001i guess the up the the middle schoolers but looking at the data i'm looking at that in terms of absolute achievement and i'm always looking data in terms of academic trend uh both do not show good performance so how do you you articulate the improvement but the numbers don't necessarily say the improvement so where's the disjoint uh communication thank you for your question commissioner um i would just like to say that that we use data cycles to inform instruction throughout no matter what we're always directing it from uh based on our data and our review not only of the mcapp or the standardized test data but our benchmark data as well sometimes those are different pieces of data that give us different amounts of information and of course we're looking at the three-year trend from
00217 to 19 so it may look different we've held a lot of good uh work on what on teachers getting better at looking at data so that they can understand how to move from the data into instruction in more targeted ways um but as we look at the renewal data tables we're calibrating standardized test scores with our alongside our local and frequent more frequent assessment data you know things vacillate in 2017 to 18 we outperformed um baltimore city and in every area or outperformed in general and in 2018-19 we had underperformance this data is a little stale i will say because since then we were certainly looking at um uh at doing better with data as uh teachers and as a staff um even in the data that we have that you're looking at there
003african american students in ela for example in 2018 um we're scoring in the 90th percentile in the district so the data gives us a mixed picture perhaps but it is also knowing it's important or the data sources that we use to plan and to target instruction um and that we see increased growth uh are are simply that we use a wider net of the data um than simply the standardized test but also we use that standardized test and we realize that there's vacillation from one year to the next we're looking at those three years um i will say we we're paying attention to it and we're looking very much at the same time of in our data compared to baltimore city but in our data compared to where we would like to be those two
004things are a little bit different we are showing that our students in algebra are uh showing high achievement over those three years time um and getting to algebra and perform outperforming the ninth graders um but we still have you know more to go the data is helping us to know we're not there yet so you're saying that the data's mixed i mean you have different data than we may have so is there some way i could see the data that you have certainly have lots of data the the i ready data the benchmark data we have running records every time i submit um student uh a principles student learning objectives for example or our teachers perform with student with their teachers slos uh where they're actually starting at the beginning of the year where are
005students performing and where are they ending their their meeting goals of toward grade levels across the board um now of course that's a much smaller picture because we're only looking at one thing at a time i'd be happy to share with you but also i think that we have presented that through our renewal process and in many ways we discuss that when we have our school effectiveness review as well and in our school effectiveness review we we were talked about um that we were seen to have highly effective instruction um so that process built is is somewhat built in but i'm happy to share with you some more data if you would like it please i welcome that thank you thank you thank you commissioner reed are there any other questions and i don't see
006any hands okay thank you so much team um thank you for coming out tonight angela thank you guys uh can city neighbors hamilton um come up next you can start when you're ready okay lashawn is going to be sharing her screen it's not letting me share sorry doctor are you able to can she be made can she be made a presenter uh yeah i'm not sure what happened sir and then i think did you leave and come back no you're mr gardner you're already listed as a presenter so i'm sure why you can't share your screen me either sorry i'm not able to share i'm trying miss gardner is there anyone else on your team who can share their screen yep i will try thank you [Music] um it's not it's not letting you do
007we have this presentation is it easy enough to email yep okay who should we email it to christian can you accept this uh sure and would you mind because um well let me ask angela while while we're waiting for that email to come in should we go to the next school and then come back is that okay yeah i think that's fine we can do that so team just you know we'll get christian queued up with your presentation and we'll come back to you all okay thank you so much you're welcome okay city springs elementary middle good evening uh can you can you try to make me the presenter uh one moment and if you can't it's okay because i think you all have the one pager that we sent yesterday i hope yes okay
008okay well i'll be up again then um good evening madam chair dr santa lisa's and commissioners thank you for this opportunity to say a few words about our beloved city springs and to answer any questions you may have i want to say that the staff at city springs have developed through the years into an incredibly talented group and as a community we are always trying to get better the work that goes into renewal can clarify areas of focus and we know that demonstrating success for students with disabilities and raising math achievement will be at the top of our list of priorities in coming years bcp is blessed with outstanding principles and all of whom would agree that the newly minted distinguished principal rhonda raquetta sets the standard for commitment and talent so it's my pleasure
009to turn the mic over to her thank you laura good evening dr santelesis madam chair and commissioners i want to spend my time telling you specifically how we plan to address our priority areas laura mentioned regarding the growth of our students with disabilities we do have a plan one of our special educators is participating in the seal program special education instructional leader program which includes her attending monthly meetings learning about additional resources and writing an action plan that will result in increased test scores for our students with disabilities we also are providing after school tutoring and a more focused daily intervention time although our park data does not show significant increase in the performance levels for our students with disabilities we do have nwea map data which shows that our students with disabilities are making
010progress at a rate that is above the national norm at almost every grade level in addition and this is the data that laura has already sent to you and in addition you can see by this data that our students are progressing at a much higher rate in reading than math and this is also the case for our general education students which is why math is a priority area for all students we have added math intervention teachers and tutors to our team whose role is solely to improve our students performance in math and finally i want to share that i am very proud of the work we started last year as a staff on understanding institutional racism and identity development this school year i created the position of director of equity and anti-racism and moved my
011very talented social studies teacher into this position we have become a more inclusive environment much of which is also due to the student leadership of our free to be me club and our recently formed kindness committee this focus has pushed us to an even higher level of school culture that is conducive to the learning and development of all our incredible scholars and speaking of incredible scholars i would now like to introduce you to one of them makai hi everyone i'm a little nervous about speaking tonight so i've prepared a speech that i'm going to read to you now my name is makai and i am a 6th grader at city springs elementary middle school since pre-k city springs has provided me with the tools to succeed in addition to learning city springs has also also
012offered me the opportunity to play basketball and this year i joined the debate team city springs is not only my school but my family i've gained lifelong mentors coaches and role models who are always there to push me to achieving my goals i want to take this time to thank my principal dr aketa for teaching us that purple is not just in color not just a color but an attitude the teachers i've had at city springs starting with my pre-k teacher to all my 6th grade teachers now all have been role models taught me a lot and made me feel safe and loved i want to thank them too if you have never visited city springs you should come one day i think you'll love it too thank you thank you mackay any ques um
013back to you commissioner richardson okay great thank you makai for that great presentation i really enjoyed you um are there do any of my fellow commissioners have any questions they weren't playing fair but that was great job thank you great job and good luck i'm not good luck congratulations right um making the debate team that's really really cool um can we stop sharing this screen because i kind of see myself do you see yourself okay there we go um we're going to take this down i'm trying here we go there we go there we go thank you laura appreciate it yeah appreciate it always a pleasure um with i don't see any um hands raised for city neighbors just i want to ask one more time any questions while we have them all right no
014questions angela all right but you meant city springs but yes um thank you guys can we bring city yes and catherine drayton barber from uh city neighbors charter can present for us because she was successful the last time so she's ready to queue it up thank you all right are we ready yeah okay all right well good night uh good evening my name is dana jackson proud parent of peyton sproul sixth grader at city nation and the vice president of the city neighbors uh board of directors i'm here tonight representing our parent-led board of directors and joined by sean gardner first grade teacher charlerau our fearless principal and mike chilipa director of the city neighbors foundation cnh is in its 13th year as an arts integrated project-based public charter school here in baltimore and we
015are proud of the school that we have created having navigated the most challenging times in the last two years the cnh community banded together and supported each other our students stayed connected with above 95 attendance rates during virtual learning while our teachers adapted to create high quality virtual learning and our students showed marked academic progress despite their challenges we are now all back and even with mass pool testing and the challenges of returning from isolation we are thriving stronger than ever my apologies for the camera being off uh i realized i've been texting my my folks have been testing saying that it's uh the wrong way so uh anyone who visits cnh sees the quality of the student experience uh on the district school effectiveness review our school scored highly effective or effective for all
016parts of the visit and we are pleased to regularly welcome 21st century schools other schools and partner institutions like morgan state who come to learn cnh is in high demand and people stay our student court retention rate was nearly 95 with a 90 teacher retention rate and our chronic absence rates hover around 7 percent across all grades historically over 60 percent of our graduates attend baltimore city criteria schools and while nearly three years old our last park scores show effective and highly effective trends in middle school while students in all subgroups outscored the district on average from 2017 to 2019. we are a strong innovative public school choice for students and families but we are clear on where we need to grow and are always in the tough work of getting even better [Music] city
017neighbors hamilton has been in the hard work of meaningful ongoing growth and improvement we developed a school-wide scope and sequence and developed educational programming that is rooted in the standards responsive to student data with synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities after reviewing park and internal data in 2018 we identified a need for deep and sustained focus on equitable and inclusive practices at cnh we invested in a multi-year equity consultant conducted an in-depth equity audit created a three-year equity plan revised our curriculum planning tools changed our data practices and so much more starting in 2018 we also work to create a multi-tiered approach to academic intervention including the investment of intervention teachers training for teachers in level literacy instruction in orton gillingham uh daily intensive blocks in grades three through eight and summer and after school programming
018and tutoring um we realize that we aren't able to do the work of equitable and inclusive practice without employing a truly restorative mindset as a school starting in 2018 we conducted ongoing staff-wide training and restorative practices invested in full-time social work and full-time staff person to hold restorative practice efforts invested in our advisory model and social emotional learning efforts the results of these efforts are becoming clear early signs include on 2021 i-ready assessments our 8th graders scored at the tier 1 level 33 points higher in reading and 31 points higher in math than in 2019 we've reduced suspensions to nearly zero between 2017 and 2020 with zero suspensions for students with disabilities we have flipped the racial demographics of our teaching staff from 58 white in 2017 to 54 teachers of color today we are
019excited to be in this difficult but profound work of making our strong community even stronger and more equitable if you were to take a walk through our building today you would see evidence of high quality work and meaningful learning experiences first graders are currently deep in a project on endangered animals examining the contributing factors to answer the question can we prevent extinction third graders are gaining scientific and conceptual knowledge of space investigating what is beyond the stars and eighth graders are researching historical upstanders in our society in their heroes and villains project you can find work like this in every classroom and at every grade level we are a dynamic place of learning and growing for teachers students and community members we invite you to visit our campus at any time to see our work
020in action and we also hope to see you at our progressive edge summit in january where we convene with hundreds of educators and leaders from across the city region and nation thank you for the opportunity to share about our school and for the opportunity to continue this work together thank you very much are there any questions from my board colleagues okay i don't see wait a minute did you raise your hand did i see your hand oh chantelle um [Music] i um apologies my my hand wouldn't go up good evening city neighbors hamilton um i would be really interested in your previous renewal report there was a there was a note around the get the performance get of african-american students and white students as they performed on the parks um during your previous renewal um
021summary um i would be really interested to see how we see that reflected in this year's renewal report i'm thinking so that it was slightly over 30 percentage points um that was quite significant at the last renewal period i'd be really interested to see where we saw a shift in that this renewal season okay mike are you taking this one oh i'm sorry i thought you had you had it shyla um hi commissioner robert how are you um so um i think the data from uh 2019 um is still mixed in that area we do see african-american students over the course of the time outscore the district but the gap still remains and that really prompted a lot of the work that we talked about in the presentation starting in 2018 so um so that
022is when we went about the work of building the equity team investing in uh professional development and leadership coaching for all of us here um uh doing targeted grouping really working on intervention structures all of the things that we're starting to see results from so for in the internal data since we don't have data since 2019 park data in internal data for instance we see by third grade there is no achievement gap in reading for the last group of students but in the third grade or we see i ready by eighth grade significant gains across all subgroups at that point so we don't have park data since 2019 since almost three years ago to show some of that growth but we have been really deep in that work uh all the way through this time
023period period thank you mr chilipa and one other question would just be around the effective programming for students with disabilities that's also an area where the ratings drop from effective to developing so if you all could speak to that this evening uh sure so um from our understanding we uh received developing for two reasons um our um our parks test scores from 2017-19 despite students with disabilities outscoring the district didn't show sufficient progress um so we've done a lot since then including investing in additional special education staffing and all of the things that you've seen in terms of interventions in the presentation tonight and which we put in our renewal report so that was one piece and then the other piece was that there was some misunderstanding in a piece of iep implementation so while
024students received all of the services and more required by the iep we sometimes provided services and integrated subject times like our project-based learning blocks when the iep specifically said literacy or math so so that some of this that was caught in the audit that was done as part of this renewal process um we've met with families we've rectified that um uh we were certainly all along meeting in good faith to meet the spirit of the iep but we've made those corrections uh since then to make sure that that's not a problem going forward thank you mr chalupa um madam chair i'm done i i'm done okay i'm sorry i was working on mute are there any other questions from my board colleagues i don't see any hands so thank you so much city neighbors hamilton
025for coming out tonight angela back to you thank you invite thank you guys i'm going to invite connections to community-based art school up madam chair yes ma'am i have a question um and i'm not particularly sure if this is too big of an s but a number of the schools this evening have made a reference to outperforming the district or outperforming traditional schools and i i would really just like to hear more specificity around that data that they're speaking about with intentionality like i just want to put that on the table we're all one district so when you when when there are comments made around outperforming other schools that are part of the same district i'm really troubled by that so i need more context to what that comment actually is referencing um because it's
026quite it's quite disparaging thank you for that commissioner roberts for all of our schools that are going to be presenting if you all could keep that in mind if your data that you're presenting um you know quote outperforms the the district then kind of give us more color that in a little bit more for us to let us know what um what what you mean in that instance and um i just would like to tag on to that and say i'm one of just one of the wonderful i'm sorry someone needs to meet someone needs to mute okay one of the wonderful gifts of having charters in our system is that we get to do some learning as well right and so if you've uncovered strategies that are um really successful but one of one
027of the things that we want to do is do some learning from those strategies as as a full district to commissioner reed i'm commissioner roberts point so um we're going to allow connections to start their presentation keeping keeping those things in mind thank you very good good evening madam chair commissioners dr santolisas we are exceedingly proud and happy to be able to present to you today i am joined by several members of our school community and they will introduce themselves if time permits uh one of the things that i'd like to point out about uh connections before i turn it over to the principal we are a community based art school but we are also very steep in the core value of teaching and learning and so with that said uh i would like uh
028mr brooks uh to take it away oh good good evening dr santa lisa and madam chair um i commissioner roberts couldn't have said it any better of what i was what i was thinking i scratched anything that i wanted to say about presentation tonight i just and i said this i was blessed to have commissioner robertson commissioner chenya um critique and visit and put a different set of eyes on this work uh which i'm appreciative of um we realize that we sing and dance well we've done that for almost 20 years um our kids are artistic geniuses and i know if they can do that work and artistically both in person and as they did virtually that they can succeed on any standardized assessments and they've shown it in their map data i sent data
029over and powerpoints over and information and data points um and i recognize and own that we have to get better at figuring out how to get them to perform and move the needle on these the standardized assessments and we're we're equipped to do that we've changed our structure we've um put systems and processes in place from hiring a data coordinator instructional coaches to help build teacher capacity um to make sure that we provide students with what they need to perform on their standardized assessments i think for me what you know commissioner roberts asked me how did i feel about the renewal and it resonated with me on my ride home after a visit and i'm like you know we have nowhere to go but up after this one thing the pandemic did was at least
030almost try to attempt to equal the playing field whether it be through technology being able to upgrade the wi-fi the things that were frustrating my students when it when it came to taking those standardized assessments we can now begin to take that excuse away and really do the work that we need to do to see students move that needle um you know we we're we're really looking at student data on a daily basis we're working in teacher teams uh we build collaborative planning time in for teachers to be able to look at student data you know in order to know how we need to group students when it comes to getting them to just get over that edge because we have a lot of kids that are sitting on that mark that can move the
031needle to show that our kids can do this work and i know that they can uh we're a safe space we've always been a safe space we we have a high number a high swd population which we welcome uh we've increased our city-wide program here in enrollment our enrollment increases every year and we know that we do the culture piece well and it's just time to get to work whether it be i need to collaborate with other leaders charter or traditional to figure out who's doing what and what it works and getting with those leaders to figure out what we need to do as a community to to show growth and we're up for the challenge so i'm i'm thankful for the renewal but i understand with the the work that comes along with that
032um one of the things that stood out to me is when i assume leadership here and i've been here teaching since 2005 was that the school was built on teacher voice and for a long time teachers had a lot of autonomy to do what they wanted to do and one of the things that dr said when i first assumed leadership that is you've proved if you've been if you haven't proved that you can do it your way and do it right then you need to align to something and we did that we invested in our the core curriculum with the district and we're just trying to to to move the needle our kids can do it i believe it and i'm thankful and i'm i'm anxious to get to just to dive into this work
033to do better thank you principal brooks um we can move on to the commissioner's questions now [Music] commissioner what madam chair richardson had to step away um but i did have a remark that i wanted to share i did alongside commissioner chenya we both had the opportunity to visit the connection school community this week and it was a great school visit i think one thing that you did not share with the commissioners and those in attendance tonight principal brooks was around your operator capacity and including a new data specialist for your school community as a as an intentional effort or resource to help see advancements in your student performance could you speak to that for the commissioners that are present tonight yes ma'am thank you we did hire a full-time data coordinator um whose sole
034responsibility is to not only just look at the data but go in observe classrooms um attend team meetings do data coaching with not just teachers but also with students you know i think that's that's the work you know we we fear we hear data and we fear it but and i think you know having a data coordinator who knows the numbers who knows how to then take the numbers and apply it to and give teachers real live applications that they can take back um to the instructional practices is is nothing but a plus and so you know that's one of the biggest steps that we made and thank you commissioner roberts for reminding me to include that absolutely thank you so much were there any other questions i see a hand is that you commissioner
035reed yeah yes you can go ahead uh great presentation sir uh mr brown brooks i'm sorry i guess you articulated the fact that uh you were thanking us for the three-year renewal uh you you haven't passed muster yet we don't vote for about another month or so i guess my i guess my point is uh you did also articulate the fact that no way but up in terms of the performance going forward but i'm really i have reason to pause because i'm really concerned about the achievement growth and the numbers you have in terms of career and college readiness uh based on the data i've gotten from staff uh those numbers aren't good uh i had some some some really talented colleagues a lot more talent than i am who visit your school but how
036can i be comfortable coming in a month from now saying this school's good enough to give a three-year contract i would like and i have and that's an excellent question commissioner reed i think when i look into the weeds of that um i think there's a lot that's unclear i mean we had a 13 jump in our graduation rate we saw we've increased our ap offerings which you and i both know um give students a better opportunity we now offer ap stats ap lit ap lane um and i have some of those teachers on we offer ap music theory as well as an ap um spanish class which my assistant principal taught during virtual learning and so we we put measures in place we're making sure we're increasing our college visits we're making sure that
037we increase um the number of applications that our students submit every year uh i have some students who are actually commissioner reed i don't know if they're on i know they were trying to log on three who matriculated here um two are at coppin one's graduating one just graduated from bowie all three i have here working as tutors to help do the work that you're speaking of um we we have students in middle school taking and exposing them to the psat we're making sure exclusive exposing our middle grades to collegiate and college business as well bringing bringing the colleges to us but also going to visit the colleges and just that being part of the everyday conversation and all our classes commissioned to read uh matt uh commissioner roberts i just have one more question
038it's it's a selfish question why did you guys fix statistics in terms of the math um that's a great the the teacher that we have um and that drives our our math department was that's what he he he chose and that's what he wanted because just of what he you know just how our students math brains are um i'm not a math brain commissioner reid and so it was one of the questions i had as well but it's it's what he we he it was i gave i gave the autonomy to him to pick what he wanted to do as far as ap and he chose statistics based on what he was seeing from middle school data as well as our high school data great question thank you commissioner reed i believe your time is
039up principal brooks and to the rest of the connection school community but thank you so much for joining us tonight thank you very much thank you thank you okay thank you um so next we're going to bring up creative city public charter school and this is a reminder only the board the ceo and creative city um people who are with creative cities cameras should be on no no other people good evening creative city good evening we are going to share our screen and in the meantime i'll just uh um say good evening and thank you for having us here i'm marisa canino i'm the executive director here at creative city public charter school i'm also the parent of a creative city graduate and a creative city fourth grader and a creative city first grader um
040i'm joined tonight by principal tracy mathina who is going to be sharing screen that we're we're both on and by our board chair amy harmandero um after our presentation will be available for questions obviously but i want to make a note that we've pre-recorded the narration of our presentation so we can make sure we stay tight on time so we're going to go ahead and play that our goals tonight are to provide concrete examples of how our instructional practice has improved since we last presented to you and to share specific evidence of our instruction and data analysis when we select curriculum materials we engage our community ensure mission alignment and review essa evidence here you see a list of curricula and interventions currently used at our school along with their adoption date and their status
041in our internal review cycle everything is connected in our curriculum from the year-long curriculum maps to the daily lesson plans skills-based lessons come from our selected curriculum materials and from projects that extend and apply content knowledge in our supplemental package we have provided examples what you see on this slide is a general arc of how instructional projects unfold please note that multiple assessment points we developed to help us isolate the specific impact that our project-based and arts integrated strategies have on student learning everything is connected in our curriculum from the year-long curriculum maps to the daily lesson plans skills based lessons come from our selected curriculum materials and from projects that ex we just um excuse me we just got a word that our audio was not working i needed to check to see whether
042there's something here that we're supposed to do when we share content to um also share audio i can hear your audio yeah it's working oh it's working no it but it's working i am so sorry i had two different text messages saying that our audio was not working my apologies i'm going to go back to where it was i'm sorry did someone sit here try to go back where you were strongly low what you see on this slide is a general arc of how instructional projects unfold please note the multiple assessment points we developed to help us isolate the specific impact that our project-based and arts integrated strategies have on student learning in fifth grade students learned about earth's major systems the curriculum is discovery science and the project is tied to next generation science
043and maryland fine arts standards students photographed examples of the earth's major systems on campus and wrote descriptions that link to their learning here is a response from a student which ends with i see an interaction between the biosphere and the geosphere when the kids are running on the ground the grass is growing in the soil of the geosphere we know our historic data and we know it needs to improve we began to redesign our data collection and analysis systems in 2019 this fall we resumed this work and the result is the data cycle summarized here we're pleased to have thoroughly addressed our weaknesses and data analysis which were identified in our ser and renewal report the data cycle is in use in all contents and we have one example here we began with school-wide use
044of the acadian's math screening tool we moved to analysis with our instructional leadership team interventionists and grade level teams math computation skills needed attention school-wide action steps included developing intervention pull-out groups in-class small groups and daily computation fluency strategies implemented in all classrooms additional diagnostics identified specific gaps and instructional adjustments occurred as we regroup students full school reassessment with acadiance is the last step already see evidence of success the chart on the left shows beginning of year computation data where 72 percent of students were well below benchmark now 47 are still well below but 20 are above we know the data driven strategy is working our available data sets this contract period were limited we've expanded our look at data to include beginning of year i ready scores for creative city students who have moved
045on to middle school so far we've analyzed i-ready data from baltimore design school which received 19 percent of our fifth graders last year we not only looked at beginning of year in grade six we also look back to their specific performance on the 1819 mcapp test when they were in the third grade we see that this specific subgroup of students performed below their district peers in both mcapp domains in the third grade by contrast they've surpassed their bds grade 6 peers in both domains on their beginning of year assessments creative city has experienced significant achievement at the beginning of this current school year alone coupled with the strong marks we received in our renewal report in governance and finance we hope that the information you've received tonight will allow you to develop an updated view
046of creative city's overall success okay commissioner roberts back here you're muted thank you um i actually have two questions that do not relate to the academics overall rating my first question would be around the audit content or the internal controls um that was an area that you all um we saw a rating decrease from your 2007 renewal report to developing could you speak to that and then my second question would be around your effective programming for students with disabilities where we saw an increase from not effective to developing i'm sorry in that space i'm assuming that you'll be able to speak to the success that you've seen in moving it forward into increasing your rating but not quite at it effective so those two areas um uh would be for my questions yep um so
047let me address the uh question about audit and then i'll turn to miss mathena for the question about students with disabilities um my understanding of the developing rating in the um financial management had to do with our assets our net assets decreasing from the previous year to the to the most recent year and so taking a broader look we have done a tremendous amount of work in building up our cash reserves over the entire contract period we went from um running a really tight margin and you know having to make sure we had a line of credit just in case a few years ago um to now having more than six months of our cash reserves always on hand and being able to have the flexibility to borrow from our cash reserves for special projects
048if needed so long as we maintain the minimum cash reserve threshold that our board of directors has put in place and so what i what i think has happened in the interpretation is that um there was a note that we had borrowed from our cash reserves let me see two budget cycles ago to fund a specific priority within our budget and so the the um the net assets declined rather than steadily increasing um and we contest that we had built up enough strength that we really had the flexibility to use those assets in the way that was best for students i hope that answers your question about that developing rating um is it okay if we go on to your question about students with disabilities yes okay okay good evening to everyone tracy methena um
049i it's i obviously am not happy with the developing rating in that but i'm very happy that it is not um ineffective we made um very intentional decisions to change some of the modeling that we were doing with our special education we moved from a case management on special education model where our um current special educators were the ones that were running their teams and making sure that all the notes were out and things like that to an ita model where we now have somebody who's responsible for all of those types of things it happened when we had an increase in our special education population and then they um an ita is a a person who lead your team meetings and things like that and so by having our special educators be able to um
050focus primarily on all of the instructional academic and um provisions for their students it took away that extra piece and i believe was able to um help our students obviously by having more time with their special educators in addition to that we had at one point not had a self-contained class and we ended up developing one as the needs arose when iep meetings um turned up the different um students moved from lre a and b to lrec and being able to have a dually certified in general education and special education teacher teach that class we now have students who are able to get best of both worlds um in instruction so i feel like there have been a lot of intentional things that we are doing to try to move things forward obviously we're not
051where we need to be but i believe as we continue to do things such as um we have one of our special educators who's also in the um special education instructional leadership program this year and he is working with all of us to be able to up our program i know that we're going to be able to move that on forward thank you madam chair thank you commissioner roberts thanks for stepping in for me i really appreciate that um angela we'll take it back to you madam chair commissioner reed's hand is oh i'm sorry i didn't uh i'm sorry i apologize commissioner reed oh no no apology needed uh ladies i looked at uh i guess your 2017 review and then i looked at the one just now for this 2021. over the course of
052four year period i guess in terms of the academics it's a little mixed but net net you've gone from developing to not effective so what was the uh the reasoning and the problems that caused the slippage uh because i'm really con it's concerning to me uh because i tend to focus on the academic and uh it's not effective a lot of our um i believe a lot of the things that were talked about in our academics from this last um um renewal period had to do with our ability to talk around how we are actually implementing instruction are we actively using data to inform our instruction to move things forward and we recognize that that was a place where we were not using data as effectively as we needed to we um recognized that at
053the last renewal period and started putting things into place in order to rectify that i will say i'm not using it as an excuse but it certainly is a reason a lot of the things that we started um had to be halted during on the pandemic not able to do a lot of the things in person having to change some of the um uh the data um work that we were going to be doing with staff things did definitely change that sort of put a halt to it but as soon as we were able to return we resumed all of that which is one of the things we just presented now so that we are back on track being able to implement look at our data and truly um understand what is going on with
054our students to be able to implement the strategies needed to move them forward um again the renewal that we had in 2017-18 um the at that time we were recognizing what needed to happen to change and we were putting things in place um we i am again not satisfied obviously with um a not effective rating in our um in our ser this year but we have truly made all kinds of um changes in order to start that process again and i think we've just shown that we are we are seeing the benefits of all of that we will be moving it forward are you talking strategies and tactics but i guess the end game for me is grades so how are they doing on the test and what's that trend line look like oh and
055the what when you say grades are we talking reports i'm talking about academic in terms of park scores and other scores i mean how are they doing there well the last time that we um i believe had park um scores or no we never took mcam um well they took the um with 1819 and those were the ones that were discussed in the last um that in the um presentation that we just gave um we've shown that the students that including the ones that are in sixth grade now um when they were third grade they took those um um the park fest and they did not perform very well in regard to park but they have demonstrated that now at where they are having continued with creative city and now moved into middle school that
056they are now performing um uh above their um grade level peers at present and i believe that when we take our next assessment when um we do our maryland uh our m caps that i believe that we will show improvement and and just to if i may i don't want to take too much time but to add on to what miss mathena was saying we share your concern about the um specifically the absolute student achievement and the student achievement growth that came up not effective in our rating rubric yes we didn't have the full it it's understandable none of us did but we as well didn't have the full arc of data that would have been available during our contract period therefore we started to really think outside the box and we've begun an analysis
057process of looking at our fifth graders beginning of year i ready score in their sixth grade that is a process because we have a data request pending with oaa so we can do a more comprehensive analysis and right now we're going school by school to do this data inquiry starting with the schools that have received the largest numbers of our students and so what ms mathena referred to was as subgroup analysis we did of our fifth graders who moved on to sixth grade their sixth graders this year we have their third grade mcap scores because it was the last time we had a standardized data point that's included here in this report and we were able to show just for that subgroup but we're expanding the analysis that they grew at a rate that seems
058faster than their peers from across the city so we we acknowledge that it's a small data set and we're growing it but we're committed to fleshing out the entire data set and would be very happy to share it with you as that goes along but we we recognize that we're not showing the growth so we're looking for alternate data points we can grab to try to complete the arc because the arc was interrupted thank you are there any other questions from my fellow board commissioners okay i don't see any more hands um commissioner reed could you lower your your hand um so that we don't get confused thank you so much angela now i'll turn it back to you thank you guys um the next school that is going to come up is elmer a
059henderson at johns hopkins partnership school wonderful um good evening madam chair commissioners and dr santelesis uh this evening and share a little bit of our successes at henderson hopkins and a lot of the work that we still need to do um my name again is peter cannon proud principal for the last four years and i am joined by dean christopher morpheu from johns hopkins school of education um and jd merrill my assistant principal so first and foremost i'm really proud of the fact that henderson hopkins is on the move while we have lots of work to do and we're focused on it um to becoming an exemplary school for all of our students our data shows that we're making progress i always believe parents will let you know they're very good judges of their own
060school we right now have a 96 percent family school um satisfaction students are staying we have an average five-year retention rate of 81 percent we strategically added pre-k working in partnership with the district and a middle school honors cohort we were losing lots of our students during middle school's choice now they're staying because the academic rigor is there we have many more spots and applications than spots available you can see the trend line below of how we've been growing in the past year academics our school is creating conditions for our students to achieve rapid academic improvement um out of the 12 categories of academic achievement absolute achievements student trend and student growth from the um from our renewal report we scored highly effective on eight effective on two one developing and two not effective and
061i'm going to speak specifically about the not effective and developing which is in middle school uh mathematics um our african-american students performed fourth in ela and sixth in math in 2019 in baltimore city schools and our data indicates that economically disadvantaged students are achieving uh at the same improvement rate as as their um as their other peers at henderson hopkins which is something we're proud of we take our we really really take our role as a community school seriously um we have become a a a a site um for food distribution food insecurity was a real big deal when the pandemic hit we knew we had to respond we were the number one meal distribution site in city schools but then we also partnered with the maryland food bank and have given out um you
062can see how many thousand pounds of food sixty thousand masks and twenty thousand families have come to our school to receive food we've had eight vaccination clinics and we really felt like during the pandemic we had to respond with a student learning center so we secured a grant opened our doors the first day of school and had 200 200 students attending for the year with internet and food at our school throughout the year last year and while we are pleased with our progress we've got lots of work to do this work is um we're not satisfied of where we are middle school mathematics is a huge focus of our school uh we've dug in hired highly effective math teachers we've expanded our math instructional block to include intervention we have targeted mathematics coaching and professional
063development like i said we added an honors cohort and now we have algebra we're going to be offering it next year and getting our students ready now our seventh graders um we're really leaning in on effective programming for students with disabilities we hired a new iep chair a full-time iep chair and added a classroom instructor already and now we're going to continue to grow the a team of special educators and we're going to move to a fully inclusive model where students are receiving as many of the services they possibly can in the general educational classroom and we're training our teachers now to transition to that model for next year training on the universal design for learning um we did receive a developing and audit content and internal controls and i want to explain that we
064now own our building um we have no more interest to pay and we have a strong short-term liquidity the reason why there was an imbalance that gave us a developing is the debt we took on in 2013 to build our building was through a new new market tax credit which has now been fully forgiven and we essentially unwound it um the debt was entirely forgiven the building is now ours it's counted as a 54 million dollar in-kind gift and so that's why um on our audit it's a one-time occurrence but we're in a very strong strong financial shape owning the building we have a great firm that does our audits and we have a strong financial team with johns hopkins school of education with full-time professionals helping us and a strong finance committee with our
065board so just in conclusion before i take questions we've really dug in we talk a lot about joy and passion at our school i um and for the commissioners who come and visited we are a school that's academically rigorous but we can do this work with joy and passion and love and um we have a lot of work to do to become the exemplary school we aspire and what our kids deserve and we're going to keep working really hard at it you