Board of Education Work Session: September 28, 2021

001mrs good evening today is september 28th 2021 i will call this meeting to order at 6 30 pm thank you for joining the board of education item 2.0 on the agenda is approval of the agenda would any board members like to make changes rob okay good i'd like to propose uh that we swap items 7.1 and 7.2 in terms of their order okay um so that would be okay is that uh let's make that a motion rob okay sorry i move that we swap items 7.1 and 7.2 on the agenda so that 7.2 comes first what is currently 7.2 comes first and 7.1 follows okay do i have a second for that from dj is everybody clear on what we're doing we will swap the order of 7.1 and 7.2 as it is written on

002the agenda okay uh joe could you do a roll call for that please dj anderson aye nate donovan aye tristan draper aye feb aye rob henderson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 excellent all right that brings us to item 3.0 which is the superintendent report and i will turn that right over to you superintendent kingsley good evening members of the board members of the community it's great to be with you all this evening since we've last met uh it's been had a chance with our team and with the community the opportunity to participate in a lot of amazing events happening across our community attended fort collins high school's homecoming football game on friday night i know it was an unfortunate loss to their football team but it was a true celebration

003for the culture and spirit of the school i saw the principal tam and they're waving a flag and cheering with the fans and the students all night long and the homecoming court and seeing what happened on the other side of the field with rocky mountain high school and the leadership that craig woodall and his team and the coaches and the players it just was a special night of fall football and magic in in our community and i'm just so grateful to be able to get back to some of the normal things that our children's are so dependent upon in our community to celebrate life celebrate each other and to feel connected whether it's their marching band the dances the homecoming opportunities to celebrate or just a simple opportunity to cheer up for your team it

004was incredible and those extensions don't just happen in the community on friday nights across all of our sports they're happening each and every day in our classrooms over the last two days i've had an opportunity with many of you to get into some of our schools some real special highlights i had a chance yesterday to get into tevelli elementary school veteran principal christine hendricks and her team shirley her assistant principal what blew me away at tavelli yesterday wasn't just the leadership it was sitting down with two fourth grade students who were able to tell me through their student portfolio uh where they are in their learning what they're specifically working on what's challenging them and why this type of self-monitoring and self-reflection is important in their own learning so they can continue to be better

005students and aspire to reach their goals that transfer of ownership of learning is something that i think all of our schools aspire to i just really proud of the work that they're doing and you know i'll use the principal hendrix words these are not modest there's a building of hard chargers over there that work around the clock and i think something that you know as a as a leader who's there for over a decade with humility she was able to name that they needed to get back as a school faculty on how to make sure that they were experiencing joy in their instruction how they were experiencing unity across their school community in a time where it matters more than ever before and to throw away some of the things that they knew they were

006strong at but almost to feel like they're starting over and leverage their school counselors and their mtss coaches and their school psychologists to make sure that we're actually beginning to re-teach behaviors how we're re-teaching expectations of how to participate in class how to engage and communicate and collaborate we're starting in some ways over and i think we take that for granted and i'm just really appreciative of scott's leadership and tracy's leadership as their supporting principles to give the permission to realize that sometimes we have to start slow to go fast later and by no means are they going slow you can tell that there's a healthy pressure in just about every school in our system uh but what i saw in tavelli and i started to learn about this mac bus mobile academic center i

007want i got to get my cdl to drive that bus around the community but was really impressed and those extensions lasted into other visits i was at preston middle school this morning and talking to principal schmear and it reminded me of also another conversation i had at werner elementary with principal camp around thinking about how we're capturing evidence of our progress right sometimes public education feels like all the pressure is on the students to perform but as we think about the conversations we're about to have tonight around our district uip and our plans moving forward it's really about trying to find a healthy balance between student outcomes and adult behaviors because i believe that adult behaviors ultimately predict student outcomes and as we think about conversations with our schools around what evidence we should be

008looking at evidence that we should be counting evidence we should see when we're walking the buildings evidence we should hear when we're talking to people about our core business i'm just really pleased and proud of the work that that's happening and i want to make sure that i don't leave trout elementary out of the of the mix too because i was there this morning with board member patterson and that was a special visit too they were some of the greatest academic press in each of those classrooms that i've seen across any of our schools their approach to literacy and building background knowledge i'm just i'm a big fan of the core knowledge concept and how they're leveraging their resources and materials to teach literacy skills in their arts classes in their health classes was just

009truly spectacular so i'm just a really proud principal tonight i've also shared the over the last week with you previously that i had a chance to have real courageous conversations with our staff equity coalition and our equity and diversity advisory council at the district and i really appreciated both the faculty and i think some of them are here tonight as well as some of those members of edac their vulnera vulnerability in candor around really important work that is complex and sometimes politicized i really appreciate it because when we can talk courageously about what matters in our system and what's happening in our community and how that plays out for most for many of our most vulnerable students and families this work requires trust it requires care and it requires our deepest attention and our courage

010and i would share with you is that i also think as a system as i'm a learner and not just a leader i think it's a calling for us to re-anchor ourselves in our principles of community as i talk to many of our staff members and community members we have some unfinished work in that particular space but there's strong value in standing for something and i want to say to you as a board and as a governance team you have a lot of courage in the stance that you've taken previously around this work and i take that charge very seriously in building the collective efficacy of our teams our teachers and school leaders and developing the leadership who ultimately hold the power in our system to make sure we can figure out ways to share

011that power with our public especially those who are disenfranchised and most vulnerable i share this work with you sometimes knowing that every time that i use the term equity it creates a reaction in the community in some ways positive people are waiting and expecting for me and my role to talk about it but there's also opportunities for people to potentially kind of think about that differently and see that as potentially code for oh no we're talking about critical race theory here again and i want to be clear psd does not teach critical race theory we teach facts and we teach critical thinking skills with all of our students we teach history in age-appropriate ways in intellectually honest ways and we center our work on making sure that all of our students not just some feel

012a deep sense of belonging we have a lot of work to do to accomplish that but i'm really committed to doing that in partnership with our faculty members in partnership with our community and the work that came out of those conversations with the edac and our staff equity equity coalition i just think was quite tremendous but it's just the beginning so i look forward to providing you more important updates as we continue to make progress in those respective areas what i'll share in closing as we talk about equity that work also has implications around equitable instructional practices we have a really important conversation tonight around our uip and i'm grateful to have the opportunity to have this dialogue publicly you will see that our focus for the work is on accelerating learning and providing and

013fulfilling a deep sense of belonging not just with our students in our schools but also with our faculty and our staff but i will share with you we still have work to do we're living we're working we're leading in a pandemic that is not to make an excuse but it is to let you know that the realities of what's happening in our schools every single day our school leaders and our teachers are making choices and being pulled in multiple directions and we need to be honest about that pull and pressure because every time that we have to potentially contact trace or potentially make a call and realize something else is happening in our system it's taking us away from sometimes our core business i don't name that to make an excuse there are no excuses

014and i expect to be held accountable for progress equity is not just about access and opportunity it's about excellence but we have work to do to figure out ways that we can do this work with people not two people and i'm excited about our team who's going to provide a really thoughtful presentation tonight to begin to explain how we're thinking about this work and what it looks like over the years to come so again thank you for the time to share my updates this evening thank you superintendent kingsley your comments are deep and meaningful and i think the board appreciates that so um that'll bring us to item 4.0 which is community comment this opportunity opportunity for public comment is for members of the community who registered to speak by the designated deadline there will

015have people go up to the back you'll have the three buttons the green is good it'll turn yellow when you have a minute left and red when i'll start cutting you off that'll be after three minutes board members i believe we have 13 people uh signed up to speak because i see a couple uh crosstalk okay very good so fest first up this evening is mr jeff alderheider welcome hello my name is jeff after heidi from wellington colorado i think i'd like to better understand why the board does not have the pledge of allegiance on their agenda for this meeting it seems like it's viewed as more of an inconvenience instead of an affirmation of our beliefs have a look at that flag behind you would you please the flag behind you stands for the

016founding principles of our republic like free speech which are codified in our constitution as of today they're individuals listed on psd's wellness advisory council actively working against these principles let me give you an example on march 24th 2021 the non-profit organization in eyes colorado produced a video presentation called addressing covid19 vaccine hesitancy among those listed on the presentation with dr sean o'leary chad morris who's also listed on psd's wellness advisory council and joe smizer the son of former superintendent sandra smizer josh meiser is ceo of the public good project which partners with the cdc and runs a pro a program called project vector this project uses sentiment analysis to identify remote to remove accounts on social media platforms that may not agree with the current cdc rhetoric let me read a quote to you from

017the 36-minute mark of this presentation made by ben arnst manager at the public good project he said quote so yes people will push back when accounts are removed and say yes you're silencing us platforms aren't the government they aren't subject to the first amendment because first amendment protects you from the government not uh not companies end quote all while sandra schmeiser receives half a million dollars over the course of the next two years and his son's company works with members of psd's wellness advisory council to cyberstalk and shut down parents in your own district this type of behavior is repugnant in a free and open society and it goes against the very fabric of what this country country stands for is this the type of guidance that psd's wellness advisory council provides the superintendent kingsley

018i want this fixed now and i want you to take action cleaning house on this toxic behavior from representing our school we didn't elect to construct a digital gulag for our citizens and i'm not done in january 2016 colorado office of state auditor investigated cdphe and conflicts of interest for spending tobacco settlement funds on the immunization program at the time larry walk served as the executive director the finding of this audit revealed series of interlocks between cdphe employees and vendors creating a significant conflict of interest named in this report the same organization joe smizer is currently working with i.e immunized colorado since the last meeting i've asked this board the name of a last person named bernie listed on a document noted as a potential fundraiser and participant for larry walks organization psd's wellness advisory

019council also appointed an individual named bernie are they the same person what is the answer to my question if you want to answer it now that'd be great if you want to do it thank you your time has expired thanks thank you for your comments okay next up we have miss joni baker welcome good evening uh director fev superintendent kingsley board members and cabinet my name is joni baker and i'm currently the president of the association of classified employees before i took this position with the district i was a health tech for 14 years i'm here tonight to thank the board of education for their decision to require the mass for all students and staff thank you for thinking about our health during my years as a health tech and kindergarten para i was exposed

020to many illnesses by students and staff that would bring him to school i have visited several schools this year and i am so incredibly proud of our students and staff for being so supportive and encouraging to one another to wear their masks i understand that this is difficult but doing the right thing for all is always hard many community members have stated that this mandate was to help with funding i'm here to assure you this was not why we asked this mass to be worn i'm not here to give out statistics but i'm here to ask everyone to please stop with the anger and the hostility regarding wearing the masks and what's going on in our district this is an incredible opportunity for us to teach our students about the importance of community it's not

021all about you it's about our community it's our nurses our health techs office managers secretaries and administrators are beyond exhausted from all the contract tracing along with all their responsibilities for all their hard work and dedication students staff and parents to this community to simply try to help stop the spread thank you for the many hours both during school after school and weekends your service is vital to our district and community i ask everyone to thank these individuals for all their work and to please use this as a teaching moment for our students if we simply do the right thing good things will follow thank you for your time [Applause] thank you for your comments and next up i have ms tasha carr welcome good evening first i want to thank the board and the

022staff for sending me information that i requested on their covet policy and decision making authority and information on covet cases in school appreciate that the information provided shows that the boe decisions on mass mandates is based on guidance from larimer county colorado and colorado department of health and the cdc and where does the cdc get its guidance from the teachers union judicial watch and a four-year request obtained 12 pages of emails between the teachers union and the cdc that included language crafting language for the school reopening policy and whose guidance does the cdc ignore the fda advisory panel made up of medical experts who recommended against authorizing the pfizer booster for 16 and older but cdc director rochelle wallensky announced this week she was ignoring this advisory panel's recommendation but she is willing to get

023advice from teachers unions on covet policy in schools so it is clear that the cdc is not relying on the best available signs for their decisions but is instead relying on the best political science this is why american people have lost confidence in both elected unelected and elected officials and we want to make medical decisions for ourselves based on our own research and not on fear and misinformation i was also provided with a graph from the colorado department of health comparing the number of cases coveted cases in schools and what jumped out at me was that for the last days september 10th there were 250 cases of covid in schools at mandate mask versus 300 in schools not requiring the mass per 100 thousand also larima county schools school-age kids kids have among the highest

024incidents of covet in the state so this demonstrates to me what we've been saying all along and based on the scientific evidence that masks are not stopping the transmission the cases may be lower it's hard to tell from the data because they don't have all the ancillary information and it may not be even significant but that's beside the point because the mass clearly do not spread this do not stop the spread of covid despite what the last speaker said so again i asked the board what is the end goal that you hope to achieve with the mask no covert transmission you've clearly missed that benchmark so again i asked the board to provide us with the science that demonstrates that the benefits of masks outweigh the significant risk to children physically and mentally psychologically and

025these children are virtually at no risk from covid do your own homework do not rely on the cdc because they're not basing their decisions on science thank you thank you for your comments okay next up we have mr matt rogers welcome thanks the opportunity to speak with you um i really don't have an agenda um i participated in some of the online talks um back months ago when it thinks a lot more heated i think um but um most of us i think i kind of represent a lot of uh parents in fort collins that really feel like things are actually going okay um and you know when people feel good about that they tend not to show up at meetings they've got things going on in the evenings but more and more of us

026are starting to realize that the culture wars we're getting a little tired of them maybe it's time we come and support the people that we think are doing a good job so really i'm just here to give three minutes of thank you for some specific things um thanks first of all for holding these meetings i know a lot of this school districts don't even have a community comment part anymore they don't let people come in it's gotten to be too much there's too many security risks i think it's brave to actually have this to have everyone come in and say their voices i think that's an important part of our democracy and i thank you for doing that um i think i speak for for the majority of fort collins would we thank you for

027the mask and the vaccine recommendations um we do know it's working we do know the science and and most of us are fine with it most of us have no problem wearing masks our kids don't have problems wearing masks and we appreciate the guidance of keeping our kids safe and is keeping our teachers safe um and i thank you for the healthy child survey we saw some of these uh drafts going out i think it's a very important part we need to understand the mental sexual health um diversity and equity are things that are critical for us to understand these are critical components of a modern education system um i think it's important work that that's being done and i look forward to seeing how that is implemented um and i know that these are

028all hard choices these are not popular things um these are these are great ways for random people to show up in front of your house sometimes uh it's a great way to you know develop fan clubs that that um you know or maybe stalking online and organizing in in ways that are healthy and unhealthy um but these are the right choices these are the good choices um doing the next right thing um if you're and you're frozen fans i have two daughters that are of frozen age and that kind of goes through our head a lot that's how this country has always worked it's what's always made this country great doing the right thing following um what needs to be done for the community that's a hard thing to do i i can imagine your

029job has been very difficult it's amazing anyone would run for re-election um but i think it's important um that that that happens and that you guys are here and doing the things you do um it seems like a thankless job sometimes um so i'm just here to say thank you thank you for your comments i have next up mr tom griggs welcome good evening superintendent kingsley welcome to fort collins board staff sports support staff members and board members i'm tom griggs and i'm running for psd school board to represent district d on the board i'd like to talk to you tonight about why it matters that we have a public education specialist on the school board any organization benefits when the people in management positions like the directors of pooter school district understand the inner

030workings of the organization that they are serving the impacts of policy making can be devastating when the balance of power lies too greatly in the hands of people who don't have the understanding of what their decisions mean for the morale productivity and requisite dedication of their own staff evidence suggests that this has been the case too often over the last couple of years in the heat of the covid crisis schools are not businesses it is a mistake to evaluate a school's performance in terms of dollars and cents profitability to be sure schooling is a community investment but the potential results of such an investment are almost impossible to measure in business terms and the cost of inadequate investment in the education of our kids is almost incalculable like most teachers at the beginning of their

031careers personally i went into the profession for reasons other than money the rewards of teaching are more abstract than dollars and cents yet teachers are underpaid for the work they do and many cannot afford to buy homes in the communities in which they live there is no ballot measure this year to increase teacher pay i think this is a mistake and as a board member i would both support and advocate for asking the voters in our community for more money to pay teachers in my own work as a teacher i've personally seen the difference having the right classroom resources makes and i will always advocate that we expend our limited resources inside our classrooms as much as possible so that students have what they need to thrive and so teachers don't have to provide these

032resources out of their own pockets my name is tom griggs my website address is tomgriggs4psd.org please check it out i'm the only public school educator in this race and i would be the only public school educator if elected on the board and i hope i can earn your support for psd school board in this very important election on november 2nd thank you very much thank you for your comments next up will be miss jessica kraus welcome hi my name is jessica i identify as a child of god who is caring loving giving talented smart and passionate wouldn't that sound nice to hear our kids identify themselves as the amazing beautiful souls that they are first day of school instead of a pronoun our children's identities have been corrupted at the hands of their peers elders

033and social media and society has accepted this as normal the world says let's feed their confusion so we can mold them into what we want them to be instead of teaching the children who they truly are the person that god has created them to be the identity that he gave them in the womb you think children will learn their true identity from worldly ideologies theories inclusion groups a special month of the year a club a cult then you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem i don't care who you are what color you are what religion you are etc i love everyone the same and kids are born to love they're taught to hate we can all love one another even when we don't agree or believe the same things but when

034we throw labels on people all we're all we're doing is feeding the division where is the month to acknowledge the christians or other religions or belief systems you sure don't want those people converting your kids but you're okay com highlighting and promoting society wanting to change our little girls into boys and our boys into girls feeding their desire to be a part of something even if it's unhealthy people can be whoever they want to be but they don't need the other people's opinions and decisions pushed down their throat second thing i would like to mention is you guys get are getting millions of dollars to physically and emotionally harm our children under the guise of keeping them healthy and safe but you can't even get enough money to provide healthy nutritious food for our kids

035at school they get processed fake food that half of them can't even stand and thank goodness for high school they can walk down to the convenience store and get even grosser food we you know we get to go home as people who are here fighting this battle we get to fight for our kids their future their freedoms and to continue to fight for what is right there is something our kids and grandkids will remember about us from this generation forward what are your children and grandchildren going to say about your decisions that you have made this whole last year and a half from now forward will they be proud of you for choosing money over doing what's right because doing what's right isn't always most popular doing what's right is doing what's right when no

036one else is looking that's integrity and that's in a lot of the schools they really promote integrity so we don't always agree with everybody but doing what's right is a thing that we feel deep in our soul so when we go home at night we should be able to go to sleep knowing i did exactly what was right not what was i was told not what i was paid to do and i hope you guys get to do that thank you thank you for your comments uh next up is casey lindsey welcome good evening board and thank you for allowing us to be with you tonight i just have to say our children deserve a strong foundation for success whatever that may look like for them later in life cmas results indicate that they are

037being deprived of that foundation in this school district and their future failures and challenges could very well be as a result of educational decisions and shortcomings being made now over the last three years and i understand not all of you have been on the board over the last three years but over those last three years this board of education has had one educational curriculum agenda item that seems to be at best an oversight when it comes to a child's future as the board of education you have four main duties and responsibilities hire and fire the superintendent approve the budget set policies and set curriculum why would it seem appropriate over the last 36 months to only have had one educational agenda item currently and this is according to the psd's website 42 percent of third

038through eighth grade students are below grade level for reading nearly all significantly the vast majority of those same third through eighth grade students are below grade level for math i would argue that as superintendent kingsley said tonight ownership of learning starts here with this board and should not fall squarely on the student's shoulders it's incredible when they are willing to stretch and get excited about learning but it starts here i would also argue pressure to perform and core knowledge concepts likely need to be reviewed based on those cms scores parents demand to see results educationally we can handle pretty much the rest at home this board has categorically failed our children and the good news is you can vote for four of these positions on november the 2nd for candidates who are focused on exceptional

039core educational values and excellence those candidates are brandy aspinall brady beal eric dobbs and jeanette gator talk to your friends and get out and vote thank you all very much thank you for your comments and next i have miss jennifer jolly welcome thank you good evening i'm a parent of two psd elementary school students and i am here tonight to say thank you i would like to sincerely thank every member of this board and superintendent kingsley for prioritizing our students health and their well-being and for preserving in-person learning boy are my kids so thrilled to be back in school they are overjoyed and they are thriving despite this last week i was saddened to see that state health officials announced that colorado's school-aged children currently have the highest coveted rates of any age group in

040our state yet this board has been able to keep our schools open for in-person learning and together we have significantly reduced covert transmission now my young children have benefited from these safety protocols including the universal indoor masking they've directly benefited however these safety protocols have protected the rest of our community our dedicated psd staff their families our neighbors our health care professionals who are working in icus that are over capacity with coveted patients i want to sincerely thank you and i want to ask for psd to keep keep doing what you're doing keep doing the right thing let's keep our schools as safe as we can keep them open for as long as we can and keep following the medical expert's advice i also quickly want to thank you so much for your work to

041make psd an inclusive environment and that includes inclusive for our lgbtq students and staff thank you so much [Applause] thank you for your comments next up i have miss nikki galbraith welcome hold on one second okay [Music] i'm here tonight because as we all know as we all know psd is well into its second year of mandated mandated mass for public school children i feel is well past time that the psd board of education provide peer reviewed studies to the concerned parents and caregivers of our community that conclusively prove mask wearing for upwards of eight hours a day is not harming our children's physical intellectual social emotional and mental health i'm asking for conclusive evidence that prove the long-term impacts of mask wearing are not more dangerous for children than the virus that have virtually

042no chance of dying from the children of no chance of dying from in may children's hospital in colorado declared an unprecedented state of emergency in youth mental health does this incredible declaration not deserve new thinking on current coveted protocols for children perhaps even calling on our psd wellness committee and their various and influential connections to pursue new mask research from csu cu ann shoots uc health n-i-e-h-s and nih it seems only reasonable psd board of education prioritize providing parents with the environmental toxicological toxicological and social emotional impacts of prolonged mask wearing for children is this happening yet i ask you to be courageous in your decision making for children ask important hard questions about mass safety to our board of health demand that they provide you answers and make your decisions accordingly we as parents

043implore you to stand up for our children we implore you we're on board if you show us the research that's all we're asking thank you thank you for your comments and next up i have mr mark fuchs welcome all right um so hello um at the last meeting and also at this meeting we've had people come up here and tell us how they work they wear their masks to protect the community and make people feel safe as has been stated multiple times here children are not big carriers of covert nor are they very susceptible to having a bad case of it themselves so what are we doing asking children to protect others to make others feel safe that should never be a child's responsibility and shame on those who make children feel that they can

044hurt others just by breathing i am vaccinated and believe me i do not need children to protect me no one else should either let me tell you something else safety is an illusion there is no possible way to make everyone safe whether it's covert or driving or basically any other thing that involves living your life all life involves risk and i understand that some people don't want to take those risks that's fine for them and it's their choice our nation is built on the freedom of choice and that is all we want to be able to choose what is right for our children this seems to be lost in our nation right now you people up there are not gods you are no different than any of us you do not have all the answers

045and maybe if you had a little more humility you'd be willing to listen to opposing views and actually hear what parents have been saying instead you have turned this into an us first you scenario and i promise you the us is mad and ready to fight with everything we have i don't need any more time thank you for your comments and i just want to confirm that uh arthur strong is not here okay uh that brings us to miss heather uh laden para please remind me if i didn't say that correctly excellent thank you thank you we've spoken a lot about mass efficacy over the past weeks and clearly there's science on both sides of that and uh the decisions being made aren't a part of that science but what we haven't talked about which

046was actually talked about a little bit earlier tonight is is there proof that we're not harming our children by long-term mask square wearing i'd like psd to prove that the small decrease in the spreading of the virus which is approximately 30 percent according to a presentation given by jared olson with ldche last week measured by a small study with unclear study controls i'd like to see the proof that this mask wearing outweighs both the short and long-term term learning delays and psychological damage to children created by the masking policies the psd has implemented not one child under the age of 18 has died from covet and lamer county since the beginning of the pandemic not one yet we continue to insist these dubious mitigation efforts at the expense of our children's long-term well-being as an

047answer to the problems you're creating you are now implementing an enormous amount of mental health programs brought to us by the 19 million dollars in esser funds that you've agreed to accept in returning in return for these coveted policies instead of implementing these programs using these conditional federal dollars stop the problem at the root stop scaring children stop masking children against their will and the will of their parents and focus on educating our children stop practicing medicine on our children we're not asking that every child goes without a mask we're asking that parents are able to make that decision for their children it's a medical device it's an eua approved medical device and it's being forced on kids and against the parents will if they want their child to receive a public education so if

048you don't agree then prove these prove it that they're not being harmed psychologically physically mentally prove that there's no long-term damage to these developing lungs that are behind a mask breathing in their own air and bacteria that collects in the mask all day long where are those studies show us the studies please please prove that you're not harming our children whoever the final decision maker on this is i believe it's the board although everyone seems to pass the buck from the cd phe to the lammer county to cdc but if it's the board that's the final decision maker please provide us the peer-reviewed studies showing there's no long-term harm that's all we're asking thank you for your comments and finally this evening we have miss jenny zeller welcome my name is jenny zeller and i

049have three children ages twelve nine and six i'm here to inform you of the negative effects that the mandatory mass requirement in schools has had on my children personally my oldest has always excelled in school throughout her academic career she has exemplified great conduct and is well liked by her teachers but in this past year her academic performance and attitude at school are declining every single day she has had to wear a mask in school she gets a terrible headache it has taken a toll on her her fatigue is now manifested into poor behavior at school and the administration at wellington middle school has openly reported that she is not alone they have seen a drastic increase in behavioral misconduct from kids with no previous incidences on their record my middle child has adhd and

050dyslexia he works harder than most in the classroom and even after school with his tutors just to stay afloat i have worked hard to find mass made of soft materials in the hopes that they would not distract him but without much luck also none of these masks we have tried have eliminated his daily fear of feeling like he can't breathe in school i have resigned myself to finding him outside support for his learning differences long ago since psd has zero resources for kids with dyslexia but why must you continue to make this more difficult for him the struggles my youngest deal with are the most heartbreaking for me he enjoyed pre-k kindergarten and now first grade although remote learning did not work for him he did not lose his passion for learning in school he

051was so excited to learn he was finally going back in person last year however with the initial mass mandate for students difficulties for him at school also began numerous times i have had to leave with half have had to leave work to pick him up early from school he's been in tears but is not able to articulate more than my stomach hurts or i miss my mom i miss my dad when asked what's going on this happens frequently starts about halfway through the school day but then he's his normal self upon returning home consults with doctors and different strategies continue to leave us without answers as these episodes continued but do you know what made them stop the lifting of the mass mandate last year for psd's younger students he was in kindergarten and they

052stopped the remainder of his school year for 2020 in the summer went well and without incident however since school started this august i have had to pick up my son from school four separate times since school year started this year this is a healthy six-year-old boy with a huge network of family and support people he sees almost daily he's not anxious because of trauma or because of the uncertainty of his life this little boy whose body is so overwhelmed with the elevated levels of carbon dioxide associated with wearing a mask that his body physically panics and he cannot understand why why do you continue to make this a requirement for him to get an education the cdc's most recent mmwr released september 10th of this year explains that from march 1st 2020 to august 14th

05321 there were only 49.7 cumulative kovitz 19 associated hospitalizations per 100 000 children among those 49.7 children the children aged 5 to 11 were the least impacted we're my youngest falls and while the older kids 12 to 17 are more likely to be hospitalized from copic complications they are still only peak at less than 70 in over a year thank you miss seller your time has expired can i say just one more thing five more seconds five seconds thank you superintendent brian kingsley you sir at the start of this year the district's priority were safety and to keep kids in school that's what you said that's why you were mandating mass but that has not been the reality for my family or my children at what point do i as their parent choose their physical

054and mental safety over their education and why am i in this position your time has expired i appreciate it very much thank you for your comments okay and uh i would like to conclude by thanking everybody who takes the time to show up uh in front of our board and to make these comments i do value what you're doing i speak on behalf of the board i think it's very important that everybody has an opportunity to speak and we are listening we are paying attention we may not always do what you want but we are we are here listening i also uh want to express that i feel like uh maybe i'm being a little sloppy as i start the meetings i want to be careful to make sure uh everywhere where everyone aware this

055is a work session this evening it's not a business meeting traditionally in the work session we sit in the middle of the room and it's more of an information informational opportunity to work with the staff and that is why at those meetings we don't do the pledge allegiance we do them always at the business meetings so i just want to make that clear to everyone okay moving along that brings us to item 6.0 and that would be the consent agenda so uh wouldn't any board members like to pull either of the two items off oh sorry i went i went out of order flips back up uh that brings us to 5.0 which is board and committee reports so board members are there any committee reports this evening go ahead dj yeah i just wanted

056to give a little update and share with everyone that we have started our student advisory council and we had our first in-person meeting this last week and it was a great start to starting to get feedback from students and being able to hear directly from the students about different subjects we spent most of this last meeting kind of organizing and discussing topics that we want to discuss but i'm pretty excited about getting it started and i want to make sure that we're sharing it out with everyone that it has been moving forward and then i have the second thing is our legislative agenda i the dab has a representative that is going to be working are sharing information with the dab and i met with her today and was able to uh kind of share

057out the process of how we go through our legislative when it's in session and then talking a little bit about casbi resolutions too so uh that was another great meeting that happened today so thanks thank you dj and uh thank you for hosting uh two of the students at our dinner session i think it's really wonderful getting their voice at the table so i appreciate the leadership you're taking on getting that going are there other committee reports this evening okay so seeing none i will move us then now to item 6.0 which would be the consent agenda would any board members like to remove one of the two items from consent okay seeing none i'd take a motion for the consent agenda go ahead nate yes i move that the board approve and adopt the

058recommended actions for the items on the consent agenda thank you and i have a second from kristin draper and joel take a roll call vote for that please dj anderson aye nate donovan aye kristen draper aye christophe aye rob henderson hi carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes seven zero okay thank you that brings us to the action item 7.0 on the agenda and for those following the agenda i'll remind you we are swapping the order of things so 7.1 this evening is a resolution in support of the lgbt history month could i get a motion on the floor for that resolution go ahead kristen when you're ready i move that the board passed the lgbt history month october uh resolution as stated in the action uh item 7.1 excellent to have a second

059i do from nate donovan okay so um do we want to go ahead and read that resolution first or should i hand it off to superintendent kingsley how would you like to approach that okay yeah go right ahead and jump in first members of the board members of the public we are honored this evening to welcome danielle here to speak to this resolution this evening danielle is a math teacher at pooter community academy this is her third year in psd and her 10th year teaching overall i'm proud to report that she co-facilitates the psd staff equity coalition and psd prod affinity group for lgb tqia plus staff danielle is involved in developing and supporting opportunities in the district to increase understanding of how to best support our lgbtqia plus students staff and families daniella thank

060you for approaching the podium if you can please give your remarks at this time we're greatly appreciative of your presence and remarks tonight thank you and welcome thank you i would like to start by thanking the board of education for having me here tonight as superintendent kingsley mentioned my name is danielle herr and i identify as a queer cis female my pronouns are she her hers and i'm beyond grateful to be representing my lgbtqia plus colleagues students and psd families tonight this is truly a surreal moment and i appreciate the opportunity to be heard and feel valued as my true self the lgbtqia plus stakeholders of pooter school district are eager for this level of support it is the biggest thing we discuss in our staff equity excuse me staff affinity group and research shows

061that visible support is one of the best ways to stand behind lgbtqia plus students we have staff members and psd that are hesitant to be their true selves afraid to mention that they have a same-sex partner or spouse who wonder if they can mention that they are trans or queer or gay we have students that are stumbling through adolescence looking for support and representation and at every psd site let alone classroom to classroom within that site they are getting a different experience i am hoping that tonight is one of the first actions of many that shows our lgbtqia plus community that psd is united in supporting us as we are and how we shall show up in all spaces i know that there are stakeholders out there who want to learn how to help i

062know that i have the privilege of working with over 20 lgbtqia plus staff members who are dedicated to making psd the best place to work and the best place to send your kids i know that psd is ready to educate every child every day but we also need to educate our staff members on more inclusive language and what it truly means to be a safe place pleased to introduce this lgbtqia plus resolution that will bring more clarity unity and transparency to our community thank you for your time for prioritizing this resolution and thank you to everyone who has given me the courage to speak on behalf of the lgbtqia plus community [Applause] and consider yourself heard we appreciate your comments miss her uh it's truly an honor to have you speaking in front of the

063board this evening uh with that would uh somebody like to read that resolution sure i'll go ahead and do that and thank you so much for introducing that's wonderful resolution in support of lgbt history month october 2021 whereas lgbt history month was founded in 1994 by missouri high school history teacher rodney wilson lgbt history month provides role models builds community and represents history of lgbtq plus rights and whereas october 11th is celebrated as national coming out day and whereas pruder's 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 or sexual orientation and whereas the pruder school district board of education wholeheartedly embraces pruder school districts lgbtq plus students employees and community members for the diversity they bring to

064our 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 district board of education and staff have committed to make scooter school district a welcoming community for all students and staff we recognize there is more work ahead of us pruder school district will use equality and inclusion are fundamental values and wishes to ensure all students and staff feel respected valued and affirmed and believes we are stronger together now therefore be it resolved the brutal school district board of education does hereby proclaim october 2021 as lgbt history month in pruder school district and encourages students and staff to participate in and to celebrate the rich history of our lgbtq plus community has to offer thank you so much for reading that

065board members would you like to make any comments at this time go ahead kristin one other comment i'd like to make is that for those of you who would like to show support for this spirit day actually will be coming up it's the third thursday in october and that was started by a teenager who was trying to counter act the bullying that sometimes happens for lgbt students so in 2010 he promoted wearing purple on the third thursday of the month of october as spirit day to show that you are a person who can support and help people who the students lgbtq plus students um be accepted and seen as who they truly are so if you would like to do that we're purple third thursday of october thank you thank you kristin other board members

066okay i just want to say that i very much hope that in reading this resolution voting on it and taking the time to slow down uh and hear some comments that we're showing uh we're doing a small step taking a small step and showing uh what it looks like to have a safe space and try to lead and create a safe space for every kid in our community no matter who they are what they believe in uh how they present et cetera so um if there are no other comments kristen go ahead i just want to also just express that that that goes for staff and for um teachers staff and community as well um and as as you so eloquently stated um the kids need role models they need to see themselves as um

067prosperous and adults who are doing what they love and that's what they need to see so we want to make sure that within our teaching community and within our broader community they have the ability to see that thank you for those comments okay i'll take a roll call vote please jill dj anderson aye nate donovan i kristen draper aye christophe aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 excellent that brings us to item 7.2 on the agenda and this evening we're going to be hearing uh and voting on a motion for the academic focus areas and the 2021-2022 district unified improvement plan to launch this could i get a motion for this action item go ahead nate yes i move that the board approved the district unified improvement plan for

0682021 2022 thank you very much and i have a second from carolyn reed and with that i'll turn it over to you superintendent kingsley thank you members of the board presenting information on this particular topic and answering questions this evening are both of our assistant superintendents scott nielsen for our secondary schools and dr tracy geil representing our elementary schools uh joining them will also be robert beauchamp our director of curriculum instruction and assessment welcome thank you good evening president feb members of the board superintendent kingsley and community members assistant superintendent of secondary school scott nielsen and director of curriculum instruction and assessment robert beauchamp and i will be presenting tonight we are excited to be back with you for our annual presentation of our district uip and academic focus areas this is an annual presentation

069as you're aware psd has received accreditation from the state with a performance plan so this uip is in support of that plan assignment we tonight we'll review the process for how we develop the uip the student outcomes that we are targeting and the action steps that have been activated to address those outcomes you'll hear about the academic focus areas and the key adult behaviors to improve outcomes for students coming off of last year this year were very intentional to identify a few key focus areas that fall under the umbrella of accelerate and belong the means to our district ends are through the relationship of standards content students and self and when we are intentional about the relationship of how those intersect we can create classrooms environments where acceleration and belonging occur and student outcomes are

070achieved examining standards and content development cannot be absent the student we have to know the children in front of us so that we can be intentional about ensuring content is engaging affirming and meaningful as well as planning scaffolds so that all students can interact with and accelerate within grade level content we also know through years of student connections data that our learners are also better positioned to meet their academic goals when they feel a sense of belonging with their peers adults and their interests and as we move forward towards equity together we have calibrated our primary focus areas of our uip to reflect those principles of accelerate and belong in reviewing the district ends the monitoring report and recent data we isolated and focused on a few key strategies to go deep across the system

071with specifically tonight we'll focus on areas that we are creating supportive learning processes and practices access of opportunity and excellence our literacy practices and then as a reminder in january you'll hear more about our mental health supports in our comprehensive mental health plan presentation as you've heard in the past um we go through a continuous improvement process um started with focused on if you go back to that slide that dr giles shared at the center of the ends that this board helped create that's the center that's our district ends that's what drives our goals from there we look at our our outcomes every year and we do that through a monitoring report with dr schmitz i believe this year that will be split up over two separate nights so we can go a little deeper

072with the data that dwayne shares we look forward to that presentation probably february march i think is what we're looking at our january february so that's the targets and the data from there we look at as staff what are some of the the challenges that continue to be in front of us and that helps to drive our action steps or our unified improvement plan which you'll be we're asking for you to approve this evening i think one of the things we wanted to talk about and you'll hear in our steps tonight is what we're talking about as district leadership as a cadence of accountability and you'll hear that as we talk about some of our action steps tonight some of the accountability measures or as superintendent kingsley talks about pressure we talk about that as

073paying attention trying to have an eye on where we're headed in some cases think about a cadence of of accountability coinciding with a scoreboard so we can see the progress that's happening along the pathway rather than waiting for the district or waiting for the the monitoring report as an annual monitor and we'll talk about that as we get into some of the steps that we'll take you through tonight as we think about where we are this slide should look familiar this is a slide that was presented to the board in the monitoring report by dr schmitz i believe it was in february and in that report he talked about he had a slide like this that talked about our successes as a district the things that were going well we pulled out the challenges we

074must solve he walked you through each one of these in the in the spring and if you take a look at it it talks about decreasing in attendance and truancy our kindergarten reading uh third through eighth math being negatively impacted by coven the subgroups continue to lag statewide peers gaps in achievement and opportunities within psd for several subgroups discipline disparities and connection disparities so as we talk tonight as we walk through our planning process and some of the steps that we continue to take this was at the forefront this drove the work we did with our learning services team our work we did with principals and you'll see these challenges as they support the school improvement planning process as well you'll see lots of commonality between what's going on with the district plan and what's

075going on with the school improvement plans so i just want you to be aware that this goes back that's how that cycle works for us and drives the work that we continue to engage in rather than putting in front of you tonight a whole bunch of data i want to just say we have updated on our website if you decide you want to look at it and this is for the general public as we try to be transparent with how we're doing if you were to go to the research and evaluation page on psd's website and you were to look under the comparison of district achievement you can see and compare psd's outcomes for previous years against other districts and how we did in the covid year against other districts so we think that's important

076and transparent but we felt like tonight we just wanted to pull out a few bullet points sharing as we have looked at our data much of the patterns that we saw prior to kovid still look the same they look very similar and we could go back to the page before when dwayne talked about the things we still have to work on they still show up in the coveteer our early literacy despite us doing better than the national norm we have 66 of k3 students at or above the benchmark that's down from 76 pre pandemic so we have some work to do right you'll hear tracy talk about what our plans are we talk about that early literacy just despite being in the top three in performance for districts across the front range we continue to

077have students who are not meeting grade level expectations in both reading and math and if you take a look at those you see somewhere between 40 and in math 50 percent of our students that might not be meeting or exceeding that's work ahead of us and you'll see particularly tonight focus on sub groups who we have historically talked about with the board around those being where our disparities are the greatest and so that i think is focus you'll see tonight on the map test despite continuing to exceed the national norms on map our students did not perform as well as they did a year ago our gaps you'll hear dwayne when he talks about this in the monitoring report we have what he calls the psd performance gap and that shrunk a little bit in

078most grade levels in some grade levels it increased but in most it shrunk a little bit so we would say as this bullet says we didn't perform quite as well on map as we have in previous years we recognize that as an opportunity and i think you'll see that as we talk about what's ahead of us this me still i got tracy to keep me on on target every day of my my work life um one of the things we continue to talk about um is high performance teams and there were some questions that the board asked about quantifying how we're doing with teams one of the things i want to report to the board is that i am excited about where we are but i also as we responded in writing we also had

079a pause i i wish i could say that another way but covet impacted how we performed with our grade level teams some buildings were able to do it on some level but those buildings that were emerging it was hard to do in a team's setup now i'm using microsoft teams to run high performing teams it was hard to take those from an emerging level and move them forward so tracy and i right now are in in the process of evaluating where we are with our grade level teams as we get around to to do the work with our individual one-on-one conversations and have our principals work on their goals with us as we work with our principal teams we are re-emphasizing this work the idea that teams are meeting regularly to talk about the individual

080students and the the most important part of that is that they're analyzing how the students are performing and as teams creating adjustments to their curriculum so they can meet the needs of the individual students that is the best way to have equitable outcomes and get at grade level content so they're having conversations on the front side of what they want students to know and be able to do at grade level and then they're on the back side of that analyzing the data and making adjustments and those are critical components and one of the things i want to just reinforce with the board is in january of 2020 todd and i brought to the board a presentation about teams and we had a chart for you where we talked about buildings that that time todd and

081i felt like were exceeds meets and approaching we'll go back to that right we'll continue to analyze that tracy and i are are open and you see in the plan that is where we're headed but we felt it appropriate coming out of covid coming out of some of the challenges we had last year to get back and understand where our teams are and i started to say earlier i am super excited about the work i'm seeing at the middle school and high school level with collaborative partnerships um last week at our secondary principal meeting we happened to be out at preston and one of the challenges i've put in front of principals is to share some of our strategies some of the work we're doing for our unified improvement plan is that's what we want

082to see when we're out in our secondary schools for our print secondary principal meetings so last week when we were at preston during our breakout time we were able to go out and see three different teams that we're doing this process we're talking about in my particular room was a seventh grade math group it was analyzing the end of unit math exam data and they had made a decision that they were going to reteach standard 2 or enrich for standard 2 and they were going to use flexible grouping as their strategy they were going to do that the following day so what they were doing was analyzing all the students that were above at grade level or below and flexibly grouping them out into three different classrooms so they could re-teach reinforce or extend that's

083a powerful example of teaming and what's going on in the building and that was an example for all of those that's an example of our principles learning together and we'll continue that process as we move forward and re-emphasize what we believe to be the rocket fuel for getting at acceleration grade level content for all and access to growth through this kind of model and we'll continue to share with the board how we're doing we just ask for some grace as we get back up and running recognizing we are definitely reinforcing it and just to add on i'm sorry if you don't mind we have a question from board member who's watching could you tell me what b o y m o y and e i are please you bet beginning of the year middle of

084the year and end of the year data so we took maps test at the secondary level elementary does acadiance and some other beginning middle and end of the year assessments and so we'll be monitoring that i would also add that as we get around to talk to our building um and and meet with teams we're also looking at what we would call the formative iterative data that they have day to day and how are they responding in the lead indicator uh data as well all of that i think makes up what what supports teams moving students across the continuum to add on to the elementary experience last year in june when i met with all the elementary principals as part of the summative evaluation process i think 100 of them at some point during that

085conference named how excited they were to be restarting refreshing coming back to their teaming protocols this year it was something that we were challenged by last year in terms of time and you know focus and this year there's such a great commitment from our teams to come back to the work that we value and the work that our teams value and the work that they do together collaboratively i cannot wait to talk to you about readiness in early literacy and our acceleration one of the things that i experienced last year as an elementary principal is coming into the school year in august and september and starting to look through our beginning of the year early literacy data from acadians it was that feeling of we have a lot of kids who are in the emergency

086room when it comes to early literacy it was a shock because of the disruptions that they experienced in the spring that the urgency that i feel toward this goal was immediate from that moment i knew it was coming but then to see the numbers it was really something that that was was important that we focus on and really narrow as an elementary group that this is our big rock for the year that we have to move the needle on some of those early literacy instructional disruptions that students had over the course of last year to that end we have a wonderful opportunity with the evidence-based reading training that all k-3 teachers in the state of colorado must complete by august 2022 as you received in your notes for tonight we have 211 of our teachers

087who have passed that course up to this point so huge celebration to our teachers who were doing that 40 hour training during the pandemic last year teaching remotely like that was no small lift and we continue to have teachers who are working through that course we have a total of 562 registered additionally our principals and aps are going through a condensed version of that training provided by our pd and curriculum instruction department so that we can co-construct some look fors and observables that we want to see across all of our classrooms for that system-wide floor of excellence when it comes to early literacy experiences students should not be having different early literacy experiences across our buildings that we need to come to a place where we're systematizing instruction we have kids who move in and

088out of our schools across our district into our district they need to have an equitable experience across all of our schools so that is the primary goal of that co-constructed look for us is to create that observable coachable tool that principals can use with their teams to create that standard floor of excellence additionally this year we will have our second pd for our pre-k and elementary staff on our adopted literacy curriculum as you remember in the fall of 2019 we adopted reach the reader and creative curriculum for early childhood classrooms they had one professional development and then we have the pandemic they'll have their second professional development this year hopefully in november is when that first one will take place and then as you're aware we had extended our summer programming this year to include

089more students more services and more targeted supports you'll receive a report on that next month in october about the outcomes from that program we also during the course of this year are planning to use our arp s for three dollars that you heard about last month to create a high dosage tutoring program to further supplement and support students early literacy as well as their math instruction and their pursuit of graduation credits all of that is identified through our support group of who will receive those actions and steps and who will activate those steps again that cadence of accountability the things that we're going to be monitoring both at the system level and at the school level and our elementary teams do a great job of looking at their benchmark data that they get at the

090beginning of the year the middle of the year and the end of year planning targeted interventions for students who are not meeting those grade level benchmarks then also using that progress monitoring data the frequency of that progress monitoring data ranges anywhere from every week to every three weeks to every six weeks depending on what the student needs the diagnostic data is especially helpful and that systematic design cohort that is the second bullet under the activated supports is a really essential component of looking at the diagnostic data that we give to some students receive additional literacy assessments so that we can further identify the lowest level of skill that is preventing the student from reaching grade level benchmarks and literacy so the analysis the goal setting and the intervention design is a critical component within that

091systematic design cohort we also will be monitoring that training completion data for the cde required evidence-based reading training and then also as a leadership team of principals and assistant principals will be looking at that classroom observable data and seeing which areas we need to provide further pd in once we've established that standard floor of excellence in the district sure go ahead dj i i just uh two things one this really excites me uh because it's something that i've talked about a few times about trying to get that early childhood learning and our early early learners all on the same page so we can all agree on evidence-based teaching and get that set up throughout i think that is so important and i also want to give a huge shout out again to the teachers that

092have stepped up and we've been able to fit that training in i think i i commend you because i know how hard everything has been at the start of the year and especially hopefully some of that you did during the summer and but i really want to thank the teachers out there and want to share that out there but i just want to say how excited i am to hear this stuff so thank you thank you carolyn hi and tracy you talked about targeted interventions and so that i can understand what that might look like for a child maybe you can explain to me what you would do for maybe a second grader that is struggling with word recognition and and and and reading so you he's not he's not being able to identify words

093so right what an intervention would look like for for that child yeah so using that diagnostic data would be a place to start so we'd identify the appropriate diagnostic assessment to give that child and there's a couple that we have in the system that we would use so based on that diagnostic assessment data a school might implement a six week period of intervention that could involve a standardized program like an example for example if the lowest level of skill need is a fluency level that just continued practice and repeated practice with identifying words and being a fluent reader might have that student participate in an intervention called read naturally which just is an example of repeated practice of reading appropriate decodable passages at that student's independent level and then with support from a classroom teacher

094that would monitor that progress if the lower level of skill need was a phonics skill for example decoding cvc words that the diagnostic assessment identified that student might receive intensive instruction in either replacing different vowels and then quickly recognizing as those vowels are replaced what the new sounds of the words make so that they've got really you know adept ability and recall to get those vowel sounds in place and so that would be either through maybe cards it could be white board work where they would manipulate sounds so a lot of different tools and strategies available to teachers some of the interventions are designated programs like orton gillingham for example others are best practice interventions that we've researched and implemented over the course of several years and through training in our pd and curriculum assessment

095department so there's a wide range of interventions some are are programmatic and some are instructional practices rob so since carolyn brought it up and following up on a comment we heard earlier um can you share with us what supports we have for dyslexic kids and how that fits into this work here yes so pre-pandemic we invested quite a bit in orton gillingham training particularly at our title schools so a significant number of our title school teachers were trained in orton gillingham um there are additional supports where we were just at the phase of starting to provide more teachers across the district with training in orton gillingham and that was supposed to have occurred in june of 2020 that did not occur due to the pandemic and as well as some cost cutting measures that we

096needed to take that is definitely something that our teachers and our principals would like to have more system support for orton gillingham training right now it's very much dependent on a school's resources and whether they can afford to provide that training for teachers and so pre-pandemic we were looking at professional development was providing some additional com financial resources to lower the cost to schools so teachers could participate in that training that's something that we hope to bring back okay no further questions at this time all right thank you all right graduation rates again this falls into what we would call the accelerate creating systems of support to meet the graduation rate and completion rates as we aim to to graduate our seniors with options tracy's already talked a little bit about the high dosage tutoring

097how we provide some supports or lay supports alongside the students credit recovery offerings the thing i want to focus on tonight though is we talked about in that in that uh early part the cadence of accountability i want to talk about some of the work that the principals at the secondary level are engaged in because i think it fits to this how we're supporting particularly additional support groups and the students that are off track we are in what i would call a cadence of accountability with our secondary principles and i'll just use the high school principles as an example our first meeting this year we looked at the district off track rates so we looked at the off track students and then we did it by subgroups but we did that for ninth for tenth

098for 11th and for 12th graders and then we shared that same uh image for each of the high schools so they could see to start the year where were their students with the off track we will do that again when we come back at the end of nine weeks so we have the first grading period the first opportunity for credits to be accumulated for change to have occurred in between we are doing or using the three-week grade check so our first first step with that was last week and each one of our high school principals looked at the three-week grade check to get a sense of how many students and who are they are failing classes and how many students are getting a's and we selected that to try to get an analysis of how

099what is our balance between a's and f's and we did that for the same subgroups that we looked at for the off track dashboard that is a leading indicator for whether or not you're going to accumulate credits is how you're doing in the three-week grade check so each principal did that and then the culmination of the meeting was to share what they noticed and action steps for me as they went back to their buildings as i've followed up with those since then they have gone back to their buildings and are taking action as we come back together the next time we're together we'll follow up on the action and we'll repeat that cycle as we move through the year drilling down to understand what are the patterns of of classes students are failing and what

100are some of the impediments in those classes so helping our principals helping our leaders to understand that we will do that same cadence of accountability as we meet with our our secondary assistant principles so they can get in that same mindset but most of the actions that our principals had was to go back share the examples with the aps and create a building level plan for how to support those students in many cases buildings are doing it but this is a way to systematize that work rather than one building doing one thing another doing the other this is a way for us to share practices and that is an action we will continue to follow and monitor and i think that gives you an opportunity to see what i would call a scoreboard the principals

101will be able to monitor progress as we step through this year in terms of some of the leading indicators toward graduation rates at the middle school level it's different we don't have off track at the middle school level so what we're doing at the middle school level is a similar pattern and that each of our middle schools will take a look at and select 45 or about 45 i've asked them for 40 to 50. 45 seems to be where they've landed additional support kids that represent the diversity of the school and they're going to track and monitor those students as we're together in our meetings to see again in the three-week grade check how are those additional support students doing in their classes who's failing and who are getting a's and what are some of

102the impediments so we're able to replicate and continue to talk about strategies with both middle school and high school principals together while having some little different data to look at but if we think about our additional support students at the middle school level if we can help them to be on track as they move from middle school to high school we got a better chance for those students staying on track when they start to accumulate credits so that's our goal that's our work that's what you see represented in the uip when we talk about graduation rates go ahead dj so this is a little bit of a going down a different road but on your scoreboard that you're mentioning right there one of the other things with with high school students that i think would

103be really valuable is the understanding how many of them are taking college credit classes to the the successes that we could talk about and making sure that we're seeing the advantages of that also i i know it's not the graduation rates but it's kind of helping us see as an overall on there so just want to throw that out dj i really appreciate that and one of the things that duane is working on right now i think for the monitoring port i think he feels freed up a little bit as he's thinking about two nights of the monitoring report and duane if you're watching i hope i'm not speaking too out in front but um but what he's looking at is a way that would become a scoreboard for opportunities if you think about we

104want to report this year on the disparities we have in opportunities like concurrent enrollment classes or ap classes or ib classes which he did a little last year if you think about he scratched the surface in the monitoring port he wants to go deeper with that this year so i i really appreciate that dj well and we also had kind of talked a little bit about it too for equity aspects making sure that we're getting all the students too and so absolutely i mean that that i think gets out what you'll see from him right is not just the opportunities but what are our disparities right as we're transparent with how we're doing that's something we want to monitor thank you jess can you elaborate on what some of those action steps for a district-wide

105or site-wide that the principals are coming up with yeah so some of the things they talked about initially was building awareness right so going back and talking to their their principal team their leadership team showing them the data some have already worked with their department leads so they can start to analyze what it looks like in their departments but the first step is building awareness and trying to understand it my belief is calling attention to it will change outcomes because people will pay attention to it right when you take a look and you say we have some of the exact same disparities that we've seen in our outcomes we saw in fs and a's last week they mimicked our data so when you see that as a building principle when you're able to drill down

106on that that builds awareness so that's some of the work they're doing but i also know they're also aligning right now early for students to do credit some credit recovery for classes they may be behind on working with teachers to understand what is it that they're struggling with and how do they recover that as we are even before the first grading period so the the idea would be we're we're able to intervene early um earlier than maybe we may have in the past we've looked at this data in the past we've talked about this data in the past but we've not done it in a structured manner like this in a cadence i would say so i think that that i believe strongly will make a difference yep okay thank you the next major action

107step falls under that category of belonging and as we were working through some of the root causes as to why we have disparities within our additional support groups why we have disparities with our graduation rates why we continue to have disparities over time that it's a trend that has been consistent one of the root causes that we landed on is that we really want to make sure that we are more student centered and culturally responsive in our practices that we feel like addressing that and better approaching our pedagogy our content how we look at the standards how we recognize the students in front of us how we evaluate ourselves and our biases all of that plays a role in how we can provide a better experience for our students so over the past couple weeks

108and actually in january when i started in this position john mckay invited me to join the staff equity coalition the staff equity coalition has activated several things throughout last year and the year before that are starting to build a foundation of this culturally responsive practice by providing professional development by activating projects in our system that support our approach to learning we also met last week with our equity and diversity advisory committee who also gave us some insights into the work that we need to continue to move forward and again to provide more of that system-wide implementation right now one of the challenges that we have is just the matter of time you've noticed that both scott and i have named lots of professional development that we need to provide our teachers with a lot of

109our professional development up to this point we've had strong strong participation across our system in culturally responsive practices in equity based training and book studies but right now due to some time constraints we cannot yet scale that up to the system that's our next goal in front of us is that we must scale this up to the system and not just have the the coalition the willing it has to be a system approach if we are truly going to impact this outcome so over the last year in addition to the work that the student and staff equity coalitions have activated the year prior to the pandemic the principles of community were developed they were discussed and then we went into the period of pandemic and they need to be brought back out they need to

110be part of our system they need to speak to our values and what we will be accountable to our community for that we will live those principles of community across our entire system that right now a few people own those their entire system needs to own those and then in addition some of the other pieces that were activated late last year was our incident bias reporting system and so we had a handful of schools k through 12 that did pilot that initially in late spring and started to evaluate the tool provide feedback provide advice about the implementation of that tool that one of the important things is that we want all of our staff and students to feel like if they're experiencing bias or harassment in our system that they need a safe way to

111report that and that we as a system respond appropriately empathetically and with accountability that it's an important response that we owe our community so this is a really important area that again we need to grow and systematize we stay with the theme of belonging we talked at great lengths last year about restorative practices and last year we did some work at the secondary level we trained all of our well we trained teams from every secondary school in january and february last year and those implementation teams continue to work and move us forward tracy has brought on some work at the elementary level to help the restorative practices live as an umbrella over some of the practices that already are in place and to enhance some of the work that's being done at the elementary level

112one of the things that we're engaged in as we speak with all of our schools is a an evaluation or a rubric evaluation where our schools are taking a look at how are they doing with what we would list as restorative practices at the tier one level that's really what's happening in the classroom to help teach behaviors to help teach what's expected and to help interact and respond at that teacher classroom all student level so that's our first step this year and to understand where we are as a system so we can understand the next steps we take in a systematic approach um to continue to enhance restorative practices the other thing i want to respond or i want to just uh illuminate is we also last year as a board as as a cabinet

113group worked through some behavioral changes in our code of conduct we made some changes with our drug and alcohol policy that were more restorative in nature if you recall we have placed in some opportunities for students to get support if in fact they're caught on campus with drugs and right now i'm happy to report that every instance that's happened to this point that has required something beyond just a school level intervention the family and the student have taken the option to go to the center for classes every single one of them i'll continue to monitor the success of that obviously enrolling in the classes is different than success in the classes but you have to start somewhere and remember i was pretty transparent with the board in the spring as to whether we felt like

114all of the students and families would access that or whether they would say sorry we'll take the other options and right now they have taken that option i will also commend the the center has been awesome they have been great to work with they are super supportive of the partnership they've done a lot of work with uh with troy over at pca in the past and now they're doing work with a broader district and it's exciting to continue that partnership and i believe as we think about what what the board was after and what we were after that's restorative in nature and that's exciting the other thing i just want to to make sure the board is aware of is we hired a behavior prevention and intervention coordinator and that person supports our mtss process

115it supports our pbis work that positive behavior intervention and support that we're re-emphasizing as we work hard on culture and belonging and that person also is a major support for the restorative practices across our district and many of our buildings are bringing leah hagger is who is that that person and she is working and partnering with many of our individual principals and she also has been at a couple of our principal meetings already to talk about some of the work that's out in front of us to continue on the theme of talking about culture responsive pedagogy so to give you a data point since the summer of 2019 nearly 1700 participants have opted into professional development on either culturally responsive pedagogy anti-biased equity training throughout our district we continue to have staff who really prioritize

116their learning and growth in that area so we have better experiences for our students staff and families again our goal in front of us is to continue to systematize that one of the pieces of really important work that our curriculum instruction and assessment department has done under roberts leadership is they have developed and worked to pilot a bias rating tool as we evaluate new curriculum materials coming into our system and so that rubric and and tool will be part of the process for any of our curriculum adoptions going forward so if you have questions about that i'd invite robert to speak more to the development of that tool additionally we want to take a look at our teacher evaluation rubric so that review teaching and learning framework for culturally responsive instruction we've had the 5d

117plus rubric as our teacher evaluation tool for right around nine years now and that framework is really sound and it's really solid but again we want to look for some more of those observables and create some more examples of what do we mean when we say you know that the teacher creates an inclusive environment what are the observables that you would walk in and see in a classroom that is an inclusive environment so we want to continue to build on something that we already have in place and further expand that to really get at some of the goals that we're reaching for here and so we're continuing to monitor that staff pd participation data throughout this year but again the plan is to grow and to systematize our approach tracy um first i i those

118last comments about the teaching and learning framework that sounds really good you saw me nodding um so could you back up to assess bias in the curriculum and and i think as i'm thinking back to how we assess curriculums as a board that becomes kind of interesting to me and i have to admit there are times where i feel like it's been at arm's length and not not a deep dive by the board so when you you mention this kind of thing of assessment and i'm also thinking about the fact that we we end up paying lots of money for curriculum that we feel stuck with for many years whatever the outcome is i wonder if that's enough of a framework of a question that maybe you or robert might be able to speak to

119a little bit yeah and if you need me to ask something more clearer i'll try so yeah i'm going to have robert respond good evening everyone excuse me um and i think the question you're getting at is how do we evaluate instructional materials as we go through an adaption process and we've always used um assessment rubrics to evaluate materials we'll actually begin an adoption process about a year in advance with the content area participants defining values looking at the the research in best practices within that content area i'm thinking about middle school science i just sat through a meeting yesterday where our middle school science teachers had their first meeting of the year to begin evaluating instructional materials and so they began that process actually last year with looking at what criteria to evaluate them

120against some of those criteria that we've used for years in addition to the instructional criteria what's nice about some areas such as math language arts and science is that there's also national standards and then achieve the core has created some of their own rubrics against which to judge materials a component of that that we've also used it includes universal access and inclusion that's those are components that we've had uh traditionally what um tracy had highlighted on this slide here is that we the the piece that we are missing is materials contained by us right there's no perfect set of materials out there and so we found a tool through the great lakes equities center that specifically is designed for instructional materials we've adapted that for use in in poudre school district we're piloting it for

121the first time this year with our adoption so we'll train the the teacher participants on that tool we will evaluate the materials through that tool and and like i said because every instructional material that we've looked at so far just in in beginning to use this tool they all have biases the the important next step for us is a to minimize those biases and b how do we redress them so what's what tools do our educators need to have to say oh i this here's a image that may you know be questionable or here is a topic how do i how do i redress that this is something that depending on the age level of the students it might be a teaching moment right for some students for some classes that might be an opportunity

122to talk about how you'll see these things in in publications we're still digging into this work we're just beginning it i see next steps as you know where we are today new adoptions is looking forward well what about the things that we already have how do we go backwards and so that that too will take time and that will take engaging teachers and understanding the various types of biases and then when they're in in the moment of creating lessons and so forth they have the tool set within their their toolbox to to make those strategic instructional decisions of how am i which which materials should i use which ones should i expand on in terms of maybe it's a lesson keeping in mind we adopt most of our materials but teachers also you know they

123they bring in materials on their own right so again we want them to have the expertise within their tool set to be able to recognize and redress bias in their materials okay thank you and i think brian wants to jump in as well yeah i just want to elevate and lift up with robert and the team is saying this work is so important you know when you think about the what happens in our classrooms every day you know we're interacting with each other as humans but we're interacting with our material sometimes more often than the human touch points of how actually instruction and learning is taking place and i'm really proud of the work that the team is taking place to kind of review and deeply analyze these things as the ninth largest district in

124colorado we can set the standard not just in terms of what we do internally but how we actually use this to leverage procurement processes in the future to hold companies that want to do business with us to this level of standard to ensure that they're addressing biases to ensure that their text is addressing diverse and varied authors to ensure that as we're thinking about the characters that are represented in our text that they're not rooted in single stories of struggle really thinking deeply about this and holding the people that are wanting to do business with us accountable to raising the bar to ensure that what we choose to invest our money in is worthwhile and a long-term investment and so i think the work that robert and his team is doing to set the stage

125for what that is internally pays huge dividends later in how we actually engage and do business with outside entities that want to help us in this work in this space so it's it's really important work and i think we are leaders in the state in this space thank you rob yeah if anybody else has anything else on the curriculum you should go ahead because i have something slightly different anybody okay so i just wanted to follow up we did get data on how many people have taken each of the courses relative to the culturally responsive uh pd do we have any do can you tell me what percentage of the staff that represents only if we disaggregated that by how many staff took multiple classes so that's the piece that's not available in that data

126set it would take a little bit of time but that's certainly something we could provide well i think it's yeah okay i appreciate that i just think it's important to understand you know the it's a trend thing it's it's a question of you know this this percentage now that percentage later and as you say it can be masked by multiple i i forget the exact word used but enthusiasts who are you know all over all this training and others who are not as engaged so anyway yeah so you can think about how to respond to that over time yeah absolutely thank you great thanks thanks for slowing down for us go ahead i'll take us back to this slide and as i bring us back to this slide i want to remind us of what

127our ask is tonight our ask is for you to approve our uip and you had in your packet um the actual uh document and and i i push you to page 11 through 14 where you'll get more details about what we did in an overview tonight i also as we come back to dwayne's page right as what drove our work what is driving our work is hopefully that you see um that some of the work whether you're talking about restorative practices or helping students to get different feedback when you're in classes um or culturally responsive practices is is going to get at attendance and truancy at least there's a theory of action that some of the work tracy talked about around early literacy is going to help support our early literacy outcomes the teaming processes

128and grade level access is really getting at access to grade level content and opportunities to accelerate learning for all students in all content but certainly can support us in the math as we think about the impacts in math and also when you think about that work it helps us to get at the disparities we see in our subgroups because we're talking about individual students and the outcomes for individual students so as we think about the work that we laid out in front of you tonight and the why here's the why we believe these are great strategies we also stand in front of you in a transition period right we're working for superintendent kingsley who's been with us two and a half months we're learning his style he's learning ours right we're in transition um we're

129i'd like to say we've come out of covid but we're still dealing with it right so we're still in the middle of it and we're pedaling fast our principals are pedaling fast our teachers are pedaling fast and we are re-emphasizing the work that we stand in front of you tonight and ask you to approve with that uh we have a couple questions for you so we've engaged in conversation throughout the presentation but as you listen to our approach tonight are there things that resonated with you and are there things that you would like additional information about yeah and thanks for i like the the fact you've added questions and and uh prompts at the end of the discussion here so i i'll turn it over to rob to kick us off yeah so i have

130uh i have one of each at the minute um and then i have some general comments which i'll wait until we sort of circle around in terms of what resonated with me as you know i've been enthusiastic about the team's model for several years that it's been prominent and and the uh in our district and the uh promise that it represents and so i'm excited to see and hear that you're re-engaging in that and that you're looking to [Music] be clear about the in in a quantitative way frankly about the progress that you're going to make against the ultimate objective of getting everybody in the district all the teachers in the district working in teams to for the benefit of the students so that's resonating a lot with me and i look forward to continuing

131updates about that i'll just bring up here in terms of more information about i i mentioned this in the email that i sent but i i continue to wonder whether there are more since many of the students not all many of the students who are struggling in our system regardless of their other demographic characteristics are free and reduced kids or kids who are on free and raised lunch programs and therefore have economic challenges in their lives whether there's anything in the research or literature or in your knowledge or experience that we should be doing for those kids [Music] i don't want to say as a class but for those kids with those with that challenge beyond the uh the necessary but obvious things of making sure that they're fed and that they have the transportation

132to get to school i don't know whether there's anything curricularly or or in terms of the way we teach or i'm just not a professional about this but it strikes me that that's a big segment of our population that's struggling and is there a thing we should be doing or multiple things we should be doing to address that population as a as a group so i'll speak to a couple of things that we pointed to in the presentation i'll go back to the slide about restorative practices for example so restorative practices particularly examples of community building and community experiences and experiences that build connections one of the things that we see when dwane shows the interaction of our connections data and our achievement data that the more connected students feel to their peers to their

133teachers to their interests the more likely they are to be achieving in our system so one of the really important strategies is to to pay attention to and specifically look for students who are not connected and sometimes that our students who are free and reduce lunch have barriers to access and participation in some of those pieces that build connections both to other peers to adults and to their interests and so our our need is to remove those barriers to access those opportunities one universal strategy for developing and building connections for adults between students and adults and students to their peers is that community circle practice one of the strong beliefs that i have about community circles and when i was principal at lopez we had weekly community circles for the last eight years starting the

134day with that community building and that community check-in clears the cognitive desk space for a child who might have worries at home that they're hearing from their parents about paying the rent or putting food on the table or not having a job or different things that you know our students are who are living in poverty might be experiencing those worries come into school and so the ability to attend and to focus on the instruction and participate actively instruction are impacted if we're not intentional about clearing the cognitive desk space as well as building relationships and understanding that that's how our students are presenting themselves in front of us also to try and be intentional about how we're screening like free and reduced lunch status is something that is not known it's private it's not disclosed

135to a classroom teacher to adults in the building and so we have to be very intentional about how we're paying attention to those those pieces and monitoring and screening and and asking the questions for students who either are not accessing are not able to fully attend and participate to the level of being connected to material as well as being connected to the other people in that community so that's just one strategy that and i think leah presented to our principals that when you're very intentional about strong tier one pbis systems and positive behavior support systems as well as community building practices your achievement actually goes up i think the national statistic is 11 percent that that immediately off the at the top you see that elevation and achievement so that's one example that i would

136provide thank you other questions for board members comments kristin and then dj all right i'm just trying to figure out how to frame this um so i i see a lot of what we're doing with the pre-k through three of making sure that kids are reading on grade level and that's that's um fantastic um one of the things that um superintendent kingsley had shared with us was the opportunity myth and talking about making sure that that all kids are learning at grade level or above and having setting that a high expectation and you know we see that all the time right if you raise the expectation that people will meet it um so in the uip is there a spot um particularly beyond the k3 pre-k33 where we are saying we are setting high expectations

137and we are going to be meeting uh everything at grade level or above to make sure that we are setting those high expectations for the kids to meet so specifically i see the high performing teams and the protocols that are used within the high performing teams as being the the start of that leveling conversation because one of the protocols that happens as teachers unpack the standards is they really dig into what is the level of taxonomy that the students are required to perform at in order to demonstrate grade level success and above grade level success and so by looking at that taxonomy as the first part of unpacking that standard they then use that to design the instruction as well as the assessments that will happen so that's the first leveling of everybody having access

138to grade level material as well as instruction that's at the level of rigor that's required in the standard so by creating that success criteria models of that success criteria at grade level standard and then coming back together as a team and using our formative assessment process to say midway through that unit or a couple weeks into that unit where are we in meeting that grade level expectation toward that success criteria if we have students who are not yet meeting that grade level expectation what are the scaffolds we're going to provide over the course of this next couple of weeks of instruction so that all can reach that level of expectation part of that teaming process is also making sure that there aren't different experiences across our grade level classrooms the protocol requires us to norm

139what grade level expectations are also around that common assessment that then frames how we will evaluate and assess commonly toward those grade level expectations so that's where i really see that that action step as being very critical toward grade level material dj so i feel like i want to make sure that i i mentioned this since i mentioned it every uip uh that the the benchmarks i i do like on this one that they we have by certain dates 100 that gives me a clear vision of what you guys are aiming for i do ask though that one of the things that still understanding how we're getting there a little bit is something that i i still think is very important in seeing in these plans and so on 1b readiness and early literacy you're

140implementing benchmarks by august 2022 100 of k-3 literacy teachers are trained on evidence-based foundation skills and reading great so my expectation or what i would love to see let me put that what i'd love to see is next year because this is an ongoing document that it would say we have 25 more percent more to go to get to that hundred percent so that that we can see that that growth has happened and how much has happened so uh it's something that i know i've talked robert's ear off for a few years about it on dac and it's something i just want to keep bringing up and i feel it's it's good for the board to have a clear picture of seeing how we're moving forward and how we're gaining the steps because i think

141we are and we of course we're going to understand like with kovid that you know the team's thing got slowed down uh but it gives i think uh the board and the community the sense of movement forward and so i i just want to say that again and then i i've shared already but i i also excited by teams but the uh the pre-k to third grade thing if we can get that organized and get it system-wide man i think that would make a huge difference so i am so excited to see us moving forward on that and getting the buy-in from the teachers and uh the buildings i think is important and so we can drive that through and bring that to all of our students so thank you again for taking on that

142work great uh yeah jess i saw your hand up and carolyn and then i'll come back to rob so um i think for starters i'd like to say i appreciate the restorative practices the teams the bias in curriculum talking about that i think these are all things that um before board being on dab these are all things we've talked about as parents wanting to see and so i know obviously in the last year and a half that's been hard to really showcase those things so i appreciate and i i i'm excited to actually go back and share that out um with interested parties because i know they'll be excited so i think those are the things i'm really excited to see um what i would like to hear more about again with this literacy as

143somebody who's been a math teacher i understand how literacy also affects those math scores right and so but in teaching high school math um obviously that there's there's a long distance between third grade and high school and so i kind of like to know more about okay let's let's solve pk through three literacy and then what are the steps that we're also going to then take to ensure that our older students are also fully literate at their grade level um because that helps with everything so future thoughts great i'll actually address that real briefly that while the the unified improvement plan has our major strategies we did a middle school reading adoption just prior to the pandemic we're still doing the tr the pd to support the middle school teachers on that kelly burns our

144secondary literacy facilitator is engaging with the 9th and 10th grade teachers on a literacy adoption for them they're spending this whole year getting into the science of of teaching best practices for high school students that concept of student voice and choice in in the the text that they engage with it's pretty exciting they've had one meeting about a week ago on that we'll spend this year looking at that and then hop into a looking at instructional materials next year so while we focused on k3 this morning rest assured that we have reading and writings oral language happening at those other grade levels with specific supports in place thanks great carolyn so we we talked to you talked about how our reading scores felt tracy and that you were kind of expecting it is that because

145of covet related issues do we think that loss of reading was related to to covet and going into remote learning um i know we adopted some reading curriculum a couple years ago and so i mean they kind of seem to to align and so can we suss out that we don't have issues with our reading curriculum or or is it just more covert related or is it a combination was the curriculum not very well aligned for online learning i mean like do we really understand what cost caused that reading loss you know we actually had a meeting just this past week with our coordinator at cde to really understand what some of those trends were telling us about psg and so i'll respond and then turn it over to to robert we do know that

146we have some gaps particularly in phonics and phonemic awareness at with our adopted curriculum to address that gap the curriculum instruction assessment department purchased a a program a supplemental program for phonemic awareness that was given to every school this year and so we recognize that there are a few gaps what we saw in our data pre-pandemic um literacy that we were we had a very brief trend for two years of about a one percent dip and then another year of a one percent dip in our overall achievement and then once we had last year's data that 2020 to 21 data it was like a cliff particularly for that k1 data set and my hypothesis and what i observed and saw is that that a combination of access and ability for a five six seven year

147old to sit in front of a computer and receive direct instruction was very very difficult required a ton of adult support and whether that was available or not available sometimes it didn't even matter that that child just struggled to attend to instruction for that duration of time so what they experienced were some some gaps in disruption in that sequence of instruction for phenemic awareness and phonics during that that really intense spring period of trying to create remote learning and create remote versions of our curriculum materials and our curriculum instruction it was a heavy lift like when i think about some of the tools that we had available in our math curriculum that were a little bit more easily deliverable through remote instruction it wasn't as heavy of a lift as it felt like for early

148literacy instruction and and nobody you know i'm sure curriculum publishers didn't anticipate a pandemic they all have great online resources but not necessarily great online resources for direct instruction for kindergarten first and second grade kids so that's what i saw and what i experienced that i feel like contributed to that that kind of cliff that our kids fell off in early literacy thank you tracy and i don't have much to add we compare our data to national or state norms so when we see uh the dip that you're referring to carolyn we compared ours to the the acadians assessment as a national assessment the whole nation dropped the same amount so um so that's going to be agnostic of the curriculum that is what what tracy is alluding to that that that remote instruction just

149particularly for the little kiddos i mean how many classrooms have we seen where the teacher is at the kidney table sounding out words directly with the the child and how different that is in a remote or online environment so um compared to the the nation we are still um you know we we dropped similar to that and and scott had a slide on that like every every uh data set we had there's the same thing the whole nation dropped psd dropped but not as dramatically as as some of the places that we compare ourselves to okay and brian wanted to jump in as well yeah i just want to build off of that i think to a couple of things like it's important to continue to name we are a very strong district and we're

150in a conversation that's vulnerable right and that takes courage to be able to name where we need to improve this is not a scenario that was created by the pandemic we had disproportionality prior to the pandemic our scenario with literacy is not a result of poverty we have almost 40 percent of our students who are not receiving free and reduced lung services that are not on target in literacy by third grade and so this is a district priority that we have to continue to do a root cause analysis to figure out whatever it's going to take to go all in to ensure that we wrap around all of our services love and support to our teachers in this space to our principals but most importantly our parents and our students because we know what's at

151stake in the event that we can't figure this out and we do have to figure out a way to be balanced with limited resources knowing that some of the students we haven't yet figured it out who have experienced a k-3 continuum in our district or somewhere else are sitting in our middle schools or our high schools struggling to figure out what that means for them even if they're still on target for graduation it means they don't have the same options that some of their peers have and so i you know i just i think it's important for us to be candid and have real talk and be vulnerable about this but we're going to need to develop a learning strategy that's going to need to have hard conversations about instructional materials it's going to have

152conversations about what our vision for literacy is in our in our district about what our assessments look like what our professional development our parent parent and community engagement in this effort and it's going to need to be a multi-year effort that's reflective in our priorities in the future development of a strategic plan our budget development process but all of our kids are fitting into the space it's not the persona of one group of kids that are more there is this personality and the pandemic amplified that disproportionality but i think it's important to be clear that these things existed prior so thank you rob yeah i i definitely appreciate those remarks brian thanks very much i think i think uh my guess is the board is going to be all in with with you and with

153the administration on on working those issues as expeditiously as as their importance warrants which is very so thank you i i do have a question uh i i i noticed scott's been standing over there all by himself so i want to see if i can so i want to see if i can fix that thanks rob oh you're welcome scott um so i i the question i have is is one i also sort of mentioned an email and i don't well yeah i mentioned an email and that is this question of uh we talk about kids who are engaged kids who uh are connected to their interests and passions and where they want to go they see the relevance of their learning that helps them to really do the learning right because they see that

154they see why it's important to do that they see how it fits into their lives right one of the tools that we have to do that or for the for the system to understand uh what what students interests are is the is the icap or career cruising tool and yet as we've learned from our connections data many students either don't know what it is or don't think it's very useful in fact it's a fair minority that think it's useful and know what it is so is that we just got a bad tool and we need to fix that somehow or we need to train our staff on how better to engage with that tool or the tool is not relevant or what i i think it's uh there's a lot there rob um if you

155remember i think probably last time we talked about this in this room we were using a tool called career cruising um that company shifted and the software shifted from career cruising to zello which is what we're using today um no we are and and i i say i say we are rob because as i talked to tanya today sorry i i was just to be clear i was making a joke i said not zillow yeah yeah not not that godzilla not selling real estate not the real estate one i understand zello sorry with an x um so so we're using that software but that transition between career cruising and zillow happened in the year of 2019 2020. so the first year we were using it was headed into that but what i what i learned

156today as we were working on the presentation will be given to the board in two weeks on on the career and innovation team is we have about about 10 000 students at the secondary level that we know their interests for jobs so we know that students are engaging with the tool and that allows for us to i think one of the promises we had for the board was to be able to take in in opportunities in the community and push them out to students based on interest so we are able to see and we have work based learning instructors at the sites who are engaging with that tool we have not yet reached full capacity of that tool with all our teachers all our students at the secondary level and i i would say that

157some of that was as we move through the implementation of the new tool and then a remote learning year that does interrupt what's going on there are a lot of positives to zillow one of which there was a meeting today talking about how we use that instrument for all our students to have access to the same course request opportunities at all our sites that's a positive that's a systemic approach that that tool allows us to do but we have work to do for sure we have work to do to help students share their information in that tool that that for me maybe is more important than how they respond if i can see they're using and accessing it um and they're sharing their interests and their their career desires with the tool that gives us

158the information we need it would be nice if that came out on the connection survey and matched what we see and i think that's where we're headed right now we certainly have work to do rob but i was impressed today to hear that we can access over 10 000 students interest in what they want careers to be which tells me they have engaged to that level with the tool that's that's excellent news and i think as dwayne prepares the the next report having that as a we'll call it a counter balance to the response to that thing might be a good idea to get perspective yeah thanks rob nate uh one of the things that resonated with me was the early literacy topic and the implementation benchmarks i wonder whether it would be helpful for

159us to get interim updates rather than waiting a whole year to hear how we're doing based on our our goal here to see if we can get a mid-year update that might be helpful great other comments questions go ahead kristen i'm just looking at the um you know the action step 2a student-centered cultural responsive practices and part of my question there is how much are we involving the students in that and is there a way for us to involve the students even more than they currently are yes to the second question we have uh i think we alluded to the the staff equity coalition which we got started last year um student equity coalition is something we want to engage in and my last update with john mckay was a few weeks ago it had

160not started yet whether he's had that first meeting with them yet or not um that would that's the big work right can we bring together a group of students we have multiple student groups we could tap into including the student advisory group that you met with earlier today but the student equity co arts i'm sorry student affinity groups would be another opportunity to tap into the student voice yeah and one of the reasons that i asked is i had the opportunity to go to the pooter high school spectrum club last week and they are doing a book club um with the library and one of the things that they do is is choose a book and then read it and discuss it as a group and one of the wonderful things about it was not

161only were there 30 kids in the group ready to engage in this but there were six ps pooder high school adults as well ready to engage in that and so that was a phenomenal um way and you know as looking at this as really going ahead and and bringing in that principles of community and that that student and staff equity when they're all there and ready to discuss those books and i feel like that's an opportunity that you know this was on their lunch both students and staff this is something they were willing to give up their lunch for um and so i'm just wondering if there's a way that we can sort of emulate that throughout other schools throughout other affinity groups throughout other culturally responsive teachings not just through literature or through history

162but other things as well it makes me think of two things one is you know ask them what do you what are you looking for what are the students looking for and and and giving you know almost getting out of their way to allow them to do it and in some cases and then the second thing is you mentioned the library but what other community partners can we also tap into to the leverage and all of the work we do whether it be around equity in inclusion or instruction for sure and i guess my question back to you is how do we engage the students more than because one of the things that was amazing about this was that this was student-led so the students decided they wanted to do a book club the students

163decided on the book the students are deciding how to lead this book club um it's 100 student-led so how do we emulate that how do we go ahead and get more kids involved in that and how do we what is it that we need to ask them do we need to ask them in the connection survey do we need to ask them separately do we need to have some sort of you know do we ask them in our um when we're talking to the students um through the board the advisory council um how is it that we get the students more engaged in this because you're right when they i mean at this point they just basically said we want this book and they were off they were off to the races and we didn't

164have to you know the library didn't have to do anything a thing for them so i feel like this is something that um we can just go ahead and expand with different groups right and it feels like it's it's an easier access point at the high school levels where you have you know student groups and clubs and so forth middle school it so i i like the the idea that how do how it's a question still right how can we engage our students um and ensure that it's um a balance of of voices to you know it's not always the you know the leadership kids who are taking the leadership role but how do we tap into the students who uh can celebrate their voices in other forms of leadership it almost sounds just like

165connecting to passions it's really close i don't know i think it is yeah um rob go ahead so uh robert um i know you work with the dac i'm not sure how much i assume the dac has had a role in reviewing this have they also looked at this school improvement plans and more uh importantly from my point of view or not more importantly but also um how tightly would you say that the school improvement plans are tied to the district plan at this point i mean if i go pick school x's school improvement plan am i going to see at a minimum steps that mirror all of these or is it really at this point an intersection how does it how does it look so two things one is um yes the dac the

166district accountability committee has has engaged in this we this most recent version was it was twice once was in august um the the bigger chunk of work was last april when we were still in a formative state of building this and engage with them um i even coached scott before this meeting say make sure you mention the district accountability committee and you know so i'm gonna give him a hard time afterwards because he failed to do that but um so just publicly right so somebody mentioned it i'm just not remembering anyway go ahead so um and i mean the voices on that committee are representative of our you know parents we have staff members very thoughtful and and engaged folks who gave really positive and supportive feedback um critical feedback frankly um the second point

167and when i you know gave scott a hard time i i forgot what it was your second point was the it's the it's how tightly are the schools yes district so i ran a report um this weekend frankly um there there's a an ability where i can just run uh the the uh the major improvement strategies out of the schools they're not due until friday the school's internal deadline so i've been fielding questions yesterday and today and and folks are still finalizing them so at at this point in the the year i can't say to what percentage but i can tell you that tracy's already asked for like how do we get how do we pull that report so um we will be pulling that report i know that there's been some messaging um at

168the elementary principal meeting i was in the other day that said here are our goals and you know i i'm going to bet you know high level of confidence that you'll see um early literacy in every elementary plan yeah so i said in the elementary meetings i don't know what the messaging was to the the secondary but um we have a way to so i hear scott saying the same so high level of confidence oops i think brian wanted to respond also so yeah i appreciate the conversation i i think it's really important to know that the alignment is taking place we are in transition but these plans are iterative and the vision that we collectively have is there is a lot of school autonomy but that autonomy has to be bounded by the district

169direction the school's plans have to align and cascade from the goals of the district otherwise we are shooting arrows in 50 different directions and so this will continue to be iterative in practice there will need to be specific feedback provided in coaching and having dialogue around these particular things but i do feel like as a system we've landed in the right space in terms of our areas of focus based upon what the data is saying to us but that process of alignment and feedback is ongoing it's not just through a committee it's through the engagement efforts of our assistant superintendents engaging in thoughtful dialogue with our principals and our assistant principals it's my visits it's it's all of those particular things making sure that we're rowing the boat in the same direction so i just

170think it's important to kind of name those things but that's a process great rob yeah what i was going to say i think was just covered by what brian said just perfectly i'm definitely appreciative of all the discussion that we've had here tonight around around sort of a systemic approach to how to address some of these things and an expectation that we're going to have accountability through the system to that [Music] so thank you i appreciate that very much okay other word comments okay i i can add a couple of things that resonated for me to begin with was just the uh format that led to this level of engagement and this caliber of discussion so i think that's that's a a great start um i i really appreciate the way we've slowed down here

171and had this discussion uh beyond some of the things that were mentioned i i did like the discussion in the slide talking about the restorative practices and how that's going to start tying into the work we're all doing i i'm i'll i'll also add the discussion on the curriculum and then frankly the email that's been well represented in the discussion that rob wrote that is uh i think really representative what the board is thinking is a big deal for what we might be looking for in the future uh and then finally uh another thing that resonated for me was the reading material that you provided brian and your comments this evening uh the the comments were spot on and it ties into the reading material and it talks about um the set of expectations towards

172in the the way we drive to excellence throughout the system while we think about subgroups we're really talking about the the system as whole and how we get there so those were all things that were important and i i appreciate frankly the the outcomes of your email rob that represented the board level of questions so uh i want to make sure are there any other comments or questions because the the work was excellent leading up to this and the discussion was was very good so yeah thank you um now this was an action item there's still there's still a vote to be uh taken to decide whether we're gonna allow the allow the staff to proceed with this uip so if there's no other no further questions or comments i will ask jill for a

173roll call vote please dj anderson did we make the motion yeah we did the motion was on the floor i and and just i'll just say to be clear the motion was to accept the uip as presented so just want to make sure nate donovan aye kristen draper aye christopher aye rob patterson aye carolyn reed aye jessica zamora aye motion passes 7-0 excellent okay and i just want to point out um as we come towards the end that um i think that tessa was trying to entrap me here because we just finished seven and i jumped right to number nine for adjournment so considering how often i make mistakes i've had to check and double check that there is no uh they're not skipping something and we are proceeding to action uh item eight which

174is adjournment sorry for all the words so we will adjourn the meeting at 8 57 pm thank you very much for all those of you who joined us thank you everybody you