001e e e school so yeah um socially uh the senior committee hosted a prom fashion talent show and it was a big success uh and they're planning a lot of things for the future as well such as um going to the Phillies game and going to the Poconos and it's doing a lot which is pretty cool to see the senior committee you know doing uh theater is going to perform the Musical Legally lawn in two weeks time so you know make sure you get your tickets and go see our theater program do Musical and that's really all I have for you guys this but so yeah Lun I couldn't hear the name of the musical oh Legally Blonde oh okay yes um and I do have a question you said you were looking forward to
002summer so you have no school yes and no school so that's July and August mhm what are you doing in September probably going to college but that's that's no not probably will but okay it's just have you decided oh no not yet but some place in the world some place that exists for sure do you want to just do you have like a top 20 well I watch as many schools they're all top 20 um I don't wherever the money takes me you know and like that's really it you know at least minimal amount of debt and like just the Good Vibes at a school was really all I want maybe we'll find out next month we'll see you've applied trying to pin you down but I guess you're not going to give even a
003weaker of an hour no she's being very modest folks I know the list of schools she got into and it's pretty impressive I'm not going to out her right now she clearly doesn't want to talk about it but she she's got her options in front of and she is not kidding when she's talking about scholarships month so she's going to do well we look forward to next month the big decision oh yeah that's when I let people know okay thanks L all right to continue our e in the power of we storytelling I'm going to turn the mic over to Colonials public information officer Miss Lauren Wilson Miss Wilson the floor is yours good evening everyone here from Colonial Nation gunning bedford's wrestling team took top honors at the Mike Snow wrestling tournament it is
004the first time the Panthers participated in the tournament named after Mike a lifelong Colonial who returned to this District to become a beloved teacher before his untimely death gunning bford was considered the underdog going into the tournament but the team fought hard to take top honors it was a comeback Journey for the team that went undefeated for eight years in a row before losing to Smyrna in the 2019 2020 season coaches for the team say Colonial can be proud of this team for showing its grit determination and heart in the name of the district and Mike Snow congratulations to each competitor here along with the coaching staff and could we have you all come forward and the coaches will be handing out your certificates [Applause] ladies and gentlemen stand up right up here in front
005of the the table here with Mr law he's got something for Mr AR coach as you exit out we have a little something for the kids and then there certificates for than I'm not wrestling um yeah there you go we're going to have to get ready real tight scoot down this way some got it three two good conratulations thank you very much uh parents that are here of the wrestlers kudos to you um because quite frankly we know that you're you're the ones who probably got them there got them back in home practices fed them made sure they got their school work done so they could stay academically eligible uh we really appreciate all the parents here so if we could get the parents to stand so we give you a big round of applause
006as well thank [Applause] you back to you Mr PQ thank you very much congratulations guys to all of you um so now is the time for the board meeting uh we're board members and the executive secretary to discuss items of information and topics from our participation in various professional organizations uh specific updates and documents are listed in the agenda um if there are any concerns questions or points of interest will'll be discussed that being said Do we have any points of interest for dsba I'm sorry hello um this one I really want to bring highlights to is um the public education funding uh committee they're really in the process of grabing a lot of data to try to figure out a better way to fund education throughout the state but once they started Gathering data
007they found out it was more work than they expected so somewhere in in uh I guess the next six months we'll get some more information on what they're looking for to suggest as a way to fund schools Ron can you remind me what pas stands for I Sur advisory committee it's the financial education got it P it says p a i but it's a typ yes okay you got it got it okay so it's fa it's FAS and for legislative we have the next meeting in April so we don't have any updates for that correct Dr men what do you have uh the chief School the chief School officer Association meets uh to Thursday and Friday uh we have a two-day conference where we'll be uh discussing legislative priorities uh focusing on our priorities as
008an organization uh as well as attending some professional development workshops related to uh diaa uh daa and from the University of Delaware so we have a pretty full schedule um starting 8:00 on Thursday going through till about 4 2:00 on Friday I'll have a update for the board next month's meeting and then you can see in the agenda I just put a link to the latest nsba news journal uh Journal uh for for your reference that's it for this section yeah so at this time uh before we begin public comment we're going to pause the meeting to allow families students if you want to take a a picture or gather up or you have to get home and do your homework students you're oh okay you know what we actually we'll we'll flip the script
009for this for this meeting we do have one public comment and I think it would be worthwhile for everybody to hear the public comment as Mr PP stated [Music] so all right real quick sorry I just normally ask we uh give a chance to let all the parents Escape because we know we're not the real reason you guys are here uh to hang out and listen to us so but uh just because some of the public comments for tonight are definitely important for your community so I thought it' be nice to ask you guys to stay for that um but as indicated for public comment sheet uh that we have uh when your name is called you'll have three minutes to speak you are expected to remain in the designated area for speaking with the
010board and failure to do so will result in you forfeiting your a lot of time uh please note that the board members are not obligated to respond to you within your 3 minute time slot administrative staff may be identified and asked to provide followup on specific questions or personal issues regarding your child or children after the meeting thank you oh I'm sorry and sha sh sha sh I've been corrected like five times on that I'm still messing I'm sorry shaa my mom didn't spell it right so so miss sha PNE you have three minutes go ahead thank you good evening everyone my name is Shauna Payne and I am here to announce that I will be running for the school board for Colonial school district for nominating District C and elections will be on November
011make May 13th not November um so hope all of you who are eligible will come out to vote you don't have to be registered to vote you just have to live in Newcastle and be able to show your driver's license and as you can tell these meetings are super important in terms of how we run our school system and improving our schools so I hope all of you will spread the word and come out to vote whether it's for me or anyone else who's running but I thank you all I've been invested in education for my entire career as a classroom teacher working at the State Department of Education helping our students find their way into College and Career so excited to hear your decision next month um that was a big part of my
012work when I was there and now I'm a mom of a 5-year-old at seat preschool and so super excited about the work that the district is doing and excited to be a part of colonial now we'll take a pause yes now uh parents will take a pause uh in the meeting to allow you to gather kids and be able to get out take any photos that you need um and we thank you so much for coming out and congratulations to you all that we're honored tonight and to the board members as well M did tell me she's going to be here after the meeting you guys like to meet with her as well take the picture up here right over there y the lobb's a better shot John Lobby okay of course it's Cher in
013Black I know you guys are orange in black but I mean it's still it's still a nice shot down there all right now that we have the die hards left with us we can move on here and where are we at I'm sorry oh we are was the right page all right so the next agenda item is the consent agenda the items listed under the consent agenda have gone through Board review including documentation concer ing these items they have been provided to all board members and public in advance items in the consent agenda generally include routine personnel and business office actions and updates as well as approval of previous meeting minutes and education related items such as choice and student placements uh with that being said do I hear a motion I move that we
014approve all centage items as presented all right do I hear a second second move quick all right as moved by uh uh by Dr dorsy second by Miss Smith uh are there any questions or comments from the board all right with no questions or comments all those in favor please signify with saying I I all those opposed nay motion carries all right next up on the agenda is the updates and actions items and I turn that over to Dr menz first up uh we have a series of presentations this evening I think are going to be very informative for the board and the public first up we have a College and Career Readiness presentation and I'd ask um Dr kin Dr CJ and uh Miss Morgan to come up to the mic and uh walk
015us through the program here are you guys using the screen so we make sure we want to look up at the screen as well okay so there's going to be a PowerPoint up on the TV if you want to slide your chairs back just a little bit okay uh good evening um thank you mam Smith uh Colonial School Board Colonial Nation um thank you for squeezing Us in we were going to be here in February so I really appreciate us you know adding uh to to the March because uh we do want to share uh what we think it's some pretty important things going on before we actually get into the College and Career uh stuff I wanted to give a pen Farm update there it is so uh pen Farm has been with us
016gosh for about 12 13 years it it just continues to grow and grow and grow it supports our plant science and our animal science Pathways here but really it now supports the community and school lunches uh here uh in in our Colonial schools so Toby hagat U our farm manager um just put a quick snapshot which I believe you might have in your packet um that we through Newcastle County we have student workers that are paid to work on the farm um almost all year now uh because our growing season has now turned into a 10mon process when you include hoop houses and green houses and stuff like that um we uh offer a CSA which is a community supported agriculture where community members can buy crop shares and every week get their vegetables I
017encourage all of you to join the CSA uh by the way it's all independ Farm website and it's actually a pretty good bargain for the amount of produce that you get and we're even upping it um to I think up to 15 weeks uh uh this time uh we this past you know so we're in a calendar year not so much a school year we're talking calendar year 2024 uh we produced over 3,000 pounds of produce it's a lot of produce um and uh or 20,000 lbs of produce uh I'm sorry 20 ,000 pounds of produce but we donated about 3,000 pounds of produce and I and I brought some numbers just to give you some perspective of of what we're doing um our FFA is our student groups that support Agriculture and they do
018a lot of the growing and the sales and um where the cost um was a we invested this is just for the FFA about $122,000 but after the sales through fundraisers and community ities that um and some in kind stuff we still net it around $1,500 my point is we are not like you think of school budgets you operate at 100% loss that's just what you do but we're not we're actually breaking even so to speak now Emily would say like there's a bunch of other you know cost of just but just kind of like you know think of paying the paying the invoices and revenue we're actually breaking even and then when you get to pen Farm um we invested around $25,000 and again uh through sales of CSA local uh farmers markets local
019restaurants communities um we are we broke even again and actually made a little bit of a teeny little bit of profit again in Emily's world it's all relative um you know not including salaries of of folks but my point is we're really serious about you know kind of as much as we can self-funding uh those programs and the most important thing I'll end here with pen Farm is uh the food that's going into school lunches and we um estimate that we basically have given Colonial School District about $4,000 worth of produce so think of it this way Colonial is in essence saving around $4,000 and in the end fresh produce literally from the farm into school lunches I think that's pretty amazing so we're real proud of that and I appreciate a little bit of
020time uh to share any super quick questions about pen Farm what are you growing you what are you growing there's probably 20 plus different vegetables because part of it is not just the Staples that restaurants want to you know want to want to have of course there probably you know anything that you can predict that a restaurant would buy we want to make sure that our kids are also learning about all kinds of different vegetables that may or may not be as popular um you know like kale as example you know at first glance the kids like oh heck no I'm not eating that but but you know but afterwards they learning different recipes and by the way some of that goes into our culinary arts you know program as well so they're also learning
021how to use all this fresh produce creating new recipes and stuff like that but there are a lot of restaurants that like fancier things and you can't go wrong when it's F not only fresh but local and then at on top of that William Penn students that just sounds cool because it is cool real real quick two questions number one are they getting into Hydroponics yeah so we have um we we have four hydroponic uh systems in the districts we all also have a aquaponics system here at William P um so yeah for to answer your question right we still have we still have the starter I'll call the starter program at yes correct and then we also we also have the business uh Department getting into it as well too to help your sales
022that type of stuff cor managing more invoices and the revenue so we we you know because we want to keep track of the monies and in fact that's that's how I have these monies because our business education students are also help and that's also with culinary arts too that even has more costs and revenue and stuff like that graphic B today invol with advertising anything like that a little bit um we you know we all you know we we already have our logos there's always so much but anytime we're we're designing a new brochure for like the CSA you know our first shopping is right down the hallway here uh to our digital media and by the way our digital media does all all the promotional videos uh and then our graphic design does the
023you know more stagnant uh flyers and posters back not just the program it's all the other corre combined in get benefit yeah everything we do is just kind of almost think of William Penn is like the major company with a bunch of Divisions working together and you can advertise about the plant sale coming up uh yeah I don't know when that is but I know it's huge and you know every spring we have plant sales and we had a George re just had a big strawberry uh sale and they did they did real well so we we have uh we obviously William pen has the biggest act program but we also have an act program in georger and in gutting Bedford and they both have hoop houses uh I didn't even get into our animal
024science you know we're the bird flu has not invaded William pen high school so we're we're in great shape there um how much are you selling eggs for I don't know $3 a dozen right now that's a good deal they're all claimed within about 30 seconds of the em out yeah so in fact our newest state employees are about to be some new uh pigs uh that are coming in April um so you know we you know more to come information about that uh I will say uh they will give ultimately the ultimate sacrifice after they are shown at the summer FFA uh but part of that sacrifice uh will be part of the culinary arts uh Department as they should they you know I'm just saying like hey they're all in you know you
025want a district that's all in now they're all in for everybody we' love bacon other questions about head thank you very much yeah so uh next uh so uh the main topic that we want to talk about is uh really our College and Career Readiness programs that we have here and so we're going to we're we're going to talk about college readiness and we're going to talk about career Readiness we're going to actually also recognize uh one of our great partners that help us with that but we feel that College and Career Readiness at the high school can only be successful if there's High School Readiness and so we've created uh a PR program uh in year two at George Reed year one at Mulla and year one at gunning Bedford called Colonial Compass I
026got to give props gab wherever he went to make this great logo uh but it is our career exploration and High School Readiness course at the middle school and uh the short version of that course we want to increase career awareness we want to increase student selfawareness of who they are and where they might be most successful in what kind of job environment we want to develop their employability skills we want to review technical skills for certain kinds of jobs and of course we want them to just to explore different jobs in all the different career clusters and then ending by 8th grade uh an action plan for high school which which career pathway will they choose of the 20 plus that exist here at uh William pen high school so the course meets once
027a week uh for about 30 35 minutes every week for the whole uh school year and it's every Middle School student there's a sixth grade curriculum a seventh grade curriculum and an eighth grade curriculum and we're hoping to expand it uh next year uh into ninth grade so we can really kind of have a real transition into the into the high school um it is part of our kind of uh look that most likely will will be part of our our next version of the district strategic plan on on some kind of career Readiness you know everyone works initiative you know training today employee tomorrow you know we have a bunch of catch lines that we'll we'll kind of throw out and Sample and see what what catches but it's really important to us that
028we start the journey in sixth grade to get kids thinking about life beyond High School graduation so I'll I'll end there we going have a little Colonial Compass swag for everybody um and want to know uh are there any quick questions about the middle school program Colonial Compass we spared no expense on those socks by the way just I mean really yes is this something that the school counselors are going to be leading or is it like a whole that's a great question you know because I want to I have a lot of time but every every teacher in the building is delivering uh uh instruction to to kids so it's not just the counselor in fact the counselors are more one of the managers to make sure everything is you know going well or
029if there's a substitute teacher they can sneak in um but but it's it's a complete buyin from the whole school that was important to us so this isn't just the exploratory teacher job this is everybody's job so the important my thought is the important things be the hand off between Middle School and High School how was it handed off to the high school well that's why I say we want to continue the program remember Ry playing yeah well we're ready we're you know we're just you know we're negotiating with the high school um but uh we to your point we absolutely know it's important to to have it come into ninth grade I argue should should also continue all the way up to uh you know 12th grade even when it's doing college applications and
030resumés and mo interviews and stuff like that at the high school level but it's exciting no matter what like we're we're excited we're going to give a kids a solid academic background but we're going to give them a solid career Readiness background before they graduate and that's exciting I I would really like I mean I personally would like to see it Go post high school because a lot of our students leave us and they still don't really know what to do so I would like to see us not letting them go completely us kind of still keeping our hands on them even when they leave us yeah yeah try try our best so but there's more to come there's more greatness because we still have uh we want to share college readiness and and career
031Readiness at the high school level so I'm going to give it Shi over to Sarah thank you good evening everybody um my name is Sarah QJ wigton I got married this year so I'll be changing over to wigton very soon um I am in charge of a lot of areas and I'm lucky enough to get to hang out in this space all day long every day um in this space I run our distance learning dual enrollment and early college program this is also multi-purpose space I manage the facilities as well as oversee the library as well my kind of two main buckets are high school online courses as well as college courses and the high school online courses is our distance learning program where I have students every period come and they actually have class
032in here and they're working through um various online courses these online courses are for high school elective credit um and it really gives the students a chance to personalize their learning it we have over 45 courses that are available in our catalog um and so students are able to select courses that they wouldn't otherwise be able to take some of our most popular include cosmetology fashion design astronomy Marine Science forensic science so um we have a lot of great options for students but also when they're taking these courses they're also honing those soft skills so they are learning to self-direct when they're in here I'm off to the side working on the back end and they I'm there to help them but really they are managing their own time they're directing their own learning um
033and also increasing those digital literacy skills and here's just kind of a snapshot of some of the different courses um I kind of revise the catalog every year and make sure that we're hitting courses that um are meeting our students interests and needs but also hitting all of the career Pathways um for instance uh I have a lot of students interested in business so for next school year I add an Excel course um to kind of meet that need and then my other big hat is our college courses I oversee all of our college courses and we kind of break those up into two buckets one is dual enrollment dual enrollment are courses that are taught here in the building face to pH the uh teachers the William Penn teachers have been approved by the
034universities to be basically an adjunct here in the building and then um we also have early college courses where students can take courses either at the college campus or online uh with a college instructor we are partnering with all of the major universities in the state and we have collectively over 60 college courses that are available to students uh you may or may not know that college courses are expensive ranging from $500 for one course at Deltech to almost four grand at UD but we are able to offer those courses to our students 90% off tuition and in uh several cases free at this point um you can see how our enrollment has just skyrocketed across the year so the big chart that I have is um when I've taken over this program the enrollment
035over time and I think that the the demand is growing not not only because the word's getting out that hey we have this great opportunity but also we've been increasing the number of courses here in the building which is the bottom right uh graph you can see that when I first started we only had about three courses um college courses offered here in the building and by next year we're going to have about 13 so um a lot of demand there and really just growing to meet our students needs and our Pathways but you can offer all the courses you want what's really important to me is are they doing well and that's what the other chart on the top right is uh the grades that students are earning and you can see that we
036have a lot of A's and B's and C's so students are earning that credit and at this point um since I've taken over we've had almost 1,400 credits earned 24 of those are Lun which I'll talk about in a minute my role in supporting students through our college courses um I am recruiting you know those are 11 courses or 13 courses here in the building building that we don't want to just have five kids sitting in the building right we want to fill those classes with 20 plus kids um so a lot of my time in the spring is recruiting for those courses meeting with students oneon-one and in groups to advise them we actually sit down and say you know what do you want to do after high school where do you want to
037go look up those programs and as I'm having those conversations I'm teaching them the kind of unmasking what the college process is Right explaining the differ between undergraduate and graduate and looking to see what are the programs and from there we kind of figure out which courses are going to help them Reach their goals help them through the application and registration processes if they're taking the courses online or at the universities I have a little orientation with them to make sure that they know how to get into canvas or um that sort of thing reviewing APA um and checking in with them and then at the end of their senior year I send every senior a letter with the college courses that they taken during their time here and a reminder that they um need
038to transfer those credits to wherever they end up going so I do hold some office hours over the summer to help with that as well so just kind of um a couple snapshots of our catalog we do have some general education courses uh what's special about English is it does replace Senior English um which is a big benefit to a lot of our students psychology and sociology are probably our two most transferable courses all of these are offered in the building and when students are taking college courses whether it's a 7we online course or a full year course or even a semester they're earning those three college credits plus an AP weighted credit here as well so that gives them a nice GPA boost uh our legal and public services um pathway has really been
039strengthened through dual enrollment in that pathway we have 10th graders taking criminal justice 101 they're actually in it right now and then then in the fall of their junior year they can move on to 205 and once they pass 205 you can see that through the Early College so the first two are the ones that are here in the building with Miss logic but then that opens the doorway to a bunch of different courses which Lun has taken advantage of as well um so she's kind of been through this process but those students can then you know take a bunch of different courses online or at the college campus in our alled health we have um a lot of strong students that want to be nurses so we actually have three courses in the building
040that are required for deltec nursing program including uh bio 120 anatomy and physiology which is a ranking course for um many nursing programs as well as that English and sociology that we mentioned and you'll hear more from Miss Morgan about the patient care assistant program but that is um a great cohort that we have running right now the kids are actually taking uh Deltech math 152 at the University earning dual enrollment credit and then they'll be taking the anatomy in English next year and then sociology if they want to and that will lead to four uh certifications plus those three dual enrollment classes are those are those U courses transferable to Del for the nursing program so a lot of our courses are transferable um we are finding out that the anatomy does transfer but
041as an elective credit UD does want um students to take their Anatomy but yes the sociology the English all of that transfers yep and it also you know helps boost their GPA and that's what I tell kids to if of course you know the pie in the sky idea is that it all transfers right but even if it's not they're earning the knowledge in the course the process they're learning about as well as getting that GPA bump and it looks good so when colleges are looking you know and you're just a an a resume in an application pile the fact that can do and be successful in dual enrollment classes is something that colleges are looking for because you're demonstrating that you're ready for that riger so that also helps our students get into some
042prestigious schools and then uh we have a lot of students that come to me from uh the business pathway that are interested so we have a bunch of different courses for business including entrepreneurship which is here in the building and then same thing computer science has become increasingly popular and we have lots of different courses to um help them so uh just wrapping up with a student Spotlight for my portion uh Lun she has I've been working with her for about three years now since she came to us um she has taken five online courses to our distance learning program including earning World Language credit for sign language she came to us um and you know just wanted something different so we she has been earning the American Sign Language um as well as taking
043advantage of all three programs to really dive into her passion which is uh political science so she has been through our legal studies program um and she has been just exploring a lot of different courses uh to the point where she's going to be graduating with eight college courses under her belt lan can you um just chime in a little bit and say you know how has this these programs benefited you and something that you've learned about yourself yeah like I'll never forget the day um near the end of my sophomore year I sit down with um Dr HJ oh yeah and I told her like what I want to do like the future and what colle they wanted to go to and she be like she took like 30 minutes to plan out all
044the courses I was going to take and she put on a piece of paper and I still have that like the piece of paper like all the courses I was going to take and I took the majority of those courses I taken like every type of um like class in here that we offer I think I think like the after school do R class with DSU of taking like uh online classes that Wu and UD and just like a bunch of classes which has definitely been stressful but definitely added to like my um time management skills and like a big part of me was always scared to like tackle college classes and like the idea of like well like my skills that went to the high school transfer I think that taking these classes definitely
045prepared me to go to college I feel way more comfortable now that I'm like going to be graduating going to college in the fall like I feel way more ready than I would be if I didn't take those classes and the GPA helped a lot like I also with um my career pathway since I moved here sophomore year I didn't um I had to take legal studies intro to my freshman year I was would to take classes over the summer I took like two college classes over the summer going into my junior year that helped me get into like a junior level of um legal studies if I if I didn't I would have been on the sophomore level like a year behind which was really nice and yeah I really enjoy I tell like
046all the under class I know to take dual Norm classes and even like the World Language credit like I think it's so interesting to be able to take ASL and not like a like French or Spanish nothing wrong with those languages but I think it's a new like take on world languages I think is really appreciate it and also I was able to get like a history credit at during the summer for American history you know a lot of other people who've done like world history over the summer or even American history over the summer so yeah I like it a lot I think every student should like take advantage of this program and it's been great and Dr FJ is like a great help to this proct too so yeah thank you any questions
047our college or online course before I turn the mic overment uh the criminal justice I would like to really uh to talk to because I know um there a lot of young people out here have misconception of law is why they keep getting in trouble so I think that this course can really help people understand some of the decision that they making ramification rather than just thinking oh this not going to happen yes it is yeah absolutely and that's actually one of the reasons too um we have adjusted the pathway to be legal studies and public services because we also don't want the law to scare students away you know if they have a bad misconception about it uh we want it to be more inclusive to all the different areas um that can be
048part of that as well so yes we can definitely CH chat thank you all right so uh next up is our career Readiness with Anna Morgan and work-based learning hello thank you for having me I am Anna Morgan I'm the work-based learning coordinator and I will be very brief because I want um some time for the students to really talk to you so we're just going to go over a couple a few wins um so our water management course is now in the third year or fourth year fourth year um so our students take it as an online course Dr QJ last summer I believe um created the course completely online so other schools actually use that as well which is pretty cool um so students can do it on their own they can do
049it whatever semester they want and then they go on field trips to get the hands-on experience so it's a nice combination um and it allows a lot of students who are interested in taking this course but can't fit it in their schedule um to be able to participate so we also have developed in the last couple years a phenomenal partnership with neor so it is very difficult to get work-based learning experiences in health care because um lots of places say we can't take anybody over 18 cannot walk in my door um but we've had an amazing partner um Margaret leasia you will start hearing her name if you have not already within the state she's knocked down a bunch of doors um for students to come in to newor um and get some awesome experience
050so one of the things we did um most recently was um a neoris healthcare Academy that was created under the guidance of the Workforce Development director and Dei committee at neor so they reach reach out to us because we already had an established partnership with them and we were the only school they did this with so they wanted to uh specifically focus on nth and 10th graders to provide an experience of um just touring through neor and we heard from probably 10 different doctors took time out of their day from all different um Specialties we heard from nurses um it was an awesome experience that we have someone who participated in that here Dakota you can see her she's got the same hair in the picture um and she's going to talk a little bit
051more about that at the end it was really cool they had different simulations we have some pictures on the next page um and that is going to hopefully be developed into a continued partnership so that's why they wanted to start in nth grade they want to follow these Allied Health students through senior year and Beyond um which is very cool we also got to go during Christmas which is really neat we actually saw the delare state police were scaling the windows in like elf costumes um it was a very very cool experience and it was very special to be there at that time of the year to see also how you know what families have to deal with who are there but how they are also able to bring joy um at the same time
052which is great and we also sorry we I I missed that we also have our seniors going in in the spring to do one-day job Shadows so that is huge this is something um that we've been working on trying to get we have some Partnerships at Christian Care but this is a really large one really cool opportunity for our students um so also the patient care technician program we also have a couple students we'll be talking about that in just a second um so every other day they go to Deltech which is pretty cool um and you're going to hear from them directly about that experience to be able to talk to them a little bit more but they are going to come out of their senior year employable they're going to have EKG photomy
053patient care technician and CNA so they will be able to immediately be employable continue their education in Allied Health or just work and again we are the only High School uh that is enrolled in this program so I think we're going to take some time right now to talk to these students so we have Sophia Andrea and Dakota guys want to come up they can stay you can stay seated I'll bring the m so we have two from the PCT cohort and then one who wanted the neor trip so whatever you would like to ask hello so what was the highlight for you you're in the patient care yes Tech program how long and this your first year in the program yes tell us a little bit about what your day is like when you
054go to Delaware Tech um during the patient care technician program that was the first semester it started off a little hectic but as soon as like we got the hand of it like with all the work and homework um we started getting to labs which I think all of us really liked and being in like different environment and out of school I think we all enjoyed that and being in the lab it really gave us like a Hands-On experiment or like experience of like the things that we would do in like an actual hospital without like um the limits that we have here in pen and yeah so what what exactly is the difference between a patient care technician and a CNA patient not as familiar with the first one okay um a patient care
055technician usually is in environments like a nursing home usually with elderly and a patient care technician their age ranges further okay yeah okay but doing essentially the same type of work yes you go be a nurse yes or for um I think right now a nurse but I think I definitely want to expand my education what year are you I'm a junior what college are you looking for University of Delware my name is Soph speak my name is Sophia and what great are you I'm also Junior and your first year in this program be curious to hear your take on what's it all about how did it feel um in the beginning like she did say it was very like kind of like all over the place it was like unorganized and unplanned in the
056beginning but then once we kind of like moved on it was more centered and focused on the actual program and we spent like a lot of time in the classrooms doing like work and like quizz every single Sunday and then like towards the end we kind of moved towards like clinicals so we actually did get to do handson activities that would be used in like actual Hospital settings and I besides like all the bad things aside it was actually a very good program that gave me like a lot of experience handson considering that I do want to be in the medical field and work in hospital setting so I feel like it did give me that like one up over people who are like kind of like just starting like who going into the medical
057field without having like any background experience with Pinnacles or any of like the background that we got did this change your goals at all career-wise on what you wanted to do or did it help change kind of where how you wanted the next steps to be by learning from this program it gave me a broader mindset and kind of like that my options aren't as limited as I thought they were so it definitely gave me like more options to consider in the medical field and not just being a nurse and how there like other things in that range that I can also do with the certif with the certification that I'm going to get like what like EKG PCT CNA and then using those certifications I can also work my way up in the hospital
058to get better ones and be higher than that good you planning to go to college as well to yes where University of Delaware got a good strong program speak up to hi and I am in year 10 and um very about my experience I had amazing experience actually just there was very kind very understanding made my first time and I enjoy the experience a lot and it was hands on as well and yeah you went to newor is that where you went yes what was the you toured all around and you met doctors what was the one that stuck out what one got your attention like wow that's cool like was there one that jumped out at you um all of them jumped out to me cuz this is my first time I like I
059forgot what it's called but I like the one where they like check the heart yeah that's the one I like and I think it was very interesting because it's like they say vs for like they really do this like this is their everything so they have some really handson things if you can see in the bottom corner um they were actually intubating a patient I mean not a real dumy but um and what were you doing in the Upp upper corner I was turning on the light Le how to do real scient you want her to show you how she did [Music] [Laughter] that and what's the is there another opportunity to go back or is it is there another sequence to this or is it just a one day event I mebe so there
060will be another sequence so we have not determine the next date but this will be a continued partnership they wanted a cohort of students in n9th and 10th grade who were in Allied Health um and they really wanted to introduce them so I mean these doctors really but all the adults you see in that room besides uh Mrs Hudson is a doctor at neor so I mean these are like high high high up people and they truly want to help students I mean their passion was unmatched it was it was very cool so in the Allied Health Program what's your path that you're picking like there's a couple different ones you can go which one do you think you're going to um I would like to be a pediatric nurse so you're going to go
061yes I like kid so you'll be doing what they're doing next year you're going to do the patient care T yes hopefully yes now you both is there a specialty from a nursing standpoint that who you want to get into don't be shy not really sure I'm not really sure yet you're not sure yet that's okay I mean kind we don't figure out what you like what you don't like and it go from there yeah you know um not really I found myself getting more into nuclear medicine though recently nuclear medicine y so you want to go a little bit more than just as a nurse you want to get more into into that into the physical or not into into the X-ray type of work and and all that type of treatment what my
062get as part of that like a mix between like nursing I feel like a mix between nursing and kind of like in the lab and doing research kind of like so I'm just trying to find something that balances the two I guess and not just the nsing so for the did you start in ninth grade knowing you wanted to go this route or did you just find it this year how did you get to this point I got to this point because I really like kids and I watch a lot of shows like G an like I watch a lot of shows on hands I know it's not realistic but it also give me idea like I like this like I like when people help each other that brings me joy like I actually want
063to do it this is my passion so the reason why and I felt that night grade like I always wanted to be in a Nur f for some reason cuz I guess my mom and the shows I watch also so I watch and I seen Vision I was like this is what I really going to do yes oh I have a question so when you say hopefully about the parent or patient care thing you guys appli to the program or is it like you just like ask me in it like how do you get into the program um to be honest oh you want to answer they kind of like choose you based off like your grades your attendance your GPA and you're recommended for it you also have to write a personal statement as
064to why you want to be in it it's not just like anybody gets to be in it a few like 15 or less people who actually get to be in it so it's very selective yeah lot of people didn't get to to it questions no thank you awesome thank you thanks for coming out yeah thanks guys you should have brought some blood pressure cuffs and things I'm sure these people here need to be checking and just one more thing I wanted to add about the neor is we have actually saw live surgery which was really cool and I obviously did not take pictures of that um but it was really cool yeah no problem all right so the next thing we want to talk about is JP Morgan Chase so we all know that JP
065Morgan Chase is a huge company right so we actually have multiple Partnerships with multiple groups of employees there so um not on this slideshow is a um group of about 10 to 15 um I forget what department they're in I think they might be from various departments but they are going to be sponsoring for our third year in a row our um resume and interview competitions so we have started workshops for that we host them every week during pen period students can sign up for them and they will write a resume it will be judged and then they will bring their resume to the interview competition and they will be interviewed by professionals from JP Morgan Chase so we're looking forward to that um that's in April oh can you go back thank you sorry
066so the other JB Morgan Chase partner parip that we have is um a group of mentors who come every month to our University of Delaware entrepreneurship class and they talk about different things professionalism communication in the workplace diversity in the workplace um and that is led by Wilson below um did I say her name right okay good um and he is a vice president in the Newark office so they come and they do a bunch of different things it's super interactive and they're really helping the entrepreneurship class to be able to um just put what they're learning into action so we do have something we'd like to uh can you come on please every now and again the board uh likes to recognize somebody who comes out and uh here's a letter uh thanking you
067for being a very important part in the e in our power of we we really appreciate all you've done pleasure and JP Morgan Chas it's awesome love to hear the stories and see where the students go so thank you very much thank you for defin the most important I've ever received in my career thank you I'm standing here because my parents taught me the importance of service to others at a very young age and if you could do anything for me pass that along to any kid who listens um while I'm here I wanted to announce that at JP Morgan our employees are actually donating $1,000 to the William pin asman competition that's going to be held in May um so we're very happy to do that for you guys as well as a shout
068out to you Miss Beasley for everything you do for our kids [Applause] thank that concludes our college career Readiness program so uh I just want to say you know thank you uh Dr kin Dr how do we say the new name it's going to be wington wington witon all right I like coj but that's all right we'll easier I'm finally getting that right and Anna thank you so much uh I do want to take one quick minute to just give a shout out this all doesn't happen by chance this happens because of hard work and dedication and commitment to the to the programs to the students and I would be remiss if I didn't give uh Dr urkin a shout out for the Blood Sweat and Tears that he puts into make helping put these
069Partnerships in place and then seeing them through to the finish and then some because it doesn't just get done it gets done well and it keeps happening so Brian I think you deserve definitely a than and we're not going to hold it against him that he ran over the seven minutes he was allocated [Laughter] presentation always is always is though uh kidding so so next up is uh we the board asked about two months ago when we they saw an article in the uh American school board's Journal about artificial intelligence what would it look like in schools uh so we uh have apparently a crackerjack team of folks from Colonial that are here to show us what AI looks like actually in the classroom or is looking like in the classroom so I'll turn they
070time for is whatever they want to do and I I was told explicitly to get you guys up and moving so we're going to try to speed this up so we you up we get you exp why we need the patient care people to help two two minutes is the time so good evening uh president PQ Dr menser uh school board members and Colonial Nation tonight we're excited to share an update around artificial intelligence in colonial uh I think our group of presenters we have Joe gleon uh Justin hanger in Tera Amsterdam would all agree right now we're not experts in AI but we are engaged in the work and we're excited to share this evening where we are currently as a district what we're excited you're going to have the opportunity to participate as
071both a student and a teacher using some new uh AI tools that we have as a district and one of the things that we want to emphasize before we get going is we've been very intentional in looking at the types of tools that we're selecting for both staff and teachers and ensuring that uh student and staff data and privacy is up is of the utmost importance um but like I said we want to get you up and moving I going to turn it over to Justin hanger so uh we're going to cover a couple things um in the 50 minutes we're alloted Dr oh I bet you do so uh we're going to go over very quickly what is AI um that is a doctoral level course um that we're going to give in about
072a minute and a half uh we're going to look more deeply into how AI looks in colonial right now and then talk a little bit about the benefits and the risks um we were able to survey about 72 teachers across all the grade bands in colonial and got their feedback on AI how they feel about it um and what their concerns are so we'll be sharing those as well so uh first up is uh what is AI so programs that you are used to that you currently use right now on your computer um they are on the left there they're traditional programs they are fixed rules step by step they are predictable so you know that if you hit the a key on your keyboard you know that the letter a is going to pop
073up in your word document that is every single part of that is coded and planned out by whoever writes the programs AI is very different it is flexible it is learning and it is intuitive so it's much more like our brain so what happens is it is given a massive massive set of data and it is essentially told learn from this and then as it goes through it makes connections and it is then able to feedback like what what you're asking it to do um obviously much more complicated than that but that is the basic premise you have been using oh you can go back one please um so you have been using Ai and its principles for years um and might not have known it these are just some of the examples um so
074any personalized recommendations when you turn on Netflix and it tells you what you might like that's that's machine learning and AI um your email spam filters um obviously nobody coded every possible email into that it learns what a spam email looks like and then know knows to put that into your spam folder um navigation obviously traffic roads are ever changing it learns like what traffic looks like like different times of the day different parts of the um you know the the area and will change based on that um if you've interacted with any like customer service chat Bots um you might have noticed recently that instead of having like things you click on like I want help with this thing or if you call in and it says say letter or say number one you
075can actually say I need to talk to somebody about this and it will kind of start routing you the right way so all of that are using uh artificial intelligence machine learning and those principles to to give to give you these things so I want to turn it over to Tara Amsterdam hi thank you um so over the past few years we've been doing a lot of learning um and uh specifically focused on AI and its implications for the educational environment we've worked with the Delaware Department of Education and we've used their guidance to align our vision with the state of Delaware's guidance um we've looked at tools that are both educational and generic and through this learning we've um we've come up with this vision for AI in colonial so first um Tech CSD
076is going to recommend AI tools that are safe so this groundwork supports our staff and our students to know that any tool that we're recommending and supporting is going to be safe for them and it encourages them to try something new which might be scary very like AI um we um offer tool we offer tools that provide a walled access meaning that any data that our staff or our students put in is not going to train a larger AI model um so that's really important to us as we consider what we're um offering to our staff and to our students um we uh we secondly we recommend and we support tools that are designed for the education environment there is a ton of AI out there that is not necessarily safe for the educational environment
077so any AI tool that techcd is recommending it is educationally focused um and finally um we recommend and support AI tools that are secure and private we make sure that we're following the federal laws for student data and privacy um and there's really two main components to this part of our vision first we vet all of the tools that that we offer we use something called the 1ed tech um rubric to help us look at the the programs and make sure that they uh follow the guidelines from doe and from um the federal law and secondly we advocate for interoperability because when digital tools are interoperable we control the data and um not the vendors and so that is really important that we look for tools that are interoperable with our digital environment that that
078we have so um staying true to that Vision we have adopted um K Migo at William Penn and I'm going to turn it over to Joe gleon and he's going to tell you a little bit about what's happening at hey board member so this year William pen introduced a new partnership with KH Academy as an a tool for enriching the academics that are already going on that have kind of been highlighted throughout this board meeting um at January 17th we were actually through that partnership able to enable kigo you might have seen it it was recently featured on 60 Minutes if you haven't seen that clip I encourage you to watch it's a great example of all the features that are involved in kigo and it gave us a great dashboard that allows us to
079see how both teachers and students are using it and in a moment we're going to take a step back to the uh computers that our team's firing up now and take this for a test drive uh kigo is a tool that allows students to get an extra push if they need help for example with tutoring in areas like math or reading or science it also is great for extending learning for our students who are approaching master who have already reached and need an extension especially for students that we talked about today that are engaging in college level skills that might not you know have access to tutoring supports for that type level learning um the teachers also have a great dashboard through conmigo that allows them to just be really efficient and take some of
080the time that would typically you know be used during planning time or even outside of school hours and uh you know dedicate themselves to the things that they really need to focus on teachers can use the kind ego tool to create lesson plans to create rubrics create quizzes right learning objectives and and then focus on student facing issues or providing feedback or you know working with groups of students where they would otherwise need to focus their efforts on planning um uh some of our students have really dug in to the condigo tool and been using it consistently we've activated this tool for all students um we're averaging about three chats per student but students like Ania um we looked at the data in preparation for this meeting and realized that she has just been talking
081to kigo I think even more than her friends I mean she is just using it constantly and we met with her and we asked her what was it about K Migo that really led her you know you know to be so active with the program and specifically with that tool and she said that it just helps her break down the math questions unlike anything else that she's ever been you know worked with before she shared that math has been a struggle for her throughout her academic career but instead of just giving her the answer it walks her through the process step by step the tool helps to you know asks her questions that allows it to understand where her gaps of learning are and then helps her understand the answer not just find it um
082and if you can go to the next slide we're going to take a second here and T you're going to visit a table there's two computers at each table one computer will have the student dashboard it'll show you what kind of guard rails are provided for students it won't just give them the answer but it'll kind of Coach them through the thinking process and the teacher platform which has a ton of tools one of my favorite you'll see is the the um make it relevant tools so if a teacher is pulling out an old lesson about something like personal finance that maybe has been used over the years and it's not super relevant super interesting to the students it can take those existing materials and provide examples in contexts that are relevant to someone who
083was born in 2010 um so if you're ready we can we'll invite you back to these tables here um spend a few minutes at each one give you a chance to get your hands on it and at the end we'll give you a chance to ask questions so the teacher view is on the left and the student view is on the right quick question for you oh yeah security of the information what that that goes through system so none of the tools that we recommend train the larger model which means the data never leaves Colonial it never lose our n and that's what Tom was saying we've been very um cautious and very um what's the word intentional yeah intentional in the tools that we've selected and then what's the Thought on expanding this into
084other items other services so I can operation we do within the district um so first we're looking at expanding in William pen and we have started expanding to the writing coach aspect so we started primarily with the digital sat preparation at William pen and then we started adding in writing coach so this allows students to put in their writing and it will Coach them through the writing process to improve their writing so that's our next step app um we're planning on launching we have more AI tools in the elementary World we're using canva AI um tools which are all built in to the system and so again the data never leaves that environment okay so it's it's all educational there's nothing that we could increase the service of the system to be able to go
085to help anything from administrative levels I'm thinking we do have Google and I and last week or two weeks ago I did a training with the team leaders at um Castle Hills to teach them how to do prompting to help them adapt materials for students based on certain lessons that the students have so it could be that tool could be used administratively it could be used it's a just a general large language model about creating um we it we have um Camy which does automatic grading our LMS school G does automatic grading as well so that be able not have man put grades every day like that goes and the key to that is interoperability so as long as these tools are interoperable that we are intentionally purchasing and putting in place then that data
086will flow from when the student takes the quiz to the school GG grade book from the school GG grade book to in this case today it's echool which is their report card so that is why that interoperability is so important because it saves our teachers so much so then the other question is that I'm sure what are you doing on the opposite end to stop the student from abusing it it's a great question so on the student recommendation there it is is so what I asked was I just asked computer and so it's so I if I was the teacher all what strategy did [Music] you CU I want to know then I can incorporate in my lesson PL face to face [Music] good she want go back into teach you were sitting down and
087how's it going wow that's a great idea out there and what good was that just Oh I thought that was back all right everyone let's start wrapping it up back to the tables he turned me off turned off turn me off's like I'm getting all my time did you see that it's pretty cool so I can only imagine I hope they enjoy should recation us CU I mean I'm I used to be a guy who had temp spret and stuff like that so while we are really excited about the way that this creates opportunity to us for to enhance learning to support teachers to make the whole process a little bit more efficient this technology and the way it's rolled out if we're not meticulous about the guard rails and some of the concerns you
088have even raised about privacy and things you know are not thought through it could create some pretty significant challenges um and that is something that we heard from our teachers and our staff in the buildings from both Elementary School all the way through the high school one of the things we did in preparation for this session was we surveyed teachers at a variety of buildings and we want to thank everybody that took the time to complete our survey it was a short survey just to kind of a a tempature check about how our staff felt about the Outlook of AI and education and the last question question on that survey said at this time how do you feel about the future of AI and education we ask just give it a rating one through five
089one do the challenges outweigh the potential benefits or a five do the benefits outweigh the challenge and I think we were all a little bit surprised to see you get the next slide state that we are as a district right in the middle out of five the average was 2.6 and that this was prior to our roll out of Con Academy but when you break it down by grade band it I think it does make a little bit more sense when you think about it some of our elementary and middle school teachers were in the middle leaning slightly towards the positive the exciting thinking about but members of our high school staff were very skeptical because their concerns which are Super valid especially from members of like our English Department were concerned about taking you
090know some of the rigor out of things like the writing process and of course concerns about academic integrity and enabling cheating in our schools um other teachers had concerns that I don't think any of us even really thought about like some of the the ethical concerns related to this technology and how right environmental concerns the energy use um and all of that I think kind of factored into to why at this time our rating is right in the middle and why our team here is trying to be super careful about how we roll these tools out responding to feedback we're getting from teachers as well as the students who are using this technology every day Joe is anybody using talk about Gemini at all because it is in our Google Suite is that something that
091they're using because that's also I mean from brainstorming perspective from a creating a draft perspective so we yep so we identified Gemini in December it's only available for teachers okay and we we had multiple uh meetings with the Gemini team to ensure that the data that that teachers were inputting wasn't training which is which which is critical uh but upcoming PD we have a we connect Conference next Friday uh we'll be leading a couple sessions that will include Gemini so I've been playing around with it and I'm like I got a buddy Gemini hey Gemini what's going on way do you find the voice mode you can talk to it it's like it was like that's a really great idea like I like you in our district we've done a variety of trainings with those
092tools to we did a Gemini training with the social studies Department recently with our physical education and health teachers the science department has engaged it um Mr jbo and Dr nunvil uh did an administrator training for it as well um so this is coming up as well as like in our coaching meetings with teach teachers when they're talking about the challenges related to creating assessment items that are aligned to student strengths and deficits like using the data that they're collecting to guide future instructional decisions so it really is driving not just the student learning but the way we're teaching in schools too because this is in the school environment are there limits to the topics that can come up that are say unhealthy like how do I create an IED sure yes that's all included
093that all of that is included in any tool that we're offering it has those guard rails in for students yes this is a school and if a student tries to test the waters it will guide them back it will guide them back so um when you were on the devices we were um we had the student side which is will totally guide them and then the teachers have the all those teacher tools and that's essentially helping um them with the prompting so that if they're using Gemini they have to write the prompt completely themselves but if they're using the con tools it gives them that framework that graphical gizer to organize their thinking so we're trying to meet everybody where they're at any other question um I feel like if you're using gemini or something
094like that you're changing it's you're you're writing the prompt writing a prompt is going to become the next writing activity like how do you ask what it is you're looking for to get the best response as opposed to writing the answer like because it youe hard to write the right prompt so writing a prompt the world economic Forum said in the next five or six years uh prompt engineering is going to be the number one job so I think I mean we're still learning how to prompt it I mean I think that's the most powerful thing you have in this whole process you hit it is writing yes yes yes it it it's writing it is and it's it's a a it's a kind of a a reciprocal an iterative process right because you'll ask
095it to do something it'll give you what it thinks you want and then you can say that's not what I meant or I wanted it to be shorter or longer or more professional or less formal or whatever and it we'll kind of re redo it back out again um and as um Tom said I I'll be leading a session at we connect on prompting um so feel free to join K do you use it in any of your classes have you seen K Barbados Castle she four five class at Castle Hill do you see it sorry to call you out you don't You Can't Hide anymore um I don't use it with my students as much but I use it personally to um help me write better IEP goals do better um planning and things
096like that with them um it helps a lot yeah yeah I asked Joe about that you said they actually have a template for the Del process in very helpful it helps me to individualize that process a little more cool and I just kind of go off of what U Kim said um when Holly was over here working on the teacher side I invited her to try the IEP assistant um block um because with you know with her background um with uh special education and when she looked at it I asked her you know how how did it do and I don't know if you want to add into it but she's like you need to add a lot more and I think that's very key right is that um one thing that Joe and I
097have talked a lot about and we had talked a lot about is that that 7030 rule or that 80 even that 8020 is you know you can like AI can get you like 70% of the way there but if you're not already familiar with what you're looking for you're not going to be able to then take that out and make it correct um so you know if if Holly was using that IEP assistant and she you know put in there it's now 70% and now she goes back through and uses her expertise her training her learning and then she's able to make it like exactly what she needs it to be individualized so that you have to be careful of what you put in and what you get out that you don't it can't it
098shouldn't be the exact same thing for every student because it's supposed to be individualized yeah and I think and one thing we talked about is you know there's there is an issue with IEPs that are being written in the traditional format that are that do become copy and paste right just because of the time constraints of teachers um so this this can if used properly it can help to to to negate that issue a little more because it can provide more ideas more feedback it's a thought partner back and forth um so you want to introduce the book I was going to say so we love to read in colonial which is a great leadway for msk's upcoming presentation uh this is a great book we have a copy for each of you uh the
099nice thing about this book is it it gets to that prompting um so so there's some really good activities and some really good things to think about while you're reading this book yeah and while we're handed that out we pulled out one quote that I think really hits on that hits on us for educators is that AI will eliminate some jobs but it's going to change every job and the big the big part of it is those who can work with AI will replace those who can't so those the the people who are like I'm not AI I'm never going to use it it's not going to be a part of my life um more power to you that's great but that person who has a similar skill as yours and is able to use
100AI to work faster and still get the same results they're they're more likely to move up in that world thank you very much thank you yes thank you guys very much and more I want to say um I won't ask any more questions but just to compliment you when you here oh we're going to have a discussion about AI I'm like all right I want to see how this is going to go this was extremely interesting and well put together so thank you guys that was a lot I want to see a second round of it too just say yeah you have know when I heard about this coming for three months I was like it's going to be a boring presentation it was I'll be fully honest you know when it came up said
101we needed them the only thing better was if you had Allan iers helping you teach where is AI I don't see him here that's his dad J but seriously this is great thank thank you hey thank you and we do I know it's is a uh for us an usually a lengthy meeting with presentations but um we did consol we did bring in forward a couple from February we do always have in March our uh Katie comes back and talks to us a little bit about Ela in the district so we have a unique this is a little bit different of a presentation we didn't have any kids because they would have been way past their bedtime because they were mostly Elementary when she brings them here um so Katie is going to share with
102us an update from um advancing literacy in the field so yes good evening Colonial Nation um Katie gasi excited and happy to be here um really privileged and honor to have Carrie Campbell joining me tonight as well as Sarah baitman literacy coach Sarah bitman at Castle Hills and Carrie Campbell principal at Castle Hills so we're going to be chatting about advancing literacy and just share some updates about what's happening in the field around literacy um you know we're coming off of I love to read month we're coming off of a read Across America and so reading is all the buzz in our schools um you know you might be having an opportunity to go in and read aloud to our staff and students and they love to see you out and about so we read
103we communicate and we value as we continue our work this year just a reminder we are in year three of CK our core knowledge language arts curriculum program in uh grades K to2 and we're in year two in grades 3 to five amongst all of the things that we're doing you know implementing the curriculum coaching on the curriculum you know we're really focused on building our capacity and our leadership around early literacy our knowledge around early literacy and expanding to our building administrators and um continuing to expand in our coaches and so I'm really excited to have Carrie here because she's going to share a little bit about her journey through this Ella cohort and these Ella cohorts are early literacy leadership acmy in partnership with doe and with school kit um in addition to
104the Ella cohorts and that literacy and learning we're doing um on those monthly visits and those that PD we're also focusing on coaching walkthroughs so opportunities to go into classrooms to see what's happening um engage with our students look at some student work as well as continuing to focus on Improvement science we've been on that Journey all year really focused on uh dat data analysis as well as science of reading pday so I wanted to start us off by just kind of celebrating some data specifically at Castle Hills um at the beginning of the year you'll see the Boi dat and that's typically what I share with you right middle of the year I get to celebrate all the progress that we've made across Colonial I wanted to kind of narrow in on Castle Hill
105specifically as Carrie gets ready to share her journey so in kindergarten our students who are the most intensive who came in needing a little more support um some additional um opportunities to engage with folks we were at 55% were below proficiency so that's our most intensive student through the work of our teachers our coaching our administrator our teachers were able to decrease that number to 37% with a gain of a change of 18% so we're moving the students in the right direction we're minimizing that intensive group and then we're not only minimizing our intensive students but we're growing our green we're growing our students that are proficient we had 25% of our students in kindergarten proficient we're now at 52% and so we're hitting our goals that have been set through our programming and through
106our Benchmark system which is a big celebration for us and then if we take a look at first grade our first grade subgroup of students are also minimizing our most advis students and we're also moving and growing our proficient students with a change there of 4% and 6% and so at this time I'm going to turn over to Carrie so she can share all of the good that's going on at Castle Hills good evening I am Carrie Campbell I'm the proud principal at Castle Hills so just to give you a little bit of History um this is my third year as a principal so three years ago I came on as my first year as principal that was also the first year that ckla started to begin um being implemented in grades K to2 and
107then last school year grades three to five implemented the first year and I had the opportunity to participate in LPD um thanks to Katy gutowski and I uh participated in that with my literacy coach at the time and so that was really the game changer on how I created the systems and structures to get the student growth that we have to support our teachers which supported our students um and so really it all comes down to being intentional with your planning and so last March I met with my instructional coaches we talked about what are we seeing in the classrooms and how can we help students grow and so one thing that we really focused on was lesson internalization making sure that our staff understand the lessons that they're implementing but also are able to
108support the students and their needs um so then from April to June we created a partnership with school kit and so I have a coach assigned to me Tara Warrington who is amazing at what she does and really pushes me to think outside the box um and then over this summer I really drafted some systems and structures to begin implementing this school year um with the help of Kim Barbo um to really make sure that our teachers were having success and our students were having success um and then August we rolled out some PD to our K to2 staff um and also began to implement our school Success plan and so I'm going to have Sarah bman just talk about some of those systems and structures that we currently have going on good evening I'm
109Sarah beatman I'm the literacy coach a castle house um so part of what Miss Campbell is sharing with you is that structure and that routine that we have that is a number one priority for us meaning um for example the building could be on fire and nothing changes our game plan is instruction and that is our priority so we have a 3-we grade level of rotation um our focus is k to2 early literacy um so Carrie and I will go in um conduct side by-side walkthroughs um prior to those walkthroughs depending on the grade level we will get those lesson plans find out where our teachers are in pacing really internalized so that we know what we're looking for um and making sure we're seeing good instruction um we will conduct the observation then and
110then afterwards we'll come back deep brief um and really be intentional and about our excuse me about our feedback um for individual teachers as well as grade level trends um that we can share with them um really making connections to the walkthrough tool that we use um through school kit um that we've adapted for Castle Hills and part of this plan is in our school Success plan so together we've created a goal of teacher growth on walkthrough tools um from that observation tool as well as creating a goal a student facing goal of mastering tricky words in grades K it to um so for next school year um we really want to focus on strengthening our plcs to that time where teachers are able to collaborate um and also build our leadership capacity of our
111team leaders so every grade every grade level has a team leader um and so we just want to make sure that they feel confident in leading some student data digs to support our instruction um and then also implement this work in grades 3 to five um in another bullet that is not on there but just continue to share the success and growth that Castle Hills have I had another principal from Southern come over and observe us um today I actually made a connection withot Charter so they are going to be coming to Castle Hills in April to kind of see what Sarah and I do so they can take it back to their school um and then last week the state came in just to see the structures we're putting in so other schools are
112able to start seeing the same success that we have and I'm going to turn it over to KB for district and we're just going to continue on with the lopd I mean you can hear Carrie is in year two now with the support of this early literacy Leadership Academy and she's making moves and all of our elementary buildings at this point are now participating five in the first cohort three in um year 2 cohort so we're excited to continue that work continue to use Carrie and Castle Hill's teachers and Sarah as um supports you know I think it's great that we've already made connections um and just continue to grow the good here in colonial school-based learning walks walkthroughs as a district and just continue to focus on the lesson internalization and the student work
113analysis starting to bring student work into it now that we're starting to get in the groove of what cka is and how to plan from it and teach from it looking at the student work and then making adjustments there and at that point we have a picture of all of these students these are first grade students who currently mastered all their tricky words so you heard Sarah talk about tricky words tricky words are those words that you can't decode right so remember last a couple months ago when I was here we did chaining and we did some of those site words tricky words those are the words you can't s out sound out so you have to memorize them you have to be directly told what the code is and so these first grade students
114have already mastered and they're rocking their we read shirts so we're so proud of them and can't wait to add to that picture in the coming months can you remind us just give us one one tricky word that that can't be decoded from from from from from okay right this o m it makes the uh sound and so that o is tricky right okay and our kindergarteners can tell you why um I was in a classroom last week they can tell you exactly why it's so one thing you're I I great it's always good to hear about what's going on in literacy and Ela Katie thank you for coming out um one thing that I think it was neglected to be shared and I think is a shout out and a props to Katie and
115the team this presentation is a modified version of a presentation they were as to do for all the Statewide Statewide curriculum Cadre members uh from by Doe so they were held up as a a shining example of how to lead the work look at data um you name it they rocked it out heard great things about it and so that's something that wasn't said but these slides are directly from that uh presentation so I would say Kudos [Applause] congratulations thank you guys so much all right we're in a home stretch I know this is unusually lengthy for many of us here we're out of practice breaking news Colonial does a two-hour meeting we're going to make we're going to make something for for the reason that we go we're not going to go we will
116not go two hours um I have the next action item is a uh a putting in front of the board a revised board meeting schedule uh specifically moving May's meeting to a week prior to allow uh H the Human Resources Division to conduct business uh that complies with uh employment and labor regulations uh as it relates to uh non rollovers and non- renewals and the like that are due to be delivered by May 15 so we just ask the board's uh consideration and action upon this request make a motion that we approve the previously approved May for a Schoolboard meeting from the 13th of May to the 6th of May as requested second well as I've heard a motion and I've heard a second uh there any questions or comments from the board all right
117no questions or comments all those in favor please signify was saying I I all those oppos nay motion appr due as well but before we adjourn one thing I have to say so we get it on record and I can include the video in the record how about the performance by the students this evening that we saw before we came into the board meeting what we think pretty good Mr Morris were God bless his heart was teaching right up to the minute anding enduring it was it was really special to see uh somebody like that energized about it and the kids they they were like the one young lady was so polite she's like thank you Mr Morris like all right all right uh so kudos to them and we'll put a link to that
118Gab filmed it we'll put a link to that in the board minutes make sure it gets shared districtwide so everybody can see their wonderful that was Newcastle Elementary that was Newcastle Elementary yes Mr Morris yeah they were great they were great so that's it now you go all right with that being said um do I hear a motion to adjourn and do I have a second all right as moved by m wall second by uh Mr handy uh no question or comments from the board all those in favor s m for saying I I I'll dispose n