001Good to go. >> We could begin the policy and curriculum committee meeting for November 10th. uh we have um some curriculum items to talk about with MTSS and then we have uh policy which has some detail and to start off we will turn to Mr. Lynch with the middle school NTSS first quarter update. >> All right, thank you very much Mr. Whistler. Uh Mr. Cuck, I apologize in advance if my pacing around makes you nauseous watching this on TV or YouTube. Uh thank you all for having me here today uh to give you an update on how we are moving along with our MTSS program. When last we met, it was rolling out our plans, what we were going to do over the summer. And I just want to give you an update on how
002we used our time over the summer to build the program that we're using right now, where we are with it, and what our plans are moving forward. Uh so just a reminder uh MTSS stands for multi-tered system of supports. Uh generally speaking MTSS lives within a three tiered system. Tier one refers to classroom instruction that all students receive. Tier two refers to targeted intervention that students that are performing below grade level math and reading typically receive in addition to their tier one uh classroom instruction. Little asterisk for the way we're using at the middle school we have a tier one and a half because in our advisory uh schedule we have academic support for reading and math. So, I'll talk a little bit more about how we're using that as we go on. Um, tier
003two is that targeted intervention in math and reading. Up at the middle school, we've made that a part of our encore block. So, students that um don't receive intervention. So, all of our students that live solely in the tier one u MTSS, they typically have two class periods a cycle of our encore classes. Eighth grade is a little different because there's more encors shared staff that are only offered one period of the encore block, but we're basically utilizing that time to also deliver instruction for our students that need tier 2 intervention. We break it down um below there. So our intervention, our NTSS math and reading lab periods are for sixth grade during period 4, 7th grade during period 7 and 8th grade during second period. Little bit of a visual here of the way
004the pyramid is coming to fruition up at the middle school. So tier one again is our classroom instruction. That's where differentiation happens as well. every our teachers are very adept at adapting their classroom instruction to meet the needs of the students in front of them. Through our data, through our uh conversations, we've identified students at each grade level that need additional support, but again, they're still receiving the same tier one instruction as students that are on grade level or even beyond grade level. We have a few programs that we've adopted this year. uh one into our tier one instruction is Alex. That is a math program that we use in both tier one and tier 2 um intervention. That program is pretty robust. It allows us to provide ongrade level support. It allows us to
005provide great um student to support to students that need intervention. It also allows us to give um some support to students that are ready to go beyond grade level. So, it's pretty robust. and we use our star testing in tier one. Tier two is our small group instruction. Uh we have Mrs. Herring here uh who heads up our she's our MTSS interventionist. She also leads the reading intervention at the middle school. Um we use Alex again as as one of our math programs. We use Lexia and Bridges which is another math program. Uh our focus for this school year is is on tier 2 intervention. The next tier, tier three would be even smaller groups of students in some cases if the numbers allow more almost individualized. Our focus is tier two this year. Um
006identifying students, letting our tier 2 interventions really take hold, letting our data pro uh data meeting process where we identify students and identify their needs and how we're going to support them. making that as strong as possible so we can get um to a point this year where we feel very very comfortable in our system. What I mean by that is being able to move students in and out of intervention levels as need be. But again, we'll be talking specifically about tier 2 this evening. Okay, so the beginning of the year, lot of conversations with Mrs. Herring and myself about student data. We wanted to use all of the data that we had at our disposal. We had classroom um well I'll just go through what's here. So uh we are fortunate enough that the
007elementary school for about 10 years now has uh been living in MTSS. So we get students um from fifth grade that were receiving MTSS support services before coming to sixth grade. Um at the end of the year we have our transition meetings with sixth grade teachers. I'm sorry, fifth grade teachers where they're able to tell us what strategies are being used with students if they need to continue or if they're ready to step down in the level of intervention that they receive. We also look at PSSA performance. Just a word about that real quick. The focus is on below basic and basic. That feedback that we get from PSSAs is telling us that students are not performing on grade level. We do live in a world though where sometimes students have a bad three days,
008students have a bad two days where they don't perform where they might be expected to. That's where the next piece of data comes in. The PEOS projection. The PEOS projection is actually an average of the last three years of students PSSA performance. One thing we were very very conscious of and we hopefully maybe give you a little taste of that later on this evening is outliers. Students that are showing growth in the classroom but when we get to standardized testing maybe are not performing where teachers would expect them to or like I said they just had a bad week. It happens sometimes. We have students that are moving into the district from other settings where they weren't used they're not used to the standardized testing that we participate in. It's a new experience. It's a
009new experience for sixth graders. It's a new experience for eighth graders that are now being challenged and some also taking the keystones. So, it's something we took into account while focusing on data that's there. We also used our star benchmark data. When we were talking in the summer, we had three points in the previous school year. Beginning of the year, so about September, middle of the year, which would be December or January, end of the year, April. We also have a program called Ed Insight, which houses all of students uh benchmark data and their standardized testing. Gives us a pretty good picture of where the student has been historically as long as they've been in the district. if they've been receiving support, we get some of the information there. But all to say is that
010on a long enough timeline, we can see if students are testing consistently and showing growth or if there's areas where they're stagnant or even starting to drop off a little bit. And we also looked at students classroom performance and took input from their previous teacher. How did they do? What are the areas of weakness? could they benefit from more support? So, as we went through, we took all of this information. We created a watch list. We weren't in a position where we can make any decisions about anything just yet, but we had a list of students for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade that we had our eye on really focusing on our beginning of the year star testing for this year. That would be the last piece of data that we would look at to
011try to have a really good snapshot, a really good understanding of where a student was and what support they may or may not need. So when we got that information, we looked at all of the students. We started with that watch list of students. Is their performance consistent with what we we would have expected either positively or negatively meaning they were above or on grade level or they were performing below. If that was the case, we started having conversations right away about what kind of support does this student need. If there were outliers, we took it more of a historical took a zoom out. Is this truly an outlier or was the outlier that they were performing above grade level? really looking at all the data that we had. We started to have data meetings
012with teachers, their classroom teachers, as well as classroom teachers they had the years before. Here's all of the data we have for this student. Does this tell the picture? Do they need more support? we started to look at um or come into account in some cases it was I don't want to say glaring but it was it was there right in front of us students needed math or students needed reading we also ran in in some instances where students needed math and reading so looking at the schedule that we had looking at the resources that we had in front of us what was the area of greatest need how were we going to get those students to support so some students students, we knew we needed to give them tier 2 MTSS. Some students, it
013was more about how do we support them in the academic support setting during our advisory period. A big piece too that we uh we we used as we went through, especially if there were students that we weren't quite sure was just having conversations with families what was going to be the best for the student. In this case, in some cases, it was the MTSS support that we were uh recommending. Some cases it wasn't. We just had these conversations openly, honestly, and we knew that this was a whole student support, a whole student approach, and we needed um support from the home as well as the school to make sure that this was going to work. From there, we changed schedules as needed and we were off and running. One thing I do want to make
014sure to point out as we got into this process, we looked at intervention a few different ways. Students that um had IEPs were identified with math or reading disabilities and were receiving replacement instruction. We considered that to be an intervention. There's also a level of our math instruction which is uh primarily geared towards students with IEPs. It's co-taught math where there's the learning support teacher and the grade level math teacher. We considered that an intervention as well. We'll come back to that in just a little bit, but I wanted to just make sure I I highlighted that. So this next slide here is a snapshot of all of the data that we collect. This is basically a few rows of the summer work that was done. So as I said, we knew if a student
015received um elementary MTSS support, has the student been identified as a student with um with a learning disability? Are they receiving replacement instruction? What was their ELA PSSA score? What's their ELA PEOS projection? What's their math PSSA score and their math projection? So, that's what we used to create our watch list. This is just the top couple rows of one page, but to give you an idea of this, the kind of data that we were looking at. So, we're actually going to take a break from the presentation. Dr. Myers, if you could come over. In front of you is a paper. Please turn it over. We are going to have a data team meeting or sort of a data team meeting. Mrs. Harry, if you'd like to join, I'll show. So what you have in
016front of you is for all intents and purposes all of the data that we used to look at to help determine what level of support if any a student needed to receive. So this would these meetings that we would run Mrs. Herring runs now would start out just the way that it's happening right now. Basically, I would stand in front of everybody, talk to you about the piece of paper that's in front of you, and just give you five minutes to look at, become familiar with the data that you're looking at. And the first thing that we want to do is we want to have questions. So, as you look there, what questions jump out at you? >> What kind of thing is this one person? >> No. Okay. That each uh good question. So,
017each row is a different student. Okay. the the the data point where there's two proficient scores here for their TLA and math. >> So, I mean, I don't really that that's just what kind of jumps out. Yeah, >> as one of the few that there would be two there yet still be on the list. And what's the cuto off for between basic? >> Oh, I'm so glad you asked because I I wrote this down >> for each grade level six. >> Yeah. So for ELA, sixth graders is So again, we looked at basic to below basic. So anything below 999 is the P the PSSA scores that we were concerned with for ELA and for math. We have a advanced math student also a basic university. >> Yeah interesting combination. >> But yet his projection
018is almost 80%. So in looking at that student, I would ask the grade level teacher um what concerns they are seeing are noticing at all if they're noticing any concerns and if that teacher has that student in our first level of support which is advisory. How many days a week do they have them in for advisory support? And if they don't uh they are flow almost like it's in 923. So I would Um because we do have that Alex program through all of our math students. I would want to see how they are performing on their Alex programs therapy. That's a concern though. But for that I would definitely or I'm sorry it's not that it's ELA. Sorry. >> Are there any other notices jumping out at? So, I noticed a couple of lines where
019you only have the star boy >> uh beginning of the year. >> Sorry. Yeah. So, as we would go through, we would we go through every line. Like I said, each one of those rows is a student. So we are looking at that data trying to come up with questions as to why might this be happen. So if a student is below basic in any area that's screaming to us that we need to get this student some support. So what you wouldn't know and we didn't know in some of these cases at the time or some of these students were in the middle of being identified with a learning disability. So in the time that we started learning uh looking at this data with these students as I mentioned before some interventions became very apparent
020because they were going to receive replacement instruction and in many many cases the students that are below basic in math or reading are students that have learning disabilities in those areas and are receiving replacement instruction there. So we are at a point where most of the concentration of the students that we are working with in reading and math are in the basic category. >> Yeah. Just to kind of there's so much data here and you don't you know if you don't know kind of the points. So because they're receiving placement instruction because that's what they need. They are being instructed inherently below grade level but yet that PSSA score is always going to be to grade level. So there there's really no expectation at that point that they're performing great on it right now in
021in enrollment. Um and just the PAS scores the PASS percentage is a probability. So that is based off of the previous three years or if there's less than three years depending on the age of the student the previous three up to three years performance the pro probability that they will perform at that level. Right? So um to see a student who's basic who had a you know is at the 80% probability to perform that's a that's a major outlier from what their previous performance would be. So again just might complicated more but so these ELA pas projections these are the projections to the PSSA score that is just before it because those projections are from if these were current sixth grade students it's projections to their sixth grade scores which are based off of their
022fifth, fourth and third grade scores. So just >> some uh students also we would look so if we remember that cutoff score to be proficient is 999 we look at some of the students where they were in the basic category I'm looking at one student with a 988 depending on I'm not a PSSA expert in scoring but looking at enough of them that could be one question in one category. grade. So, we took that into consideration after many conversations. Either way, a student that is uh proficient with a score of a like a 1030, they're proficient. Are we comfortable that they are consistently proficient? So, going back looking at previous year's data, how did they perform? How are they performing on their STAR tests? How are they performing in the classroom? Were we comfortable that
023that student is securely above grade level or were they in a good spot on that those two test two three tests maybe? So those were part of the conversations we had. We also were looking at this data looking at that those scores. So, a student that had a 988, maybe we they're better served receiving academic support twice a cycle rather than us pulling them out of an encore class to receive MTSS every day because at a certain point too, it became we can really only serve so many students at a time. We need to make sure that we're to the best of our ability identifying the students that need the most intensive intervention that we can offer. So um as we have learned this could be a very very long process going through looking at
024this data but it's important and this is the information that we have at our disposal to make these decisions. One of the things that we've gotten comfortable being uncomfortable with is this is very much a snapshot in time. PSSA scores we get in the summer. We won't students don't take the PSSAs again until the spring. So, we really have to rely on our STAR testing, our STAR benchmark testing to be our guiding lights as we go through the rest of the year as our students making growth that we need them to make um to be on grade level when the PSSA comes around. Does anybody have any questions? not even about the data just in general so far. >> I think another thing just from a philosophical standpoint is that you have all this objective
025data and then you have all the teacher subjective data and most of the time you're using once you get down to this granular level you're using the subjective data to confirm or refute anything that stands out you know as an outlier or you know in congruent in gender data. Yeah. Yep. Um, a big question that we would have as we were having initial conversations with students that we identified was why does classroom performance why is it not always the same as STAR testing or as PSA testing? And that's a hard idea to reconcile, but it really comes down to again these are a lot of these tests are a snapshot in time. If you're in the classroom with a student, you see a student is is struggling with a concept. Teachers going to address that
026in the moment. However long it takes them, how many days, how many class periods, they're going to work with that student to make sure that they understand what's going on and what the student or the teacher expects of them. We can't do that with the PSSA. So, we take that into account, too. And those were part of the conversations we were having with families of this is how we think we can best support students. Not that teachers aren't doing it. Classroom instruction, the tier one instruction is very good, very sound. Somewhere along the line, there were gaps in learning, and we want to try to address those gaps best that we can. >> That's our secretary question. Is there any like behavioral plans that ended up being developed with this? >> We have some students
027that I would say are tier three behavioral, meaning that we've referred them to every uh resource that we have. Uh they are students that work with Mrs. Lenhard in addition to working with Mr. Chester, in addition to receiving counseling from Friendly Guidance Center. Um, so we don't have that pyramid as mapped out, but we have, I would say, five students currently in the middle school that are at a tier three level of behavior MTSS. >> And then just another general question, this was this is all online, correct? The PSSA, >> the PSSAs are testing all online >> and last year they were on paper, correct? >> No, we took them online. >> Okay. Few years now. >> Oh, I'm sorry. longer >> 242 is >> we're just using last year but yes um >> but
028the projections would that go into >> the projections would have the projections would have been on paper but the actual scores would have been all that yes the data that went into the projections you're correct you just >> you guys were talking about this year last year I got you >> yeah good few more slides if you don't mind >> thank you all hopefully that wasn't uh I like that. That's helpful. Good. See all that. All right. So, in let's see. So, we did the the work to create the watch list in the summer. Our first week back in September, we started our star testing. We wanted to get this off and going as soon as we could. All of that data, all of those meetings, it broke down this way. In sixth grade, we
029identified eight eight students uh for tier 2 intervention in math, nine in reading, seventh grade, 10 in math, 11 in reading, eighth grade, 10 in math, 10 in reading. I just realized I don't the numbers for academic support are much greater. Um we try to keep each group manageable. So it's between 12 and 15 students but those are groups that are meeting twice a week. Sometimes there were se students would be in reading um academic support and math acu academic support. In many cases, we had students that we identified needed math or reading MTSS and they're getting academic support in the other subject. So those numbers are bigger than this. This is the most intensive intervention we can offer right or we do offer right now. So once we had our students identified, once we
030scheduled them into MTSS, the hard work became we needed to start to identify what specific areas of learning there is where the challenge is. STAR testing can give us areas in terms of standards. The PSSA gives us feedback how students scored in the different anchors that they use, but it doesn't give us the specific areas that need to be targeted. So for reading, we're talking about phmic awareness, decoding, >> comprehension. >> Yeah. For math, it's number sense, uh, multiplication, division, the very basic, um, areas that we'd hope to master in elementary school. So the way that we did that was in ELA. Uh we used Lexia, our STAR oral fluency and direct instruction as well as uh Scholastic subscription which works at with students where they are not necessarily on grade level math. Uh in
031the math lab they use numeracy assessments which are very intensive one-on-one working with students for sometimes the entire intervention period. one student with the math teacher to identify the specific areas of weakness. Alex is uh the program I talked about before that can respond it is a computer program but it responds to students where they are and of course direct instruction as well in the lab and uh bridges curriculum which is used in the elementary school also. Next is consistent monitoring of progress by the teachers delivering the intervention. Uh there's a lot of communication between Mrs. Herring and the ELA and reading teachers. The math teachers are the teachers delivering the intervention. So they're in a very unique spot to see the students that they are working with on their weaknesses and how it's translating
032to the classroom in real time. So that's uh paying off really well. And we've had time during our Aday advisory when we have den days where everybody is in the gym. We're able to pull teachers out to have specific data meetings and instruction planning meetings for intervention. So we just ended the fourth quarter. Wow. We just ended the first quarter. Yeah. Um we began math and reading lab on Thursday, September 11th. That was our third cycle our so a day of our third cycle we started intervention. We gave the star um progress monitoring for the during the week of October 16th. We made a commitment to all of the teachers, the students, families we were working with and our encore teachers specifically because I was asking a lot of them a lot of flexibility. Students
033coming in and out of their classes and we really wanted to make a commitment to uh a set amount of time for intervention before we would be moving students in and out. And we're using a quarter about a quarter to as our kind of timeline to work with here. So as we approach the end of the first quarter, we did our first round of progress monitoring. We use the STAR test as kind of the way for students to move in. So we're committed to using the STAR test to identify growth if students are ready to step down in their level of intervention. And we identified two students in math and reading for sixth grade, four students in math and seventh grade, two students in reading in seventh grade, three students in math and eighth grade,
034two students in reading in eighth grade that were ready to step down their level of intervention. So they did not they they are not receiving tier 2 intervention. They stepped down to academic support. So they're also not just being put back into tier one without any support or just the tier one level of support. We wanted to make sure that it was really a step down process to make sure one that they the growth that we saw and that we were able to identify is solid and that we were able to still support them as they continue to grow on their way. Okay. So in the second quarter and beyond. So students that are remaining in the math and reading lab continue to receive an intervention. There's a few week period right now where the
035groups are smaller. So that's good especially in a setting like this where the teacher delivering the intervention has a smaller group of students to focus on. The district has a assessment calendar. We're coming up on the winter assessment where we will give the STAR benchmark to all of the students. We will use that information to have data meetings again to see if there are students that as the year has gone on learning gaps have presented themselves and they may benefit from tier 2 instruction or tier 2 intervention. Maybe they benefit from more academic support time. just using more data that we collect throughout the year to identify any learning gaps that have presented themselves and try to address them as quickly as possible. That is the MTSS update at the middle school. Any questions? I
036think I have one more question. Would you be able to just walk through for tier one like a like a classic example of what that may look like? >> What's happening in the academic support? >> Yeah. So like for for like what type of differentiation would occur like is this something that's a regular thing? Is it more specific to that kid? Like like let's say like does is there like like check and connect like uh like organizational stuff that goes along with that like >> it would depend upon the students need. So it would be individualized and that's going to be conducted by the um grade level ELA teacher. Um in sixth and seventh grade the students are split between the reading teacher and the writing teacher. And depending upon the upcoming assignment, a student
037may need um just time to have not necessarily proofread their writing piece, but to walk through and discuss making sure that they have all the components that they're going to be bringing upon with the rubric. Um sometimes during home room, our home room teachers will have that organizational check with a student or that could also happen with the grade level teacher. But um just even in our math classes classrooms, it's the basic facts, the multiplication, division. Um right now middle school, it's onestep, twostep equations. So it's a quick review of that. Um and also some of our students have opportunities in ELA, they have Alexia program. So that works on word study, grammar as well as comprehension. So depending upon the level and need that's um it's very individualized in the advisory period um during
038intervention time it's um we do I do more like two or three maybe a whole like it's 10 kids but we do the needs depending on what is brought upon with the Lexia program. So >> So it sounds like it's a mixture of both like student initiated stuff and teacher initiated stuff. Yeah, >> sometimes it is um also planned as part of the way the lesson carries out. And the ELA classrooms, if you walk in, you could see whole group instruction on uh strategies that are being used or the specific writing um that they're doing and then five minutes later doing individual conferencing with the students in the back on what they're act what the student is actually working on themselves. Um, in math very similar. Sometimes in math there's a lot of hands-on, a
039lot of I don't want to say group work because that sometimes gives an air of of or gives some sort of impression, but the students that a teacher has other students working with as a support, that's all part of a differentiation as well. >> Thank you. >> Yeah, I'm not sure I just said anything there, but yeah. Any other questions related maybe not direct? I would just ask you know a little bit about the the way the library is being used. >> Oh the library is being used the library is our spot for the reading lab the MTSS intervention. So the one corner is going to set up as a classroom per se, but also we've been very flexible that our sixth, seventh, and eighth grade ELA teachers have been bringing their classrooms into the
040library to sit and read, have small conferences. I also jump in and help the ELA teachers have that one-on-one conference with the student about their self- selected book that they're reading. Um, students are checking out books, returning books. Um, and we have had over 30 54 books in circulation this school year. Um last year when I looked edited records there was about a little over 500. So we're so um thankfully our um I really do appreciate the ELA teachers bringing the kids in and having that time just to check out. So try to make the library a place to come and some knowledge and every month you can kind of see um Mrs. Westgate has kind of the books for the month. um if you come into the middle school library, it'll be our center
041um bookshelf that'll have a different theme for the month. So, and then Friday, Friday, um we are going to um the elementary school has kind of a bear or deer time where they everybody stops and reads. So in the middle school on Friday we are going to have cougars conquering chapters where during advisory everybody's going to sit somewhere um the school is going to be separated into groups of sixth, seventh and eighth graders and everybody's going to sit and read for a bit and then sixth and seventh and eighth graders going to share why they picked up the book, what what are they hoping to find later on in the book just kind of share so that maybe what Dr. Myers is reading, I might want to pick up during Thanksgiving break or next holiday
042break or that could be my next book that I read for my one pager for Mrs. Stern. So just kind of getting that promoting literacy and sharing of books and reading is cool. >> Sounds good. >> Thank you guys. >> Thank you. If >> anybody would like any additional packets I have planned. That brings us the policy and uh we have all the details to go with 626 federal fiscal compliant. Hey, one sec. >> Thank you. Thank you. Take care everybody. >> Thank you. This is a federal based policy. So we don't have very much leeway as far as adaptations of what we can do to it. Uh the policy itself there there are a bunch of attachments that have some changes also the policy itself. uh monetary threshold for audits, record retainment, cyber security
043measures, record keeping provisions and new sections regarding reporting and violations and listen protections. Those are you see areas as far as what hased Some of the terminology has been reduced to simply federal regulations. Once again, dealing with federal money. It's pretty much what the most part is said as far as terminology concern. a general comment and doesn't reflect on you Dr. Myers or really even I guess the people that are writing the policy but um it's so much information to be in a school district policy I feel like and I don't know Jim Shrader used to always say why can't we just say we'll follow the federal guidelines for this and do that and it just I mean if it doesn't change all that often. I guess it's not that big of a deal that
044it's so much just tedious. >> Yeah, it's >> right. I mean, that's the idea is like we're we sit here and we say this is basically just what we have to put into policy about federal expenditures that sort of goes in face the concept of local control. We just have to do it. Yeah. No. So, it's Jim's point too, I think, is that we're just voting on something that is compliance based and not really under our control. Um, that being said, when we complete the the documents in the system related to federal policy, they often want to see that we have the policies in place that say we do it. So, it's just >> Yeah. So it's um you I think a pure kind of federal government you know entity would say well that's fine
045but don't take money right you know so um it's just it is so tedious it's so detailed it's just following the federal nice thing about this one this time is that these change are actually cut. So you know rapid retention to three years the whistleblower requirements and so forth. >> Yeah. When you read through the rest of it, it's very tedious. >> Me personally, when there's big chunks of folded material, that makes my job easier. So, I appreciate that rather than all the editing that goes into it. But uh so yeah those those two sections new sections of mandatory reporting violations lengthy but uh one are easy to install sentiment. Um, any other questions? Did I get a motion? >> First reading. >> All in favor say I. >> I I move to the full
046board 626 for first reading. And then that concludes the items that are on the agenda. Um I did have one thing that I wanted to present to the committee just in conversations. Um, I kind of bounced this off Jason and Reeba just to make sure I wasn't kind of too far out in left field on this. And then I figured if this is something that makes sense, that's worth another conversation, maybe we could move from there. But um it all stemmed from the trend that I found in speaking with uh individuals involved including the tech school both tech school locations um that there was just a a growing desire for students to attend and programs are filling up and I jotted down some notes. I didn't look them up. But in general, we had the
047three-year trend from what I gathered was moving definitively in the direction of the programs are just filling up more and more and more. And then um there used to be historically a little bit more opportunity for for the possibility of some ninth graders for early enrollment um under certain conditions. And those from what I can gather sounded like they're almost non-existent or non-existent at this point. Yeah, there um the BCTC has not committed to that they're not going to exist this year. They will only exist if all their slots are not taken. >> All their slots are going to be taken. You know, we've advocated some I almost wish BCT would just say it's not happening anymore, but it's not going to happen. So, we're gonna have people apply. Sure. and then not be able
048to to that nth grade program specifically >> because of the popularity and and I I dis I agree I should say completely with the idea if students are going to be in the full seats for the program that they should we should use seats that way versus that ninth grade kind of exploratory version. >> Sure. So I guess what what I kind of was bouncing around off as an idea was um if there was if we are looking at this trend of um the trades becoming more popular and therefore as the tech school is going to be filling up um does that leave possibility of a future um area that we could perhaps offer something within the high school that would fall within that kind of like pre-te realm I guess. Um and so I
049mean and again this is this is this is coming from a very limited framework of my understanding. Um but like how this just is conceptualized to me at this point is well you know we have a building we have grounds we have um you know albeit limited but we do have uh and there's also some things that are in place right now. Um, but I guess my thought was, well, not a thought, but just a question of if it would be worth looking into kind of like what exists, what the trends are, if one this would be a a a worthy thing to even explore. >> And then if so, would what possibilities would then be on the table as far as what we could offer? And then along with that, what would they look
050like? like being anything from and I'm thinking more along the lines of like a ninth grade opportunity more or less would be the expansion. Um, and again it would just be whether it would be a a program that would be kind of its own thing maybe like a half year or it would just be kind of like a supplemental thing. more or less I kind of conceptualize it as you know working with the tech school in order to kind of identify what would be worthwhile within what we could possibly offer and then just kind of you know see where things go from there as far as what possibilities we realistic. So you're and are you thinking specifically like an exploratory type program for targeting ninth graders that but in any of the areas that do
051feed to BCTC or just or even broader? I think any or all. I mean I to me again limited on this but if you're looking at some of those universal skills that would then follow you to the tech school you know like I guess you know your soft skills that would be your more tech >> oriented whether that could be anything from you know just their expectations. Um, but yes, that could also certainly include specific programmatic areas as well. So, I guess I'm not really I'm not really thinking in terms of specifics. If it ended up being something where it was something that was specific, I think that would be the same kind of concept that I'm looking for. It's just kind of figured I'd throw it out there and and see what you guys
052were kind of thinking about it and then if it's something that's worth it to kind of look into it more and then see what's realistic, what's not type idea. I apologize. I have you know no real written but it's more it's more just like a a concept than anything based upon I guess again to backtrack first foremost I guess would be to to quantify if my broader perceptions are reality. If we are looking at this where this trend is going to continue and then eventually we get into areas where tech becomes more and more competitive, would it be something that then we would have where kids who went through through this program would have an edge then or your KZtown kids might have a better chance at getting into the programs that they want to
053get into. I mean it's defin I think you know I don't I say this too often I think in our place a if in a concept of like unlimited resources I would say 100% we could build something out you know that it's um that fill that need and be really special. I think what's going to be interesting for us to look at deeper is what would it look like in ninth grader schedules? How would we teach it here, you know, and what type of uh kind of staff resource allocation required to do it? Um, but I think it's even from that generalized idea, I think it's something we could take back to the team and see um what it there would be interest 100%. So, I mean, I think you're spot on that interest um
054to to really look at what it could look like in practice, the resources we have. So, yeah, I think we could we'll take it back to to our group and and talk about what >> when there was a ninth grade opportunity, did those students then attend BCTC for four years? >> Most often they would. Yeah, it was considered like an exploratory option for and it was typically only a handful of kids. I mean, um I think the program altogether might have had 10 to 12 kids. That's from all districts. We often had one or two or three that would attend. Um I say not every year, but in that in that range. Um but it was to meet the needs of students who you know certainly given the opportunity were probably going to select or
055want to apply to go to BCTC but just weren't sure what they would be apply what programs they would be applying for or knowing that they might not get their first choice but they still wanted to apply to BCGC so they would have a better idea what their second choice might be. You know, I think it was really to help students kind of through that waterfall of decisions that were that get thrust upon 14-y olds and the parents because that's when you're competing within there. So, um having a leg up in that decision making process extremely val so I think I think there's a lot of good pieces to that that concept and idea to think about what look like. So, but it's a great time to do it. Um again we do have we
056have grounds, we have resources, we have shops, we have you know we have the ability of you know family consumer science rooms and kitchens like we do have every small version of something we might need to create something that's a little bit more exploratory and preparing for the skills. So I I love the idea of this. Let let us think of it a little bit come back with some thoughts and little bit of practice. >> I also think of our research course research course and think of LA and some of the things we've done exploration as far as research there. Um and that goes back to students determining trying to figure out what they want to do. So I think if you involve somebody with some horses in the process, it's not the hands-on stuff,
057but it's more the mental workroughs as far as determining what that next year might look like. So I think there's those opportunities in addition. So it's to build that out. There's really good things there. >> Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I would like to know if we're going to get an update on having gotten rid of the in ninth grade, you know, how >> high school's coming to present next month. Okay. Yep. That's the middle schools this month. High school is coming next. So, >> not the MTSS, but the actual like the >> it's it's a combo. Yeah. Okay. It's a combo. So, plus I mean really an update on all the high school changes. Motion to >> Yeah. All in favoring this meeting say I.