001no talking good evening I'd like to call to order the September 25th 2017 Board of Education meeting the first item is approval of the agenda and I would like to move that we amend the agenda slightly with an executive session on a student related issue after the special recognition of staff and to correct position okay all right so we have a motion second second all right all in favor aye okay thank you very much we will move on to our first item which is our special recognition of staff Emily Wilkins of Liberty Memorial Central Middle School mathematics teacher with Jeff Harkin principal at Liberty Memorial and Mark Bradford the Lauren our Lawrence fire chief good evening I'm Jeff Harkin the proud principal of Liberty Memorial central middle school and I have mrs. Williams is here
002and she's going into her second year of teaching at Elam CMS I believe that all teachers are heroes and mrs. Williams brings to new meaning to that for us at LM CMS in the start of our school year were busy planning math lessons she attended an avid conference this summer getting ready for our stomp kickoff and to welcome our sixth graders with an orientation a few days into the school year she was going about her business planning in the morning before school began and one of the neighboring teachers was hosting some students before school for juice and doughnuts mrs. Williams came out in the hallway and found a student struggling for breath she immediately took action and gave the Heimlich maneuver and in my opinion saved a life so she is a hero and I
003wanted to recognize her here tonight chief Radford is here I believe to help us out with this recognition thank you very much it's nice to be back in the in the board room I'm glad you're up there and I'm over here the American Heart Association talks about chain of survival and there's many different links in that chain and at any one time if that chain is separated then chances of survival drop dramatically so in events like this you have the actual event that takes place and from that point on these chains start linking together the first chain is whether or not we've actually educated and trained either the participant that's having problems or a bystander and then it goes in to dialing of 9-1-1 response of fire medical and subsequently all the way up to
004hospital discharge in this particular case if there was somebody that is choking with a complete airway obstruction and that is not taken care of in the matter of minutes you'll start to have brain damage there will be a lack of oxygen supplying the main organs of the body the brain being the the most specific your blood sugar will skyrocket because it's starving for air in this particular case we have an individual that has been trained it looks as if you're probably assaulting somebody but you are performing a life-saving measure by quickly depressing a fisted hand into somebody's abdomen hard and rapidly and that will expel the item out of the individuals throat that's what we believe happened in this case and I agree that a life was probably saved by this simple basic life-saving maneuver
005so as part of our organization representing the city of Lawrence and Douglas County the Lawrence Douglas County Fire medical department would like to present to you the citizen life-saving award and this is in recognition of your quick response and successfully administering the Heimlich maneuver to a choking student which is was instrumental in directly saving a human life [Applause] okay our next item we're going to move into an executive session I'm going to make the motion I move the Board of Education recess to executive session to discuss matters affecting a student in order to protect the privacy and interests of the individuals to be discussed with David Cunningham in a Stubblefield invited to be present present and with the board to return to open session in this room at 7:20 with possible action to follow on
006favor aye okay we have returned from our executive session do not have any action to take so we will move on to the report of the president of the Board of Education and I have everybody past me on it's part of that forgive me it's a bit long evening but there's been a lot going on okay so I was glad to attend the power school demo session that was held here at the ESD C on September 14th I'm looking forward to the report and their recommendation from staff tonight as the usability of our current student information management system is an issue that I've heard a lot about over my years of board service I want to give my sincerest thanks to our community for coming out so strongly to support our schools Foundation at the
007annual community education breakfast on Friday September 15th it was a great event and it was well attended and the Free State High School alum Hamilton Lewis who spoke was very entertaining and inspiring thank you to the school's foundation for their support and thank you to the board members who were able to attend that morning in my role as KSP region 1 vice-president I also attended that weekend the NSBA Western Region meeting it was held most of it was held in Overland Park as part of the weekends activities they provided a tour of Allen Fieldhouse with a group of Association directors and board members from all over the region which consists of Wyoming Montana North Dakota South Dakota Nebraska Colorado New Mexico Oklahoma and Kansas and there was a lot of fun to get to show
008off a very important piece of our community to all of those out-of-state attendees I also attended a learning session that was led by the Kansas Leadership Center that focused on the core competencies of effective leaders and how they play out in the work of school boards I'd like to see our board engage in some leadership training of this type and I shared the handout I shared is actually a little like wallet card that the Kansas Leadership Center folks provided to everybody that was just a high-level summary of the information that they went over in this three-hour training but it was really helpful and I understand from talking with dr. Stubblefield that we have or will have staff who are going to be capable of leading training like this that the board can perhaps engage in
009later on this year I also took the opportunity this last week to attend a West middle school site council meeting and enjoyed learning about the successes that they've had with their one-to-one initiatives which have been evaluated as part of a district-wide research project in collaboration with K U and I understand we we will be hearing more about that the results of that research later on this school year since our last regular meeting on September 11th the board as a whole attended a joint city-county school board meeting on September 18th and we had a very productive conversation around expanding opportunities for coordinating city bus transportation with needs for USD 497 students opportunities to expand internet access in the community for low-income families and there was a bit of discussion about planning issues related to a number
010of things Queens Road expansions safe routes to schools County at the county and cities comprehensive plan a possible future interchange off the west leg of K 10 between Wakarusa and Iowa and also an update on developments at peasley Tech and we discussed having another joint meeting possibly in January I didn't have that in my notes but I thought I remembered and thank you to all the board members for making so much time last week for that meeting and for our meeting on September 20th with our search firm consultants from rain associates we had a very productive conversation and we ironed out a lot of details about the schedule and process for that that were shared in the media this past week we also have now online survey tools that we're encouraging the community to fill
011out as part of that process and we will be having community meetings coming up on October 4th and 5th the committee the board committee it myself Jessica and Vanessa that's working on the organizational manual for the board has we met last week and we've made progress on a number of issues and we're working on a draft and should have more information to share about that and in the near future the board policy committee which is myself and Vanessa met today and we did some work on a possible fundraising policy for the district it's an in draft form still and going out for for some feedback from her staff I visited the bond projects this past Saturday at paint me and sunflower had a really fun student led to her at sunflower elementary that was a
012lot of fun there's a couple of announcements and reminders related to K ASB stuff if you're interested in attending a region one summit that's happening next on next Monday October 2nd from 4:30 to 8 and Vaser I mean if you're at all interested you can let me know and I'll get you some more information about that I just wanted to remind everyone that the KSP annual convention is happening December 1st through 3rd in Wichita as is everyone on the board knows and a lot of people in the district staff know I've been recommended to be nominated for the KSP president elect designee position and so I'm gonna be asking someone else from our board to attend Convention as the voting delegate because I won't be the voting delegate for convention this year it's if you
013can fit it into your schedule and you have an interest the convention as a whole is a great opportunity for professional development and networking with board members from across the state there will be some special activities this year to commemorate ksps hundredth anniversary of service to our state as an association registration opens Monday October 2nd and it's if you're at all interested it's good to decide kind of early and get in because the hotel rooms especially at the Hyatt fill up very quickly so I wanted to share that ksb foundations of boards Minh ship training will be happening Monday and I mentioned this before but Monday December 12th and Topeka it's for new board members in particular but also returning board members that just want to update some training in that area strongly encourage it
014particularly for our newly elected board members that will be joining the board in January that foundations of board mission ship training is also going to be offered at the KSP Convention on Friday December 1st so if it's something you're interested in you can attend that day that's a second opportunity that's all and thank you that's enough thank you so with that I will move on to the report of the superintendent of schools okay I just have a few things I so on a echo what Shannon shared the superintendent search surveys are available on our district website at USC 497 org backslash superintendent search we invite the public to complete the two online surveys by October six one identifies qualities most important in a superintendent candidate and the other gathers information about district strengths and challenges
015we're finalizing the schedule of focus groups and public forums during during this week which staff in the community may share direct input for with the search firm those meetings will be held October 4th and 5th and that schedule will be available soon congratulations to Liberty Memorial central middle school principal Jeff Argan he will receive the kayuu Department of Special Education and center for research on learning well in Kansas leadership for learning award on Wednesday congratulations Jeff and thank you for your continued commitment to teaching and learning the first board lunch of the new school year is tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. at Pinckney elementary I also want to remind everyone that peasley tech will have their ribbon-cutting ceremony tomorrow at 4:00 followed by a retirement celebration for Marvin so please come out and support that and
016the last thing I just wanted to update everyone that the equity advisory council in both Delta met last week and those individual minutes will be placed on our website once we confirmed them thank you okay we move on to patron commentary I have one commentary that relates to what our next agenda item so we'll save it for that are there any other patron commentary that's right okay all right and so we will then move on to board commentary I have something so our district has received a fair bit of national media attention this past week and I wanted to take a moment to talk about it I'm proud of the brave students from Lawrence High who stood up for themselves and their fellow students holding our district accountable to high expectations when it comes to
017providing for the needs and safety of our transgender and gender non-conforming students I think I have some interesting perspective to share here because of the privilege I have supporting freshmen health classes each year I spend time in health classes with freshmen and have been continuously impressed with the level of acceptance and understanding that students Express around issues of gender identity and sexual orientation it's clear that our society is making progress towards acceptance for all and I'm hopeful for our future I'm also proud of the way administrators and support staff worked with these students to effectively address many of their concerns I've had the pleasure as well of serving on the LGBTQ task force the district level task force this past year working alongside many committed administrators teachers and school counselors to develop guidance to set
018clear expectations to ensure that our schools are safe and welcoming places for all transgender and gender non-conforming students but not unlike our work around racial equity I believe our district is taking impressive steps in making significant gains in creating a learning community that works for all of the students we have the privilege to serve which is not to say we don't have work to do or that we don't or won't make mistakes along the way from comments and concerned concerns expressed online and in other channels our district clearly has work to do to bring all staff and students along in terms of believing that all students deserve to be exactly who they are and that all students deserve to learn in classrooms free of discrimination and harassment but especially due to the leadership and bravery
019of our students and that they expressed this past week at Lawrence High I am hopeful that this goal will be realized in the near future Thank You Vanessa all right that we will move on to our consent agenda consent agenda items are those that are considered routine by one motion unless any board member or the superintendent requests that an item be removed the item are items removed are voted on separately and I believe we have recognition this evening yes the administration recommends that Teresa Wilkinson's request for early retirement be approved by the Board of Education with sincere appreciation for her twenty years of service and devotion to this community and its schools thank you second we need a motion process are you want to make the motion in a nimble second sure I move that
020the items listed on the consent agenda are adopted second all right yes Harmon yes Ingram yes Johnson yes yes thank you okay so we'll move on to our first items tonight which is discussion and approval of a superintendent evaluation tool and morning clothes that are listed David Cunningham but I'm actually going to run through the slides and help lead the discussion about this so just for some context for everyone who's here we have been as a board talking about what evaluation tool are we going to use to evaluate the superintendent we've used a couple different tools over the six-and-a-half almost seven years I've been on the board the last time we used the current tool board members didn't feel fully satisfied with the with the way that it worked and so I intended a training
021through ksb a few weeks ago on super until superintendent evaluation tools and all the slides it's ever one that you're gonna see tonight our slides that I have borrowed with permission from dr. Jordan at Kas be they were part it's not the whole presentation that was given but it was part of the presentation so one of the things that really we talked about several items at this training the the why are you evaluating the how and the what and the timeline so just wanted to to touch briefly on why do we evaluate the superintendent it's it's to help us be better enhancing the superintendent's effectiveness assuring that board policies are implemented clarifying individual roles and responsibilities and strengthen strengthening the working relationship between the board and the superintendent the what what should we evaluate so
022this was really helpful for me in this training he really gave these three areas what should our evaluation tool help us look at standards of performance which they pull their standards of performance that they recommend from the Council of Chief state school officers district leadership responsibilities which are derived the ones they recommend derived from Marzano and waters district leadership that works and then focus in alignment of the system so these were these are the standards of performance that they suggest that an effective evaluation tool should allow you to look at and I think we talked about all of these things setting a shared vision developing the school culture that we're looking for effective management collaboration within and without side the district acting with integrity fairness and in an ethical manner and understanding and responding to
023and influencing political social legal and cultural context that we are working in pretty tall order responsibilities of the superintendent and district leadership having a collaborative goal-setting process having non-negotiable goals for achievement and instruction aligning the board's work with and supporting those goals using resources to support those goals monitoring them in defining autonomy so define having a good definition of what is what is the work that we expect the superintendent to do and what is our role in supervising and supporting that work focus in alignment they had a different graphic that they use but I felt that our graphic that we have talked about in goal-setting this year really really does this is this is the focus in alignment this is what we're trying to make sure that our evaluation tool is helping us to achieve
024I'm kind of on the on the big picture level so what so that's you know so these are the things that the evaluation tool should do what does that look like in our process so I'm gonna refer back to my notes for just a sec soon so I think this might be a good place to stop our board meeting on the 11th I shared with the board a notebook that had four different evaluation tools in it one is the keep evaluation which is the tool that we are currently using and have used the last several years there was a tool that was what they call an administrative tool which is a very kind of a very basic tool there was a job description linked root set of rubrics and then there was the macro evaluation
025system so hopefully board members had a chance to look through that think about how those tools might or might not meet the needs that we all feel we're not being met and and whether whether we stay with keeper with if we go with a different choice out of those other possible tools so I really want to have a discussion what did you think what struck you is being useful kind of which to which direction do you see that we need to go well I liked the performance-based superintendent evaluation of the choices here primarily because it allowed for the superintendent to do the self-evaluation and attach supporting documents which I think could include numerous things that might help us then evaluate better so one of my problems with the keith instrument that we use last year
026was that there were several questions about how this how the superintendent is perceived as a leader amongst the staff and that was really difficult for us to answer because we don't really see that and we don't really know that we haven't you know go out and survey the staff and ask how they feel about that so I think one of those sort of supporting documents then could be something that would give us a little bit more information to answer questions like that so I liked I like that element of it I felt like it was a little bit more organic in that way that was my that's my I guess my number one preference yeah I agree that we should not use keep evaluation tools it's our tool for this year because I think it's
027cumbersome and it has a fast or talk about things that we don't have the purview to discuss I do and and obviously with whatever tool we use we can add a component but you know I think that because the state mandates that we use measures of success for teachers that it's really only fair to do the same thing for our administrators to hold them to those same standards and so I think that that's important and I think I don't know when we initially began like I think the the form that we use to evaluate superintendent dr. dole was really simple and there were some benefits to that because it really helped us hone down to the core issues and evaluate them keep completely I think we were like we need something a little more robust
028and he was like way too far in that direction and so I do think finding something that can balance that comprehensiveness because comprehensiveness is important but still allow like a level of simplicity worth what we're saying means something as opposed to like having to come up with like measures on all these different indicators that half of them we can't evaluate because we don't work in the schools on a day to day basis yeah I think that's important ya know degree the performance space one did seem it also seemed more simple I mean from our standpoint where we're sitting as a board member I like the fact that for each of the indicators is you're just you're giving one rating basically and not it's not broken down into five different columns within each subcategory you're going
029through each one not understanding exactly all the things anyway that you're being asked for his keypad but I did like that about the performance-based model I also liked the fact that it tied it more to a job description that seems like something that you know fairly concrete set up for the superintendent that you're evaluating against law so helps them put together their own evaluation and then the actual action plan I guess or whatever they can't figure what they called it the performance area contract for excellence that follows after that so it's an action plan that that you can actually then using the next year to evaluate against as well as I thought I thought it was set up the best out of the three here third for that we were looking at you know I
030agree I think that of the options that one makes the most sense they do still get concerned that we're gonna be asked to evaluate things we don't have truck knowledge of and that if you want to talk about validity throws validity out the window so I think the I think the superintendent's self evaluation is an important piece of data if there's if there are additional data that we could get access to you that would help us answer those questions in a thoughtful way I think that would be and I don't know what that the source of it is but if there was I think that you know it would be a more meaningful process so this this was the best of not a great bunch of tools because can you know a lot of areas
031and I didn't bring mine with me but you know kind of reading some more so as it's like I don't know how to assess that right so at the end it does give some recommendations for documentation to use to help I don't know that it still gets us all the way where we need to be but it's starting at least so I want to give Melissa a chance to weigh in if she has some feedback in it and then I have some thoughts about this issue that I'm not sure well I agree to what the performance-based evaluation being the best one is similar to live in valuation like I observation similar to something that my district uses to the bodyweight teachers really have to have an added piece of them actually observing a few times
032so well I also felt like of the tools that was the one that I thought balanced being a little more robust and providing meaningful feedback with not being overly cumbersome to be trained to use to use to to actually be able to do the job effectively and the the tool that we got the sample tool that we got is based on a sample Job Description and I think in the notebook at the end of that section there there was the actual job description that we have for our superintendent so one of the things that we would have to do would be to take our job description and put it into this this evaluation format and I think that might get at the concerns that were expressed about are we still being asked to evaluate on
033stuff that we don't know about because since we are gonna have to tweak it to align it with our own superintendents job description we can take a look at that and take out those things that we don't know we don't know this and there's no evidence that we feel would be reliable to allow us to give a valid evaluation on that basis so Janet I was gonna say I believe in Susan I'm looking at you I think this is created out of what we use to create our job descriptions the performance but you know that component with I can't think of the company that we use so I think there's a way to feed it in and for it to kick out but I'm not certain but I am I'm looking at it but I
034think that is possible with the system that we had to create our job description currently and it's something that was on our list of goals to do for classify staff I'm in the next year but I think you can do the same superintendent's evaluation based off the job description one question I have and we talked about process a little bit I think maybe you and I or I don't remember exactly but I think one of the challenges we've had as a board movies done evaluations in the past as we all kind of individually fill them out then you know Janice would kind of collapse you know collapse it into one kind of document and then we'd use that in a small session to talk it over before we did like the you know meeting with
035the superintendent and kind of talking through it and I think a lot got lost within that process because there wasn't a lot of time for that collaborative conversation and we talked about possibly switching the way we did the evaluation in that we would actually go through and fill out the evaluation as a body together and then do the evaluation with the superintendent and I don't think we should stop considering that as an option regardless of what mechanism we utilize just because I so KSP had a recommendation and there's a slide and talk about that so we can choose to take their recommendation or not but I think it provides their approach to that particular issue so okay so I'm hearing pretty much unanimity that we like the job description based evaluation tool if we can
036tweak it somewhat so what I will suggest then is that we we take an opportunity board leadership and staff to do that tweaking share back out the tool for a final look at and approval for using it but let's move on and go through a couple more slides to talk because there's a couple other issues that we need to figure out can be made some recommendations about the process that you use to evaluate in order to get a reliable valid evaluation that fosters a climate of growth one of them is is making sure that your evaluation is based on reasonable expectations I think that using this job performance-based our job description based evaluation will do that because our job description sets out the expectations for the superintendent and we really will be able to capture
037that effectively and also they also emphasize that you have to have a good process and this is the process they recommend having the superintendent on number one to a self-assessment having a pre evaluation conference an opportunity for data collection and updates the evaluator indepen they recommend an independent rating and this is the piece that I was going to talk about so that's number four sharing the final evaluation with the superintendent and then going through a goal-setting process around the student and that's separate from our district goal-setting process that would be a goal-setting process around the superintendent's performance expectations so that I know this is hard to read and I'm sorry I think that there's actually a copy of it in the front of the notebook as well yeah it is this black and white it's
038the second page in the notebook so it's really hard to see up there but basically this is that circle of things that you need to do with some expansion and dates tied to it so they're saying doing this having the superintendent do the self-assessment sometime in the first two months of your fiscal year so for us that would be in July in August doing a pre evaluation conference with the superintendent sometime within that first two months when the self evaluation is completed and that can either be something that happens in executive session with the full board or the board could choose to say okay board officers you're going to sit down and go through that information with the superintendent I guess boards do it both ways my recommendation would be we do it as a
039full board but you may pause you for a second so would that mean that like a superintendent that's hired for July would do a self-assessment like well that's what we got to talk about so you assume that this is a typical year where you're evaluating your superintendent one time right so statutorily we're required to evaluate the superintendent by February 15th each year when you have a new superintendent and this is on a chart a little bit later when you have a new superintendent the first two years you have to evaluate them twice and it has to happen within sixty days of the beginning of each semester and so how we do that my it'll look a little different I think so dr. Troy Lee have to evaluate an interim twice or just the one just
040oh we looked into that and because I'm dr. Stubblefield was already in our district she did falls within the one time in within the Year category because she's not new to our district even though she's new to the position that was I actually had dr. Jordan check with the KSP legal staff on that one because that was the first question I asked well this is a different situation than anything you're describing how do we handle this evaluation and data collection and that happens all through the time that you've finished that pre-evaluation conference up until you do your individual board ratings on your tool there's a couple different ways that we could approach that we could approach that either with the change in board elections we could decide that we want to try to have the
041evaluation process completed by December 31st every year or we could go ahead and follow the schedule where we do that part of it a little bit later to meet the February 15th deadline and that's that's a piece of feedback I think maybe we do it one way this year and we decide that after the first two years with the next superintendent we're going to do it so that it we're completed by December 31st because it does mean shifting timelines for a lot of other things around that process you have to have your final evaluation conference with the superintendent by the statutory deadline so at by that first February meeting for us the second Monday meeting in February and then in the time between that within the month or two afterward you do a goal-setting process
042for the to form the basis of the following year and it's it's gonna be one of the suggestions that I make to our organizational manual committee that we actually include this in a timeline in a description within our policy manual for the board so that it's kind of here's the process that we're planning to follow unless we can we can talk through that if there's any discomfort with the suggested here are the steps I mean it does seem incredibly more robust compared to processes we've used in the past typically I think we've done number six and number five condensed I mean oftentimes when we do that final evaluation conference we will talk about these are those big things that we want to see improvement on or that we think you're doing great on or whatever
043and so it it kind of goes together and I don't know that there's I mean I guess I'm curious what the rationale is for separating those into two processes given the I think it's the opportunity for the superintendent to write SMART goals okay I'm the feedback that that is given I took that slide out actually because it seemed to like too much for what we're trying to do tonight but they did have a couple of slides about SMART goals and how what would a SMART goal in the any evaluation plan look like and I think that's why that's a separate step I guess I'm also curious Anna your perspective like as an interim superintendent whether or not you think this makes a lot of sense of whether or not you think that this is too
044time-consuming given all the other you know what I mean I think it'd be helpful to weigh in given the fact that this is just it's a one-time thing that you're gonna deal with this year I'm not that I'm putting you on the spot or but I think you're so I it is it's a botanist time-consuming but it also can be a way for you to gauge on what's actually doable if you're going to have to do this 2times next year absolutely I think it can be done but I do think that's something to consider there may be some things that it's not unlike what our teachers currently go through and the Danielson model so it's very similar with some of the steps some of it just may be condition well I don't even think it's
045condensed because they do a self-assessment a free evaluation conference the data collection that thing it looks like a step but that's just once you do the pre evaluation conference when you come to the or you submit it before the evidence of whatever so when you're doing the performance assessment you would have the information on that end so I think it kind of would go back to what kind of data that I would have to gather to submit because a lot of the other stuff is really you guys except for the self-assessment and the goal-setting and me submitting the data but the other steps is you actually doing something which isn't unlike what we do for our teachers because about to say wouldn't that be typical data that you you would be collected anyway yeah it's
046just like putting it in yeah depending on what it's picked out like that kind of thing but that would that wouldn't be unlike what our teachers do currently actually and one of the ways to think about how we would handle this after this year for the next two years would be that going into a new superintendent mean they probably need to do a self assessment but maybe that self assessment is based on our process that in the qualities and things that we identify through the superintendent search as being priorities I think when we went through our last search those conversations allowed us to say here are two or three things that we feel the new superintendent needs to look out right away and then you could use those as the basis for the first round
047of a valuation and as you're just getting into the end of the year one other thing for our teachers and it would make sense that you think about the new superintendent they can do a self assess assessment but goal-setting also can I mean they may come in based off the data then share with them and have a couple of goals and then on the backside the goals can be driven by the information and data that submitted coupled with whatever feedback or interactions you have but on the front end they could maybe it's not a complete self-assessment I mean depending on what the self-assessment tool is but they could have goals they can have some goals that they want to accomplish within the first semester by the next evaluation if that would help and I think
048the Danielson and and Marzano are pretty similar and we we have to do that in the beginning of the year whether they were a first year teaching is just like where do you feel you're it's more I mean it's a self-assessment how do you feel where you thank you man where do you think you are so I don't know if it's you know gonna be a hinderance you know it's gonna be complicated for a superintendent to do it now if they were retired or they I don't know there may be a different situation so this is this is the piece so Vanessa you mentioned how do you do the evaluation so the recommendation of the training was this to take your tool and I don't know if this is the I don't think this is
049the ratings that are reflected yeah but you basically you you collate your ratings for all of the individual board members fill out an individual evaluation tool you collate your ratings and then the the final evaluation that you give to the superintendent reflects not everybody's rating but the median of the board's collective ratings so that they get one you know for for component one they get it's hard to see on here but it's in color I think the the red one up there is the median for number one was a four and so that would be the rating that they get so there so it what it does is that everybody gets to provide their input but you you give the superintendent one rating and then you collate comments and feedback if you want to give
050comments you could do that part of it as a collective perhaps rather than just handing them here seven evaluations with wildly varying weight do this don't do this right yeah so perhaps the the written comments would be an opportunity for the board to work through here's the one the one thing we're gonna say about this I in the way that this was explained it made a lot of sense to me I'd yeah my preference I mean my preference in general would be that that you have there's a there's a chance for board members to go through it individually and then you come as a collective to finalize that I guess you know I think that's best practiced haven't been Arabians because they're not contaminated than by other I think where I've been a little frustrated
051with the process is and I think that this model solves potentially a lot of that as we get together we talk we spend an hour and it just never seems like quite enough because really that's the first time we come together and talk about it and I might have a different perspective two weeks later so to the extent that that we can you know really spend some time on that process of and use as much time as we need because I think I felt always felt a little bit like we're rush is the wrong term but it's a little too compacted I think to to really be maximally useful I realized that you know the goal-setting part of this number six might require a little bit of work but you know in the past what
052we've done is we give feedback this you know superintendent says okay okay and then we kind of move on and there's not really much follow-up unless there's an issue and so I think that this will go a ways towards best practice suggesting that there really needs to be more more frequent touches on the topic throughout the year rather than the way that we've done in the past that was I think that was probably the biggest the biggest takeaway for me it's just that it really is gonna require maybe the tool itself won't require as much effort to use but the whole process in general will require more regular input from the board but I think that's a pot my takeaway was that that's a positive because it will improve for superintendent relationships and kind of
053strengthen that cohesiveness of the leadership team okay they also recommend that the self for the self-assessment you use the same entrant instrument that you use for your final evaluation which leads me to we're gonna skip over this the last piece that we need to talk about the win that we do the evaluation all board members being in attendance at the meeting where you do the evaluation and talk and meet with a superintendent you have to do it at least once a year for superintendents in their third year or more with the district superintendents in their first and second years I have to be evaluated twice by the 60th day of each semester so that that would mean doing it if our semesters begin in late August doing it by late October and then again by
054late March I guess would be the timeline so with that is kind of the process they have some suggested timelines if you're gonna use a process where you're going to do your final evaluation with the superintendent by the February 15 deadline and that's what this looks like obviously we're kind of down into the data collection area that we would be able to pull together what I think what we would need to allow Anna to do this process by that February 15 deadline they also gave a suggested timeline if you want to try to wrap it up by the end of December and it just moves up that pre-evaluation conference no longer happens at the being in the fiscal year it needs to happen back in February or March and then you're really doing your goal
055setting in the December January time frame this one again I took the different timelines and actually created a table given that we're gonna have an intern year two years with the new superintendent and then I find the third year out from that when we get to do the first February and I realized the dates the first step you're a meeting I'd need to go back in a six pack but I guess the two the two things I want to get feedback from everyone on are having dr. Seibel field do her self evaluation on the basis of the job description tool if we're gonna use that going forward is that well it's gonna take us a little time to get it ready to do that so I will change the suggested instrument column and and then
056as a matter of working on this policy manual and how we're going to suggest handling this in the future you have any feeling about should we be moving that timeline 20:21 school year to a timeline where you'd finish the evaluation Prussia process by December because that that does it changes maybe a little bit what you do before that in terms of when you do the goal-setting the piece of it and so I want to try to have a have a timeline set out saying this is this is where we are headed so that we have some dates that everybody knows or on the calendar I think the general feeling that it was the gut reaction was well this is just yet one more reason why the whole notion of moving elections to November and having
057new board members take office in January is ludicrous and if they had just listened to nearly every board in the state that provided them feedback they would have never made this change in the first place because it doesn't align with anything that we do in any other area so that was the guy was the V but now here we are with it right in that regard should we be thinking about changing maybe this year we should keep it as is but right and when the transition would have to happen after the first two years with the new superintendent because if it's a statutory requirement that you do the two evaluations so so it would really would really be talking about making that suggestion for the 2021 square it does seem like it's asking an awful
058lot for new board members to participate in a thorough evaluation process having less than a month I mean as a board member that yes I agree the flip side of that might be that if we are doing this process well they're going to have a self-evaluation and data to look at along with the evaluation tool at that point where they sit down in early february to fill it out so it wouldn't be on a completely blank slate because we were the board would have gone through that process with this of self evaluation and feedback and so we'd have a better idea of what things are supposed to be being worked on and then I know I just seem helpful that I'm a new board members would be part of that kind of goal-setting process in
059order to kind of shape that and I think that'll happen regardless of what the timeline looks like how about this how about everybody give that one some thought and if you have feedback to share send it to dawn and she can share it with me and and and then I'll share it with the committee as we work on putting all of this together so there's a couple things that will come out of this discussion we will get the tool revised and send out to everybody and then we will include an updated and correct schedule along with some of these other timelines in in the in the organizational manual and I do thank you for reminding me we do have a public comment so want to make sure is there anything else board members want to
060share before we move on to the public comment No all right as we do with public comment we appreciate patients taking time to talk to us about our policies and procedures it's time to share opinions we ask you avoid making personal comments of a personal nature about a district employee or student including use of personal names we appreciate they share your contact information and so that we can follow up with any specific concerns in such cases board member the superintendent or another staff member may be in touch with you to refer your concerns to the appropriate administrator for investigation at that time we encourage you to share as many details relative to your concern as you're willing to share we ask that you limit comments to 5-minutes if possible and thank you for sharing your
061thoughts about policies and procedures and issues with the board and Missouri Shamari thank you President Kim bowling board members I reviewed the current protocol and the three other tools for consideration myself and most of my concerns have been answered by this a robust discussion so the only thing I guess I need to say at this time is thank you for the opportunity to review the tools and for your transparency and reviving them for review you're welcome thank you very much okay I think that we need to make a motion to adopt the tool that we're gonna be using and working on revising so I move the Board of Education utilize the performance-based superintendent evaluation tool I think that's the correct name beginning with the 2017-18 school year yes yes yes thank you and thank you
062everyone for engaging so thoroughly in this discussion think we've got your work I'm not kidding that professional development all right to our reports and approvals on PowerSchool Jerry Kimball Kirsten Wondra Terry McEwen Brad Kemp and Kathy Johnson good evening we're going to present in that order I'm Jerry Kimball assistant superintendent and we're gonna start with why are we even here tonight talking to you about power school well first of all the board goal for the past two years 1516 was to deliver quality programs and services and in 1617 was to expand communication and Community Connections through increased engagement also another reason why we're here is because we have heard that the current system that we have not only our current sis but all the systems that we have are kind of cumbersome for parents teachers
063staff to get the information that they need so we have looked into that in great detail and finally the echo system that we have in place is very complicated so what we did to get started on this journey first of all we all gathered right in here everyone from ESD see all of the departments were present and we went through what are all the components of our digital ecosystem and we had literally pages and pages of Excel spreadsheets showing all of the different things that we have in the district as we talked about that we talked what would our vision be and we said a digital conversion where we could bring it all into one place so that it would make it easier for those end users be it the parent the teacher the administrator
064whoever it was it could be in one place so our next step was to survey the teachers and we talked to them mainly about the blackboard LMS that we were using the reason for that was we were looking at different student information systems and we noticed that a lot of them have an LMS in there so if they have a system in there why are we buying another one on the side so if they have one that integrates with the grade book it just makes sense to use that so we surveyed them and you probably here just a little bit more about that later on but the first step we took was to look at what we have right now skyward and so we researched the possibilities we saw what we had in place and
065we weren't quite satisfied so we moved on and we met with power school and the reason we chose them is because I believe it's about 80% of the Kansas school districts use power school and it's used very widely across the United States many of us know people in other districts that have used them you're gonna hear from Brad Kemp who has used both systems tonight and when we met with them we thought that they really brought it back to that digital conversion bringing it all together in one place so I'm gonna turn it over to Terry now very McEwen director of assessment research and accountability so if this slide looks messy that's because the system around the outside is what we're currently doing so yeah that just gives you a quick picture power school presents
066a one unified system for us to use it's fully integrated and it's seamless in its operation I think though the arrow is purposefully pointing to empowering teachers because currently I just did this for a different purpose but the number of clicks our teachers have to use to encounter different systems on a daily basis is somewhat mind-boggling so we are we are currently happy we have a special education system that has to be worked through to communicate with skywards so we have to have them talk to each other we are currently using Blackboard Learn as our learning management system but we have to engage a third-party vendor in order for blackboard to actually speak with skyward in order to get the student information back and forth and to have populate grade books assessments our assessment results
067wind up in a variety of places one of which is in our data warehouse but to get it into the data warehouse I have to extract it all into excel file and then I to take the Excel file load it on to a file transfer protocol and then send it to the data warehouse where they have to Reema niculae to put it on the data works so in other words it's pretty an incredible set of complex stuff if you look at the center graphic you'll see that skyward are that PowerSchool Ron company that power school is a student information system first and foremost but it is also a platform for learning it is also a platform for special education systems and so it begins to integrate all of these disparate systems into a single system
068all of which of course clearly talks to itself and so we don't we eliminate the need for all of these extra third-party vendors in order to get our systems to talk to each other Kirstin is going to actually show you a little more in depth of what each of these component parts does before we move off this slide I just wanted to kind of highlight the fact that they call their learning management system unified classroom so I'm gonna kind of show you some video clips of what that looks like kind of from the teacher perspective and the student perspective and knocking things down here so unified classroom for the teacher control thank you sound as much we have our classroom set up as a third grade science classroom focus on next generators here I am
069logged in in power school's unified classroom and that's gonna be the hub of every single thing that we're doing today so what I'll do is look out and find a lesson plan like this it's maybe been created within my school or district and I want to get that to my students immediately they may be coming in five to ten minutes so what I'll do is pull that up you'll notice I have the next generation science standards here they're all my lesson plan is aligned to as I click in I'm gonna go to my communication page there where I can automatically go through look to post not just an announcement that actual assignment as I go in I can see all those assignments that are at my disposal I like that biomes animal adaptation one now
070go through it's covering the standards I'm I want to focus on so now with one click it's posted to the students you can see it has a strong capability of allowing their teachers a lot more ease of access it's got standards alignment right in there as teachers have been moving away from blackboard as we've been looking at different learning management systems they've housed a lot of their things in Google Drive and the nice part about power school is that it seamlessly integrates with Google classroom so none of the work that the teachers really have done some of their things over into the G suite and Google classroom will be for naught it will easily integrate with power school assignments that they've created right in there we'll be able to cross connect and talk in that
071platform really easily so that's another way that we've tried to honor their work in their time it's a quick question about that so that through the standards that our mat like is like someone in teaching and learning going to help build the course shells to make those notes or because obviously that will but come along unless right okay so we're in the process of looking at our curriculum just in general and seeing how what of the good that we knew the course shells we can import over from blackboard or kind of refresh as in there we've got Nearpod now that's got a lot of standards connected things for our secondaries that we can link right in there and and yeah teaching and learning is engaging in that process right now okay thanks assuming we go
072with this all right so unified classroom from the students and this isn't doesn't show you as the screenshots as well for students but it kind of talks to them and the thought process behind differentiated instruction and powerful apps that ensure high student engagement power school empowers teachers and administrators to use real-time data insights to measure and adjust instruction from the student to the school level gaining visibility to each student's strengths and weaknesses to create the right formula for growth at chain Brian elementary school in 2012 only 30% of students pass this mathematics assessment using power school to drive growth scores by delivering interactive progress graphs and real-time feedback mobile devices really really excited for our students to be able to see and track their own data in a much more robust and transparent way on
073an ongoing basis so weren't they're not necessarily waiting so long to get progress reports and updates it's all very transparent in the system the other thing for the students that we are very excited about in our demonstration we saw that they as the standard feature have a preferred naming option in their school improvement system and that then allows that preferred names for students to interconnect to our other systems so Google would show their preferred name and that wouldn't be an issue in the future also they have a range of gender identities just built into the system so students can select and it doesn't interfere with any of our state reporting requirements they're kind of held in in several places and fields so that was an interconnectedness with our needs that we felt like was was
074quite a robust feature and it's just standard in their system okay so from the teachers preserved from the parent perspective today not to have to wait for a report card and maybe a unpleasant surprise and instead being able to go in did where their child is each and every day by course by standard and also access now that's the goal of the unit by classroom is to make sure that the parent has that information but the student has that information and that the the teacher just has more time teaching every day because they're not going back and forth between different systems but instead they're going to one place that has everything for them now I'm gonna take off my teacher hat I'm gonna put on my parent hat one of the things I want to
075show you is our home here we've got the power school home set up so as I'm coming in I have full access into all those class pages knowing exactly what my child did today inevitably there might be an occurrence where I'm you know my hands are full I get a buzz in my phone pocket there's something new going on at the school but you know my I'm in the middle of cooking how do I get that information let me show you power school I think students are cringing everywhere and so it's got a lot of robust tools for parents their app is very nice we as a part of our base quote we ask for the registration module because we felt like it was really important to have that parent engagement piece and the interconnectedness
076of their systems is is is quite robust you can be a guardian for perhaps some children you can be a parent or an emergency contact for another child you can be lots of different roles you can be a teacher in on the school side and you can go into the registration module and update your information and it's updated seamlessly for you and all of those user groups across the board so her parents aren't having to call three different schools and say hey I need that I never here and my my email here they can do it directly through the app and they can continue to do that in person if they would like but we have that availability as well the Brad is gonna talk to you a little bit about his experience being a
077user I'm across the board looks like he has the new iPhone a right there through my experience through different districts of I guess I've been blessed to experience both worlds as a teacher in the power school world and in skyward I've also had students in both those have been apparent and I've been an administrator both so I think Jerry said it right cumbersome is what's coyopa skyward has become to me just kind of give you a brief as a parent as you saw on that video and the videos kind of take away my thunder a little bit power school is right there so you open up the app it all the informations there you can set up your notifications to receive those notifications from teachers empower school coaches can also build groups with empower school
078so they can communicate anything athletic wise or Club wise through power school with just a little bit of tweaking it doesn't take a lot so as a parent you have information right right your fingertips things that you need to know for your kids grades attendance and apparently Alexa now is chiming into to that home world so between those two system as a parent I feel much more connected with the school through a PowerSchool interface then I do with the skyward interface as a teacher I remember and power school has changed a lot I've been telling everybody this is my year I've actually been an administrator longer than a teacher so it's kind of like the anniversary of being principal too long I don't know I've been in a classroom in a while one of the
079to you but as a teacher you can build in lie your lessons that's changed a lot since I was in the classroom and have the ability to pull instant analytics from a standard standard test and know what standards your students are meeting know what standards you need to work on is a very powerful tool and like the video said it's you can make those adjustments on the fly no more do you have to sit wait to the in wait to the end to where things are graded a lot of things in PowerSchool if the teacher uses it they can have it graded for them by the time the kids done with the test you can either take a picture of a scantron and it grades it that way or the system can grade it for
080you so there's some efficiencies there is a teacher when looking at grading looking at the data it's providing for each class I know the other piece of that I really like is it could talks with C's so as a teacher you have the ability to look at an IEP student and have that IEP at a glance so you think about being the school year you're getting to know your kids it might take a few days to get through all those IEP s that you have for the school year but it's connected right into PowerSchool so you pull up that individual you see a little indicator you click on it and you see those modifications or services that we're providing that student from the administrator side there's a very big difference power school offers what is
081called power school they change the name it's not power assessment so it's a dashboard for administrators where all this data is coming in to power school and it won't click you can see everything you want to see how that students performing on same maps and state assessment or common assessments if you build those in to power school you see attendance you see tardiness everything's right there so at the building level when we're trying to find that direction and and work on things that will improve school no more am I looking into viewpoint skyward map system it it takes a lot of time to pull all that data together and when when you go into PowerSchool it's just right there for you skyward is cumbersome that's a great word I think he used for for the
082keep system it's kind of the same and when Jerry came up I just remember being excited because when I came here from Emporia it was like taking a couple steps back because I was in a better school world and coming back the sky like oh here we go again so to hear that things might possibly change it's a good thing and I think most administrators have talked to kind of have that same feeling no plan would be complete without professional learning options so we have already begun to think about how assuming approval we're gonna best support kind of all of the users that we're going to need because it's going to take everything from our school information systems all the way to our walk-in and Welcome Center and so there's lots of professional learning that's
083available already that we know that we'll have access to the nice part is is there's a little Help button on demand so of teachers in unified classroom and so I can't remember how to do there's a little help button with just tons of information and it's not one that you have to know a lot about what you're searching it's very intuitive and they demoed for that for us then I think that's a really great support for our staff and power source and it is an entire online customer support portal that we will have access to that has all kinds of discussion boards and user group information and online modules there's just a wealth of information that's in there that we'll have access to obviously we're going to have a lot of in-person sessions and the
084quote I think we have lots and lots of professional development Dave's built in there and we'll make sure that those are scheduled to meet the needs of the staff as they're coming on board and throughout the summer if we can get there there's a power school users group there's actually a conference it's in it was in Michigan last fall that people can go to because there's so many power school users and that we can tap into you to get tips and tricks and power school ways things I think they mentioned they spend 1/3 of their budget on new tool development and really you can see that in the responsiveness of things so they use those user groups to say ok this is this is a tool or a feature that a lot of people have
085liked and they'll rated they'll you know rate it up in the forums and then they'll just make that a standard part of their product that nobody has to pay extra for it's just a part of that process so those user groups are going to help district administration continue to keep adept and abreast of what's going on with power school I think skyward was set up so long ago and there's been so much turnover that none of us remember how it was or why it was it's just how it is and this will keep that power school experience very fresh and then on-demand courses if you're home in your jammies and can't remember how to do or want to know more about and that's a tool that all of our teachers will have access to throughout
086the year and and as things move along and so that's something that we'll have reference to so as soon as we get more meat on the bones for professional learning for power school I'm sure we'll come back and give you that information but there's a lot of opportunity that where do you know that we have from our feedback that we've already received I just kind of wanted to pull out some initial challenges in feedback that we've received and as people have kind of previewed the product as far as unified classroom not being sure that it really is going to get make the teachers have less work so obviously that's gonna be something we're gonna be very responsive to in our initial training to make sure that they have enough training so that it that it
087is easier and it and it's not harder and there is gonna be a learning curve but that helps us scaffold and supports appropriately yes so well we've already begun to kind of problem-solve that one and we can leave the state and having the state reporting documents as a part of the special education module that we have access to and they're going to let us kind of do that part and parcel with our special education module so that one's on the Steven are taking care of itself student support plans that's something that a power school again with the assessment module and it's tracking capability we can very much customize it to meet our needs but that's obviously something that's been identified already from our constituents as a as a place of concern so we can be
088responsive to that progress reporting and there was a concern from the elementary that we do standards-based progress reporting you know I use power school five years ago it didn't work very well how do we are we sure that that's right power school assures us that they've they've got all kinds of school districts that are standards-based progress reporting and then they can walk us through that step in our implementation problems so we're just trying to be very responsive to feedback and making sure that we get that feedback loop back to staff us there it was we're moving forward with implementation to make sure that we avoid the pitfalls as the feedback is being brought to us first question is okay can we afford this or what is it gonna cost us and how are we gonna
089make this work so what this particular slide is is just kind of summarizing for you a little bit about what the parish school quote is and then what our current systems are a little bit and the only thing that we've included in this kind of current systems are just kind of those four core systems that Terri shared the blackboard learning management the viewpoint data warehouse the C's special education then skyward our student information which is kind of our core big there are others that as he said we're having a you know a system that has to help bridge this one or there has to help bridge this one and there's gonna be efficiencies with the idea that we don't have to go to all these different systems that everything is in one those are not
090necessarily something that is reflected here and we believe that there will be more than just what we're able to share with you tonight as far as on the surface but if you look at the power schools that those core ongoing products the quota is about two hundred and two thousand and our current systems that we just talked about that it would be replacing is two hundred seventy four so basically for products ongoing we're actually trading out for a savings there with the implementation there are some one-time costs we have some setup staff that they will help us with the consulting for that a lot of the training that's about a hundred and thirty one thousand that is built into the quote so if you were to just look at what this startup is and all
091these services that are one-time the net cost to the district I know this first time out is about sixty thousand but if you look then going forward it's going to be about two hundred and eleven annual which is distill below the 274 so when we get going on this there will be in that savings and we believe there will be even more that's when we start being able to say oh we don't need this little piece anymore and we don't need this because now it's all in one place as well as some of the staffing time and efficiency of being able to have things much quicker retrieval those kinds of things parent communication than that where they might have been sending out lots of emails or having to do it in a variety of different
092ways they're able to do it much more streamlined so we are looking at this as and that savings going forward they've built in some good training services and set up costs but the net effect this first year will be about 60,000 but going forward we will see a savings going forward and so your motion in front of you tonight if you choose to approve us going forward and approving the cost is for that first year cost of the 3 33 94 I have a couple questions one how many years are in the first contract at that price um the first two oh two is the first year the 211 would be the second you know we've not built two years and so the we're talking about implementing this for next school year so we're gonna
093have costs now how much of this is coming out of this year's budget versus next year's budget the mixture because some of those you approved for this year you did at the end of last year okay data warehouse and some of those was out of last year's budget okay though it's for this year for the school no it's sort of a mixture of that and so we would have approvals that if we weren't switching would be coming up at the end of this fiscal year that we won't be doing the majority of them you won't know because I think most of them if I'm corrected was actually out of last year's budget coming over to this year and they didn't validate that but I'm most of the time that's how that has always worked so
094you've talked a lot about teacher and administrator training what about parent and child training this is sounds cool but it's a change from what people are used to and so kind of what's the thinking on how you roll this out and get parents and kids acclimated absolutely we've tossed out some ideas of parent camps or parent at camps this might be a feature at some of those obviously we can have training available pamphlets we hadn't gotten that far in the weeds just in the off chance that this isn't going to roll very forward but as far as the student experience I think in as we continue to I was gonna say well be they'll be teaching right now I think for them it's going to be a really great opportunity to have a little more
095cohesion and what they do because right now we've got kind of a bouquet of options for them to access between Google and Edmodo and blackboard and I mean they're just going to a range of places and I think supporting one really well I think will help kind of the student experience but we will be able to hopefully we won't find anybody who's going to short-circuit their Alexis's at home but and we'll definitely include that in our in our range of professional learning offerings I guess my only concern is you know I do think for teachers that we've heard that we're doing and this is a major change our major shift and so talk to me for a second about there's professional development options so that they can learn but is there time built into their
096day to get it set up or like how much work are they going to have to do to kind of reset up and reintegrate their their teaching into this system and what support does the district plan to offer for that we are looking at that knowing that this is the direction we might be able to go we were already planning on capturing some spring this spring to begin to get people up to speed and options for them to learn we had talked about possibly moving some of our professional days that are embedded throughout the school year maybe back loading those at the front or front loading those so that possibly we can get more dedicated time for stock to be acquainted with the system and really have an opportunity to get in and play in
097the system assuming that we can get our school information component of it up and running in time that the systems can be parallel with the unified classroom we plan to offer potentially summer opportunity and time to compensate people to come in and really just have time to learn and play and and kind of get their their feet wet with it and then we'll have ongoing throughout the year as we always do we'll have right now we're already offering Google classroom on Wednesdays for people to opt in and come in and we're gonna again begin to kind of offering PowerSchool nuggets in there and time for them on Wednesday collaborations as they're free and able to come to do some of that so kind of similar to the coffee shop with an IT person do you
098think that there would be opportunities like that say I'm a teacher and I'm like I have no idea how to build this up neatly where you could meet one-on-one and get support getting that set up absolutely we've obviously our coaches will be very robustly trained we've got a trainer of trainers for them so that they'll begin to be able to answer those questions we've got the tech integration specialists at the high schools Rachael who's already beginning to work and so those seeds and let's move it here and let's think about and those right there conversations have been I think instrumental in moving us even to begin to think about how you might and and looking at what you've got even in our blackboard system is that everything that we need to move over or is
099it just the really great stuff and IT has been already beginning to work as a an export to figure out if there's an easy way to get blackboard into PowerSchool we're talking with power school to see if we can get unified classroom early so that we can maybe have blackboard and the unified classroom up so it might be just a simple kind of transition over so we're exploring all those options because we know that and we want to honor the time in the space that teachers have used already since it'll be consistent across the district like if I teach fifth grade math do you think that opportunities to like collaborate better with this model with other math teachers across the district I mean I assume so right so one of the things that I was
100impressed by at the demo that I attended was the great number of products that we already used that integrate into the system in a way that they don't integrate into the systems we're using now school messenger being one of them that it's not a power school product but they they're what I forget the terminal' preferred partner so the question I have is the two the two interfaces I have as a parent with our system our skyward and my school lunchbox system is the school lunch piece of it something that integrates into PowerSchool do we know if you don't know that it's okay because the other thing that they talked about that I thought was really interesting is they power school itself we'll work with you on customizing modules but they also have a feature where
101users can create their own modules and then share them with other users so the person doing the demo I attended in the morning was talking about and I don't even remember the specific examples but it was really it was really impressive because it you know user problems that we identify we can then go in and create a fix and use it which that seems to be a feature skyward that is completely absent absolutely as evidenced by this discussion that we've had over and over and over again about accommodating our students with the FIR names right yeah an adaptable system that grows and changes is incredibly important and they seem very the the presentation they gave seemed very focused on that this is we're not telling you what you need to do we're providing the framework
102and tools and you can even go beyond that so we've talked a lot about discipline and make sure this one records kind of move with the kid throughout the day there's a log notes feature in Skyward that I have access to that teachers have access to so when a kid comes to me I can pull that up and see comments from teachers possibly throughout the day it's all right there give me empower school in PowerSchool excuse me right but yeah Empire State that feature because we've been working on that as our building make sure everything's electronic that's still capable that was one of the things they demoed and what was really cool about it is that it allowed you to create one incident report and then if you had multiple participants you basically were like
103tagging them and so that log entry would be attached to each and you could categorize how that part was that person a victim was that person a bystander was that person the perpetrator of whatever happened and and have one log entry the same for everybody that was involved so it seemed like a really robust tool to get out some of the reporting recording issues and one feature that I don't think Skylar has at least I haven't been able to access it is as an administrator when we get calls about things like when I was a liaison I would have to go back and track someone but if I'm giving permission I can go in and see the detail as a district administrator see the detail and be able to maybe be more responsive to parents
104who are calling district liaisons and our district office administrators we have it was more access to data and easily accessible and read up in a readable way for us as well we ready for emotion or any other board comments or questions yes okay so I may be the Board of Education approved we wait ahead with power school implementation of a new student information system at the estimated cost three hundred and thirty three a thousand nine hundred ninety four dollars second excuse me second all right Ingram yes Johnson yes Kimball yes fan burn yes decent yes Harmon yes motion passes six zero thank you all very much okay and our last item this evening is a report an ESL ESOL update with Leah wisdom our assistant director of student services and equity you've been it's not
105fun to be last okay I will try and be relatively quick but want to make sure that you have information that is useful to you as you think about our English as a second language programming in Laurens Public Schools how we spend our money and kind of what that looks like so again I'm Lea wisdom assistant director of equity and student support and one of the things that I have done for several years is help facilitate and oversee or ESL programming and morantz there are a ton of acronyms associated with the ESL and I just wanted to let you know that I'm gonna be using these three yellow meaning English language learner es oh oh this English to speakers of other languages yes so as a second language there are lots of things out there
106in ways that you might hear it referred to but I will use those three so I want to just start off by acknowledging the morons public schools we have 59 languages represented and 45 countries the five primary languages outside of English are Spanish Chinese Arabic Korean and Laotian we do make an effort to translate documents into definitely Spanish Chinese Arabic and Korean it's a little bit more challenging sometimes for Laotian and we when other languages are requested we do that as well but these are our five primary want to make sure as a board that I talked about the the guidelines that we follow and warrants and across the state of Kansas in terms of English as a Second Language so we're determining eligibility for students and I put this in here because as somebody
107who's been doing this programming for a while when parents call the questions or concerns a lot of times it's in these areas and and some of those have been filtered through you as board members as well so we're determining eligibility when a family comes torrance public schools and enrolls they fill out this what we're required to do by state of Kansas which is a homely which survey they're asked three questions and if you can think back as a parent they're kind of in different places and the enrollment process they're not all stuck together but if a family indicates anything other than English on one of those three questions we give them what we call an extended home language survey so we can get more information about when the languages spoken the language no it sounds
108like a storm doesn't it so this just gives us more information as we move into the next fades oops witches I'm doing the Lost link sort of pre-loss so we do an assessment when we know other language is indicated and determine if that's a student who would qualify for services in the school district and if they do the parents need to provide us with consent or have the opportunity to say no I don't want you to give my child services so we have this form which is a school selection form or sometimes just to decline service form so it's kind of process that families go through whether they accept services or whether they decline services the state of Kansas tells us we need to do this annual ESL assessment called the Kalpa - everybody takes
109it and that can sometimes be a pinch point so whether a family decides to put their child in services or not they will take that assessment we have to have a hundred percent participation so we work hard to try and make sure everybody gets that so from there you know we're placing students and services and I just gave you a little screenshot of where you can get more information WWI KSEE org if you want to know more if anybody else wants to know more but we play students and services we are required to have a plan an individual learning plan on file for every student who qualifies for services and was receiving them and that is currently housed in our skyward system and that's what we were talking about there are ways to get that
110into powers to our school then we're required to monitor the goals that are in the plan assess annually make adjustments and provide professional learning to our staff exiting ESL service in the past in order for student to exit out of ESL services they had to score proficient two years in a row on that annual assessment that's changing starting this year and they only have to score proficient for one year and then they can exit out of services lea is that a federal I'm sorry is that a federal requirement or a state requirement that changed about the state requirement requirement so in in Lorance we have this is kind of our sites and our state yes that means if a student um their family declined services so they have to take the assessment if they're proficient
111then they don't have to take it again right okay I think you've got into one more piece of that once they're proficient for that year we still monitor them for a couple years they aren't offered services they don't take the test but the ESL teacher might just periodically check in and make sure they're progressing and there's no reason for and then after the two years that goes away completely so as you guys know we do have students with English as a second language in our four year old at risk program at Kennedy we have cluster sites for elementary he'll Kristen quarterly so there's neighborhood students who go there but also the rest of the district outside of our neighborhood sites which is swag ler and sunflower and then at middle and high we offer ESL
112services at every middle school and on all high schools and the way the staffing looks at early childhood there are four teachers who are endorsed they're out of elementary we have 13 certified ESL resource teachers at middle school we have five certified ESL resource teachers some pair educators and then four and four at our high schools and probably before any of these board members any of you guys are on the board a long time ago we decided there would be a thirty to one ratio on top of regular FTE so a building like Hillcrest would get their FTE and then for every 30 ESL students that they have we give them another one to provide that extra resource for ESO so this just shows some of our progression from 2006 to 2015 I didn't include
1132017 numbers because we're still pulling all that from September 20th but you can see the growth of students who are in services and what that has looked like but I wanted to add here as I mentioned earlier around that assessment now that students are only scoring only needs is for one year proficient and proficiency looks different it used to be you had to spore completely proficient on reading and on writing and on listening and on speaking and then get an overall now some of those might fluctuate but they still might get a proficient score and because they only have one year we are going to see more students moving and exiting out which could be a really great thing for a lot of kids but you might notice some shifting downward in our number and
114how many students were servicing so I want to make sure you're aware of why you'll see that shift who we expect to see higher numbers exiting out so does that also affect funding then I assume and we still would want to serve those students in a way that monitors their progress so we're still gonna want to have our ratios set at a number that allows for that service but we won't be getting the money from the state to do that well the your the ratio of 30 to one stole only applies to students who are in services so as they exit out unless we were to make some modification to that ratio we wouldn't be including those so you would see fewer staff right what that ratio on top of opposite effect academics so I
115know often times you know there's a student who maybe CB ll services but they may not be put on sit because they feel like it's a learning process so how might that affect they academically they may have the basic language profession like Louie do you mean so if they're exiting out but they might have some areas that they're still it's a great question so one thing that and I don't know if this answers it so let me know but especially now that they're changing this criteria when we get the list of students from the state that says for example we usually have 20 or less last year 150 students that scored proficient we were like low so we went through each one double-checked their grades checked their scores on map to make sure you know
116because if and if there were students who we thought like we're still struggling but support proficient then we recommend to the family yeah your student scored proficient but we think they maybe should stay in services and still receive some of that language proficiency because we're seeing that it could be impacting learning but the family still of course has the right to say no yeah does that answer yes so even with the change in the law families can opt to stay in services okay and then the state would fund those services as long as we're servicing but then we would need to assess them we would they would have to the family would be agreeing to continue to be assessed but yes me so this is a just a quick chart to show you how many
117students at least the elementary are declining service and we've looked at this before in a lot of different ways as a board because there's been various times what we've said do we want another ESL site do we not I think we're kind of in a place where we're relatively comfortable I thought it was important that you see these numbers you can see some of them are little higher Langston Hughes has 54 students that are enrolled there that are declining ESL services I will say Langston a good portion of those 54 students are scoring into like the advanced category so their language needs might not be as hefty then you can see 25 whale which is another higher so these are around we have 168 students around our district or declining services and the most common
118reason parents tell us is I don't want I want my child to go to our neighborhood school I don't want them to be bused somewhere else so that's typically why we see that or they don't feel like they would benefit or need the services so what our services look like at elementary is pushing in so those yes although those extra teachers that they're getting they're pushing into classrooms to support and a lot of cases they're co-teaching or they're pulling small groups sometimes it looks like pull out so I'm gonna take you into learning pocket we're gonna go to another area middle school ESL students are served through guided studies through there like enrolled in a class that's an ESL class they get general education sports supports from their jeanna teachers or push in from their
119ESL resource teachers and then at high school we do have ESL classes just like at middle we have some sheltered classrooms which is sheltering instruction providing a lot of support in a specific content area like mathematics like ela i'm taught by an ESL resource teacher to give those students the credit that they need for that content area but the the support that they need to be successful and then push in happens as well and i just want to point out and you guys see this triangle a lot but the idea here is to give our ESL students just like any of our students as much access to content at tier one as we can so that's why you see the supports looking at how often can we get in there and provide them there even
120sometimes that some of those additional supports that a student might need can still happen in the context of the classroom maybe even by the classroom teacher or by any teacher pushing in and then the ESL classes and kind of that pull out there's more tier two to three types of work for students this is what our funding looks like we have three different types of funding that that we use to fund ESL Title the federal dollars our Title 3 dollars and they're just based on that September 20 count how many students and we use those to provide professional learning and they also support like a parent involvement facilitator at our buildings that don't get that through Title one we also use state bilingual funding which is based on the formula use a student contact contact
121hours and it's based on how much time a student spends with an ESL endorsed teacher that's why all of our teachers at those four Elementary's have their ESL endorsement or are getting it it's not true at middle and high because it's not feasible but we are encouraging more more teachers to get endorsed K State just received a grant and they are including us in that grant so we can endorse some more secondary teachers for you know no expense to them which would be great and then we supplement everything we don't get from the federal government and from the state with at-risk funding and that supports you know ensuring that we have enough to continue to give teachers you know give the FTE at thirty to one ratio so you can see that's a big chunk
122Sarris and it just does this does supplement and what we get from the bilingual fund and the title three funding well I just wanted to point out I was noticing that sort of jump we did in at that point was when we moved our learning coach model and a percent of the learning coaches that are at those ESL buildings whatever percent the ESL population is that percent of their salary can be paid so we saw that increase we also brought in an ESL learning coach position that year and and just had a slight increase in enrollment so for our we do have transportation if parents accept services at one of those buildings that were there is not their neighborhood site we they receive transportation at no expense to them obviously because we want them to
123be able to access that if they want it so there's no quick no transportation for neighborhood sites Schweiger or sunflower middle school high school but there is for Cortney Hillcrest and that costs us in 1617 around two hundred nine mm we do get reimbursement for some students and only some of them that are 2.5 miles away or greater so it doesn't doesn't take care of all that but some of it and that is the only part of our budget that really comes from the general budget everything else is these pieces real quick we have an ESL leadership team and it has representation from ESL teachers at elementary middle high has principals and they want to add gen ed teachers to that leadership team they are working on kind of all those things in the achievements
124you're interested in those they've been pulling their money because they give they each get their own monies each school and buying some resources that they think will be helpful and trying to develop consistent programming school to school so that if I'm a you know Liberty Memorial or if I'm a South the depending on where I'm at but I'm receiving something somewhere that I have access to similar resources if I'm an English language learner so that team has worked hard on that they are trying to encourage more staff to take part in an ESL Academy that we have that perhaps teachers to get their endorsement so more middle and high school teachers are interested in doing that and they can take part in that some of their goals moving board are to continue to work on
125the consistent programming making some alignments with the individual learning plan and that new assessment and then providing professional learning for everybody not just our ESL resource teachers well I just put here opportunities and opportunities for growth we want and that's something that that leadership team continues to work on but we want to increase community and stakeholder knowledge about our ESL services and programming it can sometimes be Mis interpreted you know what it is that we do we believe in supporting the sustainability of native language that's you know the research in this and the literature supports that we want to continue to increase bilingual literature in our libraries we want to focus on acculturation assimilation we want to be providing culturally relevant instruction and and so some of that comes down to the communication that we
126have the families and I just put a picture of a brochure that the leadership team created and there are tons of them in the Welcome Center if you ever want to pick one up but it's it's our first sort of attempt really focusing on having a positive our first communication with our ESL families being really positive but accessing support for ESL accepting services for English as a second language isn't it's about getting access to the content for somebody who might have might not be 100% proficient and in the English language if that makes sense it's not you know always about deficiencies or something's wrong or remediations wanting to just communicate really well weaves around bilingualism and our beliefs around programming um and then professional learning so continuing to provide professional learning for ESL resources staff
127and more importantly even our general education staff we want more of our students down on that tier 1 accessing content you know ensuring that teachers have what they need to to help students access content deepening our understanding of the language process and I think this is also our families in our community and I put these two sort of other acronyms ESL has more acronyms than you could probably ever want to know but BICS versus calpads the difference between social language and academic language it's when I'm comfortable I talk to you socially in one way but that doesn't always mean I can transfer that and be a hyper super-successful in a content classroom and sometimes even as you know educators we can misinterpret what we hear in the hall or what we hear out on the
128playground you know versus how that transfers and what that means for student when they're trying to access rigorous content we want to just keep deepening our understanding of that and following with the knowledge that it can take 7 to 10 years to be fully proficient in the English language and we sometimes forget that and then continuing with the student access to general education content we're doing that by continuing to build our resources and giving instructional tools so that's kind of what what that looks like and what our opportunities are and what I think those challenges are that we're faced with that we're trying to address it's all unless you guys have more questions for me so they're trained in that the general education teachers receive is a similar to like okay P the the a
129CT prep test prepping them for the oh goodness and I forgot what it's called is it erectus the the the assessment I mean the the test to get yes all endorsed oh the praxis um yeah so the ESL is that what you mean like the training so it's optional but it it is built k-state built it and it is built to prepare a teacher for the yeah it's super cool and so should if there's there's a night dedicated to some of those pieces but the whole eight sessions prepare mm-hmm thank you thanks Lee yeah you really appreciate it appreciate it it's a great update okay that concludes our agenda for the evening I've a motion to adjourn so moved all in favor aye thank you very much