Board of Education Meeting: March 22, 2022

001hello um what happened last time um shut down do okay says uh security security browser controls okay he just wants to share specific documents guaranteed all right thank you yes all right uh thank you everybody for joining us for the board of education meeting this evening uh please mute your cell phones i'll make sure reminds me dude um today is tuesday march 22nd and this meeting is now called to order at 6 31 pm yep there we go um first order of business is approval of the agenda and so would any board members like to make changes to the agenda oh i will also as you're contemplating that thought i just for the benefit of folks in the audience and watching us on television if you will uh one of our members jim brokesh is

002attending uh remotely and is on the team's meeting i think it is so just fyi so having said that does anybody want to make changes to the agenda it looks like not so we'll move on to our next agenda item which is our first action item which is an action item around in international transgender day of visibility recognition for this year i believe uh first of all let me start by seeing if i can get a motion uh uh for the resolution in support of that in support of that resolution sorry we'll redundant go ahead i recommend that the board proclaim by adoption of this resolution march 31st 2022 as international transgender day visibility in pooter school district excellent thank you can i get a second for that motion jess has given us a second

003uh so let's start by having uh someone read the resolution for the for the benefit of everybody in the audience and then i believe uh marlena is going to speak to that for us so you're going to read it kristen yeah i think okay go ahead all right international transgender day of visibility resolution 2022 whereas international transgender day visibility which takes place annually on march 31st was created in 2009 to celebrate the achievements contributions and accomplishments of transgender gender fluid non-binary and gender non-conforming people and whereas pooter school district is committed to providing a safe and welcoming learning environment where all students employees and community members are supported regardless of their gender identity and whereas the board wholeheartedly embraces pooter school districts transgender gender fluid non-binary and gender non-conforming students employees and community members for

004the diversity they bring to our schools and workplaces and strives to ensure that they are seen accepted and celebrated for who they truly are and whereas while the pooter school board administration and staff have committed to make pooter's school district a welcoming community for all students and staff we recognize there is more work ahead of us now therefore it be resolved the board of education does hereby proclaim march 31st 2022 as international transgender day of visibility in pruder school district and encourages students and staff to celebrate those who share the power of living their truth and encourage our community to continue the efforts of moving towards equality and fairness for all transgender gender fluid non-binary and gender non-conforming students staff friends neighbors and community members thank you kristen really appreciate that so marlena i believe

005you're going to help share some thoughts on this yes thank you thank you superintendent kingsley and the pooter board of education for recognizing march 31st as the international transgender day of visibility we are happy to celebrate our community and amplify the identities of our students and staff that identify as transgender and psd we want our students and staff that are part of the lgbtqia plus community and specifically our students and staff that identify as transgender gender fluid non-binary and gender non-conforming to know that we see them that we support them and we celebrate them as an important part of the psd community we are excited to continue to develop our services and our resources in support of our lgbtqia plus students families and staff here in pooter school district thank you thank you so much

006really appreciate really appreciate those remarks and and want to amplify the level of support we have from the board also for our students and staff um so would anybody else like to make comments or have any questions that they want to raise you want to say anything else you know i'll just take a moment to thank the board and the staff to recognize this day it's truly important to all students and staff and community to be recognized to be living their truth and so it's a powerful powerful statement that we're making and for all of those of you who are still unsure of whether to live your truth it's extremely powerful it is hard there's no doubt and it we are here to support you and i can speak to being a parent and it's

007a tough road but it is worth every step of the way and so you know we are here for you thank you yeah very very very well said kristen thank you so much for sharing that so articulately on behalf of the board um carol i'm sorry carolyn do you want to add something sure go ahead so um i i really do think it's important that our students feel seen and heard from the lgbtq and i i plus community a neighbor's child shared with me he's a grown man now but he had shared with me when he was in high school here that there were several times that he contemplated suicide because he didn't feel heard or seen or accepted you know he's uh since come to grips with with that after but after he got

008out of school so i don't think we can understate how important it is that students know that they're supported here that they're accepted and that they're loved because there are all kinds of students out there who who don't feel seen or heard and feel alone and so i hope that this resolution helps them to know that they're heard and like you said marlena that they're they're they're seen so thanks for the comments well but i really appreciate it so much that that you all have particularly so articulately shared they share these values and and the importance of them carolyn that's any other thoughts jim did you want to add anything nothing to add okay that's great well then lexi if you would call a vote on this i'd really appreciate it thank you dj anderson

009aye jim brokers nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passed 7-0 thank you so much lexi really appreciate it and with that we will move on to our next agenda item which is the superintendent the superintendent report uh superintendent kingsley will now make remarks to the board of education and to the community thank you all yours thank you members of the board members of the community good evening it's great to be with you uh for those of you that have been off uh collectively enjoying spring break i hope everybody was able to enjoy a bit of respite it was able to recharge and i'm just want to celebrate everybody returning back into our buildings for a time of learning again um and hopefully feeling energized about

010finishing this school year strong i also you know want to provide just a brief statement or two regarding the resolution that was just read it was just about a year ago when i had first met you all as a board many of you the most majority of you and through the process of engaging with you and engaging with this community on the heels of the when we were celebrating as a community that resolution knowing that this community values all people their identities and is doing everything they possibly can to learn to be reflective to identify to understand people's truths and disrupt processes and systems that are not honoring and affirming people's truths made it a joy and invigorated me to want to be a part of this community and to now be able to be

011sitting here uh in celebrating uh international transgender day of visibility it's just an honor to be a part of this community in celebrating people across all differences so thank you again for for having me here there's tons to celebrate even though we just got back i had an opportunity both just before spring break as well as earlier this morning with our assistant superintendents to be able to celebrate in two of our school community centennial high school as well as this morning fort collins high school to celebrate new principals both kyle stack and centennial and penny steyers this morning really enthusiastic about one the process that staff had worked with in partnership with members of those communities those faculties but also a rigorous process here at the central office to make sure that we select the

012right candidate for all of our various vacancies across the system having an opportunity to celebrate those announcements across those schools was quite a joy over the last couple weeks and i look forward to filling other and working with staff and filling additional vacancies in the weeks ahead tonight is a special night in terms of the presentations we're providing the board in the community we know that we've continued to provi provide a prioritization around literacy especially for our youngest learners tonight we'll be diving deeply into one of our district's top priorities in that space in two different lenses one how we could amplify our approach to literacy through offering all students not just some the opportunities to participate in high dosage tutoring which is a proven model to accelerate learning knowing that the situation regarding the

013pandemic has amplified spaces across the community for many of our children where they have unfinished instruction and unfinished learning and so as we continue to prioritize the acceleration of that learning we know that there's efforts we can do in the k-12 space but we also know that we can do that by reaching our children earlier and i'm really excited that we have an opportunity to do a deep dive around our approach to early childhood education there's lots of communication and conversation around what this looks like at the national level the state level but getting a better sense of the way things are playing out today there's a lot to be proud of and i'm really looking forward to that presentation later this evening i also want to continue to advocate for members of our community

014whether it's through our board of education meetings or the various community engagement sessions that we're now starting to launch in partnership with the board of education to continue to get plugged in and show up the more we can lean in and have a two-way dialogue around things that matter to members of our community the stronger we can become as a district and the more we have an opportunity to unify as a community and i was really grateful both with board member patterson and board member draper last two weeks ago it was last week it was one week ago at bamford with many of our staff members i just was really encouraged by how that went uh and the feedback that we had got i think was really wonderful and i look forward to spending that

015time with other board members across other aspects of our community in the weeks ahead um this is a busy week both during the day and in the evenings uh both i think it's later on this week it'll be my first super art uh festivities to be able to be a participant in having an opportunity to see this beautiful artwork across this building to celebrate our students in a way that where they show their brilliance in different ways of how they express themselves is something that's going to be really fabulous i've been really impressed by our our curriculum coordinator kimberly lovett noel who i had an opportunity to meet earlier this year around the planning of this event and she her energy was just easy to vibe off of that and knowing that when we have

016students and families to come celebrate that i'm really excited about being able to close out the week with those special events which i believe are planned both for tomorrow evening and thursday depending upon the schools that are participating in lastly what i will share with you as we continue to engage with each other thoughtfully and we're continuing to find ourselves in a different space where coven may not be the thing that we're talking about most i believe we're back in a space where we can begin to think thoughtfully as a community both internally and externally around the thoughtful development of a psd strategic plan and so i'm really hopeful that we can continue to partner with each other and partner with members of our community as we've outlined our priorities but what's most important is

017we come together on the strategies and we engage internal stakeholders at the principal level the teacher level the classified staff level as well as our parents and students in the process to help identify ways that we're going to make this go and i look forward to being able to accelerate some of those engagement sessions this spring going into next fall and so i will have a more detailed update for the board of education in the weeks ahead around that but i think we're in a space i don't like the word pivot but i think we're in a space where we're able to accelerate some of the plans that we had earlier in the year being able to take advantage of the space we are in now and not go faster but do it with intention

018to be able to partner with people to make sure that we're building plans together in service of making this district which is already a strong district even a greater district so i look forward to providing you future updates on that and i want to thank you again for always giving me the space to address the community in these forums so thank you it's our pleasure thanks very much and i know we all look forward to hearing more about the strategic plan and more generally to being able to increase our focus on teaching and learning and hopefully have a lot of the covid issues take a lot less time with our staff so thanks very much so we'll move on to our uh community comment tonight we have two people signed up for community comment again

019i would ask uh you to remember some of the norms that we've discussed at previous meetings i'm not going to redirect reiterate them tonight but basically uh they are around uh respectful listening uh and so i'll just say this 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 have signed up each speaker will be allowed three minutes this evening to address the board our first speaker is jeff after heidi i don't see him in the room but i'm not sure if he's in the hall i'm going to assume the answer is not nope okay so we have one speaker tonight and that's uh fred kirsch if i pronounce that correctly please okay

020kirsch uh thank you very much for joining us welcome thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is fred kirsch and i'm the director of community for sustainable energy we're a non-profit citizens group based here in fort collins and what we do is raise public awareness of local energy issues and organize support for sustainable energy policies and practices and i'm here tonight on behalf of the roughly 25 000 contributing members that we have in the pewter school district territory and we are our request of the district is to conduct a feasibility or commission a feasibility study to determine best practices for solar installations at pooter school district facilities now we define best practices as projects that not only reduce pollution and are good for the environment but these projects also need to save

021the school's money we're not interested in costing the schools any money and they also need to provide a learning opportunity for students to learn more about the solar industry to learn about what kind of jobs are available prepare students for jobs in the industry directly out of high school and then also jobs that maybe require more education getting into things like advanced chemistry design and development of the solar projects themselves so we're asking for a feasibility study so that we can determine what projects currently can fit in to that scope as well as establish qualifications for future projects projects that are maybe in the case of say a canopy covering a parking lot solar canopy covering parking lot that's something that may be great for the environment it is going to keep cars cool give

022students a learning opportunity but especially with the cost of steel right now that's something that might not save the school's money but a feasibility study could establish could establish price points that solar companies could target for future projects down the road um this feasibility study would also prepare pedro's school district for funding opportunities grant opportunities as they arise down the road instead of instead of looking to catch up to a proposed funding opportunity you know the plan would be in place so tonight i just wanted to introduce myself and our request thankfully face to face and i wanted to present some petitions and letters that we've been collecting so if you don't know what we do is knock on doors throughout colorado but we focus here in northern colorado and talk to people about these

023issues and organize their support as i said so we do that through signatures collecting signatures i have about 780 signatures here just from the past few months and a sample of letters i know you all have seen some of the letters that we've been mailing in a sample of letters from parents teachers students wonderful pictures from from kids so yeah these are letters petitions pictures from folks asking psd to adopt a feasibility study for best practices for solar your time has expired so i need to ask you to stop i thought i had so much time thank you okay thank you thank you all right that concludes community comment this evening the next item on our agenda by the way thank you the next item on our agenda is uh board committee reports or other

024board commentary does anybody uh here in the room have anything you want to report on kristin go ahead yeah so we had um the pleasure of meeting with some community members last tuesday and it was a it was great the ability to have that dialogue which i know so many of us feel is missing with the community comment was just incredible and i encourage you keep an eye on facebook keep an eye on i think it's going to be on our psd website as well keep an eye out for the next engagement sessions they'll be held the tuesday's opposite of our meetings so just feel free to to join us there and come have some some great chats with us it's it was quite fun so thank you great thanks for that any other comments

025in the from board members in the room nope jim did you want to add anything nope looks like not thank you rob okay all right so that's board committee reports our next item on our agenda is the consent agenda do we have emotion well first of all does anybody want to pull anything from the consent agenda looks like not in that case do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda nate yes i move that the board approve and adopt the recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda you have a second looks like kristen's got a second lexi if you would call a vote on the consent agenda i'd appreciate it dj anderson aye jim brokish hi nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob pederson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye

026motion pass 7-0 excellent thank you very much lexi so now we're on to the second half of our action items which in this case is a monitoring and policy review item executive limitation 2.8 around communication and support to the board may i get a motion on that internal monitoring report nate go ahead yes i move that the board determined that the superintendent has reasonably interpreted board of education policy el 2.8 in the internal monitoring report dated march 22 2022 and that the evidence presented supports the superintendent's conclusions stated in the internal monitoring report do i have a second on that chess has got her second fingers up fastest so we'll go with jess would anybody like to discuss the report or the policy nate go ahead i just encourage the superintendent to maintain effective communication

027with the board and support to the board anybody else want to make any comments go ahead carolyn i'd like to say that the communication coming from brian and his staff this past year has been excellent it's been very much appreciated so i wanted to let you know that when i was reading this today i could think of like dozens of different instances where you and the staff have done an outstanding job of making sure that we're all kept up to date on what's going on and that um we're always the first ones to hear about something that that that needs to be heard so i i appreciate that thank you both it's a team effort i'm really grateful to be surrounded by a strong team so thank you other comments jim you went off mutes

028does that mean you want to say something i just seconded carol carolyn awesome communication from brian yeah there's no question about that thank you uh brian you've been uh it's been really excellent and i we look forward to continuing our teamwork partnership so having said all that um lexi if you would call a vote on this action item dj anderson aye jim brokish aye nate donovan aye christian draper aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora hi motion pass seven zero thank you so much lexi really appreciate it so now we're on to the work session topics that uh superint uh superintendent kingsley foreshadowed i guess is the word earlier in the meeting so the first one is on our early childhood update take it away thank you here this evening to provide the

029board and our community an update on everything early childhood education in psd is our director of ece miss rebecca benedict rebecca thank you so much for being here okay thank you for your technical assistance i'm so happy to be here tonight thank you for having me i'm here to provide us an update uh on early childhood so i'm very excited to share with you just the general cuteness that is early childhood as well as the amazing things that are happening i have two purposes tonight the first is to just give you an overview of what's currently happening in the early childhood education program and then the second is to provide an update of what we know as of right now about universal pre-k that is set to begin fall of 2023 so it's coming soon

030and we have some updates for you so we'll start with our program overview and our mission in early childhood is to empower our communities eligible families and children to build a foundation for learning as measured by their readiness for kindergarten and beyond so we have lots of different ways that we try to accomplish this but it really is focusing on the students and the families and building those relationships early on and continuing them through and get them ready to transition into our kindergarten programs so the first section i want to talk to you about is our prenatal services so this is a family that would qualify for head start or early head start funding generally we slate three prenatal families per year and as the families have education nutrition advice health advice through the prenatal

031stages of their pregnancies when the baby is born the child transitions into our early head start program and they would continue either in a center-based program or with our home visiting program so we always bring our prenatal families through to our zero to 36 month program has two different avenues our first avenue is our center-based avenue this is our most requested avenue we provide these services with a community partner the family center and they're amazing they've been our partner for years they offer 16 slots and it is the easiest way to describe it is center-based care so early care and education is a daycare setting they have four classrooms for those 16 students and a wait list of about 49 on that one right now we also have 92 home visiting program slots and those

032home visiting program slots are 90 minute home visits per week year round so they have a two-week break but the rest of the year they have a family mentor that visits the family the family and the home visitor or family mentor create the curriculum together through through growing great kids curriculum and they determine topics and pathways together to learn and it's just a really neat program to help a family grow their skills as as parents and watch the kids develop then we transition into our pre-k program these are most visible in our schools we have 1100 slots overall in psd classrooms we have full and part-time care so we have 13 classrooms that offer full-day services which is more like a school day it's not a traditional daycare full day that would have before and

033after care as well it's your traditional school day and then our part-time classes are either 2.75 hour classes or 3.5 hour classes and we also offer three center-based autism classes as well in addition to being in the 22 psd schools with a total of 37 classrooms we have seven community sites those are alpha best at the three mountain schools the family center with a pre-k classroom as well as our early head start classrooms csu teaching tree and bright horizons west so our most popular for families is the full day it's the most requested and most sought after slot in the program every one of our full day slots is full always um so that's very exciting i love that so let's get a little bit deeper into early head start this is our 108 slots

034and of those 108 slots the 92 are home visiting slots so we have 18 home visitors some of them are early head start some of them are head start so just to give you an idea of their work in the last semester they conducted 907 home visits both virtually and in person but the majority of those are in person a huge huge celebration for our early head start team is that we've already supported 16 prenatal families this year so we slate three our goal is to serve three and we've served 16 this year so yay early head start mentors they've really engaged families we've also had of the 907 home visits we learn a lot about families and what they need and what kinds of things they're hopeful for and working towards and we do

035make a lot of community referrals as part of the home visiting program so in the last semester we had 1207 community referrals so i can give you some trends or some categories that they're coming in we have referrals in the education category so we have parenting classes that are offered in english in spanish we also have adult education classes nutrition classes and english as a second language classes we have lots of referrals for that as well so that's the education category we also have many community referrals for families that qualify as mckinney-vento so that would be housing homeward alliance they would be able to connect these families with resources within the community in addition we have quite a few mental health referrals so we hook families into networks of mental health providers within the community

036including those that specialize in families with children that are very young and then also we do a lot of connection for families with activities in the community for example this year we have over 400 of our families that have active activated their free museum of discovery memberships as well as the gardens of spring creek partnerships and we have many many many referrals to the recreator and other fort collins activities to help families learn the networks that are available to them within our community another very exciting thing before i move on one of the things that we've done this year is created a food pantry for our home visiting program so if we have families that are in need of additional food resources particularly pandemic related needs they also have a delivery of food with their

037home visit every week if they need it so as we move from early head start our zero to 36 months we move into our pre-k program and our pre-k program is anywhere from three years old to kindergarten transition so the earliest we would or the latest we would have is a six-year-old in our early childhood classrooms but most of them are from three to five we have four major programs within our early childhood umbrella our first program is the colorado preschool program you can see that on this chart by the blue category here it's our largest category with 453 slots and 41 percent of our enrollment colorado preschool program is state funded and it is one of the programs that will shift when universal pre-k comes on board because that funding will be directed towards

038universal pre-k we also have our head start funding that's this orange pie we have 275 pre-k head start slots it's 25 of our enrollment and we have in this yellow pie 300 slots that we have allotted for early childhood special education those are for students with individualized education plans and identified special needs that's about 27 of our program enrollment and then this last little gray slice of the pie is our tuition-based families and so our goal is that our tuition-based family stays under 10 percent so that we can offer a variety of slots to the community but the majority of our slots in psd go to students that are at risk and so by the funding sources that we offer we do offer some slots that are for tuition-based families and they do not have

039to qualify under eligibility factors those will grow to 89 next year but they will remain less than 10 of our total enrollment slots when you look at this pie i want you to be aware of the funding sources and we'll talk about the four different areas and how they contribute to the overall picture of early childhood but i would also say that not all funding sources are created equal so this head start is a great example of our pre-k enrollment it's 25 of the students enrolled but it's 50 of our pre-k budget so there are it's more per pupil allocated and then our per pupil allocation for both of our state funded which would be our ecsc and our cpp funding that is a much smaller allocation per pupil and then our tuition-based is never

040more we will never charge more for families than we receive for our state funding so that's our lowest funded source at the moment we always talk about preschool enrollment as our most important factor because that determines our budgets and so as we look at our center-based 0-36 month early head start i would say that's consistently full it's always full i would love to offer more center-based slots however we don't provide those services in-house that is done through a community partner the family center is our current community partner we run an rfp or a request for proposals every two years and the family center has been very consistently our partner but we have not received a lot of other applications to be our partner the funding that comes with the early head start funding has a

041lot of strings attached and it is difficult for community child care providers to meet all of the guidelines for early head start so we do not have a lot of applicants to create more of those center-based seats for our home visiting program i will i'm super excited about this because i pulled our numbers from today obviously i created the report a few weeks ago and and have updated it but our updated numbers we are currently 91 out of 92 slots full we continue to chase that enrollment we will continue to chase that enrollment all the way through the year but we anticipate being at 100 enrollment just in a heartbeat we're so excited our home visiting program enrollment has been inconsistent over the last five years so prior to the pandemic we did not have

042any trouble filling our home visiting slots we were full by september and i will tell you that the pandemic this has been our most consistent feedback that having a home visitor in your home during a pandemic is a high risk activity and we will have families that are are in need of center-based care but just not interested in a home visitor in their home at this point in time so that one we're going to i think struggle until we are feeling more out of the pandemic but we continue to recruit we continue to go after that enrollment and we do not currently have any fiscal penalties for not being fully enrolled from head start so they understand the impacts of the pandemic on our enrollment we have to prove that we are consistently seeking that

043enrollment and recruiting families but there is no fiscal penalty for not being full in that one and for our head start um that is our federally funded head start program we are full we are up to 275 when i pulled the report for this one we were one down but our enrollment changes daily so i will tell you that we're always chasing enrollment but this is something that we've been consistently full um we cannot seek other head start slots unless a head start program in the area closes and that would be the only reason that additional slots would become available but if they do we'll be on the lookout for those but we've been able to consistently fill those our colorado preschool program slots the count date we have to be full by is november

0441st and those slots are our easiest to pair with other other funding sources so if we're going to make full days for families they're our easiest one to pair but they are capped at a certain number we can only pair five percent of cpp a few more of e-cares so we do have a limited number we can pair to make full days i will tell you of the cpp full days every single one of them is full of our cpp half days those are the ones that don't fill as quickly this enrollment trend has varied over the last five years prior to the pandemic we were mostly full although we did have a year where our enrollment had a shortfall of about 76 students i want to say with the pandemic last fall we were

045in trouble in terms of enrollment and cpp changed the rules on how many we could pair as a result of the pandemic and so we made an adjustment and created six more full-day classrooms because we were able to pair more of those slots and were able to fill all of them last year this year that allowance has gone away so we're back to our limited number of parable slots we came very close to being full by november 1. but we will continue to serve those 453 students even though we won't be funded beyond the 446. for our early childhood special education this one is our most complex funding source because these students can qualify under other funding sources to pay for full days they may also be as a stand-alone student receiving iep services through

046pre-k and so it says 85 percent enrolled with lots of stars by it and the reason those stars are there is that we have to make a prediction each year of how many students we will have coming in that will serve on ieps and we make that prediction using a lot of different information we use past enrollment numbers and averages we use students from last year coming over to this year we also look at child find data and we look at the data in the community for students 0 to 36 months that already are receiving services through family services plans and make a prediction of how many of those will transition as they turn three we have to guess on this one but we have to guess very carefully because if we underestimate the number

047of students that are coming in we have to open a classroom later in the year so in the last five years we've had one year we've where we've had to open an additional early childhood classroom that's a costly mistake if you think of the cost of a teacher in a para that's a pretty expensive mistake if we underestimate but we also don't want to overestimate too much because we want to make sure we have most of our seats full the majority of the time so as of today the early childhood special education count is 268 so you can see in the last three weeks we're still having students age in and we will have students age in all the way through the last day of school so any student that turns three on an iep

048will have a slot in the program and we don't anticipate needing to add another classroom this year um our last category is our tuition-based category it is 100 full with a waiting list um i i'm sad that the enrollment trend says varies but there's really only one outlier year we have always been full for tuition uh the outlier year was the year that we had remote only services so when we had tuition-based families and we were not offering in-person preschool they were not interested in paying tuition for remote instruction we have not had remote instruction consistently this year and therefore not had any trouble keeping our enrollment but i will tell you last year that number did dip as low as 20. so it was a very clear message from the community that remote instruction

049was not something that people were willing to pay tuition for okay so the fun stuff here's what's coming universal pre-k is very exciting i am so fortunate to be in a time in education that really values early childhood really understands its impact on student success and the voters have uh put their money where their values are and i'm so excited um that universal pre-k will be joining us starting fall of 2023 i will say right now this is a work in progress so this legislative session is a big session for early childhood we are going to monthly town halls we are paying careful attention to the early childhood leadership council and they have updates for us the last update from the governor's office they were saying that this bill may be in the running for

050the longest bill ever um so it's pretty complex and it's um it is not fully finished yet so i can give you some updates of what parts have been passed and then give you some updates on where we're going we are also partnering with the early childhood council of larimer county to try to work on a plan for what that means for our community as well as we're getting these updates and trying to make plans so just a little history lesson what we're currently operating under is the cpp act so our colorado preschool program was created through this legislation started in 1988 so it's been around a while later ecares was added but this legislation serves three and four-year-olds and their main mission or goal is to help support students who are at risk for

051early school failure so that remember that's our biggest chunk of slots in our program but that is also something that's going to be in flux with universal pre-k then prop ee was what was passed in 2020 that's where voters said we really believe in early childhood education and we really believe that it's a right of students and so it was passed by voters in colorado in 2020 and it created a revenue stream using tobacco and cigarette tax and 73 of that revenue would go to a universal voluntary pre-k program of 10 hours of week of preschool for four-year-olds so it changes the focus a little bit from the cpp act in terms of age and amount of time and then what's evolving right now is this universal pre-k bill and so there's several things that

052are happening there that we'll we'll talk through here so one of the major things that the universal pre-k bill did or is doing is establishing a department of early childhood so right now early childhood is governed by about a million different organizations and so there's a lot of different rules you'll get a lot of jokes about how complicated early childhood can be because we have all these rules coming from all kinds of different places so what the state has determined is that we need one central location for all things early childhood so they've created a department of early childhood and that is going to merge lots of different departments that contribute to our work so the office of early childhood will be merged there colorado preschool program would be merged there workforce development groups will

053be merged there but one of the really key things for us to understand as a school district is that idea or the special education portion of our program will not move to the department of early childhood that will remain with cde as the governing body for that part of our program so we'll have the majority of our program being housed under the department of early childhood but part still remaining with the department of education so this part of the bill has already passed so excited the first week of march they really worked hard to get the department of early childhood up and running the original bill wanted the department of early childhood to start on july 1st and they realized that that might be a little too late if we have a timeline of fall

054of 2023 to give us about a year to plan this very important implementation so they moved the launch date from july 1st to the date it passed which was the first week in march what it did was it funded six leadership positions in the department of early childhood so that they could begin the work and those folks will start their work on april 1st and then it also started a funding stream to start the work on the common application that's going to be a part of universal pre-k so i i know that there are questions about that common application and they have just started funding that work so that work is just starting so we're going to learn a lot about it but we don't have a lot of information about it yet then the

055big bill what they call the big bill has lots of different factors but it's going to work on the department of early childhood and how that's going to operate and how the governance is going to work it's going to move all of the the programs delivered by the department of early childhood and kind of streamline that it's also going to create that single unified electronic application and that's kind of exciting it will start with universal pre-k but then it will become the state's application for any services zero to five but it's gonna start with the universal pre-k so that's where they're focusing their work right now it's going to require collection and assessment of data to inform continuous improvement for early childhood programs and then it also is going to build in an evaluation portion

056of the department of early childhood within the first three years so this is this this is the important stuff for us the big bill i think the one that's on my mind the most is the local leads section it's also called local community organizations and so part of the structure of this bill is going to create a local lead across colorado that's catchment area is going to be defined by the community themselves on how big that catchment area is going to be and these local leads or local community organizations are going to be responsible for managing the universal pre-k funding so local community organizations can be county or municipal government agencies school districts boces early childhood councils family resource centers special tax districts local non-profits or charter school networks so there's a really big scope

057of who can apply to be a local lead it is a competitive process so we will be discussing whether or not as a school district we want to be in the local leads category or if we want to be a provider within that category and the local lead be taken on by somebody else in the community so here's what the local leads are going to need to be able to do they're going to be able to coordinate the application process they're going to need to ensure universal access for pre-k programs to make sure that every four-year-old has access to quality programs with family choice they're going to be managing mixed delivery systems allocate funding equitably ensure understanding of providers in quality child care increase the community's capacity for child care and supporting the local workforce

058so that's a huge job and so we are we're we'll be working with the community organizations to determine what the best avenue is in terms of a local lead of whether or not we want to throw our hat in the ring to be the local lead for the community or whether we want to be a provider within the network the timeline for determining local leads we have late spring to apply of this year and they're hoping to determine who the local leads are by summer if the community cannot decide who's going to be the local lead the department of early childhood will assume that responsibility until the community has built the capacity for a local lead organization so we do have some wiggle room there we also are not committed forever if we determine that

059we want to be the local lead or not it's a three-year term so we would be able to apply later or decide that we didn't want to do it later if we needed to as well so local leads are going to be a big piece the application is going to be a big piece as well we talked a little bit about that we don't have a whole lot of information but the idea is that a family would be able to apply with a single application and access community child care resources school district child care resources preschool iep services things like that off of a single simple electronic application knowing the eligibility criteria of a lot of our funding sources i'm not sure how simple that's going to be but we're going to take a crack

060at it there also the portion about eligibility and prioritization is unclear in the bill at this point they will be using some of the factors from cpp as a guide as they're figuring out and determining risk for students so their hope is that no child will have less services than they do now as a result of a shift to universal pre-k so right now cpp has 2.75 hours universal pre-k would only have 2.5 hours right now we have some cpp slots that can be paired universal pre-k they're working on how that mixed delivery system will work so they're working through all of those pieces and prioritizations of needs um three-year-olds is a big question in this because universal pre-k is really designed for four-year-olds but cpp provides services for three-year-olds as well so they're trying

061to figure that out right now and then the quality and evaluation portions have not yet been defined we currently operate under the colorado shines for quality programming and our evaluation is done through results matter in the cpp program i don't know that those will be the same but i imagine the process will be similar so i'm less concerned about the the unclearness of that category so there's a lot of questions we're trying to work through right now um the one of the big questions that's on my mind is will the funding for universal pre-k meet the demands of the workforce so the majority of our budget currently is spent on people on salaries and so when i look at our overall budget and i look at our state funding and the per pupil allocation for

062the state funding is lower than our federal funding i am wanting to make sure that we know what that number is before we determine how many slots we can provide because it is very expensive to run a model where you have early childhood special education teachers at the helm but still very important with the number of special needs that we serve i also am wondering about capacity so how many spaces in the school district will we want to be considering for universal pre-k early childhood typically does not expand until we have funding to do so so we're getting this funding stream yay and we will have funding to do so and it i want to be responsible about what capacity we have and i also want to be able to look at what capacity is

063in the community because we have some amazing community providers and it will be interesting to see which of them opt into universal pre-k and which of them don't that goes into the next piece of the partnerships there have been surveys going out that 65 percent of community providers are interested in universal pre-k funding that does not mean 100 so i'm a little nervous about that and how many slots will be available in our community so those are the things that we're working on with the ecclc to try to determine what that's going to look like for us and just trying to balance our parent preference where our parent our parents really are very clear they love full day pre-k and it meets their needs and it allows them to work and it provides services for

064students but if we offer only full day pre-k we have capacity for half the students currently we serve 25 of the incoming kindergarten class within district classrooms so that means 75 percent of our community's children go somewhere else for pre-k and so we've got to balance the need for full day care as well as the need for creating space and capacity for students that may be missing out on pre-k altogether we also have a strong preference for tuition based we have families that really want to be in our tuition-based program they also have said that they really want tuition-based options for a full day and again that reduces our overall capacity but we need to balance the needs of all of our families and and see what we can offer and then we also need

065to look at it from an equity lens and try to make sure that we're providing access for students who typically are underserved in our community and that we have slots for them in the school district if they are not able to find them in the community so those are big questions that we're kind of wrestling with right now that brings us to planning and it is not a one-time thing that we're we're working on it's part of every conversation every day as we're looking towards the future we know universal pre-k will bring lots of changes but we have quite a few projects in the hopper so as these additional funding streams become available we have a project in wellington that we're working on to establish additional classrooms we have a second classroom in bamford that's

066built and ready to go but no funding for it so this will bring some funding for that classroom we also have some brac recommendations coming to the board in terms of options for either building in midtown areas or looking at expansion in additional schools that only have one classroom or no classrooms and then as we're thinking about longer term where we'll want to think about the next mill bond election and what early childhood will be what part of that ask will be early childhood so i've got lots of things to wonder about the things that i just kind of try to ground myself in reality in terms of our challenges and our opportunities right now our two biggest challenges that we face as a program right now are staffing shortages and funding gaps so the

067staffing shortages affects three major categories within our program so our early childhood special education teachers you will hear me describe them as magical unicorns because they are they are very hard to find and they are so qualified to be both the general ed teacher and the special education teacher at the same time however it is not a field that a lot of people go into and so we are working very hard to find early childhood special education teachers for our positions our paraprofessional positions are also positions that we've had open all year and then substitutes have also been a challenge to find but we've been working hard on these and i will tell you that our covet dollars that have come in federally have really supported us with that we've been able to fund additional

068paraprofessional positions as well as devoting we will be devoting upwards of fifty thousand dollars towards tuition reimbursement for teachers looking to get their early childhood special education um degrees so we're really investing in that using some of our coveted dollars we've also paid for substitute licenses in our paraprofessional pools so that if the teacher is gone the pair can sub in the classroom and keep the routines consistent and that has been financially awesome for our paraprofessionals as well as supportive for the program to cover classrooms we have a futures lab partnership that is already going we have students that are high school students on an early childhood track they do their hours in our classrooms and by the time they graduate they will have the credentials to be a early childhood paraprofessional and so we're

069trying to grow our workforce that way and also get them on the pathway of hopefully getting a degree in early childhood or early childhood special education we've also been partnering with the early childhood council of larimer county they have some funding sources that are working towards tuition reimbursement and some of our teachers have been able to get tuition reimbursement for their early childhood special ed degrees as they move forward and then our university partnerships we go and talk to all ecsc cohorts in the area so we can put our face in front of them and get to know them and invite them to come and apply and work with us we are getting information from universities for example that are shutting down bachelor program because they don't have enough applicants for this area so it's

070going to be a continual struggle but it's not something we're giving up on it's something that's really important for our kids so we're still going to go after it the other piece that we are are continually battling with is the funding gap and so i would say that as we have a new funding stream coming in that's exciting we can offer additional seats but the per-pupil allocation will really matter for us as our wages rise our per-pupil allocation has not risen at the same rate so our cost of living increases federally and our state allocation has not risen as quickly as our salaries have so it's something that we're keeping an eye on and it may be that we will have to identify other funding streams to support programming when it is not fully covered

071by federal or state funding sources we have investigated all kinds of other avenues in the last two years the covid money has been very helpful we've had over 500 000 of coveted relief dollars that has gone to salaries the the substitute funding the licenses the tuition reimbursement we've also had 92 000 in child care relief grants so we are going after additional money to help us um fill in some of those funding gaps but i think it's really important that we're realistic about that per pupil number when it comes in and and how many seats we can afford to offer that's a lot of information [Laughter] but i would like to try to answer any questions that you might have it is really appreciate the presentation thank you so much uh are there questions in

072the room dj um i want to start off with saying thank you and thank you for your your team i am amazed at all of the red tape and hoops that we have to go through to try to fund this important thing for our kids um you know my dream when this first got put together as a bill and one on the ballot is that we could simplify things and they obviously have not gotten there yet which is you know a huge challenge and i and i do want to point out two things that you said that i just i hope the public realizes that this is this is being funded by tobacco so that's something that's going to continue to go down but this is a need that's going to keep going up and

073and so this is something that's very important for our community uh and our kids so thank you very much for diving into this um one of the things that i've been wondering about for a while and you kind of touched on it and i was wondering if you could give me some more insight of what the district as a whole is kind of thinking a little bit about the leadership aspect of it because of we do have a very strong uh county uh group that has been doing it it seems to be that that you know when you first think about it to me it seemed like oh yeah it'd be the obvious one but i think you get a great job of laying out how much work they're going to be required to do

074and so then i kind of wonder well do school districts have more of a manpower to do some of that and i was kind of wondering what the thinking process is on that and how you're going to work with larimer county on that and figure out well i think you you touched we have to work with each other the count this is going to be a county initiative this is a state initiative that we are not alone in the school district of being the only provider we are going to need every single community provider that's willing to be a part of this network every single community organization that's going to throw their manpower and expertise into the room and i agree with you there are a few realms of the local lead that make me

075a little nervous in terms of ensuring that there's enough slots for all four-year-olds knowing the capacity of our classrooms in our district as well as the workforce pieces that we struggle with in our district as you push that out we are not alone in that struggle in the early childhood community so i think those are two areas that we would be doing a lot of learning about if we were to take on this role that maybe other organizations have a few steps head start in terms of those areas i think it's going to be a partnership and i think that's why we are diving in with the early childhood council of lerner county to really explore options with not only our school district but loveland and estes park as well as other interested parties that

076may be looking at this local lead to determine whether or not they're ready to take on that role i also am unclear exactly how the legislation will land on it so we have a lot of like we think this is what the local lead will be but until that big bill is passed we don't have a definite definition of parameters so we have to be really careful about speculating and spending a lot of time on a road that may change and it is already changing in amendments and and and the legislative process so we have to balance that with conversations that we're starting now as well as what our reality will be once the bill is passed we have started those conversations but we have not landed on a decision yet so i want to

077just follow up on that local league question maybe you do two nate i don't know um there uh two things one of them is does the local lead as currently envisioned in whatever state the legislation is in it come with any funding to support that work it does but it doesn't say how much okay um the uh yeah so that answer no that's fair no it doesn't no it doesn't so um yeah so i guess i would i would ask you through superintendent kingsley to keep us up to date on this because this seems like a heck of a commitment if we're going to take it on and maybe it's the right commitment i don't say that it isn't but if you keep us up to date on this i'd appreciate it the other thing

078is to the extent that uh we feel like it's appropriate you feel like it's appropriate for us to try to influence the legislation in some way that's going forward we do have a legislative subcommittee and were sort of anxious or sort of willing as the right word i guess to try to uh try to support our efforts in whatever way makes sense so don't hesitate to figure out what you think ought to be done and see if we can help to make it get done sounds good so thanks sorry nate if you have something you want to add yeah i just uh encourage everyone to be patient because this bill is moving so fast that it's going to come out with mistakes that are going to need to be cleaned up in the next year

079or two or three so we're just going to have to roll with the punches i would say if you want a bill number to watch it's house bill 22 1295. that'll kind of keep you apprised of the financial portion especially okay can you please repeat that house bill 22-1295 yeah that's excellent and as i say if you have some thoughts about what that ought to look like we can try to help influence it okay thank you looks like dj has something else he wants to add yeah me too so with your conversations with uh like larimer county and uh well even in the meetings with the state trying to have have you guys uh figured out about data sharing uh and how you know they're gonna they're coming up with this one form but somehow

080it's still got to come into our system too and and i'm just wondering if i it is being planned and thought about i guess is my concern um i would say yes and it's and the funding for that just started so the work group on the on the single stream application is started but it is not developed in any way that i could give you a prediction of what it's going to turn out to look like and and data sharing could also occur on the back end with the quality and evaluation portions and we're not sure what that's going to look like but we can infer a little bit more with the results matter that we currently use in the state of colorado so i can't imagine that piece will be that different but the

081in terms of the application process we're waiting um to see what that's going to look like what they're trying to do is take the multiple or the mixed funding streams like we operate under in the in the school district and look at the criteria for each of those categories and collect that information in this single application so that they would be able to determine if a family qualifies for more than one funding source and then match the family with providers that offer those funding sources the other part of that is are they going to be wanting the reports back i guess in some way like that that student has a follow-up this show that students have gone through or something like that i i just haven't seen where it's listed at all and so i'm

082wondering if there's something i'm not aware of that yet um i do know that early childhood students similar to any student have a ceced number they are they are tracked in the state in terms of being a student uh but i don't know about the application flow yet okay thanks yeah just checking jim did you have anything you wanted to ask here sorry to keep putting you on the spot but i want to make sure you have an opportunity to participate thank you i should be unlimited yes you are on muted am i needed now um when dj already asked the questions that i was going to ask i just wanted to commend you becca on what i thought was the perfect presentation you gave perfect context you laid out the current state and you

083you described some issues that are coming and uh just laid it out really nice thank you thanks jim so uh i have a one or two things um if any anybody else want to add anything looks like carolyn go ahead so one question is will four-year-olds be eligible to ride the bus i guess i'm wondering about transportation for four-year-olds to come i mean that always seems to be an issue for our parents so what are we doing about transportation that is a big question currently the only funding source that provides funding for transportation is head start so even in our current dynamic transportation uh does their very very best to get as many of our students on the bus and if we have them going to the their home schools if there is a space

084on that bus our students do have it preschool is not a compulsory grade level though so our kindergarten through fifth grade students would get on a bus before a preschooler would get on the bus um that is something we'll have to consider but it is not part of the funding picture and then one last thing um i had noticed you know how many home visits you did and that's just incredible and i thought it would be nice if you could share with people who are watching why those home visits are so important like what you're looking for like why do we why is it important a kid rolls from his belly to his back why is it important that a kid crawls at a certain age can you kind of share with people what you're

085looking for in the things that we're doing in those home visits absolutely so our home visits and our home visiting program are designed to develop relationships with families and also help families understand developmental progressions like you were discussing flipping over milestones with language and and sound utterances and things like that from our birth to 36 months we begin collecting data on students in terms of those developmental milestones and we're able to talk with families about where their student falls whether they fall within the expectations for that age band or whether they're above or below if they're below that expectations that's where those community referrals come in and we can start developing connections for speech language therapies we can start building connections with foothills gateway to start an individual family services plan and we can really

086start that intervention process early um the gap is never smaller than birth right so if we can catch hey this kiddo is is just not not catching this developmental milestone we can start to build in that intervention right away the other pieces is developing that partnership with families our home visitors and mentors are really good at connecting with families and listening to families and determining what is the most important thing for those families so if they're struggling with a child's behavior the the home visitor will design or pull things from the curriculum regarding age-appropriate strategies for behavior and they they really listen to what a family is working on and wanting to learn about and they develop the resources and if they don't have them we find them and so we'll do the community referrals

087for mental health we will help connect them with parent groups and mom and me and toddler and you know all of the the networking that sometimes families particularly families who have experienced the birth of their children during a pandemic they don't have the socialization they don't know the networks that are available in that community and it is really amazing to have somebody who's connected in the community to come in and say did you know about this and go with them to a meeting or we had a prenatal pack where all the the parents gave birth and then they're part of the early and they're all together and they're they're networking at our parent and child together events and it is just so critical to start forming those ties to each other in the community early

088and that's what our home visitors are so good at um but it part of it is the early intervention i mean there's so much that they do i wish i could i could take you on a home visit with me they're it's so neat to see families really be partners and drive their children's education they are their child's first teacher and knowing what they need and being able to advocate for that and finding that support within the community is just the most powerful part of the home visiting program i agree and i think you did an excellent job of explaining that thank you thanks yeah i would say your enthusiasm is infectious thanks very much um so i can't i can't resist this i'm sorry but so we had a common application coming can can

089we use that for college too the the common app is that is that possible i would love that wouldn't that be great hey call them the same thing they must be the same right isn't that what it works now on a more serious note though um uh two things one of them is you mentioned charters how do charters fit into our current early childhood offerings and how do you how or if or do you expect that to change in the future so um currently we don't have any slots going to charter schools in pooder school district they would have an avenue if they wanted to be a cpp provider like our community providers we have seven community providers that apply but of course the cpp funding stream is shifting to the universal pre-k charter schools

090will have access to the universal pre-k funding assuming that they are willing to do the measures for the quality evaluation like the the pieces just like any community provider has the option to choose to accept universal pre-k funding or not accept universal pre-k funding but currently we don't have any charter providers within our network we do have charter schools that offer like our montessori school has a pre-k but they manage that completely on their own they don't use our state funding okay and if and if they did choose to participate or or even state funding would they fall under our umbrella or they're just separate providers altogether um so under the current model with colorado preschool program they'd fall under our umbrella they would apply to be a provider and then they would tell us

091how many slots they would want and then they would bill us for those slots under the universal pre-k i'm unclear of what that would look like because it's not fully defined so whether they would be a provider within the network or whether they would be within the school district i'm it's not clear yet okay so one other question you know this is all described as universal pre-k but you acknowledge some challenges in actually providing that so let's hypothesize here that there are more uh people who want to take advantages of this than there are slots in our area is there a a mandated provider of last resort or is it simply that it isn't really universal it's however many we can come up with we collectively i mean the community can come up with um

092i think those local coordinating organizations will have a big part in recruitment of additional providers they are going to be charged with creating a community plan for establishing those providers i'm not sure those providers will be available by 2023. um and i think as we're looking at our responsibility as as a school district provider we want to offer as many slots as we can of course but i also want to do that response fiscally responsibly and make sure that we have the funding to adequately support that programming and and knowing that if we can add more slots it would be a benefit i don't ever want to be in competition with our local child care providers they're amazing and we're going to need every single one of them in turn to make this universal pre-k

093work the other piece that we have to consider is that parents this is a voluntary program and what parents are telling us over and over and over again is they need full day care and education and 10 hours a week does not provide that so we will have families that are opting completely out in terms of finding a tuition-based program that offers full day or attempting to combine funding sources now one of the things i'm really proud of our school district for doing is we're already super creative about pairing funding sources to make full days for kids so we're going to keep going after those full day slots but we still want to make sure we offer enough slots that we have places for kids thank you so much that's very clear any last comments

094or questions looks like dj has another yeah i had one more about uh you said the challenge of getting you know the staff and i was wondering is there a difference in what psd requires for our student or for our teachers versus what the state is requiring for them to be a teacher or para yes so the paraprofessional or teacher assistants we use the pdis system for qualifications for educators in child cares and so a level one is a teacher assistant a level two would be somebody that can be alone with kids a level 3 would be lead teacher qualified 4 would be direct or qualified the school district our teachers all have credentials they all have a teaching degree and a teaching license in addition to that our teachers have the early childhood special

095education license the majority of them have that all of our new postings require us to search for an early childhood special education provider because of the number of special needs students that we serve in the district that makes us unique from a neighborhood provider because a neighborhood provider does not provide edu iep services so students with special identified special needs the neighborhood providers are not providing their speech language therapy they're not providing their occupational therapy or their cognitive assistance because we have the licensed teachers to do that so that's where we have a big distinction a teacher in a community provider may or may not have a degree and a teaching license so they will probably have a degree it could be in human and family studies it could be in child development but it

096may not be a teaching degree and it may not be a teaching license and so that's where we're a little bit different and and also the students that we serve are a little different neighborhood and community providers often when a child's need exceeds what they're qualified to manage the student isn't allowed to come back and so they either get expelled from a private provider for behavior issues or the private provider just cannot manage the needs that they have with the staffing that they have and those families often will come to us and they will have a home here they have a spot in the district and we don't suspend or expel preschoolers and so it is a diff you're looking at slightly different things but you are looking at a very qualified workforce in the

097school district in terms of licensure and and teaching degrees the outside ones though they still have to get licensed though right they have to have a child care license okay uh they do not have to have a teaching license to be a teacher oh even a preschool okay all right thank you all right thanks very much nothing else then will brian i think wanted to make some closing remarks in my note-taking i think i heard uh board member brookish say that this was a perfect presentation and i'd be remiss if i didn't codify that in the public record twice but i i wanted to publicly thank you becca and your team and the entire community as well as the board for buying in to the supportive efforts of expanding and doing this thoughtfully the deep

098knowledge and expertise that you've modeled alongside of the strong collaborative efforts that you and many others in our district take to do this work in partnership with community partners not in a competitive spirit but in a space where we can provide more great opportunities for children and families in this community i think really hit home tonight and just really grateful for your leadership and i just want to say thank you thank you echo that thank you so much all right good so that's our first work session topic we'll be going on now to our second worst work session topic um and that is a high dosage tutoring update and again i'll turn it over to superintendent kingsley for uh introducing the topic yeah thank you so the bar has been set hyped this evening uh

099but i know we won't disappoint uh we're gonna have our last presentation this evening and do some great work in partnership with dr geil our assistant superintendent for elementary programs and our new chief equity and academic officer marlena gross-taylor to talk about our district's collective efforts around high dosage tutoring efforts what i can share before they get into the presentation as we've had previous conversations around the use of our covert reserve dollars other federal stimulus dollars this is a strategic big bet for our system to accelerate learning for our students knowing that many of our families and children have been negatively impacted by the pandemic and this is an opportunity that is going to be available to all students and across all of our schools and really excited for us to share some collective information

100around our system strategy moving forward so thank you both for being here good evening president pedersen superintendent kingsley members of the board and community we are pleased to present tonight on high dosage tutoring high dosage tutoring might be a new term in the district but it's not an unfamiliar strategy or unfamiliar practice in the district so we'll talk a little bit about where the term high dosage tutoring came in and how it looks maybe a little bit similar a little familiar to things that you may have seen before in the district but we're pleased tonight to give an update on our progress toward implementing a more centralized approach to high-dosage tutoring so chief equity and academic officer marlena gross taylor and i tonight will walk through the following things with you so we'll start with

101just a purpose around what the role of high dosage tutoring plays in addressing and accelerating our student learning in response to the last couple of years of disruption to learning and how we're using this as a response to that we'll also walk through on this research base like where did this model come from and the research behind it we'll talk about the timeline and the models within that as well as our communication plan and then also leave some time for questions and answers tonight so why high dosage tutoring so to begin with high dosage tutoring was that key strategy that we identified one through some surveys if you remember back in the fall we surveyed our community about how we should best use our esser dollars and part of the esser dollar requirement is that

102we do use a significant portion of it to respond to disruptions and learning doing to the pandemic and so we identified high dosage tutoring because it is one of the most highly researched based models one of the foundations that you might be familiar with with regard to high dosage tutoring is the foundation of reading recovery so reading recovery is a program that's been around for decades and reading recovery is a model that is well researched and it's based on the foundation of a one-on-one setting of intensive literacy tutoring for early elementary students through the course of that one-on-one tutoring students learning and growth accelerated tremendously so that it recaptured a lot of the the gaps that students may have experienced and were able to achieve at grade level standards so that's the underpinnings of high

103dosage tutoring research that that body of research has grown over the years from reading recovery research to show that when students are in that small group setting of not greater than about four students that and with that level of intensity and frequency that we can have students gain up to five to six months of of learning and catch up toward that grade level progress some of the most effective practices with high dosage tutoring require that it be embedded in the school day but we'll talk about some other models that have shown also promise in research and effectiveness that don't have to be in the school day that include before and after school tutoring we'll also talk about the digital intervention programs that have come into this landscape of high dosage tutoring that have been around

104for a while now have also have a research base of effectiveness we'll also talk about summer school and so summer school some of our models were vetted this past summer that we began to explore what could this look like that we've built upon some of the successes that we experienced so the high dosage tutoring model has been well researched and it is by far one of the most impactful strategies that we can use to accelerate learning for our students so thinking about some of the specifics that we built into our models in psd that we're going to make sure that that high dose is at least three times a week with a duration of about 30 to 60 minutes for each session for a minimum of about 10 weeks that's what research has shown is

105needed in order to demonstrate effectiveness the other parts of effectiveness that are important is that we have a highly trained tutor or licensed educator at the center of working with the students who have been identified and that we do try and embed this in the school day there are some aspects of before and after school that have proven to be effective but the most effective model is embedded in the school day again that small group smaller than four is a really important aspect of maintaining that ability for it to show effectiveness as well as growth and that there is collaboration between the tutor and the classroom teacher to again check in on the coordination between grade level standards and continue to reinforce those tier one concepts the strategy can be applied successfully across multiple content

106areas our models will primarily focus on english language arts and math but we will show you how there are some other models that will be applied across all some other content areas to clarify there are some aspects that we don't want high dosage tutoring to replace certain aspects of a student day and so some of those things that are really clear in our model that we've outlined for our schools and for our staff is we do not want to implement high dosage tutoring away so that's seen as remedial or punishment that's not what the purpose of this is this purpose is to support and accelerate student learning and to develop a relationship between that child and the tutor so that they feel supported to accelerate throughout their day we also recognize that this is not

107just for struggling students and you'll see in the models that marlena will talk about that there are some models who that are more identified for our students who are below the 35th percentile but we also have models that are available for anyone who might be temporarily struggling in a given course the other part of this high dosage tutoring has to be delivered by a highly qualified person in order for it to show effectiveness that's really one of the key aspects of it and we will be supporting our tutors through ongoing touch points to make sure that they have the adequate training and support to be successful in the role it's not going to be treated as an optional offering i know that's oftentimes a question that the board asks us is this an opt-in model

108it's not an opt-in model we want to have all of our students 100 of our students receive access to high dosage tutoring within one of the four models that we'll share with you the other thing is it can't be offered sporadically or inconsistency we will not realize the gains and the effects if we offer it fewer than three days a week it's also not going to be a replacement for content area classroom instruction we are not going to be pulling kids out of their tier one core instruction so that they can receive high dosage tutoring that would defeat the purpose okay so it's going to be in support of their tier one instruction as well as adding on to their potentially an intervention that they might already receive already be receiving it's also not a

109substitute for intensive interventions or iep services that would not be appropriate for us to replace that it's not going to be delivered by a worksheet or a computer program that human component is an incredibly important part of high dosage tutoring it's not going to be taught in small groups greater than a four to one student to tutor ratio and it's not going to replace an elective class we're not pulling kids out of art music and pee at the elementary level or are condensing their schedule and replacing part of their schedule with high dosage tutoring so just a little bit more to go back to that esser and that funding picture how we're affording or how we scope the budget for high dosage tutoring so if you remember the federal grant we are taking about um

1102.8 million dollars from our sr3 funds for learning acceleration with the high dosage chewing again that's the aspect that our community when we surveyed them that they really were looking for us to provide for learning acceleration for our students we also applied for and received a state grant through the colorado department of education the colorado department of education is also identified and is incentivizing high dosage tutoring as a means for accelerating learning growth and so we have 960 000 of that to be used during this fiscal year and then addition an additional source additional funding source for next year that we will access as well we also had dedicated some of our general fund covert response reserve funding to be used for high dosage tutoring all of that budget was scoped on the need that

111we identified at the beginning of the year so our priority group that we we first built the budget on were students who were below the 35th percentile in language arts and math and who fell further behind during the pandemic so that looking at who really lost that we needed to accelerate through this program and so that's how we built the model so that all of those priority group students could potentially receive the benefit of high dosage tutoring okay and so marlena gross today we're going to talk about the models thank you tracy as we look at the models there are four models specifically for our pre-k 8 and then one model specifically for high school that we're going to review tonight as mentioned before by tracy model 1 is the highest impact model however that

112does not indicate that the other models are not effective when we talk about model one we're looking at in person during the school day tutoring and of course in order to make this model work our schools are would have to actually change how they do their scheduling so we're not replacing or having kids miss out on electives or interventions and those types of things in model one you'll see that the training the tutoring i should say is provided by an approved service provider and more to come on exactly what that looks like or a qualified educator it's embedded in the school day and just as tracy shared earlier and you'll see this in many of the models serving four or fewer students and occurring a minimum of three times per week our psd focus is

113on literacy and math but you will see in our high school model in particular that we will expand that to other content areas it's important to note that the service providers that are approved must show that they are aligned to our state academic standards and will be collaborating with our teachers model 2 is also in person and it can also be before or after school this is a model that most likely our schools particularly our elementary and middle schools will be utilizing or are currently utilizing to some aspect so our high dosage tutoring model will provide not only funding for schools that might be using this or might be wanting to use this model and maybe unable to fund the additional tutoring but also provide some structuring parameters that we'll talk about when we think

114about the impact and the effectiveness of high dosage tutoring this model is uh the tutors are provided by our service providers or a qualified educator and in this case again in our elementary schools in particular many of our elementary school teachers are already providing before or after school tutoring in the small group settings at that three to four students at least three times a week again you'll see that the focus is literacy and math that is our priority focus and that if service providers are used that their curriculum and approach are aligned to our state academic standards if we look at model 3 you're going to see a little bit of a change in the structure model 3 is virtual is synchronous tutoring that is actually provided by this approved service provider so in this

115model this is set at school on a set schedule and the tutoring is provided on the service providers platform so this will require for service providers that want to share this model want to provide this model it will have some collaboration with of course our iit department because it will be on the service providers platform during the school day with this model it can happen before school during school or after school so there is that flexibility but again it would occur at a minimum of three times a week and the service provider has to make sure that they're aligning to our colorado academic standards it will also provide virtual flexible time for collaboration between the tutors and the teachers of those students that are being served model 4 is very similar with the exception being

116that the virtual synchronous tutoring and even on-demand tutoring can happen at school or at home this is allowing our service providers that will that might want to participate in this way to provide 24 7 support for tutoring based on the needs of students again it's occurring at a minimum of three times per week and any skills and curriculum or standards to use are aligned to our colorado academic standards it is important to note before i go on to the high school model that our schools have the flexibility of choosing any of these models if that best meets the needs of their students or a combination of these models so they can choose a hybrid approach and that hybrid approach might come into play as we as a school any particular school launches into high dosage

117tutoring they might think that they are able to accommodate their student needs by say model two with their current teachers and they might find that they need to have an approved service provider to help with providing students with this type of support so it can be one model or a combination of models and i think that provides some great flexibility to our schools to better meet the needs of their students our next model is our high school model our high school model is based on credit recovery because we all know that at this particular juncture students need to earn credits in order to graduate this can occur in person it can be virtual it can be before or after school it can be through summer school it can also be through an approved service provider

118and their platform if it's an accredited uh credit recovery program high doses tutoring for the high school level again is focused on credit recovery so that can expand beyond just a literacy and math focus uh the tutoring provided is either delivered by a service provider an approved service provider or a qualified licensed educator again some of those same key characteristics is having four or fewer students served in this capacity and occurring a minimum of three times a week and this can extend once again through this summer the focus of the high school model for high doses tutoring is on graduation credit requirements and of course it would require either the service provider or whomever the qualified licensed educator might be to collaborate with the counselor as well as possibly the teacher of the student so

119we can make sure that they are having access to those graduation credit requirements that they're being met as much as possible here are a few other details regarding high dosage tutoring in general first of all again schools may choose a hybrid model approach they are not regulated to just one model they can choose a hybrid approach when we look at our external vendors it is important to understand that our approved service providers our external vendors in our sourcing language they will be on a performance contract we are wanting to be very mindful and good stewards of our funding that we have for this program right now the funding that tracy shared with you is expected to last at least three years but again if the need is great and we are using that that is

120something that dave and his team will come back and we will problem-solve how we can continue this if we're showing that this is being effective for our students here but for our external vendors they are on a performance contract and they will be assessed for k-8 they'll be assessed a minimum of three times a year because that is when we collect our acadians and map data to see if they are moving the needle and showing the growth and with our qualified educators we're still going to track that data we're going to track how students are receiving that tutoring either through a vendor and or a qualified educator so we can support our principals and having those conversations and problem solving if we are not moving our students as we want to with this model and

121it's through qualified educators or our current psd staff with our internal staff it's important to note that the rate that they will be paid will be a licensed hourly rate currently it's at thirty dollars per hour and if that changes or increases of course we will of course increase that as well this applies to model 2 which is what most of our schools are currently doing particularly at the elementary level but not exclusively to elementary and also to our high school model because we do know that we have several of our high schools if not all on some on some level are providing some type of credit recovery before and or after school as well as some might be providing it during the school day it's also important to note that our classified psd staff

122may participate as a highly qualified tutor if they have a cde license or a bachelor's degree in the content area we have several amazing retired educators that are currently helping and supporting our schools so they still will be able to do that and consider and be considered internal staff if you will psc staff and receive that hourly contract rate but they would need if they're classified psd or if they're say a retired teacher they would have to of course meet the requirements of cde licensure or bachelor's degree in content in that content area the last program detail that i wanted to bring to your attention is our school point of contact our high dosage tutoring site facilitator this role is particularly important because they are truly serving as liaison between our district supports our students

123staff and our vendors our approved service providers they are going to help our schools identify and manage the participation of students tracking the students making sure we know who those students are receiving the tutoring by an approved vendor or by a qualified highly licensed educator they'll also help facilitate the planning between the teachers and the tutors where that is appropriate help communicate with families and one of the most important things that they'll also do is make sure that the data that is gathered especially for approved service providers that that data is gathered so we can properly evaluate the performance contracts of those approved vendors as well as provide the data necessary for the coaching with principals and staff for our qualified staff that are providing that model they will receive a stipend uh fifteen hundred

124dollars a semester right now we estimate that to be about two and a half hours or so across the school year of work so the full stipend is three thousand for the school year and roughly we'll have two payouts for that fifteen hundred dollars a semester and that does include this summer with that we do understand that probably in the very beginning we'll have quite a few hours uh poured into that and as the as the program continues at each of our schools it's really more of that coordination that facilitation making sure that we have those measures in place to track students so we can see what their progress really is at those key points for our site facilitators we will provide regular ongoing trainings orientation quarterly touch points because we want to be able

125to provide to the board of course an update on how this model how these models are working how our high doses tutoring program is working and where do we see continued opportunities where we might need to fill in some of the any gaps that might persist i will say that this is a lot of work for our site facilitators and if as we continue to progress over the next three years in this program if even that stipend needs to be increased if they're putting in even more hours to help support this program then that's definitely something that we will consider increasing if that is necessary so what's our timetable for implementation this has been something that as tracy mentioned we've looked at for quite some time we've dabbled here and there into high dosage tutoring

126to find out you know what is our capacity and even even with some of this dabbling in initial planning we don't know all the answers so we are we are required to be flexible with that and to be responsive to the needs of our students so in the winter of 2122 school year we had our initial planning that tracy mentioned earlier and now that we are in spring i think a day after the official first day of spring we are launching uh our high dosage tutoring we're going to be monitoring that we had our first site facilitation facilitator session today and our next one is planned in the next week or so we're going to be finalizing our summer learning plans and to see how can we incorporate high dosage tutoring into this model particularly

127for our high school students that are needing credits in order to graduate we want to make sure that we have that as well as supporting and expanding and providing this opportunity for our elementary and middle school students this summer we'll be implementing the summer programming for high doses tutoring and finalizing what the fall would look like we're starting this program now in the spring but we want to be proactive and take what lessons we're going to be learning in the spring and the summer to really finalize how do we want to continue to make high-doses tutoring even more effective for our students right at the start in the school year in the fall we will be looking at program expansion whether that means increasing the number of vendors our approved service providers that we have

128as well as looking at what is the capacity of our teachers if the need for our students exceeds what particularly model 2 what our teachers can handle we want to make sure that we continue to expand that list of providers that we can offer that support to our schools when we think about our communication plan this is not an exhaustive list by any means but we wanted to just put together a couple of ways that we've already started communicating this and this list will grow as we continue to refine our processes for high doses tutoring internally we've met several times around with our principal advisory group as well as with all principals and will continue doing so giving them time to connect and to share best practices of how they plan and and are when

129they're implementing it what is working well in that implementation with each other we've also had the opportunity to share this with our assistant principals and our deans we know that this role in particular is very critical to the implementation of any initiative at any of our school buildings involved our counselors again we had our site facilitator orientation our first one today the first of many and it's a lovely group as well as our quarterly board of education updates externally we are working with our communications department to finalize our high dosage tutoring messaging toolkit for schools so we're consistent in our messaging and in our providing access to all of our families that might want to take advantage of this we want to make sure that all of our families are aware of what this program

130is what it does and how to access it in their schools and any news items that we might have we're going to put that on our psd website around high dosage tutoring as well so with that i'd like to invite tracy back up and we'd love to entertain any questions that you might have thanks so much for your presentation nate you have a question this is great thank you i'm excited about it uh what's the supply of tutors and and vendors look like sure so we our internal staff really stepped up for us last summer so last summer we we really met more of the capacity of need than we anticipated that we do believe we'll continue to have staff our particular internal staff who will be willing to provide services again particularly during the

131summer as well as in the before and after school model with the the different roles of a tutor in the system like one of the workforce areas that we really want to go after is our retired teacher workforce because they have the content area expertise oftentimes they already have relationships with the classroom teachers and can facilitate that communication between what's going on in the tutoring program connecting it to the classroom learning at the time so that's really the couple of pieces of workforce that we're going to go after pretty much right away because they're right there in front of us they're accessible easy to reach out to the vendors are really an untapped area for us as a district there are many many national providers and particularly some of the programs that we use in

132the district they are those providers are off also expanding into the tutoring arena so we have some experience with their curriculum with their professional development now they're offering a branch of tutoring services as well and so that's an area of workforce support that we haven't explored as a district that we're really looking forward to looking into they they have credentialed workforce oftentimes it's teachers maybe who are looking for a more flexible schedule who want to work from home and so that's a that's an area that we're expanding into we're also looking at vendors within our local community so we have tutoring vendors who have shops set up and storefront shut up set up here in the community that also could potentially apply to be a local vendor as well so i think we have um

133some good resources and we have a very fortunate position in our community to be located around several universities who have recent graduates or students who are looking for additional hours while they're working on an advanced degree that i think we're in a pretty pretty good position to be able to meet the need yeah you go ahead and then i'll go because i'm gonna follow up too i i guess i just want to be a little bit more uh pinpoint on have you done a back of the envelope count of how many people something like this is going to take because reading through it i i just envisioned how many more people that it might actually take to get in front of these kids so so um back of the envelope literally it would be 500

134tutors in order to serve all that priority a group that i mentioned in terms of the students who were at the 35th percentile and fell further behind over the last school year it would take 500 um ratio of one to four sessions in order to meet that need kristen yes sir and my follow-up to that one was um i i've actually talked to several retired teachers who we've talked about the high dosage tutoring and they're excited about how to help out with this and so is there something on the website for in the careers section is there something out there yet that they can go ahead and say i would like to become a part of this how do they how do they engage sure so not yet but again um we we use a

135lot of the pieces that we used in planning last year's summer programming we'll be able to pull those in and recruit the staff so we already have a job posting that we used last summer that we'll make some modifications to to put up a posting for tutoring and so once that posting is created schools can push that out to maybe people that they've worked with in the past for retired teachers it's also a great way that we can push that out to like the university job board and access that pool of applicants as well and so that job description is in development right now and should be posted soon awesome could i ask that you forward it to us as well because i think some of us have some connections and with retired teachers and

136whatnot or maybe you want a tutor don't think i'm allowed i do have one other question if i can go ahead um we're talking about you know four at a time um and three times a week but there was never a mention or at least i missed it um of how much time for each section of you know for each of the four kids so i think you're asking it a minimum of 30 minutes of each of those sessions and then ideally to get an impact and a flow of instruction it needs to be for about 10 weeks at a minimum that's not to say that it can couldn't continue beyond 10 weeks but in order to to really see the effectiveness of that tutoring and to show progress it really has to occur with

137that group of student or with that student for 10 weeks other questions go ahead dj jim i'll get you next i saw you going off me go ahead um so i want to start off with the so reading through it the model one made me a little nervous you know unless like you said the schools change their schedule and or or they have an extended learning opportunity um i the model 2 and model 3 i think are very exciting but the one piece that i see kind of missing or wondering if we can fit in there is transportation because that's a lot of these students that are going to need this or my value this opportunity is the transportation part have we looked at that at all or is there anything that's so interesting you

138bring that up there are no shortage of yellow buses but of course we know finding drivers and getting that is is always a challenge right so for schools that are currently providing some type of tutoring before or after many of them have already worked with their in their feeder area worked with their bus drivers that we currently do have to figure out creative ways to provide transportation that is something that when we start getting those numbers and those rosters that our site facilitators will work closely with matt's team as well to figure out how what are some ways that we can do this right like because we know that we're going to have kids that need to come to school have transportation provided either before school or after school is it something that we can

139use some of our community partners with to help with that transportation is it something that we can use some of our our fleet vehicles to help transport it's really tough to determine exactly how many need transportation because we are just launching this now but that is definitely something that the site facilitators asked today and that is something that we'll continue to work on once we get those firm numbers especially for our schools that are not providing any type of tutoring at this point either due to the ability to compensate tutors or teachers or to provide transportation my concern would then would be the communication for sure that the parents don't feel like oh there's no way i can get my kid there that the counselor or the site person is making sure they're communicating that

140you know we'll find a way to get these kids there if this can help them so absolutely on the schools that are doing this right now are they doing the four to one ratio or are they doing a bigger one right now you know i think it varies by school right now like there's a difference between high dosage tutoring it really has to be below that um five is kind of that that limit once you get into five that's just considered a small group instruction or small group intervention and so most often what you see during the school day is more of a typical small group intervention of a group of five and you know one adult working with a teacher however within our schools right now the more intensive services that are being provided

141in terms of an intervention model might occur at that one-on-one ratio or one to two ratio but it varies widely by school whether they have the staff capacity to do a lower ratio so the lower the ratio the more staff it takes in order to implement so the the wonderful thing about having this additional resource will provide the ability for a school to provide a more intensive intervention maybe than they're currently able to all right i think brian you wanted to say something and then we'll get jim's question yeah thank you i just want to build off of both of the questions dj that you asked one is i think one of the great things that is happening as a result of this systemic approach to this work while also providing some flexibility is we're

142systematically calibrating around evidence-based practices so right now schools are approaching this through the best what they knew was the best approach at the time those are changing and evolving as we're calibrating i think we also realize that schools have been differently positioned across the system to pull this off as a result of the role of volunteerism and so to me this is a game a game changer around putting a financial investment in that to incentivize and calibrate more resources going to all of our schools but especially those that are most vulnerable in this particular space and i think that's an opportunity for us to continue to feel confident and proud about i also appreciate the question around access and transportation i want to be clear to the community that we do intend on offering transportation

143to our summer programming so we're working through those particular process i just want to affirm that that is accurate and correct i also think that you know it's hard i think as a school system we all we want to do it all and i think this is an opportunity if there's anything that i've learned to continue to be proud of being a part of these communities when they realize that there's a need this community comes together and so i think this is an opportunity to call out to families to potentially who have created pods during the pandemic to be carpooling to be sharing resources to be thinking about community partners that could potentially step up and offer additional resources for us to think through the transportation scenario that we're in uh but i think it's

144that's something that we're going to continue to be mindful around before school and after school and try to problem solve around i think we got a solid plan around summer but there's room to grow but i think we're going to really need to invite others to help us solve that problem knowing the complexities that we have just with the tiering of our buses and to be able to add tears it's really difficult to be able to pull that off if not near impossible and so i don't want to over promise and under deliver to the community but i do think it's an opportunity for partnerships to be strengthened and for other people to step up in partnership with us knowing that the need around our children and us wrapping our arms around them to accelerate

145their learning has never been higher so i appreciate the questions all right jim you had a question yeah i did rob thanks a super exciting program first of all um if i'm hearing it right a quarter to a third of our students would be at some point engaged in this does does that sound right um actually when we looked at the numbers of that priority a group it was closer to about 12 of our population who fit into that priority a group who were below the 35th percentile and showed regression and so that's the the first group that we're going after however within those models we feel like we feel pretty confident that we can serve beyond that and i think 25 percent could potentially be a reasonable number we might reach thank you so

146when i think about that especially as we're building the engine that first semester it seems like that coordinator at the different at each school is going to be a a very busy person so you may want to look more at whether the 1500 is the right number at least starting out i can picture once once it's a well-oiled machine and everything's running all right maybe it's great but your call obviously but uh that that would be a piece of my feedback i think that's uh i had one other question you mentioned that we would not be pulling them out of art to do this this tutoring but where do we pull them from do we pull them out of math to do math tutoring that piece of it i was still just a little bit

147um fuzzy on yeah that's a great question jim thank you so to explain like what's more typically what we would see it in elementary school so in an elementary school master schedule there's typically an intervention and enrichment block that is built into the schedule where it tends to be anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes of the school day that it's essentially a designated time where no new tier one instruction is occurring and so it is for the purposes of either extending learning or for providing more small group instruction for students and that's a pretty frequent schedule that you would see at an elementary school in the middle school in high school you might see like a zero block offering or study group offering those types of things would be part of the schedule for students

148and so we want to be be really mindful of not putting student not taking students you know love of learning love of school and replacing it with high-dose attrition because we don't want to be seen as a punishment we want it to be seen as a support for success in their core classes that lead them toward graduation that lead them toward feeling success throughout their day in learning and so it is very much a scheduling um puzzle and for students that it potentially might not work out to fit it within that scheduling puzzle where we end up pulling them out of something that's really important to them we wouldn't propose that model for that child we would look at either a before after school model or a virtual model that would be more appropriate because

149we we don't want to cause harm this is meant to create good for kids all right great i i have a couple questions so you said you had your first site facilitator orientation who are these people i mean who's who's signed up to be a site facilitator is it mostly teachers or administrators or classified staff or what so for some it's a mixture of teachers and also for administrators your assistant principals or deans at this time because of how our employee agreements are particularly classified and have to be mindful of them not working more than their required hours as well as making sure it's not you know too similar into what they're currently doing the site facilitator has to be licensed staff of some capacity of course if they're an administrator like an assistant principal

150with our current agreement they do not receive stipends for that work the majority of them are teachers or teacher leaders it might be the mtss coordinator it could be maybe a team lead but the majority of them are teachers but again we allow the school principals to discuss with their building leadership teams who would be the best person for this to do this work so i have a couple more does anybody else have questions they want to ask go ahead carolyn i just want to say that this is a really big audacious goal and and that's what i love about it is it's so big and it's so audacious and just because things are hard does not mean we shouldn't do them and i think what i see in this program it's really well set

151up really you guys have a great plan when i was reading through this i texted brian and i said wow i'm just blown away by the planning in it and so i think that's wonderful because to get the kinds of changes that we want to see in the district for our children we need a big audacious goal and we need a big dive in into the whole system and i see this as being a big dive in for the whole system and so i'm i'm really excited about it and i'm really excited about all the planning you put into it so a couple other questions for me one of them is in terms of credit recovery at the high school level so they're getting this tutoring potentially during the summer how do they actually demonstrate

152the knowledge or whatever in order to actually earn the credit so with our credit recovery model they would actually earn the credit for the course right so whether some of our schools as you know have different models of credit recovery that we are working with our high school principals to centralize a little bit more and to be more aligned but with them actually receiving the credit that is proof if you will that they are progressing i think for high school and scott please feel free to jump in and speak more to this if i am missing any aspect when it comes to credit recovery the four to one or one to four ratio is really important because we have so many of our students that might be missing more than one course and so to

153have that accountability to have you know someone that is there and holding them accountable and encouraging them as well to to complete whatever that they might be missing in any given course and to help them go through those missing courses i think is really important and this is where the high doses tutoring model is very different from say in some of our high schools they have a a zero hour or maybe a period during the day where credit recovery is happening happening during the school day but it might be in a computer lab it might be you know a whole a whole classroom full of students and so to have that four to one accountability model i think is really important but scott please add to if i'm missing something rob i think when i

154think about your question marlena got at it at the beginning right is we're going to ask students to do credit recovery software that demonstrates mastery of the the content they haven't already mastered so that's that that's how we'll get out i think your question yeah that's great thank you that's that's that's a that's uh that does answer the question thank you i have one last one but it looks like dj has another i got two uh one because we've talked about summer here a little bit i just want to clarify that we we are setting it up for students to be able to have the technology too then if they need it to take with them okay all right uh the the second one because of how many people we need and i wondered if

155if there was any thought about uh us training up volunteers at all um you know i when i was volunteering in the school man i would have loved it uh because when i got into the english trying to do that it was not my specialty keep me in the elementary math but um and and so you know i think there are some out there that could really benefit and i know that what your requirements are is the qualified licensed educator i'm wondering if if we can't meet the need is there a possibility of doing some of training up volunteers at all so i think that's really important that we have that approved service provider and that we have that running list of approved providers so if we have folks that want to participate and maybe

156they don't meet that content area are highly qualified to be to be considered as a psd staff like a retired teacher say that we can direct them to one of our approved service providers as they start you know requesting with our rfp process to be considered that they're providing that that intensive training for that right and they're they're meeting those needs that's why the performance contract is really important particularly for our service providers so we can also have that accountability piece as well that if they are going to be selected by a school that they are able to actually do the things that we're paying them to do with this funding all right so last question i have is around the uh i guess accountability the tracking information and that is will we identify somehow

157in the school records which kids have had access to this and perhaps how often or through what grade levels or whatever else so that we can so that our great research staff can can run cohort reports and we can see the distinction between those students who have had this opportunity and those students who haven't and what their trajectory is yes so similar to how we track students who are in our summer program last year dr dwayne schmitz is building a spreadsheet where that would be one of the roles and responsibilities of that site facilitator to track that information so as we enroll a child into a particular program we'll identify you know name date of enrollment student id as well as the frequency of attendance so that'll be an important factor because we want to

158see if you know if it's actually the model or lack of attendance that you know resulted in maybe not seeing the gains that we wanted it's also an important component to that performance contract that marlena talked about our vendors will have to demonstrate a level of performance and we'll have to be able to provide that student level data to them and the student level data you know will be tied to that student id so that is a big role in responsibility of the site facilitator and dr dwayne schmitz is going to be building that data collection for us excellent thank you very much that's great news looks like superintendent would like to say something yeah maybe maybe a closing comment if that's okay i think staff i speak on behalf of staff that we genuinely

159and deeply appreciate the enthusiasm that's being built around this approach but if you're a teacher or a classified staff member that's in the trenches every day i want to speak to you right now because to me this is an approach to support you to complement the great work that you continue to do knowing that we collectively have seen you and continue to climb a very steep hill to accelerate learning that has been incredibly challenged with a limited time limited resources and the challenges that we've continued to have to navigate in a year where i think we all collectively anticipated not having to maybe enter this school year with the challenges that we collectively faced and i want to thank our teachers and our classified staff members our volunteers who are continuing to accelerate learning in

160our classrooms we've heard you you need more support you need more time some of you want extra opportunities to grow and stretch your students and this is an opportunity for that but this is not meant to replace you this is meant to build off of the high quality efforts that you bring to our district and to our children each and every day and i just think that can't be over emphasized enough that this enthusiasm is really a support for them uh and it's just i'm really really grateful for the opportunity to work in partnership with all of our people because i just think it's really important that us as a community collectively work together to maximize time you know as i shared earlier i think in our dinner session our cmas testing is starting over

161the next couple of weeks our school year doesn't end for another couple of months and the pressure that that puts upon our employees who take their craft so seriously about raising the performance we just spoke for the last month about our de monitoring reports those scenarios are real what's great about this is in addition to what our teachers and classified staff and our school leaders are bringing to the table this is an additional systemic treatment i say that with respect and dignity to be able to apply additional supports to all of our students and i just can't thank all of the people who have continued to navigate really complex circumstances and still figure out a way to be strategic in the midst of this so thank you to all of the staff collectively who have

162worked together not just internally but figuring out ways competitively to build bridges to other partners both locally and across the nation to help stretch the resources that we are deficient and desperately need in our community to close those gaps so thank you well said thank you very much oops looks like nate has something he'd like to add yeah i just like to echo uh what superintendent kingsley said and it seems like the acceleration of the workload between spring break and the end of the school year is just going to be almost unimaginable so thank you to our teachers and staff for all that they're doing and will continue to do to try to get us through this year i think that represents the sentiments of the whole board so thank you so much um and

163thank you very much marlena and tracy for your presentation and what you've shared with us it's it's really exciting and we're looking forward to seeing it seeing in action thanks so much appreciate it and with that we are going to adjourn this meeting believe it or not at 8 40 8 49 p.m thank you so much you