan itself, the past it was the mlo, even academic, facilities management plans. We are always to some extent obligating future future boards, to the energy usage and timing variations. I would say that's all the more reason we want to commit sooner rather than later to having savings, because they will be charging us more. And I know that some of that is after school, but that seems to me like an incentive, as energy costs we can assume will go up so that we should start saving sooner rather than later. And Katrina, can you go to 4140? Another comment while she pulls it up. I assume that our facilities staff

238have other projects to do. I would prefer that we have someone come in and assist us rather than so we get more work done and get the savings sooner instead of taking our facility staff and redirecting them. So just the key takeaways here. I think there's so much, so much benefit to moving ahead now. We spent the 571,003 years developing the project. Well, we didn't as a board that they did. It's apparent that the energy performance contract approach would save the district money overall, $2 million over the cost of the project. We're losing a million and a half annually while we wait. Sorry. These are some notes that I pulled together from the whole presentation. Again in June and July, Schneider Electric was collaborating with our team to ensure the scope and the energy projects

239did not overlap. So I just I can't help but wonder why additional time is spent. We as a board wanted to move forward in June. The bond was not completely off of our radar, so the other part that was in that first slide, I asked to be brought up that additional questions. Do you have I just I'm almost there. Okay, okay. So I know we can help students now. And we obviously know presentations tonight. We can use all the help we can get in academics. So I want to know how we explain to parents that we chose to wait rather than improve their children's learning opportunity as soon as we could. And then I'd like you to help me understand, why waiting is better for the district when the analysis that we've seen showed costs

240more and delays benefits. So I guess that's it. Why wait? Really? I understand that you're talking about the bonds, and it sounds like cash upfront, but the costs long term and the cost to our students when we could be improving conditions. Now that's yeah, I keep coming back to that. I wanted to respond. First of all, as I said, if the if the board wants to direct, we will make this a capital priority this year. That's not our team doing the work. That's our team working with the same subcontractors that Snyder would work with. They don't have a union of some subcontractors that only do their projects. We're all going to work with all some plumbing. It's all going to be the same group right now. We will have less overhead. I'm not paying an

241intermediary to do that. So it will be for less of a cost. Will it take time with my project management team? Absolutely. But it's not going to be my facilities guys who are out there doing that work instead of doing other work in the district. So that that's my answer. To the so that's if we want to if we want to regardless of the duplicative, potential projects, if we want to go do it now, I'll bring you that plan next month. Well, we'll get after it. And we'll get as much as we humanly can. And then, you're saying that we start on the list now, contract the work out? Absolutely, absolutely can come to that. Now, again, I'm going to have the same concerns about undoing some of that work, but happy to do, with

242it with the same people that, that, the third party would use. In terms of the cost that I would argue all day long that $2 million over the next two years is more important than 35 or $40 million, over the course of the next 20 years. Right. I brought you projects in the past, which it is about. Let's maximize the money now, that doesn't make sense. In this situation, we have another option that, makes more sense over time. So financially again, financially, waiting for a bond completely makes sense for all of the reasons that I already described. I can't bring you the numbers right now of the impact of taking out debt now, or a loan now and then trying to go for a bond. It will be sufficient or it will be significant. So

243there's all of that costs that we're not we're not quite talking about in this, but I just would draw back to the slide. Right. I'm going to pay $41 million in payments, or I'm not going to pay a payment at all. So financially that completely makes sense. And again, if the the will of the board is to maximize the student and let the environment right now we'll get on. Yeah. How long do you think it would take to if if Schneider Electric with and the state has guarantees that we don't get through our own program. And I think that's part of the appeal. If we were to do a bond, how long is it going to take to get the same. Savings in in the same same updates to our students classrooms? I just don't

244see it all happening in one year. Yeah, I think by 2020 I think here would be my, my counter, director is, I think the way that statement is made is that we're on a level playing field, that we have quality facilities, and we're trying to make these adjustments to some other settings to improve things. The condition of our of our facilities is where it is, so that the $750 million is the real work, right? That is the transformational change for our for the the conditions in which our students currently, exhibit. And like I said, it's $37.5 million every year that that we don't do that. Right. That's the cost, to the district. So I'm super pleased that the board is considering 26 and not 28. I had another project. Okay. We I want to give

245other board members who haven't had an opportunity to talk yet, and that's Director Huber, director Gary, do you guys have anything that you want to ask at this time? Comments. Anything like that before we come to a decision point, I had a comment. Okay, it's not really a question though. Okay. That's fine. I mean, others have made just comments. Before you get to that, I don't want to forget one thing that I do want to counter to you. You said that, obligating future boards and you mentioned this, and you worry sort of sent you Larry some back, sent by the state and so we did have no financial obligation for future to get the increase that we might otherwise have gotten, I believe. Right. Yeah. But that is offered by the student from a financial.

246My comment is just we have asked, even in my time on the board, a number of rather audacious things from Doctor Comfort, the polymer copy going to double digit compensation package last year when the rest of the state was ridiculously underwater, financially trimming $6.5 million in administrative costs in response, you know, to our complaints about kind of what I've referred to on several occasions since the scariest graph in the world, we've asked him and Superintendent Gall to push spending on instruction from 60% to 70%. We asked him to take any new money from the state and move all of it towards compensation. And Doctor Comfort has delivered on every one of those things. I think his advice here ought to constitute strong evidence for us. Okay. You good? Thank you. Any of different speak on

247this one. Okay. I, I liked the presentation. From that counterpart of energy. I think what got me tonight was the piece of when you're, you know, in underwriting for a mortgage, you don't go buy ten granite furniture on, you know, 24 months financing, you know, while you're in under contract. And so to me, I think that stuck out for because I was I was gung ho for getting this going for our kids. Now, but I see that and the and the piece of it, I mean, in the finance piece of not having nobody's going to want to buy a two year call box. They're just there's not for you to consider an additional cost, which is what you said. You kind of questions. So I would love for us to get to work on our

248kids classrooms. But I see the bigger strategy of doing a bunch of significant work for our buildings, which I think we need to focus on selling that to our community. Okay, so, okay, that Huber, you have anything to add at this time or. Okay, decision point? So I'm going to ask at this time if the board wants to provide some overall guidance through a thumbs up. So the, reading the discussions that the direction the board this morning and I will go with this if the board is comfortable in, moving this energy efficiency discussion as part of the bond process, the bond discussion process, specifically a tasking administration as they develop the, overall scope for the bond, that they prioritize a bucket for energy efficiencies specifically, so that that comes as a feedback from the community

249as well. And when that discussion is presented to the board, that's how the energy efficiency is, are going to be addressed. Is that so? Yes. For it, a thumbs up to to be clear, I just want to be clear that a thumbs up means we wait for the bond. Yes. Thank you. That's what I'm saying. Yes. So it's a thumbs up building for the bond. That is good. I'm waiting to see. I've got, you know, thumbs up. The second question that I would have to the board, based on that, back to, Doctor Comfort's feedback to the board, there is, a possibility that if the board has an agreement, we can direct the superintendent to, they've done already some energy efficient look at you showed in the third or the fourth slide out there. Target some

250of our capital money to address low hanging fruit between now and the next year. I'm not saying the whole capital project they can come up with what is, a good amount of money, efficient use of money, so that when we do go for a bond discussion a year from now, community, we can demonstrate in good faith that we have used, internal dollars in addressing some of those challenges as the board comfortable in providing that feedback to, superintendent call transfer clinic superintendent calls. You got that feedback. So when you are prioritizing that capital budget to address low hanging energy efficiencies that can be addressed at this point. Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate this discussion. I think we came to a resolution on this. With that, we are at the end of, discussion at

251this work session. If I don't see any I don't have anything else to add at this time. Thank. I do have a quick mention. I saw Dylan had a Facebook post about it, but I want to just to read something briefly. Okay. On Constitution Day. Okay. So on this day, we recognize the signing of what I would argue is the second most God inspired document in the history of the planet. On September 17th, 1787, just 11 short years after America declared independence from the Crown, 56 of the most intelligent political minds on the planet gathered in Philadelphia's Independence Hall to sign the Constitution of the United States, Daniel Webster stated, I regard its the Constitution as the work of the purest patriots, and why is a statement that ever existed aided by the smiles of

252the night, the providence, it almost appears, a divine interposition in our behalf. Senator Robert Byrd recognized the need for there to be a reminder to citizens and our schools today of this great nation, that the founding documents laid the groundwork for what is today the greatest nation on Earth and chosen for Congress, passed Public Law 108 447 that designated September 17th as Constitution Day, and also requires that all federally funded educational institutions and federal agencies provide education programs on the US Constitution each year. So and so. The Facebook post, I apologize today. I think that's about all I got, actually, I'll end with a Benjamin Franklin quote, Ben Franklin's cautionary statement when asked by Elizabeth Willing, well, doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy? To which he answered, A republic, if you

253can keep it. So much work to do on teaching about the Founding Fathers and the intelligence that, brought this nation to bear. So. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Today, Thursday, September 17th, is Constitution. So, with no other, comment at this time. Work session is adjourned at 7:28 p.m.. We need to get to the dais to start the session. Can.