 Can anyone see this document? Yes. OK. All right. So tonight, we're going to do a crosswalk between the survey responses and the forum data. I'm hoping that you all have some observations that you extracted from the survey once we were finally able to make that viable for everyone. I'm going to discuss a little bit the policy governance board role and the superintendent's CEO role. I've done some color coding that I think will help do some clarification and also some prioritization. We'll talk a little bit about the Agency of Education COVID plan and the connection to the strategic plan. I sent you the graphic timeline and the strand or theme icons to look at. And I think we're going to need one more design team meeting in early May. And then maybe this is a good time just to explore some dates. I'd like to do it before the 10th of May. So let me go to next week. And I've got open, well, Wednesday, I guess I got open. Or it could be a little bit later on Thursday. Or we can look at the 10th is that Monday. So it's looking like Wednesday would be, oh, let me just think about this. I'm in North Carolina. And I've got to arrive. And I am camping right here. So let me just think. Well, we may not be able to do that. Let's see how we do tonight. And if we need to, we'll schedule it after the board meeting and do some adaptations based on what the board feedback is. I forgot that I'm now fully vaccinated from COVID. Doesn't mean I won't get it. But I have three little granddaughters in North Carolina that have been itching to see Mimi and Pa. And we've been itching to see them. So we're looking on to the camper tomorrow. We're headed south on Monday for a month. So any communication we have in May, it's going to be good rich on the road. And that's the beauty of technology. All right, well, that's the agenda. Let us start the conversation with what your observations have been. And I'm just going to list these from reviewing the survey before I fully go there. Were you all able to, once I figured out the magic of shutting the survey down, then you could see all the graphs. With a thumbs up, could you all see the bar graphs and the pie graphs? Beautiful. They were much nicer than the spreadsheet was. So I'm glad we were able to get that done. What did you see? What did you observe? I'll take a question by question. And any overall observations is that either reinforce what we heard in the forums or new things. And David, would you be my facilitator tonight, my eyes and ears? Because I can't, at least my eyes, I can't see folks. I will do it with a heightened level of confidence, I'm sure. OK, that's good. But what did you all glean from the survey? Is that good? OK, so one thing that I noticed that maybe we don't have it disaggregated, far enough to note it too. But there's this group of people who are OHS graduates who have children in the elementary school who responded to the survey. I mean, it seems like the percentage just kind of flows through those questions. And I thought, oh, that's the demographic that we're preaching to. These are people from our community who stay in our community who have children in our schools who actually care enough to respond to these things. And I thought, and it's a high percentage of the numbers. At least it showed up in the elementary school numbers. Aha, OK. Good observation. Any other general observations before I kind of go question by question? This is Gus. I actually found a lot of, I read it through the responses that were, I thought, very informative. So many people felt like they couldn't answer or rank accurately because they didn't know what things meant. So I don't know what that means to the validity of the data. But they were pretty honest in their responses, like not knowing what PLPs are or what on Earth is advisory and what does it mean and how do I rank it. And the comments on senior project were literally 54-50 against. It was very funny. Ah, 54-4? Well, just if it was 50% it was just like six and one half dozen of the other type thing. Like, they either loved it or hated it. There was no middle ground. OK, I did send out a definition of the terms afterwards, along with the survey to the 143 responded. So after the fact, they were able to glean a little bit or learn a little bit more about the education jargon. Yeah, this is Jeff. I agree completely. What jumped out at me was a real, I don't know what the right word is, but publicity problem. The Innovation Center, PLP, senior project. People had no idea what we were talking about. And that's not your fault in terms of creating the survey. It's a problem that the district has in terms of communicating what's actually going on inside the schools. Yeah, that can be a focal point for our communication narrative as we move forward. So we'll certainly keep that in mind. This is Richard. I mean, there was thankfully quite a few positive things in there, but I did see there was almost alarming undercurrent of cynicism from a lot of the responses and the narrative responses underneath. I mean, some of it was obviously more extreme than others. But yeah, that just seems to be, I feel like we've alienated certain members of the community or parent group. And I think we need to be honest and really think about why that may have happened and how to repair it. OK, OK. Another theme, this is Lindsay. Another theme that I saw, and this just kind of goes along with kind of what Richard was saying and sort of some of the things that popped out on those sort of negatives. And it's hard to know whether this is like one person commenting over and over again with the same thing or whether it was like more of a theme, but sort of this concept of like politics and how they play into school and where they play into school and sort of political agendas. And again, I don't know if that's like one individual or not, but I just think it's something that, again, was mentioned in there that might be something we need to think about in terms of how that's being presented or is there a cohesive way to present that type of stuff so people don't kind of the same thing feel alienated in that way. So if I said the present info without bias, that there might be one way to even implicit bias. Yeah. Okay. Are there any other general observations? Okay. Let's take question by question. Next stage of their lives, students need to develop life socio-emotional executive functioning, all of that. I saw that the number of you have identified specific things. Does anything else come to your mind as you look at this list? Okay. Let's go to question two. Positive middle school culture where students feel physically, emotionally, intellectually safe. Is this large enough so you can actually read it on your screen? Yes. Okay. Any additions here or any need clarification on what you see? I think this comes down to the communication thing as well. I don't know if this is just a misunderstanding on the part that people are commenting, but I saw a lot of people railing against the career day for girls and I don't know that they necessarily understand what that entails and why we think it's so important. I don't know if this is just something that some people will never understand why we push it in particular, but that did jump out from the comments that a lot of people seemed really, some people almost offended by the fact that we'd have one for girls and not for boys and I'm not sure how we would communicate with a point that has been missed. Okay. And that's a really good gender. When I presented that particular offering to my sixth graders, a couple of the boys were like, wait, what about us? And I simply asked them, do you feel you have access to explore those tech opportunities? And they all said, yes. I said, okay, well, thank you. So this is specifically for girls just because they don't usually have that and they all agreed, which is great, but Richard's point is, how on earth do we communicate that to people? Well, or the flip side is do it for both genders. Any other thoughts here? Student voice was a fairly high priority. Just gonna underline that and this one. Okay. Let's move on to three. A current middle school operating model. And for those of you who came in a little bit later, Jeff brought up a good point that maybe we should embed that as an action step in the strategic plan. So when we get to that point, Jeff, make sure you hold me accountable here and I'll edit that in. We'll figure out what the metrics will be. What do you see here that either concerns you or prompts another thought? I think it's more- I think that seems like- Look ahead. Sorry, I was just gonna say, I think not to be redundant, but I just think there's a lot of that kind of, again, like sort of missed understanding of some of the things like why are the conference is important, why are personal goal plan setting. And so, and even if it's like we're talking about is how do we better present all that information to parents so that they feel, because it seems like in some of their comments, they're supportive of those things, but the numbers don't always show that. So again, I just wonder if there's communication error there for folks. Okay. So with advisory, I think it scored pretty high an adult supportive advisory, but I feel like people mentioned that there's inconsistencies among the advisory program. And so that suddenly, some kids have advisors who do this and other ones do that. And so I think people wanna see some consistency with advisory. That's what I was gonna comment on was the advice. I was surprised by the responses to how advisory is going because I mean, it seems like it should be one of those things that's really positive and useful. I wonder how much of this is just the bias of people more willing to complain than they are to praise, but it does seem a little strange that we have that kind of response to how useful advisory is. I would have thought it would be a more useful thing that the kids could do. And it was especially surprising given, as Kelsey said, how important they rated it in other areas of the survey. Yeah, I think one of the things that I had talked to written about when it came to this area was just re-examining the advisory. As a parent who went to advisory conferences, it really was surprising how the advisor didn't know what Chase had been doing. Like they were getting the information the same time we were getting the information. And I'm like, well, he could have just told us that over dinner, we didn't need to have a meeting with you if you really don't know what's going on. So I think that the advisory concept seems like an excellent idea, but I think that they're different from advisor to advisor. And I think even having the student-led conferences, maybe let's the advisor off the hook, like, well, I just need to be there and the students can run things. Okay. Thinking about that too, with the student forum, once I know you were there and David too, the students really, really talk strongly about advisory. So it's definitely something that there is some real big gap between what the students are saying and I think what the adults are saying. And so just to kind of put it out there that I think that every student that we talked to has positive thoughts about advisory, but it is alarming and such a big difference between what the adults are maybe saying. Well, and Lisa and I got to hear the alumni and they were very positive. In fact, many of them participated, I think, because they had such strong relationships with each other and with their advisor. And so those are our graduates that see the benefit of it. Okay. I think the consistency point is really noted because the people, the alumni who came to that forum were people who had advisors that followed the model with fidelity and really felt passionately about advisory. So I'm definitely hearing that feedback. I think there are things we can do to strengthen them. Okay. Richard, do you have a point? Yeah, one thing I'd forgotten about this. This has jumped out me and having placed my kids with advisors every year and thinking how good it sounds that they're gonna be consistently with one teacher for the rest of their school career, that great relationship building. One thing that this pointed out to me was the fact that especially if we're gonna separate the middle and high school more, we're gonna get to a stage where we have teachers who are high school teachers, but they're advising middle school students for a couple of years each time. And I guess I hadn't really done the logistics in my head of if you're a high school teacher that you have to advise seventh grade middle schoolers, then you've got a big disconnect with scheduling and all sorts of things. And I guess I hadn't really appreciated what a burden that puts on a teacher in that position. So I think it's definitely worth being open-minded to how we structure that model. Because I can see how that would be a bit of a logistical nightmare if you were put in that position. Okay. All right. Ready to move on? This is a curriculum issue. Take a read and let me know that prompts anything. I think in a lot of the comments, like not necessarily under curriculum, I just noticed like people pointing out the importance of academics still and the need for it to be strong and to push students to feel motivated and to have high academics. And there were even some questions where I think people were questioning like why aren't academics more kind of front and center here? And as design team members, I think we have a sense of yes, we know that's important. But like we've talked about in other scenarios, even though we think academics is a given, I think it's important that we're still really highlighting the basic aspects and where those strengths are in addition to the extra things they've talked about here. And a lot of people talk, like I feel like this question could have been like worded, I don't know, a little differently so that it was more about how we're teaching the curriculum, not the curriculum itself. Cause a lot of people were like, well, hands-on is important, but I don't know, I'm trying to remember exactly, but I just felt like because they kept saying, academics are important, we weren't saying like the questions didn't say like, which one's the most important? Social studies, science, that wasn't the point of the question. So I think that some of that got lost, but in the comments it was that part was more informative than the actual ranking for this one. Any other thoughts on the curriculum side? What should the middle school grade configuration be? And you can see from the survey that it was roughly a 50-50 split. I don't remember the exact numbers. Any thoughts around grade configuration? I don't know if you can do this, but I would be curious to see who was voting because it was such a split, like to see who was voting for what? You know what I mean? Like why it was such a big split? I don't think we can, but I'll certainly look at that. Other thoughts about middle school grade configuration? Let's go to smooth transition from elementary to middle. You can see what some of the general comments are. Oh, here's the girl's career day, okay? Let's go to smooth transition from middle to high school. Anything new emerge from this one? Here's that old innovation center. I did create a definition or mission. Actually, I worked with Mr. Arcado around identifying what the mission of the innovation center was. It seems like this is a real gem. It sounds like more and more students and teachers could benefit from accessing that resource. Community expectations for students in project-based senior project. Talked about those above any new info come to your mind here. This is Gus. I was actually really surprised to see so many comments saying that senior project doesn't have any value. I know of several young people whose parents are educators who went through our high school and they felt like senior project was the only thing that had enough rigor to prepare them properly for college. Clearly those people did not fill out the survey. So I just was really surprised that they had such poor reviews. And I'm sure that's just a reflection on some people's experience, which of course is based on the effort you put into it. So I do think that a student's effort can suggest the outcome and therefore perhaps predict the result of a survey. Well, I also gleaned from this that it probably makes sense to build throughout the whole high school experience. Is there a sophomore experience also that has a capstone project? There have been different gateway projects over the years at various grade levels. And unfortunately, as staff have come and gone, they haven't necessarily stood the test of time. And so I think that what I got from reading all of this is that there's really important data that shows us that that needs to continue to happen. My understanding as a parent with kids who went through the system is that it was like a hierarchy of seventh grade. They had one type of project, eighth grade was a different type of project. And it just built upon itself. So ideally it was built up so that once they got to senior project, they would be prepared for it. I don't know where that got lost. And I think COVID of course interrupted that. But I do think that it was a really, really good plan. Having been a student who did senior project, and then I've actually been on the panels quite a bit in the last years, I really agree with the idea of like it's really student dependent. And I've seen students like really take it above and beyond and like put a ton of effort in and be able to carry that on. I've also been like, for me, I don't think I knew well enough that for the amount of effort I put in, I should choose something that I was gonna use. Like I learned how to win her backpack, which was exciting, but I wasn't able to really, I mean, I could carry on the knowledge of how to write a paper, but there were certain things now looking back, going into a medical field that I was like, I would have loved to have been encouraged to be like, hey, you could choose something maybe in those things. So I wonder if there's a way to like, you know, kinda help students, like you say, maybe it's building it early on or understanding like, here's what you're gonna be doing and where the work goes in and here are ways you could use it to really advance you if you want to, or here's a way to learn something new that you're just interested in, but that's just some of my personal feedback. Okay, anything else on a senior project? This project-based learning, do you feel that kind of scaffold those capstone expectations? It does, but there are elective classes and therefore not every student takes them. So it doesn't sort of perfectly align with senior projects. So it builds the skills of connecting with community members. It builds the skills of seeing a project through to completion, but only for the students who take a PBL. What does students do if they're not doing a PBL? They take other electives. So they might be taking an AP class or they might be taking something in the fine arts. Anything else under PBL? Thank you, Gus. I love the teamwork. Randolph Tech Center program. Any thoughts here? Okay, and what about world? Go ahead. What was student choices to go? What did that mean? I think that means to attend, but someone want to clarify? Yeah, so we've discussed that, I think quite a bit. It's more around the student feeling like it's a viable option and not the only option. So the concern was that some students wouldn't see that there were enough flexible pathways for them to make a real choice and feel ownership of their decision-making. And so that's why it really speaks to that need for the Tech Center to be seen as a career pathway and not sort of as something where students who aren't academic necessarily. And that's not my perception, but I think that over time that has been a perception of second-career centers who attend there. Okay, all right. Entry into the world of work. Any new information emerge here? Waitin, can I ask a question about that Tech Center one, too? Yeah. Up above it says choice about what the Tech Center does. What does that mean? Well, who put that in there? Also mentioned parent communication. And maybe just that parents need more information about what the Tech Center programs are. Oh, okay. So in helping their child decide whether or not the Tech Center is a good option like that? I think that's it. I saw a comment that referred to if my student was given information to bring home, I did not see it. So I think that's a reference to how backpack delivery does not function well in many households. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Anne. Entry into the world of work. Anything new emerge there? All right, and the final one in this segment, all the kind of college options around AP and dual enrollment, early college, vast. Any new information here? I do remember from the comments on this one, there was a lot of talk about class choice and parents feeling like they weren't involved in knowing what students could choose for their classes. I just noticed that in the comments. Got it. Anything else? Let's go to question nine. The one that referenced a strong student connection with at least one adult in the high school community. You can read what kind of the high level observations were, anything to add to the PLP and the language, multiple ways to connect. Opportunities for student voice in the high school community. Any thoughts here? And question 11. What else do you think would be helpful to improve the quality of education? We got a pretty good list here. Take a scan and let me know. Do you have any additional thoughts? I do think that I was reading these comments. It was concerning that there's a perception in the community that if we talk about students of people of color or diversity or anything, that it's somehow promoting a political agenda and maybe that's left to the language that's used, but I was really concerned about that. I saw some of that as well. I was a little bit shocked with one of the comments about we don't need any diversity or equity or inclusion training because we just don't have much racial or ethnic diversity in our schools. And I was surprised at that. I think part of the reason is because we're in this community that isn't very diverse, that we are faced with a lot of families who don't really have much experience, some of them not even outside of Vermont. So while I don't agree with them necessarily, I can see where their perception has come from. And unless you've been or lived in places where there is a much higher degree of diversity, then you may not understand what the need for understanding it is as much as we may want to push it. So I don't agree with it, but I can see unfortunately it's a product of where we are is where it's come from. Okay. I think there needs to be a way we can outreach and educate about that, but I don't know how we do it without people feeling like they're being patronized. Just was at a conference today where I don't know if the elementary teachers have run across the same sun shines here. It's a, it's, Gus, you've seen that book? Yeah. It's a great way of sort of looking at both and I saw the authors who spoke at this conference and they were talking about, so in the book, there's a rural young man from Kentucky, I think it is, or Appalachia, and he's riding with a pen pal of an immigrant from India. They're writing letters back and forth and they, and one of the things that the authors said in working with schools and sharing the book is that the really great learning that takes place is the students from both sort of the urban environment where you have all that diversity and the students from the rural environment. Many teachers have taken the idea and they do pen pal kinds of things, but the bottom line is that they all realize that even though there are a lot of differences, the reality is there's more in common than not, so I don't know, but anyway. There's a really great book. What's the name of the book? She said the same sun shines here. Yeah, I believe that's what it's called. There's a younger book for like fifth grade level by Andrew Clements that's about pen pals, a boy in Iowa and a girl in, I think it was the Middle East, and they were writing and the girl sent the boy a Ziploc baggie of earth. And so he added it to his Ohio farm earth, but the fact that it was the only thing she had to share really made an impact on him emotionally. It's really, really well-written. What's the name of that one? The name is escaping me, but the author is Andrew Clements. What these authors pointed out is what's interesting for their book is that the diversity is within the United States, and there are a lot of things for young people to reach out to places across the country, or across the world, but we have this diversity within our own country, and we're so siloed in terms of, and segregated in the way that we live, that we don't interact a lot. Even in the urban setting, sometimes you have an enclave of Asian-Americans and then you have an enclave of Black Americans and Hispanics, and one of the things they're hoping that their books and their work is that it encouraging Americans to get to know one another because we've become so polarized and we live so separately than anybody. Good idea. I'll stop. It's a great conversation here. Okay, anything else in question 11? Okay, let me put that one away. Thank you very much. I hope you found that interesting. As you look through the survey, especially the narrative responses, let's take a look at, see where we are on the agenda. Let me take us to the goal matrix and maybe I can better get at the issue here. So what I've done is I've created a legend with colors just to help us kind of differentiate some of the information. So you can see that board role is red, superintendents green, other roles are black. Existing initiatives, and this is David and Lisa. This is where I'm gonna need your help also with Lane just to help me know what is a current initiative and that's in brown and new initiatives in blue. And there's gonna be some melding of that, but I think it's helpful as you take a look at this, you're seeing quite a bit of brown in this first goal. So these things are already happening. So I tend to just concentrate on the action step in the metric, but note that school board role in red is update board ends and executive limitations policies based on what emerges here from the strategic plan and then the superintendents responsible for implementing those executive limitations or procedures based on what emerges from the action step. You can see the interdisciplinary units, the lining staff professional development and that's more role for principals and then track student achievement increases on data assessments and that would be teacher leaders. And I believe I'm accurate that you are either already or soon to be implementing professional development initiatives, the professional learning communities. Help me to know, David and Lisa, are those happening now? Are those are slated to happen in the fall? We already have our PLCs that we use for looking at data in the elementary schools, but I wouldn't call it a teacher leader task. It's actually a teacher task. While we'll do the work together, they don't fob it off on somebody else. They need to figure out what their students need and go from there. Okay. Yeah, our grade teams function in a similar way and we had a plan for how they would use data to drive decision-making and conversations this year, but this year has sort of been atypical. So I would say that has not gone exactly according to plan, but we do have a structure that I think would support this week work pretty well. Kelsey could speak to that too at the middle high school level if she felt like she wanted to add something. Yeah, I mean, I think that we have our new like local assessments too with our 360 and so through department meetings we track data that way as well. Like Lisa said, it's been a little bit different this year but I feel like it's something that we can just do so easily now because we have access to it digitally that like I can look at the data anytime I want to and make decisions for my class tomorrow. So it's just very different than how it maybe used to be. Like I already can have, see my S back data, I can see star data. So it just happens in real time, I think pretty easily for teachers in the middle and high school. And how often do the either the PLCs or the grade teams or the 360 groups, how often do they look at data? Is it once a week, once a month? Well, I mean, in terms of like actual assessment data, we look at that, we benchmark three times a year. So that's kind of like the more formal data. And then as a team, you know, we would do it more during integrated units probably, but. And I would say in the elementary schools it's a moving target because our PLC time gets shared, you know, between lots of different subjects as opposed to just having a department team being able to talk about math. So we got to share between math and literacy and you know, and science and other things. So I would say monthly is a safe thing to say, but not more than that right now. Anything else to add here? Either that we heard in the surveys or we heard in the forums, any of the data synthesis that we've done that fall under the goal of ensuring all students have access to learning resources and materials. I just have clarification because I'm not in the school system side of things. When you guys are speaking of data, is that like individual student data or like the class as a whole data, some of both? I'm just curious. I would say it's yes, because it gets used for, if you look at the class as a whole, that will inform your instruction for everybody as opposed to individual data as if you need to intervene with a small group. So, you know, one then the other I guess. Okay, great question. Thank you. I also think about, yeah. Hold on. Go ahead. So I'm just looking at the goal to ensure all students have access to learning resources and materials. And this doesn't seem like, like it meets what the action steps and the metrics we're talking about looking at like data. I mean, are you gonna keep data on access to learning material resources and materials? Like, I mean, that's not really an outcome. Do you have access to it? It's not. Okay. I guess I'm curious how you came up with this goal. Well, Lord only knows. So help me to shape it so that it meets what are our action steps. This is the area where we're talking about kind of that foundational knowledge, no? Yes, but we've all got it. We've got a foundational knowledge down here. So I'll do some mergers and acquisitions. Here's what we said under foundational knowledge. Implement research-based instructional strategies in all classrooms, complete detailed assessment framework. I don't know where internships got in there. And then we've got vertically and horizontally aligned the curriculum. So some of these kind of bleed over into other theme areas. I think the intent here was as you look at school culture and climate, what should the goal statement be here? We're talking about equity, inclusion, disabilities, social, emotional learning. So it isn't as much the curriculum side, which would be in foundational learning. It's more about the other things that either help or get in the way of learning the foundational knowledge. I'm just trying to start from the school board perspective and we need to see outcomes. Right. And our current outcome goals that part of what we need to flesh out is are we on track with these and to allow Wayne to kind of fill them in in the best way that he can, are those that foundational knowledge, critical thinking, those ends goals that are in our policies. So that's where I'm like, I don't know if the school board has a role in this part. Okay. It would be more maybe down in the foundational knowledge. I got it. Okay. I see what you're saying. This is Lisa. I feel like part of how we know that students have what they need to adequately learn is through our assessment data and through our social, emotional and discipline data. So I do see the connection there, but it may be a little more, it's not as clear a line from point A to point B as it might be in some other places. I wonder if we could even just add that verbiage that you just shared, Lisa, of like the emotional data and some of that stuff to that piece of the metric to indicate that it's not just the academics, but like you talked about data could be how many kids are getting into trouble and having detentions if that's still a thing or how many kids are being put into these disciplinary. So maybe adding that part of that metric is that piece might help people to see that connection. Right. I feel like the evidence is like successful student performance. That's the evidence that shows that we're providing access to the resources, materials and supports that they need in my mind anyway. I think the evidence is successful student achievement. Yeah, successful student performance, whether it's related to behavior or academics, that's the evidence that shows that we're supporting them in the right ways. I think looking at EST data and SPED data too, because we have district wide a high percentage of kids on plans and so I could see this as an area, like if we see those numbers starting to decline then clearly we're providing what kids need within the general ed classroom. Okay, you said EST and what was the other data? EST and IEPs. Okay, yeah, got it. Okay. I think it's... Is there like a general data? Go ahead Lindsay. Okay, I was just gonna say as long as... I'm sure most people on the school would understand this but when we're talking about data, a lot of these numbers we're using as a dipstick on the understanding that this is how we check the general condition but if the oil smells funny as it were we're gonna dive in and find the nuance and find out what's going on. So just because a student is achieving really, really well that doesn't mean we're gonna ignore the little orange or red flags that pop up and dive in deeper when we need to. So it's not just blindly following the numbers and going, oh, they're going up, it's all good. It's deeper than that. Okay. It also seems like we're ensuring that they have access to learning resources and materials and environment. I mean, they need to have a place where they can learn and I don't see that later on, so... And Anne, when you talk about needing data, like is this something where, and I don't know if this information's out there because I'm not in the education side as much, but like is there a percentage that people use of like, okay, for each of these things, for example, like for even the special ed, like if there's a certain amount that go down is that generally in the education world considered successful or is there with your certain testing if you're above a 60% or a 70% school-wide? Like are there benchmark data there that then the school board could kind of utilize if they like me don't have this knowledge to be able to use that data to know that it was or wasn't successful? That makes sense. That's hopefully what the school board is asking the educated professionals to come up with is tell us what is, give us, so we basically say achieve these results and then we want them to say, okay, we're gonna use this way of assessing and here are the benchmarks that we're gonna be looking at. We're gonna say 70% of the kids are gonna be at this place and as a board, the board doesn't have the expertise to outline that. That we dump back to the educators to say, okay, we want kids to have foundational knowledge. We want it in these areas. Now you as educators define that for us and then as long as it's a reasonable interpretation, then we take that data and they have to provide that rationale and we can go back and forth on the rationale like why did you come up with this? We can question it as a board so that we can understand it but we're looking for, but we need to have data to show achievement toward ends but our ends are very vague and that's part of this outreach is to try and clarify them a little bit more with the public and we're also relying on stakeholders at having some staff here who are more familiar with sort of the way education works. I'm gonna take folks, if I can find it, I think it's right here. What Ann has taught, oh no, this isn't exactly the one. I don't know if I can find it. I don't think this is it either and I was trying to find the September, 2020 ends report where there are percentages on students expectations and I'm not seeing it right here. Well, I won't spend more time looking but there is a document that I have been looking at and I'll continue to look at as we move forward here. So I think I've captured David, I wanna come back to you. David, the roller, you said something that I didn't capture here. Could you say that again? Oh, I think I'm gonna ask you to use my memory. So it was back up there where we've got, you gotta scroll for me, back up where you were in the black stuff on the left. Over here. Yeah, ensuring all students have access to learning resources, materials and environment. You know, they gotta have a place to learn and not just stuff to learn with. Got it. That seems to fit with what we're asking in the rest of this part of the matrix. Got it, thank you. Exactly right. That just supports this whole theme title, the culture and the climate. Okay, all right. Other thoughts in school culture and climate? Again, I'll skip this one. Yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say another quick thought about if we're talking about culture and climate and if some of this is like parents' student and we want that data, I don't know if the school board would think like is this for a yearly or bi-yearly survey to parents and students about the climate of the school and how they're feeling about those things. Like is that something else that could be helpful or a data that you could start having to track over the next two or three years to show our people, especially if we think there's some disconnect now, do we see that improving? So I just don't know if that's another possible measure that might be able to be used. Yes, I have that a little bit lower as something new, but I just added create longitudinal data tracking, I think, tracking and trends. And I've also suggested as a possible resource this Kualia Institute. They provide templates for student surveys, for parent surveys and for teacher surveys on voice and aspirations. And again, that is something for administrators and the board to look at. I know that Lane has a student survey that he's been utilizing. This could expand that to two other kind of stakeholder roles and this is really dealing with voice and aspirations. So this is another way to assess school culture, climate from teachers, students and families perspectives. And the elementary school already takes a PBIS survey that could maybe help with that as well. Okay. Is it behavioral intervention systems? Yes, yeah. Okay. So what I've done is I've maybe gone a little too quickly here. We're transitioning from all the stuff that you just gave me that I'll clean up later. The next goal area is closing gaps for academic learning. And this is dealing not with foundational knowledge. This is more the social, emotional learning, gender, racial justice and poverty. And to this point, align staff professional development programs to meet the goal. Is there anything else that would strengthen this from a measurement metrics standpoint? What I'm doing is I'm just kind of moving across here. And again, as I pose these questions, think about your survey compilation of data. Think about your forum compilation of data. Think about your own personal views as a member of the design team. Is this where you put in something about like having math labs and literacy labs and intervention blocks built into the daily schedule to be able to, instead of like pulling kids out of a regular classroom, you're giving them additional supports in the areas that have the gaps. Absolutely, absolutely. Math labs, what was the other lab? Literacy labs. Okay. And you said something else as well, Kelsey? I just said like interventions in general or accelerations. I don't know what is the better term, but. I like the accelerations. That intervention tends to denote students who aren't doing as well need to catch up. But we also need to make sure that the kids that are doing quite well, how we continue to challenge them. All right, good. That's what I'm looking for. What went in the goal here is closing gaps for academic learning. So would a metric just be simply test scores or is that too simple? No. We often call those student assessment scores and help me, educators, do you talk about proficiency standards? What are the terms that you use here? Well, I think the assessment is measuring proficiency, right? So, yeah. So that's okay. Well, I think you could take out assessment and just student proficiency scores. Okay. All right. Thank you, David. Right on the money. I'm wondering then, do we need to go back to looking at, the only thing is you said this was about like the social emotional learning gender, racial stuff, not about the foundational knowledge. So I'm wondering if the closing gaps for academic learning isn't really the goal that we're looking to have right now because it sounds like we're not talking about academic learning, we're talking about social emotional learning in terms of what you had. So I'm just, I'm just questioning or if we're gonna end up duplicating with foundational knowledge. I'm gonna put it down there. You're exactly right. Okay. So these are more about the structures and systems that support learning. So I don't know if this belongs here or somewhere else, but I'm looking at this, I'm just thinking when I'm looking at that list, like closing the gaps and then the part over this is about social emotional learning gender and so on. And anyone correct me if I'm wrong, but having worked here now for four years, what I observe is probably the biggest driver in creating gaps in our students is poverty from what I can see. I mean, that seems to be the overwhelming theme I notice as students in poverty are the ones who really struggle academically. And I don't know if there was an action step or anywhere on this matrix where we can honestly address that and is there anything we can do to support those families better to help their kids access their education better? I think with what Richard was saying, like the poverty and then the trauma that many experience that are in poverty that tends to be the biggest barrier that we encounter with kids and their ability to access their education. Okay. Is there any way in a metric that you could quantify like how many students are utilizing like our social workers and like some of those services that we offer maybe as a way to kind of metrically monitor that and again, whether that goes down because it means less are needing it or just if it means we're effectively using those programs, it would show that we're attempting to manage that. I think our Swiss data would be really helpful too. Say that again. I think our Swiss data would be really helpful. I'm seeing some puzzled faces. Can you remind us what Swiss data stands for, please? No, gosh, I don't remember exactly what it stands for. And maybe somebody else can help me, but it says that it comes, it's a collection of data. It's the database they use to collect the PBIS. You know, what the discipline referrals are, what the things are found for is, the students are being found for in terms of the good things they're doing as well. I got it right here. It stands for Schoolwide Information Systems. We do need to recognize the data over the last year since COVID hit is massively skewed. I mean, happily, we've had a lot, I mean, maybe this is just me, but we've had a lot fewer behavior interventions this year just because the class has been smaller, the kids have been excited to be there. So we're gonna see that creep back up, I'm sure, as we get back towards, quote unquote, normalcy. But yeah, just being aware that the data of the last year is probably not reliable in the grand scheme of things. Okay. I wonder, wait, I'm sorry. Go ahead and see. I was just gonna say about moving the additional supports with math and provide interventions, are those more our action steps as opposed to the metric in which we're measuring it by? And then the assessing numbers of students and analyzing. Good idea. I was gonna say something similar. I think what you just moved over in the one above it seemed more like action steps to me. And some of these metrics are great, and I appreciate where they're coming from as far as they're good metrics to measure what the school is doing, which you need because you need action items. But I still get back to, if you're trying to close the gap for academic learning, your overall strategy is around addressing the social-emotional thing. But at the end of the day, the metric is, are they more proficient in scoring better on tests? I still think that's the end goal that there's a measure, but I guess that's just my opinion. In this category, it's still important as to whether addressing these social-emotional is helping or not, I guess. But at the end of the day, I still think a test score is matter. Can we change the wording of the goal if we have that essentially down lower in the foundation to maybe better go towards this being, this particular goal being more about the social-emotional? Because we have the academic part down in foundational knowledge, I think, is that correct? Yeah, we do. But maybe it goes in both areas. So for right now, I'm gonna leave it here just so that I make sure that it's addressed here because they both are working in synchrony. It's not foundational knowledge is here and the culture is in another place. It's how they interface that's important. And David, I think you've got that right on the head. And I think sometimes what's missing when you just look at the test data is that you're missing the growth. So sometimes it just shows how many people are achieving. It's not showing those kids that have shown so much growth. So they might not still be meeting that metric that we want them to, but gosh, they have been working with a social worker and have shown so much growth. So I think that's a piece that's missing when we just look at test data. I agree. I'm thinking about kids on IEPs that can make tremendous growth and no longer need these significant levels of supports but yet they may never be proficient. However, they may have gone from a full time one-on-one para to only needing support for 30 minutes once a day or something. And that's pretty significant. I'm gonna chime in as a board member. It's that kind of benchmark and those kinds of outcomes that we're looking at is are we moving kids forward in that way? And I would agree. I mean, again, I like having you here, David, because that outcome is really what we're looking for. We need outcomes. It's great to have all this stuff and it's all important. But in the end, we need to have kind of a succinct. Where are we now at these various benchmark points and you can do it by grade level. You can do it according. We really should probably be doing it by grade level because we've got an entire system K-12. If we're headed in the wrong way and we haven't checked until 11th grade to see where everybody's out or if we're hitting these benchmarks, then we're not really able to correct the shift a little bit and steering it in a slightly different way. And that's sort of hopefully what we'll have is kind of a set of benchmarks along the way that we can monitor and see how we're doing as a total system. Excellent point, Ann, thank you. David, I recognize what you're saying about the academic achievement and having the test results be a metric. One thing we do want to be wary of though is you can have a group of kids who are getting fantastic test scores, but when you go and meet these kids, they may be emotionally wrecked and completely burnt out. So we do have to, we have to see that side of it as well. You might have kids with fantastic test scores, but that may not speak well to their mental health. So it's really important to keep all those plates spinning. Yeah, and I don't know at the top of my head a metric for that, but it's certainly, I agree with you, it's not a proficiency test score. But I think I like the metric. I think that Kayla brought up might be a good metric of maybe monitoring the number of IEPs or who comes off of IEPs or who's using less of an IEP or less support. That sounded like a good metric that I think I've heard Lane speak to in the past too about overall trying to address some of these behavioral things earlier in the elementary so that you're not seeing it later. And I feel like maybe he already tracked some of that. Yeah, part of the, I'm sorry about that. I was going to say part of the, trying to develop the statements that were current with the board, one of them did deal with IEPs. We actually created a rubric, the team special education team did a really good job created a rubric to be able to kind of track over time, you know what I call the severity of IEP, how intrusive it is on a student's regular learning environment as part of a tracking mechanism to make sure that we're accomplishing what we're supposed to with those students. So there's quite a bit of work that was done on that over the last couple of years. Just getting the monitoring system up. Got it. It sounds to me, and again, I'm not in the education, but that's where maybe it helps to kind of look for the school board. Like there's a lot of the data that's being tracked. It may just be that the school board needs access to like, these are the current information that we use and whether then you're looking at standard deviations of like we expect over the years that this is, you know, this is what typically can show proficiency or not. It may just be helpful to put out the information, whether it's from the special ed stuff, whether it's from the statewide stuff, whether it's the IEPs so that they can see, again, what those numbers are, what are sort of your average recommended numbers. I mean, I'm sure if there's that much data out there, there must be some normalized data that you would be comparing to. And then our ways that we can pick out this emotional stuff as we kind of need to as well, you know, through some of the, you know, more specific data, behavioral data and things like that. But it sounds like it's there. It's just that probably those of us that aren't in the school system kind of need access to what it is and how that information's being, you know, evaluated. All right, I found the file that I couldn't find earlier. So here's the ends plan that Lane presents to the board. And this was in revised fall of 2020. This is the theme area's special education. Lane, do you want to decipher that a little bit? Can you see that okay? Yeah, so there was, and again, actually had a little bit of a discussion on this earlier tonight. When I started in the district, I took each of the ends, did an interpretation of it, ended up being like this 30 page report, end's report that was, you know, tying in the best data that I could interpret based upon the research for each of the ends that the board said. They, board did not seem to be happy with the amount of testing data that was there with standardized testing. So I was moving stuff around, manipulating, trying to figure out, you know, the target that they were wanting me to aim for. And so I just try to create something very simple. You know, it still relied on the test, the national, excuse me, the state testing data, but this is what I came up with during the last round before we went into COVID. Okay, and I think there's four, four different kind of theme areas. This is English language arts. Yeah, and part of the discussion about this was, you know, the board has multiple areas for their current end statement. Part of the discussion and the report that went along with this was the idea that, hey, there are too many areas in there to work constructively on all of them at once, based upon talking with the cabinet, based upon the thinking, is that these are the ones that are the most high profile for the district. So these are the ones that we should work on first. Once we hit these initial goals, that 70% threshold that we're looking for, then, you know, we come back together, decide if we should be trying to push those a little bit higher, or if it's time to move on to a different end, you know, once we're hitting those thresholds consistently. Okay, and here's a good example of a projected metric over approaching the goal, gaining an additional 4.3% per year in the weighted average of all elementary students, exceeding the proficiency threshold. So those are the kinds of, I don't know, hard and fast, but clear ends metrics. And then this one is mathematics. Go ahead. So when one of the, Lane's put a lot of effort and work into this and we've started and we're on this path, I'm hoping that as we come up with this new strategic plan, we don't, it's not like we dump this one. Correct. But we continue to monitor this and maybe add some more in as this one is sort of working and we're getting some data, we're seeing some improvement. Maybe, you know, it may need to be tweaked here and there as they try some different things and they don't work. And so you try something new and that's fine. But yes, it is more helpful to have information presented in this format rather than a big long data dump where board members who are laid people makes it really hard for us to understand it needs to be more succinct like this as we move forward from the board perspective. Yeah, I will pull these together. This would all be under foundational knowledge. And so I guess what I'm gonna throw out to you all is, is it makes sense to embed the special ed, the English language arts, the math and the science to weave those into the foundational knowledge strategic plan and then the strategic plan has some other priorities. But does that make sense to the design team? And I guess just with a thumbs up but maybe David, Roller, you can help me with this. Did we take a thumb vote? Yeah, I think so. So we've got support to merge those two together. Okay, great. All right. So we are still under culture and climate. Have we finished? Take a look at the new, this will be under, I'm assuming, it's still closing gap for academic learning. These are additional action steps and metrics. You have suggestions here or language additions or edits. Maybe we finished that. The only thing is we don't have the actual metrics. Like who's gonna come up with those numbers to present it so it looks similar? Is that something somebody else does later or how does that, like when do we actually come up with the piece like they're looking for? Well, I think I've previously had a meeting with Lane to go through some of this and I'm gonna meet with hopefully Lisa and David Roller to continue to do that. I'm thinking that Ann and Lane, if I could have a meeting with the two of you after I meet with David and Lisa, I think it makes sense that we could have this pretty well shaped up and then if we can come back together as one more design team, just to make sure that it's all coherent and understandable and it's deep jargon from education, education ease, that probably makes some sense. And we're getting a little shy on time tonight. We've only made it through one of these, but you've given me some outstanding feedback. What are your thoughts? Do you wanna put this on hold and let the couple of administrator teams take a cut at this and then come back and you all take a look at it, see what it looks like afterwards. Does that make sense? Do it that way? Okay, good. All right, I'm gonna skip a couple of things. Let me just, I wanna share with you these two issues. I think, and again, this shows five theme areas. We're gonna only have four. Does this look like a reasonable, I call it a macro timeline? What it's doing is it talks about stakeholder feedback, the theme identification, the beginning creation of strategic plan. You'll have four theme areas rather than five. And so they'll mirror the theme topics in this goal matrix. What this is about is so that someone from the public or the board or administrators can take a look at this and in 2023 under, I'll see these topics are different topics than what we're using. Culture and climate. In 2023, what are we going to be doing either starting or finishing in that year or in 2022, same thing. So we'll have little bubbles that will emerge in different places, but you can follow in kind of one high level macro view know where you're going and be able to look at it that way. And then the other one is to have these theme areas built into the goal matrix so that graphically, and again, these are different topics, but communication relationship building is one that is ours. So it might look like this. Curriculum and career pathways, it shows music, it shows the world of work, military, academic focus. Again, graphical depictions help to tell the story. And again, we'll change these graphics, but I just wanted to share this with you and get your feedback on, does this seem to be a good way to go, thoughts or issues? Any feedback for me? Are people supportive of that? You need more questions, help me to know because I've, through Tina Scheindel, we've got a graphic arts teacher at the Tech Center that's willing to mock up both the timeline as well as the icons, but I don't want him to do that volunteer work if you're not supportive of that's a direction to go in. I mean, at first glance, I feel like the first visual shows a lot more information than the little icons do. All right. Well, imagine that the little icons will be in one of these bubbles. So as they come out of the strategic plan, you'll have a little, you'll have four little icons here and you'll also see them, where are we here? Where it says communication and relationship building, you'll have the little icons here. So you've got the narrative, but you've also got the graphical icon that also tells you the story of communication and relationship building. So that's many strategic plans have these kinds of graphics built into them. I think anything that improves accessibility for people would be a good thing. I don't see that as a, I think it's a good idea. Okay. And what I hear you saying not one or the other is a combo of both? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It just tells the story. Some people learn, have different learning styles and some see the message in graphics and others see them in narrative. And so it's like our learning styles. Gardner has seven or nine different learning styles because some students learn better through art and through science and some lose better through kinesthetic movement. So it's the same kind of thing here. So I'm feeling like we are gonna have to schedule another meeting but there's gonna have to be some work with administrators in between. I don't think that I can do anything until after the board meeting on the 10th. So what we present on the 10th will be a draft. It won't be the final. And I could meet either on the 12th with you. I start to get wide open on the week of the 17th. So it won't be on the 19th. I have a date with my bride. So what's a good date? Are you feeling like the week of the 17th makes sense or we're getting into the crazy zone and we'd be better to have a meeting on the 12th? I wonder about sticking to Mondays and meeting on the 17th. Okay. All right. Let's look at the 17th. Let me see what folks think about Monday the 17th. How does that work for you all? Monday the 17th. Ah, good. Beautiful. Okay. Then let's do it that way. So 6.30 to eight, is that still a good time for you? I will invite you to that. And I'll be coming to you from the Smoky Mountains. And we talked about Appalachian before. It's not exactly there, but it's certainly in the Appalachian range. And we have to crank up the internet and crank it really fast so you can get enough bandwidth to communicate up North. But I'm sure we can make it happen. So with that, I think we got through pretty much everything. What I'll do is schedule offline with David, with David Roller and with Lisa, and schedule offline with Ann and Lane. And stay tuned. I'll continue to kind of present to you the updates and we'll finalize on the 17th. Lane and Ann, then the board must meet again one time in June. What's, do you have a date of that June meeting? It's the second Monday in June, whatever. Yeah, for 14th, I believe. Well, the second month, oh, is it the 14th? Okay. All right. And that's a 6.30 board meeting? Yeah. All right, so save that in your calendars because I would love to have you kind of observe the handoff to the school board on the 14th. And with that, I thank you very, very much. Have a great rest of the evening and excellent work tonight. Thanks a lot, gang. See you later.