 Good morning, good afternoon and welcome to the third of a five part webinar series on accelerating learning hosted by a essay, the superintendent's association and the learning policy Institute. District leaders, educators and others are focused on planning for recovery from coven and thinking hard about how to accelerate student learning. There is so much work to do to make up for lost instructional time over the past 13 and a half months. And we know that students need more than just academic instruction. They need schools that tend to their social and emotional well being as they navigate the trauma and stresses of the pandemic. CDC data from this fall show that the proportion of emergency room visits related to mental health crisis has increased dramatically for young people. It's up 30% since the pandemic started from March 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. And there's a conversation around so called learning law. Let me just note here at the learning policy Institute and at a, a, a, we are actively trying to reframe that narrative. We want to avoid a narrative that is deficit based and then said acknowledge the last instructional time and focus on the need to accelerate learning rather than remediate. We encourage participants to continue the conversation on social media using the hashtag accelerate not remediate. In our first webinar, Linda Darling Hammond talked about how social and emotional learning is a pathway to not a distraction from improving academic learning. We also heard there from an amazing panel of researchers and practitioners who shared both research and practical advice for how to develop high quality summer learning programs to accelerate learning. Our second webinar discussed what we know from the research about how to design high quality tutoring programs as part of a holistic strategy for accelerating learning. We've heard from practitioners there who have implemented these programs at all grade levels in ways that are integrated as part of the school day with well trained tutors. So if you missed these first two sessions, you can watch the recordings online, they're there in the chat. And as I mentioned, this is the third of a five part series on May 18 will have the fourth webinar, which will focus on how to use assessments to determine student needs and guide plans for accelerating learning. And on June 1, we'll have a session focused on equity centered strategies to support student learning. So we'll drop links on how to register for these two remaining sessions in the chat. My name is Tara Kinney. I'm the chief of staff and director of state policy at the learning policy Institute. My colleagues and I have had the pleasure of collaborating with Dan Dominic. Mort Sherman, Valerie Truesdale and the amazing team at a essay on this webinar series. These strategies is designed to leverage the strengths of our two organizations with a essay really bringing the important voices of district leaders who are doing this hard work every day, and who can importantly share the nuts and bolts of how, and we encourage you all to please engage with us in the chat and how you are working on these strategies in your local communities. LPI has supported by bringing the research perspective to these topics. So before we jump in, let's attend to a few housekeeping matters. Everyone except presenters has been muted. So we'll be taking chat questions throughout through the chat feature. You can write your questions at any time throughout today's presentation and use the chat to engage in discussion. I also want to let the audience know that this webinar is being recorded. A video recording will be emailed to you in a few days and the slides are currently available through the link in the chat box. Today's session is going to focus on best practices for expanded and enriched learning time as a strategy to accelerate student learning. Our speakers represent a renowned expert on expanded learning time and community schools as well as district leaders who are implementing a broad array of strategies to provide expanded and enriched learning time. We hope this webinar will provide you with some concrete ideas on evidence-based design and implementation of expanded learning programs. It's a topic that's on everyone's minds as districts consider how to spend federal and in some cases state funds to support learning recovery. Lisa Anders, Associate Director for Research at the UCLA Center for Community Schooling, an overview of the evidence-based for expanded learning time. And Mike Brophy and Peter Finch will present on the multifaceted approach that they are taking to providing expanded learning time and accelerating learning in the West Valley School District and the Yakima Valley of Washington State. Rounding out the team from the Yakima Valley who's a Rivera Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning for the Grand View School District will discuss his district's approach to providing expanded learning time and how they're using this approach to both address the social and emotional and academic needs of students. We save time at the end of this discussion with our presenters, so we encourage you to drop your questions throughout the webinar again in the chat box. So it's now my pleasure to introduce our first panelist, Marisa Saunders. Marisa is the Associate Director for Research at UCLA Center for Community Schooling. Her primary areas of research focus on K-12 transformation efforts aimed to address the long-standing educational inequalities. She's conducted extensive research that explores the potential and challenges associated with college and career pathways. Marisa has co-authored several books about equity and deeper learning, including one particularly focused on our topic today, Learning Time in Pursuit of Educational Equity, and beyond tracking multiple pathways to college, career, and civic participation. Marisa, thank you for joining us and for providing us with a research perspective on expanded learning time. Thank you, Tara, for that introduction. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you're joining us from. We've been wrestling with the issue of learning time for decades. Well, before last spring, we've been exploring ways to offset the learning time constraints imposed by the traditional school day and calendar. And as we move towards recovery, we have an opportunity to redesign the traditional school day and calendar to not only accelerate learning, but to address the learning needs of students and their families so that it is equitable, more in sync with 21st century life, and so that it aligns with our knowledge about how young people learn and what they need to thrive. So, yes, next slide. Thank you. In 1994, the National Commission on Time and Learning released a report, aptly titled Prisoners of Time, that found that our traditional school calendar that had been established a century earlier, no longer met the needs of students, families, or our quickly evolving economy. And the report found that we've held time constant, and we have let learning vary to meet those time constraints. Time constraints, not surprisingly, impact some students learning more than others. Knowing income inequality, for example, enables more affluent families to increasingly invest in resources that provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their children such as preschool, weekend and after school sports, dance, music, private tutors, test prep, etc, etc. And these opportunities exacerbate unequal access to a range of learning time opportunities that can offset learning time constraints. These differences begin early on, in fact they begin at birth, and continue to grow throughout students K through 12 years. Studies have shown that addressing these learning time gaps through expanded learning time, depending, of course, it's the no brainer on how that time is spent, can lead to positive achievement outcomes. So next slide. So given the numerous factors that contribute to learning time gaps exacerbated by the pandemic, we know that schools can't be expected to address these issues alone. To meet the needs of the whole child, we need to draw on the resources of the community and youth serving institutions. This provides opportunities to grade and blend resources, which is critical but it also aligns with how students learn best and can maximize the benefits of expanded learning time. When we invite community partners in, we bridge students home and school experiences, and we assist them in building pathways to college and careers without giving up their ties to their families and their community, their cultural communities. A youth sector approach can also prepare our students with a broader, deeper array of competencies that are adjusted to meet their individual interest talents, as well as needs. So next slide. So whether expanded learning time is delivered through an expanded school day or school year, or through out of school opportunities such as after school programming or summer programming. We know that they're most effective when they focus on the whole child and align with how students learn best. That is, when there is a focus on students social and emotional development. When they provide supportive environments, we know that students learn when they feel cared for and known. And these spaces also create opportunities to explore and shape their own learning. When they provide instructional strategies that support motivation and engagement and build on students prior knowledge and experiences, and when they provide systems of support that enable healthy development meet students needs and address learning barriers. So next slide. Research also tells us that the most effective expanded learning time opportunities connect and align within school learning. So this means that expanded learning time is not viewed as an add on, but it is integrated and supports learning goals. An advantage to expanding the school day and year is that it should naturally address these issues versus after school or summer programming where schools and expanded learning partners must work together to design integrated learning opportunities that can accelerate learning. Integration of expanded learning time also requires, this is key, built in time for professional learning schools need time for teachers and support staff, as well as partners to learn from each other to learn new skills and to gain the tools, the new tools they need to meet the needs of their students. Next slide. And importantly, expanded learning time must prioritize equity. We want to provide provide opportunities for young people to experience creative and engaging education during their expanded learning time. We want to invite them to experience their learning as meaningful and purposeful, rather than as a sort of punishment. The summer program offered by Los Angeles Unified last summer provides a great example of this, while usually it's only available to a limited number of students. Last summer the district opened up summer programming to all 600,000 of its students, providing classes on computer science, the culture of hip hop, the science of sports, the science of food, among a range of other topics. And this universal access invited all students to accelerate their learning. The expanded learning time must address the equity concerns of students and their families. So educators alongside partners and community members must consider the ways in which equity has been challenged in their communities, both before and during during COVID-19 and design policies and practices for expanded learning time that form a shared vision for equitable learning moving forward. The next slide. The community schools provide a great example of an evidence based strategy for redesigning and expanding learning time. It aligns with what we know about how students learn it integrates in school and out of school learning, and it centers equity. Schools have been around for a really long time, as long as our traditional school calendar and highlight the connection between schools and communities and forge partnerships between schools and community partners to provide educational opportunities, as well as supports and services to support the whole child. Although community schools will necessarily look different based on their local context, they are not a one size fits all approach. They share evidence based practices or pillars that integrate and that integration piece is critical to provide a supportive learning environment. Teachers consist of meaningful family and community engagement, collaborative decision making that includes teachers, community members, students and families, integrated student supports, and the final pillar is expanded and shared learning time opportunities. This means powerful teaching and learning that takes place both in and out of the classroom and that taps into the lived experiences, the interest and strengths of students, families and the communities. Next slide. So one of the largest studies of the community school approach was conducted by the Rand Corporation of the New York City Community School Initiative and the study involved over 250 schools making it one of the largest studies of the approach. And after three years, which I think is a very small timeframe for such a study, researchers found improved academic outcomes at the elementary, middle and high school levels. So academic outcomes included an increase in course pass rates at all levels, on time grade advancements and increase graduation rates. Some opportunity to learn outcomes included an increase in attendance rates and fewer discipline issues. So next slide. In addition to the student level outcomes, community schools create positive learning environments that are characterized by caring and trusting relationships, which are really at the center of the approach. And while community schools have to adhere to standardized testing, many community schools develop a range of learning outcomes that align with the needs and the goals of the local community. And they provide students with opportunities to demonstrate their progress and their learning and meaningful in authentic, authentic ways. So the next slide. So I want to end by sharing what we all know and that powerful learning not only happens in schools. It takes place everywhere and all the time expanded learning time to accelerate learning must honor this learning and by partnering with family and community to redefine the purposes and practices of education toward meaningful learning and well being. These expanded learning time approaches, including community schools can help move us move beyond these time constraints. Next slide. The final slide provides a number of resources for learning more about expanded learning time and community schools and I've included volume two of Cardona's report that identifies community schools as an evidence based strategy for expanded learning time. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing with us this research base and really to lay on the table for us some of the key elements that that folks should keep in mind when designing and implementing high quality expanded learning programs. Some of the things I'm taking away from what you just shared are, you know, I wrote it down to meet the needs of the whole child we need to draw on the whole community and the importance of community partnerships for implementing high quality expanded learning time programs. The notion I'm also taking away that that expanding learning time isn't just an add on program, it really has to be integrated and complement what's taking place during the regular academic day on a typical school day. And the importance of making it broadly accessible to students and of course engaging them where they're at in their learning. As a reminder to our audience, please react, share your questions in the chat, share what's coming in mind for you or what your takeaways are. We'd love to hear your voices there and it's now my pleasure to introduce our next three panelists, Mike Brophy, Peter Finch and Jose Rivera. Mike Brophy is in his 10th year as a superintendent in the West Valley School District and his 44th year in education. He's been a high school teacher and coach, a high school principal and assistant superintendent, and now a superintendent. He led West Valley's one to one initiative and it's personalized learning initiatives. West Valley has also been recognized as a college board AP Honor Roll District as a Washington State District of distinction for student achievement, early learning and career and college readiness. And as a National School Board Association Magna Award winner, the Magna Award honors districts across the country for programs that break down barriers for underserved students. Recently in partnership with a essay West Valley's personalized learning initiative with the focus of an AIR case study. Mike is an AA essay ideal cohort co-chair, which stands for innovative districts empowering all learners. He earned his bachelor's degree in social studies and education, as well as his doctor of education from Washington State University. Peter Dallas Finch has served as a school administrator for 28 years. He's currently in his 20th year as assistant superintendent of the West Valley School District. During his tenure as assistant superintendent, all six elementary schools in West Valley have received Washington achievement awards for outstanding student achievement. The junior high was named as the lighthouse school for STEM education and the district was designated as an innovative district by the International Center for Leadership and Education. Peter serves as one of the co-chairs for the AA essay early learning cohort. He was raised in the Yakima Valley graduated college with honors from Harvard earned his master's degree from Central Washington University and completed his doctor of education from Washington State University. Jose Rivera has worked in the education field for over 21 years and currently is the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning at Grand View School District. Jose's professional goals are to ensure all students receive a quality and equitable education and to make sure that all students become strong, competent learners and responsible citizens. Jose believes in data driven decisions, teacher collaboration and building teacher capacity across the K-12 system. He holds a bachelor's degree from Heritage University and a master's degree in professional development. In 2020, he completed his superintendent certification from Seattle Pacific University. Currently, Jose is completing his doctor of education executive leadership at FPU. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing what you've learned about designing and implementing expanded learning time programs in your districts. I will turn it over to you. Thank you very much, Tara. We're looking forward to having this opportunity. We were honored to have the opportunity and we're looking forward to sharing and answering questions and providing any additional resources we can with any of our viewers. You can go ahead and move the slide. Well, the first thing I like to do, and I have a saying, I like to keep it simple. And so we want to go back and look at the why. And I'm not going to read all of these. I want you to just take a look at these, though, if you would. We all know that what this pandemic has done, it's probably the greatest interruption in school and decades for students, severely impacting learning opportunities. 97% of educators reported seeing some learning loss in their students over the past year. And 57% estimate their students are behind by more than three months in their social emotional progress. You can see the rest of the things on there. The data for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that virtually learning might present more risks than in-person instruction related to child and parental mental and emotional health and some health supporting behaviors. And finally, pandemic or no pandemic, we owe it to all students to provide them with accelerated learning and expanded learning time. One of the things that I like best here in West Valley is we spend a lot of time on one of our goals, which is continual improvement. We believe you're either getting better or you're getting worse as a school district. And so our leadership team constantly brainstorms ways in which we can best provide accelerated and expanded learning time for our kids. Next slide. One of the ways you can provide accelerated learning time, summer school, extended school year, before school opportunities, after school opportunities, vacation break or inter-session opportunities, expanded learning opportunities that you can create in different blocks of time. Those are all just examples. The possibilities are endless and possible ways to provide accelerated or expanded learning time. One of the things that you have to do in part of this keeping simple mantra is it's critical that you identify the why or the purpose you are providing accelerated or expanded learning time. This will best determine how critical the need is for the time that you are creating. Next slide. Accelerating or expanded learning, the question, are we or did we make a difference? We use a lot of assessments in West Valley and we use the I Ready curriculum associates assessment fall, winter and spring. We're going to next fall initiate the Accuplacer for high school to measure college and career career and college readiness. So assessments are used to measure the difference being made throughout extended learning time, as well as standards reached or accomplished during accelerated or expanded learning opportunities. We will give a pre opportunity assessment, or we'll use the last assessment taken by a child in the spring, and then we'll do a post opportunity assessment like at the end of summer school, or the next assessment taken say the fall assessment. The comparisons made to children provided the accelerated learning time, and those, and those not provided or not making the choice. Give us the opportunity to see what differences were made. And that gives us the opportunity as well to make modifications and changes in what we provide during the summer. Our experiences showed the younger the student pre K through entering fourth grade, the differences were greater, and the results were more positive one more thing before we move that slide. We even started a jumpstart to summer school program. We identified kids throughout our community through our outstanding pre K early learning initiative that really could best benefit from a pre school opportunity and invited them into jumpstart for summer school. So where is the Akama Valley, the Akama Valley is the agricultural center of Washington State, you can see us right there, and West Valley on the map is on the west end of the of the of the map there and grand view where Jose hails from is on the eastern end of that map. Apple's wine grapes peaches pears cherries and 77% of the nation's hops all come from the Akama Valley so it's a rich agricultural area. Next slide. The thing we focus on in West Valley is our strategic vision and everything we do centers in and around the strategic vision, and it's called the five steps to student success through personalized learning kindergarten readiness. We've been nationally recognized for our early learning program that Peter Finch who will speak next supervisors. We want to get as many kids possible at the same place and the starting line before they move through our system. We want kids to have an enriching kindergarten experience. We want our third and fourth graders at benchmark and reading and math, and we dedicate a lot of time and energy and intervention work with intervention coaches, working with teams of para educators in all of our buildings. We want kids algebra ready by eighth grade so that they can take advanced math and advanced science courses in their senior year and throughout high school, and we want kids career and college ready as they get to the finish line in our high school. Next slide. So the nuts and bolts of providing expanded learning time. The thing we like to say is this kids get one opportunity to learn all they can in a grade. grade level expectations, they need expanded learning time. Students will continue to get further behind if they're not provided that opportunity. We have an obligation to our kids to provide the most amazing educational opportunity we can. And if they get it that's great and they move on, but if they don't get it, we have to provide expanded learning in summer school. We've been doing it for years, as well as before school focused learning opportunities for elementary school kids to have targeted assistance. Our middle level has peer tutoring and after school expanded learning opportunities for students. The high school also offers peer tutoring, as well as additional expanded learning opportunities for students. To support this growth mindset that I referred to earlier our goal of continual improvement. We support expanded learning opportunities before school for elementary and after school for secondary kids in support of any time anywhere learning and this growth mindset. We offer the West Valley Virtual Academy with over 300 courses that kids can take any time anywhere any place. We also offer the West Valley Virtual University in collaboration with Arizona State University. We offer university credits at no cost to students beginning in ninth grade. We offer early start world language opportunities for third and fourth graders provided by Rosetta Stone. It's available for every student who chooses the opportunity before school. This accelerated learning opportunity is provided at no cost and the kids take the secondary school bus and get to their elementary school early. They take early start and it gets them on track for having the language lab opportunity in fifth, sixth and seventh grade for after school We offer the West Valley Virtual Academy with over 400 students that have accelerated learning. We have around 400 students taking advantage of this language opportunity. It's paid for through revenue generated through our statewide participation in the West Valley Virtual Academy. Our first season supervises our early learning as well as our teaching learning and teaching department in West Valley. Go ahead Peter take it away. Thanks Mike, and thank you to LPI and ASA for allowing us to share. I have some interest in what was happening in the Yakama Valley and in Washington State about a balanced calendar. And so there is a, I'll put in the chat there. There's a upcoming summit sponsored by the Educational Service District which is based in Yakama. We're looking on this summit to learn more about balanced calendar. Next door in the Highland School District, they are going to be doing a balanced calendar. Next school year where they're going to have intersession, you know, they'll take the 180 school days and spread it farther out and you know start school earlier in August and in school later in June. They'll have intersession for one week in the fall, winter, spring, and then two weeks in the summer. In the West Valley, we're going to be using the emergency relief funds to do a summer school session. You can see there are structure. We want to make sure that we have steam activities, the science technology, engineering, arts and math. We're to really engage students and have it be a very fun experience where they're coming to summer school and providing that extended learning and accelerated learning that we wanted to provide. Some of the ways that we fund the various programs. So, you know, really proud to have a Senator from Washington State who was a preschool teacher. So that Senator Patty Murray and she made sure in the Every Student Succeeds Act that Title I funds could be used for early learning. I think we know one of the greatest returns on investment in education is early learning. And so West Valley we have Title I funded home visiting for early learning and we also have preschools. They're partially funded by Title I. And so the other interesting thing with the ESSA is the Title IV. So we've focused our Title IV funds on afterschool activities for middle school students and those are the, you know, the three buckets there of Title IV is the social emotional activities, fine arts, and STEM, the science, technology, engineering, math. So we have those activities after school for our middle school students. And then we do have afterschool tutoring at the high school and that's provided by peer tutors so across the district we have before school at the elementary for targeted assistance and the language, Rosetta Stone and middle school we have after school and high school we have after school so we really extend the school day. Through a variety of funding sources and we extend our services to early learning as well through, as I said, Title I. One of the questions we had as we prepared for this webinar was, well, how do you find the staffing for summer school. We've been able to put together pretty amazing pipeline for education. And Jose also in Grandview is a part of this as well and the work that we're doing with Yakima Valley College used to be Yakima Valley Community College but they dropped the community college because they are now getting four year degrees. And we've been a part of helping to design and support this program for teacher education. In this slide here actually in the lower left is our high school students, they're able to get college credit through the child development and practicum that they do in high school. And then we're able to hire those students as they graduate to be para educators they can get into the registered apprenticeship for para education and get a 50% tuition break on their tuition to get their a degree so they can work in the A&A and do their classes online in the evening. When they get their AA they can move into the Bachelor of Applied Science teacher education program at Yakima Valley College. It's a two year residency model the first year that the rotation of learning walks throughout the Yakima Valley to have diverse experiences from all the different partner school districts in the valley. Then the final year is a full year residency. And that's a residency model here where we have had 11 candidates placed in our classroom in the West Valley over the past two years. And there's about 30 people in the cohorts about a third of the cohort has been in West Valley classrooms. One of the reasons that there's a satellite campus campus in Grand View. And so they've doubled the cohort so there's 30 in the Grand View campus and 30 up here in the Yakima campus and so Jose has been working to place those candidates in the Grand View school district as well. I love this picture here because as the candidates are working side by side with our kindergarten teachers and they, they learn the West Valley way which is to cooperate and coordinate and collaborate with our early learning partners so that slide there has a slide gone who's the Head Start teacher and then has one of our student teachers next to her and then the kindergarten teacher and then the director of Head Start so you can see we have great collaboration and and the results are that we're able to identify students who could use additional systems with that jumpstart kindergarten session over the summer as they prepare for kindergarten and then also we can collaborate and actually play students in the kindergarten classrooms at early so the families are confident and they know who their teacher is going to be. Next slide please. Also, through our work with ASA and we've been able to partner with Waterford and this summer Waterford through their philanthropy efforts have been able to provide the upstart program for no cost to families in Washington State for this summer for children they're in kindergarten so we've been promoting that we've also done creative ways of doing a transition kindergarten in Washington State where students who maybe need a little extra time are able to come mid year and have it's basically a preschool experience. It's called transition kindergarten that they come come and the next year go to kindergarten so we've been promoting this Waterford summer learning with all of our transition kindergarten students next slide please. As I said before we use title one for home visiting for early learning, we have used the model of the parent child plus program. In addition, we have those families come in on Fridays and do play and learn. So we go out to the families money through Thursday and then on Friday we invite them in, and to have that social connection. Waterford, as West Valley goes quite far west up into the Cascade Mountains so many of our families are rural and remote. And so we have this opportunity on Fridays to come in and build that social connection, which is one of those strengthening families by protective framework factors so this is a nice model where we go out for home visitors Monday through Thursday and Friday invite them in for play and learn. Next slide. So today, success of our home visiting for early learning. We worked with the state to get permission to use a home visiting model for our migrant education summer school. We've been doing this for many years now and it's been replicated by other districts. We made sure that the work that we did with this home visiting program for the school aged children was culturally responsive. And here, the Loteria book is wonderful. And the trumpet the mother, the spinning tops, the wooden tops. We've taken those activities and so the spinning top turn that into a math activity, have the families and their children work together to have the models of the top time them and graph the results. And it's a beautiful thing to see the family, especially the fathers get on the ground and do the tops of their children, a fun activity they did when they were a child and have that intergenerational approach to learning. Right next slide. So, you know, we'll focus in West Valley and personalized learning taking students where they're at and having growth and having culturally responsive instruction. In West Valley in the state of Washington there's a called walk kids conference for all kindergarten families in West Valley for the past two years now we've done family engagement week for all families pre K through grade 12. So the first week of school is half days for kids and then half days for family engagement. We always talk about that the family engagement time is not a time for a teacher to talk it's a time for teachers to listen, listen and learn about the child and their family and their background and their interests, so that they can provide the personalized learning and culturally responsive instruction that we went for all of our kids. All right. Next up is Jose Rivera from the Grandview School District. Thank you again for the opportunity to share. Thank you Peter. So let me just begin by our end goal in the Grammy School District. We're always aiming to accelerate student learning even prior to the pandemic. In Grammy we serve a large Latino population, and we're a high poverty district. And so a lot of our students are sometimes behind. And that's okay because learning, I believe is in time bound. They just a little bit more time. And so we're always making efforts to accelerate student learning programs and so the goal is always, we want them to graduate and be productive members of society. We want them to be able to go off on their own paths, whether that be secondary education college, technical school, military or go into the workforce and our job here at the Grammy School District is to ensure that they are prepared for the world head on. Next slide please. I just kind of I always like using this this particular slide and quote and I'm going to read it to you this morning I hope you don't mind, but it's just setting the stage in our mindset here. So as imagine that upon your arrival at an airline ticket counter, you are told that only 65% of the flights to your intended destination actually even arrive. The remainder crash in route. And if you're an ELL student, a child of color, or poor, you're required to fly on a special poorly maintained planes, of which only 35% make it sounds crazy right. But this is exactly the deal that is as a nation we're serving up daily to millions of children and thousands of public schools. And so the reason why I shared this slide is simply because of the urgency that we know we have here in the Grammy School District. We do serve a large number of ELL students where Spanish is their native language. Like I mentioned earlier, we have a high poverty rate. We serve a lot of children of color here in the Grammy School District and so our moral imperative is to look at everything that we do through a lens of equity and ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to walk through that door and everyone's path to that door is going to be different. And so we really strive to look at things through a lens of equity. Next slide please. So one of the things that we've done in Grandview is we have really changed our approach to extended learning. We have a lot of the programs that that Mike and Peter mentioned before school tutoring, after school tutoring, a lot of supports during the school year, a lot of interventions. And we just feel that during the summer, it's an opportunity for us to really accelerate learning. And so the last couple of years we've really changed or trying to rebrand summer learning and not even call it summer school because as we well know when the research supports this is that summer school does have a negative connotation to parents and students and to just a community at large and so we're really rebranding it we've done things like summer camp science camps. And this year's theme is spark summer program for arts and recreation and knowledge. And the other thing that we've done really is we've streamlined a lot of programs in in the past, you would have to choose between attending Grammy school district summer school program, a migrant summer school program 21st century summer programming, kindergarten star programming, you kind of get the point there was a lot of programming is that we were that we're kind of competing against one another, in terms of students. And so the last few years we've really done a good job of bringing all of these entities together is all of these grants. For example, we have 21st century programs save the children, gear up migrant. And so now they're all under one umbrella, if you will, and that's the Grammy school district summer sparks program. And it's a K 12 program where all our students are invited. Like was mentioned earlier in the research. Next slide please. This year we were doing we're doing something a little bit different traditional or summer summer programming, usually is four hours from eight to noon, and students go home. So this year, we really want to focus on endurance because we know a lot of our students have been home for a long time and some habits have been formed that may not be conducive to learning. And so we really want to push students to be in school a little bit longer. And so we are going a regular full day from a 30 to three, six weeks. These are our excuse me Monday through Thursday. And of course they get their lunch breakfast and a snack. And we have some areas that we're going to focus on this year. We always focus on literacy and math as the kind of the core academic piece. This year we're bringing on the stem and the steam. We're also interventions that's always always part of the work that we do during summer learning, but really focusing on the whole child like was mentioned earlier. Really focusing on the social emotional needs of students first and then enrichment we want summer learning and spark to be fun. I think fun is something that needs to be brought back into into education and learning. I'm just like anything we do in life we want to enjoy it we want to have fun with it whether it be sports whether it be a hobby, and I feel that learning should also be fun and as educators I think we we have the skill set to make it fun. So that's one of the things that we really want to focus on this year is having a lot of hands on activities, intramurals yoga I know is being done at the high school. So it's very different this year. The other thing that we've done this year is we're really empowering our students are excuse me our administrators and buildings to kind of create their own programs so if we can go to the next slide. I just I've already talked a little bit about the traditional historical background on summer programming the way it is in the negative connotation. And then just some of the summer programs that we're doing this year, and like I was mentioning, really empowering our building leaders, instructional coaches, VPs to design a program that they know is going to be beneficial for their students. They're the ones that are in the trenches if you will they're the ones I know their students the best and they're the ones I know our parents the best, and what needs and what interests students have. So what we've done is we've asked students for input we feel that student voice is critical in this process. I think a lot of times we do things to children versus asking them what they would like, and or what they'd be interested in. And so getting student voice on the table I feel is critical and also parents, you know what do they want to do do they want to play soccer do they want to do intramurals for basketball volleyball, our music dance, whatever that that case may be. So our administrators are designing programs that are going to meet those interests and needs. Next slide please. Here's just some general information for planning. Obviously, everyone in this room already knows that if you're going to be planning for summer learning you start back in January, you don't start in May. And so on the right hand side there's an image of a document that we gave all of our elementary middle and high school. We set the banks of the river if you will, you know they they had to have some summer learning or accelerated learning, and we had some again some four core pillars that we wanted to make sure that they were hitting. One of them was of course wanted to have a vision for outcomes is that's always critical and important. What are the areas of academic focus, what are the interventions that we're going to provide. How are we going to identify students data is the driver of everything that we do. So we need to have some student data. And then also social emotional learning enrichment, and then looking at really the whole child and how do we develop leaders. How do we bring in health and nutrition in our summer accelerated program, we just felt that was really critical. And so from from central office these are kind of like the non negotiables if you will, and we're loose on how they develop their plans. And that's that's where we're at right now so if you want to go to the next slide. I'm going to go back to some summer designs for the high school and the elementary. And I just put in here some, some schedules because I know that's always a schedule, you know how do you divide up the time. So as you can see at the elementary level which is on the right of my screen here is talked about the curriculum, we talked about the subjects, the amount of time at the high school as well. So what we're doing at the high school are doing more of a project based approach, which is totally fine because again we we allowed our administrators to design a program that they felt was going to meet the needs of their students. And so here's just some examples of the designs and some schedules that I thought I'd share with with folks this morning, or this afternoon. And these are just some images of another critical component that we feel and the research also supports is we have to connect with our families there there has to be a family connection. Communicating with our parents about our summer programming is critical during conferences in the spring. Having family nights is important for our parents to come in and see what students are doing and a lot of times they're student led where students are teaching their parents or about something that they're learning during summer programming whether it be stem. And then you know enrichment and fun these are obviously pre COVID, but you know taking them on field trips to the zoo to a water park to the swimming pool. Sometimes our students don't get those experience like going over to Seattle to the to the And then we always participate in the community parade that we have here every year in grand view. And again just to showcase the work that we're doing in the Grammy school district to our community. They support us very very well and so we feel that parents in our community are a critical part to our children's success. If we don't have them as partners. We're not going to get very far and so that's that's grand view school districts approach to accelerate learning. We're more than happy to answer any questions. I didn't unmute myself. There's so much to dig into here in terms of what you've shared and I see that the chat kind of exploding. Thank you for sharing some of your resources and response to two questions from the audience and we'll have time to dig in that more but before we even get there. I guess I just want to kind of echo some of what I heard you share which is just, you know, in terms of the summer program in the spark program that struck me Jose was how you've really tried to streamline the many programs you had and bring a coherent program to your district that's engaging community and family and students and the design of the program and really putting broad guardrails on it if you will from central office but letting each school really design a program that's going to be most engaging to their community and informed by their community. And Mike and Peter, I was struck when you shared about the many different strategies you're pursuing and your district to accelerate learning, you know, from early learning programs, home visiting programs to the apprenticeships and dual credit options, language learning options that you're offering, both during the academic year and over summer and then other strategies in the valley, more broadly around balance calendars and creatively using intercessions. And as we've seen in other places around the country, you know, the Lawrence School District in Massachusetts Acceleration Academies is one that's been studied and listed up in research and I think it sounds like that's a strategy that's coming to the fore in Washington as well. Some of the questions we've gotten really pertain to your some of the staffing issues you've raised and we've seen in the chat. I wonder if you could share a little bit more about the residency program in particular and Peter you also shared that you're using certificated teachers and bilingual parapropos over the summer to support student learning as well so I don't know if you all could share a bit about how you're thinking about staffing these programs what's working for you and and maybe a little bit more on the residency in particular. How are they funded and how are how are you able to get students credit for their work in the after school program in particular as well as potentially what we found last spring was that just having the Chromebook and the hotspot. It was necessary but not sufficient to have engagement of students in the learning and we really understood the need for family engagement and really emphasize family engagement. So having the ability to have our bilingual staff reach out to families and just explain you know how to log in how to monitor your students progress all those little things. It just really made the difference we had a school go from about 50% participation to 100% by the end of the when we were doing remote learning last spring since that time we have been in person but just remembering how important the family engagement has been has been a great lesson for us. And so on this summer activities that we have where we're going to have a person at the elementary but then all students will keep their Chromebook and hotspot over the summer. So we will have staff reaching out to families and we're going to have a little more formalized actually at the middle level where families will will sign off that they want their child to do the summer activities remotely and they make a commitment to a certain number of minutes per day. And then we'll have a certificate staff and by them both para educator staff that will be reaching out to families and providing them with needed for tutoring, but then also just to monitor and and to help help encourage families to monitor their students progress and and keep them on task for the summer. Yeah, we're bumping from four weeks to six weeks this year, because of the need. We're operating at two elementary school sites Peter has done a fabulous job of, of already posting the positions and already getting the teachers all lined up by grade. We're working on identifying the students that have the greatest needs with our instructional coaches, and, and that's going well as, you know, it's going great so we've done a nice job of extending the learning process for the summer this summer, or and we're all we're already in talks about how we're going to best utilize intervention opportunities throughout the year. You know, we're like everybody else and we had a lot of kids that did not engage at all. We've had kids that haven't even engaged in anything remotely or in person obviously since the shutdown since the start of all this. So really carefully identify who those kids are the greatest needs, and get them the intervention work when school begins in the fall. So in grand view, Tara to answer your question is, we don't have a problem with recruit recruitment. We've had our summer program, this new design for quite some time in terms of accelerating student learning and really focusing on the data and what we do. And one of the things that's unique I think about our program is that we have some built in professional development time for our teachers and coaches, and so our coaches come in and so teachers are really hungry to learn and try on new things new strategies. If there's a new program that's coming on the horizon, you know they want to be the first to implement and try it out. And so, sometimes we've had to turn some of our teachers down. The big shift that we had me I want to say about 10 years ago is we traditionally the summer school program was like, Okay, who wants to do summer school. It was usually some some who just wanted the money someone who was fresh out of college or, you know you didn't have your best and brightest teaching our neediest. And so we really focused on recruiting our own teachers that know the Grammy school district way they know the curriculum they know our philosophy and approach. And then they started working with our neediest kids and then after that I just kind of got momentum and more and more teachers wanted to work here in Grandview. And so, and then they also like that PLC time and that coaching support. It is a little intense but it's really good learning for our teachers and so a lot of our teachers have told us, they love our kids of course, but they really love the professional development that they get during summer learning. And so that's a draw. And we've also bumped up the pay by a couple of dollars for summer learning and that that's helped as well. Incredibly helpful strategies I think that you've all listed up in terms of creating the conditions and support that want to bring staff in to work over the summer and really giving them voice and both what they're teaching and and the support to work with each other to execute during that time so thank you so much. I know we are almost at time here. There are a couple more questions in the chat I wonder if we have time for maybe one more. It was Nicole Kathy who asked, does anyone use an acceleration framework across the district. Is that anything that you've articulated or heard others articulating. I'm not familiar with that. You know, like I did say earlier, we try to brainstorm on periodic, periodically, our leadership team will brainstorm when we have a situation that comes up. We will brainstorm ways to meet the needs of our kids the best we can. We don't have any, we don't have any framework, we just try to meet the needs as they come up. So, yeah. I think what you've laid out today really feels like a framework as a bit of multifaceted set of strategies. Maybe it's not written up in a in a document as such but I think folks are walking away I hope from this webinar with some ideas and you've graciously shared your contact info for people to follow up as they see fit. So I just want to close by thanking you all for sharing your expertise and resources with this audience today. I think there have been incredible resources shared in the chat we hope our audience will dig in and follow up on those and we'll share the chat as well as the slide deck and the recording of the webinar will land in your inbox within the next few days. I encourage you to sign up for the next webinar accelerating learning using assessments to determine student needs on May 18. And again, thank you all for your participation today and hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you.