Board of Education Meeting: May 23, 2023

001all right everybody Welcome to the May 23rd meeting of the Board of Education pooter School District I apologize that we're starting five minutes late we ran over a little uh in our early earlier meeting thanks for joining us if you would mute your cell phones like I'm going to do here before we start the meeting that would be great so we don't get any eruptions and the meeting is called to order at approximately 6 35 in the evening would any board members like to make amendments to the agenda yes Kristen I make a motion to remove consent agenda item 7.12 Colorado Department of Education Comprehensive Health education grant application can I get a second from DJ Jill is there any discussion on this Jill if you would call a vote that would be great DJ

002Anderson aye Jim brokish hi Kristin Draper aye Rob Peterson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 6-0 thank you very much Jill all right we're all then on to our action items uh or at least the first one which is a resolution in support of Jewish American Heritage Month uh can I get a motion with respect to this uh resolution somebody anybody Kristen there you go I move that we passed the resolution in support of Jewish American Heritage Month 2023. excellent can I get a second looks like Jim great would someone please read the resolution you want to do that Kristen go ahead that sounds great uh resolution of the Pooter School District Board of Education in support of Jewish American Heritage Month 2023. whereas since George W bush designated may as Jewish

003American Heritage Month in 2006 in May of each year Americans of all backgrounds honor and celebrate the vibrant and varied American Jewish Jewish experiences and whereas the United States has always been a nation built on the achievements of immigrants and Jewish Americans have strengthened our country by contributing to all aspects of our society ever since 23 Jewish refugees arrived in North America over 350 years ago as part of the Jewish diaspora which refers to the dispersion of Jews throughout the world following a series of persecution and expulsions from multiple regions and countries throughout history and whereas the diversity within today's American Jewish Community is reflected in the approximately 7.6 million people in the United States who identify as being Jewish including those who identify as Jewish based on the religion and those who consider themselves

004Jewish for non-religious reasons such as ethnically culturally or based on their family background and whereas while much work has been done in the diversities across the country to Foster transformational social change and unite people of every racial ethnic cultural and religious backgrounds the Anti-Defamation League ADL found that anti-semitic incidents in the United States surged to historical levels in 2022 marking the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents throughout the country in one year since the ADL began tracking such incident incidents in 1979 and whereas the Pooter School District Board of Education Administration and staff are committed to making pooter School District an equitable and inclusive community for our Jewish students families and staff and we recognize there is more work ahead of us diversity equity and inclusion are fundamental values in pooter school district and we are

005committed to ensuring that our Jewish students families and staff are valued seen and heard now therefore be it resolved that the Pruder School District board of education does hereby Proclaim May 2023 as Jewish American heritage month and encourages students staff and the community to seek a deeper understanding of the cultures and identities within the American Jewish community and to recognize and celebrate the significant contributions made by Jewish Americans to the United States of America thank you Kristen Brian I believe we have some uh folks here to speak to this yes we do I'm grateful that tonight that joining us this evening to speak to the resolution honoring Jewish Americans in our community is our District's diversity equity and inclusion coordinator Miss Delia mahaney uh welcome Delia and I know you're here also to welcome other

006guests from the community so thank you thank you superintendent Kingsley Board of Education and members of cabinet I am happy to be here I am happy to be here to introduce tonight's speakers on the importance of the resolution for Jewish American heritage month I would like to thank Dr Renee Cohen Jones and Dan Rosenfeld for reviewing the resolution through their lenses Jewish Americans I especially want to thank Shayna shytek our lgbtqia plus coordinator for her brilliant revision of the resolution reminding us that being Jewish is not only about religion but ethnicity as well thank you Rabbi gorlik for speaking thank you Madeline bass and Eisen Rosenberg for speaking as well through your words I have seen areas in which we I've already seen their words so just so you know through your words I've seen

007areas in which we are doing well and areas in which we can grow your courage and Truth matter to me and our system so I would like to have Isaac and Madeline come up they're going to speak first and when they're done Rabbi gorlik is going to come up and join them and also say some words to us [Applause] hi hi my name is Isaac Rosenberg and I am a fifth grader at Laurel elementary school as a proud member of the Jewish Community I would like to thank the board for passing the this resolution this resolution along with efforts like by school's inclusion of the dreidel song in our winter assembly makes me feel happy and welcome to be myself at school thank you again for for passing the resolution and recognizing my heritage [Applause]

008Shalom and thank you for inviting me to speak today my name is Madeline bass I'm finishing my junior year at Fossil Ridge High School and I'm proud to call myself a Jew I was hesitant to speak at this meeting at first because I was afraid that my speech wouldn't be as good as the speeches that came before it wasn't until I faced yet another instance in school where I felt too unsafe to speak up for uh that I decided to come today we are real however small our community is in Fort Collins where my temple doesn't even have a building we are real since we are such a small community here and in general it falls upon the few to basically teach others about our culture I can't keep count of the number of times

009I've had to answer questions from my friends about my religion I'm happy to do so but it gets tiring I'm sad to say as well that there have been more than a few times where I've had to correct my history teachers who seem to lean on me because they are not equipped to teach about this on subunits where Juda Judaism is the topic when we do get to the brief lesson on Judaism which is more of an afterthought than a planned lecture that takes less than one period to complete I feel my peers and my teachers look over to me like I'm the subject of the lesson like I'm show and tell I shouldn't have to shrink into my seat every time this happens for fear that I'll walk into class the next day and

010be welcomed with more stairs I shouldn't have to stay silent when boys in my finance class are making jokes at the expense of the millions that were massacred in the Holocaust for fear that that will paint a Target on my back I shouldn't have to talk with my teacher after class about why they stayed silent when my culture and my Heritage were at the butt end of some sick joke I shouldn't have to isolate myself every time I have to correct someone on my religion in a way to try to prevent even a little bit of ignorance I should not be responsible for educating people about a culture that has been around for thousands of years and has been the victim of the biggest genocides in history this can all be prevented with simple but

011accurate lessons regarding my history or my religion's background teaching about Jewish culture and history could be one step closer towards more understanding and safer place for Jews at school [Applause] good evening Dr Kinsley esteemed members of the board wow Maddie that was that was amazing you guys remember wow I've heard it so many times yet just to hear it again it's just so incredibly moving um hmm so what are we going to do about it right that's the question my name is Rabbi Relic it's a very big pleasure to be here the truth is it should be Renee that's up here she's been spearheading our efforts working with the puta School District as well as the city of Fort Collins for many many years um and so I'm just very thankfully to life for getting

012this together and for having this opportunity you know you're only going to make this mistake once you must give a rabbi a time limit before you invite him to school I don't know what your schedule is but I got the whole evening here I'll try to be brief so I've been here close to 20 years I've had the opportunity to work with many of the various institutions here in our town many different people and it's been a wonderful Journey it's also been a bit of an experiment right I don't fit the normal malt here right I kind of stand out or I like to jerk them and I'm an ad for Fiddler on the Roof right around here at the same time it's giving me tremendous opportunities and I've seen a real Evolution and I'm

013here to express my gratitude to you and then to push you a little bit as well it's been how many years that we've been working on this Renee what uh 18 years now that we've been working on it and um I'll be blunt there hasn't been much progress I'm not blaming anyone I'm not and I probably take um some of that on me as well because you get distracted by many other projects Etc so this has inspired me hearing YouTube it's time to to change this I don't want to come and hear another um young person I have to have that experience it's it's enough it's 2023. I work with CSU I teach there so there's a lot of those experiences as well but it it doesn't make any sense that it starts at this

014young age and had an opportunity to speak to matter here before we come so let's see if we can uh light a fire under this what do you say Brian we can get this going and start seeing what we can really do about this and start making some changes like I sense a real love and warmth from so many of you here so I don't think it's a question of Desire it's just we're all overloaded we have lots going on um just to share an idea from Judaism because I think it's so important and something that I think about a lot education is obviously key for any functioning Society but there's two forms of Education there's the education that allows us to have a career we teach our children so they can get a job

015so they can make a living and that's critical but then there's another sort of Education that there are inherent limitations in any academic institution especially here in America to provide and that's what's a moral education and my leader the ribby Robinson felt very strongly that we have a responsibility within the constitution of course to provide opportunity for a young children to develop this moral character the idea is that it should come from home but not everyone has that home that it's going to come from and certainly Society is not necessarily teaching good lessons about it but how does a young child as they become an adult get familiar with how to develop feelings about wrong and right how to express his or her feelings when it comes to things that really affect them deeply right

016how does a young child develop an idea that they're not just here for themselves to chase the American Dreams but they're here to to to give right to serve a purpose that transcends self that's something that a person has to have mentors a person have to has guidance and there has to be time given for that I'm a big proponent on what used to be something that's across America now it's in about 22 States and I don't believe Colorado is one of them and it's something that I've been meaning to do and it's called moment of silence I don't know if any of you are familiar with that I'm going to start started many many years ago and then there was a bit of a controversy about it now it started again moment of silence

017is where they encourage children from a young age to take a minute at the beginning of the day to think about things beyond their own needs think about how they can contribute the idea is that it's not the teacher that tells a child what to think it is absolutely secular it's not religious but hopefully the child will come from home and say mum what should I think about and I said well what do you want to do how do you want to give it back where are you going to be kind where are you going to add some light to the world and there have been a number of states that have actually adopted this as a resolution and there's a website you can see momentofsilence.org to see the effect the impact that it's had

018on so many children that in the children's words what it's done for them to have that ability when I teach at University and I have students that will graduate they'll come to me and after all those years they still don't know what they want to be and what they want to do and so in my class I encourage before we start I said take two minutes to think about something Beyond yourself they love it one time I forgot and the students reminding and a rabbi we need to do that we need to do that thing again right it's exercising that muscle and so that's an idea that I want to put here I know it's probably goes to State legislation Etc but just an idea of how we'd like to work with the school district

019as allies and to help and to make sure that the experience that Maddie has doesn't get repeated because we want to turn out happy and well-integrated students right that's what creates a unified healthy Society so I want to thank you all again and for taking this time and I imagine you'll be hearing from us very soon so God bless you all thank you are there any comments from the board go ahead Kristen yeah I just like to take a moment and say thank you for for speaking to both the students and to the rabbi and also to the revision when you included um the non non-jewish uh sorry non-religious Jewish reasons such as ethnicity cultural or based on family background I just wanted to say um thank you to that because that affects me personally

020um and that is something that um is not always welcome so I I just hear here to that thank you other comments well I'll just say that I thought that both the comments by the students and by the rabbi were both inspiring and profound and and thought provoking we need to as you say Rabbi we need to we need to work on that we need to make progress so thank you for for speaking that truth to us I appreciate it Brian you wanted to say something yes I wanted to personally thank Isaac for sharing your kind words about your experiences at Laurel um Maddie I want to think is it Madeleine or Maddie I want to be respectful um I want to thank you for your courage to use your voice even though you doubted

021whether it would make a difference or not I want to affirm that it is not your individual responsibility to fix that it's ours and I personally take your experiences as a charge and a challenge and a fire for our Collective Hearts not just my own to take both rabbis charge and courage but also using your experiences as our motivation as well as many of your other peers and members of the community to do better and Rabbi and Dr Cohn I've been a part of this community for two years your partnership and mentorship and friendship has meant a lot to me personally and professionally and I know that there's Bridges being built to improve our relationships but they're certainly more progress that's needed so I just want to thank you for both the affirmation but also

022the push I think that's what leads to a healthy relationship and it means a lot that you're here all right Jill if you would call a vote on this resolution I'd appreciate it DJ Anderson I Jim brokish hi Kristen Draper aye Rob Patterson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 6-0 excellent I think we're gonna try to get a picture here and then we'll move on with our gender would it be appropriate to have a picture with you all is that okay all right great thank you and we'll slip in behind you I think I think we're going to sit on this aren't we it attack you supervised [Music] if you're standing on your tiptoes thank you thank you very much [Applause] absolutely what is your phone number teaching all right the next

023item on our agenda is our superintendent report and superintendent Kingsley will now make remarks to the board of education and to the community yeah thank you it's great to be with you all um I like to live by the example when we know better we do better so I'm going to actually start my remarks by asking us to take a brief moment of reflection to think about the things that Rabbi shared with us that transcend ourselves to think about giving and the purpose that we all have as a governance team and as a community to serve our youth but also our family so we could just take a moment of reflection I really appreciate that thank you very very much um you know something that I just realized that I think in my time here

024I have asked this boardroom to have a moment of silence and it's been this board meeting considering this week of school sadly a year ago it was post the Uvalde Texas tragedy and Massacre and tonight it's about giving so I think we're headed in a in a solid direction of reflection you know public education to me is an incredible pipeline to strengthening our Humanity I think that's what brings us together in a shared purpose but I also think it has other uh it has other direct laws to strengthening our economy to Dr to strengthening our national Safety and we just talked about and heard from one of our students that didn't feel safe so it's not just at a macro level it's also at a micro level too in terms of the role that we

025play we know that the role of public education is to improve and steady property values it's to help deepen and broaden our pipeline for our Workforce and ultimately it's you know purpose I think is to advance democracy um and I think you know one of the things all we start our meeting in a moment of reflection and recognition of where we can do better and step outside of ourselves I also want to take a brief moment to celebrate what just transpired across our system over the last week where we had over 2 000 members of the class of 2023 who had a great opportunity to earn their diploma it was such a pleasure and a joy to be a part of that supporting him along their Journey you know that's why we exist that's why

026we do what we do in PSD and I would tell you while we have work to do and I do not want to minimize that at all to be a better system A Better Community I think that is the role of humanity evolving iterating listening being more empathic I would also say that there's hope that I have as a result of listening and celebrating to many of our young adults and across our system who are already figuring out ways to be better communicators to push us to solve problems to do hard things I feel supported and strengthened by who we're surrounded by and that's our youth not just our community who's pushing us in a very healthy way to be better our students are too and they're showing us the way in many instances and

027I'm just really really proud I want to take a second to thank our families for trusting us with your children for us to teach them to support them and to continue to push us to figure out ways to be better servant leaders to your family and most importantly your children and young adults the last couple of weeks 13 years of public education to achieve walking across the stage of graduation doesn't happen by accident there's a lot of people who are investing in our youth and I want to thank the hundreds of Staff who worked for months to put on more than a dozen commencement events we know that there's someone The Horizon with our Charter Schools still but because of you our graduates and our honored guests felt special over the last couple of weeks

028we saw that there was an emotional experience just as they should feel those particular things in those particular moments and I just want to personally think you know whether you're at the Lincoln Center or at the Moby Arena the environments were first class not only were they clean and secure and well decorated and joyful but it didn't happen just because of the teachers even though they were instrumental in that process the various custodians who worked around the clock for two weeks to make sure that that experience was first class for everybody was really Mission critical the security members who worked Around the Clock the parking attendance the administrative staff who made sure the programs were right and the diplomas were in the right order the various leadership teams at the school the volunteers our partners

029at CSU our Communications team who made sure that people had access whether they were able to be in person in attendance or not and still have the same level of first class experience I run the risk every time I start naming groups that I'm going to leave somebody out but I really do believe that it was an incredible systemic effort to make sure that people felt seen heard and celebrated in the overwhelming amount of positive feedback that I have received from various constituents is just it's something that makes me incredibly proud and so while we're in a space of reflection of knowing that we have work to do to be a better organization I do think that's also juxtaposed by things that we are doing really well that we also deserve to be celebrated and

030the people who make those things possible so I just wanted to name that you know community of voice and engagement is going to continue to be a Common Thread around just the way of work because that's what pushes us to be a school system that is a public institution tonight I'm really grateful that our district Advisory Board chair and chair elect will present our Dab's annual report you know at a time when it may feel easier to disengage or post questions without offering solutions to parents and Guardians who are offering their time through dab are leaning in and stepping up in really important ways and having really courageous tough honest candid conversations that are really necessary to move our system forward they challenge our assumptions our data our ideas and where we're putting advocacy and

031where we're not so I just want to say that I'm grateful for that update tonight I want to also say thank you to any member of our organization or volunteers or parents in the community who extend and step up in a volunteer type role whether you're on a committee stepping up to volunteer in a school setting and help a teacher a paraprofessional or on some type of District board we recognize that that work could be not happening by you and you are leaning in in an area in time where we need you more than ever and I just want to say thank you for all of your opportunities to to step up and be an instrumental role in moving our system forward and speaking of that as you know student advisors are a big committee

032that we pay a lot of attention to as a governance team and I believe that for our new membership going into next year there are applications that are available for high schoolers that want to share their experiences and ideas of how to make our school system better with the Board of Education in our cabinet you can apply for the student advisory Council now and there's more information on our district website it is this type of involvement in listening in the ebb and flow the tap dance of working with each other and being gracious with each other that allows us to make continuous Improvement efforts in my system in my opinion and tonight we're going to talk about that Dr Schmitz is with us again this evening we are one of the strongest districts in the

033state of Colorado I want to continue to reiterate that and lead from a place of strength while also being humble that there are areas that we need to pay more attention to we're going to learn a little bit more about recent data that has been public to show where we're making quality improvements and where we have to pay more attention to to make more systemic efforts to double down to ensure more students if not all students are experiencing success over time we know that we only have two and a half school days left this school year I'm not counting I promise you that but I want to make sure that you know we can't do this alone we want to finish this year the same way that we started which is strong and so I

034just want to say thank you as we close out this year for everybody that's been a part of our successes who's challenged us on our opportunities to grow you continue to make us better and I'm super grateful to be the superintendent of this incredible school system so thank you for allowing me some time to provide a community update excellent thank you very much Brian um our next item on the agenda is in fact to hear from some folks in our community and that is community comment I want to remind us all for our hopes for this section of the agenda the board desires to hear the viewpoints of all stakeholders including students employees parents and Guardians and community members input that is most helpful to the board of education and District staff is that which

035celebrates successes that support the educational and social emotional experiences of our students or which identifies a problem and proposes a solution for us to consider that ultimately improves the educational and social emotional experiences of our students public comment is designed to address issues not personalities or Personnel matters please keep your concerns and comments focused on the district it is important to note that the board does not generally respond to remarks made during Community comment our lack of response should not be construed to mean that we agree or disagree with what is said or with a description or interpretation of events as presented by any speaker although we may disagree on some things I know that we all want the best educational experience for our students and as we participate together in this community comment session

036we should model for our students how to listen how to interact respectfully even with those with whom we disagree and generally how to show up each day with that the opportunity for public comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline those people will be called on to make remarks in the order that they signed up each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board and our first Speaker this evening is Joseph Moore welcome I think I think it's over there good evening and uh thank you members of the school board my name is Joseph Moore I'm a presbyterian pastor and Sir for a long time as one of the leaders of the Fort Collins Interfaith Council I'm also the proud father of three PSD students so

037I'm not just here as a leader of the faith community but also as a dad someone who has the privilege of sending his children to schools where values of welcome and inclusion are part of what it means to be a student in this District and so I'm here tonight really just to say thank you and I'm grateful I get to kick off public comment on a on a positive note but I'm here to say thank you thank you on behalf of the refugee students and the homeless and Couchsurfing students and the gay and lesbian and trans students who call pooter School District home schools where they are welcomed and loved and supported I've pastored students and families in all of those categories and I am so grateful that at the very least they get to

038attend schools where they're going to be welcomed and we won't always get it right but I am so grateful that you at least try every child deserves a learning environment where they are fed and challenged and affirmed and again I want to thank you for leading a school district where that is the goal I'm also here to thank you on behalf of a large number of religious people and Faith communities of all types but folks that you might not hear from as much as you should but folks who believe in the principles of radical welcome and inclusion folks who think that those things speak to the very best of our religious traditions so on behalf of those communities thank you for enacting policies and for creating School environments where questions can be asked and conversations

039can be had it's messy and it is complicated work but it is necessary work so please don't give up on it you have a diverse and large group of people supporting you so thank you for all the ways you helped create a community where difference and diversity is embraced and welcome bless you as you continue to do your good work thank you our next speaker is Jeff afterheide welcome great can I can I reset my clock and do this thank you thanks in Animal Farm George Orwell uses the allegory of a farm to illustrate the dangers of totalitarianism and the consequences of corruption within a society the concept that some animals are more equal than others is Central to the story as it demonstrates the hypocrisy and Corruption of the pigs who rise to power

040following the Rebellion against the human farmer Mr Jones the novel serves as a critique of the Soviet Union under Stalin and provides a cautionary tale about the abuse of power the quote all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others is a significant turning point in the story it showcases the blatant betrayal of the original principles of animalism the animal's revolutionary belief system based on equality and freedom this change in the original commandment all animals are equal underscores the pig's manipulation of language and their exploitation of other animals Trust as the pigs Inc become increasingly corrupt their actions and decisions betray the initial Spirit of the Rebellion this Distortion of the original commandment is the ultimate expression of the pig's hypocrisy as they use their intelligence in cunning to consolidate their power

041rationalize their actions and maintain control over the other animals the corruption of the Commandment also highlights how easily the ideal of the of equality can be Twisted by those in power to maintain their dominance as the pigs become more human-like the distinction between the oppressive human Farmer and the pigs begin to blur symbolizing how power can corrupt even those who once fought against Injustice this famous quote from Animal Farm illustrates the central theme of inequality hypocrisy and Corruption among the ruling pigs this betrayal of the principles of animalism serves as a warning against the dangers of power and how it can ultimately lead to the erosion of the very values that were once cherished by those seeking change just like those in the novel Animal Farm this board has repeatedly demonstrated the idea of being

042morally intellectually and spiritually Superior over other community members and parents and because of this you use the superiority complex to manipulate language and exploit the trust of the community as Mr Kingsley likes to say you can be a builder or destroyer of the community and I propose this is the method of how you are destroying the community foreign thank you our next speaker is Aaron Rose welcome it doesn't go low enough for me good evening my name is Aaron Rose and I'm the mother of three children currently attending pooter school district schools I'm here today to talk to you about school safety communication and specifically especially transparency thank you I'm sure you're all aware of the ongoing situation at Rice Elementary where more than one staff member from school has come to parents to state

043that the special needs students in the ILS classroom they're not having their educational individual educational plans followed or implemented and there have been reports of safety and abuse concerns for special needs students in that classroom from a member of staff my child is non-verbal meaning she can't communicate with me or tell me what has taken place in this classroom with these level of concerns come to our attention as parents I would hope that you and the district recognize not only our concerns but also our need for transparency to ensure that our children are indeed safe because they can't communicate with us I and several other parents of the students in this classroom have requested information regarding the investigation of these allegations from school staff the district administrative staff including the assistant director and director of

044Integrative Services the Director of Human Services the director of student services and to the superintendent to date we've only received canned responses first that Noble abuse has taken place how were there other concerns that have been addressed then no misconduct has taken place when I ask for more information regarding what those quote unquote other concerns were I was ignored when I emailed the before listed members of the board twice requesting external investigations be completed again I was ignored these are special needs children protected individuals who are allegedly not being educated according to their IEPs and additionally are being allegedly neglected abused and ignored these allegations are coming directly from multiple staff School staff members who are directly witnessing these alleged events By ignoring our request for more transparency to ensure that these children are safe

045and learning the school in the district are denying us the right to know the true truth of what is happening at the school while continuing to have these persons allegedly doing these work with these children I would hope that you can all imagine how unsettling this is for us as parents to not know and to feel ignored when our children's education safety are in the question I'm coming to you the Board of Education to request please please investigate what is happening in this classroom as well as the failure to transparently address these concerns to the parents if the allegations are indeed false which I'd find difficult to believe in multiple students staff members have strictly similar reports for parents and HR says there are fact concerns that refuse to elaborate on the information as when

046requested what does pooter school district have to lose in proving to it by completing an external investigation for the same students and parents I'm free I'm requesting transparency and disclosure to the families the results of the internal investigation as well as requesting energy thank you our next speaker is Heather Testa welcome no good evening my name is Heather Testa and I have taught out at ice Stone Elementary for 20 years I come here today rep to represent our staff students and community to start I would like to thank the district for your outside of the box thinking when addressing growth in the Wellington area I would also like to acknowledge our building principal Kristen broadbelt and our office staff Cassie blackett and Mary arnberg for not only fulfilling their job responsibility but taking on the

047additional roles of this new building in the process in 2019 when the conversion of Wellington Middle School was presented to us by Dr Lambert as a four or five School our staff was generally excited about this project now nearly four years later this project seems to have turned into a bare minimum Rush Band-Aid to a projected growth issue once staff and students left Wellington Middle School nearly a year ago the building was left in complete disarray with unwidened items trash secure student documents and any of their discards the information given to us this spring as a staff was that if we didn't do it our timeline would be pushed out even further so the cleanup was organized by our office manager and principal by asking for staff to volunteer off contract to clean on multiple

048Mondays and Fridays After School in the Saunders contract being voted on on the consent agenda this evening there are updates to one classroom the hall Meck room however the rest of the 11 General classrooms and the intervention rooms will remain untouched except for carpet and paint your three five eye stone staff has concerns that they've been trying to get heard and addressed for several months we reached out on April 4th fearing via our building principal to Dr Tracy guile expressing these concerns and requesting a meeting that request was denied until we finally met with her and Dr Kingsley this afternoon our major concerns are one the Safety and Security of this new building including lack of adequate Staffing we will be sharing an Administration and limited office staff reading the Saunders contract fencing will not

049be completed until the night before school starts and the west side of the building will not be fenced in at all the entrance to our building will allow access to the entire school once they are buzzed into the two main doors Renovations our goal and hope is that we can create Equitable classrooms that are in line with the basic setups of any Elementary School building new buildings and such as Bamford and Zac include upper and lower cabinets including sinks in counter space at this point ice down south fourth and fifth grade classroom and intervention rooms consist of just four walls there are no cabinets or shelving for any teachers materials student materials manipulatives reading live berries our goal is Equitable funding throughout this District and our hope is that this timeline really can happen for

050before the start of the Year thank you for this opportunity to speak this evening as I help represent all of those people over there we also want to be able to take pride an equitable learning environment for our students thank you our next speaker is Mike houtz I apologize if I pronounced that wrong please correct me welcome good evening for teacher appreciation week you said teachers build the foundation of our society in every Walk of Life every single successful person is where they are today thanks in part to their teachers none of us would be where we are today if a teacher along our journey didn't teach us first I want to tell you I very much appreciate and agree with those statements however there is somewhat of a large distinction between the teacher Union

051the Pooter Education Association and the 1300 individual teachers that comprise the Union the Pooter Education Association pea is closely Allied to the Colorado Education Association cea and the National Education Association Nea both the cea and the Nea are political organizations with 95 percent of their support going to the progressive Democrat politicians and organizations we have 179 school districts in Colorado under the influence of the cea both for good and to bad with seven members per board of education potentially over 600 board seats are open each election cycle in Colorado if an average of two people run for each position you have over 1200 board candidates throughout the state now this is where the progressive teacher unions exert an incredible political power throughout the state board candidates are interviewed to determine which candidates are most aligned

052with the Union priorities a union endorsement can lead to significant campaign contributions plus critical volunteer teacher help for phone Banks sign distribution and other critical election tasks endorsement by the teacher Union dramatically increases the odds of an election to look at the 2021 pooter Board election where four candidates were endorsed by local and state teacher unions the Coloradan says that four candidates Drew 119 thousand dollars in donations with the largest percentage tied to the local and Statewide teacher unions that is more than the past four board races combined thank you our next speaker is Jim weinbrenner welcome was this turned on yes okay more cash than the last four elections combined The Coloradoan said that the Pea pulled out all the stops Force endorsed candidates presidents of both the cea and the Nea were in

053town campaigning for their endorsed candidates the Pea confident website confidently states that they together with the cea and the Nea has a strong voice and the ability to affect public education policy question becomes was a school board election of 2021 in the best interest of pooter students or in the did the reflects election reflect the values of teacher unions imagine if you will a hypothetical union strategy session in Denver home of the Colorado Education Association it might have gone like this Colorado has become dependably blue over the past 10 years the last election election cycle we had a significant budget for Colorado Board elections in pooter with our support our four Progressive candidates received 119 thousand dollars in donations more cash than pooter saw in the last four election Cycles combined our endorsed candidates won

054by a large margins so in hindsight they probably could have won with fifty thousand dollars when you consider hundreds of teacher volunteers helping with the election we need to reallocate our teacher our financial support this fall we need to determine which Colorado districts are comfortably Progressive and which districts are conservative but could be flipped with an influx of State Union cash and a visit from the Nea president did this hypothetical strategy session actually happen I don't know but my sense is that we are simply Pawns in a larger game than we imagine to board members running for re-election this fall will you decline interviews with teacher unions decline Union endorsement decline Union cash and decline teacher Union volunteers will you compete on an equitable Level Playing Fields with opponents who are mainly dependent upon contributions

055from individuals thanks for listening thank you our next speaker is John Meyer welcome a pause here and I just congratulate you guys again on the successes you gave others represented by the lives that walked across that stage there's a lot to be proud of there and providing PSD and thanks for recognizing that so strongly I wish I could talk more about that I've already used time I wasn't planning because I feel like I could serve you guys better by speaking to the very divisive issue about gender identities addressed in pooter School District it's easy for each of us to think that our own personal beliefs and bias on this issue are somehow some acknowledged reality accepted by all reasonable people but if we succumb to such thoughts we will create the inevitability of a very

056divisive Community issue this is only my third time at a school board meeting I had a very stereotyped view of what happens here and coming only these few times has helped me immensely in seeing the work and the challenges and the culture as part of all this you have become real people to me as a church pastor it's been easy to live in my own cultural world and not see accurately or even know about a diverse cultural circles that share the community I live in I want to say as humbly as I can that you might be in a position to make a similar mistake I have realized that voices like mine are not familiar voices in this room that fact is more my fault than yours but it makes it likely that you have

057a stereotyped view of people who Hold My Views and that makes it easy to dismiss these views as foreign or belonging only to a French minority I've been guilty of similar thinking in my own Circle but there are significant number of good people in our community who are concerned about gender and sexuality issues thousands of their children are in PSD and when the and when impacting their children these issues are deeply important to them enough so that they will take action of some sort if no other alternative is found it could mean simply looking for other educational options for their kids which brings you an opportunity can you create an educational environment that acknowledges these diverse views and honors each of them can you and will you bring that same neutrality to these deeply held

058beliefs if you do it will be a profound service to this community if you do not our children's schools which should help bind this diverse Community together may become the very center of doing the opposite please Serve All of Us in all our diversity only you can initiate that and make it possible the outcome could make Fort Collins a beacon for this entire country but to miss this opportunity will bring an outcome only to Common today one that only brings a loss to us all thank you our next speaker is Amy Healy welcome hello I'm a teacher at Fossil Ridge High School I attended the fossil feeder session for the Strategic framework back in the fall when the district's goals were presented the goals are well thought out graduating with options literacy mental health and

059security as a professional in the classroom working with students it's clear that to accomplish the district's goals students need to be present I can help students find connections but they have to be there I can often notice when something is wrong with the student and alert someone who can get them assistance but they have to be there I can create a safe space in my classroom for my students but they have to be there as a school we can work on getting students different kinds of support but they have to be there we can accomplish the district's framework but students have to be there in my professional experience and my colleagues attendance is the number one indicator of students graduating so many teachers say if they're there in class they'll pass why stress to meet

060the CDE seat requirements if students aren't satisfying them it seems so basic that a student should be in class a minimum amount of time in order to receive credit for a course yet under the guise of equity we're being told that attendance doesn't matter I've done professional development with the book grading for Equity that many of you have read and I have adjusted many of my grading practices to incorporate those ways of equity however where in the real world can people show up less than half of the time and still expect a job even if excused we're not preparing students if they don't learn how to do the minimum of showing up according to the data from the Deans at Fossil Ridge High School there were over 3 700 unexcused absences in a student body

061of approximately 2 000. just in April 3 700 unexcused absences in April That's not including excuse absences for things like appointments sickness and School events let the extreme situations be the exceptions not the norm of course the student who has serious medical conditions should be given more leniency let that be set up as we have the systems to make that happen but don't let that be every student's situation if a student is considered present while being there half the time and missing out on material then why shouldn't our district professional development for teachers be run the same way I can't get credit towards my lane change unless I'm there eighty percent of the time or more but students can attend a fraction of a course and get graduation credit it seems really silly that I

062have to make a comparison like that to point out how ridiculous attendance in the district is right now parents should know that their children are in class when they're at school if a student is gone for half the period wandering the Halls that's 45 minutes an adult does not know where they are when we're talking about security that's a big deal changing attendance codes will only make things worse and more confusing encouraging Behavior the opposite of what we contribute no contributes to learning thank you thank you our next speaker is Laurie Maggio Huber again I apologize if I pronounced that wrong please correct me welcome good evening everybody first of all I want to thank Mr Kingsley for coming out to istone today I was not able to be there but we appreciated your time

063so thank you for that I'm here in addition to my colleagues from istone to discuss the Dilemma that we have out at our new dual campus our Expansion Project I am the media specialist at istone and I've been here for the past seven years and 20 years previously back East so I have a wealth of experience working within media centers I love what I do and I love the community that I work with and I have made the choice this year to remain and to see that expansion through it is one of those dream projects where you have the opportunity to work in a development to build a library from scratch unfortunately that dream seems a bit tarnished by the idea that I do not have any funding whatsoever to pursue this with I have

064been tasked with creating a New Media Center as well as dividing my present one with exclusive volunteers that only I have called and dividing my present collection as you can imagine this does not feel like it aligns very well with our district goals of literacy I am struggling to find out how I'm going to provide adequate resources for my students that are either extremely high readers within our community at my e35 school as well as my students that are not potentially a grade level and maybe are at the middle school there are many challenges to not having the proper resources and literacy opportunities for my students for any of you that have had that experience where the library has been a sanctuary for you perhaps it was a chaotic childhood or an environment that the

065library provided a safe place for you it is essential and it has been an essential part of our community and our especially our eye stone community I would very much like to continue to create that sanctuary and two robust media centers for our students I can assure you they richly deserve it thank you thank you our next speaker is Marjorie Wagner welcome thank you for the opportunity to speak in support of lgbtq students this evening I'm Margie Wagner I have been an adult educator for over 30 years and I have learned that creating a safe environment is absolutely essential for learning if students feel threatened or embarrassed if they feel called out or targeted if they are upset or traumatized they cannot learn our brains are wired to focus on perceived danger only when we

066feel safe can we focus on other topics and Beyond feeling safe people need to feel valued and accepted for who they are in order to grow and thrive students who are bullied harassed threatened or excluded from their community will very likely suffer from depression anxiety psychological trauma and they are at a much greater risk for suicide transgender students are particularly at risk right now they are under attack in our society as some states create laws telling them that they cannot be who they are and that the world is not made for them I am grateful to live in a state that is protecting and supporting these children and their families and I am proud of our school district for adopting policies addressing harassment and suicide prevention to guarantee a safe and nurturing School environment and

067to specifically protect children who are part of a marginalized group I think all parents would agree that we want our children to be happy and to grow into well-adjusted productive members of society teachers who create inclusive classrooms and model how to treat others with sensitivity compassion and respect are literally Transforming Our World into a more loving and peaceful planet I want to say thank you teachers administrators school board members and school Personnel for standing up for our most vulnerable students thank you thank you and our last speaker this evening is Danny Lawrence welcome tonight I came to speak or came to seek specific action for families with disabled children in the school district we need your help demanding oversight of the integrated Services Department as you know the CIA special education advisory committee only advises

068itself there appears to be no advice reaching you as a board of directors it took a parent of that committee to invite you to attend in public comments before there was a connection additionally all the parents on that committee are chosen by the is Department no public comments are allowed in their meetings which is why I have no place but here to express my concerns my attempts to problem solve and find Solutions with is are now met with a deafening silence in the spring of 2022 I sat on a hiring committee with 20 other parents of disabled children where we interviewed three candidates for the director position we were told in the summation of that process that the candidate the district was seeking hadn't been found in the interview pool and that a national search

069would be implemented that search never happened to my knowledge and you all just approved in April the internal candidate from that pool to service director the parents who served on that committee were never given the respect of an update if the is Department reports only to itself and only allows for a committee of members that it appoints without public input I think we should all be very worried so I'm specifically asking after two years of making public comments to this board for you to intervene over the summer and demand change of the integrated Services Department's receptiveness to input from its stakeholders now that the district has lost its Chief Equity officer and the director of is reported to them there is quite literally no check on this system special education is for most districts the

070most litigious and expensive part of their school budget you have a fiduciary responsibility to the community and a moral obligation to the student all the students in our district to help protect the most vulnerable students here in the 2023-24 school year our district must have developed a new reporting standard to CDE for seclusion and restraint because of legislation that passed last year the duration threshold of those restraints decreased dramatically how are your staff being trained on that change the site-based chaos approach of every school for itself as it relates to state law won't work and there needs to be a uniform plan delivered with professionalism demand to know what that is the same is true of House Bill 22 1260 for reasonable access to Medical necessary services in schools if you don't ask these questions

071and press for answers in oversight it is my experience that no one else will please add integrated Services updates to your agenda for some public transparency it's been over a year since there's been a presentation in this boardroom and please ask for some fairness in the public participation process of the seat committee if a parent who's been in this in your ear for two years every every two weeks for two years can't get our son's IEP implemented in a school year while she's simultaneously using federal and state complaint systems imagine what's happening to families who aren't aware of their children's rights thank you for listening but please take long overdue action thank you thank you that concludes Community comment for this evening our next agenda item is board committee reports and comments do we have

072members of the board who wish to speak looks like DJ wants to fill the silence yeah I've kind of gone back and forth on this a little bit uh but uh I also want to take a little reflection of last week because of the amount of graduation sometimes it's hard to enjoy and pull it all in but I think at the time you are able to see the difference that our school district has made and I think the teachers especially and the staff that has reached these children and helped them through their their 13 years it was so wonderful to be able to hear these students thank their parents mom's got a lot of shout outs and uh their grandparents and their teachers one that that really jumped out to me this year that I

073thought was very very cool was thinking friends and they're thinking friends to help them find the right school for them or to help them motivate them to keep going and I thought that was it was really beautiful and you know unfortunately uh public education gets a lot of knocks and it is not perfect but man does it do a really good job and it opens its arms to everyone no matter the religion sex um special needs we we as public Educators open our arms and try to connect with all these kids and it really takes these graduations sometimes to refill my bucket um as a volunteer you know sometimes it's you you start to wonder why you spend so much time doing it and you uh see these kids and and their stories and it's

074it's very powerful and I think last week was probably a little more powerful for me in the fact I had a daughter graduate but I also had that class of hers and I volunteered a lot of hours in Johnson Elementary School and so to see these kids crossing the stage uh that I knew back then some of them I couldn't even recognize uh but you know when I hear their name and and saw them it really is a special moment and I would like to just invite the public to uh come experience some of these that if you have doubts about public education uh centennial's flower ceremony where the students get a chance to actually to speak and thank the people that helped them through the IB uh stall ceremony where they they get to

075talk about give give a personal thanks you know opportunities where the speakers that even our large graduations get to talk about what helped them get through and and make it happen it is a very heartwarming experience and um public education is not perfect it definitely is not funded correctly for what we need to do uh but man we do a damn good job and I'm a tiny tiny bit of that and so I'm very proud to be a part of PSD and being able to help in any way that I can so I I just really last week was uh was a great week so thanks thank you DJ Nate ditto thank you Nate other comments from the board Kristen yeah I think I'd just like to Echo the ditto um but also um I

076just want to take this opportunity for um a call to action um and as the as the summer approaches and school winds down this week it's an opportunity for us to as parents to slow down talk to your kids find out what's really going on because they have one less stressor in their lives right now of school but there's still lots of stressors out there so make sure that you're still you know coming to uh speaking to your to your kiddos over the summer and find out what's going on in their lives um one of the things that during that moment of silence that we took earlier I asked what what can I do over the summer what can we do over the summer as a person and one of the quotes that struck me

077and I'm going to paraphrase it because it's um it's it is not your duty to finish the work but neither are we at Liberty to neglect it and so I think finding that piece of work that we can do over the summer whether it's you know for your parents parents for your kids come to the summer reading program at the library for instance um but there are so many other things that you can do with your child over the the course of the summer to engage with them and be present with them so I want to ask for that I also wanted to ask the community to support our students over the summer yes once again the you know the the challenge of schooling may be over of academics maybe over for the time being

078but we are again are in a challenging time particularly for our young people and I'm asking for the support of our teachers right now too and our staff because it has been a challenging year um I heard one of our principals at graduation say this is the first time in three four years that it's felt close to normal so first time since the pandemic that it's felt close to normal and another one who said I'm not sure what it's like not to have adrenaline coursing through my body at all times and we need to understand that this is this is the life of a of a School employee and so please give Grace please um you know let teachers and employees enjoy their Summers and know that they are we're going to be working hard

079as well to learn new literacy curriculum to get buildings ready to be doing all of the things that teachers do because their teachers and their special human beings so I just wanted to to put that out there and again just parents over the summer just be present with your kids thanks Kristen other remarks from the board sorry Jess did you have something I did I saw something on a square in my eye maybe maybe it was the moth going by again I don't know there is a moth in here um all right well well done with that item on the agenda we're going to move to the consent agenda I'll remind you that 7.12 was removed from the agenda under our earlier agenda item would anybody like to move that we approve the remainder of

080the items on the consent agenda Nate I move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items remaining on the consent agenda excellent can I have a second Kristen Jill could I have a vote please DJ Anderson aye Jim brokish hi Nate Donovan aye Kristen Draper aye Rob Peterson aye Carolyn Reed I will be voting no tonight because there are real estate contracts on this consent agenda that I don't agree with but um I didn't want to pull them because I don't think that we need to talk about them but I did want to note that I don't agree with the real estate contracts in here Jessica Zamora aye motion passes six one okay thank you Jill very much the next items on sorry the next I yeah the next items on

081our agenda are additional action items the first one being revisions to the student rights and code of conduct policies this is the second reading can I get a motion with respect to this go ahead Nate I move that the board approve and adopt District policy j i c d d and policy jlcdc do I have a second looks like jazz if I read this correctly there's no additional presentation on this right it's just if we have questions or comments are there questions or comments from the board we did talk about this last time just for members of the public in case you want to hear some more about it you can go back to that video which is on our web on our website or can be accessed from our website anyway Jill if you

082would call a vote on this I'd appreciate it DJ Anderson aye Jim brokish hi hi Kristen Draper aye Rob Pederson aye Carolyn Reed no I mean I sorry I just got in the habit sorry bye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 thank you so much Jill the next item is a resolution designate an election official for the 2023 election can I get a motion with respect to this resolution go ahead Nate I move that the board approve and adopt the resolution to designate Autumn Aspen general counsel as the designated election official for the November 2023 election and wish her well on a thankless job okay yeah there you go so Kristen's got the second there is there any discussion of this beyond that which has already happened go ahead DJ I I just have a

083question is how come this has to be done yearly and not or each election cycle we can't just set it and have it until a certain period of time yeah and state law has to be done every time there's an election all right thanks other comments or questions Jill could we please get a vote on this DJ Anderson aye Jim brokish hi Nate Donovan aye Christian Draper aye Rob Pederson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 excellent thank you and to Echo Nate congratulations autumn so so uh with that we'll move on to our informational reports the first of which is about the district's advisory boards uh and the parents uh have been working hard I think this year in this Arena I know it's something that both DJ and I were

084involved in back in the day and Jazz too that's right sorry and um so we really not only appreciate the work from a theoretical point of view but also from a practical point of view having lived it so uh Brian if you'd like to introduce this word that would be great sure here this evening to provide the annual DAV report as our dab chair Scott schoenbauer welcome Scott glad that you're here there we go thank you so much all right my main goal tonight is to get Carolyn's approval so looking for a yes I don't know what it's about but it's something [Laughter] um Brian thank you very much and and thank you board for having me here tonight uh it's been an exciting year uh I started on the dab in 2019 I think

085it was and um Jess was uh the chair of the following year I think yeah and um so I've gotten a chance to get to know a lot of you and uh Jim was a great liaison this year and really helped me out a lot with uh with the year um I'll try to be quick it's not that many slides so we'll we'll burn through this one of the big things uh when I came in as chair I wanted to set the tone the year before had been challenging I don't know if you guys noticed there was a lot of tension in 2020-21 I might have seen that here at these meetings but uh we saw it at the DAV meetings as well a lot of people uh really wanted to express some pretty strong

086opinions about things which is good and we want to have healthy debate but uh it got to a point where it was turning off a lot of the members and so we I wanted to bring back more of a welcoming environment so um I started off just by talking about what the dab is and what it isn't um it's a chance for parents to learn in depth what's going on at this in the school district ask questions and give feedback but it's not a place to have your soapbox and so uh I threw Jim under the bus and said the school board meeting is where you get on your soapbox so so you're welcome uh but assume a positive intent just you'll recognize some of this stuff this is stuff that she created when she

087was a chair and had our Zoom dab meetings and but listen learn understand criticize ideas not individuals learn collaborate and communicate those are our our main missions um it didn't hurt that I also made some homemade baked goods that sweetened up the the deal as well and our last meeting we had a huge collection of baked goods from all the members that that brought them so I thought that was nice so um one of the things that we did is a member survey you may not be able to read this very well um and typically this is what happens at dab uh at the end of the year we look for topics of interest and then we try to plan our agendas based off that and I thought this was really helpful and we based

088a lot of our agendas off the top 10 items here so number one with a big number of votes was Future Ready programs which might have surprised some people given where we were coming out of with covet and everything but people really wanted to get an idea of what PSD is doing for to prepare students for the real world number four on there was tied into that academic achievement we also had questions about uh mental health that was a top three budgets uh top that was the second one and then you'll see some other ones there as well one surprising one this is number seven and eight involved in classroom cell phone use and other distractions as well as Internet safety I think those are tied together so I actually had a pretty interesting presentation

089about that this spring um Equity diversity inclusion was in the top ten still but it had fallen from previous years um and then the last one was rethinking education Innovation and promising practices education so I'll talk about that in a little bit so based off of those um survey results this is the agenda that we put together we had uh Dwayne came in and presented about the unified Improvement plan that tied into the Strategic plan um we learned about the four pillars uh and I'll talk about that in a little bit the one great thing that we did in the October meeting is we had a one hour plus in-depth discussion where the parents really got a chance to voice uh their opinions and questions and I think that kind of that besides the rules

090that we had I think really helped people feel like okay this year I can really say what I want to say but do it in a respectful way and people are going to listen and it was it was actually one of the best things I've seen at dab since I've been there and tons of parents were just like that was very fulfilling to get that chance to have that discussion for a long period of time with a key member of the PSD Administration so we had a couple people representing that November was my favorite meeting work based learning Future Ready that's one of my passions I run a small business and that's the whole reason I'm interested in in PSD and the education is preparing kids for the real world and to be ready to

091jump into that workplace and and be responsible and fulfill their you know their passion and Thrive um from that we actually got dab members that go to the Future lab for the open house and tour it so that was really awesome to see what you guys have done with that December was a collaborative discussion just kind of brainstorming on on the next uh set of meetings um January we learned about the literacy curriculum we got like a chance to give good feedback on that February we learned about budgets and school funding March we did a whole thing on restorative justice and mental health and then April we have that social media and cell phone policy discussion uh and then in May uh superintendent Kingsley was able to come and meet with us and really did

092a great job in terms of being open to any questions we we had five questions that were kind of pre-done just as you know there's going to be similar subjects that a lot of parents want to ask about so we Consolidated those uh and and Brian was able to answer those very in depth and then we had an open session of q a which I you know was thinking you might be on a tightrope there but you handled that really well so um so I think parents felt like they got a chance to have that one-on-one and I think that's a really great thing uh so thank you for coming to that um key takeaways uh the strategic planning is very encouraging uh the pill the four pillars I think really nail what people are

093are interested in as parents uh the only concern is with implementation you probably hear this a lot from the teachers how are we going to have time to do all this with the training and the implementation uh timeline and that type of thing it's it's going to be a challenge one other area of feedback we got from the parents is is our academics and safety being um getting a back seat to mental health I think that's mental health keeps coming up that's the kind of the hot topic of the district and really the country uh in a whole bunch of levels but going back to that survey top concerns or academic achievement Future Ready that type of stuff which are more General and mental health is an important part of making you ready for those

094things but just keep that in mind from the parents uh the sros and restorative justice was another area we actually had two meetings I forgotten to mention that in November we did have an SRO update about what reforms have been going on which I think was really uh valued by a lot of parents who thought it it was the same as it had been in 2020 before any any reforms that happened so um they're encouraged by the progress there's still questions about how to report staff wrongdoing whether that's a teacher or an SRO if you feel like your kid is being unfairly targeted what do you do I think that's just I think there are policies in place I think it just needs to be communicated more clearly and then questions came up about victims

095rights and disruptions to other students with a lot of the restorative justice it's about bringing the victim and the person together but I think there's a feeling from parents that that doesn't really give that the victim it almost victimizes them again and so and then the kids that are kind of on the ancillary outside looking in that have to deal with the disruption a lot of parents are frustrated with that whole thing like remove the kid deal with it let my kids still learn is the attitude so I'm sure you've heard of all that budget concerns um one thing that's come up is the uh the trend over the past years of PSD losing students two or three hundred a year and what that means financially and in terms of teacher pay those types of

096things that you if you do the multiplication I think it's getting to ten thousand per people is that where we're going so that's two to three million bucks a year that's going away so the the primary reason we're hearing about this is birth rates I've I heard um several parents after hearing that multiple times called the S on that I won't say it um and they said that they they don't think the PSD wants to know the answer as to why some uh parents are pulling their kids out so that's just feedback you guys should know um there are a whole bunch of a bunch of reasons but uh when you're losing that many students it's what are we doing wrong is is a question that should be asked that's what I asked if I

097lose customers in my business students and parents are your customers um concerns about the social media and cell phone policy being inconsistent in schools did come up there is no Universal policy and I think a lot of the the parents were surprised by that and also surprised that there hasn't really been much um investigation into that or studies there are other districts that have done studies and what that's doing and I think that ties into mental health big time you know social media I think the Surgeon General just came out with a report saying that social media is a primary contributor to the mental health problems that kids are having right now which I think we all intuitively know that um so that's that was another takeaway and then interest in more community and business

098Partnerships the Future Ready real world type of thing I think parents can in Jim and I talked about this at the beginning of the year it's tough to implement but I think parents can be a great way to connect the school district to the community with their networks and that type of thing um and I'll wrap up here just got two more two more slides future topics this goes back to that top 10 list things that we didn't uh get to address the academic achievement like Innovation and promising practices like what are what are some of the different schools in the district doing that are successful and what can the others adopt I think parents are really interested in that the value of specials music art and PE that was in the top 10 and

099and surprisingly but I think people really do value that I know my family does um the academic committee we brought that back this year with the idea that parents should be involved in at least learning and disseminating what the school district is doing with the new curriculum especially since we're implementing that we didn't have an academic committee for a few years because there were no changes to the curriculum so so we put together an academic committee uh chair we had one meeting with the uh with the administration and there was just kind of like neither side really knew where we wanted to go with it so I think more guidance from the administration to help us um bring that together there's a lot of interest from parents about uh the curriculum so this would help

100with transparency in getting the word out like what's truth and what's not coming from the curriculum I think you guys would value that too so um and then the last thing is a DAV bylaw update is needed this is the one thing I really regret that I did not get done um because the bylaws are decent but as Jim will state they're a little messy and vague in areas and so we need to Define membership better the purpose better and then clarification of Technical and legal stuff you know like are we operating by the Colorado meeting laws or does that apply to us you know I think we're a pretty casual group but at times we felt like we've had to operate as if we're the school board and that's a little a little much

101for parents you know so um with that I just want to thank everybody on the exec team my chair elect Queen she will she'll be a great chair next next year Brady was our past chair um and you'll see the other others there as well um Angela Lindquist I will call out was a fantastic membership chair she worked many many hours to clean up our membership and recruit we had fantastic attendance this year so I was really happy with with that and she really organized things and left it for the next person so um Scott and Tracy were fantastic liaison's uh Tracy especially helped me get these meetings set up and I really appreciate all her help and again Jim was an excellent liaison I really appreciate everything that you did for us this year

102as well so that is it sorry for being long-winded well thank you very much are there questions or comments from the board gym yeah I just want to say thanks for Scott we we met for breakfast I think early in the year and Scott's leadership on this in this committee was just incredible I mean every meeting he he established he kind of refreshed the purpose and set the tone for the meeting and we just had great discussions and I'm just uh I'm so sad to see you go I just think it's uh you did a great job this year and I thank you appreciate that other comments from the board Jess thank you sorry it's just kind of weird to be on the side I know right um but I'm really glad that I had

103the chance to work with you a couple years ago and uh I was at yourself well at least one of your cell phone with the SRO and I know that's come up multiple times in multiple different Avenues so I'm kind of excited to see where we head with that because I I know that was one of the conversations that was one of the topics that was we were charged with like five years ago we're gonna talk about and and then lots of other things happened along the way a little bit um so but I appreciate all the work that went into this year and the variety of topics you kind of were able to bring back and get feedback on thank you thank you other comments all right thanks very much Scott really appreciate it

104thank you thank you more broadly to the parents who serve on the dab really appreciate that work next item on our informational report sorry is Title One funds um Brian if you want to introduce this that would be great yes members of the board Community as you know title one is just one of the many entitlement grants that PSC receives our director of language culture and Equity uh the director of language culture and Equity David ottenwright is here tonight to provide an overview of how our system intends and is using our existing title One Fund so Dave I want to welcome you to our meeting tonight thank you welcome all right and then how do I run this bad boy all right okay that's that is on all right good good evening board thanks for

105having me tonight and thank you Mr Kingsley for introducing me thanks cabinet for having me in tonight and um yeah we get to talk about something that I'm actually very passionate about which is Title One funding and strategy and um so we'll get to Dive Right into that I'm used to teaching and presenting standing up so I'll try to contain myself in a seated mode as much as possible um Maybe not not ready yet that's zero worries all right now I can use my hands just gotta stay seated I can do I can do that I like I like it is this when I would do like a comedy routine I didn't have a dry juggle I do uh metaphorically juggle I don't literally juggle uh all right and I don't know is it just

106something I need to reshare or anything David why don't you verbally talk about the purpose and what our intentions are tonight in terms of what we want the community and our board to learn about as we're finding the presentation absolutely um so just jumping into it and we'll catch the slides up as we go uh so the purpose of tonight is simply to give an overview of what title funds are and the purpose of those funds in our current uh State and strategy within Title One and we're moving forward into building the Consolidated application for next year so we wanted to give you that background and and application ready to go perfect all right so what we'll learn tonight as we go into things is simply the what in the whys of title programs important

107background information current state what's happening for next year what the community has said in terms of feedback and what they're looking for in title support and the future support and strategy that we have in mind tonight and we'll have time for questions at the end all right so what what are title funds when you think about title funds uh these are the funds related to Federal programs and they're designed to create Equity through funding regulations compliance and they are built to build Equitable and inclusive practices um so thinking about this their funds and federal monies that are meant to be uh supplemental and not supplant existing state funds and so when you think about State funds and versus title funds so State funds often have to be distributed equally to keep the system moving and

108so every school needs a principal every school needs teachers these are things that are the state's responsibility to fund and so when you think of federal programs they are the equity funding of equal is not Equitable and so we need above and beyond support for certain programs and populations and so when you think of that when you think of title funds also we think of the Civil Rights Movement we think of building in the supports and that we need for the for the community as hole so that's that's what title funds are and why they exist are simply to improve student outcomes and experiences there's a lot of research around family engagement especially in schools that serve populations that serve high high percentages of free reduced lunch numbers we are building the how to overcome

109barriers to education in certain circumstances and we're simply helping students and staff thrive in schools that serve populations highly impacted by poverty that is the what's what we're working on right now and so some backgrounds to go into so again the purpose of title one specifically so that was kind of an overview of title programs in general and I did a presentation earlier this year around all the title programs tonight's kind of that zoomed in mode around title one so this is specifically title one is all around supporting students living in low-income situations and how we identify that is the percentage of students who qualify for free lunch we have free and reduced lunch we focus on the free side that's the more deeply impacted side of the free and reduce formula and we as

110we look into how do we move forward in our funding and application and strategy we know that we need to align to the district and school uips and we need to take into account the Strategic plan that the district has built and we have two forums of community input and one is through the CPAC which is our community planning and advisory committee that's something specific to Title One communities we bring CPAC together and we get their input we'll talk about their input later today along with every school has their Sac Community Committee so that's the school accountability committee and they give further input on the school specific side so we'll dive deep into those one thing one thing also to know important in the background is we have as a strategy for many many years

111due to increased due to the strong research behind it is we've invested our Title One funds into our Elementary programs so all of our Title One programs are in the elementary level so the family input we met in January and what CPAC did is we we gathered everybody's input of what's currently working well for them what they're appreciating about what they're receiving in title funds and what they would consider priorities and if there's anything that we're missing in our title programming and so we had a very uh robust turnout we we packed the Discovery Museum and we had an awesome event and we had we did it in English Spanish and Arabic so we had all sorts of input from our diverse community in the title 1 programs and what we what we learned is

112this they had the number one priority being Staffing they wanted the majority of the money going to uh increased number of Staff in the buildings that can help with their students that was then ranked in priority order of what they were wanting to see their first priority is they wanted to see mental health supports that they wanted then to see the small group support and intervention individualize attention that they thought their students were greatly benefiting from they really wanted to emphasize helping their students learn English as a second language they wanted that for both students and parents on the parent side we addressed that through title III not through title one but we still take their feedback and can address it through all of our title programs they really wanted bilingual staff in all of

113the schools to make sure that they felt welcome they could be heard they could interact the way the way they wanted to with the staff and make sure they could understand and engage in their their children's education the way they wanted to instructional coaches so that that they recognize teachings a demanding profession and it has a lot of skills to to build and grow and so they wanted the they really liked the idea of instructional coaches and building up those tier one practices um something that I had not heard before in meetings like this I've been doing CPAC meetings and things for the last 20 years the first time ever they asked specifically for sports coaches they really wanted they said our community doesn't have access to actual sporting uh events and and they get

114now they're realizing as their kids get to middle school and high school that they're not actually allowed to play sports if they're not good enough at Sports and they can't get good at sports if they never do Sports and so they're feeling very left out of the system and so they would love to see how and when we could incorporate earlier sporting opportunities and extracurricular opportunities to to have those same opportunities but they're recognizing the prices on those are increasing exponentially and they're ability and access to those are drastically decreasing as the time goes on so they really wanted that as part of it which they recognized as part of the after school programs they also needed The Wanted continued support through Alpha best and after school programming and care they they were very clear

115with us that we're working two to three jobs and we we can't be home as often as we'd love to and our kids are going unsupervised and so please if whatever help you could provide for after-school care would be amazing so those were their number one that was their number one bucket of priorities that they really wanted to talk about the second one came in as materials and parenting classes that was their second priority so they really wanted they're they're really enjoying parenting Partners which is a program that we offer through our title programs um we they love the ESL classes technology classes all of those things they're finding great benefit in and lastly but they said don't just because we're putting it last doesn't mean we don't like like we like all those things

116first and but don't think we don't love these things our last priority that we really want to continue is the events that we put on in our title programs and so those include the math and literacy nights they really appreciated that they like knowing how to they're like math is different than how we do math in our countries math is different than how we did it as kids we need help navigating this so they've really appreciated that they don't know how to support in the new literacy models in the new literacy adoptions and things so they're wanting that kind of supported continued and they said and while we love that no offense what we actually love even more are the celebrations in the community building and so they we have Dia de Nino we have

117cultural nights we have community building events that happen throughout the title programs and so those are things that they are wanting to to see continued so we had a we had a lovely conversation in time with all of our families during that their last their last priority that they also wanted they didn't think that this was um and it didn't fit on the side but the fourth priority is security and safety and they just said that because we don't they were clear actually we don't think that it's title funding's job to make our schools safe we think it's the district's job to make our schools safe so they wanted that clear and uh so the support and strategy so in there's some background history to this so I'll walk you through this so in 2019

118we had the rank order that you're seeing on the left hand side of the grid here and so in 2019 the pandemic hit and then free free lunches were available to all the state and feds decided that they would freeze our what they call rank order and data process for identifying Title 1 schools so what that means is that since 2019 we have been frozen in our data and so we kind of have had this snapshot in time and so we have the six schools that we've been supporting on the left several important things to know about this in title funding is we have two types of support one's called school-wide support school-wide Title One programs and we have targeted support school-wide support basically says once you've hit the at least the 40 40 free

119lunch threshold then we support the entire population or we can support the entire population within a school not just targeted populations within a school it allows a lot of flexibility it allows a lot of so something that you could Fund in a title one school from title funds in in terms of a title a school-wide program is we could actually use that money to Target gifted and talented programs we could do enrichment programs and it wouldn't matter who's receiving those supports that would be a possibility that we could have in a targeted support program that's schools under the 40 free lunch rate their their year you're more limited in terms of what you can do it needs to be specific academic interventions there's a cohort that is attached to that and we need to track

120that cohort's progress and not only that we need to ensure that whatever Staffing and supports that we build in are specifically for those students and those students alone so it builds a lot of extra data compliance and kind of restraints behind it so all schools up to the first five schools were school-wide programs this year and Harris bilingual was our targeted support school so knowing that's one important piece of information the other important piece of information is that there is a concept in title programs that is called rank order which means that whichever school has the highest percent of free lunch percentage receives the per pupil greatest amount of Title One funding and so we must keep in those rank orders per regulations and so Putnam Elementary re receives more per people funds than Irish

121Elementary who receives more than bowder and so we need to make sure that we're keeping within those rank orders so those being said this was the first year ever that we or not ever since 2019 feels like forever so since 2019 it's the first time that we've been unfrozen in our data and we need to turn into the state new new free lunch data so on the right hand side you have as you can imagine from 2019 there's been some demographic shifts within the community and so that being said um there's some stability and you'll recognize a lot of schools in the New Order and there's there's some differences here so whereas Linton was number five they moved up to number three they'll be receiving more support Harris has moved into the threshold that we

122can move them to a school-wide school-wide programming so we're excited to move Harris bilingual to school-wide programming Laurel went from fourth place rank order to fifth place rank order and you'll notice about her that was in third place rank order they actually went down to the eighth place in turn terms of free lunch numbers this year so that led to some cabinet discussions and discussions with Tracy geil and I and we took in a lot of input I've been in communication with bowder since uh way at the beginning of the year when I saw that the data was not looking like we would hit a threshold we did a blitz to try to get in the free reduced lunch applications make sure we really had the right data for them and as we looked throughout

123the year we can kind of monitor that data throughout the year they never moved past eighth place so in terms of strategy and funding we are moving powder off of Title One support and what that means is the district and cabinet and everybody in collaboration we are inflexing some extra State funding ft's so we and as you notice would know even if we could fund them they would be at eighth place so they would not be getting anywhere near what their used to as as being in third place so we inflexed in roughly approximately what they possibly could have gotten in an eighth place kind of scenario which we couldn't really afford in the title scenario um and we're inflexing three FTE units into bowder to support this transition time and as we see what

124might develop on the state side in terms of we have proposition FF that we don't know how it's going to affect their proxy if we're going to continue to use free lunch numbers if they're going to freeze us again next year or if they're going to come up with a new proxy we're still in kind of flex waiting to see what they come up with for that so that being said we have we did get our allocation which is always a variable we never quite know what our allocation is going to come back as this allocation came back stronger than before we were hoping they were going to take into account inflation and they did so that was great so it came back as about four million dollars for title one so that funding strategy

125is simply to move and inflex that support into five school-wide programs instead of six which had a targeted support which was at a lesser fund so really keep a robust support for those five schools that you saw in the last slide and that's going into again taking into account what CPAC wanted what the principles were advocating for kind of a general Federal program strategy and so that's generally going towards a staffer intensive academic and intervention support we have our family Liaisons and making evento Advocates that come from that we are taking the communities feedback on needing staff for mental health so we have counselors involved in this we have instructional coaches and of course our after-school programming and family engagement events and activities sorry my eyes are getting blurry so I'm going to turn my

126page instead of reading it off the screen um oh and up close isn't much better either all right we'll see if we can focus one way or another okay so thank you we're getting there we're getting there my arm is still long enough so we're we're in denial here okay so um uh and so each school also gets a budget for the parental engagement activities and again all tied into their uip which is their unified Improvement plan and again they will then take their individual family engagement accounts and they will use that towards what CPAC could ask for their individual schools to engage in that also being said 20 of the budget are allowed to be District managed activities versus allocated to individual sites and so we've always used those funds to do our amazing

127programs like Camp Seoul which benefits all title programs we do for the summer program when we do our 20 towards the after school programs which benefits all of our after-school opportunities it builds that background in enrichment and that's where we can build in the Sports coaches that they're really looking for in this so that that all being said that's kind of where the money is going to and uh and then in terms of just general strategy um and things to know about we're going to continue to engage with our cpec and make sure we're being responsive to the community needs and that engagement strategy that we know as a research-based best practice and we're looking to what we learned uh in terms of the the bouter experiences that as a and I can say 20

128years in a title School these are funds that you can become fairly dependent on it can become part of your system so entrenched that the thought of losing it can be fairly drastic and so we're looking and seeing how there's a lot of things up in the air that we don't 100 control like proposition FF and things like that so how can we look at this as that true temporary supplemental support to really lift up our tier one instruction to lift up the core and provide that intensive instructional support to improve student outcomes and then if and when we had to translate transition off of Title One support be able to handle that in in smooth have a smooth transition plan for that uh that also being said we have we're building stronger and stronger

129principle and District collaboration in terms of we have a cohort of principles that are working within similar paradigms that it's a great cohort For Thought Partners it's a great cohort for collaboration it's a great place to really engage in that and lean into that and so we're wanting to really build a robust program for that we're going to meet monthly next year we met monthly this year and so we're getting a lot of traction in that area and again where there's a lot of research like I said we invest in elementary for early intervention and the also new research on top of that is really investing and making robust your core Universal tier one instruction what we've learned from our research and from our own data and from research out there is you will never

130intervene your way out of academic issues and what you need is a strong core program so we're really going to invest in that and collaborate around that which will go very nicely with our curriculum adoption it's going along so we have nice plans to really align core adoption core instruction with our English language acquisition instruction with our intervention instruction all of that's going to speak very nicely to each other so that all being said um that is kind of where we are in Title One what questions do you guys have Nate yeah going back to the slide about uh the title schools in the current year in the title schools in the next year yes um was there a big drop off between five and six in terms of free lunch percentage that caused you

131to limit it to five or was it more stretching the funding wouldn't make any sense uh two factors so one one is uh it does stretch out the funding in a way that um perhaps doesn't make the interventions and and possibilities that we can do for the school's as robust um so that was one two was uh we would be investing in a in a couple brand new schools that are right on the cusp of then losing the funding the very next year um and so we were it's a little bit of an emotional roller coaster for both staff principals and the community to go on and off of title funds and so truthfully what we're what we're actually kind of monitoring for is um because we're literally within the three percentage points of of

132bauder being able to jump right back up into that sixth position and so since we have that like one year three FTE that we flexed in we're curious if bowder could come right back into title funds the very next year if they don't freeze us so that then we could put them back into Federal programs versus having to support state funds and then and then they would have more of a seamless transition versus funding to other schools up top that then dropped down so they get funds now you lose funds it's a bit of a gamble within the unknown variables of what's the allocation going to look like and how that's going to work so those were two of the considerations that we took into account when making that decision okay thanks and then I

133know the legislature is fought for a while about whether they're going to change the proxy um for for these students but now is the big uh variable the proposition FF which makes the proxy the current proxy really non feasible as a way to measure what we want to measure yeah it's a good question from what I've gathered from the state one thing to realize proposition FF is a state Proposition not all and and we're talking about federal funds so not every state is in the same boat as us so how the feds react to proposition FF who they may or may not take it into account at all now can the states take it into account they're looking and seeing what their proxies can be they're looking and seeing like could we freeze this year

134with this data and give us some time and space to look it out so so the trajectory over the year as I've interacted with CD was at the beginning like we're looking into new proxies we're looking into new proxies now the last couple times that I've spoken with them it's more along the right lines of we'll we'll either freeze or will continue with a free reduced Lynch and you will have to figure out how to incentivize and systematize that application Nation even though lunches are free and so they won't get that benefit but there's other benefits that come with that application and so they they suggest that we really think and look at that as a possibility so but long story short the state hasn't quite figured it out yet but isn't there a kind

135of an issue with that application in the challenges in getting families to complete the application now where in the past there was some system where we were more successful in having them complete that application or not necessarily that's a good question um Brandon you want to take that one I think your assumption that we will struggle uh to get the same level of applicants knowing that proposition FF is in place is fair I think we as a system need to use this as a proxy going into next year but be open to the other proxies that are available under the guise of the federal government I think there's like three other current proxies that are available to us I think one is concentration of poverty data or Census Data there's a couple other things I

136don't want to speak specifically about all of them but I do think that the reality is we should be exploring what the impact is of maintaining this as an existing proxy and moving forward and what are what are the possibilities what would it take to look at the others and is there a value added a benefit or a risk I think that's the work ahead of us in the next year go ahead DJ I had a couple questions about your slide 10 about your CPAC um first of all uh participation has that been well have you been able to find the people to give some good feedback on there yeah um his historically I think it's varied quite a bit we'll say that um but we yeah we had and I can look up the

137exact number but we had well over 60 families attend this year and which I heard um out out did a couple many of the past years so we were we were extremely happy like we actually would not have been able to fit more so we need to think of possibly a bigger venue for next year that's that's awesome to hear um my question was uh about two of the things that you enlisted on there um your extracurricular activities I was wondering did they talk about transportation in that same vein and if if so what did you hear or what what challenges did you sense from them on that that's a great question and I'm glad you brought it up because they did say exactly that that for the um especially for the after-school programs for

138kids uh they said Transportation was uh uh um a given that that would have to happen for anybody to be able to participate in a meaningful way and so we've been working and transportation has been great this year and as soon as they have a tiny bit of bandwidth they've been able to get us busing to more schools this year than ever since the pandemic started so we're we're slowly getting back to where we can offer the transportation in the way that we need to and so transportation is 100 they did say like and if you could figure it out for all these amazing family events that'd be incredible um and so we'll have to get creative of can we send some uh some of the small small Vans some of the Subarus some of

139the fleet that we have to pick up families that don't have access to to getting them and that that would be a good point in terms of even get getting getting folks to our CPAC meeting we know that that that is a barrier and so luckily our families are are very uh in creative and their Solutions so there was a lot of carpooling happening and a lot of other things but how can we help support that is going to be a continuing question on how how we move forward but yes transportation is always a need awesome thank you well it's great to hear that we've solve some of it yeah and do it the other one was the small groups I was wondering if you could just expand on what you heard about that or

140what was really beneficial for them on those yeah they they were saying um that sometimes and especially when they're students learning uh English or when uh they're just uh for whatever circumstances they're coming in and they didn't have as much access to the education that they would have hoped to they say in larger groups their student feels like they get lost sometimes and it's hard to get the attention that they need and who can answer their questions and so they feel very strongly that those moments of instead of being in a group of 25 kids that like one one to six ratio is incredibly helpful just to help them get their questions answered have a space where they feel like they can speak up that they're really not understanding what's going on that sort of

141thing they saw a lot of value in that so that's what they wanted to continue to advocate for thank you thank you other comments or questions all right thank you very much David appreciate your report and your dialogue with us it's great thank you the next the next last informational item for this evening is on student outcomes Brian if you'd like to introduce that that'll be great yes thank you here tonight to provide an update on our student outcomes based on late spring data it's our chief institutional Effectiveness officer Dr Dwayne Schmitz welcome Dwayne thank you hello board directors it's amazing to me that we're sitting here at what feels to me like the last meeting of the Year even though I know you have one more but I think I'm on vacation during that

142one yeah I won't be there don't rub it don't rub it in so I want to start off first of all by saying in all seriousness my colleague David amazing I every time I listen to that presentation I learn a little bit more about title funding and I think he brings a pot across the point so clear around the equity piece and that's what title one's about and providing support where we need support for the kids that need us most and I just love the presentation style and the information really awesome David okay so my my role tonight is we're going to talk about student outcomes and we have two sources of information let me just grab this we really have two sources of information we're going to focus on which is our acadians data

143which is our K5 reading assessment and then we also have our map NWA map assessment which really is it is grades two through 11 but the the end counts get smaller at the high school level so we're going to focus on the two through eight data sets I just want to point out I want you to look up front at these three bullets there as we go through these student outcomes you're going to see some patterns okay and I'm just going to call them out up front these are Big Celebrations by the way these represent our students work our teachers and the other staff's work the families that are working with our kids and the whole community and so tonight is a celebration because we have a lot of good news reading and math achievement

144increases are evident for all grade levels and um and across multiple assessment programs the achievement increases that we see are evident for subgroups not just overall we see ketchup growth being attained by many of our schools and that's a pretty rigorous Target I'm going to remind the board we set that Target at a 0.20 growth effect size if uh if we have anything positive anything then a zero greater than a zero that means our kids are accelerating or learning at a faster rate than their academic peers Nationwide but to get up to a 0.2 effect size is a pretty rigorous Target the reason we set the target there is because if a student gets 0.2 of growth effect size an individual student three years in a row that's a 0.6 standard deviation gain on their

145academic peers and generally speaking that's enough to move them up to the proficiency level that we're all looking for so that's why we set the target there at any rate we have quite a few schools that are hitting that Target big celebration we'll tie this into our Improvement efforts towards the end just to talk briefly about why we think this is occurring for us okay in the monitoring report the big report in about February we have six major Keystone metrics that we're really paying attention to right and we do we have a lot more measures and metrics and information there but there's six big ones tonight we're really focusing on the top three and that's just because what we have right now at this time of year that's fresh and new to talk about is

146that acadians in that Maps data which is really achievement and growth data we'll have graduation rate data but we'll wait for the official data from the state and not tip our hand ahead of time okay so I just want to remind the board members that on those three targets and metrics that we have on early literacy achievement growth and additional support on early literacy the graphs we're going to look at you're going to see a dotted line at 85 percent and that's because that's our achievement Target for early literacy that we have 85 percent or more of our students meeting what we call grade level Benchmark okay on achievement and growth we have on achievement let's just take it one at a time on achievement we have a Target you're going to see again a

147dotted line at a 0.25 achievement effect size when we look at that map data and that's be we set that because we we have seen in multiple years and achievement effect size of 0.25 to 0.33 like a quarter to a third of a standard deviation so if we're falling below that we're kind of slipping behind where we want to be so we set our Target there on the growth Target it's just that the growth of our students in PSD are exceeding the grow growth of their academic peers Nationwide so anything greater than zero meets that Target but when we drill in specifically to the kids that are good candidates for additional support or they're being supported with a read plan we up that growth Target to a 0.20 for the reasons I just talked about

148a moment ago because successive 0.20 and above you can equate that to catching up that's a good measure of a ketchup growth in a very real way okay let's start with early literacy and then we'll progress up so there is a that bright green line is showing you six years of the percentage of students that are meeting or exceeding The Benchmark measure in acadians grades K3 and you see that we have that downward trend pre-pandemic which is one of the reasons we made literacy a priority in our district we see that dip during the pandemic notice that the 1920 school year isn't showing up there because we didn't test kids in the spring of 1920s there's actually an additional year in embed it right between those six years as a seventh year there we don't

149have data for but then after the pandemic we see that steady increase and that's a celebration so our kids are bouncing back kids are reading at higher higher and higher percentages of kids are reading at grade level and we're making the progress we're looking at the little table on the bottom right that's kind of small from where I'm sitting with these glasses on shows the breakdown by grade level okay and the one pattern that jumps out there pretty clearly is that our first grade reading levels are consistently lower than the other three grade levels K through three and I'm told by the reading experts in our district that there's reasons for that based on the way the test what it's measuring jumps quite a bit in difficulty in the way it's measuring what it's measuring

150and I basically checked that just to see if there was a Statewide kind of a pattern that you know likewise followed that pattern and it is true so when I look at the percentage of students who are identified with read Plans by grade level it's true that both locally and Statewide the highest percentage and you can see a jump occurs right there in the first grade and that read plan designation is a direct implication of these assessment scores on acadians Statewide so so that is true it is a pattern but it is a pattern Statewide okay please I'll go back to this I just think too as a part of this as you know as we continue to focus as litter focus on literacy as a district priority there has been a treatment for lack

151of a better way of explaining it around professional development around the science of reading and structured literacy practices but we haven't yet implemented the high quality curriculum that needs to be aligned to state level expectations so I'm not saying that that is the sole proponent of where our data is it's definitely the Artistry of teaching it's the professional development it's the partnership with families but the instructional materials is another area that I'm really eager as we begin to implement in the year ahead it should have a positive effect across our entire K5 system but I would see exponentially hopefully that didn't make any sense my my hope is that it will have an exponential effect in the K2 space which will transcend literacy scores throughout the rest of the system so I just wanted to

152name that Brian thanks let's slow down on this slide a little bit this is a big celebration a district doesn't necessarily get this kind of outcome just because we're post pandemic okay I want to point out that and if you did look carefully at that table you'll see that there's been increases three three years in a row for each of those grade levels so everything is moving up and we'll see in just a second that's true with for subgroups as well as the overall data and like Brian just mentioned there's a lot of systematic effort that's been put into our our school district at this point in time and as the board knows there's more that's happening with this literacy adoption and implementation that we're rolling into next year but in fact we did land

153the plane on quite a few of the different pieces of the uip and so a lot of work has occurred so it's not just random them we we believe yeah okay let's move on but it is a big celebration we're real happy about this okay when I take that data and by the way I'm moving a little quick tonight as usual I'll get a quarter for every word I don't say uh my bank account's not growing too fast unfortunately based on that rule but hey um but seriously I'm trying to kind of keep it quick high level but point out some some important things that we need to look at and talk about and so one of them is just breaking down the results we just looked at across free reduce and not free reduced

154lunch groups and you can see that those patterns are very very similar and those gaps are very persistent like they are for many districts Nationwide so we haven't you know eliminated those gaps but I do want to point out you can see that the drops were pretty pretty deep for reduced and free lunch eligible students but if you look carefully at that you can also see that the slopes you know the angle of the line for those past those last three years is steeper for the kids that are eligible for reduced lunch and free lunch than for neither the black line so reduced is the yellow line Sorry free lunch is the red line and neither is the black line so just pointing out the slopes are a little steeper there so again that is

155a celebration what's not a celebration is that the gaps persist right we have work to do in front of us same data real quickly just broken out across ethnicities okay major ethnicity Federal ethnicity groupings in our district and in this I want to point out that the Blue Line represents Hispanic student outcomes the green line kind of dark green represents a Native American student outcomes it's a Native American students at the same time I'll point out that the the line for African-American or black students has decreased so that catches our attention and like Brian said there's things we have to double down on and that's one of the pieces that jumps out at us okay I'm Switching gears now on you what we were just looking at was acadians K3 reading data right and the

156metric was the percent of kids that are meeting benchmark we're going to switch gears to something the board is familiar with and some of the viewing public we're going to talk about map data and when we switch to Map data we're going to talk about achievement effect size Okay the reason that we I like to talk about achievement effect size we get a lot of traction on this throughout our district in a lot of places and I have this real quick reminder graph for us and I know the board saw this when I did the monitoring report in February if the blue normal curve that's in that diagram represents the outcomes of students Nationwide on this particular exam let's say reading Maps third grade the red normal curve represents the PSD student population outcome and

157it is shifted to the right relative to the blue curve right the distance had shifted in standard deviation units is the achievement effect size so this is a perfect measure of accelerating learning you know where how are our students performing relative to similar students Nationwide same grade level same test okay that's what I mean by similar in this case and how far that shifted is the effects I so anything that's positive above zero means the PSD outcome distribution is shifted in the positive direction or you could say they have accelerated learning or a higher level of achievement that they're demonstrating maybe is a better way to say that okay so this graph we're just going to look at a couple of these this is a reading achievement for second through eighth grade maps data when

158we're looking at this we're looking at based on historical Norms like historical groups of students these are pre-pandemic students which is great because it tells us how are our kids doing kind of wiping out the effect if you will of who we're comparing against of the pandemic it's like how are we really doing compared to kids that didn't experience the pandemic Nationwide and you can see that every one of those little dots in that little lineup there are in the positive Zone they're above zero okay and the Green Space within that picture we're looking at represents everything from zero like above zero to 2.5 an achievement effect size of 2.5 which is our growth Target I'm sorry our achievement Target and everything in the Blue zone is the 0.25 and above meaning it kind of

159hit our achievement Target right and you can see that pre-pandemic we in superintendent Kingsley mentioned earlier our district is very high achieving and it always has been and it still is so it was high achieving we do see that downward pre-pandemic slant we do see the kind of drop during the pandemic but we also see that rebound back up so in 2223 and this is all spring data we're looking at each spring we see that we're at a 0.28 which is well back up meeting our Target and getting a lot closer back up into that range we were pre-pandemic okay and then again that table to the right is just by grade level across three years you can kind of see how we're making gains and our achievements at a high level this picture I

160just switched over to same exact picture so I'll move through this a little quicker it's just showing us the math outcome instead of the literacy or reading outcome right notice this though the pandemic caused a bigger dip in the math outcomes than it did the reading outcomes that statement is true Nationwide Statewide and locally what's different though is if you look at the pre-pandemic picture it doesn't have that same consistent downward slant that we saw in the literacy data which is one of the reasons we saw this is a little bit different pattern with regard to when we set up our strategic plan and our priorities and we focused on literacy that's just one reason we went with literacy but I want to point something else out you can see that there's a very consistent

161and fairly steep recovery happening in math according to map data that we're looking at that's a steep line from 0.15 to 0.19 to 0.23 or bouncing back quick and you can see that's across all the grade levels okay we're not going to do another one of these breakdowns other than this one right now but I just wanted to real quickly point out that's just math math math achievement second through eighth grade if I break that out by free reduced status we see something very similar to what we saw before which is gaps still persist so there's work in front of us on just the fact that those gaps are persistent as they are in many districts but we do see that that upward slant on those most recent couple years is evident for kids that

162are eligible for reduced lunch and it's evident for kids that are eligible for free lunch it's not just some other component of the population okay so that's the point of that slide we're going to switch gears and talk about growth as opposed to achievement so growth in this case we're going to look at acadians data we're going to look at map data but I want to remind folks and again I like to pause on this and make sure we're really grounded because I think this is important growth is different than achievement achievement is a snapshot in time where your kids at achieving relative to others or or some standard but growth is how much did they change over time and that's really important for a lot of Educators because we we do public education right

163so kids come in where they're at we love them for who they are and we teach them and what we want to see is how much growth they get in that experience so that's what we're going to talk about now these two normal curves notice they're not situated next to each other because we're not talking about a national curve versus a PSD curve and how much the PSD curve slid to the right it's not what we're looking at what we're looking at is a pre-test curve on the top and a post-test curve on the bottom and the question is where did kid move where did kids move individually from that pre-distribution to that Post Distribution and the little black arrows that go straight up and down are indicating that those two individual students held their

164same normative relative position compared to their academic peers kids who start it at the same relative position and we're in the same grade level and take the same pre-test and they ended up in that same normative position in the post-test so that's pretty much a perfect definition of a Year's growth in a year's time so those two little black arrows I would argue notice one of them pre-achievement is kind of low on the low end of the scale to the left and the other one's pre-achievement the top graph is kind of to the right that's a high achieving student but in both cases they held their normative position they both dropped down to about the same space You Follow Me Okay years growth in a year's time that would be a growth effect size of

165zero not a bad thing holding your own but the green arrows are all sliding from the top to the bottom forward like positively right they're making gains on their academic peers again good definition definition of accelerated learning so if we took an average a bunch of green arrows it's going to be a positive number right the two red arrows I have up there are just to show you examples of two kids that lost ground one of them started with lower achievement one of them started with Higher Achievement they both are examples of losing ground relative to their academic peers if we averaged a bunch of those red arrows together we would get a negative growth effect size that is not a happy story I don't care if you're a high achiever or low achiever it's

166not a happy story when you're sliding back right all right thank you for indulging me just to make sure we're grounded because now what we do is we zip through and we look a lot at a lot of information very succinctly this is the fall to Spring second to eighth grade map Reading growth okay every time one of those little numbers is above zero that's a positive thing that's on balance or on average PSD kids gaining ground or moving forward relative to their academic peers Nationwide again if I was doing this work for some other districts our picture might not look like this you guys are getting so used to looking at pictures like this I sometimes think you wonder like would everyone's picture look like this and it doesn't but ours does to to

167also validate this whole method notice that in the growth you can see that pre-pandemic decline yes we're getting high levels of growth but we're getting less of that high level of growth right pre-pandemic there was a downward Trend there's a big drop during the covet pandemic that makes sense it did impact student growth but notice that there's a big rebound and we're back on and our kids are gaining ground compared to their academic peers grades two through eight and then again I have those grade level breakdowns on the right so you can see it by grade level and we see that we have stronger gains in those earlier grade levels and in sixth seventh and eighth we actually see right at zero or is slightly negative right so there are differences by grade level okay

168I'm going to move on same picture math data same thing with the growth in math we don't see that consistent pre-pandemic decline right we see some natural variability up and down but then we see a definite clear drop during that pandemic if we didn't see that you'd probably sit here and question are these methods really measuring what we think they're measuring because we know there was an impact on student growth during the pandemic and we also know it was a bigger impact for math than it was for language arts and reading but you also see the rebound backup in math so we're back in the green zone where our kids are making gains on their academic peers and when you look at the breakdown by grade level for math it's a much more consistent story

169right that again kind of validates our attention that we're giving to literacy in our district and I love what David said when he said we can't intervention our way to the outcomes that we want did you all catch that we have to approach this with universal level instruction and that Universal kind of approach and I feel like these graphs kind of support that view and the other data that supports that view is the number and percentage of kids that we have on read plans there's too many to say we're just going to run a bunch of intervention groups or a bunch of that is not going to work we have to focus and we are focusing on our Universal approach to literacy instruction in the district and it's going to yield big benefits okay last

170thing last piece of this and thanks for your time and attention we're going to talk about students and I know the board members know this this is more for the viewing public but pooter school district has a pretty unique and I think quality system for having a shared understanding of who the students are that are the best candidates for additional support all kinds of Educators talk about oh the kids in the Gap and the Gap in the Gap and they'll they'll Define that Gap with things like free and reduced lunch and different ethnicities and different kind of breakdowns like that and and so on and so forth right We additionally have an explicit empirical measure based on students history of scores on assessments on a body of evidence not on a single score in a

171single day that helps us identify specifically which kids are good candidates for additional support meaning they're traveling below the graph on the left is showing you and I'm I apologize it's kind of a faded graph it's from our visualization tool that doesn't show up good in a PowerPoint it shows up a little better in its actual power bi version at any rate what you're looking at is a single student's set of test outcomes over I don't know a bunch of years looks like almost 10 years across five different assessment programs right and all of those scores are traveling along below the 35th percentile that and by the way I literally clicked a filter that said this student does not have an IEP they're not supported with an IEP some people think any student who has

172a graph that looks like that is probably supported in some special ways that is not necessarily true which is why it's so important that our system has a system to identify and have a shared understanding of which kids we're talking about so we can better support them right and now it helps us because we're going to look at some data and learn something about this in just a second the graph on the right is the other end of the spectrum that's the student that we classify as having exceptional outcomes which means they're hitting that 95th percentile or higher on all those tests across all those years from all those assessment programs that's like that GT criteria right I'm not too concerned that that student's not showing up at school able to access the information right

173okay so now let's turn our Focus to the students that are good candidates for additional support and let's look at the outcomes for them in growth in this District okay first through fifth grade acadians the reason I'm doing not K through 3 like we did assessment data I want to explain this super quickly K3 the reason we show K3 and acadians assessment data is not all fourth and fifth graders take acadians data it's this very special group of students that then continue taking acadians data so when we're showing and we're trying to talk about our district overall results we're going we're looking at K3 achievement data for acadians okay but now we're talking growth and growth is how much a student changes over time and so every student can grow right so we widened out

174to the full spectrum of K5 but the only reason K is not showing up is because you need the scores from the kindergarten year to know if the student's a good candidate for additional support or not so I can't show the K data because that we're using it for the identification system you with me on that so that's why this one is first through fifth it's what we've got right and what's this story show it shows tremendous growth is what it shows these students remember and a growth effect size anything positive above zero means that student is gaining ground on their academic peers Nationwide if the student hits a point twos or above three years in a row that's what we would call catch-up growth so we have the 0.2 and the blue if you're

175a 0.2 or above that's blue and this is averaged across all the kids right so the PSD growth effect size is relatively consistently in that ketchup growth Zone there are some years where it's not quite hitting that Mark but it's real close and it is definitely high in the green more importantly I want to point out that list of schools on the right that's 18 schools that's 18 PSD schools that did hit that growth Target of 0.2 or above for the students that are good candidates for additional support is identified at their school that's a big celebration seven of those schools we're going to see likewise on the next list we look at and two of the schools in there are going to be on every single list we're about to look at and from

176study kind of perspective if you're looking for where are our successes that we could study a little more about why are we getting those successes there and then learn something that we can scale up this is how you would find those kind of success stories this is like exposing expertise we're using data to expose expertise then we could study that expertise and we could scale it up potentially okay I mean just one very quick question when you say data points on the side here that's the number of students correct thank you thank you sounds awful doesn't it data points wait a minute are those students that yeah let me explain the real quickly the reason it says data points and not students is because I'm pulling this off of the dashboard that we use and

177if a person is selected both acadians and map simultaneously it will show the data from both assessments simultaneously and so then it truly is more accurate say these are the number of data points because some students are being double counted you know what I mean but it sounds I had to explain that real quick because it sounds awful like oh this guy he's a statistician and kids are just data points now there's a reason it says so thank you Kristen for pointing that out okay next slide additional support same group but now we're talking about reading growth for second and eighth grade the prior one was acadians right so now we're on reading second through eighth grade um and by the way the reason we can do that is the even though second grade's the

178first time we give the map data we know which category if you will support category students are in based on the acadians data so we can launch right into this at any rate you can see that there's a lot of positive growth like it's in the green zone right so our kids are in fact gaining ground on their academic peers Nationwide but the the evidence isn't as strong it's not up there in the 0.2 overall for the district as often at the same time there's 14 PSD schools that did hit that 0.2 based on this measure in 2223 and I have to back up and say something I haven't said yet the acadians data we're looking at tonight is complete the window was closed it's the same acadians data pile you're going to see in

179the monitoring report in February right the map window is not closed it doesn't close until the 25th so this yeah the map the map assessment's still out there churning away but nine what's that yeah two more days but I just want to assure you that more than 90 percent of the students test data is in when I pulled this data which was on the Monday before I gave you all the rip this report or whatever I think that Tuesday or Wednesday so I grabbed it as recent as possible but yeah this is like the Lion's Share of our student data so the patterns we're seeing are reliable but numbers could change a little bit between now and the monitoring report anyways 14 Schools like I said seven of which are on both lists okay I'm

180going to move along the next one we're looking at is the same type of picture but math you can see that this the list of schools meeting that ketchup growth if you will is shorter but yet there are nine PSD schools attaining that level of growth for kids that are good candidates for additional support and we're just about done and this is not something I've done with you before but we're going to look at the students that are currently supported with read plans it's very similar kind of to the additional support concept just a little different criteria these students if they're supported the read plan have been designated to have a significant reading deficiency right and I won't go in the Weeds on the criteria but these are the outcomes so check that out different

181set of students different criteria but for our students that are being supportive to read plans based on NWA reading data grades I'm sorry this is acadiance data first through fifth we see those Positive Growth effect sizes and they have been in fact increasing over recent years and there's 15 schools that are hitting that ketchup growth mark last slide almost this is the same data of the reap students supported with a read plan but this is the map data second through eighth grade similar positive story 18 schools you might ask a question that I asked how many schools if any were on every one of those lists I just showed you there's two okay and I'm just going to call them up to Valley and CLP Elementary they were on every single list we just created

182you might wonder David was up here talking about students I mean I'm sorry schools that are supported with title one dollars there's multiple occurrences of schools that are supported with title one dollars in these lists we just looked at okay so good job on all that good Federal programs work because I think it does make a difference there's evidence okay this slide's just to wrap us up a little bit and remind us that we're just in a process we did the we did the monitoring report that was a big big report we're just going over some student outcome data that we have from this spring that's new for us it's fresh and basically that data says what I indicated up front we have strong evidence that our reading and math growth is strong and it's

183gotten uh greater higher better in the last couple years we see that that statement is true for students that are in various subgroups as well as just the overall student population and we do have evidence that we have students in schools and whole schools that are attaining ketchup growth for the students who need us most the kids that whether it's a read plan their support of the read plan where we identify them as good can ends for additional support we have schools that are attaining high levels of growth with those students so this is the bottom the Keystone metrics we're going over some of these very important core metrics of a school district and We're looping that back up into the Strategic plan information the board has a conversation coming up very soon on the

184Strategic plan as does the cabinet we're refining a few things we're rolling that out in the fall so we're just in a cycle and this is just part of that cycle I would say if you ask me in a nutshell you know what's the outcome of this I'd say we have evidence that we're on the right track we implement it you saw on the slide with the uip and all the steps and how many check marks we had we've been implementing stuff and it looks like there's evidence that things are moving in the right direction that's how we summarize this questions comments DJ okay I'm hoping I can word this correctly um and it might be because of all the graduations last week this weekend I just couldn't make it work in my head but

185when we look at the earlier slides uh that you did break down by um you had Hispanics that were really low on it and and it was still there was some improvement but I can't balance that then with seeing uh the Z gains in the later slides so and I know it's not all the exact State students but there's a good portion that would flow in those so I'm trying how do how do you rationalize that okay well first of all remind you like if we looked at and I can click back if we want to but on the um the academic gains just achievement gains for both Hispanics and Native American students were quite steep yeah that totally aligns with big gains the growth data that you see later and you're right about it's

186it's not the same groups exactly but you're right that there's probably a disproportionate number of students there's a generalization but it is likely that there's a disproportionate number of students in our students that are good candidates for additional support that are either on free lunch or reduced lunch maybe Hispanic maybe you know some of these subgroups so I get where you're going with that and yet it's not a perfect matching but no I would say those two pictures are not out of sync at all because we saw big gains there's gains everywhere like all of PSD students we saw achievement going up right post pandemic and those gains were even steeper for kids eligible for reduced lunch or free lunch and they were even steeper for students that are Hispanic or Native American and that

187kind of jives with high gains growth within a semester or a school year so the steepness of the slope to go along with that aspect okay but I do want to be clear about this the fact that those gaps exist right this is great you know we've got we've got some evidence of good academic gains and achievement moving in the right direction and we have a lot further to go and that's why I was tipping my hat to the way David phrased that like we the only way we're going to get there is great Universal level instruction and inclusive environments in psychological safety while learning all these things you know kids getting to participate in activities we have work to do so and we're not looking past that those gaps exist and they're evident and

188they're persistent and then the second one I had was the um I think it's I think it was Slide 15. the the sixth grade reading numbers and and those were the bigger negatives in there and and it's fairly been common since even before I was on the board I remember seeing that and we've talked about transitions a lot is there an is there a value anywhere that you know of of to take off the transitions to see if those are if they are getting any kind of growth on it I guess is kind of what I'm saying or if there's like we still have a challenge though okay I'm not positive but I think I might have okay and DJ if I did understand you something we had a unique opportunity to see in pooter

189School District this is just cool to hear this maybe once at least we transition from our Junior High system to our Middle School System I think we were probably the last District in the state to do that right John passantino at the time do you remember this was with me he was the he and I were partnering on a lot of this work and we saw a pattern that was so amazing and clear where you saw when the rest of the state transitioned to sixth grade and we didn't we saw a big boost for that sixth grade level and then when he Tran yeah our sixth grade had a big boost back then every year and then do you remember this Rob and then when we went into seventh grade we were transitioning but nobody

190else in the state was and we saw a big drop in our seventh grade numbers and then we saw the exact same thing in that eighth to ninth grade transition we were out of sync in two places and guess what those patterns were exactly the same year after year and then when we transitioned to Middle Schools it wiped that pattern out and I'm not sure if I followed your question but if you were going to isolate what's the impact of a transition year that's the data set we had and we're kind of unique in the state to have that to actually isolate what is that impact of transition it's real it's a negative impact transition years are not friendly with regard to achievement outcomes and probably because there's never been like a national study that

191you know of just that off the top of my head I mean I'm sure there has been but I can't say and that's why I wondered if yeah so then that bump that you saw you know when we look at it we can calculate oh you know that we could bring it down or from back then we could get an estimate but it's real but the thing is all kids are transitioning right like there's no way around it we're going to transition between schools the question is how can we minimize any negative impacts of transition which no doubt have a whole lot to do with schedules and lockers and new friends and all kinds of social stuff going on um so yes what can we do and that's we are aware of that like we

192do work on that right various things and I just real quickly and you know we're getting late and I should probably shouldn't say this but I'm going to my um my my I'm a rocky I'm a rocky parent right um band for my older boy they were doing transitioning program in the summer for all the band kids my youngest kid now is a basketball kid coming up they're doing incredible transitioning stuff into Rocky for that basketball group now I'm just throwing those out as two examples I'm aware of but all of our schools are doing different things like that to kind of reach down and build Bridges between but you're right DJ like to the extent that we can do our best work there we would get some academic gains out of that okay sorry

193for all the personal story piece and the last thing is I just I I wanted to shout out about her in Irish because they had the most data points uh and with big numbers yeah I just find that amazing and awesome absolutely yeah thank you other comments from Nate yeah I wanted to go back to slide number four and just highlight those uh targets and I personally think that early literacy achievement and growth and additional support and read plan progress are the keys to the other three and they're all important but I think if we are successful in the first three we're more likely to be successful in the second three so um then the second three are mental health and belonging credit accumulation and CCR demonstration is that credit report career Readiness college career

194Readiness and it's not Clinton's clear water revival yeah and graduation completion so I just wanted to highlight that because I think that's important for us to keep in mind thanks and thanks for all your work you're welcome other comments are on the board I'll just quickly say um thank you so much for putting it into um readable documents for all of us to understand and a huge shout out to the teachers that are making the teachers Paris staff members that are making this happen that it's this is not happening on its own this is happening because the staff is making that happen families are working with their kiddos and everybody's working together to make it make it happen we're not there yet there's no there's actually no there to but we can aspire to keep

195going in that same direction so thank you you're welcome all right I have two questions um one of them is probably more for Brian than it is for you Dwayne but anybody can answer it and that is Dwayne you had mentioned use the whole deal about using data to identify Excellence I think was the phrase you used right so the question I have is how are we doing that how are we I mean I see how we can do it from the data good we identify this as excellence in these schools whatever how are we then transitioning that or or using that in other places to bring them to that level of Excellence I think it's a great question I mean data informed leadership requires us not just to celebrate where our outliers are but

196to learn from them and what I've been really proud of the work that our two assistant superintendents in partnership with their peers with our principals is our principal and our shared leadership meetings have been an exercise in elevating who those people are and how allowing them to tell their story we've done school learning walks to identify best practice we've used our connections data and our SEL data to identify schools that are outliers and building connections and trusted adults to kind of learn from those particular practices and so our routines are on continuous Improvement and making enhancements in our uip have to continue to be a part of a learning strategy that is implemented in real time so the slide that's kind of like the inverted holiday tree at the back of the slot deck is

197really really important because everything kind of Cascades from what we're saying is most important in the system and ensuring that our process is around measuring and looking at adult practices I mean that is our theory of action if we improve adult practices student outcomes will will improve and we're seeing that play out which builds enthusiasm builds Collective buy-in it builds morale but also continues to allow us to evolve around how we're learning from each other and so we have space to go deeper in those particular areas and extend that to teachers and we've heard even in negotiations this year that they're you know as principles were participating in walkthroughs you know we even tweak teacher evaluation processes to allow teachers to evaluate others and learn from others so I think there's there's some system that's

198being built in that particular area that I'm incredibly proud of of the team and I would share too that I don't know how many people at this hour are watching this but I think it's really really important that we continue to share this narrative you know we heard earlier tonight that there are some assumptions that we are focusing on Mental Health to a fault where we're actually taking our eyes off the wheel and the dashboard around academics and what makes this District incredibly strong is we're proving you can do both and you must do both you must focus on belonging to accelerate learning and if you're going to accelerate learning you have to figure out how to focus on the other thing too so they they are they were reciprocal and intertwined and there's huge

199intersectionality that people if they feel seen and they feel valued they can't achieve at high levels and we should not lower our expectations for anybody what I love about our system is all people are welcome here everyone is welcome everyone belongs and we're not going to allow somebody to belong at the expense of another and ours taking that stance is proven to show that that is how you improve student achievement at exponential rates and that's not because of the superintendent it's because of people in this system buying into something bigger than themselves and working their tail off I'm so proud of all the various employee groups there's not one employee group that isn't supporting these particular data points and so I'm just incredibly proud of these particular efforts and to show that we're out performing

200our peers across the state outperforming our peers Across the Nation that is the message that needs to be on the front page of the paper that is the message that we should be seeing on social media every time that we're challenged by our approaches in other spaces this is why we're doing it for people to be seen so they can achieve and prosper and reach their potential and there's just so much joy at the center of this that makes these efforts worthwhile so I appreciate the question okay well after that I hate to ask another question but um but you all know me and I'm gonna uh Dwayne this one's gonna be for you I think I you know you talked about uh our additional support groups and how we're gaining uh relative to our

201uh or our how the kids are getting relative to their National peers based on all the efforts that like Glenn was taught like Brian was talking about so one one question that just occurred to me is okay so that's compared to the National scene right is it a similar answer to how we compare with the state scene that's sort of uh thought X I mean you can do the analysis but it just occurs to me as a transitional thing to this other question which is particularly to the extent that we're using tier one instruction to drive some of these results is there a way to compare how our kids on additional support are gaining compared to other kids in our system who are receiving the same uh tier one instruction now I know the challenge

202here is that the whole definition of this thing is you've got a whole line of results that that Define what an academic peer is right so if you're going to do some comparison against people who don't have that same line of results how do you how do you normalize that or take care of that I don't know the answer to that and I don't really necessarily expect to have an answer here tonight although if that's fine but it just strikes me that if that that particularly if we're looking to how are we going to get catch these kids up uh to their peers who have been doing fine or doing exceptionally right it'd be interesting to understand what kind of progress they're making relative to those ones who are in the system with them I

203don't know so maybe a good way for us to frame that to dig into that one is which of the students who are in that blue Zone that are hitting that point to growth how many of those students are hitting it two out of two years how many are hitting it three out of three years because some kids are hitting it one out of three years and then they're bouncing back down to some lower growth thing that's why it would explain they're not actually catching up over three years because it requires you're consistently hitting and if we studied the kids who were consistently hitting three out of three years versus kind of in alignment with your idea those who didn't hit it three out of three we might learn something like what are those factors

204and I did use the phrase you know using data to expose expertise expose expertise because that is what you're doing you're looking at like where did it actually work and we can we can go a lot deeper like Brian said I think we're just getting going I'm looking forward to the best five years of my career in this District over the next five years because all the right pieces are in place basically for us to learn a lot all right well we can talk more about those ideas offline giving us 9 30. I appreciate uh very much the work as you know that you do thanks for help us to move the district forward in combination with your peers so thanks thanks so much it's an honor I appreciate it thank you all right we're

205going to move on to our last sort of uh Mega item and that's an executive session would somebody like to read emotion with respect to this executive oh Nate would like to do that go ahead okay executive session 10.0 I move that the board enter executive session for the following purposes number one to receive specific legal advice regarding contract renewal process as authorized by CRS 24-6-402 for B comma number two to determine positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations developing strategy for negotiations and instructing negotiators relating to a possible intergovernmental agreement relating to the Southeast Community Recreation Center as authorized by CRS 24-6-4024e comma and number three to develop the strategy of the school district for negotiations relating to the 2023-2024 collective bargaining agreement or employment contracts as authorized by CR RS

20624-6-402 for E3 individuals invited to join the board and executive session are superintendent Ryan Kingsley Chief officers Jeff Connell Lauren Hooten Dave Montoya Madeleine noblet and Eric Von Savage and general counsel Autumn Aspen and since Dwayne's going to be on vacation at the next meeting he's welcome to join us too that last part is not part of the motion can I can I get can a friendly Amendment there can I can I get a second to the to the yeah good DJ thanks very much uh Jill if you will have a vote on this please I'd appreciate it DJ Anderson aye Jim brokish hi Nate Donovan all right Kristen Draper aye Rob Peterson aye Carolyn Reed aye Jessica Zamora aye motion passes 7-0 all right thanks Jill and Kristen would like to make a statement

207at this point uh yeah just as uh to not have the appearance even the appearance of a conflict of interest I'm going to remove myself from executive session number two um and relating to um the Southeast Community Recreation Center okay thanks thanks for sharing that appreciate it uh now what okay so this is the last uh item that we're having in public on television here uh the only thing that's going to happen after the executive session is I'm going to come out and bang this gavel and adjourn the meeting as a whole uh so we thank you very much for joining us the next board meeting if I'm not mistaken is June 13th which I think is three weeks from now is it is it yeah uh so anyway look look on the website you

208can double check my my math but in any case we'll look forward to seeing you thank you Jill Jill uh reminds me that's right so we'll look forward to seeing you on June 13th then thank you oh and we will convene the superintendent's office at 20 minutes to 10. so you got seven minutes to do whatever you need to do