CMS Board Of Education Meeting. 4/13/2021 6:00PM

001foreign up and trees and grass grow all around [Music] history is made art is created things happen that should always be remembered Heroes emerge a woman sets people free a man makes light a leader steps forward people get together they help each other out they make their own places to run and play and contemplate the universe there's pride and gratitude and fun it belongs to everyone it can be a place a Feeling a state of mind so I feel powerful and confident and like I could do anything we got to see stuff that we never saw before and we got to try something that we've never done before one zero all engine running [Music] I think if I wasn't a Girl Scout none of us would have happened hey did you hear about Jen no

002what happened she posted something see what was she thinking sharing online is Serious Business visit dhs.gov stop think connect for tips on how to be safe online CMS television your source for news and information in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools [Music] on this episode of insight we are ready CMS opens all school buildings for the return of students because we have to make sure not only the cleansing is but also the safety and the health of our staff and students returning student-facing employees and they're shot at the vaccine I encourage them to get their vaccines at the appropriate time board chairperson Elise you and the lessons learned from leadership everybody has a firmly held passionate opinion so you gotta listen to all of that with empathy for this and more we'll ask the superintendent for insight [Music]

003hello I'm Coretta Wilson and welcome to Insight with CMS superintendent Ernest Winston the show that keeps you up to date on the issues and initiatives in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools it was almost a year ago when the CMS superintendent and the CMS boardshare person announced that in-person learning at our schools would be suspended due to the covid-19 pandemic now with all schools ready to open we welcome all students back to the classroom CMS bus drivers and the fleet of over a thousand buses are ready CMS custodial staff taking care of more than 170 school buildings already ncms operational staff teachers and principals properly prepared with procedures and PPE are ready in our community there's been no shortage of opinions on the return to school and that's why we spoke with CMS superintendent Ernest Winston for insight

004well good afternoon superintendent Winston it's good to see you once again good afternoon Coretta it's good to see you well we have a lot to talk about in this issue or this episode of insight it's been almost a year since CMS closed its doors due to the pandemic and it appears that we are finally about ready to open our doors back up to our students and to our staff why is this the right time to go back into the building we believe that this is the right time of course our at the national level our president has urged us to return kids to in-person learning and so too has our governor governor Cooper and other state officials uh certainly we were already along that path of bringing kids back for in-person Learning and we believe

005it's the right time because uh one we're ready we've got the protocols and procedures in place our staff our school-based staff our principals working with our Learning Community superintendents have done a tremendous job preparing and getting us to this point and we know that in-person learning is the optimal environment for most of our students because we do have students who thrive in remote learning as well so I want to acknowledge that but this is an opportunity to bring back students in person and we're fully ready and committed to executing on our plans of course you've looked at the metrics and the numbers have you spoken to the county what would close CMS once again you do have the power to close schools if you see fit what would be some of the things you would

006look at what would have to happen for us to go back to full remote so certainly it's not one particular factor that would cause schools to close it is a variety of factors I think an important factor in that decision obviously we want to look at the metrics both our community metrics as well as our district-wide metrics but we also you know want to continuously monitor our staffing levels to make sure that they are where they need to be in order for us to provide a safe environment for our students so there are a variety of factors now the board has given you the option to close individual schools how would that work what does that look like yes the board voted to recently provide me with the flexibility to close schools on an individual

007basis and the board also recently gave me the authority to close parts of a school or a grade level in particular and it's important to have that flexibility because you want to have as many Tools in your toolbox as you possibly can particularly during the pandemic you say that we're ready to go back into the classroom of course some parents some teachers are a little bit concerned how do you make them feel at igneous that first day when when everybody goes back how will you make them feel at ease and how can you help them understand that you've done everything possible to make sure that we are as safe as we can be in the building that's a great question and I think back to when we initially had our elementary school students and staff

008members in our buildings we had a subset of our students with disabilities Pre-K students we had them back in the building and I remember the anxiety and some of the apprehension that families and staff members had at that time what we found was that once they returned to the building and they saw all of the protocols and safety measures that we had put in place that anxiety and fear began to disappear and so we believe once we bring more people back into our buildings including those uh in our traditional middle schools and high schools who have not been in person this year we believe the same thing will happen primarily because of the protocols and the safety measures that we're taking we have about 60 000 students out of our 140 000 plus who have

009decided they will not return to the building they've chosen to stay full remote how do you plan to keep them engaged in learning so that is a significant portion of our student population that's a choice that families have made and we completely respect that and we honor that and we are doing all that we can at the school level principals and teachers to keep our students in the full remoting Academy engaged in learning and we will continue to do that and make sure that we're providing the best possible instruction that we possibly can as we will for our students who are returning for in-person Learning and of course teachers are prepared for the in person and those who have decided to stay at home let's talk about vaccinations yes do you think that all teachers

010should be at the Forefront of getting those shots absolutely but I do want to clarify that we teachers are extremely important to our school district and we want them to uh I encourage them to get their vaccines at the appropriate time so when will that opportunity come for teachers and other staff to get that vaccine as far as our student-facing staff members our governor announced recently that on February the 24th that our student facing staff members will begin to have that opportunity to receive a vaccination and so we're excited about that we're excited about that as we bring students back and staff members back in person will you roll up your sleeves absolutely when it's my time because I don't want to LeapFrog over any other staff member but certainly when it's my time to

011get the vaccine I look forward to actually doing that do you foresee a time when it will become mandatory for teachers and staff to get that shot you know that's a great question and I think that's a very uh personal question and so that is not uh something that we have as a school district that we have mandated and I frankly don't anticipate that we will go in that direction but I do want to encourage staff members to get the vaccine I think that's an extremely important task well of course we have students returning back to campus and some of those students are very excited because they get to participate in the Performing Arts as well as Athletics what's the plan to keep them safe and keep them on the field and on the stage

012yes we're excited to resume Athletics and begin arts for our students who participate in those extracurricular activities you know it's important to remember that Athletics the Arts are a part of students overall all educational experience and so we think it's important from that standpoint having said that we have very strict protocols in place that we have spoken with athletic directors and coaches and advisors to ensure that we're following those proper protocols because this is a privilege and we want to not just begin these activities but we want students to be able to continue to enjoy them throughout the rest of the school year a rite of passage for our students is the prom and also graduation last year students missed both do you foresee us having a prom getting dressed up cap and gown marching

013across the stage this time we do acknowledge that prom and graduation are important rights of passages for our students and we have begun to look at that we have a team that is exploring the possibility uh and to determine what can we offer so that decision has not been made yet any ideas yet we have some ideas surfacing certainly we had successful drive-by Ceremonies for graduations last year and at the mid-year point this year in January and so those ideas are still on the table but we have not made a decision just yet more to come on that later more insight from the superintendent in a moment we all know that change is inevitable during a pandemic and CMS is adapting in many ways so we asked CMS Deputy superintendent Dr Matthew Hayes what's different

014in academics give us Insight on Lessons Learned we will not come back into education the way we left it meaning that the pandemic has exposed as I said before many things that we we thought existed but it just really opened them wide open right some of the disparities some of the inequities that we have across across our community that we need to address and how we need to address them how are we going to support those schools how will they always receive the best of what we have to offer in our district to get them where they need to be to serve our students the proper way Insight on lower than expected student enrollment so we saw the largest gap of students actually in our kindergarten group of students that just basically did not attend

015did not come in we also saw what we would normally see as an influx of students into our early grades kindergarten through third grade was not the same influx that we would see in normal in years past we really believe that that's really where a large majority of our of the loss in our numbers are generated many families uh that maybe have had kindergarten students probably said I'm I'm gonna hold off in a year instead of sending my child in their first year during a pandemic I'm going to wait and they'll go to school next year and so we're looking to really with excitement to have them join us as we get ready to launch into next school year and insight on changes in how students will be graded we've also made some changes to

016our grading expectations that we have a student cannot earn lower than a 50. a 50 is not passing basically what it says is that a student still has an opportunity to be within 10 points to be able to pass the course we don't know exactly what is happening in all of our households that may prevent a student from getting that work done so what it does it allows for students to have an opportunity of hope that no matter what their situation is there's still an opportunity where they can dig in and get the work done and be able to pass that course [Music] welcome back to Insight nearly all of her time as chairperson of the CMS board of education has been during the covid-19 pandemic that has emptied schools ushered in Virtual learning and

017divided a community on when to bring students back it's been a lesson in leadership for elite statue Miss statue thank you so much for joining us today giving us some insight as we return to in-person classrooms and in-person school is now the right time to go back into the school building it is it is the right time um I know we've been waiting a long time I know there are a lot of parents who wish we'd gotten back sooner um but when you look at our Readiness in the school when you look at our staffing Readiness and our PPE and the work we've done on our school buildings and then and the community rates this is the right time but of course it's on us to take every possible precaution to keep our students safe

018and to keep our grown-ups safe how difficult was that decision for you guys to make for us to go back into the classroom oh it's so hard it's been so hard a lot of conversations yeah um just you know the following the evidence from the epidemiologist and the research continues to shift and change and evolve and so you know you've definitely had to be flexible and and up to speed on all of that and just listening to thousands of parents and teachers and and employees like bus drivers and teacher assistants and kids and everybody has a firmly held passionate opinion so you gotta listen to all of that with empathy and then ultimately find the best solution that you can come up I wanted to ask you about that I call it a lot of

019voices in your head how do you make sure that you're giving everyone the information that they need to to believe whatever it is that you're trying to convince them of well I don't know that I can convince anybody of anything people are so divided right now in our nation everybody thinks their opinion about covid is science based and the other person's opinion is political and I hear that from both sides and so ultimately I just have to be empathetic when I listen to whether it's a family that is worried about our Readiness to go back or whether it's a family that is worried about the risks of their kids doing in-person learning too long I I have to listen and learn from both perspectives and then ultimately I have to follow the evidence and deal

020with the cards we've been dealt and make the best possible decision for our kids when there is no good decision a lot of times there's only the least bad decision what does that conversation sound like a parent calls you or a parent emails you I want my child back in the classroom or you get the the opposite I don't want my child back in the classroom what does that conversation sound like if we could eavesdrop I don't think you'd want to eavesdrop on some of those conversations because just the emotions have been incredibly intense for a year now tell me this and we spoke about this a second ago there was no pandemic 101 class that we attended to prepare us for this and if it was it was the 8 A.M class I wish

021you had taken that class yeah you were thrown into this what have you learned well I learned that we have some incredible staff in CMS everyone from the from the superintendent to every single school teacher um and and the work that they're doing is heroic it was heroic before there was ever a pandemic and it's heroic on steroids right now yes we've had to change course so many times because the pandemic has unfolded in kind of a chaotic way but definitely have learned a lot about about how to pull a team together in a crisis what would be your message to team CMS the students teachers and other staff and the parents as every single School opens its doors embrace all those students coming back on campus socially distanced embraced for July to be responsible

022and that's for the community too we've got to be smart I mean I'm hearing I'm starting to hear anecdotes of families planning Big Spring Break trips oh let's just be responsible because we're still in this pandemic kindness is so so important so to be kind and be respectful well we certainly do appreciate your time and we appreciate your Insight as CMS students prepare to head back into the classroom with all campuses ready to welcome I should say team CMS back yeah it's going to be good I'm so I'm I'm glad that we're here and but yeah we just all have to work together to make sure we stay safe well as we get ready to go back to school when we get ready to end this show when I say back to school back to

023the building any final thoughts any last thoughts you want to offer our team and our family members of CMS yes I would strongly encourage us all because this is really a community effort and although the numbers the metrics are moving in the right direction by no means are we out of the woods and so I implore us to continue to do those things to keep us safe I really ask our parents to make sure that we do not send students who are sick to school we are we have reopened our schools for in-person learning but we want to keep them open and so that will be key in us being able to keep our schools open we'll be flexible and we'll be ready we're looking forward to it thank you students in CMS now have

024the option of returning to in-person learning at their school or continuing with virtual learning at their home the steps that got us here put a top priority on the safety of all of our students and all of our staff thanks so much for joining us we hope you learned something that will help you become an informed parent and energized employee or an Engaged Community member your support is important to the success of CMS be safe and take care we'll see you next time for more insight we do this for sanitation purposes to kill all the uh anything that's going on on the bus with germs and of course Kobe [Music] so here are the iPad that every student will get along with a charger [Music] it's different but it is I'm loving seeing the kids

025smile every day and being back at school so I'm ready we ready [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] Cannonball which sounds the most fun to you [Music] meet Mr and Mrs Johnson and Mr Mrs Johnson and Jordan and Jamie Johnson two beautiful babies born on the very same day each baby has a good chance of Landing in a good place in life as long as one of them doesn't lose the ZIP code Lottery foreign like 1 million babies each year Jamie's been born into a low-income family and since Jamie's mom lacked access to good prenatal care Jamie is much smaller than Jordan [Music] and since they won't have access to brain developing activities found in high quality Child Care low-income children like Jamie will be two times more likely to experience developmental delays it probably won't

026surprise you that by their third birthday Jamie's been exposed to a lot fewer words than Jordan a whole lot fewer and I imagine Jamie's fourth birthday won't be much better by the time they reach King Jamie will have already fallen behind Jordan in language and pre-reading skills by 12 to 14 months and getting to school on a regular basis will be perhaps Jamie's biggest challenge unfortunately a myriad of help transportation and housing problems were caused between five and seven and a half million Jamies could be chronically absent this year but with Summer right around the corner you'd think Jaime would have plenty of time to catch up with Jordan then sadly summer presents new challenges for Jamie a mountain of challenges you see every summer Jordan's learning will evolve by a month because of access

027to libraries field trips and camps while Jamie will lose two months of school learning every summer because good habits such as reading haven't been reinforced by the time they reach third grade Jamie will be between two and two and a half school years behind Jordan in political reading skills foreign and how much more likely is Jamie to drop out than Jordan because he can't read at a third grade level 13 times more likely and the results of which are frankly catastrophic thank you all right good evening I now call the April 13th 2021 meeting of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education to order uh I will now entertain a motion to adopt the agenda motion from Ms Sawyer second from um Ms Byers Bailey all those in favor of the motion please raise your hands

028any opposed okay Madam clerk the agenda is adopted by a vote of eight to zero and I'm now going to call on Board District 3 board member Dr Ruby Jones to introduce tonight's pledge leader and turn on your mic Mackenzie Hunt is our pledge leader tonight and will speak to us about the character trait of perseverance so Timely Mackenzie is an eighth grader at Northridge Middle School she has a 10 year old sister named Madison and a two-year-old black lab named pepper before coming to Northridge she attended Reedy Creek Elementary McKenzie is a member of the National Junior Honor Society and the PTSA she is a new member of kids lead from generation nation and has co-founded a group at North Ridge Middle called youth for change she plays clarinet in the Northridge band she

029enjoys watching video essays reading short stories and talking to her friends next year McKenzie will attend East Mecklenburg High School she says she is excited about meeting new people in high school and looks forward to more freedom and responsibilities she plans to pursue a career in either journalism or filmmaking she is joined tonight by her parents and I hope I pronounced this correctly Keely hot and Dr devania govindhunt and her little sister Madison would all three of you please stand to be recognized thank you you see that all right go ahead and and lead us with the pledge okay okay thank you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with

030liberty and justice for all thank you tonight I'm going to be talking about the character trache perseverance perseverance is something that I've struggled a lot with especially over this past year at times it felt pointless to put maximum effort into anything when it felt like nothing mattered I was stuck in a loop of wanting to be the best version of myself that I could be and not wanting to put in the work been feeling guilty about it and setting unrealistic goals for myself that made me feel even more guilty when I didn't reach them sometimes I would completely shut down when something got too challenging I would get behind on my schoolwork stop texting friends and spend hours scrolling through videos on my phone to distract me from my responsibilities I started to question myself

031if someone wasn't constantly reminding and encouraging me to do something would I be able to do it it seemed like everything I tried to accomplish on my own from learning how to play the ukulele to speak in French I eventually gave up on then it dawned on me I had a complete misunderstanding of perseverance it wasn't how much you can accomplish on your own without asking for help it was not giving up on something that you're passionate about and being able to use the resources around you to adapt to reach your goal perseverance is resilience and the ability to persist and be determined enough to do your best even when things get tough perseverance has nothing to do with how smart you are or how good your grades are it's about not letting obstacles discourage

032you from reaching your goal perseverance is necessary to create change both in your own life and your community if you don't try something you've already failed so why not try thank you that that I think that was a message we needed to hear especially this time of year message we all need to hear all right we're now going to move on to requests from the public and the rules are as follows each speaker will be called to speak one at a time unless you're part of a group each speaker will have a maximum of two minutes to address the board each speaker may speak on any topic of their choice except for individual student matters and or specific Personnel matters personal attacks will not be allowed profanity or other inappropriate language will not be allowed

033and the board reserves the right to cut off and mute any speaker who violates these rules um and I will call the speakers into the zoom room um three at a time so our first three speakers will be Nancy Pope Ricky Hall and Dr Valeria Avery and Ms Pope is up first Adam's here in just a moment we lost both of those first two speakers Mr Root should I go to the third speaker and then come back to the other two yes we have Dr Avery back please move ahead with her okay so we'll start with you Dr Avery thank you so much greetings superintendent Winston and members of the CMS board with great honor on behalf of the Parker family I want to say thank you for this opportunity to share information about my

034great-grandfather Charles H Parker who lived and worked in the West Boulevard Corridor his name is significant in that there is a street Parker Drive named after him the affordable income apartments Parker Heights named after him Charles H Parker was a strong advocate of children and public education he was a teacher he helped purchase land for the Berryville Hills School which became Plato price High School the first black school in Charlotte he donated land for the more Sanctuary Amy Zion church and the brothers and sisters Aid Society he was one of the organizers of Amy James a mission Sunday school which later became Amy James Presbyterian Church Charles H Parker exhibited Excellence he was remarkably diverse he was inclusive of the others around him he demonstrated commitment he was a great achiever he was a black

035man who came out of slavery in that day who had the wherewithal to acquire quite a bit of land for his family and to help others Charles H Parker's life supports the mission of Behringer academic center his life was challenging From Slavery to a man of wealth and success his example Foster's college career binded Scholars and Leadership he encouraged leadership in the and a Malta cultural Society Charles H Parker was born into a multicultural family Indian mother and black father the landmarks left in his name Parker Drive in Parker Heights Apartments demonstrate that it would be fitting thank you Anna Dr Avery I'm so sorry we've we're doing two minutes per speaker but um would be grateful if you could send your comments into the board clerk so that we can read the rest of

036what you had to say because we need to know this history and it's an honor to hear it from the family so thank you thank you so much okay so next we have I believe we have Nancy Pope back do you hear me hello good evening go right ahead good evening um reading suit attendant on Winston and all the tending um I appreciate being given the opportunity to speak to the committee I want to thank Mike Moore who responded to my message on ancestry.com and let me know about the fact that my grandfather great-grandfather was being um considered for Behringer as the name being submitted um for Behringer Academic School name change um I think also Ricky Hall who had the relationship with my aunt Olivia Sims and I thank you for submitting information about

037my great grandfather and a big thank you to principal um Stephanie range and Thomas Connors for being so helpful and always answering emails and phone calls promptly and providing information and Clarity when needed during this process Charles H Parker was a strong advocate for children and public education he was a school teacher one of four men who helped purchase the land for Berry Hill School Berry Hill School became Plato price High School this same group of men donated land and helped um build more sanctuary and Museum church and the brothers and sisters Aid Society also Charles H Parker was one of the organizers of the Amy James Mission Sunday school which later became the Amy James Presbyterian Church Charles H Parker's life supports the mission of Barringer Academic Center also um Charles H Parker's name

038is significant in the West Boulevard card Parker Heights Apartments were built on part of his estate in 1970 to provide affordable housing Parker Drive and Parker Heights are landmarks left in his name how befitting it would be to have barrager academic center renamed Charles H Parker Academic Center thank you thank you so I understand Ricky Hall is not with us next we have Patricia Parker renetta Holloway and Virgie Middleton although I understand that Patricia Parker is not with us is that correct that's correct okay and Virgie Middleton is also not with us so so really next we have renetta Holloway Lisa Middleton and then Kathy Middleton okay good evening everyone um let me start by saying thank you to the board and to the school leadership for this opportunity I am renetta Etheridge Holloway the

039great great granddaughter of Charles H Parker I'm speaking on behalf of my mother Eloise Etheridge who is the great granddaughter of Charles H Parker and could not be with us due to health reasons but she knew Charles H Parker and we called him Grandpa Parker she recalls his commitment to learning and his sense of community in particular the West Boulevard community he demonstrated his passion for education and community and helping others and that is noted through his life he was an example to others and he helped others to um to to to grow and to do uh better in the community and prosper it would be an honor and fitting to have Behringer academic center named for Charles H Parker because of the things he did during his life his legacy is consistent with the

040school's Mission and we think it would be something to lift the students Pride I thank you again for this tremendous opportunity and good evening thank you so next we have I guess Virgie Middleton is not here so next we have um Lisa Middleton and then Kathy Middleton [Music] to my family member to get the information to me I am honored today Charles H Parker was my grandmothers grandfather and she talked about her and I'm going to tell you a few things she would tell us he would say he would say that my grandfather said choose your own friend don't let people choose you and the fear and another thing she would often say to us was he that he with his tongue keepeth his brush and if you don't work you don't eat that was

041a few of the things he would tell her and as he grew up she made sure we understood what she learned from Charlie Parker he told us that he made fun he could make salt he raised all kind of vegetables and he would have found when he sold food he was a given person and I am so honored and so proud to know that we can have a full name after a person who came out of slavery he did so much I praise God for this day and I'm thanking God and I thank the school and I would like to take this a little further and every year I would like to honor a student I would like to have a in his day some students receive an award somebody said you just want a

042foundation in this thing well that I'm telling you the truth I'd really like to have that and the food could choose somebody every year and we can honor in his name God bless you and keep you and I'm praying that he's the one I've seen the battle last night and I want you to know I am so honored and I have left and I thank you thank you very kind and I appreciate everything you've done thank you thank you Ms Middleton thank you so much that's our two minutes um we'll follow up with you on that so next we have another Ms Middleton Kathy Middleton can you hear me yes we hear you loud and clear thanks thank you for allowing me to speak before you today um Charlotte minklinburg School District I am the

043great great great granddaughter of Charles H Parker and the daughter of Virgin Middleton and um I concur with her and the rest of my family that it would be fitting to the children of your school to have this the uh School the Barringer School renamed after a man who is as great as our great great grandfather as you already know Charles Parker came out of slavery when he became free he left the slave system with nothing but this brags on his back and yet despite the fact that he was due to the systemic racism and slavery born and bred in poverty he still practiced the principles of giving to his community of being generous to the people who are around him of lifting up your fellow man he did this by forming a school he

044did this by helping to found the church he did this by helping to other individuals who are establishing homesteads after slavery to to establish homes of their own he did many many things for the people of the uh Charlotte Community my understanding is that the school that he founded was attended by a former Congress member um from the state of North Carolina so my great great grandfather's impact is tremendous and I believe that he would be a great inspiration his name being on the school would be a great inspiration to each and every student who is currently and in the future will be part of the Barringer Academic Center thank you for allowing me to speak and I I look forward to speaking with you in the future about the actual celebrations because we believe

045that you will select Charles Parker as the as the next name for the school thank you very much all right so next we have Jerry Lewis followed by Perry aletto and then Don Cornelius so Jerry Lewis is up hello can you hear me yep we hear you okay I had problems I'm greetings to the superintendent and the committee I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of this um discussion today my family they have really spoken and said everything that I had to say as well but I'm gonna let you know that I am honored again and um Charles Hawker he was an anchor of education for black children for 50 years he helped many black families acquire land and he built homes in the remount area he bought 12 acres of land and uh

046in the 1970s the family teamed up with the civil rights leaders to build affordable housing uh there and the 19th century Homestead Parker Heights Apartments still provides low Market rents to residents I want to thank you for allowing me to to expound on my great great grandfather the name Charlie Parker Academy would bear historical relevance because it would be named after a Slave versus a slave owner I applaud my great-grandfather for turning his scars into Stars I feel that his name stands for the test of times he reflects one with Community values and beliefs he presented a positive impact on education and his contributions will certainly instill inspiration in the students and therefore I look forward to Charlie Parker's Academy and I too would be one that will make a contribution yearly to a student

047when his name is chosen for the renaming of the school thank you thank you all right thank you so much next we have perioletto then Don Cornelius and then Brooke Weiss I am honored in fact as we are addressing someone a great friend part of a history but when I looked at the 2040 plan they have for Charlotte the problem the problem is is that it erases that history for when you look at all the holes in the current plan it it doesn't take about look into a population that will be erased because they can no longer live in Charlotte because it's no longer affordable we can name wonderful landmarks after wonderful people but they'll be erased in a sense because it's not servicing for the current system does not serve the people that we

048serve 72 percent of our population of African-Americans our current education system does not serve their needs adequately there's not adequate uh AIDS in the regular Ed classrooms a teacher adequate reading mathematics that addresses that population and the one size fits all that we've used and we've taken is not a good idea and we need to rethink and think to the Future and stop giving everything to developers without thinking about what about our communities Hall in its future where are these people going to go yeah and that's all I'm here to say okay thank you you and next we have Don Cornelius then Brooke Weiss and then Stacy Staggs so miss Cornelius good evening um oh you froze oh dear well let's give her a second and then we might have to come back to Ms

049Cornelius okay let's go to Brooke Weiss and then hopefully Ms Cornelius will get her internet moving again for four days that it was going to be for three weeks and then um Miss Cornelius I'm sorry to interrupt but you froze so could you go ahead and start again and um and Nicole could you start the timer again because we don't want to miss anything that you have to say okay all right thank you okay go right ahead okay well good evening and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak I am a parent of a middle schooler who attends has been a CMS um since she's been a Pre-K and with the covid-19 situation I've had some concerns about the four days middle high schoolers going back for four days for three weeks and

050then uh returning for five days and I was wondering what is the rationale in in law having them go back four days for three weeks and then turn around have them go back for five days with no day where they can where the teachers are allowed to part of custodians are allowed to clean the schools um I am like I said concerned uh dear all right I'm sorry I am concerned about you know them going back for five days and what is the rationale behind them going back for what is it three weeks for five days and why they keep changing stuff and my last question to it is um do they have a plan in place if they have a high number of students in Coven 19. I was working in school today and

051a student had symptoms of covid-19 and it's just I was saying this is just an example of you know what plan do they have in place you know for for students if there's High cases of covert 19. and thank you all right thank you and and we'll follow up we'll follow up with that information okay next we have Brooke Weiss and then Stacy Staggs and then Bena paws can you hear me yes uh well first I just want to thank you for voting to allow parents the option to send their children back to in-person learning my understanding is that all but one of you voted to do that and I for one and very grateful as a Jewish mother I was recently shocked when my daughter a junior showed me a holocaust minimizing question that

052was posed on an assessment I found out the book that she was reading in her Ela classes rooted in critical race Theory and white fragility under the 14th Amendment states and school districts have an obligation to prevent the creation of a learning environment that provides hostility towards a certain race or sex government entities including Public Schools cannot adopt policies and programs that perpetuate racial stereotyping discrimination and harassment CRT based programs are often hateful devices and filled with falsehoods they traffic and racial stereotypes Collective guilt and racial segregation and race-based harassment that's why it is absolutely no place in public education critical race Theory makes a moral judgment about people based on the color of their skin critical race theory is in and of itself inherently racist CRT just a reformulation of the market Marxist oppressor

053oppressed dialect replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the racial categories of white and black after the incident at my daughter's school I reached out to Mr strain who was my board representative and all of the at-large members Mr strain and only one of the at-large members responded Miss Jennifer delajara forgive me if I mispronounced your name responded saying that I don't have to worry about whether or not CRT will be taught as the state defines North Carolina Standards not you or the Board of Education CRT doesn't have to be included in the standards in order for it to be introduced into our classrooms as evidenced by my daughter's situation I'm asking for specific action that forbids CRT indoctrination in our classrooms and I want to ask each of you the following questions

054so your answers can be placed on record number one where do you stand on critical race Theory specifically do you support the implementation of instruction involving critical race theory in our classrooms number two CMS recently began a mandatory monthly SEL curriculum that's taught during homeroom can you define using very specific language what social justice means do you believe that people who disagree with the term social justice policies that you support are advocates to be Injustice and number three will you publicly disclose how much money our district and school are spending on SEL initiatives and how much is being spent on teacher training programs okay last thing I'm going to do is ask you to buy a very much Mr two minutes thank you okay um and then we have Stacy Staggs good evening can you

055hear me yes we hear you all right thank you um I wanna so this month's attribute is persistence and that is not lost on me um as we have been anticipating and warning against uh covid cases in Mecklenburg County are on the rise again the adults in the community continue to fail uh to put significant and sufficient disruption in the way of spreading infection as such I'm floored and dismayed that the school district decided to expand the exposure window for covid-19 in almost every way possible um as it stands for cms's own metrics we are in the red at 152 cases per 100 000 uh with a 6.6 positive test rate uh which is also red per CDC guidelines designed for safe reopening of the schools that means our middle and high school students should

056not be in the buildings as of course they are uh that same is true for surrounding counties Union Cabarrus and Gaston are all also in the red for us a quick numbers review uh within Mecklenburg County and this is per the state dashboard 10 000 people aged 5 to 17 have already tested positive for coven curiously less than 800 of those school-age people in our County have also been tracked through CMS so you're less than 10 percent Also earlier in March the CDC updated and tightened their definition of clusters from five epidemiologically linked cases to two epidemiologically linked cases which should mean that while CMS is increasing the number of students the density in classrooms and the amount of hours of exposure a potential exposure that we should see in influx in clusters that's yet

057to happen as I believe CMS documentation is outdated so reflecting 5 instead of two despite the CDC updating thank you Miss Dags cutting everybody off tonight two minutes is seems shorter than usual for everybody tonight and it looks like we had missed Patricia Parker earlier in the list and apparently she is now with us so I'd like to go ahead and bring her up and then our last speaker will be Bena Haas hello hi there I I don't know what happened but I am under two minutes I am Patricia Parker along with my dad Charles named after his grandfather my Aunts Uncles and cousins past present future we stand on the shoulders of Grandpa Parker who is the man you know as Charles H Parker Jess just like him we are a family of Educators

058teachers who have taught in and outside of the Charlotte area and other parts of the United States as well as in other countries like our Aunt Olivia Parker samus's daughter we are a family of educators doctors nurses all medically trained and religious Ministers of various States we continue to uphold honor and live by the standards of Grandpa Parkers his Integrity his values and the beliefs and reasons he had for developing strong communities and families most of all we continue to follow in his footsteps upholding his concern and being sure the children had schools to go to that families had places to live and people had churches to attend we have family who live in Charlotte one Grandpa Papa's land to this day we have family who's graduated from Barringer and we are proud of that

059we have parents friends who lived across the street from Ballinger on behalf of the family those of us outside of Charlotte from north to south east to west in the United States we had honored to be a part of this renowning process and we would be forever grateful to the staff of banjo academic center and the department Board of Education and Charlotte Mecklenburg County that we all call home thank you to this outstanding experience thank you and our last speaker tonight is Bena Haws I hope I pronounced your name right yes that is correct thank you all right can you hear me yep we hear you perfectly all right great well good evening my name is Diana Haas I'm secondary Talent Development specialist thank you Mr Winston and also for the board members for all

060the critical and Urgent decisions that you have made during pandemic to support teachers and students and thank you Dr Nelson and also Ms Hensley for supporting Advanced uh learning needs of all students I'm here to advocate for Middle School underrepresented gifted students I urge you to allocate resources for Middle School AIG certified staff Physicians and learning communities CMS Navigator portal data showed that DF summer and Report among gifted students of high poverty schools and students of color give the students of color mirror districts chronic absenteeism that's crisis who gets hit hard during crisis our brightest kids it goes against every fiber of federal and state policies of every Student Success act that clearly states that instructional support must be provided for gifted students so is NC State article 9V and the dpi's call to action

061on equity and excellence CMS has had no Talent Development positions in middle schools to support diverse gifted students all AFS were AIG certified are extremely rare and those who are they juggle multiple responsibilities and despite UNCC and queen's licensure partnership program there are no incentives for Middle School teachers and AFS so middle schools have EC and ESL teachers to serve all students needs why don't we have ai to certify teachers or AF to provide supplemental and intensive support for students I urge you that you would work to create AIG certified positions as full-time for the next AIG plan cycle these positions can free up other responsibilities and can lift barriers for all gifted students and all students and these positions can support all shareholders shift mindset and biases from at-risk students and supporting all at

062potential students thank you so much for your time thank you and I said that Ms Haas was our last speaker but it turns out that Ricky Paul has now joined us who is not with us earlier he was on the list but we had skipped over him so Mr Hall gets the last word tonight okay good evening everyone and I'm Ricky Hall I'm the board chair of the West Boulevard neighborhood Coalition and I have lived in the West Boulevard car all of my life and I um am here in support of renaming Behringer Academy at in honor of Mr Charles Parker who is a legendary uh figure in a Tall Timber in the West Boulevard Carter not just in the um Parker Heights Community but all through the West Boulevard Carter from an African-American history

063perspective and so many of his family have spoken and I'm pretty sure spoke well but I'm an inheritor of the legacy of Mr Parker in the sense that his daughter Mrs olympi Livia Parker Sims was a mentor of mine and while I can't explain it to you in detail as the family can I can say that from the most Sanctuary area to the middle area of the community with Reed Park and call Heights and figures like Amy James Mr Parker's footprint is all over the West Boulevard Carter and it is a high honor if you would name that school in his honor given his talents his multiple talents from the community perspective um from the educational perspective from the building of places of worship and leaving this Legacy it is in fitting on to name

064the school and is on and I I applaud the effort to do so all right thank you so much Mr Hall um Madam clerk did we receive any public comments by email Madam chair we received one public comment email from Wendy Gibson all right would you go ahead and read that into the record then please good evening I would like to bring the current 500 spectator limit at outdoor stadiums to your attention now that CMS reopened schools to in-person learning I feel outdoor capacity limits should be reconsidered Governor Cooper eased restrictions on March 26 to allow 50 capacity in sports Arenas and Fields I strongly believe that if if it is now safe to allow 1 000 plus in-school buildings it is safe to allow at least that same number in outdoor facilities and stadiums

065CMS has multiple teams competing in the nchsaa football state playoffs two teams are competing for the four AAA football state championship Huff huskies and Vance cougars round one is Friday April 16th I was unable to find seating capacity for Vans however Huff Stadium capacity is listed as 3500. according to Governor Cooper's recommendation 1750 Spectators should be allowed to attend Friday's game this is an increase of one thousand two hundred fifty Spectators which would generate ten thousand dollars at Huff alone concession sales would also increase which directly benefit the schools if kids pay to play why not increase capacity and generate as much revenue as possible furthermore increased capacity will give College recruiters an opportunity to attend and evaluate players in person I I employ implore you to reconsider your previous decision to limit capacity to

066500 spectators thank you for your time and consideration Wendy Gibson all right thank you madam Clerk so next colleagues we're going to move on to the public hearing for the superintendent's 2020 2021 budget recommendation um and I could read all of the rules but I understand that we have no speakers for this hearing um just confirming that is that correct Madam Clerk Madam chair we do not have any speakers for the public hearing and then did we receive any emails for the hearing Madam chair there are none okay so in that case I'm not going to make us all listen to the rules um and I will now declare this public hearing closed next item is our consent agenda is there a motion that the board approved the consent agenda items so moved okay thank

067you so we have a sec of motion for Ms Sawyer second from Miss delahara before we move to a vote does any board member wish to pull any part of this item for individual consideration okay hearing none all those in favor of the motion please let me know by a show of hands do we have any opposed okay Madam clerk that passes by eight to zero all right next we have three action items tonight the first action item is to consider the criteria for redrawing Board of Education electoral districts before the board asked I'm going to turn to Charles Jeter the executive director of government Affairs policy and board services to present the criteria that is being recommended by the redistricting work group it is um we have five criteria before y'all it's the same

068criteria that we've had previously we did drop one based on feedback from our previous conversation we had last last two three weeks ago with you all so I'll give you those five criteria one is ideal population the one person one vote rule number two is contiguous districts they can't be separated it all has to be contained within itself three is incumbent protection four is the compactness of districts you can't look like a salamander going back to Elbridge Geary and then the fifth one is the no split precincts we have 195 precincts we don't want to split any which you can do nowadays in the computer technology we think it's a bad process so the work group would ask the board to adopt those five criteria that is our recommendation to you all tonight to adopt

069those five criteria okay and by incumbent protection you mean no double bunking that is correct so as we draw the maps we will not to put two incumbents in a similar District moving forward okay so thank you so much thank you for your work on that board members do you have any questions that have not already been answered Ms Marshall this is five criteria can you just give I think they're pretty much the same thing that had been in previous um iterations of maps and I would also assume and you could probably you can comment on that as well are they um uh the types of things that we see in other District races across the state yeah so I think that's a great question Miss Marshall these are best practices um two of them

070the first two ideal population and the contiguous District boundaries are required by external law anyway so even if you don't adopt those you have to the other three have been consistent with previous actions by the board this will actually be the third time in our history we've redrawn our district so it has been it has existed excuse me in the previous two incarnations as well it's also consistent with best practices that the general assembly and other districts around the country use there are some other ancillary ones that sometimes people use we didn't include those we tried to stick to the best practice the core issue to make sure we were clean and efficient as we drove through the maps okay thank you the questions Mr s thank you madam chair thank you Mr Jeter the

071item that was dropped from the last time can you explain what that is and the case for it being dropped so the item that was dropped of the original six was to be con to draw a version of the map that was consistent with the county commissions map after discussion it was the concern was a the timing not may not match up um and B it was concerns that um whether or not that was a necessary part of the equation moving forward so that was the the the the Genesis of the conversations among the work group we met last week and determined that based on the feedback we had got from some of your colleagues that we would remember that I will say predominantly the reason was because we were different on a different cycle

072than they are the timing really doesn't add up and we didn't want a requirement there that we knew we probably wouldn't be able to meet thank you so since we're going first if they have yeah we would we're happy to help them in their in their efforts right okay any other questions okay I'm going to turn to board member Margaret Marshall to make this motion Madam chair I moved to approve the criteria for redrawing Board of Education electoral districts as recommended by the restrict redistricting work group these five criteria are one ideal population two contiguous District boundaries three incumbent protection for compactness of districts five no split precincts okay do we have a second second so motion for Ms Marshall second from Carol Sawyer um Ms Marshall would you like to speak to your motion

073I will just quickly I think that in in the questions and in a quick presentation we've had that these are these are best practices these are things that other districts use our our own County City we've used them in the past I think these these make sense and they're common sense and I would recommend that we go forward with them okay do we have any further discussion or debate hearing none all those in favor of the motion please let it be known by a show of hands any opposed okay that motion passes eight to zero Madam clerk thanks guys thanks for your work thanks to your whole team for the work okay our next action item is proposing the renaming of Behringer academic center before the board acts I'm going to turn to the superintendent

074to introduce this item and to make a recommendation good evening thank you madam chair and members of the Board of Education this time I would like to make a recommendation to change the name of Behringer academic center but before I share the recommendation I would like to State my appreciation for the work of the school naming committee all of the committee members provided the thoughtful input and principal Stephanie range and learning community superintendent doctor Raymond Barnes led a thorough process and effort to consider choices that would make the new school name one in which all residents of Charlotte and the surrounding area can be proud and so I am proud to recommend that the name of Behringer academic center be changed to Charles H Parker academic center as you have already heard earlier this evening

075Mr Parker was a local activist who helped develop the West Boulevard Corridor he was born into slavery but Rose from those Beginnings to build schools help establish churches and provided affordable housing for the African-American Community I believe that naming the school in his honor will inspire students and reflect positively throughout our community and with that Madam chair board members I would humbly ask for your approval of the recommendation okay thank you um board members do you have any questions before I turn to the motion hearing none Ms Byers Bailey would you like to make the motion I certainly would since this school is located in my district district 2. I take great pleasure Madam chair in moving I move to approve the renaming of Behringer academic center to the Charles H Parker academic center this

076name change will go into effect for the 21 2021 there's 2022 school year okay do we have a second second so we've got a motion from Ms Byers Bailey a second from his ship I heard a lot of seconds but I heard Mischief first um Ms Byers Bailey would you could you please speak to your motion thank you as I said uh I am familiar with this location I have been in that facility several times the students are absolutely delightful um and I am really excited that we are changing the name of a school to someone who was born into slavery that accomplished so very much in his community rather than someone who supported slavery and we've heard a lot of from the family so I won't go any further than that thank you okay

077any further discussion or debate before we vote oh well I will just say I'm inspired by what I've learned about Mr Parker both from the family tonight and and from what historians have been able to inform us of and um it's he's the kind of role model and history maker that we ought to know more about and by naming a school for him I think our community is going to know a lot more about him and his legacy and um and uh and we can all aspire to be more like Mr Parker um so with that all in favor of Ms Byers Bailey's motion please let it be known by a show of hands any opposed and Madam clerk that vote passes by eight to zero our final action item tonight is a recommendation to

078approve the contract for the needlepoint bipolar ionization installation at 39 CMS facilities before the board acts I turned to the superintendent to introduce this item and to make a recommendation thank you madam chair and board members uh for your previous vote I did want to acknowledge uh the three families who were under consideration um um for the the vote as well for the Behringer academics and renaming as it relates to this particular item the needlepoint bipolar ionization I am going to ask Miss Sean Turner to come forward to provide some additional details but as you all know and as we have discussed many times since the beginning of the covet pandemic it is imperative that we make improvements to air quality in our facilities particularly those facilities for which we do not have the capability

079to bring in outside air or minimum outside air and so after much research and consideration um this needlepoint bipolar ionization unit option was determined to be the best choice to optimize air quality and we prioritize the 39 facilities most of which are School sites with that I'm going to turn it over to miss Turner good evening so what I have in my hand is an example of the device that we will be installing in all of our HVAC systems throughout the district in every classroom and in every school if you'd like to take a look at it this that device is called an ionizer or we call it that we are installing needlepoint bipolar ionization in the schools and we will have a mechanical contractor that will go to these 39 schools and specifically to

080the classrooms where we have no or limited outside air capabilities and we will begin our first phase of installation with these devices why is this so important well one of the reasons it's so important is that many of you know that um covid is an Airborne transmitted virus and as a result that's been a really big concern of many of the parents of many of our staff members we've even had staff members and some parents ask about buying their own purifiers what were we going to do about it and so our staff spent a lot of time researching talking with people from Council of great City Schools we actually talked with staff members from City of Charlotte Cabarrus County Schools as well as Greenville County South Carolina schools to get an idea of some of

081the things that other school districts were doing prior to making final decisions and we decided on this device and one of the reasons that we did this device it actually provides the addition of ionized molecules in the Airstream through that electronic device so what does that actually do well it produces millions of positive and negative molecules that attach themselves to air particulates or allergens dust viruses and what does that actually do what it does is it makes it larger so that our filters if you remember back in February prior to the students and staff coming back to the buildings we issued a memo talking about some of the HVAC um quality initiatives that we had underway at CMS and one of the things that we did was to upgrade our filters from Merv 8 to

082Merv 10. with this technology it is considered the combination of the two would be considered um Merk that we've actually upgraded to Merv eight I mean Merv 13 I apologize but at any rate what it does it it helps to trap those air particulates and remove them and capture them in the filter which cleans the air or purifies the air it's an additional method of air purification and it's one that we decided to utilize because this particular device has a self-cleaning component we have 29 staff members in HVAC we have approximately 10 000 classrooms across the district and so it's vitally important that we had something that would be easy for us to maintain going forward okay thank you um board members do you have any questions before we go to the motion all right

083it's really cool to see what it looks like it's smaller than I expected um some of the larger pieces of equipment they have more than one oh okay um I see Ms Fowler's hand our student advisor and then I see Ms Marshall's hand hi this is Brianna Fowler speaking and just for clarification for not only me but the public as well what were we doing instead of these devices now that they're new and coming to these 39 schools so one of the things if you recall earlier in the year we sent a memo out that details some of the activities that schools could do to assist with um I guess letting in fresh air into the classrooms and some of those things were like for example um we where we could we introduce outside air

084incrementally into those classrooms where we could we also upgraded filters we also extended schedules for our HVAC systems to run on a 24 7 period of time to keep them operating for continuous airflow throughout the buildings we corrected functionality of exhaust systems um and one of the things that we've been doing and prioritizing the 39 schools with limited or no outside air capability we did what we call HVAC air system optimization and basically what that was doing is cleaning the air components of those systems and bringing it back to its original original design or optimal use thank you you're wearing masks Ms Marshall I I know that um every board meeting we have in our consent agenda if if the members of the public can if they want to access the agenda they they can

085do so but almost everyone we have several um items that we approved because of the cost of the of the repair but HVAC Chiller repairs and um or ventilators or all sorts of things that are that are quite expensive and oftentimes have to be done in the summer or or over Christmas when students aren't in the building because it is just an extensive it has such an extensive impact on the building and and folks would be able to be comfortable in that building at the time so so this work is ongoing since I've been on the board every month I see um uh items like this so it's it's not that people haven't been paying attention to air quality we have been and we always do this is an over and above and a different

086situation and I'm thankful that you mentioned dust allergens because we're gonna these are things we deal with regardless of covered and I think this would be healthier air going forward will this will this installation be able to happen while students are in the buildings right now or do we need to wait for that to happen to happen so um when we bid this particular item one of the things that we did was to take into consideration that we would like to have it when they're not um in the building and so we bid it in such a way that they would do it after the students leave and or on weekends okay but we'd like to start as soon as we get the contract signed and in place so that people can begin to feel

087more comfortable but we still want people to understand that even though we will add this technology um it still needs to work in conjunction with the mask and all of the other washing your hands and all of the other things the safety protocols that CDC and North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services have recommended throughout this year sure okay but I'm glad I'm glad that we can start this immediately we don't have to wait until a summer break to implement this technology thank you you're welcome Ms virus Bailey thank you uh prior to decide the decision to get these needlepoint bipolar ionization devices the 39 facilities where they will be installed had been advised to do things like leave the door open leave the window open that kind of thing uh now that they

088once they get these installed will they still will they no longer be recommended to leave doors and windows open so you know one of the things that we said in that memo is if they felt comfortable doing that um it is our hope that this will replace some of that but still you know one of the things with covet is that you're introducing um new or fresh air into the building so you're trying to dilute any Airborne transmission that may be happening as a result of people talking or sneezing or laughing or singing um and so I would say that you know whatever people continue to feel comfortable with if they once we install the systems if they still want to get a little bit of fresh air that's fine that's fine it certainly will

089not hurt anything oh miss ship come that just made me think about um safety issues and I think we always have to consider safety is all we are really talking about this having the doors of the windows open because safety is the key uh and you know things are happening even now in schools and with so many more kids coming back into the building I think we really need to think about what that looks like to have doors open when it's open and those kinds of things and then so here in the building doing the day and ensuring that all those witness endures a lot at the end of the day to secure that building at the end of the day and those are those are things that you just really have to be aware

090of when you're saying teachers who like Billy can just open the window open the door in these schools that have large classrooms yeah I agree with you and we have actually had some principles that we have worked with directly who did not feel comfortable doing that so our staff would go out and meet with the principal and talk about other alternatives you're welcome that is a good point Miss ship and I've I've really um uh I would almost say agonized over agonized over uh that um the fact that the advice for covid safety is the opposite of the advice for security from people coming into the school who shouldn't be coming into the school and before covid we did a lot of training on what to do in case of that horrible situation and it

091has to do with keeping windows and doors locked so conundrum of the world that we live in today any other questions um and I just want to point out my own sort of a just a technicality but a lot of times we say 39 schools and I like to say 39 facilities because not every facility on the list is a school for example Spa which is where we have a lot of Staff but it's not a school and also there's a common perception that if a school is on the list that it's the entire School whereas I believe and you please if you could confirm this in some of the facilities it's just it's specific classrooms within the facility that need this bipolar ionization that is correct um in some cases every single classroom in

092the school that is correct in some cases it was the entire school and then in some cases it was specific areas in the school and we identified those areas and so this contract is to address initially those those areas in the schools specific areas that had the issue okay thank you so with that Ms Sawyer if you would please make the motion thank you madam chair I moved to approve the contract for Chiller services in the amount of 879 eight yeah eight hundred and seventy thousand nine hundred and ten dollars the contract is for cms's needlepoint bipolar ionization project and will provide air cleaning services for the classrooms located in the 39 Charlotte Mecklenburg school buildings that have rooms with no outside air available to them okay um do we have a second Okay so

093we've got a motion from Ms Sawyer a second from Ms de la hora Ms Sawyer would you like to speak on your motion yeah I think um I'm very glad this work is proceeding and um I think that it's the our emphasis on air quality in our schools is going to be a lasting benefit from the the crisis that is a global pandemic but um because of of an infusion of of funds to upgrade our systems that this is a benefit that will serve our students and staff for years to come so I'm grateful for this work any further discussion um yeah I think you make a great Point Ms Sawyer and I know we will speak at more length at our budget Workshop about differentiating between our regular ongoing expenses and the federal infusion

094of funds that are coming to help schools recover from covid but but it is very true that with that Federal infusion of funds you know well it's specifically about bouncing back from covid if we're really strategic with how we spend those dollars we could help students in a whole lot of ways above and beyond recovering from covid um so with that um seeing no discussion I will call for the vote all those in favor of the motion let it be known by a show of hands any opposed this vote also Madam clerk passes by eight to zero okay now we're going to move on to the reports and information items for the evening first is the report on budget amendments for February 2021 and I turn to the superintendent for this report as president Madam

095chair all right how about the report on financial statements for February of 2021. as presented and next we have the report on Capital project ordinances for February 2021 as presented okay and then after this we have the learning and teaching early literacy report I will turn to you for this report thank you again Madam chair one of as you all know as our team enters the room one of the major Investments that we have made as a district in recent years is the standard aligned curriculum for early literacy and we believe strongly that this is the right investment to improve Equitable outcomes in reading for all of our students and so tonight you will get a look at that curriculum and its adoption throughout the district and as a part of this interactive presentation you

096will hear from others including principals teachers and other leaders throughout the district and and with that I am going to toss it over to Miss Beth Thompson who joins us with other members of the team for this early literacy presentation the floor is yours Ms Thompson thank you so much superintendent Winston and Ford it's an honor to be with you this evening and to get to get to talk about early literacy within CMS want to give huge gratitude to folks behind the scenes who have been a part of preparing this report for this evening I would be remiss to not honor Dr Paul Tau who's our elementary Director of Education Trish Sexton who moves the world in our elementary schools our Associates who they know it's true our associate superintendent for equity in our elementary

097schools and our elementary literacy Specialists who work tirelessly to both put together all of guidance for schools and supportive schools as well I'm joined this evening by absolute rockstars you're in the presence of Fame right here right now Crystal Graham giveaway first grade teacher at Westerly Hills Academy Shayna Ray proud and I emphasize proud principal at Windsor Park Elementary School and Lisa Devoe first grade teacher at McAlpine elementary school they're going to be here to be to talk a little bit we're going to see some video of them as well and then also be able to answer questions as the evening goes on so here's what we're going to talk a little bit about in terms of what we teach in early literacy when he says uh oh that's not a good sign better should

098I use the arrow thank you so we'll talk a little bit about this evening is historical practice so what have we been using to teach early literacy and CMS previously why we made a change in the way we teach early literacy and CMS what our current state is in terms of our early literacy instruction and we refer to that we're referring to kindergarten first second and third grade how we're assessing the impact of our early literacy curriculum and then what next steps will look like both short-term and long-term in implementation of early literacy and in the context of returning to in-person learning so we're going to start with historical practice what have we been doing in terms of early literacy instruction previously prior to the use of our current curriculum which is El education so

099what if you were to go back approximately five years and and enter into this Devo or Miss Graham's classroom a first grade classroom you would see a teacher engaged in whole group instruction as you see with students who are right here on the carpet and that teacher would be using text that is an on-grade level text for a first grade classroom the ship you probably remember this so teachers holding uh what we would call a level J text which is a first grade level and working with students on grade level skills following that time and whole group students would then return to their seats or reading spots throughout the classroom perhaps also work with partners and when doing so students would then be practicing on what's called an independent reading level and in doing so

100that reading level might be on grade level it might be above grade level and it also might be below grade level so whole group with a teacher a student is working on grade level but once a student moves independently that student may not be working on grade level anymore additionally in the course of instruction perhaps with a teacher many of the instructional practices in which a teacher would be engaging a student would not necessarily be attending to specific letters and sounds but instead relying on things like pictures to read words in other words there was not a guarantee in all classes across the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools that students would be getting explicit instruction on letters and sounds and how to form those and and retain those you'd also have then times when a teacher would

101be working alongside a student then and then that's and in the course of that work again a teacher when the child is with a teacher the T they're going to be working on on grade level but when a child is working independently it would be off-grade level on their independent level what resulted was in the course of levels leveling of Books A B C D the goal with students for to be moving up in level in accordance with grade level with those what should be on grade level these skills are fixed they're finite and they can be taught but what we found was that students who started on grade level largely stayed on or above grade level students who started behind however remained behind so the practices of students not necessarily spending time independently working

102on grade level were resulting in students not not reaching grade level and it's not anecdotal data that tells us that this was just true we conducted a CMS cohort analysis within that analysis we noted that number one students who began in kindergarten with reading gaps had those gaps nearly double by the end of first grade I need to say that again students who began kindergarten with gaps in literacy skills those gaps nearly doubled by the end of first grade those were our students and it was happening here in CFS there was no doubt that business as usual was not working and that we had to do better to support our students so it Bears no surprise that change had to happen right Sheena in addition to what we saw data telling us within CMS based

103on our practice and as a result of that we then did a root cause analysis why is this happening one component of our analysis was to to look at the current resources we were using in terms of aka the curriculum that we were using and to look at whether the components of that curriculum were aligned to grade level standards I have a 16 year old at home he's learning to drive we had a nervous moment the other day when we got onto an interstate here's the reality if he never gets onto an interstate though he will never be able to drive he will never be successful in doing that on his own if we are not giving students access to grade level curriculum we cannot expect them to ultimately be able to be successful in

104grade level standards what we found noted by the red dots is that the curriculum we were using the books we were putting in children's hands when they were working independently that were below grade level were not standards aligned and this was not just us in CMS determining this this was from Ed reports if you Google it go online to find resources that are there it says that it said that to us we also looked um at a research that came out from tntp right along the same time and that same research has been shared with us multiple times I think in board meetings like this I've experienced them when I was a principal in principal meetings as well that said that there are four key resources that influence a child a student's School experience and

105the outcomes they will experience not some children but for all children and those four things include grade appropriate assignments strong instruction and note that by strong instruction that's talking about what students are doing not necessarily all the things that teachers are doing so are the conditions set up for students to do the heavy intellectual lifting that students are deeply engaged and I particularly love this one in lessons that they find interesting and enjoyable and lastly that teachers have high expectations and while that sounds like something that's so so common sense of course we would have high expectations it's having high expectations and believing and knowing that students can and will be successful with rigorous standards in other words believing that despite whatever circumstances students experience it can and will happen for them if that's not

106enough there was also emerging research on what's called a science of reading and you've probably seen this in the news this term science of reading in the news just recently specifically in Senate Bill 387 that has just been approved and signed by our governor at the state level that redefines so to speak for the read to achieve legislation known as the Excellence in education and what that science of reading component says is that our human brain is not naturally wired to read and remember the slide before that said it's fixed it's finite and it can be taught we have to teach it and showing children texts having them look at pictures and yes it words will not do that secondly that reading requires a complex set of mental processes that is involves the relationship between

107decoding the skills and making sense of those sounds and letters understanding language that then results in reading comprehension that again those foundational skills have to be taught explicitly and systematically we're going to get t-shirts made 26 letters 44 phonemes and nine decodability letters levels again it's fixed it's finite and it can be taught we have to teach it right and lastly but not least and this is the one that I think will be fun we get lots of comments and questions about this from teachers we talked about this actually yesterday as we were preparing that foundational skills in other words the pulling letters and sounds and words off of a page can't be the only thing we do when we educate students in early literacy they also need to be exposed to building background knowledge

108and vocabulary to be skilled readers So within the course of this evening you're going to hear a lot about birds and it's because that's the module that our first graders have been on and sometimes online I'll see teachers saying why birds I used to like them right I'm so sick of birds but it's not by chance that the curriculum is designed for students to take a deep dive into an area of learning to acquire vocabulary and have the skill in learning how to learn and build background knowledge because not all students come to the table with the same background knowledge and we can't assume that just giving kids passages and lots of different texts are going to support their ability to build knowledge about a single topic and the vocabulary that goes along with it

109I would be remiss if I didn't also add that a huge component of what we also saw heard and wanted to address was whether we could ensure that a student in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools was engaging in curricular resources that were culturally responsive specifically what students were learning did it validate their experiences and values were we disrupting power dynamics and privileged dominant groups and were re-empowering students you're going to hear from you're going to hear from a rock star here principal Ray is going to talk from a principal perspective about why this change needed to happen hello my name is principal Ray and I'm the proud principal of Windsor Park Elementary School where every day is a great day to be a wildcat I am grateful for the commitment and change that the district has made

110to adopt the El education curriculum prior to this change we as a district did not have a uniformed way to teach structured phonics or content-based literacy leaving teachers in the middle to piecemeal resources together that they find off of the internet or from Teachers Pay Teachers or from other various resources which teachers do what teachers do best they fill in the Gap where they see a need however many of those resources were not vetted nor were they research based which left our Learners with reading gaps that continue to widen at Windsor Park through the El curriculum and through strong effective professional development for our teachers we're able to identify these gaps through micro phase levels teachers are now more strategic and intentional about how to best engage their Learners through compelling real life content which

111has transformed what teaching and learning looks like at Windsor Park Elementary School and I'm sure not only at our school but principals across the district are seeing these changes as well thanks to the El curriculum we now have a sound curriculum that will Foster equity and best social emotional learning and have Learners take ownership of their own learning so with the El curriculum we will be able to close those achievement gaps and the belief gaps because our children can succeed as long as they have a sound curriculum in front of them in a Highly Effective Teacher thank you thank you so prior to moving into what our current state is and what we will what we're doing to assess where we are in that current state and then also next steps I want to take

112a pause to see what Reflections or clarifying questions you may have of either me or our teachers and principal who are here regarding what has been happening historically in terms of early literacy and why this change has taken place all right thank you any questions thus far Ms Dr Jones oh oh Mike there you go wait it turns on that's so weird yeah okay I'm delighted to to hear this presentation um uh uh hear you saying that you're trying to gear reading around students life experiences and that kind of thing but also you want reading literacy that's some uniformity um across the district how do you make that happen say in a school that's in very diverse areas of of our County so part of the the beauty of having a curriculum right now we

113have an English language arts curriculum that's adopted and being used at all of our schools that serve kindergarten through eighth grade we're in the process of adopting for high schools so starting with English one in the 2122 school year but the part of the beauty of having a curriculum that's being used across multiple grades is that we can think about that in terms of not just a student's experience in one grade level but what their experiences across grade levels so for example students might participate in a module one of our eighth grade modules is on the Harlem Renaissance another module may be on the Holocaust so we are addressing different students and noting that you're not going to see those modules with our kindergartners right so our kindergarten and first grade modules are going to

114be more around understanding and celebrating diversity but as we start to get with our fourth fifth sixth seventh and eighth grade as it's age appropriate we go much deeper into building knowledge not just about birds right but about social issues that are in our community and that address the Learners who are in our classrooms thank you you answered exactly what I was hoping to hear right there with that thank you sounds great absolutely um Ms Fowler this is Brianna Fowler speaking and for those who are under the reading level or under their literacy level like you said if we just continue to give them books or give them um the curriculum that is underdeveloped what what are we going to do to have them above or on their reading level I'm going to speak actually

115I'm I'm not I'm going to see if Miss Graham would be willing to come on over um would you be willing to talk from a first grade teacher's perspective when you have students who are still striving to be on grade level what that looks like in terms of their ability to learn to read sure um one of the things that's so wonderful about our curriculum Elle curriculum is that it's in phases and those are micro phases and so before we had J level books H level books and you can have a group of kids and that was where they were but now we have phases and it's fluid kids can move into this phase and get skills and through explicit teaching get the skills that they need to advance and so that's what's really wonderful

116about this and what um is so important is because in kindergarten and in first grade when we're filling in these skills and these gaps a little bit of extra time with them will only be like 20 minutes or so but if we were still in the model that we were in when they get to third grade and they have those significant gaps that we were just talking about that intervention time increases significantly where it could be used for something else that was on grade level so doing it in kindergarten and doing it in first and filling in and meeting kids where they are and just filling in those skills through the L curriculum really helps with that so does that mean there will be more group time or more individual time so in skillsblock we

117have small groups so firstly there's a there's a large hole group it's about 15 minutes and it's teaching directly to whatever skill that all of the scholars need as a whole group at their grade level and then we move into individual small groups so it can be four or five kids that need just for example our controlled vowels and so they will get that extra time that differentiated time within that skill so that they can continue to move along in their microphase what's really wonderful is that we have kind of like outlines of this is where kindergartners should be and this is where first graders should be but I have a son who is in first grade and he is in a whole different microphase than what would be expected and that's what's so wonderful

118about it you are not pegged as this kind of student this is your level you can move along the continuum thank you so much thank you Miss ship oh I'm glad to hear that we are looking at on grade level because you know as you said the history had been we were trying to teach them but expecting them to be on grade level especially when we got to assessments so I'm glad that we're really looking at this on grade level teaching and then moving them and making sure we're advancing them I think one of the areas I'm most concerned about always is teacher development and training because for students to be successful teachers have to be strong teachers with instructional practices that really nail this program and how they teach children so what are we

119doing in terms of that I know we have the new curriculum so it's been very important that professional development is strong and that all the teachers at every school is able to really teach this instruction and how is that going agree and I think you provided a really great segue into our current state and then what next steps will look like so if it's okay I'm gonna I'm gonna move into that and I think we'll be able to talk through that in that section thank you so um we did make a change right and that change was reflected in our strategic plan specifically around at the very first action which is to guarantee to ensure a guaranteed viable curriculum for for all of our students so there are several components so so the way that

120we established El education was to be able to go through an adoption process there are many phases of that adoption process to make sure that it will ultimately be um be will be able to use it well within our district but the first of which would be to make sure that it is through Ed reports a standards aligned curriculum and the second of which is to make sure that it is going to be a curriculum that's reflective of culture of bias and of social emotional learning so as we talk a lot about student social emotional well-being that's a component of what shows up when students are doing deep study around modules El education specifically really originated in 1995 as a curriculum that was created by teachers for teachers and I'm not sure I think in

121the flurry of of implementing uh two years ago for the first time sometimes I have to come back to that that like this was actually created by teachers for teachers in an effort to be able to find to be able to provide standards align resources to schools and school districts as common core standards were being adopted nationally there are three components to early literacy instruction so if you are a first grader within Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools you're going to experience what's called modules you're going to experience what's called skills block and when we're not in a pandemic and students can be working collaboratively in classrooms but starting starting to start now students will also experience what's called a Labs block and we thought no better way to be able to find out what that feels like

122than to hear it from teachers and students so I'm going to ask for yes so this is Miss boys first grade teacher at Mallard Creek Elementary love learning about birds we 've been learning about birds since about the end of April now and it just it starts slow so I like how it starts with just the bases basics of what birds need in order to survive and then it builds on top of that so we started with learning about those basic needs and then we're taking it step by step so we started with feathers and went into a deep dive now we're learning about beaks and doing a deep dive and the kids absolutely love it they can tell me about all the beads all the feathers that we've learned about it's just a great

123experience to have them learning without even really knowing that they're learning so they they made it really easy for for us to teach and for the kids to learn the El program is really good at embedding writing into their lessons it starts off simple and small with one or two sentences for them to write talking about different types of grammar that they need Capital sentences periods and then it just Builds on that learning about verbs right so what do birds do they hop they Peck but in previous lessons we've learned about adjectives and nouns so whatever we're learning about whether it's tools and work or Birds they embed everything into the lesson so like in my lessons today I did Simon says it's something really easy that we can use outside of birds but also

124still connected together and then we also have our skills lessons that have the grammar as well with the periods and capital sentences when they do their editing I define success as are my kids learning and are they having fun and with birds I think I have one scholar in particular who just fell in love when we allowed them to be able to explore it's something that they can actually go out and look and see so just being able to watch that scholar grow more in this last third and start of fourth quarter just because their interest that would definitely be my my best success sword foreign questions how do birds use their beaks in order to survive okay so the next thing we're going to do the meat is to answer this question my favorite

125part is getting collecting information [Music] I hope somebody so it's within our module blocks one component of the early literacy curriculum that students are building that knowledge centered around one topic that teachers are teaching writing using using that read think talk and write framework that writing is incorporated into lessons and and specifically that students are able to build and use vocabulary in that writing and that grammar is embedded into those module lessons to support their continued development so that's one component of what a first grade student would experience a second component of what a first grade student would experience or a kindergarten or a second grade student would be what we call skills block and this is where we're addressing those skills that are fixed and finite that we referred to earlier in in those

126presentations it's also a place where there's a whole group portion and then also a small group portion that's differentiated to be able to meet student needs and we're so incredibly grateful that this is a space in that small group time that many of our Community Partners such as our helps fluency tutoring and the Augustine literacy project push in with tutor support to be able to help students if whatever they're working on but help specifically helps with fluency and Augustine projects specifically helps with phonemic awareness and phonics so we have missed by first grade teacher at Windsor Park he's going to talk a little bit about how that shows up for her for her students um I think it's been helpful to see that there is a systematic way to follow the progression um because before

127the L curriculum we didn't have anything and so I have previously used recipe for reading but as a grade level it's really great to see students working on the same skills and all following this progression so we can be better aligned and then in terms of the macro phases translating to modules we're able to incorporate a lot of the writing because there's a ton of writing in the um the modules so we're able to incorporate those skills while still being mindful of like without patterns the spelling patterns that we're working on do small group skills in the afternoon and so I have students doing rotations and so they're doing independent reading word work fluency and they're also doing a teacher station with myself for fluency we use the decodables and so students are reading their

128decodables daily and they have an activity that goes along with their decodable um and then I have a Writing Center in my classroom and The Writing Center always relates back to the module so it's a prompt about whatever ruler it's been incredible so I have previously I have the recipe for reading book and so in previous years I was using the progression and learning from the book um without the actual training and so now I'm able to like really dive in and then I follow the microphase progression from the El curriculum and I see where there's spots that I can integrate OG but still following along with the segmenting and blending from the El curriculum and students typically in first grade are learning they have a lot of levels to grow in writing and learning

129those skills and so they've been able to like really I'm really proud of especially this year with covid they've still been able to grow in their microphone one night before thank you my favorite kind of skills block is reading I'm working on 30. it has helped me to read about it and also probably he also has a pain in his house I have grown into this hair because I'll say so um [Music] everything is actually one of my favorite things to do check off if you self-corrected or you score approved or you have this expression you can be first you read it and make sure that you're getting it all right because if you skip some that you forgot how to save them you will remember how to say them there was a rock and

130the Rock is in luck and he lost it but he got so much luck so in the end he found he thinks and thinks and may stop he forgot he hit it and he saw I was walking on my fluency fluency what was a passage I I needed to leave like I can collect myself and then if other students have the same one from from the passage then I already know them they woke up up and felt weak he could he also had a pain in his throat foreign so again it's during this time of skills block that there's both whole group and small group differentiated instruction that you see students who are learning to really pull those words off of a page learn learning things like spelling patterns that it follows a structured scope

131and sequence and that professional development is supporting teachers ability to do this a part of the El curriculum strategies that are embedded are multi-sensory strategies such as those that are used in Orton Gillingham and that we use in terms of our subsequent intensive interventions to be able to support to support students last but certainly not least literacy is exhausting right for our kindergarten first and second grade students at promise the end is um the component of labs block and spotlighting Labs block are Ray Farms Falcons have implemented Labs even in this year through part of their Makerspace work in their in their early grades so Miss Herb's going to share with us about how they've implemented in a lot the labs portion foreign so a typical day here in large block as we'll start out

132with our song our lab song and then we will do a read aloud about um the topic of focus or we might watch a short video to get the kids engaged and excited about what we're doing and then we'll begin with one of the labs so either create imagine explore or enter um for the bird unit right now we're working on the create lab so students today worked on collaging a Bird puppet and they're going to be using that puppet to do a puppet show about the bird they've been researching Birds which is a lab and they're also doing the Imagine lab which is writing a story around that bird and then we're also going to be doing the engineer lab creating a nest which they'll use in their puppet show as well so all

133of those different components are going to kind of come together in this puppet show that's a cumulative project at the end that combines all the labs so um probably my favorite unit so far this year has been the second grade dinosaurs unit and in that unit the students they just absolutely love getting to learn about the dinosaurs researching and then there was a part where they got to sculpt their dinosaur that they were researching and then they also got to do an excavation of a dinosaur fossils like a fossil egg and that was just really exciting labs for them and then currently in second grade students are studying pollination and we're doing we're developing a pollination Fable and they're making marionette puppets based on the characters in their pollination Fable so Birds bats bees that

134sort of thing and they're very engaged and excited to teach others which was really fun yeah in the spirit of time we're going to look um we're gonna we're gonna not do the students for that part I will say though that as someone who works really closely with the people who place all of the lab orders the dino eggs are the hottest commodity for labs of all time the kids love Excavating and finding those Dino eggs we we will not be able to ever go back on those so it is during our Labs block where kids take the what they've built knowledge around what they're able to build those skills um and and decoding and encoding words and then applying them in what feels like a very project-based learning environment that is associated as a

135part of their literacy experience so that's the curriculum itself that's what students experience when it comes to teaching the curriculum and specifically teachers being able to do that we know that several things are really important number one that that lives that a fundamental component of a teacher's ability anyone's ability to be able to do the work that we do in education but specifically ensuring that students all students all students are seen heard and valued in our curriculum it is doing the mirror work of acknowledging the role that race bias power and Equity play for ourselves in the work that and how we show up and how that shows up for students within our classroom and those conditions are created within our classroom as well that teachers need knowledge as standards knowledge of content and probably

136most importantly knowledge of the children that that they get to work with each and every day and that everything we do no curriculum in and of itself alone is going to fix that the work that we do to make sure that we have we our staff members are able to do this um including folks in support of schools um that that that is critical that we're able to provide that adult learning that does that and the adult learning isn't one or the other but it lives at the intersection of all of those components we continue to assess the impact of the work that we're doing that includes doing looking at student work to see what they have mastered inclusive of Assessments um like like multiple choice assessments as well we also have been conducting surveys

137with students and what they tell us about their experiences are absolutely fascinating and very telling even our youngest can tell us very well what they appreciate what they don't appreciate when they feel valued and when they don't feel valued and how they experience the curriculum teacher we've we receive teacher feedback as well from areas such as our what we call stack our principal leadership advisory team research studies and feedback from teacher PDA and two of our stars who are here today our first grade teachers tell us a lot about what they see going on in classrooms with the use of el education and specifically how they see that impacting students so our next steps what we hear from teachers and stakeholders are that we want to make sure that as we move into 2122 that

138we're supporting our school level teams to plan Implement and monitor instruction specifically as we're moving back into full in-person instruction that we provide access to professional development and the ship I think this speaks to what you were asking earlier not just when a work day comes but in an on-demand format that schools can access when they're ready and we now have resources to be able to put that together so that we can have modules that will that will enable folks to be able to to access that professional development and across each of those other bubbles I think it would be also that that staff members are asking that the professional development they receive include modeling of best practice not just talking about best practice so that we move from just saying well you just make

139your groups and then do this to actually having opportunities for teachers to see that happen whether that's in other teachers classrooms and we now have virtual abilities in each of our buildings to be able to do that or to be able to use things such as videos or classroom walkthroughs one other thing I want to note in that last one is that we don't assume that transitioning from a remote or a hybrid environment will come naturally to everyone in other words we need to be intentional especially for our grade levels that implemented for the first time this year in a remote and hybrid environment that we're explicit about what what our curriculum usage looks like as we move back to a full in-person environment and that we don't throw away the lessons that we've learned

140this year around tools that are available in curriculum implementation but that we instead leverage them as we as we continue to move forward so in summary early literacy we have had historical practice that has not resulted in the learning that we wanted for all children we made a change and that was to adopt a standards aligned curriculum that was both standards aligned and diverse and representation that we currently are using that curriculum and while by no means perfect we continue to make strides to iterate to improve in that space that we're consistently assessing the impact what do we see students able knowing and able to do and that we will continue with next steps in implementation as we finish fourth quarter in during the summer and as we move into the upcoming school year and

141with that if there are any other questions or discussions regarding any component it would be an honor to be able to address okay I see Ms Sawyer and then Ms Marshall and then Dr Jones so you talk about getting feedback from students and teachers how are there notes taken and has it has it resulted in changes in the curriculum yes so there are lots of levels of feedback um there are several examples that I would cite we've had a couple instances in which folks have lifted whether it be teachers or principals or instructional leaders within schools who have lifted concerns maybe with specific texts to say um I'm not so sure actually about the language that's that's used not necessarily like profanity but language that's used around discussions of people right in which case we

142will research that we will work along with El education and they will also assess the situation and in in cases where that's able to be done then changes will be made teachers will be notified through our direct to teacher communication and changes will be made in canvas to what we call resync materials so that we can do that so it's one example of spaces in which changes are made with their curriculum in other spaces we will also look at feedback and say what what are the problems or concerns that are being lifted and what does that tell us about what people need to know more about so for example one question that commonly comes up why birds why birds why birds for so long right and so what that tells us is is that we

143need to continue to do work around understanding the role that building knowledge around a particular module topic is so that would inform upcoming that informed this presentation tonight and also upcoming professional development that we would that we would offer to folks at the end of each of our professional development there's a survey as well we comb through that survey to help inform us around what teachers are saying is effective about that professional development their experience with the curriculum and then what next steps need to look like thank you thank you I'm especially interested in in student feedback that might impact how the curriculum what the curriculum is or how it's delivered and yes so especially as you get into the older grades I've heard some grumpiness about the amount of time spent on a single

144text that kind of thing yes there will be continued opportunities for students to be able to get to give that feedback I will say one of the things we've learned from that feedback specifically is that even when a text there's an anchor text that's associated with a module but there are lots of opportunities for supplemental texts um that particularly the use of digital ebooks can support students being able to access a continued next step for us is supporting schools in using knowing what supplemental texts are available using those and quite honestly being able to provision as many texts as possible which even in an ebook even though ebooks are a little less expensive than hard copies of books it still costs money and so our priority has been around making sure we have anchor text

145we have student workbooks all Dino eggs right like all of the components of our curriculum but a continued desire and wish is that we can continue to provide supplemental text for our secondary students one huge component of that is that they are able to get text with additional perspectives that perhaps counter or provide a different additional context to what they're seeing show up in their anchor text that are often very deep around very deep content one of the um things we learned from the new teacher project and and our internal work was that you know teachers weren't teaching what we thought they were teaching how are we monitoring this implementation to know whether the curriculum is being implemented with fidelity we were well on the way last year to conducting School walkthroughs in which we

146were doing what we called evidence of core actions in other words what should we see that lines up to the to the information and research we have about best practice how are we seeing that show up in classrooms or not show up in classrooms that has been trickier to do in a virtual hybrid environment not impossible we have continued the march of doing that really grateful for our partners in our Equity Department who have been really the leaders of that work but it is hot on our list of to Do's moving forward to be able to continue that practice to be able to measure the effectiveness thank you yes Miss Marshall thank you madam chair this is Margaret Marshall um I've got a I've got two questions we've got lots of questions but I'm gonna

147I'm gonna Buck it into two areas and then I know my colleagues will probably hit some of these Orton Gillingham so sounds like that we've had a lot of folks training in this could you give me some indication as to how how this rolls out to our teaching staff in K3 yes absolutely let me give you the context behind it first So within El education when a teacher looks at a skills block lesson you guys help me help me if this is wrong there is there are options what's what's not negotiable is what's going to get taught to students that day remember it's fixed it's finite we need to continue to teach it what there are options around though is the way in which you might teach that particular thing there are there are options

148that are what we call multi-sensory and that's what Orton Gillingham provides we have we use Orton Gillingham resources as our intensive intervention so El is our core specific lessons in El that are scripted and more targeted are are supplemental intervention and then Orton Gillingham the multi-sensory strategies that is our intensive intervention that we use so throughout this year the Deep investment has been to ensure that we have teachers at every school teachers or instructional leaders at every single Elementary and Middle School who know Orton Gillingham and can provide those intensive interventions it has been wildly popular in terms of being a super effective intervention and what we're thrilled about is is that while right now we're using it to support as an intensive intervention every single staff member who is who receives that adult learning

149gets better at core because that multi-century approach now becomes something that they start with at core hoping that we don't need students down the road so many students to be receiving intervention and I see heads nodding over here so I I hope that I hope that that's the case so we have somebody at least at least two people at every school some schools have more and we are continued um we're continuing to provide that so as a as somebody who's had interest in students who struggle with dyslexia this is wonderful news I think this is this is great and can you give me an example of just one of those lessons just real quick just yeah Miss Diva would you come I feel like we've got her here so we may as well would you

150be able to model maybe a strategy or a multi-sensory strategy or something for skills block or Orton Gillingham specifically I'm at probably an OG specific yeah yes I was trained this year so I'm I'm a first grade teacher but I'm also the interventionist on our grade level um so for Oren Gillingham specifically when we're teaching a new sound we are brainstorming words we are tracing the letter in the sand we're saying the letters saying the sound it's repetitive it's multi-sensory um and as we are writing the words we're constantly tapping the sounds writing the letters that make the sounds checking um so it's there's so many components to it that help it helps students solidify the letters and the sounds each day we review in a card deck we're reviewing the latter name the letter

151sound um we're writing in the sand practicing the letters and sounds um so I think that's that's where I've seen my students in my intervention group grow because it's so targeted and it's constant okay great thank you so much thank you I appreciate that this makes me want to go like 26 44 nine right that's right that's right um group instructions but as you mentioned it has changed my whole group instruction um because once I received an intervention I went and I found sand for all of my students in my class and put in Korean boxes and and so as we're learning our new skills and our skills block um just taking the strategies that I learned from the Orton Gillingham training and implementing it for all of my students because that's something we were

152taught in the training is that Orton Gillingham is for everybody okay great thank you so much I'm really pleased to hear all that thank you and and to a larger question so when we've done these incredibly wonderful specific skills that we're working on so hard and first grade or kindergarten I know we've had students that have been in and out of their instruction this year whether they are parents have kept them at home and may enroll them next year or whether there have been students that have had a little bit of a furlough time so to speak in in showing up for class how are we going to approach this for those early grades next year yeah Lisa can I call so when we were when we were entering today she said I've had three

153students enroll just in the last week I think it was correct yeah would you mind would you mind sharing when a student is enrolling and maybe hasn't been in school for a while or has been in a remote environment and coming in person how would you address that with with supportive students we're in a unique situation um with everybody coming back now so I have three new students entering my classroom this week um one is transitioning from the virtual class at my school um one was virtual and in my class during our hybrid time and a third moving from out of state and something I do appreciate about the the skills block assessments that we use we assess their reading and their spelling so we can really Target what they know and where they're ready

154to go next um so I think just you know assessing where are they and where can we take them in these final seven weeks of school and that's going to be ongoing as students in so again so we'll need to know very there'll be a lot of assessment done I would assume the beginning of the next year yes and and two with um Crystal mentioned before with the skills block it is a Continuum so it spans from K to second grade um so the students you fall into these micro phases of instruction um so we have students working in different areas where we get the information from the assessments and really pinpoint um where are they what can they work on next okay so I think through the assessments we can really help pinpoint where

155we need to go wonderful thank you thank you um Dr Jones let's ask the question about Fidelity but another comment I'd like to make um I'm a secondary teacher um but some years ago I became a state evaluator and I visited elementary schools environment as a teacher and [Music] um I think at the K2 level more than anywhere I saw visual overload and I realized then that I had a learning disability myself it's too much stuff or visual overload um so I understand that you have centers in all of that but sometimes even in some visitations to Schools pre-covet elementary schools I walked into classrooms and so much stuff just sort of moved in on me and um having worked with exceptional children's programs and students with learning disabilities and other type learning concerns uh

156that that's a real um area that I want to bring to your attention to be aware of as you're visiting classrooms and doing the teaching of evaluations and looking at the environment because the environment is a teacher and thank you uh I had a smile under this mask approach is is has been around was old as new and someone asked the question it's pretty Universal too so we are on the same page in terms of where students might move to uh uh it's not something that's uniquely Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools but it's more Universal than that but I really appreciate what you all are doing and I think it will make a difference the only thing that I ask is like I said was old is new so let's stick with him amen right yeah that's

157good thank you for that a doctor you're our one doctor so Ms delahara take it thank you this is Jennifer de la hora speaking um so going back it seems like OG is the big topic for tonight but it occurs to me we talked someone mentioned that it's really great for many students and I'm wondering if you know off the top of your head if there's any research that shows that it's also effective for our English language Learners I'm only imagining that some of the kinesthetic approaches and the different you know methods that are using would be particularly helpful yeah I see heads nodding like crazy over here that's fine I don't need a report out on it I just was it was more sort of a commentary because I I as you're describing it

158I've heard wonderful things about it so so that is good to hear on that same slide with it that was also mentioned is it knee house and great leaps are those similar and that they're teaching like methodologies or are they programs like what is it what are those so we have there is a Continuum of what we what we aspire to do is make sure that there's a relationship between our Core Curriculum that all students are receiving what intervention for students who are in need of it or receiving and then specially designed instruction for students who have exceptionalities and that those things aren't living separately from each other or at odds with each other in some in some cases so for our for our littlest ones right sometimes talking about a sound one way or

159using one strategy and then turning around and using a different strategy to intervene okay can help or it can confuse kids even more right both of those things can happen and it's knowing children that know it that helps you know whether that's going to be the case those two specific resources are for students with disabilities so if students are needing specially designed structure in addition to Core Curriculum the new house and great leaves are are components of the curriculum that are provided for students with disabilities if it's dictated in a student's individual education plan and deemed appropriate and effective for that student okay all right I also noticed that you had the new approach is we added two Specialists and I know I wrote you earlier today to just sort of get the job description

160of that in preparation for tonight because I was just curious what that role was so that was very helpful in understanding how they assist in the planning and they're doing professional development and doing various things and I think that's fabulous and needed I'm also those struck by our first grade teacher here who's an interventionist and I'm wondering um if we've made any additions to to instructional staff that are actually working with students be they interventionalist or maybe Tas and and how that is playing together if you can help me sort of understand because we do talk about and you spoke about tonight the importance of small group instruction differentiated instruction and I've been in a classroom it's hard to get around you know 20 25 kids and and meet all their individual needs so how

161can we can you talk to me a little bit more about what we're doing there and what you'd like to see sure yeah so as we have talked about I think recently there's been a board report about our multi-tiered system of support which includes our core our intervention and our specially designed instruction the relationship between those and then specifically what it looks like to be able to staff those and Implement that well in a school we have a series of focus area teams that are working in collaboration across our district to be able to make decisions and each of those teams is cross-departmental so for example I have the honor of working with our great teaching team and folks from different departments are coming together around great teaching so we have representation from various departments

162to be able to move work forward in a way that is just strategic and aligned across departments one new Focus area team is one is around academic performance so that we can look specifically at what it looks like to implement intervention effectively within schools what the needs are to do that and whether there are any uh obstacles and being able to do that well and and so I more more looking is going to be forthcoming particularly as we are returning in person as we are consistently assessing students to see what the need is and we're making determinations about whether a student needs their needs can be met through our Core Curriculum or whether a student needs intervention as well one thing I'm particularly attuned to is being really smart about that because when we move

163students into intervention I think sometimes we do that a little too early when the needs could be met during court during our during our core time if it's literally that a student hasn't had access to learning for a little while granting them access will support that well however we also don't want to misjudge that and deny students opportunity for intervention but in short looking at how that shows up and what schools need and noting that all school all schools may not need the same thing in terms of being able to provide that okay principal Rory would you be willing to talk about intervention how it shows up for you specifically and how you how you stack that in any needs you may have okay okay well hello everyone um I would take the Walk of

164Shame if I did not acknowledge my school uh Windsor Park a special place filled with special people doing special things and so Windsor Park Wildcats go they'll give me tomorrow if I didn't say it they'll say you didn't even recognize us um you know throughout this pandemic we did not want to allow covid to be the excuse as to why our kids cannot learn and at Windsor Park we really honed in on what our kids needed as a district we had to make sure they have food right so we did the Mills bundle programs we had to make sure that Health Care was important in their lives and that they were getting Dental appointments and doctor appointments even though businesses were closed and so the curriculum piece of things is something that we started last

165year and as a district and we made a commitment right we we made a big bet as superintendent Winston would say on this curriculum and so part of what we were doing we were making sure the child was okay we can access the child we can put eyes on the child but the curriculum at Windsor Park never took a back seat and the one thing that we realized is we we talked a lot tonight about what our students need and that is very important but we did not talk a lot about what our teachers need and we have to invest in our teachers and the district has done a great job of making sure professional development was available but every school is different and so at Windsor Park I wanted to make sure we customized

166what teaching and learning looks like for our teachers first because through their commitments our Learners will learn at high levels and so Barbara Truitt she is one of the Specialists that you actually spoke of that the district invested in she and I met and we created a professional development plan along with the cerebellum who's my instructional coach and Christina bye who will be at MCL next year at my school and she's a wonderful first grade teacher I think first grade teachers must be it all happens in first grade birds and all and we sat down and we decided you know it starts at the top so what professional development can you create for the principal and for the leadership team so that when we're walking into the class rooms and evaluating what we see we

167know what we're looking for and we know what learning should look like right because this curriculum is new and what is it that we did not give our teachers who were moved from one grade level to another grade level and maybe you know I would admit was not onboarded appropriately to this curriculum what can we do now in the middle of a pandemic right we don't want to overload teachers but we don't want to wait until next year because we're here and so we decided to put together end of year professional development and it has been amazing teachers are telling me that they wish that we had this at the beginning of the year Barbara Truitt has been so instrumental in making sure that we have resources that we need she comes and models for

168our teachers they're able to ask questions get clarity because teachers are not trying to not use the curriculum it's not that they're resisting it sometimes it's unfamiliar and they need to be comfortable with it and so that's what we're doing at our school and we're taking this all the way to the summer and back to the the new school year along with what the district is offering us but fine-tuning what we need at Windsor Park to make sure that our teachers feel successful because if they don't feel successful our kids will not feel successful and to make sure that our Learners feel successful at the end of the day so that's what we're doing at Windsor Park where it's a great day to be a wildcat thank you foreign business I'm hiring her to be

169my marketing person so I'm so glad I have just a couple more questions here but I'm so glad that you're taking that time to to invest in the teachers and finding out you know what they need and supporting them um because obviously there is the direct connect with with the students and along sort of the same lines I in earlier in your presentation Ms Thompson you talked about teachers uh need to have high expectations for their students and I guess along the lines of professional development as it relates to that like what can we say that we're doing to help teachers realize that and I know that they do in many ways but I think we can all be challenged to go higher I I worry sometimes that you know we could fall into sort

170of a as human beings all of us myself included a deficit mindset to look at some of our students from with various you know you know differences and maybe assume that they couldn't do it you know maybe they're an English language learner and they just arrived I mean how how can we through our professional development also make sure that we're touching base and checking in with when those things sort of seep in as humans yes so I think back to the slide that that has the arrows at the intersection of race power bias content standards and knowledge of children um in each of our professional development experiences with school leaders instructional leaders and with what we have called our direct to teacher professional development which I want to acknowledge in a pandemic has not been

171able to happen in person and so there's some impact of the work that we want to do around race power bias and acknowledging what we show up with and what we show up without and that every one of us shows up with mental models around how we look at people how we look at situations how we prejudge and or misjudge what we what we refer to those as are are discretionary spaces that we live in and we make discretionary moves or decisions based off of those and so right now I would say that we're in the awareness phase of being able to say hey when is that showing up for me and then how am I countering it so that it so that I don't give in to or lean into any bias that I

172may bring into a situation regarding a student or a fellow colleague um uh both were both professionally and out outside of that work as well so literally some of our professional development has been watching clips of video right of a classroom and just noting where are discretionary moves happening all along the way and it could be something as simple as I always start on the right hand side of the room when I go to support a student right right and that may not have anything to do with my view about race specifically it's just a predilection that I have right I always start to the right so Ms Sawyer is always getting my attention first and if something happens before I get to uh Miss Fowler then she may not be getting as much personalized

173attention from me as um as Miss Sawyer is so I think even things like that show up in terms of what how the written curriculum is it is actually enacted in a classroom and I hope there's an opportunity for teachers who are going through that learning to share yes um you know if I've had a revelation of you know if I could have gone back and taught that lesson differently now that having you know evaluated whatever that bias may be let me sort of admit that share that so that you know we can help others along the journey right I think that's that's really great and wise we were talking as we were waiting for this earlier about missing some of the opportunities for what we had last year in communities of practice and in

174it in being able to share and physically being able to to share with each other our experiences with it with the curriculum and I think that's a perfect example thank you just one last question I I know we talked about you know there's a transition for many instructors it was instructed a transitioned in a pandemic year um I know as as you know critiques have come up about the curriculum your department has been very responsive and trying to help instructors understand uh the implementation the the better what about for parents who may be critics or have questions like you know what recourse did they have I mean obviously they can talk to the teacher but I guess what I'm really asking is do you think as a district we're being receptive to that and also

175helping to guide them along you know to understand what the goal is and the the long-term play we have here if that makes sense I think that's a really great question I don't know I can't think of an instance in which a parent has reached out at least within our department and we've said we don't want to talk about this right like we typically want to but I think to your point what what that strikes me as something to continue to look at in terms of our next steps is that parents shouldn't have to and so what can we do to be able to support parents ability to access just as professional development we'd like to be able to access in an on-demand fashion how can we better support communication with parents around questions in

176the in the curriculum and the ability of both our school leaders our teachers and District staff to be able to to respond to those um I think is a goal that we can continue to Aspire to thank you for that yeah thank you okay so Ms ship and then Ms Byers Bailey um I thank you because you did answer a lot of my questions about professional development and I heard the word Fidelity in ensuring that all of the teachers throughout the district really will be uh setting high expectations for this level of work and learning um we've talked a lot about in intensive interventions and we also think about our students that have all this unfinished learning or that really are struggling what about uh we haven't heard about our AIG gifted TD students what

177does that curriculum look like for them how are we ensuring that we're moving these students and that we have what we need to to grow these Learners who are on track and you know above grade level what are we doing yeah absolutely I feel like that's a that's a whole other presentation if you ask for it we'll come back and do it um but it is so our Advanced Studies department has really done an incredible job of building resources both guidance for teachers but then also resources that currently live in canvas our learning management system so that when it comes time for that uh that skills block that students are all receiving the whole group instruction we want for them to all have it but in that next 45 minutes of skills block time if

178students are um are in need of additional enrichment in that space that they're able that teachers are able to provide that for them during that time and those resources are there to accompany the El education curriculum so that teachers aren't having to create all of that on their own that being said it's not necessarily scripted right so like teachers are still able to to back to those arrows right know the standards know the content know their children and then be able to make decisions about what's going to be in their best interest but those resources are there and we're going to continue to gather feedback and iterate those resources to continue to to improve them um over the course of time as we gain more of that feedback and experience with use of the curriculum

179because I think it's important that we're selling accelerating all of our students regardless to whether they certified TD gifted they're Catalyst kids their High Flyers as we would call them um and I think it's very important that we're doing that as well as we're remediating we talk about that a lot doing that intensive work but we also need to be moving them along to advance them as well uh somebody mentioned El curriculum and I wanted to mention are we still looking at some work that specifically fits those like Madeline calderon's work I don't know if you're familiar with that English English language Learners reading and also psyop I think we've used before how are we really looking at some intense uh within this curriculum some intense work for our El students sure so so similarly

180when we're implementing El there are resources for our AIG students their resources for English language learner students then there are also resources to support students with exceptionalities and students with unfinished instruction now say all that to say like for one teacher that's a lot to navigate right and I think what's beautiful and what we've highlighted tonight is that in many cases those resources and or strategies aren't always and don't always need to be different so what we saw to happen tonight is Lisa described some multi-sensory strategies that can support students who maybe are in need of additional intervention and what I heard was that they can also support English language Learners as well and can actually support it can support all Learners as a part of the of the Core Curriculum so what we're looking

181at is what are effective strategies that can support all Learners where do we need to augment in cases where students may need additional services but how do we do that in a way that helps teachers stay sane right because you can't make eight lesson plans for three blocks of literacy day in and day out every every single day so making sure that we leverage resources and keep things aligned strategically aligned where possible while still meeting the needs of all of our learners because when you have schools with a large large population and I think you want to speak to Fel students that is a that's the word get into this a little bit I also am an ell tutor for the district and um one thing that I'm really proud of is how the ell

182department at the district level has created resources for ESL teachers and our ell Learners and so for example we have our skills block we're in cycle 21 right now first grade but the Ells department has created a through Book Creator which is a program and it is given by the district to ESL teachers a whole library of resources that are specifically supplement that cycle for ell Learners and so the district is working really hard to make sure that those Learners are supported um also I am on a PLC at the district level because I hope to create first grade content that we push out actually miss Dale and I we work closely together and so we do that together and we recently had someone from our ell Department join our PLC so now we get

183to collaborate and work together to make sure that the needs of all of our students are bad I think and I found that those strategies work a lot of times like you're saying they work for all students that we're identifying a group that we need but we can find that English language Learners some of those same strategies all of our students that are struggling with reading needs absolutely I find myself in my classroom some of the things that I do with my ell students and my tutoring I'll take it right back to my students because it's good teaching and good teaching is good teaching thank you um before I turn to Ms Byers Bailey I just want to do a little translating for the lay public because we use a lot of special language so

184ell is English language learner you got it ESL is English as a second language you got it um what else AIG is academically and intellectual intellectually gifted yes PLC is professional Learning Community you've got it and I said TD talent development you got it yeah and El is Expeditionary Learning which is the curriculum that's correct not to be confused that's right okay Ms Byers Bailey TV [Laughter] thank you I've heard a lot tonight about professional development for teachers I didn't hear a lot about professional development for principals what what are how has that enhanced what is happening for our students because the print the teacher affects the students that's in her classroom or his classroom but the principle affects all the students in the school so how has that played how how has El played

185into making bringing our principles better at or bringing them on board with this program they talk about that I feel like hearing it from her perspective is probably the most valuable so that's a great question because as a principal I need to know what I'm looking for right and what success looks like for our Learners and for our teachers and so during our principal meetings we have breakout groups where we will receive professional development um on different components of the El curriculum right sometimes we focus on the modules sometimes we focus on skills blocks um and sometimes we just focus on the overall meaning of the EO curriculum even envisions as well so we have multiple opportunities to sign up for professional development I could just pick up the phone and I can have someone

186on the other line to come into my school and to give my leadership team and myself a specific professional development which is what we're doing right now through the El department and Barbara Truett right and we sit down and we unpack just like teachers on what is it that we're looking for when we're walking into the classroom right so yes it's about birds but what specifically should we hear what language should we hear to understand that students are actually learning right and that teaching and learning is taking place at a high level so we definitely have that is there room for improvement absolutely absolutely there's room for improvement and this El curriculum did not come without let me just say we went round for rental sometimes with teachers um because this was new and teachers

187were always allowed to kind of put together uh lessons that they felt were appropriate for their students and now we're saying no no no no we're going to use research vetted material and resources and so since we have that we have to make sure as a principal or as leaders in a building we're able to assess what teachers are actually teaching and students are actually learning so that's a great question there's always room for improvement I know this summer we will be packed with different opportunities to attend professional development online and I'm sure the district will also offer in-person services for principals as well so that's a great question and of course there's still more work to be done but the district has provided us with professional development opportunities and I have a mentor that

188I can lean on as a second year principal and I contact miss little so shout out to miss Marita little my mentor and she's an expert as well in the El curriculum and she goes through things with me I have questions about what I saw in the classroom and what do you think about this miss little and we kind of just brainstorm and walk through this work together so literally we're instructional leaders and I love that about being a principal because I'm able to collaborate with teachers and we're working side by side and it's not just a valuative I'm going in as a coach as well coaching my teacher and even one of my students said to my teacher I didn't know you had a coach Miss Reyes your coach to uh Mr Bridger one

189of my fourth grade math teachers and he said yeah Miss Ray's here just like me because the T the students saw us interacting and me asking him questions about what was happening in the classroom so yes we do we do have the PD and of course more is always me it right I think one one more question for me um you know we've had this all virtual then we had in person and virtual and then we had the teacher doing virtual and in person at the same time how has all of that compounded but you were trying to accomplish with the eel whoa so they're eight changes correct eight eight eight eight eight eighty eight um here's what we know change was happening but we always tried to keep the focus on our Learners and

190what they needed we went from some classes being hybrid classes and let me tell you I stopped a lot of those classes from happening because it wasn't working sometimes kids were sitting in front of teachers and a screen was in front of the kid and I'm like oh this is not how it should be where are the manipulatives what are the things that really makes teaching and learning great and so we had to reevaluate a lot of what we've done so some teachers became full remote teachers um some teachers became became in-person teachers and I have a teacher who's a master teacher at um hybrid learning and the district is bringing people in and out of her classroom as we speak because she's mastered what that looks like and so she's also coaching for other

191classes to be hybrid classes but we had to take we had to take a few steps back because we did lose a lot of our Learners I can't imagine being five and being online for four five six hours right and your com the teachers competing with what what is it Paw Patrol the new whatever's on yes there you go um what's on television or what's happening in the house right because every environment was not set up or is not set up for many of our Learners to be successful right they don't sometimes they don't have a quiet spot that they can learn and so the teacher is competing with that and so to have a teacher have kids in front of her and on the computer it was like torture if not mastered and so

192we pulled back on a lot of that and the canvas resources that the district has provided us with we use those right during independent time but we also went back to like you said the old right sometimes you have to have the manipulatives right in front of the child paper pencil who knew how valuable paper and pencil was right to teaching and learning kids used to be sick of it and now teachers are like I can actually see their writing because virtually that was almost impossible unless you have white boards or something that they can actually really gravitate towards and teachers can actually help the child with the writing so it has been a task but it has actually made us greater I think it made us more Innovative more creative I see teachers doing

193things that they've never done before and they're very proud of the work that they're doing now and the kids are so grateful just to be back in school it's like the honeymoon is all year it's really great and so it has been a task but it also has taught us to be resilient and it showed us how strong we are as a district and how strong we are as leaders and as teachers in the building thank you thank you Mr strain so I think this has been a great study in identifying an opportunity maybe a problem statement and kind of peel the onion understanding what the contributing factors were and and really attacking those contributing factors to come up with a better result for our kids and if I if I think about that that's

194what we need to be doing every day right through continuous Improvement identifying those opportunities and going to do this and I guess my question is a little bit of how did we get here not from a perspective of you know let's go drag up the past but how do we make sure that these things are coming to light as early as possible so that we can address them I I think the way that we monitor the effectiveness of what we're doing on a consistent basis and then are able to assess the ultimate impact and that's a learning curve I've had as well I think we use the term leading and lagging indicators and how we're consistently using the leading indicators and being wise about which leading indicators were tracking to make sure that those are

195going to be the most aligned to the direct the end the end game what the impact is that we want to see candidly it is much more possible now that we're using consistent resources across our school than it has been in the past because when we're not using the same resources at different schools then the leading and lagging the leading indicators are different across schools potentially based off of the resources that schools are using and yet we're all trying to get to to the same the same end results so I think we're poised in the ability to to Rally around resources start from a place that the resources are gonna our standards aligned that we're on the interstate together right we're not driving back roads and then putting kids on an interstate inspecting expecting them

196to be successful and we're able to speak a Common Language use common resources and together like principal Ray spoke about in terms of a Content specialist coming out with her and walking a classroom side by side to look to look to see what instruction is happening and when it wasn't happening making changes right there on the spot we're much better poised to do that because of the consistency uh in in what we're using in our district at this point in time yeah appreciate that and certainly with two 16 year olds myself I'm tracking it's life in your own but you got to get on the interstate at some point but I will say that those two 16 year olds are also in different places as well yes right picking up on Miss sheep Miss ships

197um questions and and the references to the fact that all of our kids are at a little different place you know I I often talk about making sure that we understand where they are meet them and give them the opportunity to fly as high as they can every day right we used to talk about that a lot in this district and so as we move to the standardized curriculum understanding that we've still got to have the sort of Standards aligned curriculum but apply that and that degree of personalization is critical to meeting the individual needs of the student I agree I agree 100 and I think we have continued work to be able we had continued work to do that anyway but we continued work to be able to do that we speak of it

198in terms of implementing with Fidelity which would be everyone reads the same words every single day the same lesson versus implementing with Integrity which is we're going to use the same tools and resources resources to ensure standards alignment and we're going to make sure that the knowledge of children that Arrow at the bottom is is Central and critical to what we're able to do to make sure students are getting what they need thank you for that thank you okay I'm the last question um oh I see Dr Jones has another question some years ago uh Brian Kingsley and I I had a conversation along these lines and I want to say thank you to him he's not a lot of this initiative um he he had conversation we had conversation about and I am glad

199to see that it's moving forward and it looks like it will be a successful modeled so there are so many slides yes done a fantastic job of presenting there there are so many slides within this report tonight that he he led our district through you are 100 right about that so thank you much gratitude to him and he's built a strong team um so first of all thank you for um acknowledging that what we were doing before wasn't working we're here to figure out how to close achievement gaps and for a while there what we were doing was causing achievement gaps to grow so I'm glad we caught that finally and you've taken steps to um to turn that around and um and I am really interested in as a similar to Mr strain interested

200in how we're going to measure that progress along the way in the spirit of continuous Improvement because surely we were going to learn things along the way and need to make some adjustments so that that's just one comment that I wanted to make another comment um on the slide when you talked about El education and um the the fact that the curriculum presents realistic portrayal of history and or contemporary life experience avoids glossing over controversial topics such as discrimination or Prejudice and I do think that's that's a real strength um I think that that is you know there's a lot of evidence that students learn best when they see themselves they can relate to the studies and um and and kids are ready kids are ready for those controversial topics I believe more so than

201than a lot of us realize um but I do want to also acknowledge that there was a bit of a glitch there during the pandemic where El actually removed some modules that they thought would be too controversial to teach remotely and I just remember we had there was some controversy about that a few months ago so I just wanted to acknowledge that um I mean I think it it was a glitch could I speak to that real quickly yeah I think and I think as we were working through that with with folks who expressed that concern there's a first edition of el and there's a second edition of El I think that when we announced that some modules were going to be removed due to the pandemic some of what stakeholders were lifting as concerns

202were actually not a part of second edition modules they were a part of first edition modules so it was a perfect example of where a concern was raised and we were able to actually like deepen understanding around what we are teaching and what we're not teaching some of the specific changes that El made between the first edition and the second edition was to ensure that across a K-8 Continuum of learning that students aren't seeing or experiencing modules or texts consistently that show anybody's particular experience as one of only strife and so that the first edition was basically building upon some of the some of the feedback that had come with with that the second edition was building on feedback that had come in that space the decision around modules to be removed actually didn't didn't

203take away anything culturally it literally was we went through the standards and said which standards can we integrate into other modules so I just I want to lift that to make sure that there is particularly for the stakeholders with whom we worked around that that there's not um we're not going back on anything that we uncovered in that in that space yeah I really appreciate that I'm so glad that we had a chance to talk about that tonight um and I'm looking for the slide okay here um I'm glad you brought up SB 387 um in the talking about the science of reading and I am curious how it I mean it you you've alluded to it that this aligns with the new law that the governor the new bill that the governor just signed

204into law but I just wanted to confirm that or I don't know if you can elaborate on that I'm sure that your team has studied the legislation yeah there's some um yeah yes I would say we are ahead of the curve in that we're not scrambling to meet any requirements that the state is making around the way we teach early literacy we're we're ahead of that right um so that's fantastic um the second thing I would lift as a part of Senate Bill 387 that I think is really critical and we were talking about this as we were preparing as well is that it includes the requirement that is a part of teacher preparation that teachers receive learning in science of reading specifically so in other words if if a teacher is coming to us

205with a K-5 degree they have received as a part of their teacher preparation program science of reading that has not always been the case and there will be an opportunity from the state funded for our pre-k through third grade teachers to be able to receive robust professional development in science of reading um and we look forward to more information from the state about how that will how that will show up when that will show up in all of the above but there's some components that will deepen and augment our work but we are we are ahead of the game in terms of being able to meet those requirements which feels really good yeah that's great thank you um and then Camp CMS will El will all of this flow into Camp CMS or will Camp

206CMS be kind of a break from all of this we will the the the fixed finite component of what we need for students to know and be able to do does not change over the summer so we will we will continue we will continue that work we are currently in the process of making sure that we have instructional expectations stations for this summer so I don't want to get ahead of the collaborative work that we're doing with with our school leaders and across our departments but what I can assure you is is that we will continue the work that we've been discussing here in terms of early literacy and we have we've looked nationally at resources from achieve the core student achievement Partners to identify what the priority standard skills and practices are if we

207only have six weeks this summer how do we make sure that we get the absolute most bang for our buck out of those six weeks knowing we can't replicate an entire school year but that we're really strategic about what it is we do with students that will set them up for the the most success as we enter the 21-22 school year in other words there are some standards that students could could start school next year and be be okay with that we could continue to work on there are other standards and and pieces we gotta we gotta make sure happen and specific to early literacy there's a sequence within which students need to learn that and so we need to we need to know that part of what we'll be doing with our K2 students

208to finish out the year is a standards-based report card we do that historically we have modified that so that we can get the microphase data for students and know which sounds and skills they're working on so we don't have to spend a week of the six weeks over the summer trying to figure that out that information will carry with students who are able to participate in our summer program interesting okay thank you and so you know that makes me think about how the summer program is is funded by by coveted recovery dollars and I'm probably not I'm not using there's so many acronyms for different buckets of federal funding so I'll just call it coveted recovery dollars Federal Federal funding um and and we do we know that our students in varying degrees have a

209lot of Unfinished learning to catch up on um and we also know that covid hit um impacted some of our students much more so than others and so I know we're concerned that those gaps may have widened due to the pandemic and so I'm just so relieved that we have these strategies in place and these resources in place already to accelerate our way out of out of that it's just that the pandemic we needed to do this anyways and the pandemic made it even more urgent and and so I'm saying all this thinking about the budget Workshop that we have coming up in two days where we're talking about you know we've got our ongoing needs our ongoing expenses um and then we've got this Federal infusion of dollars which are finite um cut off

210at 2024 so we don't want to use that for ongoing expenses but we do want to be strategic and get as much bang for our buck for this stuff that we're doing already and so I guess Camp CMS is an example of that and I know your team is already thinking about what do we use the federal funds for versus what's an ongoing expense that we would have had before and that we will have many years after um so it's just a little bit of an editorial comment I guess yeah I I think yes similar to looking at standards and strategies and skills and all of the above how do we get the deepest impact over the course of the next three years that quite honestly can live beyond those three years right they can

211support heavily in the time that we need it but um you know areas like professional development are building capacity of folks Beyond those three years to be able to be able to better support us in years to come right [Laughter] okay thank you and we look forward to coming back maybe sometime again to talk outside of K2 right thank you so much thanks Madam chair can I just say a closing remark here before our uh Team departs um I I know this was a lengthy report um but I think you will acknowledge um or you could see that it was worthwhile and that it was an important report because it reflects the work that our team is doing and I know that uh oftentimes when we're out in the community we hear the same comment

212that if you keep doing the same thing you're going to get the same results and so hopefully as a result of the presentation by our Rock Star team uh who's here with us and others um who are not hopefully you will have a better understanding of the work that's being done and you can't feel more or better equipped to say well let me tell you about some of the changes that have been made to improve student outcomes and um and so I just wanted to lift that up and also you have a better understanding now of the Investments we talk about Big Ben this being our big bet you have a better understanding of some of the Investments that are being made and that will continue um to be made because we do have to

213expand this work to other grade levels so thank you all again uh for your incredible work thank you uh for the leadership uh Dr Hayes and I think Mr Kingsley stepped out uh but uh there's an Italian entire team responsible uh for this and just wanted to thank you all and did Mr I saw your hand I'm sorry I just wanted to say and you've kind of superintendent once and kind of did that too and it's so important we've talked a lot about resources and materials but it's the investment in you all the people so I hope that we continue to understand how it's important that we invest in people we put the money in making sure we have the best to do this work and so I think we have to continue to talk

214about investing in you and what you need in the people so I want to think because you were you know saying that that it's so important that we thank you for the work that you're doing but we continue to invest in people in our staff so as we look at resources materials we need to look at who's teaching it who's doing it you all of the you bring the secret sauce to the table for the kids I think somebody said that right so thank you yeah because like Miss Byers Bailey was saying it's the teachers affect the students in the classroom and the principals and the students throughout the school so we absolutely need to invest in and the training and the support and the the pay pay for our people for our people yeah

215thank you okay um so next we have a more brief report and I'm going to turn to the superintendent for the accountability management oversight report thank you madam chair um I will um introduce uh and he doesn't need an introduction but uh Dr Frank Barnes our chief Equity officer who is here to bring forth our management oversight report on accountability and so as we get teed up I wanted to call on Dr Barnes to share with us his uh brief report good evening Madam chair members of the board and I will note that the superintendent introduced me by saying brief report [Laughter] like in comparison so I want to just acknowledge that thank you Mr superintendent but you know but I will be brief I'm joined by two fabulous principals who I will introduce shortly

216but uh the office of accountability is made up of 29 individuals who I would say collectively make us what I would say if not the best one of the best offices of accountability in the country I want to acknowledge specifically uh the people who I get to co-lead and co-serve with and that would include Jennifer Bauer who leads our state and federal testing team Kelly Cunningham who leads our data use for school Improvement team also known by its beautiful acronym doozy uh Dr Lindsey messenger who's our research evaluation analytics director also known as Ria a person who leads our data quality efforts Dr Charles monpower and my co-partner in crime who is an exceptional leader and a privilege to be able to serve them who manages supports and pushes in each of these teams Daniel

217Miller who is exceptional and I'm glad that she's part of our team as well but these 29 individuals work together towards a common Mission something we've talked to you about this last spring president to you that we seek to provide accurate and timely information research and resources to facilitate data informed decisions on behalf of our students and Families Our vision is that we want to provide the services tools supports and solutions to be able to catalyze action to both increase improve improvement in our district increase achievement and close gaps that's what we're here to do so although we work with numbers and figures and reports we really hear about kids and kids outcomes collectively our work focuses on five functions these aren't new to you these were presented last spring so I will go over

218them quickly and briefly as I want to set the stage for kind of what our work culminates in so let's start with data collection customarily what we do is we oversee state and federal testing to be able to collect data now there's also data that other people collect teachers help collect attendance data administrators help collect data around suspensions or or incidents in our schools but we focus on being able to to gather data about what our students know and can do on standardized summative assessments as well as universal screeners as well as their processions of their school environments and even of their own Wellness we want to be able to see into our schools to help us get better every day this past year as you know in the spring we didn't have our assessments

219but this fall we did and we worked side by side with our testing coordinators and our principals and our teachers to administer assessments as students were coming in our high schools came into our buildings for the first time we also work with our teachers who had to learn to do something that none of us had done which is administer Universal screener data remotely helping families take those assessments remotely and then as we were transitioning to hybrid and in-person instruction do the same work for some students at home and some students write in person in our schools we also are ministering different surveys this spring in addition to what we did in the fall we'll be administering a CMS climate survey we'll be able to look at student wellness for the spring to look at how

220that data for our students look compared to the fall through our Panorama partnership being able to provide Solutions such as our camp CMS registration in partnership with our academics and Equity office and as well as just being able to get insight into what our teachers think about how we're doing with our curriculum as we collect those data whether it be in the classroom or centrally we then process those data we organize and classify it so it can be usable and accessible by multiple audiences internal to our school district and external as well on an annual basis we create reports and dashboards and ensure that there's a nightly processing where the data can be as up to date as it possibly can be based on when we collected the types of things we produce are internal

221CMS Navigator portal just this past year in preparation with this report we did an analysis of kind of how often it was used and just in this past year was used over 1 million times by over 8 100 users being hit by over 3 200 times a day certainly we have a hunger in CMS for data and our teachers our administrators our principals and our central office leaders utilize the portal it's particular this particular tool that has helped to ease their use to be able to see what's going on in their schools but as we work this year this being a year like no other we work to make sure that we're meeting the immediate needs that this pandemic in particular presented and just to support our schools in navigating the things that this pandemic

222presented we created over 63 reports specific to the pandemic one particular report started out in the right hand corner as something that was just a spreadsheet looking at who was in which rotation A B C or D D being formed Academy eventually that report and I shouldn't say eventually very quickly that spreadsheet became a report that was updated nightly that would allow you to drill down to specific students disaggregate those data across race grade and a particular program these are the types of reports we made for the pandemic and the tax reports we have on an annual basis for our schools to use to support students and Families we also recognize we need to not just be a data Rich organization or we need to be an information Rich organization so our team Works to

223create information out of that data to create Clarity to create context great transparency and if we're really effective to provide data that's revelatory that helps you see something that you wouldn't have seen just by looking at the numbers we make those reports in several different areas but we work and we also work to provide research and work either our doing our own specific research with our analysts or being able to partner with outside organizations to provide even more insight into the operation of our organization specifically this last year we've adopted as a district this plan do check at process this plan do check that process this is something that we've started about the central office working our way through schools this is to be a way of working a Cadence for us to always continuously

224improve our office works with two and one and you could say three specific areas the plan the Act and the checking the next time I'm before you which will be in a couple of weeks we'll be talking about kind of how we did over third quarter as part of our check process so we can act and continually improve as we go throughout the school year the types of information we provide through different dashboards reports executive summaries address a number of different areas from literacy mathematics out of school suspensions student attendance student enrollment student absenteeism just to name a few things to help us to be able to see how we're doing as a school district some of these data are rendered on a daily or nightly basis some of them were able to report reports

225monthly or quarterly and some of them are annual reports all of them are used in the spirit of continuous Improvement along this plan do check act process information sharing once we create the information we want to push it out into schools into our departments even to you to be able to make policy managerial administrative and instructional decisions each of these things we've been doing even during the pandemic providing trainings and facilitating sessions to look at data to help make meaning of what these data say or how we can support schools how we can support individual students and how we can support groups of students and we've continued that work even through the pandemic adopting new tools and strategies to be able to do that even though our team has continued to work remotely but all

226of it should culminate in action action that makes us better action that makes us reflective action that makes us think about how do we do things differently and in some instances how do we continue to do the things that have been working for particular groups of students but I thought it'd be best as we met as a as a leadership team to say what would be the best way to talk about the action and this is where a view from a school would be helpful and I want to introduce two leaders who will be talking to you today one is Kathy Phelan the principal at Sharon Elementary School and the second is Miss Wendy Harris who's at Trillium Montessori I think both of them are going to talk about their work and how we support

227their work and with that we'll close and take questions I want to hand things over to them superintendent Winston the board and Dr Barnes thank you very much for asking me to visit this evening to share with you how we've used data at Sharon Elementary School and the work and help that we have received from the DC team over the years they've been able to come out to our school to provide targeted instruction for our teachers they've been extremely willing to work around our schedules they come in the afternoons they stay with us online during Zoom meetings and they also attend our team planning sessions when available and we've been very fortunate too that they've been attending our ntss meetings when we've asked the Fantastic part about the Ducey team is that they've worked with

228us by providing a school-wide data training they've worked specifically with the grade levels based off of their needs and questions and they never get tired of our questions that they're very patient with us they sit with our ntss team to help us drill into the data to make sure that we're using a universal screeners appropriately for the tiered plans that we need to present for our children and follow through with our interventions and then in the past when we've had in class or iStation they've always been willing to come out work with us on that data as well we've been working with them to learn more about evos and how that affects our school and also in the past we've worked with them on the instructional planning approach throughout the years they've offered training for

229student for staff to be able to go to the instructional planning approach sessions during the summer and then they follow up during the school year and the sessions tend to be about three days we dive deeply into the data we look at how we're planning to be able to address the needs of our students based off the data that we are looking at and all the different data points from the Navigator portal which has been a great tool for us and then we were able to use protocols that they provide for us that we can adapt to all the curriculum so with the with the instructional planning approach protocols being curriculum agnostic when we change curriculum or something is adapted we're able to adapt this protocols to meet our needs so it's extremely useful and

230it provides us as many tools that we can use year after year and that we feel comfortable with which helps us spend more time on planning and meeting the needs of our students so I do want to thank Dr Barnes for the time that they've spent with us over the years they're always patient even in the pandemic they've been on Zoom calls with us they've come to several of our staff meetings over Zoom they've held separate sessions with us to make sure that our questions were being answered that we felt comfortable using the data that we were presented with and that moving forward that we're able to present that information to parents to help them better understand their children's needs so as a principal and an educator I am so thankful to be able to

231have those services and I wouldn't know what to do moving forward without the services so we're very thankful for the time they spend with us and the patients that they have when we have many questions so thank you Miss Harris thank you Dr Barnes good evening CMS Board of Education and superintendent Winston I'm Wendy Harris the proud principal of Trillium Springs Montessori home of the most incredible staff family I'd like to first start by acknowledging and paying respect to the traditional natives of the land we are on today the sugary and Catawba people second I'd like to genuinely thank you CMS Board of Education members for supporting the Montessori approach in our Public School District giving more families with diverse backgrounds access to a different way of learning that strengthens their ability to overcome obstacles

232on the pathway to becoming change agents it's with great excitement that I share with you this the support received from the Ducey team through the office of accountability over the past three years so Montessori relies heavily on qualitative observation and anecdotal data while following the child through four planes of development in multi-grade classrooms for a two to three year period at a time as a Montessori School in a public school district with a high level of accountability and during an unprecedented school year with so many changes and unknowns Trillium was fortunate to take advantage of support provided by the Ducey team to learn more about strengthening the core instruction through the study of both qualitative and quantitative data simultaneously so in 2018 as a first year on principal I knew I needed support from experts

233when my school Improvement plans comprehensive assessment indicated the need to establish high functioning plcs of teacher leaders planning Montessori and standards aligned instruction um so if you've ever seen that in in uh in person it's very it's a lot of hard work um and it takes um some wonderful Montessori teachers that are well trained um to do it the Ducey team provided training on the instructional planning approach to all of our teachers around the core belief that highly effective planning and consistent sorry consistent planning and instruction are the key levers to improving student achievement in the district no matter if you're traditional or magnet as a result of the IPA training our plcs have advanced every year in their professional performance using research-based best practices and protocols to unpack the content in a way that

234moves the dial with the students helping them meet or even exceed their projected growth as we continued our partnership on into 2019 I discovered the need for our teacher leaders in the admin team to learn more about school Improvement goal setting and planning while studying the learning Pathways of all of our students the Ducey team sharpened our professional skills through work sessions in analyzing multiple data points from our District's balanced assessment system such as using map evos and NC check-ins so as a result of the coaching sessions our plc's improved in the areas of analyzing student work identifying gaps in student achievement across grade levels in multi-grade classrooms implementing best practices for stronger core instruction and identifying developmentally appropriate interventions for mtss students and the practice of the beautiful practice of content modeling for teachers

235by teachers so last but not least it brings me great pleasure to share that my partnership with the Ducey team continued through the 2020-21 school year during the pandemic with Specialists stepping in to support me through one of the most challenging school years ever My ultimate goal was to make sure my students and staff were safe at all times while also simultaneously creating a plan to capture student growth at a time when most thought it would be impossible to do um so given that the Ducey team supported me um with a year-long plan of principal coaching sessions and admin team and teacher leader leader data Deep dive sessions virtually through Zoom my teachers have thoroughly enjoyed figuring out ways to leverage best practices that could be replicated across grade levels and that was for the

236purpose of the students mastering the content in the most creative ways during the pandemic so I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to share about a partnership that I am most proud of given the unique circumstances and many challenges I have faced on this school year and many thanks to the office of accountability Dr Barnes and his team for continuous and unwavering support in prioritizing trillium's teaching and learning outcomes so thank you so much for allowing me to share our partnership with you today gonna just interject for one second to put on my translator hat and do see Team I think that means data is it data used for school Improvement do USI okay all right that's a new one thank you thank you and I do want to thank Miss Harrison's

237family for their time and their servant leadership in our district but I want to say again on behalf of 29 exceptional Educators researchers analysts Enterprise data Architects uh just great servant leaders for our district thank you for the opportunity to served that we want to see our district Thrive sometimes we get to share good news sometimes the data we provide isn't the best news and we have to provide that with boldness and Clarity and honesty and that's what we seek to do but we want to thank you for the opportunity to serve and we welcome your questions and I want to thank these two exception leaders and their teachers who do the hard work we get to support them doing the real work or hard work all of it's real but I want to support

238them for doing the work with our kids Marshall and I'm just I know we're going to hear more about the data collection that has been so hard this year the accountability piece all the testing that we do that we are mandated to do by our federal and state government and I know we're going to hear more about that as we go on and tonight is not the time to get into the deep dive questions about that but can you um speak just a little bit about sort of an overall framework I know we we had started map testing remotely for elementary students in the fall and that certainly was very very difficult and not very accurate but sort of what we've seen pick up and what we might what does parents can just sort of

239expect on a high level knowing we're going to get down into some more data I mean it to more some more details as the semester goes on surely and hopefully I understand your question kind of what parents can expect so so we've we did the map testing remotely in the fall we're not doing that now unless you're on full remote correct thanks so we value the screener that we do as part of read to achieve requirements we have to provide that type of screener three times a year K through three beginning of your middle year and end of year parents can expect K-8 to be able to take have that map assessment be taken if students are in person they should experience that in person if they are remote they should expect to experience that

240remotely in addition to that those assessments we're now coming up to the end of your assessment season though the U.S Department of Education has granted a waiver to this from some elements of every student succeeds act for the state of North Carolina they have not have not waived the requirement that we administer those assessments to our students and so if you are in third through eighth grade you should expect to take the English language arts and Mathematics assessment if you are in fifth grade or eighth grade that is expect their students to also take the Science assessment in the high school grades and this could be through for some middle school students you know four and of course uh courses that offer an assessment math one now math three English two and biology as well

241some students will choose to take advanced placement exams which we'll be offering a window coming up in early May and there'll be a makeup opportunity if there's a conflict with either really this holiday or something else that comes up for a student those are all things parents should be expecting okay that's good to know and so I think that's that's one of the things we're going to be starting the week of May 10th there'll be a lot of information coming at that point but but that's that's what's ahead of us yes ma'am so we need we need to know we talked last um in our last report about assessment and we need to know where we are and I don't want um folks to think that everything we do is high stakes we just we

242need we need to take the temperature and I think that's what this is designed to do and again trying to pull the high stakes piece out of it so we know what we're dealing with yes ma'am thank you you're welcome we questioned out um I have a few questions um but not too many of them here um just first and not a question just an observation that um you know when the slide we talked about the continuous Improvement plan do check act it's I mean all four elements are important but the checking and the acting are what I'm at this point in time most um focused on I guess um and I think that's the case for a lot of our board members so I just wanted to share that um and when you talked

243about student Week information creation some of the work you've been doing you said student week designations is that talking about which students go to school which week when we were rotating is that what that means yes ma'am that's exactly what that means thank you I'm sorry for that wasn't clear on my part no no it's okay that's why that's why we have q a um the remote you talked about remote learning student feedback reports is that um is that just basically where we get feedback from students as to how remote learning was working for them yes we would did that work intensively in the spring and then we we begin to incorporate as we administer other assessments Incorporated some questions to be able to get some more insight to what that experience was like I'm

244excited that well excited I'm eager to learn what students perspectives will be as we're administering this next survey around student wellness um it's actually not a server it's a screener with our partner Panorama to be able to see kind of where they're at with that it creates a lot of very specific user-friendly reports for schools to be able to support students around whether their level of efficacy or their level of stress around kind of schoolwork and what their experience has been during this remote or hybrid period and the Panorama screamer screener is K through 12 right yes ma'am um but these other feedback reports what grade ranges were they would have been grades five through twelve five through twelve okay yeah I'll be really curious to I know we all be really curious to see

245what what the district learns from those screeners and reports um those are my questions so thank you thank you and thank you principals for sharing the real world examples of of how this supports you and um and thank you for just taking the time tonight to be here because we know how how hard you're working right now and have been all year and Dr Barnes the the data that that your team um pulls together is like I don't know how to what metaphor to use it's like the it's like the the blood vessel system of the district so yeah so just yeah thank you so much for the work that you do we we just need to our job as board members is to keep a real Keen Eye on the data that that you're

246producing so thank you so much thank you thank you all right and now I'm going to turn to the superintendent for your report thank you madam chair and board members I have just a few items that I wanted to highlight as part of my report I am pleased to begin my report by sharing information about yesterday which for the first time was an opportunity for us to return all of our students whose families wanted to return for in-person learning in grades K-12 to plan a and I know we will not provide an in-depth metrics review tonight but we did provide an afternoon walk through online and that information is available online for all of those who want to be able to review that but I am also pleased to just share some information from the

247first two days of this week and I wanted to start with transportation uh so we are operating 939 uh buses daily and currently just over 62 000 students are assigned to buses now prior to April the 12th prior to yesterday there were approximately 57 000 students who were assigned to buses it was not necessary for us to add any buses to our Fleet for our April 12th return students were assigned to existing uh bus runs that had the needed room and the easing of the 24 students per bus with middle and high school students facilitated this as well so that was a plus for us as far as our on-time arrival for this morning our on-time arrival was 98 percent um and it was 94 percent the afternoon of yesterday so the 12th um we

248saw 94 so you can see the gradual The Continuous Improvement there I do want to highlight that there were three middle schools Alexander South Charlotte and elmar Road who each uh have one bus that is nearing capacity um our area transportation managers and are monitoring this and they will make the adjustments uh to move one or two uh stops to other buses with more space so we're we're monitoring that situation we do have uh 10.5 driver vacancies and we're actively recruiting uh through various uh driver events um I want to spend a moment uh talking about school nutrition we heard from one of our principals who talked about that is one of our important needs that we serve in regards to families so our meal bundle program continues on each Wednesday for those in full

249remote Academy and children who are under 18 years old who attend remote learning on that day as of tomorrow as of tomorrow April the 14th our meal bundle sites will be reduced from 32 to 18 to consolidate in kitchens that have the space for the meal bundle programs as well as the return of additional in-person students double Mill bundles will be distributed the last Wednesday of the school year and we're working on plans for summer based on our summer programming sites which have yet to be determined it does give me great pleasure as I shift topics I wanted to share some information about an important topic that I know is top of mind for many of our high school families and Educators and that is our plans for graduation this year um and so you

250all will recall that last year the pandemic unfortunately interrupted our traditional graduation plans and so it replaced them with uh in-person graduation ceremonies uh it replaced the in-person graduation ceremonies with virtual ceremonies and drive through the diploma pickups and while these virtual events were Innovative Innovative and successful I know that board members attended them we long for a time where we move back to our traditional graduations and so this year as things are improving we wanted to offer our students their families and friends an opportunity to celebrate uh this amazing accomplishment and life event um with our graduating seniors so we had a graduation committee uh which included a diverse group of principal staff leaders uh who have explored a variety of options and while they have monitored uh the reopening of schools businesses and

251different venues across our community this committee began exploring the viability of Hosting in-person graduations that resembled the traditional graduations that I spoke of just a few moments ago and there were a number of factors that the committee uh considered as it relates to the health and safety of our staff our students and our community while also analyzing the operational details and some of those details included the number of Ceremonies that would need to be held for all CMS graduates to attend with their guest present to celebrate this special accomplishment there were governing rules and guidelines and the we also had to look at the availability of venues considering our traditional large venues that we have used as well as school auditoriums gymnasiums and stadiums while focusing on the ability to social distance and capacity restrictions

252and so finally we also analyzed the importance of providing security needs at you know both our CMS and our city county law enforcement partners and so with a number of school uh facility possibilities that we looked at um there were some challenges that were involved um as part of that consideration we were limited to 19 available outdoor stadiums for 32 graduation ceremonies we also ran into the fact that we lacked the availability of stages and chair rentals due to other graduations and other events that are taking place in the areas capacity for students and and staff and guests and so the need to be able to split up uh graduation ceremonies at different schools was another uh challenge particularly for our larger schools and then also the risk of severe weather if events were held

253outside in outdoor stadiums and the concern learned that that brought with having to potentially reschedule events if we experience severe weather and then the complex security needs and so the graduation committee brought forth a recommendation which I support and I wanted to share that uh with you tonight and members of our listening public and that is to return to in-person graduation ceremonies at uh three venues Bojangles Coliseum Ovens Auditorium and the Charlotte Convention Center for the 2021 graduating class all of the ceremonies will be live streamed so they can be viewed remotely and we will have attendance requirements and that will be limiting for each graduate we'll have a limit of two guests and then also there'll be a limit on the number of Staff members who will be able to attend from each school

254and I will tell you that every effort was made to keep posted graduation dates and time times as previously stated but we did need to make some adjustments to what had been posted previously in order to accommodate all of our students and our guests and so I did just want to share that with you all I know that's an important announcement um and I just wanted to lift that up now I'm going to acknowledge that um it is difficult to follow up uh such joyous news um with such heartbreak but I must share some thoughts about some tragic events that have unfolded here and throughout our country and as we continue to feel the impacts of the relatively um a new Culvert pandemic a pandemic of much larger duration continues to influence our lives and

255those of our fellow community members and of course we are all I'm sure following the events making news Nationwide but unfortunately we don't have to look very far to see some tragedies on our own doorsteps and it seems way too often that we are hearing about another student of ours who has been injured or um uh who has lost his or her life uh by gun violence or or other acts of violence and um I I I rarely find myself at a loss for words but this is one of those times and I'm processing like I know you all are um the thoughts and feelings of what is happening here in our community and across our country but I do feel that it's important to raise this issue because in the reason it's important to

256raise the issue because we must come together and we must find Solutions yes we do need to talk that's important we have to have conversations that is important but it is way past time for action and it's difficult to see an end to these Horrors unless we make a concerted effort to combat um all of the evils of our society including racism bigotry um and inequality in all forms and this is not a small task I know that but it is a critical task um and I just as I know your heart does my heart breaks for all of the families who have been impacted by these uh tragic events and so I just wanted to conclude my remarks by sharing that that has been on my heart and I just wanted to lift that

257up and that concludes my remarks Madam chair thank you um so we're now going to turn to reports from board members and I will recognize any board member who wishes to make a report and I see Miss Sawyer's hand and then Ms Byers Bailey thank you Carol Sawyer week marks an important anniversary in the history of Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools it's the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Swann versus Charlotte Mecklenburg this was a case that was argued before The Supreme Court by Julius L Chambers that changed fundamentally what our schools and Community look like swan the swan versus Charlotte Mecklenburg case dismantled a dual educational system in Charlotte Mecklenburg that separated black children and white children and that change wasn't easy but it was the community at the time embraced with a great

258deal of community work and embrace that change and that episode in our history speaks to the power of a community willing to to come together to become as we were known nationally as the city that made desegregation work while cities in other parts of the country were exploding in violence over school integration CMS integration was by and large peaceful to the point where a delegation of students and Educators from Boston visited Charlotte to see how we were implementing our desegregation plan because their city was torn apart by racial hatred and violence the change as I said wasn't easy and there were the there was a Grassroots movement to help build that change and to support that change through a series of potlucks um Maggie Ray Maggie Ray um organized um these dinners as as a

259southern woman she knew that um Southerners would be polite over dinner and use that tradition of Southern manners to hold difficult conversations about what schools children would attend in a community conversation over a potluck because you're not going to be nasty while you're sharing a meal and I hope that we as a community can embrace that willingness to engage with each other over the difficult conversations that are ahead some of those difficult conversations will be about pupil assignment because every time we open a school somebody has to go to it and and boundaries change and I'm hoping that as a community we can have these conversations while holding in our hearts what's best for the community as a whole in addition to what our own child may need and to to to to expand the

260view of what Community good is and I I think if we can do that and hold in our hearts respect for the students who attend all of our schools and to um to keep a sense of the Greater Community in and in our hearts as we have these discussions and what will what will help everyone be successful in our in our schools and in our community that we will be a better place and a better school system for it so I just want to remind us of our of our history that while 50 years ago is you know for some may seem you know like ancient history but for many people in the community that part of their school experience was transformative and participating in that effort to fundamentally change how children attended School had

261a lasting impact on on many many people's lives and changed how our schools are structured today while I grieve for the the shift that has caused substantial racial and economic isolation in our schools at all levels I hope that we can find ways to ensure that we can mitigate that and to and where we don't to ensure that opportunities are are supported for students at all our schools I had a call in preparation for our board retreat from one of the facilitators who asked what I what I envisioned success for our school system and my answer was that we will have a successful school system when we are the choice our community's choice of school system of schools and that every school will be a school of choice and that you know any board member

262or staff member would be pleased to send their child or grandchild to any school in the district secure in the knowledge that their child would be well served at that school at any school in our district so thank you thank you that's a good Vision um okay Ms Byers Bailey thank you I've had several an opportunities to interact with several of my schools virtually the first was I had a chance to read to some Elementary School students via Zoom that was a new experience for me and I had to do my own telecast on assume the next one was I attended a white water that was the reading was at Bruns the the second one was oh why I had an opportunity to watch the middle school students at Whitewater Academy do presentations for Black

263History Month and they did things on their Zoom that I haven't even done yet each student had a person or a HBCU uh some did a national leaders some did International leaders some did social groups some did entertainers but they each had to share their own screen now I've seen adults have problems with that and each one of these fifth and sixth and eighth grade students were sharing their screen it was awesome I I was I was blown away I've also um had an opportunity to participate at uh West West Mecklenburg they would have they had a on the 24th of March they had a Naf Academy industry panelists in conversation around ability Innovation and resilience they participated with six National panelists and they had breakout rooms and the students interacted with these industry leaders

264and listening to them and answering questions and asking questions it was remarkable they they came away with uh one of their they asked the students at the end to give some uh final comments on what they learned one of them was failure is feedback I know a whole lot of folks in adults who haven't figured that one out then the next time next thing um the last thing I did with uh in terms of and I was again at West Mecklenburg was um they had a act their academic Academy for hospitality and tourism was part of a national their apartment they're one of the Naf academies that we have in ecms and uh Naf is a national network of Education business and Community leaders who collaborate to ensure high school students are prepared to succeed

265in the workforce West Max uh Academy has now become one of more than 200 such academies in the country to achieve model level of excellence in 2021 when you're a Naf you you get in and then they come back and they evaluate your progress and how well you're performing the service for the students and how well the students are receiving and progressing and achieving in your Academy and you they give they grade you they they're very strict with their grading and westmec has been they give levels of achievement and westmeck has achieved the model level of Excellence um the part of what Naf as a National Academy there um they computate their National Data showing that their program is highly effective and in night in 2020 Naf academies reported 99 of their seniors graduated and

26687 percent of their graduates plan to go to college so um achieving that level of achieve of accomplishment with math is not not is not usual it's not the you know the usual thing um West Mech is um upcoming having us upcoming this spring they're having a fundraiser and that is for where potential meets opportunity it's going to be on May 8th and this funds will provide academic scholarships program training and internships so really proud of what westmeck has accomplished with their math academy with hospitality and tourism thank you you've been busy mischief yes I I do want to dovetail on uh Miss Sawyer's statement 50 years of swan versus Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools I'm a swan student I I lived it and everything you said is exactly right um I watch my parents really say

267how important it was that we did this work to desegregate Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools and I was in a household where my brother and I we're one year apart he continued at North Mecklenburg where I was in high school and I was moved to West Charlotte High School so how did my parents deal with that but they understood the importance of what we were doing in this community and how important this work was to desegregate the schools to look at integration and at one point we were a premier district with that and it was so important and so many times say how do we really have Equity without diversity and do those two go hand in hand because I saw so much happen when we did integrate the school system because I started in the schools

268when it was all black I went to University Park was an all black school so I know the importance of this and and the difference it made in my life not just education but the quality of my life and how I would interact with different cultures and people throughout my life even though my father was also military so I had some experiences there and what's interesting I want to give a shout out to the equity committee who also School composition committee was talking exactly about that how do we look at as we open new schools as we continue to talk about how we Market our schools so that students want to go to all of the schools in Charlotte Mecklenburg and that all of our schools provide the best possible education for all students So

269and I've been just impressed with the work of the equity committee because they have really looked at how can they help us do this work through an equity lens and it has been great to hear the work on April 29th the full board will be meeting I hope uh Equity committee full board will meet on April 29th I hope everybody can attend and you can hear the work of each one of these committees they want to support us and advocate for us the needs to make sure we have this District moving in the right direction in terms of equity and making sure all children are learning and that we're making a difference in the lives of these children so um I just wanted to to do that make this shout out and say there is

270a lot of work being done with the equity committee and it was interesting that you mentioned Swan okay it's because that was brought up also with the school composition committee and I met with them yesterday and Miss ship um April 29th what time in case people want to tune in remotely yes it's remote it will be virtual and we'll have to we'll send the link will be sent out and it's six to seven thirty and it's six is that correct six to seven thirty and Elise and I both would have been working with the Committees and it has been a great opportunity for me to hear the word on every last one of the subcommittees and the the Dynamics of the teams and the greatness that they bring to the table has been really good

271they're impactful great okay Ms Fowler this is Brianna Fowler speaking I'll make this really brief um the student advisory Council has been working on and going to review and make recommendations for the student code of conduct they're also going to meet next week with the superintendent with superintendent Winston and they're also scheduling a meeting with the Met County officials about covid and kids and the youth and how that's going also the guidelines like how we said how it affects students mentally and physically and we've also well the student advisory Council has also started an eighth grade Civic leadership program which will help develop student voices and Leadership and hopefully encourage students to join the student advisory Council the following year in high school I've also been talking to students and they have been flooding my

272DMs with in-person prom in-person graduation so I guess a lot of students will be happy hearing that they will be having an in-person graduation and then there's just been questions about the grading policy in regards to the first semester and seeing if the grading policy that we have implemented in the second semester could be implemented into the first semester in order to stay um equal and just an equity thing and then we're just going to have an emphasis on the um the severity of school choice when we were talking about literacy and how students for example the talent development program a lot of parents do not know that there are schools that specialize in TD and have special teachers for those programs so that's just a quick report I hope that was brief thank you

273thank you anybody else Mr strain I'm sure I just want to reflect on the fact that we've made it to plan a and that this this week is uh is quite a milestone for this District to get our kids back into schools for those families who have elected to do so at least at four days a week anyway and so um and so I think that's uh it's been mentioned but I think it's worth mentioning again that we got there I appreciate the work of the graduation committee and coming up with uh with a solution that gives our kids the opportunity to celebrate this significant Milestone with their families and in person and I would ask that we continue to look at the evolving restrictions as those are evaluated by teams of medical and public

274health professionals and the executive in the state and and County and and look at opportunities to continue to evolve our own restrictions there are several that were called out uh today by speakers and otherwise um obviously at uh extracurricular and co-curricular events such as Athletics I know the Arts is is also one that that we've opened up although there were some questions raised about that today whether there's been some regression there and so I would encourage us to to lean into this remain safe but we're getting a lot of guidance that suggests that we can open up more and that's only good for our families and and certainly our kids to to celebrate their achievements and the potential that they bring every day and every aspect of their life so I appreciate that okay so

275um I'll it's been a long night so I will just share one brief but very important announcement to follow up on what Ms ship shared about the equity committee um you know I I want to Echo her gratitude for the hard work and the smart work that our Community Partners on the equity committee have been doing and I and and I do encourage members of the public to tune in to um the to our Facebook page um on the on April 29th 6 to 7 30 to watch the um the next Equity committee meeting um it is already time for to to reappoint or to have new appointments to the equity committee and so that's the announcement is if you are interested in serving on the equity committee um contact your board members um there

276are and if you currently serve on the equity committee and you want to continue contact let us let the board know um but basically under policy adaa at our meeting on May 11th the board will appoint 20 nominees to the equity committee with each of the nine board members and Ms Fowler the student advisor making two nominations each to the committee so if you've already appointed somebody and they want to continue you can choose to do that or if you wanted to choose a new member to appoint to the committee you have that option too and obviously if your appointee has doesn't want to continue then you'll need to find somebody new to a point so that's that's announcement number one um there are also there are two ways that our people serve on the

277equity committee there's the group of people who were appointed by individual board members and then there was another group that applied sort of at large and and that we voted on um so those elected spots on the equity committee there are three spots that have become vacant and so we will fill those seats at our May 11th meeting too so if you wanted if you want to be considered to fill the vacancy on one of these spots please email Nicole Kelly our board Clerk and she'll forward you a copy of the application and additionally I'm going to ask the superintendent to provide a link if you could on the front page of the website for applications similar inconsistent with what we did in 2019 thank you um so I that's all a lot I guess

278the Public's not going to know whether you want to you know which which way you want to apply to the equity committee if you want to so if you have any questions just contact a board member or contact Ms Kelly and you know what let me I don't have it written down here but I'm going to read off Ms Kelly's email address um she is used to getting millions of emails so she can handle it um so Nicole n i c o l e One Dot Kelly k-e-l-l-y at cms.k12.nc.us so um if you want to serve on this Equity committee and do this work with us Now's the Time to let us know um and with that I hope everybody continues to stay safe and I will entertain a motion to adjourn so move second

279so motion from inspires Bailey a second from his ship all in favor of the motion please let it be known by a show of hands any opposed we are adjourned Madam clerk by a vote of eight to zero thank you