10/10/23 Board Meeting

001us. We'll do the pledge and then after the pledge we are going to have a moment of silence for um the unfortunate things that are happening over in Israel. So, if you can just stand after the pledge for a moment, that'd be great. United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible and justice for all. Thank you very much. All right. Well, this evening we are having a special board meeting um to go through um some different turnaround and priority improvement school unified improvement plan presentations. So, um, do we have an order in which we're going through these or is it what's listed on the agenda? Okay. Are they coming up one school at a or I guess Okay. All right. Sounds good. More the marrier. I think we have

002enough seats for everybody, right? do that. But we'll click until he gets and do we have all the microphones on? Yep. So, um there's a button. Make sure just that one is on. week. I think they're starting. Okay. Right. Just if just while Yeah, it's not on. Just maybe check. Is that the one with the button on the bottom? Sorry. We're I'm just getting us prepared before you get started. So then you're you're ready to go. When it's green, it's on. Okay. You're good. This one's on. All right. Sounds good. He'll he'll get us all set. All right. We'll go. Okay, we're hot. Are we hot? We're hot. Okay, thank you for having us here tonight. Um, tonight's presentation, the purpose is to inform our community about the D-51 schools that have received a state

003rating of priority improvement or turnaround and what the school's plans for success are. The school board um report is a process required by CDE. Tonight, schools have received less than 42% of the possible points uh on their SPF, the school performance framework, and have been assigned improvement plans by of priority improvement or turnaround. As a reminder, I think I was here just last week sharing a little bit about the DPF and how our SPFs and DPFs are um related. So, as a reminder, we saw um this SPF breakdown a week ago. In elementary and middle school, it is a 60/40 split with growth as the largest portion, the 60% and achievement um scores 40%. And the high school has um three sections and that is um 30% on the academic achievement, 40% on growth and

00430% on postsecary workforce readiness. an indicator rating does um not meets and you can see that arrow pointing right there or the rating area that is impacted the most. Um those are the areas that we're going to speak to, our schools are going to speak to tonight knowing that unfortunately having this rating there are many improvement strategies that is contained in their UIP and that they're all working on. We're only going to focus on a a does not meet or an area that is has the most impact on their SPF rating. All right. Yeah, that entire week ago that we were here, we were talking about our schools looking at their SPFs and the second page. So, this graphic represents the second page of an SPF where you get into lots of detail about kids

005in groups and what's working and what might not be your strongest suit. So again, you've got a 40% achievement weight for things and you have a 60% growth. And we talk all the time about growth almost always precedes achievement. You use the same efforts to get both. But you're probably going to see growth before you see achievement, just depending on how far in that hole you are. This SPF up on the screen is a good example of a school that's making good academic growth in the bottom half where you see greens and blues and that has yet to turn into a strong indicator of achievement up on the top half. Um, I wanted to mention too, we've got a phrase that we use um for this page. It's going beyond the first gap. So, the

006first gap tends to be the front page. How's your overall growth? How's your overall achievement? Then we ask our principles get on that second page and start looking at all those diverse groups of students. Math, ELA, growth, achievement. Look at all those areas and go beyond just that first big gap and see if there's groups that need special attention or work in your in your work. So, I want to show you how this progresses a little bit. So, there's that shot we saw of a school that's got pretty healthy growth. Here's a different school, another shot where that growth is not quite as as impressive and the achievement's not quite there either. And you can see we're getting into progressively more yell, more reds, more yellows, right? All the way to where you get to

007a lot of reds. So the year that I spent at CDE, I got to be on UIP review teams. And a UIP is driven by an SPF. So whatever your SPF looks like and what your data looks like, you're going to create your unified improvement plan based on that. So sitting around for a year, I might have figured out a few things, but we sat with people who were guiding us who had been doing it for decades. Some of them had been there 20 years reviewing UIPs. So you get to pick their brains and say, "What's the secret to this? What's the what's the methodology we want to glean?" And it really is that when you when you get a school that's having numerous aspects that are not in the green or blue area that

008you want them, you can't go hunting down little tiny fixes. You have broadspectctrum work to do. So you need to take a look at your first instruction that's happening in a universal classroom and go do we have best first instruction going on or do we need to strengthen that in some way? um is there something we should change across the whole spectrum, not just with a small group of kids or one subject area or one grade level because it's really mapping out to be bigger than that. Um CDE's transformation network and you'll hear from Jenny Hle later tonight also tries to help people focus in that way. what's the broadsp spectrum work that you probably need to do as opposed to little micro fixes that won't won't quite address that spectrum of work. Back to

009you for All right. So, when we were talking about that broad spectrum or those numerous areas of improvement, all of our buildings have numerous areas. However, like I said at the beginning, they're going to focus on one or two of those um strategies that will meet most or more of those areas than than a micro or a mini. So, everybody gets their SPF late August, including the district. We get our DUIP and each school gets their S um their school performance framework and they dig their um data immediately. We're definitely, I would say, a data informed uh district and they immediately get into it to that data and they look on that back page to see where those disagregated groups are and what um where attention needs to be um present. And then after soon

010after that, our site directors work with the principles to unpack that data and ensure that the school's major improvement strategies are focused on the areas that need the most improvement over time. And Paul's going to share a little bit about then what happens after they identify dig that data and identify those major improvement strategies and how those look at the school site level. So one of those broadspectctrum pieces of work that we do in district 51 and in school districts across the country is use learning communities or teacher teams to get in tune with their kiddos and what they can do and what they need. Um, and we ask ourselves these four questions in LC's constantly. What do we expect our students to learn? How are we going to know they're learning? How are we

011going to respond if they aren't learning or don't learn? And how are we going to respond if they already know it? And that's just a cycle you continuously drive. Um, state assessment data shows you a picture once a year, but you have to set up systems and structures to be looking at data more frequently than that and asking yourself these questions as you go. So LC's get grounded in their data and student work. When an LC is really being effective, their teachers are bringing in student work from recent assignments, recent units, and they're looking at what did they get, what didn't they get, how did we know they got it, right? What if they already got it? They're asking themselves those four questions as they look at their students work. It's really powerful when you

012have teachers, you know, picture two third grade teachers or three third grade teachers together getting to have this conversation about how did your kids do on that? How did my kids do? How did you teach it? How did I teach it? All this conversation is really rich and it just naturally drives improvement. And it's really fun to watch teachers do that in LC's. They get zoomed right in on what their kids are doing and what their kids couldn't do yet. and what are we going to do about that since they didn't get it yet and they just keep moving that cycle forward. Um they set quarterly goals and sprints around their own instruction and student outcomes. That's a screenshot of our PDSA tool. Um so that's a structure we've given them to to harvest and

013place those things down in writing to say the kindergarten team is doing this, the seventh grade math team is doing that. here's what we're doing to drive our instructional practices to get to these student outcomes that we want. And then last of all, they monitor as they're teaching and as learning is happening. They monitor, they adjust their instruction from those conversations. And they walk out of those LC's with things to retach and reassess. if we haven't gotten kids where we needed to get them, what's my next move as a teacher to go see if I can get my kids there, right? And how am I going to reassess for that learning and make sure that it's happening? This was a slide you saw last week. Um we had um our priority and or I'm sorry

014we had our proficient our performance schools on one slide and then this slide was the second slide that shared who their improvement priority improvement turnaround schools were. Tonight we will hear our priority improvement and from our turnaround schools. And here are the list of schools you'll hear from this evening. and they are in order from your right to left. Again, we've intentionally asked our school leaders to be brief so you can ask questions in the end. They are not going over every MIS or major improvement strategy that they have outlined in their UIPs, which we didn't we forgot to tell them or didn't tell you. They are due next Monday, October. Not next Monday, the Monday following October 16th. Um, that is next Monday. My word, that is next Monday. And so, but they are

015um more than willing to share any questions or share any answers to questions that you may have. But intentionally, we've asked our leaders to be brief and just focus on one or two of those improvement strategies. So, with that, would it would it be best should we let everybody go through or should we or should the board ask questions after each individual's done? I don't know what would work best. I'm thinking if we could maybe get through all of them and then ask questions at the end, maybe note down which one questions for what school. All right, we'll hold the applause till the end. Okay, thank you. Good evening. There it goes. Okay. Good evening. Um, Clifton Elementary, uh, we our growth and achievement uh, continue to lack. Um, go to the next one here.

016There we go. Our first just speaking about our reading. We have three three big parts of our uh major improvement strategy around impro improving growth and achievement in reading and one is to decrease read plans by 10%. Um increasing we also want to grow there it goes again okay there we go. Uh we want to increase the student growth on CMS by 16 points. uh and then increasing the student achievement on CMS by 10 points. Thank you. Um right now currently with our reading um our learners are scoring 6% of our students are proficient on CAMASS. Um and and so looking at that our our deficit is large and so that's the reason why we have that decreasing the read plans by 10%. Um and so CA continuing to work on our focus around foundational

017literacy skills and um ensuring that progress monitoring is happening every 10 days and then making sure that the adjustments um are happening with the learners and that it's being tailored and personalized to each learner. Um, and then also just being able to make sure we're looking for those learners that really are making making those grow making that growth and no longer uh designated to be um not proficient as as defined by the Colorado Read Act. Um, we have created the pacing calendar for instruction using our new resource, the h the hootin mifflin uh resource and then using our planning protocol uh that we had um learned about this summer through the relay graduate school of education in using data cycles and being able to define the what do we want students to know and be

018able to do and how do we know they know it and then how do we respond if they don't. Um and that responses being that retach. Um and then we are also working around the the creating the smart smart goals to monitor the growth of learners um in ma making it to this benchmark. Uh last year we took 59 students off of read plans. Um meaning we were at 51% of our student population was on a read plan. We are now at 36.5. So that's big growth. Again, like Paul talked about that growth is preceding the achievement. Um, in math, we have increasing student growth on CMSS by 29 points and increasing the student achievement by by 10 points. Currently, 3% of our students are proficient as measured by CAMASS. Um, continuing to work on

019the backward plans before teaching units. really looking at not just the replicating the math procedures but actually understanding the conceptual behind the math because otherwise it doesn't transfer to those higher grades in that higher level mathematics. Um and then some of our other ones are other action steps are being able to train teachers on how to use reflex math. that is a math fluency um program that really supports kids being able to know their math facts with automaticity and flexibility so that they can they don't have to spend their time counting and figuring out what the number is but they're actually being able to engage in that deeper level mathematics and then beginning to use the data cycles to plan retaches to address the gaps which will be happening with our uh coach facilitated planning

020coming up in November. All right, good evening everybody. I'm here to visit with you about Fruit Bill's plan moving forward. And so we our focus area is growth. Um typically our growth really definitely carries our academic side. That's been pretty flat over several years, but last year our growth just was not what we're used to seeing. um we typically see well over an median growth percentile of 50 um 55 65 pretty high and last year it was um pretty low. So what we're going to do to address that this year first of all our staff is confident that we can equip students to make the growth necessary to perform at the improvement or performance level on our SPF in 2024. And here's what we're going to do. So our first aim is um for reading

021and with the transition from a balanced literacy approach to a science of reading approach which is one of those broadspectctrum um strategies that Paul was talking about. Um and so just today says priority of early release professional development and LC work. I was able to spend um a half day with second grade and fourth grade where they just dove into those end of unit assessments and planned backwards from there regarding what we'll expect students to know and be able to do and how we'll be able to monitor their progress all along the way and adjust instruction instruction as we go. So, um strive data folders and data LC's learning communities specific to addressing those um gaps and planning the retach. um our teachers are in the thick of it and really making good progress as

022we end the first quarter. Um we have we would also like um one of the second um gaps that we realized was just um our students with special needs are in the first percentile for growth and it's well behind their non-impacted peers and multilingual learners are also not growing at a level that we need to see. So, we're going to spend a lot of time um aligning support from CLLD and special education, using common resources, using those same backwards planning strategies as they um not only pull students out for um interventions, but push into the classroom to um scaffold to the the core learning for all of those students. And we really expect to see some great gains in doing so. for AIM3 and math. Um I think we maybe became lax when as we

023think about root causes and our implementation of bridges especially as we really focused on that change from um balanced literacy to science of reading. So we want to have a renewed integrity of implementation and commitment to math instruction um at tiers one and two um ongoing data meetings. Like I said we just have wrapped up quite a few assessments and we're seeing some excellent growth in the first quarter. Um we're asking teachers to do formal data meetings at least two per quarter um in math specifically and then emphasizing the retach. So really using that data to go back and impact growth. Um we've also taken a look at where we fell well below the district and state um expectations on the evidence outcomes and the standards and we've aligned um highlighted those standards and where

024they appear in the instruction so that we can emphasize those. And so we're already seeing some good growth on the interim assessment. We've uh made that mandatory. Um it's optional in the district, the interim assessment, but we we're doing it at Fruitville so that we can moni use that comparative data all year and not have those surprises at the end of the year. And again, backwards planning um is just a commitment we've made to really dig in and um commit to that process. Thank you. So, um I'm Dorothy Wolf and I'm representing Nisley Elementary. Um and as you can see, um we are um both achievement and growth is an area for us. Um so our first major improvement strategy is focusing on our implementation of interreading with that tier one instruction. Um so we're

025leveraging our weekly PLC time, professional learning communities for team planning and data meetings. Um, so we're using the backwards planning protocol and really having our teachers look at um, prioritize standards and coming up with learning targets to help them better understand their standards so that they're able enough to see them in the into reading. Um, and then looking at our assessments and seeing where those targets are assessed. Um, and then really starting to get into stage three and what does daily lesson planning. So how does this work in our PLC's translate to everyday classroom planning? Um we're also looking at common formative assessments. One of our root causes was that we need to um we were creating our own common formative assessments and so now we're going to be using inter readings um assessments and

026so we really want to make sure that we're aligned to our learning targets that we're having the rigor to the standard and that we have common assessment practices. Um and then we're using our data meetings um end of units and end of module um see it, name it, do it. what are um that comes from relay um so individ identifying our successes in the data looking for gaps and planning for retach um and really thinking about into reading um through how um reading is like holistic it's you have to think about it over time and what does that look out like throughout the year major improvement strategy is looking at planning small group instruction um so we currently have a wind time that's been working really good to try to fill in um foundational gaps,

027but really thinking about how when we have small group time in our master schedule for both ELA and math, how are we ensuring that that we're um scaffolding and differentiating so students can access tier one? So, um we're using data from our um module assessments and our unit assessments. Um also, we use some screening data um to make flexible groups that are based upon that data. And then we're using evidence-based resources to provide that. So we have 95% decoding power some of our resources from into reading um our strive and in math we have um bridges interventions. So we're using those to um create instructional plans so that we can pro provide target specific learning needs meet the needs of um specific students and then differentiate our instruction to provide what students need at the

028right time. And how we're monitoring this is we're using our module assessments. Um we're going to be looking at NWA and whether or not kids are read reaching their projected RIT scores. Um and and Dibbles 8 is also another part of that. And then um for both we use classroom walkthroughs. We do um monthly walkthroughs based upon our major improvement strategies and provide teachers um trends across the school. And then we also do observation and feedback cycles. Guess I get this this Hello, I'm Kim Davis from Grand Mesa Middle School. Nice to see you all again. Um, so at Grand Mesa, we do have some celebration. Last year when we did this u presentation, uh we were coming in in the 31.7 out of 100 percentage points and we did grow by eight points. So

029I think uh the big thing we can see and you can see from this front page is that the growth in all areas um with the exception of special ed students on IEPs, we're seeing that growth tick up and that is pretty much across the board um in math and reading. So that's a huge celebration. We're very close to that 50th percentile in growth which um that's a big change from where we were last year. uh and just as Mr. JB and uh Mrs. Marsh noted that this growth is a precedent to our growth in achievement. So we're really hoping to see that continue in that trend. Uh our major improvement strategy around ELA is really focused when we went to that next layer of data digging. Um it really goes to non-fiction text. Um

030the reality is is that as kids move through the grades and move um up from learning to read to reading to learn that they have to be able to unpack non-fiction text. Um a couple of the areas that we found were really tough for our kids is part of their life experience does not expose them to a wide range of vocabulary. Our our kids are vocabulary poor. Um and unfortunately some kids get those broader experiences in their life and a lot of our kids don't. So one of our focus areas um for first quarter and second quarter is to really focus on what are the vocabulary um words contentwise and just academic wise that students need to be successful. In other words, when it asks you for a quotient in math, can a child tell

031you that that's the answer to a division problem? And not always, unfortunately. So really focusing on what are the words, what is the vocabulary we need to offer our kids and make sure that they really know. We're using several strategies um aligned across our building um and help from our instructional coach to make sure that you know if if I'm learning vocabulary in my science class, I'm going to use this strategy or this structure and I'm going to go to social studies class and I'm going to learn different vocabulary, but I'm also going to use that same structure. So we get that transfer of how you learn which is really um fairly critical. Uh of course we're continuing with our data informed instructional cycles and ongoing data analysis with teachers. Uh this has taken a

032little bit of a dip this year because we have some new staff and so we're really depending on um veteran staff to support the new staff in learning some of those. So um it's coming along but it's not as robust as it was last year. Um, and then also in the reading area, we have targeted intervention with what we call our lit plus or our reading intervention classes. A couple of years ago, we redid our master schedule to ensure that we offer three times for exploratory classes during the day. And this allows for every student to have either an enrichment or an intervention class in reading or math. And so at semester, we'll be able to change schedules. And so if they needed both, they will get both. Our other area to focus on of

033course is math achievement. Um we know that we have places where our students are not achieving well when we go to that second gap. We see that one of the things that really gets in in the way is that fluency and you heard that named earlier is that I'll walk into an eighth grade math class and I have students that don't know their basic facts. I'll be like what is 7* 5? and they'll be like, um, so really in those intervention classes, finding ways to engage kids that are already feeling a little bit frustrated with math in fun ways and engaging ways to really hone in on that math fluency so that as they get into that deeper thinking that um, Miss Shepard mentioned a minute ago that they have that automaticity of their math

034facts so that they can do that functioning and do that thinking. Um, of course, continuing with our data informed instructional cycles and we also have math plus classes for that targeted intervention. I want to add right here that both um, lit plus and math plus are targeted to our general education students. As far as our special education students or students with learning disabilities, we are also offering um, intervention classes to meet the needs in their IEPs where those special education teachers can really hone in on the gaps for those students. um and those are going well and we've actually had to add classes to really make sure we have enough opportunities for those kids to get extra help. Um all of this will come around making sure that the staff we have are prepared to

035to help kids grow. Um so continuing to have learning communities be the driver of our professional learning um throughout the week. uh that's really critical and so we we be meet both by content and grade level throughout the week so that teachers have that opportunity to support each other learn from each other learn with our instructional coach and our content specialist to ensure that they are prepared for that best first instruction. Um so continuing with that at this point we have new materials in the last several years thank you um for allocating those funds. So, we have new um core resources for science, math, ELA. Well, ELA is coming and um social studies and that's really making a difference to help everyone feel aligned and understand the needed rigor to be successful in middle school.

036Um we continue to rely heavily on our instructional coach u uh Emily Lint who's a superstar amazing amazing person and she can go in and sit side by side and really support teachers not only with the planning and organization and looking at the data but with their instructional action in class and and help model that as she's a master. Um we continue with our data informed teaching cycles uh in all content areas, all core content areas. And then of course the part that falls on the administration is to do the observation and feedback cycles with teachers. I know that as a as a a teacher, it it wasn't I didn't always get the feedback that helped me grow. And so as an administrative team, our focus is when we get into that classroom, what is

037what is it the teacher's asking us to support them with and how are we doing that? So, what are we doing to support those teachers? Thank you. All right. Um, Orchard Mason Middle School. So, there's our um our preliminary rating right there. Priority improvement status. Uh, we're a couple points off. And it's probably uh it's it can be healthy to to to score in these ranges sometimes just to kind of know where you're at. You see that we scored at approaching and both achievement and growth. Our focus really is on growth and preparing the UIP. Kind of got to look back at the last 6, eight years and this is um a bit of a low mark for our school. We've typically been a higher growth school. Um strong group of teachers, everybody's super committed,

038super working hard and part of the transition plan that Dr. Birdsy and I when we met in May, you know, she had anticipated that growth wasn't going to be where they wanted to be and and um so we've been planning for this and we feel confident that we can move forward. Couple big ideas here. So when we look at the causes of this, both our challenges and some possible contributing root causes, especially the things we have in control, growth was was substantially lower than it's normally been. Usually um last year we were in the mid-40s for MGP and ELA, which is just a little under a year's growth in a year's time. And um a year ago we were actually um uh at 55 over a year's growth in math and we were in about

039a 34. So, you know, growth was really what what hurt our school last year. And then achievements not really where we wanted to be. When we think about some of the root causes, had a chance to meet with our instructional leadership team this morning. Um there's things that are outside of our control that we think contributed certainly um some of the needs COVID some of our kids readiness skills, but the variables that we have control over. We really talked about planning and instruction is something that we could have greater consistency around. Are we are we consistently understanding and practicing that folks are working super hard with data informed instruction the cycles were in place I got to observe that over the last year or so um the question is is it aligned to kind of

040those highest leverage standards are the assessments the right assessments are we using the resources so it's not throw it away but we need to keep looking at it um student engagement in testing uh don't want to have excuses for it but do want to name that during testing we we might have missed some easy opportunities to have every kid fully engaged. That really leads into a bigger challenge that we see, which is are we creating a learning environment via our planning and instruction where students are accountable um to demonstrate um they're accountable for showing mastery of their learning at grade level standards. And that's where we're working is creating a place where kids can't be passive, but where they need to be active learners um whether it's during assessment or really day-to-day instruction. So, how

041are we going to get there? We have three big kind of goal areas. Number one is establish effective lesson planning. We actually slowed down our data informed instruction work to say what does an effective plan look like. We use some of the relay graduate school of ed practices for that. We are continuing with our data informed instruction. Talk about that. And then we have some schoolwide practices and some targeted interventions. So when it comes to planning, we've really spent um the ILT we met and determined like let's slow down. Let's get some consistency to organize our learning communities around how do we plan. Uh it's really exciting that we actually have everybody as a content planning partner and that's new. We haven't had that for the last few years. Folks have planned in isolation. And

042so as people are meeting in content planning pairs, one of those collaborative meetings each week is to lock in these four key elements of a an an essential lesson elements. So an intentional entry routine. We're here to learn um a standards aligned learning target. This is grade level rigor and hopefully we're using a evidence-based resource. An explicit I do teachers modeling it um to help students have access to that next step. And then really if we want DII to happen uh a learning target at the end of each day tied to an exit slip tied to that did you get there today? Some of what um Paul shared in the opener today. So if we figured if we could get planning right then that gives us that springboard to do data informed instruction. Well also

043just want to name that as administrators and coaches are getting into classrooms. I've gotten to be in um 13 classrooms over the last month. That's what we're looking for. that's what we're giving feedback on. And so, um, that is our first goal. Our second one is really just getting to that DII cycle that you all have heard about over the years. uh you'll see that we added the word plan in there but um the interim assessments which just concluded today actually our last ones we're shooting for 90% participation and a product is what was the biggest gap and then how are we going to address that in our future instruction and then maybe through explicitly but folks have um flexibility in that so that's kind of how we're kicking off DII um at inservice this

044Friday actually and then the last one here is um we're able to use some of our resources that have been provided So, first targeted interventions. Um, I think the ESSER dollars did us a great favor. We worked with the curriculum team this summer and we got read 180 in place. We use some of our title dollars, got an intervention parent and and so we have three read 180 evidence-based reading intervention sections that we didn't have before. There's about 25 to 30 students served in there that are in between having a disability and um kind of several grade levels behind. That's going really well. We also have um a targeted math tutoring partnership with um with two different organizations. So that's going well as well. Um schoolwide literacy practices. We have what we call our night

045sanitation. Basically helping students close read for understanding and key ideas. And then a schoolwide writing practice. So those are kind of our three ways that we're working on boosting growth and achievement. Hello So, um, at Central, our main focus is, uh, getting our participation rates up, and that's what we're focusing on. We are 2.1 points away from being performance and our points earned. So, we need 53. So, we're we're getting right there. Here, try that one. Okay. How's that? So, we're really working on moving up to performance, but our big focus is going to be on participation. uh we had 93% participation rate. So we were two points shy of that. So we've put into place um an action plan on how to make sure we have three phases to get as many kids testing

046as possible. There. Okay. So right now what we're working on currently and October count started uh early October and it goes through the end of the month but we were cleaning up all student records to identify students who may have been counted toward the testing number but who may not have come in to withdraw yet or filled out the right paperwork. Um it's kind of tricky. You have to wait for a records request from another high school that they enroll in. And if you don't get that records request, they have to stay on our roles until we get that. um or until parents come in to withdraw them or if they're 17, they can come in and withdraw themselves. And so we we we are kind of at the mercy sometimes of of those plans,

047but we are working to really be meticulous about our records. Um we have a lot of attendance meetings and plans and advocates and students who are working with the truency officer or working with an attendance advocate. Uh we do have meetings, individual meetings with the parents one-on-one and that's when we are also planning to discuss testing options so that parents understand the need for them to test and and encourage them to test but also provide them with options if they did choose to refuse to let their students u test. So starting in January and February, uh we do have parent teacher conferences in February. And so we will be having a breakout session about the importance of testing, why it's important, but also be providing parent refusal forms if parents still choose that option. Um

048we will also continue to monitor our list of students expected to test to make sure that we have a plan for each student on the list. Currently, we have a list of every student that is in our student body right now, 9 through 12. And through a team effort, we have everything on one page. We have their attendance, we have their tardies, we have their grades, we have their um if they're on a read plan, if they're an on an IEP, a 504, a health plan, or even their extracurricular activities. So, we can actually see, yes, these students are active members in our community, or these students, we really have not seen them. And then we can try to dig down deeper. So, that's what we're working on right now, and we'll continue to to

049increase that effort. And then our last phase, as we get closer to testing, we'll be having a boot camp for PSAT and SAT prep the week after spring break. And um at that time, it's a good good chance to have real conversations with students in your classes as you're kind of doing the the hard press for testing. Uh students who are saying, you know, I'm not going to come and you can kind of identify those and maybe call in their parents for a conference or discuss with them the significance of taking the test. Our goal is to get every student to test as possible. Our goal is not to just push a different process, but we do want to make sure that we have gone over everything we possibly can to get them there. Um,

050after the initial test date and before the makeup date, that gives us a lastditch effort of two weeks to identify any students who did not show up for testing and who had not completed their opt- out forms or parent refusal forms. Um, so we will be contacting those students to find out the reason for the no-show. if they were just ill and they're planning to attend the makeup, then everything's good. Um, if not, we will in we will be calling home. We'll be emailing and we might even do home visits if necessary, but we are going to like leave no stone unturned and try to get every kid there that we possibly can. So, that's where we're at with Central. Good evening. I'm Steve States. I'm going to be representing Grand River Academy. Um we

051are uh on a priority improvement plan and um our priority improve uh improvement plan we um did qualify for an improvement plan. We're 2.2 points away from performance but however because of our participation we were dropped um one level to a priority improvement plan. We did not meet the um accountability participation rate of 95% and that's where we needed to be uh in order to meet the participation requirements. Um we were 84.6%. So um we're in the neighborhood but we're not close enough. Um we um are breaking what we're going to do down into kind of the seasons. Um we want to start this fall by uh conducting anformational campaign. One of the things that was revealed through our uh school advisory committee meeting um with parents is that they expressed that they didn't always

052know uh the impact it had on the school or um on the outcomes and accountability if they didn't test or if they didn't do an excusal form. And so um it's it's important that parents understand that. Um also the benefits of testing. We want to make sure that they understand um the information that it does provide to their students and to them as families as far as their performance. Um and also we want to make sure that they know that the accountability piece that that's important for us. Um and also that we use it for planning and instructional um decision- making as it's a part of a body of evidence, but it's something that we do. Um we also want to look at student records. Um and we've um been in the process of doing

053that. We are um doing that primarily to monitor participation rates in our online platform because we know that um participation rates in the online platform um if those are low if for a student um there's a good possibility they will not participate in testing. So monitoring um that participation rate as well as attendance either virtually um or in person for those students who have chosen our blended option um coming one day a week um or attending um virtually monitoring that attendance and um trying to target um that uhformational campaign um for students also that um may be struggling uh in the online platform and with and with uh attendance that informational campaign really will um rely on um information on testing in our newsletters, a correspondence that goes out to parents. Um we will have

054teachers discussing the benefits of um assessment in advisory um with students. Again, that's an opportunity um as Tracy said, you know, we have the um students may say, I'm not going to test or I don't want to, you know, do a testing. that's an that's an opportunity to have a conversation with that student and find out um what the reservations are and what their plans are for um for testing. Um we'll also uh in our SACE uh meetings, our school advisory uh committee meetings, we will also um discuss uh assessment as well and and those same things. You know, what are the benefits um for families and understanding their students performance? What is the accountability piece for us as a school and how do we monitor that accurately? We want to make sure we have

055good participation so that our results reflect the work we're doing. And so just emphasizing that there. And then also um making sure that we have a web uh page a part of our web page dedicated to um just sharing information on assessments and link to the district's web page as well. We want to um look in the winter at our um uh parent teacher conferences as well. We have one in February 1. It's another opportunity to share that information to um provide information on assessment. Um again um it sounds somewhat repetitive but we really do want to emphasize that there are benefits for students in assessments. We don't want to we do want to get as many people as many students to test as possible. And so for us that's that's important and um so

056we want to continue to emphasize those benefits. um at our April 4th parent teacher conferences um they that is right in the middle of Camass testing or when CMAS testing is beginning. So that's an opportunity for us to speak to parents of students who have not started at CMS testing and talk to them about makeup testing when makeup testing window is when they have the opportunity to do that. Um and if they um if they opt for that um provider parent refusal form if that's their choice. Um uh similar to central when um testing begins and before makeup testing begins we will contact parents of students who have not tested um and we will do that through phone calls um emails and um similar to central. We're not going to leave a stone unturned to

057try to get as um many uh students to test as possible or if parents elect that the parent refusal. Um, and then that con uh informational campaign will be continued throughout the school year up until testing in the spring. Back to me. Back to me. Yeah. First, I want to say how proud I am of these leaders. This isn't easy being up here sharing um where they didn't make where they needed to be as as the leaders of their school. Um they are with all of our leaders are some of the most student centered people that we have in our district and I'm really proud of them and I want to thank them for being so vulnerable and coming up here and creating and adding to their slide decks and showing and being very honest

058of where they are. But that's the part that I want to celebrate why they're up here. They know and understand what their data says. They've gone and dug in. they've gone beyond the first gap. They know exactly where um in which students they need to focus. They need to focus on all but what those high leverage um strategies are. They created um those improvement strategies. They have a plan and I think every one of them their plan is based on best practice and their plans are based on um opportunities that they've had with other training with the district and without the district. So, I want to make sure that they hear that um I'm proud of them for being here and this wasn't easy and they will be happy to answer any questions and share

059cuz that's the other thing. I think they're very proud of the plans that they and their school teams. None of them have created these plans on their own. They have a team that they work with that are made up of their teachers. They do this with their teachers, not two or four. And I'm sure they would be happy to answer any question that you have um or any wondering questions. Sure. Um okay, so yeah, thank you for being here. I have a couple questions from the district um's perspective. I'm curious how the district views balancing the focus on students versus teachers. So, you know, we hear things like vocabulary and um you know, math groups versus like professional learning communities. And so, I'm curious how we balance those things, especially like hearing from the later

060different assessments of like the number of kids sitting and taking a test. you know, it sounds like we have a lot of resources going to that area as well for those schools. But so how do we balance how do we think about how we balance the focus on teachers versus students versus like some other Right. I I actually think that's a great question because that's something that and I'm sure they would say as leaders as well that we're always trying to balance. We're in this for kids as adults. We choose to be here. we choose this profession. We choose to work here. Our students don't. They don't get the choice, right? They live where they live. They go to the school where we go to. But we also know how important it is that we're

061our our teachers have the resources and they're in a good place to be able to get the good outcomes or the best outcomes for their students. So we always are trying to I am always our site directors all of our essential leadership is really trying to always trying to work on what that balance is that our teachers have the tools and resources that they need to ensure positive good the best outcomes for our students. So when and how we introduce new resources, we know that there are always going to be new resources or the evolution of the science of teaching and learning and how do we and and they practice. Our teachers practice just like our doctors practice and our lawyers practice, right? So how are we ensuring that we're giving our teachers what they

062need that they have to ensure those perfect outcomes? I don't know if I didn't if I answered that specific, but always trying to keep that balance in mind. So, but how So, yeah, I hear that that um tension of figuring out what is the balance, but how do we figure out the balance? So as we're going through any one school, how how do we decide okay we need to put more focus on the learning communities or backwards planning like how does how do we you I understand that we use best practices and datainformed practices we implement only those types of practices but how do we decide between saying like okay we need to focus on like primary focus on vocabulary I just keep using that as an example because it was it's just such an

063easy thing to say um but vocabulary versus backwards planning like h how do we decide? Yeah, there's a um it's complex. It's complicated. And I think when you dig into your data, what each of these leaders and their teams have, they've identified what are those best practices. I'll tell you, I think at the district level, what I've tried to do and everybody on in my team is be consistent in that rhythm and we're not shifting or changing or moving. And so we have been consistent in the last four or five years on what the rhythm of teaching and learning looks like. While we may have introduced, thank you our community, some new resources to ensure that we have those high quality um resources, grade level, grade level rig, grade level standards, grade level rigor. We've

064kept to the same rhythm and routines for the last few years. So, our teachers and our building leaders have become more comfortable on what's coming up next or where should I be looking now? I'm just trying to wrap my head around how we support our teacher or our schools in deciding what to implement. And I understand maybe yeah I understand that that you look for root causes you look for the gaps you go down again and so kind of wherever each school ends up it's just going to be so different for each school yes I just um yeah for the schools where I heard a lot more about the students it just struck me that you know sometimes we heard a lot more about the students and sometimes we heard a lot more about the

065teachers and I was struck by that division. And so I was wondering so irrelevant of any specific school I was just wondering as a district. Yeah, I I have not made nor directed what those improvement strategies are. So as a district, we don't dig your data with your team. You all are professionals and know and understand what those strategies are. Um here are some of the frameworks that you can use. But Kim because of vocabulary we we didn't tell her to choose vocabulary that is what organically came out of those learning communities and them as practitioners know and understand when they do their root cause that that's the strategy that they chose. Okay. I we don't choose their strategies. Yeah. So I do understand that but we do we does what level of the central

066admin helps support them would it be our area directors? Yes. Yeah. So how do they kind of think about this? Yeah. I think I think I understand where you're what you're asking. It goes back to that structure of LC's. So, as I'm sitting in in any of my schools that are up here sitting with those principles in their learning communities with teachers, um you watch them anchor to the standards because that's where they're finding out what kids need to be able to do. They anchor to the standards. They look at their own data and figure out what can our K did kids do and what can our kids not do yet and they come up with those plans. So if a if a learning community sees like, wow, we have a massive gap in vocabulary.

067We're going to focus on that. There are schools that see like we need our kids to write more clearly. They're not good about writing, so they're going to focus on writing. Um we're with all the early literacy stuff that we're doing that right now with HMH's into reading, there's a lot of tearing into skills, right? Do our kids have those discrete foundational skills? And if they do, then do they have the ability to turn that into comprehension of what they're reading and respond to it. Right? So everybody's looking at that data inside those LC's. We're helping them make sure they have the structures for the LC's, the time. We're helping make sure that they're focused in that way, that they have healthy LC's that really look at, you know, if if Danny's LC's were not

068really completing the whole cycle of an LC, we'd be talking about that. How do you help those teams grow to that next place? Right? So that you have that whole cycle going on where they mine their data and they see what their students need. Okay. Thank you. So I think I'm this is becoming more clear in my mind. So I think my question is do we have an understanding of or an an assessment of how we implement these things? So, do we know that focusing more having this more student focused um goals or steps have the same? So, it sounds like what we're saying is every impact, every thing that we implement has the same impact. So, we're agnostic about what exactly is implemented. So whether we focus on the learning community or like a

069a student, you know, specific skill, we think it has the same outcome. So we're agnostic at the district level about how we implement these plans because everything will have the same good outcome. It's it I sense that you're thinking it's a eitheror and it's not. It's the the learning community is the soil for things to grow. So, you got to have a a good structure of a learning community, looking at student data, owning that data, thinking about their instruction, willing to go back in and retach it and look at it again. If you don't have that cycle, it does not matter what you focus on, vocabulary, whatever, math, facts, none of it's probably going to bear a lot of fruit. So, we need that healthy soil first and then their data tells them which pieces

070do you need to dig deeper. So we when we're when each school is implementing the these internally they are making sure that they have both the learning community piece and the student student skill piece and that's that balance. Yes. And it's about adult practices. What are the adults doing or what do the adults need to do to ensure that the students are learning? It's about teaching and learning. And many times goals start with adult practices. what are the adults going to do or what do they need to do to ensure that they're meeting their students needs? And I think that's what you heard with all of our um schools. They're going to focus on that green zone, ensuring that best first instruction. They're teaching to the standards. Their students are engaged. They're using data. And

071they're also talking about interventions. They're closing that gap. We're not going to intervention our way out of this. We need to have both, though. And those are the adult practices to be able to identify what do we need to change in our best first instruction or grain zone and then what do we need to know or what do we need to have in place um to ensure that our students can meet those gaps. So as we heard the difference in focus between some some of the schools focused a little bit more on the um learning the te the so if we make the distinction between teaching and learning some of the schools focused more on teaching and so we just assume that they're at a different process you said that it's kind of the process

072of the teaching and then the learning and so they're just at a different phase in the process. I'm just I just am always curious about the com the component of like quality control and like how we are setting standards to make sure that you know so if if there's an unspoken standard in there that if everybody everybody needs to be addressing both and while we heard more from certain schools about certain of the you know some of them felt more imbalanced than others um but there's some internal quality control where we feel there is a balance and we only heard about a couple of highlights Correct. And I think that goes back, I've said it a number of times to you guys, it's an art and science. And um unfortunately, our schools and our students

073aren't widgets. And we can't automatically that that quality control truly depends on the students and the teachers. And it's all about context. And each one of our leaders know and understand that. And so um they meet the needs of their students as well as meeting the needs for their teachers. But I'd love for you to ask them some questions. I'd be happy to share any more of district, but I I think that they're they've got a lot going on and I'd love for them to have an opportunity to answer any question. I have an easy one. What's that? I have an easy question for me. I'm curious. What kind of opportunities are there for our principles to share what works and what doesn't work with each other so that they can Yeah. double up on

074on those learning experiences regardless of which direction they are. Yeah, we really want to lift and celebrate what we're doing. Many um times you can find a video or an example. We'll read articles on what other people other folks or people or schools or districts are doing. But we have had the opportunity in our leadershipmies, our level meetings to lift um they have because they have learning communities themselves and we try to ensure that we lift and celebrate what's going well in our own district. I don't Does anybody want to share how that has happened? I'm just cur I know you guys are swamped. I know that you're, you know, up to your eyeballs with with this work and and making sure that you're getting to those good outcomes. Um, and sometimes I find that

075it can get lost that sharing component where you may be a able through your experience to um help someone else along even even quicker with their experience. So, one of the things that we've uh we started doing again this year are uh our uh principal cohorts. And so, I'm with a group of three other administrators. And not only we meet, we're supposed to meet uh quarterly, but something that we've noticed is really starting to develop is this community of learning that that's happening weekly. We're we're reaching out to each other. We're building that relationship with each other and asking some of those big questions. For instance, um, one of my my teammates, Jamie Chairo from Chapida, she wanted to know what we were doing to be able to talk about how we're getting kids off

076read plans. What's that focus look like? What are we doing within our data? And so, being able to ask some of those hard questions and sharing some of our documents, we're sharing with each other. And then we'll say, hey, hey Dave from Chatfield, what are you doing? And then Dave says because he's in my group and so we talk about these different things and some some of the pieces that he's already thought of he's informing us to be able to refine our practices. And so it's it's this we're we're richening we're richening the experience for all just through our conversations. and they may we may may not even be in person, but because of that that that forum that we've been able to have, that's really lifting what we're able to do and how we're

077able to support each other and grow grow together. Fantastic. Thank you. That's what I was hoping for. And I just want to share and celebrate again these leaders. Data is not taboo in our district. Amy is just as willing to share her data as somebody else is. And it's not we we really try not to weaponize that data but use the data to spark conversation and share practices. Everybody knows everybody's data. No, I I for instance for actually for any of the principles on the or representatives that are up here, how do you guys get your teams excited to where I mean it's either buyin or going through the motions? I mean there's a difference to where you know you guys are doing a great job you guys are already starting to improve but we

078want to get our students whether it's a learning disability whether it's u a parent at home because kids kids learn different so they could be opting out because they don't test well or I mean you can talk to me and I can tell you anything but if I comes to writing it down then you kind of like you forget it. So, how do we how do we talk to our parents and our teachers that we want to be a better community, you know, education wise, but we really have to buy into that than just kind of just go through the motions of it. I think that um one of the things that all of us do that we don't talk to you guys about in these presentations or turn in in our UIP because that's

079the soft part of what we do. Those are the phone calls. Those are as we're getting to know kids in the community and kids in our school, you know, can I I I would venture that most of us can walk down the hall and talk to every kid that we have in our classrooms and our and our that piece. And then also just really how are we working with our families? Because our families are doing everything they can flat out. They're doing everything they can. They're getting their kids to sports. Some of them are working two or three jobs. And so how do we collaborate with them so that they understand some of that importance? And I think you heard that for sure from our high school principles. But I think that um and it's

080super, you know, elementary parents are a little more brave about going to the school because they're still bigger than most of the kids. And then at middle school all of a sudden in high school the parents kind of disappear. And what we're trying to really work with with our families is that no, we still want you around. And as a matter of fact, the more you're in your kids' business, that the better that's going to be. And so really trying to collaborate on that soft side of things, not that hard data piece all the time because there's that human element that impacts that art and science of teaching. So we might talk about data and we might talk about what a teacher's practice is because I want to come back to Dr. Schulty's as well,

081but we're also know because we were in the room with the kids when they took the assessment and we know where they got stuck. So, we can see it on the data, but we also know the kids. And there's that human part of what we do to say, you know what, the reason that they couldn't do this is because they couldn't read the instructions. And that's where we come up with some of those other pieces. Um, I was going to also respond that sometimes breaking the task down into smaller bite-sized pieces. So, for example, when we looked at our data, we realized that if every student answered two more English questions correct and three more math questions correctly, that we we would make the points we needed to be in performance. So, breaking it into

082something that seems like manageable, I can do it. You can see that very specific thing for both students and parents that really can be um morale building that it, you know, we're right there. You're just pushing through. And so that's that's what we use to try to get sort of everyone on board and and bought in and like we're we're right there. And so it's for me it's breaking the task down into very smaller, more um tangible pieces because sometimes it can get too big and lofty, especially for a new teacher, brand new teacher comes in and they're like, "Oh my gosh, all of these big things like backwards planning and LC's and data informed instruction and they're just trying to figure out how to get their kids to sit down and listen." And so

083if you can give them something very tangible, I think that helps. Thank you. I can jump in on that, too. Um, so I hear you describing um, Director Jones, this idea of going from compliance to commitment, right? As leaders, we're going to be here, many of our teachers are probably in these buildings a lot longer than we are or will be. And so we want to leave behind a legacy that's going to last, that people are excited to go there. And so I think um in OM for example, we've actually slowed down to say let's study the problem. And I've I've actually heard staff begin to be vulnerable and share, well, you know, this is what it feels like to be a staff here. These are some of the things we face. Um this is

084what our kids believe about being here. And so we've actually not acted a ton as much as to say, well, what could we do to help kids take active ownership? Um and then creating space to say, well, how are you creating active ownership? We have areas of excellence throughout our building and then how do we study those where that's happening. So, um, for example, does each lesson have a learning target that creates an opportunity for a kid to own where they're headed and not just going to what does this video on the internet say, but here's one teacher in our building who leverages that to have kids take ownership throughout the lesson. And so, we're actually going to use that as part of a fireside chat at our PL in two days. teachers start to

085tell their own story of how they're seeing success. And we should be focused on this for a year or two at least so that we've got a foundation. I think there's going to be some quick wins we can do. We're going to tighten up our assessment schedule at OM. We know we need to um we've got lesson plans people are submitting, but we need to help people find internal value in this, which it's going to take time. We could always use more time. You guys have heard me say that. I'll say it again. Yeah, couldn't help it. Sorry. Thank you. I think I just want to say in closing, and it looks like Will that you do have a maybe another question. Um, I'm proud that Oh, I thought maybe you did. I'm proud that

086we are a data-informed district, but I want to say, and I've said this a million times, nobody here on this panel, nobody in our schools, leader or teacher, does what we do for data. We do what we do to change lives and influence our students choices when they leave. Data is just a metric that we use to ensure that we're doing the right things. But everybody up here, including our teachers, including all of the people who are not, it's about influencing and changing lives. And this data and these presentations are just the opportunity to share their plan and changing lives, ensuring our students have choice. No, I really appreciate um you guys presenting this evening and I would echo um Jen's statements here and and from before. Um I sat on a sack committee as

087a parent and we had to put a UIP together. So, I understand the enormous feat that you guys have done to put that data all into a document that then has to be submitted. Um, I understand why we need to do that, but I also feel like it misses the piece of the actual implementation of what we actually need to do to get kids to move. So one I I I haven't as an administrator or a teacher sat in your shoes, but as a parent I sat in those shoes to work through with the school to do that. And one of those pieces was we were low on participation because parents didn't understand the testing aspect of it. So I understand what you all are saying. Um I also understand um the pieces of of

088the backwards planning. Now I do have a couple of questions. So many of you mentioned backwards planning. So, is that a best practice, I guess, as far as why we're identifying that? Um, okay. I see heads shaking. Yes. Okay, that's great. Um, and I do want to celebrate each one of you had something that was a benefit and and something to celebrate. So, while we have to do these kinds of meetings as a district, I agree with Jen. It's not a punitive thing. It is something about us just being aware of where we are and how we need to move forward. So, I do commend you for just being able to step into being the leader that you are to present this data to us. Um, a couple questions are if you had the a

089UIP from last year, what things do you know worked that you're going to continue to do this year? And what things do you did you change that you felt like, oh, we did we tried that and that didn't work? So, I don't know if you can maybe specifically whoever wants to step up to that plate. um you know identify that hey this worked really well. We're excited to to to continue to do this this year and this is something we're changing because that did not work last year. I can go for it since you know you're getting to know me. We've gotten to know all of you. I've been here before. Um I I I think when I look at our UIP from last year, it really didn't change a whole lot, but what it

090really did was become more refined. And so what happened was is that we were looking at more of what do we want students to know and be able to do? But now we're really targeting into those, you know, what does that standard truly say? What does that priority standard say? And how do we get kids there? What are those gaps? What are the what are what are what are they what are they missing? What do we need to grow through that? And so it's we've really gone from more of like up here and we're now more into that into that more specific. And so it it helped us become more specific because really and truly this is the third my third year at Clifton. It's that that UIP has continued to refine itself because the

091work is the right work. Um but but being able to say is that these these were these systems and structures that support instruction. We are becoming more refined and more laser-like focused. That's great. Does anybody else want to share anything? Okay. So then Oh, go ahead. data informed instruction was something that worked at Central. We we're on an upward like it's yeah small but we're we're going up but data informed instruction is one thing that um just identifying the gap and really putting PSAT and SAT questions in front of our students. It helped our teachers understand the rigor necessary for grade level instruction. I think that they were always trying to meet kids where they were, but um that that work helped them see that they needed to up that that game and make sure

092they were fully in tune with what grade level rigor was. And so that's absolutely something we'll continue um to really refine and and get better at. But that was a that's been something I think a success. That's really good because I think you guys mentioned the anchor to the standard and I I know Dave has mentioned that at Chatfield because I've asked him several times. I'm like, "How did you how did you guys get there and then how have you stayed there?" And they said that anchoring to the standard and so while I know all of you do a lot to meet kids where they're at, we also know that we also have to know where we have to get them to. And kids are actually quite remarkable. I mean, I I I know that

093they will rise to those challenges, but and with that, we know that sometimes we we're going to help supplement, which I think you all said with um well, I know, hold on, I made lots of notes. So like the MA the LIP plus and the math plus at Grand Mesa Middle School and then just the other things the targeted math tutoring um at Orchard Mesa cuz so my oldest son when he was in elementary school and he's now in college um he was really challenged with reading at that first grade level and the teacher just identified that if she could take him out of the class before they got into reading groups it it ended up being a competence thing for him. So he didn't want to start reading in front of his peers, but

094if he had had a little bit of practice beforehand before he got in the reading group, I mean, in in just a few months time, all of a sudden, just his his confidence and his wanting, right? It's it's sometimes it's that desire for the student to want to do it because a lot of times we all shy away from the things that we're not great at, right? So, um, that those little pieces just helped him, you know, excel in them wanting to be able to read. And we know that reading is then super important when it comes to the comprehension piece. Um the second question I would have or the follow-up is and I know that I've asked you this when I visited your schools is do you feel you're lacking resources or um people

095things in your buildings that would help you or help your teachers? Uh I I know I know time for you time. Right. Right. So well but but I mean if if there was you know okay if time money whatever was you know it's that that dreaming thing like I think from the board level we need to know these things because either e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e either it's going to be an ask of the community or it's going to be something that we have to look at as you know if we have to reallocate funds or things like that. I would just do you feel that there's something you really could use or need in your building that would help

096you with your students? And but please don't be afraid to state what it is. It's not I think that the declining enrollment and the reduction of staff has impacted us at Nisley. I feel like we've had to make bigger class sizes than we've had in the past. And I think with students that have a variety of needs, that makes it really difficult. So that would be something that has impacted Nisley. Thank you. I think right now what a big thing that's hugely impactful is um just the trouble we have finding substitutes for things like half-day plannings and Nick days and the quality professional development we want to offer. And we can I mean we could always use time. I'm not going to even argue with that. But sometimes we find the time but there's no

097sub or I had teachers pulled aside for half day today but then admin and other people were running around like crazy because behavior spike when there's subs in the building just for a variety of reasons. So I feel like anything surrounding that topic of subs and quality coverage and even just coverage it really puts a strain on the building and and an equity issue too because it's much easier to get subs in certain places than others for a variety of reasons. So, I think just a continued commitment to that equity piece and those considerations that may people may not realize. I appreciate that. I'm going to stamp what Danny said just in a different way so you don't think it's just Danny. But in the in the TLCC survey that the state does every other

098year, teaching and learning conditions in Colorado where they ask all teachers, what do you need? What do you not have? Right? They just talk about all that stuff. Time is always the huge answer that says we don't have enough time. We may have enough this, we may have enough that, but I mean the whole time I've been in the profession and they've used that survey. It's always time. Teachers need more time. Is it is it time with students? Is it time with colleagues? Is it time with principles? I mean, what are we breaking the time piece down into? I'd say yeah with the first two time with students because if you're not getting the learning accomplished yet and you're looking at your data going we're not there you're like can I get you know periods

099that are six minutes longer can I get what can I do to get more time with my kids and more days right and they need more time with each other because this all this stuff we've been talking to you about tonight backwards planning and all that is really that anchoring to the standards you when you when our when our educators get really familiar with the standards which we are now. Four years ago, not so much. Now, you just go sit in these buildings and watch these teams and they are ripping apart the standards and doing like Amy was saying, what what are the kids expected to do to meet this standard? They're tearing it apart. They need time to plan. They need time to prepare that now that they get it. They're like, "Okay, I

100can't just drop this and run and go to, you know, I need to prepare for these kids now that I know where I'm leading them." So, they need time to plan. Our leaders need time to help them do those things together and orchestrate that professional learning with them and we need more time with kids. So sorry it's like all of them. So so what I'm hearing is that and I'm seeing heads shake. Yes. So principles you you feel you need more time with your staff. Okay. And then our teachers are needing more time with students. So either longer periods or we need more contact days with kids. Right. just and I know I'm probably that's a we just need more teaching time with kids. Okay. And then and and people and we need people. We

101need more teachers. We are not um producing as a a nation or a state. We are there for whatever reason is it pay is it? But there is not a lot of value in being a teacher. And so how do we lift this profession because everybody started as a student. Every professional at one time was a student. So how are we honoring this profession and ensuring our teachers are being paid as another professional would and find um this profession as um as valuable as anything else. And then it sounds like we might need some stabilizing factors in buildings when we have subs because if behaviors peak then and you're all coming out of your meetings to help probably help with those behaviors. So all right and covering classes like Dr. Gan said that we um

102I'm sorry Angela sorry everybody's a doctor right now so I call everybody a doctor so yeah we're all doctors. Um but I think that I think there's another element to that that schools have changed dramatically um since I started 30 some years ago. Um and what what what some of our buildings really need are those support pieces. We have so many children that are impacted by trauma, mental health issues, etc. And we do not have the resources to support them so that they can be successful in the classroom. you know, they're blowing out, we say, for behavior, but those behaviors are tied to something. And and I think that symptoms, they're symptoms. Yeah. Those behaviors are symptoms of other things. And I think that what we see certainly um in the buildings represented here is

103we see more of that unfortunately um because of socioeconomic issues. And I think that um we're staffed right now on an equal basis based on the number of students. And I've said this before and so I soapbox it a little bit, but I think that our staffing model and the way that we give resources to buildings doesn't need to be equal. It needs to be equitable so that the needs of places that have more needs get met. Yeah. I I think that I think It's going with what I don't know if this is on again. Is it on? I think when we're when we're talking about what Kim was talking about is that we really we're really talking about that social emotional component to learning because really social emotional learning is really the foundation for

104all academic and academic achievement and growth. And so something that we you for instance I was uh without a school counselor for the entire last year. Didn't have one. Couldn't find one. And so we didn't have that to be able to support. Um we were calling people in all the time. It more of a triage part, but we still didn't have that person. Um, it's finding the qualified people and it's also being able to, you know, people who are going to a answer that call because we as a as as an as a community, we have to be able to recognize that we must regulate ourselves and teach our learners to regulate ourselves so that we can learn. Because what we're all talking about are all these other pieces. If we if we we've got

105to calm our learning environments and I'm going to keep saying that over and over and over again. And that is my primary directive this year is we are calming our learning environments and we're seeing some differences. But if we don't calm our learning environments, we're going to keep doing the same thing over and over again. A day in the life for the last the last two weeks, which is um we've had we've had four to five un unfilled sub jobs two weeks straight. I've walked classrooms and they're getting relief stipens, but they're classrooms where you got 50 kids. We're able to open up doors. We have a modern building. We have an amazing staff, so they're getting it done. Um, when that happens with these subs, with people getting sick, with life happening, then the

106discipline does spike. So, we met in our admin meeting just yesterday and we said, "Hang on, guys. Let's take stock." When was the last time you were in a classroom being an instructional leader? Little bit of crickets. And I I'm supposed to be the lead learner. I said, "Guys, I've been on the ropes for two weeks." And so, we all recommitted. Let's go take 15 minutes, get in a classroom now. And so I think when we say time, Angela brings up, I've got $30,000 for sub planning days for backwards planning. Amazing. The problem is those subs don't fill or you're not there to facilitate the PL. And so I know there's debits and asking for it, but it's really sustained time so that you're not rushing a monthly staff meeting for 45 minutes because we

107want to have fun and connect. So after we do that, I got 25 minutes left, right? Can't do a lot in 25 minutes to build deep learning. see you in a month, right? As a whole staff, that's what we got versus and and y'all have heard me say this in the past, high performing learning systems, networks of schools block weekly sustained time when kids aren't in the building and that lets adults be there. That lets adults triage and kid talk that 10% of the school that is in absolute trauma that's selfharming. And so what I see happening is we're straining the system probably particularly in title schools and we're we're reacting to just to keep the day going right and everybody works so hard and so I think like you need time to take stock

108and get organized and then we can do these great improvement strategies tied to instruction but as it stands right now the time's not there and you can't take it from teacher planning time they have two three preps right they need all that so I think otherwise we're just trying to maintain pain. So that's that's how the last two weeks have gone. We're doing great. Culture is good, but I don't know how fast we can move things. Thank you. So that's a great series of thoughts to to kind of think about, but also follow up on at the district level. I'm curious, how do we think about equitybased staffing? I know that we use title dollars. Each school uses title dollars to do that. Well, not to accomplish that as though it's done, but how what

109conversations have we had at the district level to talk about equity based staffing and how does the district think about that? Um, so we have had those conversations. We actually were um looking at maybe doing some changes to the staffing model last year. Um, there was hesitancy um at the district level because we were moving to a a steps and lane system and too much change to how we staff our buildings um during that time was um a worry. So um so we didn't move forward on that. Um so yeah, it's a conversation. I we haven't made any changes there. We have made changes to the model over time. We've made little changes like factors to try to help out schools when um they're in certain situations. But um would I say that the model

110is completely uh equitable in terms of um you know student needs and and things of that nature? No. Um but it is something that we um we've been looking at and and need to make adjustments to. Great. So, it sounds like that is an acknowledgment. If you say we need to make adjustments to it, what sort of a time frame are we thinking about in terms of, you know, getting do we have a goal at the district level about how to get Well, the other issue is that if you're going to do equitable staffing, that means you're you're probably putting more staff into buildings. And so, what we're dealing with right now is uh a lack of resources. So to put more staff in the buildings, where are those dollars going to come from? Um

111and as we're declining in student enrollment, that's just going to get even worse. And so um you know that that would be an issue as well. And then also the other issue to that is are you going to find the people to actually do that work? So we have positions right now in our buildings that we can't even staff. So if I give um a school additional FTE for um equitable purposes, am I actually going to be able to find the people to do that job? Um, so that creates an issue as well. So, um, yeah, I I don't have a timeline on when that would happen and what it would even look like. I don't want to give people false hope and say we're going to we're going to start putting more FT in

112these buildings and then we don't actually have people showing up to to take those jobs. So, that gets back to the issue that was mentioned before about the profession in general and how do we attract more um folks to the teaching profession, how we attract people to the Grand Junction area uh to want to be teachers in the district. Um, and then how do we attract folks to take some of these hard to fill positions as well? Um, I don't I don't know the numbers right now and Nikki's not here, but the amount of special education positions that we still haven't filled this year. Um, okay. So, 22. So, I I you know that even to get us to where we're staffed at our current staffing model levels, um, I think would have an impact

113on schools. Um, but then to have a conversation about how do we because I I think an equitable staffing model for us right now. We're staffing pretty I don't know if lean's the right word I would say but we wouldn't necessarily be taking from some schools to give to others in that sense. I think we would be adding more FT to the model in general. Um again which is additional cost and then are we going to find the people to do it? So um I don't have an answer for when that would happen right away but I I it is something that I've heard from principles. Um we've talked about it last year in our um uh uh principal advisory committee. Um and we we've had some conversation around that, but we haven't actually dug

114in deep enough in that. Is there any plan to put that on the, you know, prepared and supported staff committee for the Strat plan or is there any plan to kind of like formalize or institutionalize, you know, thinking about it and moving toward and I understand there's tons of barriers always, but yeah, you know, if we don't have a plan to move toward it, then yeah, it's a it's a good point and yeah, that could be the the avenue to take it. Um, it just hasn't been the priority right this second. I'll just be completely honest um with everything else going on, but we do need to re uh address it. So, yeah, and that that may be the avenue we take it through is the action team around um prepared and supported students or

115staff, but specifically within maybe it's the pipelines group um that we we kick it to. So, but I it's going to have to be tied to the effective resource allocation group as well because we have to make sure that we obviously have the dollars to be able to do um any moves we would make within the model itself. Yeah. to reiterate, we can throw all the money at it if there are no people to to come in and do that work. That's really I mean this has been what we've heard since before we were were even on the board in in speaking with schools and and speaking with um administration, teachers, people at the district level is we're we're really just hurting for good people in these positions. And I don't know if there's some

116other strategy that we can think about besides going that same direction. If people aren't there, they're not there. I mean, we're not going to get them. So, what other things can we do to sort of offset that that issue and I I know that's what you guys are working on. I I talk to you and and hear that all the time. So, you know, uh, one of the things I'm I'm thinking about when and just to throw this in there is that the CMU promise that came out just recently, I think that that is a huge leverable place that we can really bring in our community. It's bringing access to education for some of our adults in our community that they and I have talked to so many people that they want to be a

117teacher, but they can't afford it. And so, you know, looking at that, I think really partnering with CMU and thinking about some of those pipelines that we can do to build our profession. I think we can do this. We have a lot of we have a lot of dedicated professionals that are in our paraprofessional roles because they don't have a four-year degree. And so, I think really thinking about that as well. I think we do have some opportunities there. Yeah, I was going to say I think we I think we are we're making some steps in the right direction. We have CMU, we have excuse me, um we're doing our grow our own and and then the pathways that were identified in the declining enrollment committee between looking at I mean if the funding needs

118to be there, then that's something the board is going to have to go back and ask our community to see if they're willing to step up to help fund positions via mill levy dollars, you know, and better resources. Um, and so I think in the five pathways, there's ways that we've started that and then we've also started that in in having to grow our own. And I know that Nikki and her team are starting to look at trying to attract other people to the Grand Junction area for those types of positions. So, um, I think we've started the work. I know we would all love for it to be at the completion point right now, but, um, I do have to say that sometime, you know, you got to take the first step to get

119the ball rolling. And so I think we're I think we're working through that. Does that mean we're we're perfect and we're there yet? Absolutely not. But that is at least at least as an organization I think we're making the steps in the right direction um to get there. So um I would like to see how we can help with the substitute situation and the spiked behaviors. You know, I've already talked to you about some of that. So um well, I have some ideas. So, um, but I think that could that could be implemented more quickly because some of some things we can do quickly to to help address situations and then some things are going to be more longterm. Um, and we we've got to be able to work both, right? If we only focus

120on trying to fix something that's a long-term plan, we might be selling ourselves short of actually trying to help in the interimm to help those kids, like you said, just calm the classroom. there may be some things that we can do more quickly um that then once you find the counselor or you find the person long term um we've got to be working through all of those steps all the time. And we were just talking yesterday about the um the sub issue and you know we've tried some different initiatives. We've tried um upping the daily rate if you um are going to sub in um hard to fill schools schools that have a hard a hard time filling sub jobs. And I think if I'm not going to speak for Nikki, but I think I

121remember what she said yesterday, it's not yielding the results we thought we would get. So, we're having some of those discussions now about what other um incentives or or some other ways that we could try to get um subs to um want to fill positions in schools where we're not getting those positions filled. So, it's it's a reality. And then, you know, I know the principal shared there are a lot of times having to be in classrooms covering classes um which pulls them from the work they're doing. And then the same things happen at the central level as well. we've got um folks in the central office that are out um filling in classrooms or covering um and dealing with these things. And so it it then impacts what they're supposed to be doing within

122their roles as well. So it's not it's not a great situation. Um and we are trying some different initiatives to try to address that, but it's um we still have work to do around that as well. Um, one thing that I know Danny was talking about the early release Fridays last year and the the beauty of that is that there's something that when the year gets really heavy, you have higher sub days and um, so then that's part of because teachers if they're always filling in for other teachers, then they start to just get emotionally tired and drained. It happens at every level when you're filling in and not just doing your regular job. But there's something about having that time that like Danny was talking about to breathe like on that that early release

123Friday that we kind of thought about last year. Um that could help with the mental health of some of our teachers who might not need to take as many subdays and it might not feel as heavy sometimes. So that's just that's like an easy kind of something that's not long term but maybe a little shorter. But Oh, thank you. I I really really appreciate your honest feedback because from the board level um it's just it's things we really need to hear. So, and you guys know you have our emails and you're welcome to give us feedback anytime because um we can't well like you know if you don't know about something you don't know how you can help with it. So, I appreciate your guys' time here and I look forward to all of your

124schools being right there. I know that that they will be. So, and we thank you for the dedication you have to our students. And and I I'll echo that. And the last thing I'll mention is, you know, five of the schools up here weren't here last year. And so, you know, um and so I know they're excited to get back um up to those top two levels. You know, that I I don't want to over um gloss over the participation thing, right? because um y'all schools technically scored high enough to be improvement schools to not be uh priority improvement or turnaround but because of the rules around participation um that's what dropped them down a level. Well, in last year you didn't even have data because it was labeled as insufficient. So, you know, just

125kind of looking at that and then looking at our strategic plan goal around having 90% of our schools in year two at the top two levels. Um you know, I think we're we're headed in the right direction. And we've got plans in place um to make sure that we can get uh I mean I'd like to hit 100% next year, but um but our strap plan goal is to get 90% of our schools um to that. And if we um can make sure that our schools that were there um jump back up to those levels and can stay there. And then we have schools that moved from improvement or excuse me prior to improvement or turnaround that moved up to uh performance or improvement, but we have to make sure that you know they're not

126sitting up here right now, but they've also are making sure they have plans in place to not drop um back down a level um so they're not back presenting next year as well. So I just don't want to lose sight of those other um you know 30 or so schools that we're having to focus on as well to make sure that we continue to see growth so we can get 100% u in the end for our strategic plan goal. So, but again, yeah, thanks for all y'all's work and um all the effort they are putting in and um we're excited to see the results. Thank you for your time this evening. We appreciate it. [Applause] All righty. Do you guys need a quick little break? Just get it done. I don't Well, if you All

127right. So, now we have um our Colorado Department of Education four-year watch presentation. Does anybody want to tee this up a little bit? It's Well, Jyn bailed on me, so I'll tee it up. Um Oh, you're coming. But you go ahead. So, um, we've asked, uh, CD to to come present just to give us information on, um, essentially some background on, uh, what it means to be on the the quote unquote the clock, uh, with the state. So, what does that mean exactly? Um, and then what does it mean as you move through that clock into um, you know, a year four or year five school. So, it's a little bit more of anformational session. Um, and so, we're appreciative of Jenny being here. Um, I know she met with staff at at um our

128our school that's on year four of the clock and so she may share a little bit with that uh about that as well with us, but this was um we haven't had a presentation like this for the board. So, we just wanted an opportunity for y'all to hear um what that looks like and what that means moving forward. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Jenny and Jen. All right. Good evening. Thank you for having me um and Andy who's online right now. My name is Jenny Hinkle. Um I'm a school transformation specialist and I'm also the support lead um for Mesa 51. I also have the privilege of working with the schools that are in the transformation um network in Mesa 51. And Andy, I don't know if he can if we can

129see him and he can introduce himself. Okay. All right. Um, I'm not sure if you can hear me. Uh, good evening. Andy Swanson, director of accountability pathways. I get the honor of working with Jenny and so just thanks for the opportunity and thank you for letting me uh virtually join the meeting. So, it's a pleasure to be here with you all. So, this evening we want to give you an overview of the accountability process and then just provide an overview for the next steps for Nisley Elementary. And you've already heard about this in the previous presentation, but we'll just review it again three times. Can never say it enough. Um for the school performance framework, the elementary schools and middle schools um their school performance framework is made up of 40% of achievement scores and

13060% of the um academic growth. And then for our uh high schools, we have 30% that's made up of our postsecary and workforce readiness uh 30% of the academic achievement. and then 40% growth. There's different plan types that are based on our school performance framework. So the top two are performance plan and improvement plan. Then we move to priority improvement and turnaround. And there's two other ratings too for insufficient data um if a school has or school or district has small tested populations or if there's low participation. And then there's a lot of different language around accountability. So just want to build some background for that. So a school that is on the clock is a school that has received a rating of priority improvement or turnaround. Schools that are off off the clock are

131when a school or district sustains improvement status or higher for two consecutive years. That's how you get off the clock. Two consecutive years of improvement or higher. schools and districts that um have schools on the clock are eligible for different easy grants um to support the work that's happening at the school. And then when a school is on the clock for five consecutive years that uh requires a school to come in front of the state board for a state board hearing and at that state board hearing the state board of education will direct an action um around a pathway for the school. So here's just an overview for MESA 51 for your school performance frameworks. The district overall is on improvement. You have a significant amount of schools on performance. There's 26 schools that received

132a rating of performance. Six that are improvement, seven on priority improvement, one on turnaround, and there was three schools with insufficient data. Then you can see the schools on the right are the schools um that are currently on the accountability clock based on the preliminary um school performance frameworks that came out in September. So this slide shows the accountability clock process and how the level of state intervention increases as the years on the clock um increase. So you see with year one um there's support around improvement planning. Um there's also support around grants. Um but as you move to year four, you see a higher level of intervention. So there's a state review panel visit to the school. That's when we begin talking about pathways. When you hit year five, you even have a higher

133level of intervention where you go in front of the state board um and they will um ask you to implement a will direct you to implement a certain pathway and then after that there's ongoing progress monitoring for the school. So, Nizzley is one of the schools that has advanced on the clock to your force. They have a higher level of intervention. So, just here's some background on um accountability for Nisley. So, from 2017 to 2019, the school earned a school performance frame of priority improvement. So, putting them year three on the clock. Then the pandemic happened and all of the school performance frameworks were paused. Um then in 2022 the school performance frameworks came back but no schools advanced on the clock unless the school district um did a request for reconsider. So for Nisley

134they actually earned a rating of improvement. The school district did a request for reconsider which moved them onto year um onto on watch because they were improvements. They would need one more year then after that to get off the clock. But then this uh past school year 2023 the school actually um actually had a improvement rate or a priority improvement rating moving them to year four. So Andy is going to jump online. He's going to talk a little bit more about the accountability process when we hit year five. Thanks Jenny. Yes. So um what we'd be looking at here is just wanted to walk you through uh what happens in year five. Um in the case of for your scenario of Nisley Elementary next year were to get a priority improvement or turnaround plan type.

135Um what happens at that point is we'll talk through the state review panel visit here in just a moment but there would be a hearing before the state board in which the state board would consider that state review panel's report um whatever the district proposes for the possible pathway for the school to be and then the commissioner's report which is what our team puts together u with the commissioner which essentially is the data over time. um our evaluation of the plan um and then any other subsequent information such as grants and other things that would be germanine to the situation. Um the state board then directs an action to you all as the local board um of one of those five pathways that we'll go through in just a moment. U they are statutoily required

136to direct one at least one of those pathways and then uh that would be for the school to implement in the following school year. So in this scenario, if uh NISLY were to get a year five primary improvement or turnaround plan type on the 2024 SPF, this hearing would have to happen by February of 2025. And then the directed action would have to go into place the 2526 school year, which um feels like a really far time away, but it really is not. Um and then uh the school and the district would continue to receive ongoing support, monitoring, and accountability. um Jenny being the the point person for you all um from CDE and that would continue until either the school exits um the clock through two consecutive improvement or performance plan types um or

137typically in a state board directed action order the board would um the state board would direct the school to come back to the state board after two more um SPFs for a re-haring and possibly um a modified action at that point. So to look at what those um district-run school actions are, this is the slate that is statutoily required um for the state board to direct um in the situation of a year five hearing for a district-run school. Management by a public or private entity. This can be full management or partial management of different aspects. We've actually had a lot of schools that have come forward in with management as their pathway a lot of times around academic systems, assessments, um talent management, other aspects of the school. This does not necessarily mean an external

138organization fully manages or fully takes over the school although that is a possibility under the law. Um innovation status is a very clear uh rule-based designation in which a school can request waiverss from certain district rule state law um or collective bargaining agreements. Um that's very detailed and laid out how that happens. um school closure, conversion to a charter school, and then the most recent that the legislature just passed in 2022 that we don't yet have any schools that have this as a directed action, but we anticipate that happening soon is conversion to a community school. Happy to go into further detail um on any of these and what they they all entail as as you may wish within that. But the state board must direct at least one of these pathways. We do have

139schools that have come forward with directed action with multiples of these um such as myself. I was an assistant principal at a high school that went through stateboard directed action. We had innovation status as well as partial management as our directed actions within that. Um so the one part that I said we would come back to is the state review panel which is actually a big part of this. The state review panel is in statute. It is a group of educators across the state of Colorado that um that apply to be a part of the state review panel through it is run by school works an external organization. Um, and really the intent of this is to have an outside set of experts who have no tie to the school, no tie to the district,

140no tie to CDE, um, or the state board to provide an evaluation to the state board of what they think is the best directed action for that school as an outside set of experts. They will do a document review. They come on site. They interview the vast majority of staff, uh, walk a lot of classrooms, and then prepare a report that is intended for the state board to be able to tell them this is what that, um, review panel believes should be the directed action for the school. Um, and that report is very detailed and it is part of the record that goes to the hearing. The state board is not beholden to that report, but they do take it very seriously. Um, and so we work very hard with schools before the state review

141panel comes in to be thoughtful about what are what are the directed actions that the school and the district may want um in order to be able to uh use that strategically with the state review panel. The other thing that the state review panel will um judge or evaluate the school on is within these six criteria. So you can see them there. The school would receive a rating um on each of these from not effective to effective. Uh whether leadership is adequate, the infrastructure is in place is adequate. Um they can plan effectively to lead implementation of an action. They engage productively with external partners. Uh likelihood of positive return on investment and whether it is necessary for the school to remain in operation for students. So, a school that underos a state review panel

142visit will get a we'll receive a rating in each of those six areas. Um, typically a state review panel visit will happen in the spring of year four. Um, we will work with the district on timing and and when and how that should take place. Um, in the case of Nisley Elementary and whether or not the spring is the right timing for that. Um, and I think I'll turn it back to Jenny. Yeah. So, here's an overview of of the supports that CDE provides um for schools that are on the clock and then I'll talk specifically about NISLY. So, um there's grant funding available through the easy grant for any school that's identified um on the state accountability clock or any school that's also federally identified. Um we also have our supports a designated support

143lead which is the role that I have supporting MESA 51. We also provide support around improvement planning um for the U unified improvement plan. Um any technical assistance that schools or district may need um around grants around the SPFs around the UIP and then the accountability process support um which specifically for NISLY what that would look like is support visits for the school, helping them with their improvement planning. Um, in year four, um, helping the school to get ready for a state review panel visit and working with the district to learn about the different pathways and determining what might be the best fit based on the district's vision um, and the vision for the school. So, next steps for me 51 and around Nisley um is working with the school and district leadership to develop

144that strong improvement plan for the school year. um providing support visits along the um al across the year around um those improvement plans and and providing thought partnership around that and then starting to research and plan for possible pathways for Nisley that meets the needs of both the school and the district. So with that, that's the end of our presentation. So any questions that you have for Andy and I that we can um that we can answer around the accountability clock process in general or about Nisley. So just to kind of make sure I've got my head wrapped around it. So first the district needs to come in really help NLI work with an improvement plan probably a little more intensely than what we're doing with the UIP. Okay. And then if that's not succeeding,

145then the state's going to come in, do an assessment or interviews, and then potentially make or or make the recommendation on what they feel would be the best pathway for that school. Is that kind of I just want to make sure I'm tracking with sort of what the process is. Um, so yeah, so the district will work with the school and I will be supporting alongside of the district with the school on creating that strong improvement plan and then I'll be doing support visits and yeah, we actually had that visit um I think it was last week that I met with Dorothy um on on the improvement plan and then because NISLY is year four on the accountability clock. That's when the state review panel would come in um and do the school visit for

146the document review, interviewing different stakeholders and making that recommendation for a pathway. Usually it happens in the spring, but we can work with the district to decide if that's the best timing for that state review panel visit. Got it. Thank you. Any other questions? Yeah, I think I have more questions for our team, not necessarily for you. So, I don't okay want to keep you if you don't need to stay. So, thank you. That was a that was a good overview. We appreciate that. Well, thank you for your time and um if there's any other questions, I'm sure we'll um they can direct them to me. Thank you. So, Dan was our site director at Nisley, right? But now that he's So, who's our site director now? Paul. Okay, Paul is all right. Can I

147what was Nusli's status prior to 2017? Do we know? Um I can probably find that real quick. Okay. So I'm looking off of a spreadsheet. Yeah. Um, I have them from so 2010 it was performance, 2011 performance, 2012 performance, uh, 2013 performance, and 2014 performance. Sorry, these are tabs. I'm trying to click through a spreadsheet. Um, and then Curry's not here, but then it we have 2016, so I don't know what happened there, but um, Nizzly, uh, so performance and then it moved to um, well, they were dropped to improvement for low participation in 2016 and then it looks like uh, maybe 2017 was when it moved into priority improvement. I believe that's that's what her slide showed. Yeah, since 2017. So yeah, 2017 looks like 2016 um they technically were an improvement because of

148the low participation. Yeah. So 2017 was improvement because of low participation. Uh 2016 2016. Okay. And then and you may not have the answers to this. So how have we been coming alongside them since 2017? It just seems to me that by the time I mean I know that COVID hit, but there was a three three years where they were on priority improvement. Um I just am kind of wondering what steps were happening or what we were doing during I I don't have the answer. Right. I don't um but I most certainly we can investigate and I can find out. I I don't Well, it's really interesting that they just put everything on hold through two years of uh of COVID. I mean, it's almost as if you're starting over. Yeah. And if you've got

149new different leadership, how long has the leadership been at that school? Do you know that? How long we We're going to Okay. Four to five. is to go back that many years. It's not even the same kids in school. A lot of them have no moved on. So, and and knowing the kind of the um makeup of that particular school, I I'm guessing that there's a high rate of students moving around and not maybe staying there. In fact, we just talked about that today because we did meet with um with their staff and they do have a high mobility rate. So as a district, are we involved in it now or are we at the the level with the state? So the state is here with the district. Um so I guess on top of

150the UIP, what I know there's been visits what what are we doing? Yeah. So I think that goes back to even one of the questions that we had last week. What what does the state do with this data? And um one of the things that Paul shared is they use this data to identify different resources and the easy grant is one um and I want to tell you for the last well we've been doing this is going to be our fourth fourth implement or fourth request for the easy grant and um NISLY has been a part of the easy grant. So there's the relay training um the school turnaround network or the transformation network that Jenny is talking um they met do they meet on a quarterly basis or that you come over and visit

151but then we go they'll go over there and so um those opportunities for additional professional development through the easy grant or CDE's additional funds and resour I guess the reason I was that I made the statement about CO and and kind of how long that period of time is, I don't mean that to sound like it's a bad thing. Might be a huge gift, right? That that we're getting it maybe if you think if you think about it, we would be getting the help sooner rather than the good news, bad news. Yeah. Good news, bad news. Yeah. I mean, we'd rather not be in that position at all. Of course, I know everyone would, but maybe that extra help that the state can give will will get us to the goal. Yeah. Quicker. Could we

152get the numbers of FTE that Nislley has had to cut since 2017? That' be interesting, too. Yeah. I mean, just because her comment was that that is, I think, greatly impacted them. And we know we know now that the declining enrollment has at least from 2017 we started um seeing those numbers kind of come about. Um and I'm not saying that anybody at that time knew exactly what that would translate into. But I mean if we've been making FTE cuts from those buildings um it'd be nice to know what what Nisley maybe has had money for but if they've also had to cut in the in in the interm as well. I mean, we might have had money to do things, but we might have not had the people to be able to do it.

153And then if you're having to cut your reading interventionists or your math interventionists, it just seems like we've we've kind of just gone backwards. Um I I'm don't know yet, but I'd like to have that information. So it sounds like um one question is, you know, do we do we believe that we understand the root causes for this situation. Um, and so it sounds like you're trying to get at some of those, but maybe um, and that is something that I would like to thank Jenny that she's been doing when she says she's working on the UIP is helping of course Paul or our site directors um, visiting the school, watching um, taking the opportunity to to walk and watching our LC's, seeing what they're doing, how are they moving forward, does it look the

154same in the classroom when they break from the LC, but really focusing on identifying what those root causes are. Um, having Jenny as a partner. Um, I know that she has met with and just recently, like she said last week and then Paul and I pick her brain and and listen as well, but what are the those strategies that are going to make the biggest difference? And that is because she not only Jenny, she has she had the opportunity to be a turnaround school and make things change. She's working with schools all over the district. I'm sorry, the state and providing those uh strategies and that guidance on what they need to focus on in their UIP and every day. It'll be interesting to see how their findings for root causes and strategies differ from

155our findings because we have years of information about we what we have identified the root cause. Do you mean the state between us and the state? What um at what point does the is anything brought before the board before it goes to the state board like this board? Do you know of Yeah. Sorry. I guess I should have asked you that. Yeah. And I'm thinking that's the review panels first before we go in front of the state board. Yeah, the state review panel um would provide us with that report. Um so you have that information. Um but before you would go to the state um board, there would be a lot of meetings with the district and supporting the school um with that pathway planning and preparation for a state board. So, so could the

156district pick a certain pathway before the state board does and then the district would make that that recommendation to this board? That's that's a great question. Um, so the state review panel will give a recommendation around a pathway. Um but even before that happens um the school and the district can work together on thinking about what's the best pathway and they'll actually present that to the state review panel saying based on our data based on conversations this is what we think would be a great pathway for us. They present that to the state review panel. They also take that into consideration when they're making their recommendation. When uh the state board decides on a pathway they'll look at the state review panel's recommendation. to look at the commissioner's visit and what the commissioner um her

157findings and strengths um and challenges for the school and then there's also a place for a district proposal um for the pathway so the state board considers all of those. Okay, great. Thank you. Does the state look at um anything beyond just the school? So, you know, as we're, you know, we just had this conversation about like equity funding versus equal funding, you know, does the state consider kind of more district level themes as well or is it just the school? So, when we go in front of the state board, we'll do give a story about the district um and the supports that the district has given all the schools, specifically the school that's going in front of the state board, and then give some context and background around the school as well. so that

158it we try to tell the whole story for the district and the school. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Okay. Um any board discussion? All right. Oh, we have adjournment, but we don't need a motion. So, thank you everybody for your time this evening. Thank you. Apologize for lateness. That's okay. That's okay.