001e e e for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible liberty and justice for all prior to tonight's public meeting the board met an executive session to discuss information or strategy in connection with a litigation matter and issues about which identifiable complaints may be made Mrs anusa could you please call the role Mrs Cooper here miss Dad here miss fin Mr Frank here Mr good here Mr Hamilton here Dr Hassel corn here Mrs Lynch here miss Z here uh eight members present Dr Hassel corn present via telephone Miss Finley absent thank you uh Dr eljack do we have any guests this evening we do not have any guests this evening all right right
002would you like to go to your superintendent report sure I would be happy to so this evening for our superintendent report we actually have two presentations uh the first presentation is a district data review by Dr Stephen Edwards our director of student achievement and instructional verification and so he's going to share an overview of the district's uh data for the year Dr Edwards I will turn it over to you all right thank you good evening everyone um so as mentioned I'm gonna give a kind of a high overview of some District data primarily on on our most recent data points but there's some historical data as well uh the first slide I have is just some achievement data uh it's Elementary language arts pssas uh historical data dating back to 2015 until 2024 um some
003things you can uh see here this is grades three four and five um we we've really uh um grown in many areas um and kind of leveled out uh since uh 2019 uh to about 85% or higher in each grade level there is some fluctuation from time to time um one one one of the more notable ones on this slide is the gains we've made uh in fifth grade um overall it's a gain of about 5.4% these are the percentage of students that are proficient or Advanced on the pssa to break break it down a little bit more and give you an idea of where this stands in comparison to the states um our students achieve um you know at a very high level um and the compar the first uh graph on the left
004you'll see theirs in comparison to the states and you'll see that um while we're about 85% the state is is just slightly over 55% the graph on the right sorry the graph on the right uh is another thing I wanted to highlight uh not only do we have a high percentage of students scoring proficient Advance we also have a great number of students scoring um Advanced on on our pssas as well so uh on the right hand side you'll see us in comparison to the state um I think most notable there in fourth grade last year 56.1% of our students were Advanced on their English language arts pssa uh this is uh similar uh but this is our elementary mathematics pssa historical data um I I there there's there's a couple areas I'd really like
005to point out here you can kind of see the historical growth uh from 2015 till now third grade has always been pretty strong and we have seen growth over the years but I think I'd like you to key in on fourth and fifth grade where we've seen d double digit gains uh since 2015 um and also uh we we've started to exceed some of those pre-pandemic numbers in math um as far as proficient Advance is concerned once again you'll see we far exceed far uh outpace uh the state as far as proficient in advance and also the the number of advanced students last year uh on the the pssa in third grade we had 63% 62.2 in fourth grade and 56.8% in fifth grade which is just phenomenal having that many students reach that advanced
006category uh we also uh the the Science assessment used to take place in fourth grade uh last year our students uh overall were at 95% that's been pretty consistent um over the years um and Joe if you'll turn to the next slide I think this is one area that that's really exciting while um you'll see the comparison to the state we are about 20% higher but the percent of students proficient in advance of that uh 95% 77.1% of our students scored Advance on the science pssa so that assessment is now moving to fifth grade um so it'll be field tested this year and uh using the new steel steel standards and then um it'll continue in fifth grade moving forward uh this is some DMS data uh for English language arts pssas um what you'll
007see on this slide is is similar uh worth noting though is we have now been consistently into those the mid to Upper 80s uh in and proficient Advanced students for pssas uh for for the last four or five years um so so maintaining that has has been um great to see and then if we'll turn to the next slide uh We've also increased the number of students that are reaching Advanced at DMS as well um and just pointing out all three grade levels uh sixth seventh and eth were above had more than 50% of their students reaching Advanced uh so that's very strong this is probably the the biggest area for celebration is our our mathematics pssa uh at DMS um if you go back to 2015 we were scoring in the in the 50%
008range is for uh for proficient in advance on the pssa those numbers have greatly increased specifically in about the last three years um but the jump overall has been over 20 20% in sixth grade 16% in sth and about 8 and a half% in e8th grade but the last three years uh We've really accelerated that growth um we attribute a lot of that to a change in our curriculum we're now in our third year of reveal math uh at DMS uh it's been a solid uh switch for us um also coming out of the pandemic there were some changes made to the schedule that kind of stayed in place that allowed for um remediation opportunities for our students um and we've seen a lot of growth in those courses as well and also worth noting
009um last year was the first time we had one of our uh grades at DMS uh eclipse the 80% Mark for proficient and advanced and that was our sixth grade class um and here's our eighth grade science uh we you know two years ago we saw a big jump in our our achievements um we went up you know over 10% uh last year we relatively maintained it went down slightly to 87.7 uh but that that we're we're happy with that growth um this will also be a a a uh assessment that's going to be changing next year uh with the new or this year with the new steel standards so this year will be more of a field test next year will be um fully assessed uh using what they learn from this year and
010you'll see once again those comparisons uh the state to our district and just um the number of students we have proficient and advanced is about 55% which is extraordinary Keystone data we do look at a little bit differently uh the way the state tracks uh since students take keystones at different times during their educational career some take uh uh algebra in the Middle School some take it in high school so instead of looking at it year by year they actually Bank the cohorts and their 11th grade year uh by that point everyone who's taking an assessment has taken it um we have done uh historically well uh in this area we we are typically in the mid to 80% range for each graduating class um in algebra bio and literature I think that uh one
011of the point one key point to look at uh last year was literature was at 89% so getting closer to that 90% that we saw um pre pandemic on this slide you'll see some are not reported that was due to covid and others there's some wonky looking data points there they look like big drops that's actually because those students didn't take the the actual assessment uh they got what we called a non-numeric proficiency it was kind of the uh the waiver that was given during covid if they took that assessment it counted for them but it wasn't counted as a past assessment by the state on how they report it and this is just a comparison of how um you know our our 11th grade achievement uh compares to the states so we're around 90%
012upper 80s 90% for each uh the state varies uh algebra is about 41% bio 50 literature is a little higher at 63% another area I wanted to key in on was our advanced placement data uh overall we offer about 27 courses uh which is actually quite a lot uh considered um considering the the averages that the College Board shares uh and in all about um schools average about eight courses um public schools that is private schools usually about 11 courses uh so we have a nice offering last year we had about um 1,090 students uh enroll in AP courses uh and that equaled um 821 uh assessments you also have to remember this isn't necessarily individual students some students students may have taken multiple AP courses and multiple assessments as well so overall um about
01375 Pursuit percent of students that were enrolled in courses uh ended up taking an assessment uh and 74% that did take received a four or five which would grant them some college credit so um that's a good number in comparison uh to the national average as well oh and the J if you don't mind going back uh I also had a graph there just these are three um uh most popular classes courses and assessments uh so that was US History world history and English language and composition and you'll see how our students scored uh compared to the national average and you'll see we we far exceed um that national average and the number of students who score four or five on their AP exams uh this is a a a some data I also shared
014last year just our Trends as far as Charter School enrollment go um if you were to look at our enrollment over the last five years we did see a spike during uh the pandemic uh a lot of those schools uh included um uh online or virtual schools uh and that number group went up I think 22 we kind of hit our Peak at 82 students um that's most likely because that's when we had kind of pulled back from our hybrid model um but since then we've really um regained a lot of those students this this current year we have 4 47 students enrolled in charter schools these next uh data points are Scatter Plots that are um on the the peos website this is actually public data that can be accessed um and you can
015you can kind of uh arrange it and and shift what data you want to see but uh what you'll see here is the red triangle is is Fox Chapel and the other um the blue um the blue symbols there are all school districts that are in alagan county or the AIU specifically aiu3 specifically um what I wanted to show you on that on the vertical axis you'll see that that's showing achievement so the higher up the Axis The Higher Achievement is um within the cohorts and or or for the year and uh the further to the right on the horizontal access that's that's the growth so the goal is to be in in the upper right hand corner uh where you would have high growth high achievement so in I'm sorry you mean achievement growth
016like a growth in the indices used to measure achievement say it again I'm sorry I just want to make sure I know what you're saying is growing okay so uh peos uses um past student pass standardized assessments for each student and provides a projection for each student on their next assessment thank you great and and so based on that they collect all the data and kind of have a prediction of where students should be um and I'm actually glad you asked that question because what you'll see here is we we are going to be towards the top of the achievement and all these graphs we're very high up in achievement what we are seeing is there's some bounce uh bouncing back in between that horizontal line as far as as far as where we are
017um for growth um so you'll see to the left to the left there our math achievement had high high achievement some and in in good growth but it could be better whereas um our our uh Ela growth in four through eight um it was it was to the left of that horizontal line so we want it to grow so one thing we're doing is really looking at that individual student evos projections and pairing it to other data that we have that could be our common assessments our our star assessments and saying how can we continue to move these students year after year especially with such high achieving students so how are we providing push for those students so that's kind of where where and how we're using this type of data are there particular cohorts
018that you found aren't growing as well as others have you gotten into the data that far um sometimes it's cohorts sometimes it's specific courses that we're taking a look at um one that I'll I'll get to here in a little bit um well Joe go go to the next one please um One More sorry one more one more slide so in our Keystone data so we we uh if you'll look at the literature one which is on bottom um you'll see that we've kind of seen o over the last couple years that growth has continued to go to the left uh our achievement has remained high so we we we've we've talked about this year a couple different options or you you know there's a few things to look at it how why aren't we
019growing students is it curriculum is it our scheduling um and we're looking at all those things um so what what we've kind of we've identified a few Pockets where we're we're thinking hey we're going to make some changes here to see how that helps continue that growth some of some of it's class placement and also when are we giving students the assessment um so in key for keystones in in particular literature they usually take them in 10th Grade uh we're wondering but the posos data shows that a lot of our students could actually pass the moment they walk in the door ninth grade um so we're looking at would that be a better time to capture them and maybe open up some new possibilities as they move into 10th grade 11th grade if if they
020took that uh course and completed it could we do some different things so that's just one example of how we look at things but you can boil it down in so many ways you can look at um individual buildings uh classrooms um and so we've taken a look at that a few different ways to see how can we continue to grow students so it's been a big conversation within the district this year so by giving it a grade early are you just decreasing the window for how long they have grown or I mean that doesn't seem like an intervention but I'm just trying to understand I'll explain a little bit more so we have students that come in 9th grade and they they're predicted that they could be Advanced on their Keystone assessment however we're
021not actually giving the assessment to them until their sophomore the the second semester of their sophomore year so often there's a gap of a whole year of instruction that we're not capitalizing on for those students um so the thought is you know they aren't any English class you're an English class all four years of high school right yes but we we we have like a trigger course of when we would give it to them so the longer we wait NE isn't necessarily going to help it's capturing them when they're ready so rather than have them take a year off take that course again we're thinking we can give it to them uh in their in their freshman year and and have them be successful then which could open up a wide range of possibilities moving
022forward one thing you might be seen and I see it everywhere except for this one in literature is that if you're at the top of the growth y AIS and nobody else is to your right suggested a ceiling effect that you can't go much further uh because the test has a ceiling effect so there is the issue of whether we're pushing students further along fast enough and and also there's a question of Are We testing them at the right point time sure I think that's what you're saying is really we could test them earlier it's not then that would open up also so let me also another thing to consider is for that assessment ninth and 10th grade standards in literature are identical on ninth and 10th grade they're actually coupled as ninth and 10th
023grade ELA standards so one of the discussions we've had is not only moving it earlier but what can we do to to push students further so looking at our curriculum how are we meeting them where they are and pushing them yeah I just was saying you might not be able to see that in the test though even if you you're successful doing that because it will pop out maybe and and again and that's what being close to zero on the growth is probably telling you if you are the top school district is that you've hit the ceiling and you can't you can't prove that you're better than growing at at at the top of the scale but Mr Mr Hilton wouldn't you think that this growth indicator would adjust for your proximity to the ceiling
024it can only do what the what's on the items the bank that's on the test well sure but you don't think there is a there is a there's a plateau adjust as much as it can but there's a plateau on what information the model has yes but surely if that was if what you said was true then all of those would be pyramid shaped all of these graphs would have a would have a would have a sort of an envelope around them that limited the amount if you had the universe of all test takers you probably would see a normal distribution but we only have AIU right so so I would say peos says that you do not have that effect that all students no matter what their achievement can grow because the definition of
025growth is one year in one year meaning if you are at whatever score you are in in eth grade in nth grade if you take that same assessment you would be similar similarly placed according to score not according to your other students according to your score so according to pivas and it's a that's something for people who are uh more interested in in looking at the mathematics I haven't looked at it for a few years but according to them it doesn't have that plateau effect but we do know that when we give the assessment matters because it's when students we have a block schedule at the high school we have students who based on the projection data could be proficient 80% or more could be proficient when they walk in but sometimes they are waiting
026for semesters before taking that it doesn't mean that they aren't capable it doesn't mean that they could not grow but they might be taking other courses so our thought is if we give it to the students who are showing that they have Readiness does that then give them other opportunities for perhaps college and high school or other AP Pathways in their future years to still meet their English requirements but the will we still capture either the same or better data that we're getting now and more importantly give students different opportunities as they move forward so that's our hypothesis based on doing that backend analysis now whether you uh you have much more expert and that would agree with p's comment that everyone can grow on this assessment or not um but High achieving school districts
027like ours do show growth It's just sometimes that growth is is different um and and maybe may work at a different pace than a district that is um you know growing 10 and 15% because they have been lower yeah and it's really looking at Trends you know we don't want to ever overreact to one year of data you know we're looking at historical data data Trends comparing it to other data points our curriculum based assessments we know are strong so we'll often see how how does you know a state assessment compared to what our students are doing uh in the classroom as well so and the state doesn't regulate and say it has to be one grade or the other we can decide in in the Keystone it does not but you have to declare
028when you're giving it because you have to actually code a course as what Dr Edward said as a trigger course so we report that course to the Pennsylvania information management system and if it's an algebra one course that's listed as the trigger course all students in that course must take the algebra one Keystone that year you can't pick and choose that a student doesn't take it if they're in a trigger course um but we can have other courses that aren't trigger courses um in 10th Grade uh so yes could we move it we can that that's like some of our students take you know algebra very early on in middle school they're showing that they're ready so kind of meeting them where they are they do get that assessment NE out of the way and
029and it does open up a variety of different options than when they get to you know later middle school or high school as well what about a ninth grade student who is not showing they're ready yet in ninth grade but would if they did the cycle we have now where it was 9th and 10th grade they would be ready the following year but they're in this ninth grade trigger how do you do that so there's a few different ways so we we also have multiple classes courses in ninth grade so uh we have an advanced and and uh Advanced or sorry accelerated English and uh a regular English nine so we could make one of those a trigger to see how this is going to work um the students that are in The Accelerated English
030non they're they their peos is saying they are ready they're they're most likely many of them are likely to be Advanced if we were to give them assessment so I think that's where we want to look at it first okay and then see could that also apply to students who are not in that course but then it does have a ripple effect because then we were looking at scheduling at DMS to make sure we capturing the right students to be in that accelerated course and and there's self- selection involved when you get to ninth grade you can choose to take accelerated in four all four of your core classes or three of your core classes and different students make different choices according to how rigorous a curriculum they want to have not necessarily their Readiness
031for their literature to be Advanced or not sure yeah and and it we we have to look at it carefully we don't want kids over assessing in one year either uh so you know it might be beneficial for those students who have already gotten algebra out of the way and we think we're probably going to capture a lot of those kids in ninth grade in that accelerated course one thing that we have done over the years is we've always enriched students when they need that enrichment and uh as evidenced by algebra we have students from fourth grade to 11th grade who have taken an algebra Keystone assessment but what we're also seeing is that when you think about what the pssa score showed we're seeing a higher percentage that are coming Advanced and scoring advanced
032in younger grades which means we need to look at what they will need when they get to high school because the profile of a student is different now than it was in 2015 based on what we're seeing and therefore we we want to make sure that we aren't we aren't accelerating to the point of frustration that students have choice and voice in that that families have that choice and voice that's not going away but we also know that we have many students who are showing a Readiness and we don't want to hold them back by a construct of it's 10th grade if it doesn't make any sense for that assessment to be in 10th Grade just like we have not done that in Algebra 1 so we're trying to look at what does the student
033need at what point in time and and trying to match that academically for them it's a work clearly our math we have a lot more flexibility in that than we do in our literature I mean we have kids taking algebra you're saying in fourth grade they could pass the Keystone we do not have any equivalent on the literature side there is no opportunity for a student to be that far ahead on literature and actually be able to have any sort of acceleration Beyond one grade so I think to that point there is a lot of room in the conversation to create space for kids who are really good at literature to have an equivalent amount of opportunity to our kids who are really ahead in math yeah yeah and that's going back to like the
034scheduling piece that's where we're looking at at DMS that what students are uh in our ADV our Advanced uh courses there you know are we getting all the right kids you know or um what what data can we use from peos to show that hey there's more kids that are ready for an advanced advanced course that aren't so that is kind of the trickle down effect that we we I I spoke of so we're looking at that as well how can we create more opportunities for students when they are younger absolutely I encourage that in literature in particular I think it's I think it's an area we could improve in I I don't want to see the kids in the middle get forgotten that's that's where my concern is because I think we do really
035good job with our accelerated kids and with our specialed kids and kids that need more time and I worry about the kids in the middle and that changing when the test is and so just one throw that out there sure one thing we do know is is based on the profile of the pssa growth in the younger grades you cannot see that growth only with attending to the needs of those who may need enrichment or those that may need intervention you can't see that kind of growth without attending to the students who may be progressing along at a at an average rate um and at times maybe need accelerated and at times may need a little extra and so that that is part of a global conversation that we are having because it it isn't
036there's no one- siiz fits-all and there isn't in any of the buildings in our district including in elementary school and so what we're trying to do is make the next informed choices Based on data uh and based on what we know about our children and not just the standardized test data that's just one piece it's a whole host of things that we're looking at um and we're also getting student feedback on some of those things and um as to you know what what is the most important thing to them as well as from our Educators they're a critical part of that conversation can we ask questions about the earlier slides I would also like to ask questions about earlies please do you want to start nope you can okay um so what of a tradition
037that I'd love to see implemented as a part of these meetings um is is standard errors or standard deviations um so like a concern that I think happens in a district as high achieving as ours right is like um are we is the this sort of spread of data reflected in the story we're telling about student achievement and what I mean by that is is kind of more back to going back to Mary best's Point um of uh yeah I think it's great that we've got so many high achieving students I love that we're at like over 50% students who are achieving at Advanced levels in many of our subjects I'm very interested in what proportion of our students are not there um and What proportion of this like overall proficiency data lives above and
038Bel below a mean is this a mean that you're reporting for some of these or is it you know like so if if we could have a little resolution on that I think that would be helpful and then I'll Follow That by saying are are those standard deviations very different between buildings so are some of our buildings doing a great job at marching kids up to this sort of basic level of literacy before middle school and others maybe have more stragglers or are struggling to to maintain that achievement and I don't I don't know how how might I learn that from the data you're presenting so all all the data I'm sharing is publicly available uh the PA Future Ready index is is a good uh resource for that it'll break down each individual building
039one thing I can see is you know our achievement overall can't grow you know with one building it's definitely growing as a whole um you know I mentioned DMS previously that that was kind of an area where we were had been a little bit stagnant and we've seen great growth um there it's a little easier to point out because it is it's it's 6 seven8 in one building but our elementary schools while they vary in and their and their makeup of students and um their size um we have seen growth in all of our buildings and that that's where the growth piece also comes in it's not just achievement but looking at how the groups are growing uh some of them are at such high achievement levels um they are at the very top of
040that that vertical line so we we are looking more towards growth because there's a limited amount of achievement that we could even get out of them whereas others we We are continuing to push you know some some subgroups of students towards that proficient range or even some students who maybe score below basic to that basic range um so it's that is available and and I can provide those breakdowns to the board too uh that's all data we have ready for you so I'd be happy to share that and I actually had shared the PA Future Ready index with the board when it came out in the fall all of the buildings can be looked at and um you can see many indicators from that um and that is publicly available great um and so I
041guess I'm interested in a little bit of the the sort of lag that we're seeing in proficiencies as you as you sort of move into the middle school level testing so it seems like there's we sort of are building up an Ela proficiency um prior to DMS and then it it or maybe I get the growth seems to be there as you said are we just waiting for four years or three years to see that proficiency show up at the DMS level um because it seemed like it was I think it was English let me take check my notes yeah because we're doing great in the math yeah yeah yeah so like um sorry so English has been about we're about 85% at the elementary level we're around there at the middle school now too
042so that is pretty consistent as far as proficient Advance math has always been an area where we did see a drop from elementary school to middle school that that is that is something even if you look at the comparisons to the state that there is that that fall off from from elementary to Middle School what we're see seeing now is that's we're starting to flatten that out which is is great to see which has really brought up a lot of the the peos and the growth things because now we have kids coming in sixth grade they're ready like they're they're more ready than than what our sixth grade teachers have maybe been seeing before so what changes do we need to make to our curriculum or our scheduling to make sure we continue to push
043those students um and and it's been good conversations that we've had with teachers about this um I think some of them recognize it like hey these kids are coming in at a different from uh Point than than what maybe historically they were used to so definitely definitely a a a conversation that's been had so that's it's great to hear that the that the proficiency between elementary and middle has flattened I'm excited for dorville having sort of a lot of progress when I'm looking at this Elementary pssa data what I did was Circle where was our our high point and our High Point in that at the elementary level in third and fourth grade was they were both before the pandemic uh and then in fifth grade it was the year after the pandemic but they're
044all significantly higher than where we are now so DMS is great I'm glad they're moving up but it's not I don't want to see flattening because I don't want to see flattening because English is moving down at the elementary and this is coming up I want to see flattening because dorsy bille is meeting them at that high level so can you speak a little bit to what we're doing at the elementary level to get back to sort of our pre-pandemic levels sure in ela specifically they're currently going through a a review of curriculums um are we are currently using uh Journeys which is set to our our our license is set to expire in the near future uh so that rev viewing programs um and and I think they're bringing a group together next week
045to they've Ned it down to to a couple different ones I think that's a big change that needs to happen that was one of the things we saw make a big difference at the middle school for math uh so you know we've we've had Journeys since I've been here so I think about eight or nine years so I I think it's we're kind of at a point where it is time for a change so that's one area uh but we've also made a number of changes at different levels we've you know uh adopted a a tier three reading program last year Spire that we've kind that we piloted and now spread throughout um not only the Four elementary schools but even DMS so there's a lot of concentrated efforts taking place at the elementary level
046uh in ela but I I think we're always looking back at 2019 uh we knew there was going to be some fallof and I have some data to even show there's been a fallof nationally um you know in in um in data from uh pre pandemic ver versus post I think it's it's something we've all trying to get trying to get back to uh but we're doing a number of things to to get back there we're are we proud that we've gained some ground since the pandemic yes well we we definitely have room to grow for sure yeah I I certainly don't want to like belittle that growth I I think the retention of learning or like really the ability to maintain much of an NE flat or positive trend through the pandemic is truly
047extraordinary it's something that I'm very proud of um to be a part of this District would challenge a little bit um to Vanessa's point about um or Miss L's Point excuse me about the Jitter um so a lot of the growth that we're sh that we're looking at looks about the size of the year-to-year Jitter and so like I think um again that's sort of where it would be helpful to me to sort of see um what sort of variance we're talking about as we look at this data um but that's that's a great next time challenge um would it be all right if we talked a little bit about the AP scores or AP test data okay we wait till he actually gets there oh I thought he was there already I'm sorry yeah
048do there he already talked about AP oh there were few other slides yeah I'm M whenever you're ready oh I think I did review this one yeah great okay perfect so um so I see that the total student enrollment I want to make sure I'm understanding the slide correctly um so the total student enrollment in AP courses um is that is that's current as of this year the 1090 this is this is last year last year okay perfect and then the same and the total assessments taken last year is 821 correct okay and so I guess it would be helpful to understand as you alluded to in your in your discussion of this slide what how many students is 8 821 assessments yeah uh oh how many individual students I can break that down for
049I don't have that right right here but I will look it up it was shared with the board after the academic committee meeting so I'll look it up okay great perfect um because I I think maybe I I don't really understand I was not an AP teacher and I'm not I don't yet have an AP student um What proportion of students in AP courses are we hoping take the tests what's an aspirational percentage of of test of assessment rate like is that I mean if I as a teacher I think you want all of them to take the assessment so there's actually differing there's differing CH there's a there's a changing idea about AP courses that we've seen in the last eight or 10 years uh it used to be a gatekeeper course that you
050only took an AP course if you met certain criteria and you only took it with the idea that you were taking it for potential college credit um through something called the national math science initiative a lot of other research that's been done especially on AP uh there is a a a different perspective of if you're taking an advanced placement course it's a college readiness course if the majority of your students are going to to college then the majority of students in high school should be engaged in an AP course at some point in time and that a lower grade in an AP course may still be a worthy educational Endeavor because you're taking a higher level of material and you are taking essentially a college readiness course so a lot of the evidence from about
05110 years of data out of the nimsey initiative is showing that opening the AP courses for more students even if it is just for the experience of it is actually a worthy Endeavor whether a student chooses to take the course with the test in mind or chooses not to take the test it's really up to the student Educators can give them advice can say I think you should but we have students who will choose not to take an AP assessment because their college has already told them they will not accept that AP assessment but they still take the AP course and I don't I think that has a worth educational outcome however we also have students who will take that AP course and take that assessment because they want that that experience as well and
052so as to the individual reasons most of the students who have not taken courses that we are aware of anecdotally it's usually because their college isn't going to look at them so they they put their efforts in other endeavors but they may still be in the course we don't have any hard data as in exactly how many of those students take it for which reason reason um but there is really a worthy thought of taking more rigorous coursework as a a Growing Experience when you're in high school in a more protected environment than you would be in college so it just depends as to what it is several kids several of my children took a all three of my kids took AP classes some of them took the AP exam um and got credit for
053it some of them they would not have got even if they passed the exam they would not have gotten credit with with the major that they were seeking so they said well why take the test and pay at that point it was $90 but they wanted to take for example Jen Klein's uh AP History CL AP World History or American history and because it it came so highly regarded and they knew her but but with no intention of ever taking the AP test they want to go through the experience of the class excellent it sounds like there's a lot of good college readiness too I I I think one of the one of the most impressive things about our high school is how easily that transition to college goes for a lot of our kids
054I think that is it's a testimony to our high school curriculum in a big way so I will give the Kudo on that one is so I think I think many parents look at a district and look at the availability of AP courses right how many of them are there and are there enough and then they look at how many students are enrolled in AP courses as an indicator of rigor um because it's a you know it's a nice like externally robust everybody kind of knows what you're getting type of course right um and so I that's that's all excellent and laudable and I I don't dispute for a minute this like shift in encouraging more students to take AP courses I think that is totally rad um my question is do we have an
055aspirational proportion of those students that we hope feel it is worth their time to take an AP test I will tell you as a superintendent I do not I would hope that a majority do but I would want to know why a student's taking the course before I would answer that question question with an aspirational number because I I think that there's a worthy there's a worthy push for AP for a lot of different purposes and I hear students taking that we also have students that will not take an AP course but will take a college and high school course because they're earning college credits or we have students that say I'm taking three advanced classes I'd like to take this art course or this technology education course for my own benefit so could we
056come up with what we would like to see as a school we can but it's a lot of qualitative um uh you know value judgment that really has to involve students and families as well um as to whether it is worthy because I can't say that if you're not taking the assessment it's because you don't think it's worthy it may just be because you're a senior and your college already told you you're not they're not taking your chem course because you're a chemistry major so why am I going to spend the you know the the money to do the course and why am I going to take the assessment when I'm already you know accepted for so yeah absolutely and I I would nudge a few opportunities maybe to see that number grow without violating
057anyone's wish or intent in taking an AP course so one of those might be are we are we like aggressively supporting students in fee waivers for example um are we asking students at the be at the time that they enroll in that course are you taking this with the goal of taking the test and the reason I asked that is because I I know for a fact that students particularly in low achieving districts generally will take a test they don't think they can do well in and so I want to make sure that that discrepancy isn't being driven by students feeling as though they won't be prepared for a test that they that we we have a responsibility to prepare them to take um so if we could maybe nudge that a little bit I
058think that would be those seems like worthwhile Pursuits that don't intrude on this vision of AP as a source of rigor in our school yeah I mean I think I think it's the first step I think I think before you can set an aspirational goal you would have to understand the reasons why our students are and are not taking their exams and I think that's that's a pretty easy ask when they walk into the class you can sort of is your goal this and when they walk out of the class you can ask did you achieve your goal I mean that that's that's not a hard thing for us to figure out so I think that information seems reasonable I don't know that we're ready yet to to say that we know what what a
059I mean is the regular old non- aspirational data like in general we'd expect 70% of students to go on to take the test Nationwide data regular but we don't pay for the assessment so let's be clear as a school district we don't pay for the assessment it's a it's a parent that pays for it we have ways to subsidize that assessment youing her question about paying sorry what was that were you answering her question about being no I'm saying before I would set an a figure that we want to take it I I would we would need to to have some discussion I don't want to set a figure that then we're asking I was just curious with all the data that seems to exist within the educational Realm of the United States in Pennsylvania
060if there a general in general we see I I don't know it just seems like a really long discussion on a very simple question like how many students would we expect to take sure well I I don't have that information I don't have that data because it's qualitative I will say in nimsy if you're a nimsey school which we are not if you participate in the National math science initiative all students must take the assessment um as part of that whether or not you're going to pass that's a requirement of it and there's no choice if you sign up for the course I don't know that in our district we want anything that is doesn't have a choice for a student in a family based on for sure no I don't think anybody's saying that
061I think it was just a general I'm one that took AP courses and didn't take the tests all of them sure yeah I mean I just wanted the h i I do know we we saw in when we when we looked at this in more detail in the education committee that we did see variations across classes in terms of the rates and we have some classes that are only a fairly small number of students and very few of them are actually taking the test and for whatever reasons it could be that like the superintendent said that we they might the question I think it's a good question though is like do we have enough insight to know whether we should for example it is costly for the district to offer a course for only 10
062kids and if only two of them take the test should we just do an accelerated class not call it that could still offer the same similar experience but not call it an AP test and uh and potentially open it up to more kids is that a better use of our resources in some instances than offering that because we have plenty of AP courses right now I don't think we have to worry about anybody exceeding our offerings and AP courses we have a lot um but uh so just just I think it's a very interesting discussion in a rich area to just look at um for that uh for that body of students that and I will put a little caveat on that um AP is not looked at as rigorously by some colleges as it
063used to be college and high school is now um an opportunity for students to earn a college trans transcript in high school and um many students uh in our region are earning 10 15 20 30 college credits while they're still in high school which puts them on a pathway for uh advancing quickly in their college level uh courses whenever they arrive in college After High School with a transcript all ready to go so that is something that we just have to temper in most places that have implemented more college and high school courses AP course uh attendance and enrollment continues to to stay around the same but um some students are choosing one way or another based on what they feel is is better for their educational outcome so yeah sure I'm very excited about
064the college and high school thing I mean especially with student debt being what it is I think that's a really wonderful solution but all right as as a comment I I I I like that the test is decoupled from the course itself um that just seems the right thing to do there I will say too we have some students that take assessments who have not taken courses but they you you can choose to just take an assessment so you have a personal you know interest in it and you feel like you can do well and many of them do well and some do not but uh you don't have to take the assessment you don't have to take the course to take the assessment certainly when you take the course you are better prepared for
065the assessment and you receed all of the GR of the student for the okay no matter if they take the course or not okay yes just to Mr Hamilton's point you you're saying 27 AP courses offered is is a high number and good um there are kids in our schools who are taking like four and five of these a year of high school right some of these some of these could be multiple like one student in multiple courses correct yeah so like 27 when you're taking four or five a year is is actually necessary to get where you're going okay can I ask about a different assessment so we have the new Steel City standards when do that when when does that enter into the assessment path what's so funny steals Ste steals I don't
066remember what's it called no okay it's our own moment over here nothing to do apologies if it appeared as no it's okay I just want to make sure I wasn't missing something okay so yeah when does that um when do we start assessing with respect to those standards so uh in this year fourth grade students used to take the the Science assessment it'll it moves to fifth grade this year okay and it'll be it'll actually be a pilot this year um by by the by the state so it's more or less a field test where we'll get some data back but it's not going to be uh necessary we'll get data back for each student but it's not going to be um released for hey here's where the district is so it's not part of
067any of our our grading without a better way to say it uh and that the same it'll also stay in eighth grade and this year they are uh field testing the new assessment in eth grade using those standards cool okay great thank you um I think I'm I think I'm out did the did the academic committee ask about gender differences on any of these tested subjects or any enrollment is that something you all discussed we had some discussion about that okay great I'll follow up with you all individually then um I think I'm out you're done okay all right I one one more question is just um because I do want to get to the rest of but uh as long as we're still you should benchmarks compared to the Statewide comparison I just wonder
068if um for us to nudge ourselves a little further we should be comparing ourselves to uh some kind of um comparable District Benchmark uh because obviously we aren't the same as the other 400 districts in the state we're we're definitely different there are districts that are more like us that um would give us some potentially Insight if we were to pick 10 15 districts that we think uh resemble Us in terms of our characteristics it might be a useful Benchmark to hold ourselves to a higher high standard yeah that that can certainly be done I mean all this is public data Maybe we wouldn't present it in a public form but I could definitely provide that data to you yeah I know we we composit it I guess so that we wouldn't be out anybody
069well and if you composite it though we we we are very careful when we're looking at that data to keep in mind that we don't know the history and the story of that data either so comp we can composite something and say these are 10 Lake districts um you know a lot of this though you could do that comparison on your own if if somebody would be interested and it fluctuates um the the key to remember is that in the Pittsburgh business time with the top 10 usually the difference between you know number one and number five is about 10 kids so it's not you know we just it it just depends on on such minor differences at times but that is data I could I could get you um I just speaking of those
07010 kids I thought of one more thing um which is do we see attendance depression on test day um or see any attendance anomalies that would suggest that any of our um data is is absent some students I mean I we have not noticed a specific issue with attendance except when people have trips planned and some people choose to take trips during the pssas because they don't have homework and so then their children make that up um we see you know some families too that opt their children out uh we had a high percentage of opt outs at the middle school that actually and every time that somebody Ops out it counts as a zero for the school district so the scores that you see are representative of our students achievement with the optt outs
071included in it is there a trend in the opt outs or was that a blip for a time because I do remember there was a year or two when that was an issue and then I haven't heard lately much we haven't seen that in in a couple years um none of our our schools have been penalized due to you know exceeding the the required 95% in the last two years so yeah see if that's I didn't realize that those were reported as zeros and included in these averages in which case it might make makes sense to co- report in like a tiny little font in like red italics like yeah like or like a foot footnoting of of some of these achievements because it if if there is a banner year for opt outs that
072would make that year look depressed and make your growth look inflated right so like that might be something worth reporting at the same time I know that's annoying but if you if it's all in the same spreadsheet sure so just realize some of these aren't coming directly from a spreadsheet because the students that test aren't always attributed to the school district there a whole lot of other backend business rules that go along with that that actually require Dr Edwards to work for multiple weeks on reviewing uh a lot of the thing the um the business rules as to whether a student is assessed in the district and do they count for the district or they count for the district that they moved from or they account for some other purpose so um it's possible it's
073it's a it's not a a simplistic calculation yeah unfortunately I mean that's why there's a an administrator committed to data which is pretty awesome so yeah and we're grateful for all the work you put into this all right so this is exciting stuff um these are just some of our rankings um I think uh most notable is the Pittsburgh business time this past year we were uh ranked the number one school district in Pennsylvania uh and the number one school district in southwestern Pennsylvania not only that uh we saw many of our grade levels uh reach number one um and uh uh in seventh and eth grade they were considered the number two school districts in southwestern Pennsylvania so uh this is based on uh largely standardized assessment data over the uh over the last
074three years um so that was great great celebration for our teachers our students uh the everything the board has done uh to support us as well and this would include all local districts that people may consider us comparable to um but one thing that that uh we do know is in the Pittsburgh business times there are very few that have the same that we do so um the US and world news is another uh ranking report that we receive um and overall we were the number 749 in national rankings um that's the high school and that was out of out of about 25 25,000 schools uh we were ranked number 17 School in Pennsylvania um and then uh DMS number 13 in Pennsylvania and all of our uh elementary schools were in the top 2%
075uh they were also in the top 55 schools in all of Pennsylvania uh elementary schools that is and that's out of three over 3,000 schools uh Niche is another uh ranking they they take into a number of of different things uh not only test scores but they also get some public information as well um it's worth noting all of our schools received an A+ and um only two and a half percent of all schools uh in Niche uh get uh are rated with an A+ so high marks again so I I had shared something similar last year was the education recovery scorecard um which we saw uh that that we had a lot of growth in uh they recently just this a few weeks ago released an updates that included 2024 data um and we
076were excited to see that we showed uh a further increase from where we were in 2019 coming out of the pandemic um so the what they are showing is growth um in grade level equivalent uh from 2019 till now um and you'll see um where we were before that dotted line uh and to where we are at the end of that like blue dot there so we've continued to go up and surpass where we were pre pandemic uh as far as uh learning loss goes and the next slide um shows we were also uh within the uh in the article within the research we were found to be one of the top 100 districts uh as far as recovery goes um and in in regards to reading achievement we were the we had a 49th
077great uh greatest change in Reading achievement from 2019 to 2024 um so just just really um um a great way to show all that we've done not only during the pandemic how we how we reacted and made sure kids were getting what they needed but even going beyond that how we've have adapted afterwards and continue to move our students math we saw uh an even greater uh jump um so you'll see where we were in 2019 which is before the dotted line uh until now so we had a big spike this past year and we'll go to the next slide uh overall out of the top uh well we in the top 100 but out of uh all the all the schools that were part of this uh research within the study uh we were
078the 60 we showed the 62nd highest change in the nation as far as mathematic achievement from 2019 to 2024 so I think I wanted to end with those couple slides because I just think it's a testament to all that the board has done our teachers have done and our administrative team have we've all worked together to ensure that students get what they get get what they needed and we've come out of Co in in a better place than we were so um that's all I have and if there are any other questions I'd be happy to take them thank you yeah I just wanted to say thanks for being uh ready for a rigorous conversation it's always appreciated when you come prepared and have the information absolutely thank you thank you thank you Phil we
079have another presentation this evening as well uh and this is uh for a required plan so Dr uh Tim Mahoney is here a director of special education and people services to give an overview of the fox chap School District kada 12 special education plan that is due in April May well May 1 May 1 thank you so yes Steve and I get a double header of super exciting information data and state compliance um so this is the fun part of my job here um so we are this special education plan is every three years we go through a planning cycle um the special education plan is a PA code requirement see under there it's 22 PA code chapter 14 subsection 104 that is to support idea Federal requirements so this is the the mechanism which
080the state of Pennsylvania uh responds to those Ida requirements and those indicators that Ida identifies so at the academic committee we went through piece by piece with each of those indicators talked about the data tonight I'm just going to give a broad overview of that planning process and where we're looking at addressing indicators that we feel that or this data has identified that we need to address so um this is a process supported within the Secretary of Education it's in that future uh ready planning portal and it is an evaluation of our pen data so again publicly accessible data you can just Google pen data and it's on the um the SR it's the the Special Education data report um we look at our policies as well as training opportunities within the district so I'd
081like to look at it under three broad buckets so our areas of improvement this is through that those idea requirements in that special education data report where were identified as areas that we maybe didn't meet compliance or areas of growth so specifically for Fox shop Area School District that's indicator three five and 13 we'll talk about that in just a minute we also look at our um review of internal policies and practices so we go through our uh identification method how we handle non-resident students incarcerated students least restrictive environment Positive Behavior Support intensive inter agency meetings program profile which is looking at um our special education case loads and our facilities as well as Supportive Services so there things we do Beyond just our special education case managers um just to note the um non-resident
082students previously we had what was identified as a a 1306 um medical facility over on um Foxwood Drive that's no longer here so in this plan we no longer have to address that however we talk about in the event that we were to have a medical facility this is how we would address it we do not have a facility which houses incarcerated youth so that again is is one that we would say how we would however we don't have that in our district and then looking at I'm sorry that's right the uh the Personnel development so this is the training oper OPP unities that we have and these are the areas that are mandated by the state so everyone in the state of Pennsylvania looks specifically at autism positive behavior supports PA of professionals transition
083the science of literacy which again was discussion which you see is obviously a Statewide flag as as to an area of improvement um that you saw in Dr Edward's data where we're talking about improving literacy uh parent training and then IEP development so those areas of improvement specifically indicator three this is participation in state assessments so U where the question was do we see a lot of opt outs or we see a lot of people not participating in the assessment Ida actually looks specifically at our students with disabilities with an IEP in place and their participation their required participation is 95% so the E expected Benchmark that we are to meet is 95% um they look at specifically grades four 8 and 11 and then report that data back so the reason that that is
084an indicator uh the district at the time so they look just pen data reporting because data lags they're looking at 2022 data so that data for fourth grade was 94.5% was this was the district data 88.4 in 8th grade and 97% in 11th grade that was for both reading and math the the um math data the algebra data was I think just maybe a decimal point below but we met the standard in both math for um or Ela and math in 11th grade so what that tells us is of our average class size of those students with IEPs so you're looking at an average class size between two and 300 just the students with IEPs the participation there so a handful of students even three students in fourth grade if they choose not to take
085the assessment we're now not meeting the standard so we know that our end count is very small based on that information however we know that we can do things better and better educate um our staff as to why that data is important um and part of that is the peos conversations that we're having and how we're continuously growing students and how we're moving students towards achievements so having an additional data point on our students to identify their growth and their achievement within the state set standards is beneficial to the students so it's helping educate and we're already taking action um because we KN we knew that this was a trend so it's something that we're already addressing and Dr Patterson and Dr Constantino have already um completed professional development within the the district talking about
086P scores and how we can focus in on that data the second indicator is indicator five so that is students educated in other settings so the standard for that indicator was 4.8% of students we had 5.5% of students in 2022 again a data point we were aware of one that we were working to address um there are a lot of factors that go into the placement of students in other settings specifically you know we have all these conversations we have never been in a position as a district as long as I've been here where we are unilaterally placing a student without parental agreement so that is a due process right of the district where we can we can go and we can unilaterally place a student um we have not enacted that due process as
087a district it is a collaborative process we have conversations with families we make sure that we're educating students to the best of our ability in our home distri uh building if not providing the best opportunity for them to maximize educational benefit um part of those conversations and part of the reason that some of our data is um we do have a high um a high end count of students that are me medically fragile within our district um comparative to our peers so um based on our geographic location we are a s after suburb with easy access to things like children's hospital um so we have a lot of families that do move in with medically complex students students um and we ensure and we are in a position where we can um provide them with
088an education in a in a setting that is more appropriate to meet their needs um that being said we are we have over the past year worked with the School for the Blind because we saw that as an opportunity um to educate and uh further develop our programing to student uh support students with blind visual impairments as well as a cons uh concentrated approach for schoolwide positive behavior supports because we did see students that were educated in alternative settings do to um social emotional behavioral issues that we feel like we could better support in District if we had the capacity to do so so we've taken a really a concerted effort in addressing that uh indicator over the past couple years and we'll continue to do so in the future the last is indicator 13
089um so that is specific to our transition planning um in our cyclical monitoring so cmci is cyclical monitoring for continuous Improvement uh that is the special education audit as a lot of people know it by um so what happened is they go through file review within that audit what they identified is a student and I explain this at the academic committee was a calculation issued by a case manager that didn't typically have students of transition age miscalculated the birth dat child turned 14 during the IEP didn't have their transition grid completed because they weren't starting transition planning yet so every single question related to postsecondary planning was marked as a no so our data ended up being a 76 .9% compliance so of the five students that that was a A Fault by the district
090so that happened during our cical monitoring that was um part of a public report that came out um we are going to continue to to work through that um so we are broadening our reach within our indicator 13 training uh within the Aly Intermediate Unit um one of the the pieces that we have that we're very lucky in the district and and something that she's taken very personally is our transition coordinator is actually actually the executive director of uh DC which is a branch of C that is focused on transition um so she's extremely upset that we um have been identified within this indicator but um we're actually working with the national organizations as well to bring in resources for transition planning as well as um focusing parent training um to help everyone better understand
091transitioning and what transition looks like for students 14 and above with IEPs so what the process looks like um the public review process will actually we are still in draft form we will publicly post our special education plan on March 17th so in just a about a week and a half two weeks um so two weeks we'll publicly post so our process based on board policy is we will post on our website we will have a hard copy in each of our buildings as well as the public libraries um for review with that we also create a essentially a an email address that people can provide public comment to um as they review the plan and then provide us feedback that 28-day review then comes to um board vote in April and then we'll talk
092about that next process as we go through so those public comments again must be considered um it doesn't have to be adopted so somebody could send an email asking for something that is is just something that we couldn't accomplish as a district for for one reason or another we do not have to include every comment um but it's something that we will always considered and and we'll um address or or we have discussion surrounding um we've already received some feedback so through this process we've worked with our building leadership um we've worked with building principles regarding feedback from our teachers as a pair of professionals as well to how we can further develop the plan and provide opportunities some of the feedback from the academic committee was to broaden our reach as well um so
093we are going to be sharing with our PTO groups get any feedback there so at those building level pto's um did want to mention and I forgot to mention during our um academic committee meeting part of this process is included within uh the cmci the continuous monitoring for the cical monitoring is they do send a parent survey to every student with an IEP so we send about 530 through pde Paton sends about 530 surveys um we had two responses and they were positive people were happy with the programming and for procedures in place so that is the only feedback we garnered from that um where we they surveyed about 530 students uh families through that um not to say that everybody didn't go in their junk box or get deleted but um that was just
094another Avenue that is supposed to help Pro this process through the state um so the areas that we are getting feedback on on our specific to um we'll be looking at how to further our reach um 2 e so students that are twice exceptional um this is a topic in the state of Pennsylvania and Al that is a conversation um so students that are are twice exceptional or students that are identified as gifted as well as with a disability um we do not have a very large population in the district however you know I think that we through conversation we know that this is an area that um everyone needs to learn more about um everybody needs to work through identification meeting the needs of students um so identifying students appropriately as well as meeting
095their needs once are identified and then supporting students in our curriculum that are twice exceptional um the page conference uh was in uh the pit the Pennsylvania page conference in Pittsburgh this year there was a large focus on twice exceptionality and Dr House of horn was able to join that as well um I do want to put out and I'll share information the national conference is actually in Pittsburgh this year and there will be a concerted Focus again on uh twice exceptionality so we're looking at bringing some teams and learning more and continuing to grow those programs within our district our gifted department has done a phenomenal job on um really focusing in and putting the effort towards learning more about 2E and we better support our students um one of the next steps was
096life after graduation so working with uh Maria Smith is a Community member in in O'Hara Township um she is uh works with achieve a Family Trust so providing kind of opportunities and trainings for famili as to how to build and work with the achieve of trust it's a grant funed program as students graduate from high school and go onto more waiver funding and Trust funding and how to work on those financial pieces that are difficult um if you're not familiar with how to do those those things um and then I attended and met with the pals group um so on the 26th um they identified just some areas that they would like to have more information on or or uh talking points um so we're going to come down and present and work with with
097Pals on just some of those talking points there so once our 28 day review process happens um we will update make any revisions that we need to April 14th we will present to the school board for approval so you'll have that copy of that plan would still be in draft form um we uh any based on any feedback from the board if there's any additional feedback or discussion at that point um we do have until May 1st to submit to bsse um from there it goes to miss Courtney burner who is our BSE adviser um in the western region she'll review provide any feedback um we may do revisions so this turns into like an additional feedback cycle with the state because again this is a state mandated Compliance Document related to federal guidelines so
098miss fer will review it and then it then goes to um Miss sand zel uh znik at she's the Western PA bureau chief she will then review it provide any revisions or feedback and then um we will look at implementation on July 1st 2025 so from there Next Step thank ma'am so future revisions so there are parts of the plan that are considered live and able to be changed so those are the program profile the educational profile so when we look at case loads we look at any additional uh teachers those are live and the reason those are live are because the state understands and recognizes that year-to year in a three-year plan you may add teachers you may absorb teachers you may shift case loads there may be things that happen there so they
099actually have built into the system um they have safeguards so that you cannot exceed what the state requirement is for case loads um so they actually have safeguards in there where you can't do something that isn't approved by the state and federal laws what you do need to get approved is anything related to facilities so if we were to have our entire program approved and then we wanted to move all of our classrooms to One Wing that is not compliant with the state or federal laws you can't do that so you actually need what's considered a serpent so it's a special education plan revision notice so that would have to go to BSE the adviser actually comes out she reviews the room makes sure that it's compliant she walks the building with us and then
100they give the approval from there they submit it to again Western PA bureau chief Western PA bureau chief then approves it so those are things that uh we can't just change that's not live and then the document but things like case load your age range those pieces can be updated year to year and that's it yeah like I said it is a kind of the the state maned the the federal component to it um so it is a Compliance Document um but that will come to you and again it's going to come to you in that beautiful um Future Ready planning portal form that's going to have um about 30 blank pages and a whole lot of information that is not very fluid um so you know if there's any summary or anything that I
101can provide uh to help navigate that just let me know so where will it be posted on the um 17th yep so um Miss Leonard does a nice job she posts at front and center for us with a link to an email for any feedback um so we had this process previously um so we'll post it up right on the front page of the website um we'll also have hard copies available um at each of the buildings as well as the public libraries thank you you're welcome there were three indicators in that were areas of improvement in planning is can you give us an idea of what a typical number of indicators would be in a three-year plan like what you would nor is that pretty Norm like average is it usually more than that
102less than that yeah so this is my third year coming through the planning cycle at Fox Chapel um this is the first time we've had an indicator um the we have always been close on that 95% for the participation um this is the first time that we've been flagged in it um the these special education in other settings is always another one that because the threshold is extremely low given our end count is one um we've never been indicated for indicator 13 and again this is a frustration on the district on my part you know as the one in charge of this um it was just a clerical issue that turned into something more so and you mentioned the difference between um medically fragile students versus our um positive behavior system social emotional behavioral uh
103issues for students do you know what percent of this 5.5% of out of school placements fall into which category or sort of what are the numbers there yeah so um we've actually reduced our students in alternative placements when I came into the district we were 52 students uh educated in alternative placements we reduced that down to I believe 26 of that 26 um it is evenly uh pretty evenly dispersed so you look at our medically fragile um I believe we have seven students uh currently in in placement due to um medical needs um we have about three to five students that are purely behaviorally placed um we have other students with just alternative needs that their education is is really specific and and needs um just a higher level of support um based on that
104the team decision to to educate them in that alternative setting so and our our April discussion um or approval of this are we likely to hear receive any summary of the input that you received over the review period as a part of that approval yeah okay yeah great so we have time on the agenda for that then four I'm sorry just I mean like I it sounds like a lot is going to happen between now and April 14th when we'll approve the final plan we actually started getting feedback for this plan last January yeah um with the comprehensive plan process as well as in some other ways so it's actually been I don't know a year or so yeah and and actually part of this cynical monitoring actually kind of kicks off you starting to
105develop that plan so from the cynical monitoring that took place that's where we do that initial start looking at some of our areas that we need to to improve upon those are the indicators that's the parent feedback so part of that parent survey actually drives what we do in our special education plan um I I can tell you the last time that we put it for public we had zero commenters um so we'll see if there are additional commenters we we'd be happy to share that who have been the comment over the last year then you said you've been getting feedback over no the process includes different groups that gather to give feedback toward the building of the plan explicitly sure I apologize if I wasn't clear about that right that yeah sorry that and
106that was the the 28 day public comment period from our two it would have been 2021 2022 was the last time I went for public comment well and to be clear these would be families that would have a lot of things going on that could make it difficult to be responsive are we doing anything to reach out to them like did that survey go to everyone in particular yeah PD sounds that to everyone who who did it come from pde PD it's probably an RA account so like I said it most likely a special I don't remember I don't remember either yeah I mean I think I think flag well and that was Dr rojack and I actually met maybe sending an email to them from like a hey expect yes we provided that feedback
107to the Department of Education already because because it was something that was uh flagged in our cyclical monitoring process U for lack of participation in the survey and and uh the reason it's flagged is that they wanted to make sure that we weren't telling people please don't respond we didn't know that the email came out normally we would try and send an email just alerting people if have two pretty involved parents sitting on the panel that are like what yes yes so we we will continue to try our best to gather feedback a lot of the the things that have developed through the plan have come from iterations that include those stakeholders including families including our Educators including um you know the information that came from the monitoring and then we'll continue to do that
108the the difficult thing about this plan is it is a purely compliance-based plan so there are so the reason that it says that you need to consider but may not include some of those is there could be feedback items that are great for us as a district that we want to take action on that we won't include in the plan because it's not met you know it's not part of the requirements but we certainly encourage is a require or at least right trying yeah yes that's what I mean so you might as well make it worthwhile right yeah and that and that was um a point just reiterated at the academic committee and that's why we you know we'd also look at the PTO seeing you know just having those people that we know that
109are making time to be involved is that an opportunity for us to get additional information because we will continue to attempt um but we just we haven't received much response yeah and that's actually consistent with most of the plans that we put out there that are required they're always required plans for the state and we have tried a variety of different sources including flagging it including sending links to people um and and we have very low participation in those comments we certainly will always encourage people to provide their input we had an assessment a couple of years ago of our mental health um intervention and I'm noticing that you know a lot of these sort of review of internal policies and practices around least restrictive environments and positive behavior support and things that I would
110sort of consider tangential to what we learned are there things that we're taking from that knowledge and and applying or changing to address any of this I mean anything that when we look at those review of internal policies and practices really related to the the policies that come through so you know we need to ensure that you our last plan we did attempt to add more to what was in our um Positive Behavior Uh I apologize the the uh Behavior or Behavior Support policy um we tried to add some additional information was actually pushed back from the state that said please review your policy and ensure that your policy is aligned to the state guidelines um so we had to remove some parts that we were we were talking about additional things related to POS
111Behavior interventions and things like that related because it's strictly related to policy and what they what um legally we have to have in place is it informing our work yes is it is it going to show up in the plan likely not any other questions maybe as part of all that paperwork for I AP beatings there's a sheet say here's how to give formal feedback oh yeah because I think a lot of people give feedback to principes teachers probably right to Tim um but yeah like if there's actual formal methods where we can document and show that we are requesting it and getting it yeah that actually I don't believe we we can certainly try I don't believe that that counts for what their requirements are I think they really just look at the survey
112but I could be wrong for yeah for cmci yes that's they just look at the survey um however we do get parental input for every IEP meeting that is documented within the IEP process but um when it comes to just general programming and planning so the survey links only good directly from that email to the personal email you can't like Prov like it's IND we asked if there was a way we could like resend it out and they they were very firm that we were not allowed to know when it was going out we were not allowed to inform parents because they felt like that would sway they felt ill informed was better that was it was a Lighty topic of discuss give us all five you know in all fairness too idea is is
113such a a dense compliance exercise and special education is and it's almost impossible to ever be perfect in special education when you have documents that are 40 pages um what we really are looking at and it was Dr Mahoney and I are required at the end of the cyclical monitor to attend a uh feedback session and um you know we at we we raised a lot of the questions you're raising because we feel like they're not actually they're not actually set up to gather the information that would act would be helpful it would be helpful and we we provided that feedback it was acknowledged as feedback but some of it is Guided by what's in the state plan or what the federal requirements are and some of it's just a very narrow so although that's
114what the plan is that doesn't mean that we don't have other opportunities to learn and hear from families and make changes which we have tried to do so and really a specific example to that um our last plan was approved and then following that we we heard from some families that um there was concern around just teacher training related to epilepsy um so rather than you know we didn't we weren't going to put that in the plan it was already finalized we can't make that change we just took a district initiative had all of our nurses train our staff on uh through a training with the Epilepsy Foundation and all of our staff went through the the formal training got the certification to identify students having you know seizure needs and how to respond to
115them so you know there's always opportunities um that you know but that might not be encompassed within that Compliance Document you mentioned our twoe students do you know what percent of our gifted population is twoe um extremely low uh we have I currently identified I believe it's 11 students isn't that a group that's typically historically underidentified yes and that's why we are focusing our efforts and um so with that National Conference coming um making sure our school psychologists are part of that as well as our curriculum leaders and our um our staff that are supporting them so making sure that you know everybody is has the latest research and and we can make sure that our tools are measuring appropriately and identifying students because yeah it is definitely an under underidentified population okay any other
116questions thank you thank you Dr thank you do you have anything else uh Dr that's all for the superintendent report thank you all right thank you Mr jefra solicitors report no report thank you all right next week we will be moving on on of approving the minutes for the February 10th meeting does anyone have any questions Corrections comments about the minutes okay uh time for first public comment period I assume there's no one correct okay we will go on to new business Mrs Lynch will you please read the facilities and transportation report next week I'll be moving on the following two items number one big Sanitation Incorporated bigs Sanitation Incorporated approve the agreement is attached between the Fox Chapel Area School District and bigs Sanitation Incorporated for refuse and recycling pickup services for the period
117of July 1st 2025 through June 30th 2030 this is a renewal of services number two additional school bus drivers 2425 school year ratify hiring the additional ABC Transit Incorporation ated and first student Incorporated drivers from the attached list effective for the 2425 school year all Required licensing clearances and all other essential employment requirements for school bus operators under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have been verified thank you any questions or comments on these two items do do we see competitive bid for waste removal or do we I'm sorry I couldn't hear you sorry did we seek a competitive bidding did we do a comp we actually asked for proposals we received four different proposals and this was the one that was the best economic decision for us perfect thank you happy to see
118more more bus drivers yes all right Mr Hamilton the finance report please we'll have five items next week on the finance report we'll have the fund dispersements from fund 10 for $4.9 million dispersements from fund 31 for $55,000 the finance report for January 2024 for the power SCH LC agreement for e finance service software uh for 66,6 187 and the Alig Intermediate Unit 2526 program of services budget will be on the agenda thank you any questions or comments on these five items okay next up is Mrs Cooper instruction be moving on two items next week um the first one's with the AIU a notice of adoption of policies and procedures and use of funds um as attached for the 25 26 school year and the second one is to also um with them to approve
119the subgrant agreement as attached for implementation of the individuals with the disabilities Education Act Part B between the school district and the AIU for the period of July 1 125 through June 30th 26 we'll be moving on those two items and then there's an instructional or an instruction information item um the awbd career center 2526 school year is attached okay any questions on those items all right um bless you Mr Frank could you read the legis ation policy report please at the next meeting I would move that we approve the second reading and Adoption of the following revised policies 005 organization 113 number two Behavior Support 308 Employment contract board resolution 620 fund to balance 705 facilities and workplace safety 706 property records 708 lending of equipment and books 709 building security 710 use of
120facilities by staff 716 integrated Pest Management 717 cellular telephones and a23 opioid antagonist I would also move to approve the first reading of the following revised policies 610 purchases subject to bid quotation 611 purchases budgeted 626 Federal fiscal compliance 800.1 electronic signature records 802 school school organization 803 school calendar 804 school day 807 opening exercises moment of silence flag displays 81.1 school bus drivers and school commercial Motor Vehicle drivers 81.3 School Vehicle drivers 811 bonding 812 property insurance 8813 other insurance 814 copyright material 816 use of live stream video on School District property 818 contracted Services Personnel 822 automated external defibrillator um AED cardiopulmonary resuscitation and 824 maintaining professional adult and student boundaries I would also recommend we approve retiring the following policies 813 .1 indemnification uh this is um it's also included in applicable
121uh District contracts and as unnecessary as a standalone policy in a25 state mandate waivers this policy is no longer necessary any comments or questions on the policies I just had one point of information is the who is the school safety and security coordinator uh Chief Kazarian is okay I was pretty sure that's who it was I just wasn't it wasn't explicitly an policy any other [Music] questions okay uh Miss s could you please read the Personnel report sure um next week I'll be moving on the following items resignation Extra Innings of uh Kristen El bashor teacher at Kerr Elementary School for Extra Innings due to personal reasons for custodial maintenance Alyssa J bellan is approved as an 8mon 10- hour per day custodian and fcasd for probationary period Erin M Hager is approved is a
12210-month 8 hour per day custodian in FCD probationary period and Karen a Willam Williams is approved as a 10-month 8 hour per day custodian for fcasd for a probationary period um for supplemental contracts athletic Anthony itri baseball Middle School assistant and Alex Lawson volleyball boys high school assistant um the uh and also Jordan Thompson football High School fourth assistant relief professional Elizabeth J Dames elementary teacher at O'Hara elementary school has approved for child variant adoption leave Melissa M obers math teacher at Fox chap High School is approved for child reing adoption leave um for change of status educational support Ambert L jhoda 12mth building secretary at car Elementary School is approved as Business Office Accounts Payable purchasing secretary for Fox Chapel Area School District um summer programs 2025 Elementary Rebecca L gisc is approved as
123fox trap Area School District elementary summer Learning Academy program facilitator Carly Keller is approved as the Fox Chapel Area School District elementary summer Learning Academy program assistant facilitator and the following individuals are approved for as instructors for the summer Learning Academy sha baldus Carrie Ferguson Amanda gatus Monica gr grusi excuse me Nicholas luchiano Alexandria lcer Howell Julia pentil Emma stanovic Anna Steen Mira Stein Claire Walters Kayla wise Katy weant and Miranda zarino um and the following are approved a substitute inst structures for the summer Learning Academy and hook Jennifer Lance and Kristen M Shero Food Services Laura m partic is approved as a Food Services employee um fox trap are School District elementary middle school Sumer Learning Academy um Lisa R Gibson at the high school is approved as the Western PA Learning Academy director
124salary crossovers the following professional employees are listed um below and are eligible for a crossover on the salary scale in the 2024 2025 Year I'll list all of those next week um and seven volunteers athletic um Kellen Petron for volleyball boys high school Ray tarai volleyball boys high school Dan tuin tublin volleyball boys high school Jordan B volleyball boys high school and Jason zaleski volleyball boys high school all the effective dates um rates and related uh contracts or bargaining agreements or as listed in the agenda thank you any questions or comments on Personnel okay Mr Good could you please read operations and operative Services yes next week we'll be moving on one item uh accepting a donation of $11,000 from PW Campbell contracting company to the distributed distributive education Club of America at Fox Chapel
125area high school um thank you very much for that great yes any questions about this all right second public comment period we do not have anyone Fox Chapel educators associ ation no comment tonight okay thank you uh board comments I'd like to remind everyone that next week's regular business meeting will be held at Fairview Elementary School and Mr good any comments uh no comment thank you all right Miss Z no comment Mrs Cooper sorry for my absence the last couple meetings the flu no joke wash hands very sick thank you we're glad you're better and that you're back thank you uh Mr Hamilton no comment Dr Hassel corn thank you all for having me call in this evening um and I will see you at our next meeting thank you Mrs Lynch uh just an
126extra thank you to our administrators who were here tonight and uh gave us reports I appreciate their hard work and Mr Frank I'd just like to congratulate the families and the the students and staff for the hard work educational gains that were on display to tonight and um a welcome for spring Sports which practice started today so we hope that we have another successful athletic season thank you all right thank you yes thank you Dr Mahoney and um Dr Edwards we appreciate your being here so long tonight and answering our questions and um could I have a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor I meeting adjourned