 as we call it her 30 seconds of fame. So, Daisy, take us away, tell us who you are and what school you're affiliated with, your role in the community maybe and does something have fun doing or a hobby? Okay, so my name is Daisy Mendez. I have three kids, one in elementary, a first grader, an eighth grader and a tenth grader. I speak Spanish, I'm originally from Mexico. I love to cook and I'm a caregiver. I take care of elderly gentlemen. Wonderful, we're very happy to have you with us. Thank you, I'm happy to be here too. Okay, all right. Well, before we start with the agenda, I have one apology. You got a berry file today it wasn't Randolph and Brookfield and Braintree. It was a very sore questions disregard those questions. They got sent to the wrong design team. It may not be the last time it happens. I hope it is, but again, as I shared with you, we have two initiatives going on simultaneously and they're quite a bit alike and yet they're quite a bit different. So with that, I'm gonna jump right in and I wanna chat with you a little bit about kind of the focus for where we're going. And I wanna share with you, I sent you this copy and it's also in the shared drive. But also to say that, we asked last time about the 2017 through 2020 strategic plan, which I sent you, that's more a PowerPoint overview. What I'm sharing with you now is more of where we're going. And let me get that up so that you can see it. You see the colored OSSD ends plan. Somebody just say yes or no, you can see it. Yep. Okay. All right, so this is what I sent you and this will help you to chart a little bit more of where we're going. You'll see there are four goals on this. They're all color coded, but the columns are the same as far as their headers. What do we wanna change? Where we would like to be? Where are we now? The differences between desired and current states and what must be done to bridge that gap. Now, this is what the superintendent presents to the board. And so this is a format for you to think about. Again, some of the data that we're gonna glean from these forums and from the surveys will speak to this and some of it won't. Some of it will be more what administrators might use to create what's called the means. The board's role is what are the outcome or the ends? And this is an ends monitoring report from fall of 2020. So I just want to highlight that for you to keep in mind. These are the kind of metrics that we're gonna be using to move us forward. So any thoughts, questions? Anything obvious, not obvious here? Anything about the priorities? Anything, Lane or Ann that you'd like to say with regard to this? Yeah, I think the data is important to talk a little bit about. Remember that a lot of this is based on the state testing data. The state was three years behind in keeping its data up the speed as well as the fact that we haven't had us back for a year because of COVID. So this data is at least two years old at this point in time that's in there. There have been significant improvements, especially at the elementary level at this point in time, at least on our local assessments, which this isn't tracking. So just so people are aware this is from about two years ago. Okay. Except for education, sorry about that, special education is current. Lane, speak a little bit about the difference between local assessments and the SBAC. So no child left behind way back when, when it came out, tried to build accountability into education. And one of the ways that they did that was they required all the states to sign into some sort of statewide testing. All pretty much all the states did something a little bit different. Some of the New England states did collaborate on the same test, but SBAC is the accountability that started with no child left behind. And it's important that we perform well on SBAC because it feeds into the federal government and it's actually used at a state level to determine federal funding that comes in under title funds. Those are worth about a million dollars a year to us as a district. So it's quite significant. This is a district just so folks know that until the last year or so, it took a couple of years to build up in the budget and get some structures in place. This district has never had a curriculum director. This district has never had an assistant superintendent. This district has never had a professional development line at the district level to drive any improvements in academics until the last two years. So there's been a lot of structural work that's gone on to try to address what we're seeing in the data here. And it is starting to pay off keeping my fingers crossed that they actually run SBAC this year, even though we've been in hybrid session most of the time to hopefully see what the payoff has been so far. So just a really quick overview. We do have local assessments that we use. We use two different software packages. We use Track My Progress for ELA and math and we use Star 360 to get up through the high school grades for both. And so those give us pretty much the same data that SBAC does, but they're more useful for the teachers because they can give it give those assessments to the students on the fly in a shorter format, you know, 15, 20 minutes and they can get immediate data on whether the kids are learning what they should in terms of what's being taught right now so that the teachers can adjust immediately if the students aren't meeting the standards the way that they should be. So brief overview. Great. And thank you. Thank you for being willing to do it on the fly lane. I should have had a conversation with you in advance but you handled it very well. You've done this before. All right. So any questions about kind of where we're going with this? Maybe just clarify too, part of what he shared with the board is as students have migrated from the elementary school over to the middle school some of the focus on the middle school has been that we've seen a drop in the performance of those students. So that's been part of the reason why we're focusing a little bit on that middle school and the middle school structure is to understand what is there something in the way that we're doing things at the middle level that might be creating that difference in performance. Yeah, Anne brings up a very good point. When I looked at the data going back 10 years the pattern has always been the same regardless of which assessment the state was using is the state's changed assessments in the last decade. But what you'll see is in the elementary levels you'll see the performance of the students rising each year. And then all of a sudden around fifth or sixth grade you'll start to see this drop in the transition you're over to the high school it bottoms out. It hovers down there for a year through eighth grade and then in ninth grade it starts to rise again. And that pattern that shape of that graph when you're looking at what's happening in student performance that has been a constant for at least a decade. And so one of the reasons that we were focusing at the middle school level is because that's usually a pretty good indication that we've got some structural issues in terms of the way that we're doing things that need to be addressed. And that was part of the reason that we did some major changes there last year. We've got a head of house who's actually with us tonight that is actually looking at a full middle school model to try to bring in analyze the issues that are happening, analyze the needs and then get some good things going in those grade levels. Well, I might say is somewhat tongue in cheek that at the middle school level, for those of you that have student children at home that are in middle school, there's the same drop off in how clean they have their room and how well they do their chores at home. It's something about the right and left brain synapse aren't connecting so don't think it just happens in school. Any other thoughts or issues before we move on here? Desi, do you have a question? No? Okay, I thought you were giving me a wave here. Maybe that's just a wave goodbye. All right, so we are moving into forums. They're coming right up on Wednesday, I think it is. I just wanna make sure folks are all set. I went through all of the forum lists today and I'm also gonna say I'm pleased that I'm now one of you. I have, thanks to Lane and to Tina, I have a OSSD Google account. So now you and I can work together on scheduling Google Meet meetings. I'll take over and I'll invite all of the participants from the different stakeholder groups to their respective forums. So you can take that off your to-do list. And so I'm gonna be doing that after tonight because Wednesday is our first forum. I hope that you've been in communication with folks and I would ask that tomorrow you touch base with them again that kind of the day before. But tonight or tomorrow morning and early I'm going to be sending the finalized questions after we finish that work tonight. I'm gonna send them the forum operations and questions with that. And also with it are school themes that can help them to think about what their feedback might be. So let me just step back and hear from each of you. I know that this is kind of semester change and this is probably one of the worst times in school to be able to ask people and invite them to do one more thing. So many thanks to you for all your good work around that. Talk to us and Mass. How's it been going? Any strategies that work really well? I know some of the lists are pretty long and some of them might be a little bit easier. I know poor Lisa's out there trying to get alumni to remember where their roots were and to come back and join us. So what are your thoughts? Everyone doing okay? Yeah, Wynton, this is David. Yeah. One just, I really appreciated the background of why we're focusing on middle school right now. Cause I know when there's been community meetings about maybe changing how the middle school is structured there was some resistance from parents. But I just, my two cents would be as you go through these middle school forums maybe that same background of just sharing how there's a dip in performance over those couple of two or three grade years might help orient people to the discussion and be more open to the idea of change and that change might be a good thing in this situation. Okay. So Lane and Anne, is there a best way to do that? Yeah, we had talked, put a little meat on the bones for those that may not have been a part of those discussions a year or so ago. We had talked about, you know, creating a preschool across the district for all students. And that idea actually got combined with this idea of, hey, we've got these concerns about how the students are performing in the middle school grades. Maybe we can combine the two. And we had talked at the time about, well, we're going to need space for all these preschoolers to be able to come in. So how about we move the seventh grade up to RUHS which has the space to do it and then create a true middle school model for grades six to eight. And we even have quite a bit in facilities reserve that if we need to do some structural changes to the building itself to support that, we would be able to do that. We were on board to kind of fast track that a little bit. Teachers got involved, sent some emails out to the community. And so when we had the first open forum to discuss it, a lot of parents came up with information with concerns that the teachers were sending around online. We talked a little bit and said, hey, we realize that this may be making people a little bit nervous, but at the same token, you can't ask us to be trying to address these issues while not allowing us to move forward on the things that might solve these problems. So we made an agreement and the agreement was this, is that we'll get the middle school, the seventh and eighth grade up and running well. And once we prove that they are up and running well, the town and the folks that we talked to in the open forums at that time said, hey, if you do that, then we'll be happy to support the transition of the sixth grade to RUHS. And so we are in the middle of that process right now. That was the reason for the restructuring for bringing in a new administrative structure for those current seventh and eighth graders is to really get that middle school model up and flowing to get those students performing as best as we can make them and then get ready hopefully for that sixth grade to come on over and to build a true middle school model with those grades. So add a little bit of meat to the conversation. Good stuff. Okay. All right. Excellent information. And I'm just trying to think, so probably parents are going to be the ones most interested in these forums. So I wonder, I wonder, Lane, if you'd be willing to do a cameo and we're talking about the parent one, which is, oh, February 11th. That might be the one to talk a little. The teachers know about this. Is it just parents that don't know the rationale behind? Are the teachers pretty well versed? Those that were involved in it do know, but it definitely could be spoken about more. February 11th in the evening is going to be problematic because I've got the support staff negotiations for their contract that's going on that night. I'm happy to show up to any of the meetings folks need me to. And I can even do a little mini presentation so I'm not talking off the cuff, but that'll be a problematic night just because I'll be doing the negotiations with the support staff that evening. I wonder, could you do a little video that we just play? I can try. Well, I'm just trying to think, maybe just send some talking points and because I've got, at February 11th at three, I've got the teacher forum. And if I had talking points between Ann and myself or David, I don't know. I think we could work through this. Yeah, those are easy, because like I said, I did presentations at the time. I just have to go back, find them, update them a little bit. When I'm on that support team, I'm so sorry about that. I'm both gonna be leaving you. All right. Well, even if I had like a PowerPoint slide I just had bullet points or a couple of slides. I could shift into that and just provide that rationale and go from there and David, are you in negotiations that night? Okay, not. No, I'm not. Okay. All right, let's leave it at that then, Lane. If you'll send me just some talking points around rationale, that would be great. Okay. All right, so just reinforcing what I, the email that I sent you today, make sure that your lists are set for forums, the emails are in them and that you circle back and send out a confirmation to them. Actually, if I'm doing that tomorrow, maybe that's their confirmation because the first ones are on Wednesday. For the ones that are later than Wednesday, it would be good if the day before is a standard operating practice. You just follow up, make sure that the folks are ready and sometimes there's a, in migration, out migration, things happen, people can't come or new people want to come. So I think we're set on that. Let's move now to forum questions. I went through and I think I made most of the edits that we talked about last time. And many thanks to David and Lane for sending us the kind of the talking points around these issues. So let's just take a question by question. I did move the middle school forums first and so that's set and just, are we okay with, excuse me, the way this question is worded, what knowledge, skills and tools to middle school students need to be prepared for the next stage of their lives? That an okay question, okay. And what does Randolph Middle School need to stop start? So on and so forth, physically, emotionally, intellectually safe. We go on that one. Okay. Yup, thumbs up, whatever, whatever works. Middle school ensure, maintain a positive attitude. Folks feeling okay about that one. Yeah, I don't see quite as much affirmation. Do we need to do a little word smithing on that? We're good. The next one, middle school stop start continue doing around positive school culture and climate. And the italics here is what Lane and David put together. So that's designed just to help folks better understand the difference between culture and climate. So I think we're good on that. Question five, maybe I should, well, question five's got quite a bit of what happens now, the math, the science, the schedules, the supports, are folks okay with that question? Question five, okay. And then question six, the current leadership structure. Are we okay with how that one's worded and the descriptions that help guide people that might not be quite as much in the know? We're good on that? David, any comment? I see you got your mic on. Okay, all right. And the different models, the transition process. Let me check up to that other one. It says principle, because we have the head of the lower school, who's Lisa. Yeah. And then we have a principal who helps out. So is that Elijah? And then, and then Katie does the upper school. Am I understanding the structure correctly? Yeah, as well as curriculum for upper school with Katie. Okay, so maybe we want to say principle Elijah Hawks. So that people know who we're referring to. Are you on question six, Ann? It was on the leadership structure. Yes, just say principle. And just putting parentheses Elijah Hawks. So maybe they know, and maybe Lisa Floyd for head of lower grades, because some people might not know who does what from the community. So Lisa Floyd for grades seven and eight? Seven through nine. Seven through nine. Yeah. Well, no, put hers up under head of lower, you know what it says, head of lower grade seven through nine. You can just put your name there and that way people know, they know who, who, where. And Elijah down here. Yeah. And Elijah, sorry, he has an E before the S in Hawks. Like right there? Yeah, and his role spans grades seven through 12. Thank you. Good, good feedback, Ann. Thank you. Just for those of us that aren't as clear, this is where Lane, you were saying this is a new structure that's just been in play for a year. Is that correct? Correct. All right. Any, any other changes? It's Jeff. Go ahead, Jeff. So I just had two questions and one is kind of just a semantic one and one's a little bit more about the process as we get ready for the forums. So Lindsay and I, we're gonna be facilitating the parent meetings and we had talked about the stop, start, continue. Oh yes, yeah. Praise. Yeah. And I did talk to you a little bit about that and we were kind of concerned that that's sort of relying on the parents to have a kind of a depth of knowledge about what the different initiatives are like, you know, what would you stop? You know, what would you continue? And we were wondering if we, for our forum, if that question was just changed to, you know, what would you do? And I don't think it's gonna skew your data analysis if we just make it, you know, what would you do to ensure students maintain a positive attitude? And then, you know, they may mention something that the people behind the, you know, in the back room know that we're actually doing already, but they didn't know and that would confirm, okay, well, that means continue. And they may mention something that they think is not helping based on their own experience and that may be a stop. But we were kind of concerned about the stops, start, continue and they might be sort of hesitant to provide feedback because they didn't do their homework or don't really know, you know, what are all the different initiatives going on? All right, thank you, Jeff, for bringing that up. I actually changed it in both question four and in question two. To what? So I took out stop, start, continue and put in need to do. Good, perfect. Are other folks okay with that? Does that make sense to you all? Okay. All right. Any other- The only question was about the forum process. Those definitions are kind of lengthy. Yeah. Are you going to provide the definition first and then ask the question? Well, I'm gonna send these out to folks in advance. So these will go out tomorrow. So they'll have these prior to the forums. And what I'll do is we'll go to the question and just let folks know that if they need, if they haven't read it or they need some more explanation, it will take a little bit of time to do it. But I felt like it should be there just so they're a bit more comfortable in the kind of the domain that they're speaking to. Do you want to make that same change to the number three question that has the stop, start, continue? Yeah, good idea. Got it done. Any other changes like that? I do wonder if it may be worth just indicating on number four that the leadership one, that that is a new leadership in the last year, just so that again, parents kind of know that as a discussion. And I wonder if it would be able to have a small something that talks about how it's different. Cause I guess that might be what some people are gonna look at is if there's this new model, maybe what did they change and kind of what is that, what are their hopes that that's gonna change from what was happening in the last decade? I don't know if that gets too in depth, but I'm thinking of some of the elementary parents that are gonna be coming in and really be concerned or interested about it, but maybe not have the knowledge of how it was running before. Elaine, is this the first year of implementation? For that particular middle school piece, yes. Okay. Again, it was interesting coming in a lot of my time, the first couple, I think this is my fourth year. So first two years was kind of analyzing and starting to think about budget implications. And then there was a year or two of trying to get the structures we needed to address some of these issues into the budget. Okay. So if there's no one else in the know, what was it before, just seven and eight for middle school and nine through 12 in high school? Lisa, go ahead. You can probably answer cause you were here. Yeah, I think that it was really more of, even though we called it a middle school, so I wouldn't put this language in the document, more of like a junior high model where the seventh and eighth grade functioned really similarly to the rest of the high school. So really what we are focused on doing right now is looking developmentally at what students' needs are. Last spring, there was a group of us, teachers from the fifth and sixth grades, parents, administrators, school counselors, and we were really looking at different middle level models. We actually had scheduled our first visits to other middle schools for late March last year. And then as we all know, schools were forced to go remote and we weren't allowed to visit other schools. So we had just gained some momentum and had visits set up and an observation tool to collect notes on when that happened. So right now what we're really focused on is how we're gonna transition students from the elementary school into our middle school and really looking at the developmental needs of those students. So for example, the schedule that we had expected to run this school year allowed students to have 55 minutes in each of their classes every day at the middle level. So the high school would still run its block schedule which we know is really effective for high school students. They have longer attention spans and it allows them to do deeper work like in science. If you're going to do a lab or something like that, you wanna have time for the teacher to get the class focused on their learning intentions, maybe teach a mini lesson or a concept and then dig into the lab work and then have students still have time to take notes, et cetera. At the middle level, we know that it's most effective for students to get more routine instruction on a regular basis and they may not have the attention span to sit through those longer classes. So that was another plan that we were going to put in place. And now we're in a hybrid modality and kids are in shorter classes when they're in school anyway but we had just really started to make some strides in those directions and then COVID happened as everyone knows. All right, and I don't know if that was more information than you wanted, but. We got it. Thank you very much. So are we okay with the document to go out with the new information that we have there and I'm trying to think the other, yeah, I think I sent out two documents through forums. So that will go out to the first thing tomorrow morning and for the Wednesday forums, I think that's sufficient. I don't know that facilitators need to reach out to individuals for the forums after Wednesday. Please the day before, just connect with your folks to make sure that they've got the link and they know what they're doing, those kinds of things. I think because they know you, they don't know me. I think that's just a good practice to do. Any other thoughts or issues with the forums? Wendy, can you ask a question? Are the second forums set in stone are those dates gonna happen like this? I think the second one for students is the 16th or something, is that still a go? Are we gonna talk about that one or is it on that? Yeah, are folks okay with those, any of those bad dates? David, is that a bad date for you? No, we got two Davids, I'm sorry. Do you want to identify which of you, well, let me ask it in a different way. Do you wanna just take the second forum like you did the first forum? Whoever the facilitators were for the first, take the second, okay? And I think the door is still open for the second forum. Remember, that's the high school one that we may have different participants or we may have the same. And I'm gonna leave that more up to facilitators. If you've got a really long list and you really got too many people for the first forum then shift the outreach participants to the second. I had a forum in Barry just before this one tonight and we had 15 in it. And it actually worked, we were able to get it done in an hour and had adequate time. So depending on the stakeholders, sometimes we could have a few more. I like to keep it 10 or less because it gives more dialogue time for those that are in it. But if you're in a quandary and you only had 12 people, don't take six the first time and six the second, bring on 12 for both forums. And I think that that's the guidance that I'll give you and I'll let you decide if you wanna have totally different people the second time out or the same. Thoughts about that. All right, so what I'll do is I'll go ahead and arbitrarily assign the same facilitators for the second. And let me just run through with you how it's worked really well with the thumb voting. I'll start the forums, I'll give the context, I'll start with the questions. And as soon as I get into the questions, I'm gonna go behind the curtain of Oz so to say and I won't be able to see the participants. So that's why I really rely on the eyes and ears of the facilitators to be able to tell me, to be able to kind of moderate the forum so that everybody is not talking at once. But once we get in the flow, we actually don't need to wait until you call on them and they come on. As long as the sequencing is working, let them flow because I can keep up with capturing what they're having to say where I really need your eyes and ears is when they're voting because I can't see that. So just tell me, four votes, five votes, whatever that is. And my question to you, do you wanna remain pure facilitators or do you wanna vote with your participants, especially if you're in that stakeholder role? What are your thoughts about that? We might do. Yeah, all right, let's do it. Let me go into. We're supposed to be seeing a document, right? That the people in the forum won't be seeing but will be seeing it. No, they'll see it. Oh, they're gonna see it. So are you gonna be presenting these questions? Yeah. And this isn't good. I just wanna sort of go run through so I have an idea of what to expect. You'll see these exact questions. And am I in the, no, I'm in sharing mode. So you can see my document now. So what I'm gonna do is this, I just got bullets. And when I hear what people have to say, I'm just gonna capture it. And I'm gonna continue to do that. And then eventually, when I get five or six kind of theme areas, then I'm gonna shift it fully back to you. And I'm gonna say, Anne, on the first one, how many votes, how many thumb up votes do you have there? Cause I can't see the screens. So you're gonna count them and you're gonna tell me there's nine. Sometimes I'll give them more than one vote. If I've got five or six kind of theme areas, I might give them two or three votes. And people could put, if I said three, and Jane Smith really likes that first one, she could put all three votes right there. Or she could be one here and she could do one here and the like. So it's just a way to prioritize and get a little bit more kind of traction on multiple people think this is an important idea. And then I go on to the next and it works pretty well to go through about six or seven questions. Okay, I have another one. Yeah, go ahead. So when I'm looking, when you're presenting, I can see two, four, six, eight, nine people. One of them is you. Is there a way for me to scroll down on here to see other people's, so if I'm trying to count like thumbs up or something, I can only see the first nine, but if we have, if I have you in there and then the other facilitator in there, how do I see the, is there maybe somebody who uses Google more than I do? Can you see the screen? Can you see the screen I just popped up? Can you see my text box? Can you see what I'm typing down here? So you could have those people you can't see, just come in by text. Okay, so maybe we should have them chat their answer. You can do that. I'm looking for a visual, a visual. Tell you what, every, every, every. So we're on here, who do when you're, when you're trying to sort of tabulate where kids are at? Well, it does have a. If you go to the three dots down at the bottom right-hand corner, you can pull that up and it says change layout. Granted tonight, my layout is not, isn't working. So like it does sometimes depend on how Google Meet is feeling, but yeah, right there. What when, when Wynton is showing is, is how it works, it doesn't always work in on certain, some computers that won't allow you to do all of that. Do you see what I did, Ann? Yes, and that, and that worked for me. Now I've got, I've got a lot more people on here. Yeah. The other thing. I don't have everybody, I don't have everybody, but at least I have more. I don't see it now, but there is a polling function and I'm not seeing it. No polling function on this. That's only on zoom, or yeah. No, wait, what is it? No, no, there's a poll. There's a polling function on Google, Google Meet. Cause I've seen it in Barry, but I don't see it here. So maybe you don't have that in your, in your Google account, but I haven't figured out how to use it yet. So it doesn't matter. It's another way to vote. But I think, Ann, this should enable you to be able to see it all 10 people. Oh, actually maybe 12 because you've got, you know, a couple of facilitators. So that way you can see what you need to see. Yeah, perfect. And I'll just have them text in the chat if I can't see everybody else. Just for the fun of it, if everyone would go to this chat here, let me back out and take you through it. Go hit your little chat button there and vote, just put a one in it and hit your arrow. I wanna see what it shows us. All right, you see that, Ann? So you see everyone voted in chat? So I don't know if that, yeah, you just, you use your side. And Susan also also pointed out we could raise hands because there's that raise hands option. Okay, that's right. Thank you, Susan. Yep. So that's another way to do it. So you've got a primer and you've got a backup and you've got another backup. Just know that if you're sharing a screen or presenting, if you ask people to raise hands, you still can only see a limited number of people beside the shared presented screen. So the chat might be the best bet. Okay, your arm for Bear, Ann. Let me go back to the agenda. So are folks okay now that we made that change? And again, I'm working with you. I'll certainly help, you know, much as I can, but it's difficult to capture what they're saying and at the same time kind of facilitate the form. And that's where the facilitators really come worth your weight in gold. All right. We'll be using the same questions for the Google survey and the survey will be done in Google form. So it will show us graphs. It will show us a spreadsheet list of responses. Some of the questions I'll use data that we gather in the forums to build those Google survey forms. So it's gonna be authentic. It'll be some of the feedback we get in the forums will also be the choices that people get in the online survey. And then there's some open-ended questions where they can put in whatever they would like to. So sometimes those prompts help people to have a bit more comprehensive thinking about the feedback that they'd like to provide. The only other thing that I'll ask facilitators just to be at the ready, especially early in the forum, people haven't gotten quite warmed up yet. So don't be bashful if I ask a question and it's one of these, you know, 10 second pause and nobody says anything. And let's just say Kelsey and Anne are in that forum. I might say to you, Kelsey, what would you say about that? Or Anne, what are your thoughts? Just this kind of bridging statements to get them moving. And then once they start, you can't stop them. But especially in the virtual environment, it's tough sometimes to be the first. So just be, I don't want you to be surprised if I pitch one of those out there. All right. Communication. I'm shifting now to the 730. We're a little ahead of schedule, but that's okay. What are some key talking points? And again, this is to alert people that forums are happening. It's also to let them know that surveys are coming. Just brainstorm for a minute. What are some key thoughts? And I'll develop those into tangible statements later. What are some key talking points to be able to go to the newspaper, to be able to go on Twitter, to go to school websites, so on and so forth. What are your thoughts? All right, I'll do what I just said I would do. Anne, what are some of the thoughts you have? Or Kelsey, what are you thinking about as far as communication talking points? Exactly what you're asking for. Well, I'm using these to develop a little press release, a little communication that... Well, maybe something like OSUD strategic planning committee looking for your input, something like that. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. I've been really, so I had the student group and so I've made a little presentation for the seventh grade, because I don't know them and I had the teachers deliver to them and I've been really... Go ahead. I've been really playing up like the future of our school, how important the voices of the students for the future of our district and what they wanna say, like this is their community and so their voice and choice is so important is what I've kind of been talking to the kids about a lot. Yeah, beautiful. Okay, what else? What about an elevator talk? You're on an elevator for 10 seconds. What would you say to somebody? How would you tell them what's happening right now? Might it be worth as we kind of talked about mentioning something along the lines of, there's been some show and some difficulty between the transition, between elementary and middle school and this is an opportunity for folks to kind of voice, again, their ideas or thoughts around that or learn what some of the changes that have been made are and something along those lines. Got it. I'm just chunking things in here for now. Other talking points? I think it might be, go ahead. Yeah, I think it might be a problem. Lisa, it's yours. I was wondering if it might make sense in sort of the introduction of our talking points to reference the previous strategic plan just so people have an idea of what a strategic plan is and what the goals are and then build on that and include that the design team is made of community members, elementary parents, just the stakeholders who are on this committee as well. It's all yours, David. I think that while there might be lessons that have been learned during this pandemic time, I think it's important that people know this isn't about the pandemic right now. This is about, we're talking about the future, next five years or whatever. Yeah, I think that's particularly important as we think about like the transition between middle school, I mean, elementary school and middle school, it's been really hard this year. Kids couldn't do tours or step up day or any of the things that we normally do because of the pandemic. So thinking beyond this one transition to what it has been before and what we can envision it being in the future would be good. Got it. Anything else? That's a great start. What I'll do is combine that with some of the other communication points that we already have. And that's what we'll put out there. So to get this on school websites, and this might be a question for Lane or David, what do I need to, who do I need to send this to for school websites? If you email it to me, I can get it to Ben Merrill who manages our website. If there are broadband communications that people want emailed out to the entire district body, all parents, all staff, I can do that as well. Okay. Well, I think that's good there. Let me go back to- They want it on, there is some school, I know the high school has a Facebook page, I don't know if you wanna put it on that. Sure. And I think, Lisa Floyd, you checked me on this, but Lisa Jacob does that in the main office? Yeah, Lisa takes care of the Facebook most often. I think the elementary school has one too. So we can get it on our social media for sure. Why don't I do this? Why don't I email to Lane, to Lisa, to David? That takes care of middle and elementary. Anyone else should get that to post it? So we're good with that? Okay. Let me go back to our agenda. So, we've got our questions, we've done our facilitators, thumbs up vote, we've done our talking points. You wanna begin to take a look at the high school questions. Remember, we moved those back, and I know that that's the middle school. Let me open this up. All right, these are the questions for high school. These are based on your ends policy. So the first one, knowledge, skills, and tools, the high school's students need to be prepared for the next stage. This is part of your mission statement. In fact, it's almost all your mission statement. Do you want that to be a question? I can't see you folks. So somebody's gonna have to speak up here because I'm behind the curtain of awe, so to say. Actually, Anne, will you act as my facilitator by eyes and ears here? Oh gosh, okay, yeah. So the second one, what does Randolph Union High School need to stop, start, continue? Do you wanna make the kind of structural change to stop, start, continue on the high school one as well? Okay, what was the language we used to ensure, yeah. So again, this is taken right from your ends policy. What do you think people would say, let's just take critical thinking and let's pretend like we're in a forum. What do you think the participants might say about that? We think they would disagree with that? Thoughts or issues? How can we frame questions around this? Or do we just use this as background information? Is there a way to sort of indicate again maybe what is being done currently to sort of approach critical thinking or foundational knowledge? I mean, obviously I know there's the basics, but again, is there sort of information like we have for the middle school where you could kind of use it as a presentation of what's there and maybe that can start some talking points for folks of then what they might think could be different or changed? Makes sense. Folks think that's a good idea. Okay, all right, let's do it. So that will be background. What about when we get to, so this will all be background. Let me copy this. Well, and Wynton, this is Lisa speaking. We can take that and add some bullet points like we did for the middle level. I mean, we can probably turn that around tomorrow so we can do it pretty quickly just to add a little more context to this document if that would be helpful. That would be. Okay. All right, Lisa, that gets us, let me just look at the question above. So what do you think participants would say knowing that this is gonna be background, what do you think they would say that the high school needs to do to ensure students meet the following graduation standards? And let's just brainstorm here for a minute. This would be stakeholder responses. What would you say if I pose this question to you? Wynton, this is David Wynton. I just finished watching Social Dilemma because my 10th grader did it in social studies. So the first thing that came to my mind was where are they getting their information to do the critical thinking? What's their source of information? Is it just some guy in his car doing a YouTube video or is it CBS News or is it Fox News? Like where is the source of the information coming from? Information is coming from, because sometimes I hear students say, well, it was on the internet. So of course, you understand sort of, that it's important to check where you're getting information from. Okay, good, keep going that you're on a good flow here. For the younger kids, especially, so that it's a skill that it carries over when they get older. It's how to stay safe in terms of using technology. And what else, what comes to your mind if you're a forum participants, how could you give feedback to the school about the critical thinking? So are we talking critical thinking here for this response? I was, yeah. Okay, let me move that up then. Anything else under critical thinking? Let's go down to, yeah. Okay, well, I would just add that sort of, some relevancy to what they're learning to apply to real world problems as they're developing their knowledge of, their literacy and knowledge in the sample areas. Yeah, let's go to foundational knowledge. What would you, what would you say here? What would be your question? Don't worry about it, I'll clean it up afterwards. What would be appropriate questions under foundational knowledge? And again, yeah, because we're, we've been in the process of sort of developing curriculum and that has been something that Lane has sort of put some attention to. And since he arrived, because we were sort of the middle, or the elementary school sort of had, there's a little bit more in place in the high school. From my understanding from what he has said, there wasn't necessarily a clear curriculum in place. And so I wonder if we would maybe wanna add, I know, Lane, you tell me if this is what's been going on, but they've been working with sort of developing and adapting the curriculum to sort of the common core standards of the state. Yeah, so the elementary had already done that work. The high school when I came in the door was under the mandate that they had to create the graduation proficiencies in the standards-based report cards. And so all their time for those first two years was devoted to that work. So they are lagging behind being able to do the curriculum work, lagging behind the elementary schools because of that. They literally had to stop everything and then every meeting they had, and it was probably going on for at least a year or two before I came was focused on that process. Yes, it's related to curriculum and yet that process would have been easier they had actual fully developed curriculum at the time which some of the groups did not all but they did not have the time to refine the curriculum to the common core standards the way the elementary school was. So the high school is evolving? Yes, so they have the structures in place now, they have a Cata, not a Cata 12, they have two directors, one for ELA and one for mathematics that is driving a process to help with that work. Those are two of the structures that we built in the last two years as well as these NKD and yeah. Okay, so is this will be then more background than it will be actual questions? I can't see anyone. So Lane, if you could just let me know. This is more background. There is no, if we're talking about the foundational knowledge, you know, one of the issues is interpreting what does that mean, right? Because for us to be able to do the work and to put it into practice, we have to have an interpretation of what it means. I've chosen due to lack of other information to interpret it as meaning we're following through on what the nation expects of schools and that's right now, that's common core. And so we've been working towards that end but there may be, I know during discussions with the board, there may be other meanings behind that, what foundational knowledge is above and beyond what we're required to do for the state and the nation. And that might be worth digging into a little bit. You know, what is a value in terms of foundational knowledge in addition to the state and the national work that we're doing that is valuable to this particular community? Yeah, I agree and think it would be interesting to hear more about the life skills, for example, that's not something that always people think about but it comes up a lot like, oh, I wish I learned this in high school and maybe a financial literacy course or there's lots of topics there under life skills that I think could be thought of and maybe they're already being taught of some, I don't know. I haven't had a kid go all the way through so I'm not sure what's covered already. No, it was funny, their foundational knowledge, there's like six areas. In my first year here, I started working on all of them or trying to because there hadn't been a lot of work done across the district on them. I realized very quickly that it was too much. There was too much work to be doing. We weren't gonna be able to get any of it done well. We'd have people scattered all over the place. And so I pulled people back into the core which is the math and the ELA first and then added the science on. And the special education services is also a piece just because we're so far out of the norm in terms of our special ed population and how large it is. And so I said that, and I actually wrote that in one of my more bigger narratives of an end report when I was still doing the narratives and basically said, it's too much. It's not that we won't work on them but we can't do it now. We need to focus on these four areas. Okay, so Lane, do you want feedback from these forum participants? Is there any salient value that we have? That field went especially, we started a little work on it but that would be beautiful to know what folks expect or would like. What is the definition for this community of the life skills that we should be providing to our students as they work their way through our K to 12 grades? Hey, Wynne and Lane, this is Jeff. I'm thinking about the parent forum and I'm a little worried about going down the rabbit hole here of like, how do we assess whether or not they actually meet these foundational skills and then what's a MP, what's a PP, what's an EP and how do my kids get an EP for content but got a PP for habits of work? How did he, I'm a little worried about like, what do we say when they start diving into those proficiencies and assessments? You're right. And what I've heard in other forums, there's a cohort of folks that don't like proficiency-based standards at all and some that like them a little bit and some that just don't know very much about them. So we're likely to get some of that. Help me, I really like this question because I think anyone can share their ideas and beliefs about that and I think we can get some good data from it. What other questions either around foundational knowledge or we can go down to ability to adapt and we've already done some of the technology. Where did I put that? I think it would be great to get a question and I don't know exactly where it would fit but about community involvement and just sort of the connection with the high school and the community and whether they're doing things within the community to work on those life skills or just some of what that is. I think it would be something to, again, what expectations do families have about the students being involved in community type things maybe or something of that sort. Are you saying community service? Yeah, I think community service, internship opportunities, vast opportunities, whether it be Norwich connections, all I think kind of any level of those things as well as just, yeah, kind of being, feeling like a full sense of community in the high school is being part of that, that Randolph community. So kind of all of the above, I guess. Yeah, okay, good, thank you. So probably if we're listing some things that happen, also project-based learning and senior project should probably be included in that list in terms of community involvement. And are we asking that question as if one, we either want it to continue or we want it to end? Well, I like the way Lindsay phrased it, what expectations do parents have around these things or community members? I mean, this is the high school series question, so. Yeah, got it, okay. And again, I think it's really important to affirm that this is future focused because some of these things, such as job placements, internships, those things during this COVID era are not what they would have been in a more normal school year or what we expect them to be in the future. Great point. And just to bring it back to the other forums, you mentioned like what expectations parents have, but I think it can be the same for students, like what expectations do middle school students have around community involvement and senior project and even those types of things. So I think we can, or the same thing like you said, what do expectations does the community have of the high school to be involved in those types of things? So I think we can phrase that particular question to hit each of the different groups. We could even pop up business and nonprofit in there as well because they're, they got a dog in this fight. They're the recipients of, I think we're getting some good stuff here. Let's see what else we've got in this high school question. So how are you feeling about this one? Sure that students are successfully prepared to complete their tech center program, world of work. I'm pretty okay with these kinds of questions. So here's your senior project. Here's your AP course, college dual enrollment. I thought I had an early college. Do you have students that take advantage of early college? Yes. The VAST program, do you have students there at VTC? Yes. Any particular question, any change you'd like to make to this one? We're good. Anne, are you helping me? Cause I can't see folks. Let me see. Folks, give me, I'm seeing shaking heads. I'm seeing shaking heads, thumbs up. Okay, good. Nothing's in the chat. Okay. All right. What about this one? We use this in the middle school. Should this be a high school question? Number four? Meaning a yes head or a no head? Yes. Okay. Thumbs up. Got it. And this one, then this one maintained a strong connection with at least one adult in the school community. Okay. And then student voice in the high school community. All right. It would be helpful if someone, and maybe this is Elijah, maybe it's Lisa, but I don't want to burden Lisa with anymore. She's got plenty. To be able to give examples of what's available now for student voice. Is that fair to ask Elijah? Yeah. So I can share this document with Elijah and Katie. And we can definitely put some indicators around these things, or not indicators, but descriptors. Yeah. Stop, start, continue and just. Okay. Wonderful. I think we're in good shape here. Wynton, David here on number five, if you're looking for examples or conversation starters, for me, on number five, what's been huge for our family is the advisory group. And having a single focal point where the kids start every day. I mean, I know it's not happening in the pandemic, but they normally have an advisory, a teacher that they meet with first time in the morning. And it's that same teacher and same group of kids throughout their whole high school years. And that's been really helpful to have that one adult to go to as kind of a, somebody to help advocate for you or just bounce ideas off of and ask questions. I know that in the past you've had mentoring. I think that's gonna happen again. I know that Laura is a key player in that. What else other than an advisory group mentoring? And now question five, what would you say is in place normally? Any thoughts? I think if you do generally, this is Gus, if you just generally say a key teacher, people might interpret that the way they need because each of my kids had a certain academic focus and there was a key teacher involved very closely with each of them in their own academic focus. So I think people would interpret that the way they need to. Okay, perfect. Any other resources, things in a normal way? Well, we're gonna need coaches. Oh yeah, good idea. Yep, coaches or advisors, because we do have some non-athletic clubs, et cetera. Well, maybe not advisors because we said advisory, but... I'll say club advisors. Perfect, thank you. Yeah, other student boys. What about, what are some of the clubs where student boys would be key? Do you have a Black Lives Matter movement or...? I think there's a social justice club, I think. Okay. Yeah, I mean, we have a racial justice alliance. We have our theater company. We have a gay straight alliance called GLO, in usual school years, GLOW, yep, kind of thing. And we have some other clubs that meet right now. For the pandemic, we have cooking club that kids are doing at home. We just started a poetry club and a music club that has met a few times as well. Beautiful. That gives folks a good idea of what's available. I think we're pretty good shape here. I very much appreciate your help because it's important to know kind of what the resources are on the ground. So let me shift out of this and back here. I'll make that change. Yep. All right, well, I think we've done some fabulous work tonight. This is, I have a question about the alumni group. I'm not sure who's running that, but both of my kids are alumni. And I don't think either of them has been reached out to, but most alumni don't actually use their school email account anymore. So I'm wondering if we need to get creative with more social media or use alumni who are now employed at the school? Anne. I've reached out to some alumni in Anne's household. And I've been using almost exclusively social media to reach out because they're using email addresses from all over the place. And if you could reach, I don't have contact information for your two guts, but if you wanna reach out to them and have them send me an email, I would welcome that. No problem. Thank you. Good idea, that's the power of the group. Thank you. So I think we're good. Who should I reach out to? And this might be a David question, a Lane question. Who should I reach out to for help on developing a Google Form survey? Who's your technology wizard that once I developed the, yeah. Tina, Tina Scheindel. Okay. Yeah, and she's actually, you interacted with her. She sets you up with your email account. Yeah. Okay. I got it. All right. Well, any last words before? I hate to let you go early. I mean, we could stay till late if you'd like or we could go now. So any thoughts, any questions before we go to battle this week? Figuratively? Another meeting in between all of our forums. Is that true? Do we not meet again until after the middle school and high school for feedback forums? Yeah, that's correct. We'll meet after that. And I think it's on maybe February 16th. No, let me look here. We meet again on March 16th. So we meet after the second series. Oh, we should meet in between the first and second, shouldn't we? Let's take a look. That's good. I don't know how I missed that, but I did. So the first set of forums end on February 16th. And the next ones are on the 16th. Let's take a look at calendars here. So a potential date would be sometime between after the 11th, but before the 16th. So it looks to me like on a 16th at three o'clock. Yep. Well, I am booked up every night. I don't think you wanna meet on a Friday, do you? What are your thoughts about that? I'm open on the 12th, but I have no other time until, well, we could, how about the evening of the 16th? We will have done the teacher high school culture, but it'll be before the other one. So the only times I have are Friday the 12th or Tuesday the 16th. What's your pleasure here? I'm using that meeting for just to prepare and maybe any learnings from the first few, from the first forum through, you know, because we love to talk about it. It would be, yes, it would be to kind of streamline any, we do a debrief on the first set of forums before we go into the second set of forums, while it's still kind of freshener minds and begin to process the data that is gleaned from the middle school forum and then prepare for the high school forum knowing that one of them already will have happened at three o'clock on the 16th. Would we expect to have survey data back by then or no, for the middle school forums? Yep, yep, because I'll be working on that in the next day or so. So the survey data will go out almost the same time as the forums start. I might wait a couple of days because I like to extract some of the kind of the key points that I hear in the forums to be able to embed that in the survey because then it's your stuff, it's people in your communities have said that. So it makes sense to add that as some of the choices in the Google forum. So we're down to two dates. One's a terrible time, it's Friday night at 6.30 and the other is a Tuesday night at 6.30 unless there are times during the day that would work for folks. Because I'm booked at about four o'clock most days as well. I doubt that you're gonna be very available. Tell me what you're thinking. Could do six o'clock in the morning. I don't think you have too many conflicts then. No, all right. Well, the choice is, no, I got it. The choice is no meeting at all, but you're gonna have to kind of wrap your head around feedback from the two forum series or a meeting on Friday night, the 11th or 12th, whatever that is that we could do earlier on a Friday. What if we did like a late afternoon on a Friday rather than an evening? That possibility or is that just bad news? Yeah, cause I'm wide open on Friday. I'm not hearing much movement here. Do you wanna have a thumbs up? All those that wanna meet sometime late Friday, show me a thumb. Yeah, I thought so. I knew it was a bad time. All right, how about Tuesday the 16th? Show me a thumb at 6.30 at night. All right, that's what it's gonna be. And I'm looking to make sure those are thumbs folks. Remember, we only vote with thumbs. All right, I'll send you out an agenda for the 16th that is 6.30 still a good time for you? Yeah, all right, we're good. Don't hate me, but thank you for bringing that point up. Happy, have a good night. Thank you for your good work. Bye for now.