November 10, 2021 — Meeting Transcript

All right, I'd like to call our meeting to order tonight and first by stating that adequate public notice has been provided for tonight's Board of Education meeting. Our board president, Amy Rubin, is not able to be with us tonight so you all are stuck with me chairing this meeting. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, thank you everyone. I would like to just mention at the beginning of the meeting tonight all of our thoughts are with people in our Merrimack community this week. We've had kind of a tough week and just thinking about all of those parents and students and teachers and we share a lot of celebrations and positive things here and we share in the sorrows as well. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Patel for recognizing our own.

Thank you. So tonight we actually have two students from Clayton High School that we are going to be recognizing and we're gonna just wait for them to get on the Zoom feed for us. and okay wonderful they are on um so tonight we're going to be recognizing matt miller who is on this or matt martin sorry who's on the screen right now and landon miller was going to be with us but he's not able to join us these two young men i just want to really really highlight them because of their actions that happened homecoming weekend after the bonfire So these two gentlemen, they were having a good time. Obviously their faces were painted in orange and blue, and they had a great bonfire experience. They got in their car, and they were driving home. As they were driving home, they came across a car accident. The car accident, it was just like a head-on collision but against a guardrail. And what these two young men did was they pulled over. Because of their quick action, they probably saved a life that night. They pulled over. Landon quickly dialed 911. Matt got out of the car, went towards the car, he noticed smoke coming out of the car. He noticed oil all over on the road. He got the passenger out of the car what stepped into the car turned off the car engine. And then they waited there with the injured individual and waited for the paramedics to arrive. So I just thought that that was heroic on their part. It showed courage, it showed kindness, compassion while other cars were just driving by. So I really wanted to highlight these two young gentlemen tonight and just congratulate them because we have a lot of focus on learning in the classroom, which we should, but this is an example of learning outside the classroom and really showing it through your actions. So Matt, I want to thank you and congratulate you for being a hero for us and a true role model for all of our students. And I didn't know Matt, now this is your, you get to say whatever you would like. Matt, could you hear us? Oh, did he not hear us? Oh, no. Oh, really? Yeah, he's just watching us. He's like, what are they doing? That's it. Oh. Got it. Okay. Oh, okay. Well, we will make sure that we reach out to him. Is there any way we can at least just do something in the chat box? Yes, yes. Well, Matt, we want to congratulate you. You'll be watching this later on. Obviously, we're having difficulty with technology. But we want to thank you for all that you're doing. And Ms. Mancilla is going to send you a text message or chat message. Hopefully, you get that in time. Anything else? I didn't know if the board wanted to just congratulate him as well.

Thank you so much, Matt. And congratulations. And you've made us all proud.

Yes. So thank you, Matt. Um, and thank you Landon as well. I know you couldn't join us, but we really appreciate you as well. Thanks guys. Okay. Okay. Matt, can you hear us?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, wonderful. Matt, we got you now. We just went through this whole, your experience and we shared it with everybody of how your quick actions and you were basically a hero that night, you and Landon. So we wanted to thank you and recognize you for doing what you did.

Thank you for recognizing what I did. But honestly, I would hope that anybody in my situation do the same and to help that person uh but i just what was going through my head was if i help this person maybe he'll help someone else along the line and if everyone does that we'll have a better place so yeah

spoken like a true gentleman thank you so much Well, thanks again for being with us. I know that this is an evening you were giving up. So thank you again for everything. We'll talk soon. All right. Thank you. All right. All right.

all right thank you and we will now move to our report from our student representative to the board

Oh, I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I'll go ahead and start it. I'll start. So just a few things I want to talk about tonight. The first thing I want to acknowledge is that tomorrow is Veterans Day, a federal holiday. So we want to make sure that we honor our military veterans who have served on the U.S. Armed Forces and pay respect to those individuals and the sacrifices they've made for us to be in this country. And so thank you for their patriotism and their love of this country. And then secondly, later on today, you know how this entire semester so far we've been giving updates on our strategic plan. We gave an update with our first goal, a place for everyone from Cameron a couple of months ago around all our equity work. And then last board meeting we did our community engagement forum around goal three in Head and Heart. Tonight we're gonna do an update on us as learners And our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning will be sharing some information with us. And I just wanted to say that tonight's presentation is more about what it means to be an empowered learner. And we just wanted to share the foundation of that first, and then we will give you some preliminary data, but it won't be detailed data. The detailed, drilled-down information will be presented in the January assessment report. But today will just be like a temperature check on where our kids are as readers and writers, and really more focused on the professional learning that we're doing with our teachers. And one of the things that I also want to do is, you know, we talk a lot about what happened to our students academically through the pandemic. And I really think we just need to... I personally try to take caution in using the terminology learning loss because for me, when we discuss learning loss, it's almost like we're starting from a deficit mindset. And I feel like during the pandemic, our students learned a lot. You know, it may not have been... necessarily what we would typically identify as, but they did learn a lot. They learned how to be resilient, they learned how to be flexible and to be creative. So that's part of what we're gonna be looking at in the future as well. So that's gonna be a presentation later today, and then Switching gears, cross-country team made state level. And I'm not going to say too much because I believe our student rep might be talking a little bit more about that. But they made state this weekend and the girls team came in seventh out of 200 teams. And they have not been to state since 2015. And the entire team is going to be coming back next year. So hoping for a trophy next year, you never know. So I definitely wanted to give them kudos on that. um vaccine clinic we are having our vaccine clinic this saturday for elementary students anyone eligible from ages 5 to 11. for the vaccine clinic when we opened up we had 300 slots open up in originally because we didn't know how many you know families would sign up how long it would take within 40 minutes all 300 slots were taken We added another 200, and those were taken. So we're now up to 568 students this Saturday that will be getting a vaccine. So that is very impressive, and I just want to thank our community for supporting that. And then the second follow-up will be December 4th for those individuals. After that, on December 3rd, we're also going to be offering a booster clinic for all of our staff. So that'll also help with our mitigating factors that we have in place. And then speaking of COVID, just a quick COVID update as we do at every board meeting. If you look at our current data dashboard, we have right now one staff member that has the positive case and then one staff member in quarantine. Three total positive cases among students and then zero in quarantine right now. Again, this is basically showing us that what we're doing in our school is working and we're keeping those mitigating factors strong and solid. And then the next slide talks about the positivity rate in the county. Our daily case rate went down from 17.3, which was last month, to 14.6. And our positivity rate went down from 6.9% to 5.5% right now in the county. And again, the things that you want to focus on on this graph are the shaded areas because you can compare it from last year to this year. And as you can see, there's an anticipated peak coming around the corner. And so time will tell with that one. And then this next slide just shows us the school-aged cases per 100,000. Again, you want to pay close attention to the shaded areas. Overall, it's declining. However, we just are being extra cautious in the next month or so just to see what the holidays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas break. So we're going to stay true to our mitigating plan that we have in place. And then finally, I always like to end with this slide because that is always our end in mind. We develop the hashtag Clayton experience of what we want our students to experience throughout their school here and the competencies that we want our kids to leave us with. And with that, you know, this year has been challenging. You know, we wanted so much to get back to normal the way it used to be pre-pandemic, but we have anticipated challenges. And at some levels, we may have even underestimated what this year was going to be. And it has taken a toll on our staff and our students and our families. And we're really hoping that this extended Thanksgiving break is just what the students and the parents and the staff members need. And I really just want to take this time to acknowledge the fact that yes some of our families it was hard you know for us to offer the extended thanksgiving break but those families that reached out and needed child care during those days i'm happy to report that every family that needed it we have been able to provide it for them so and there is no wait list you know we were able to give child care we have over a hundred um students registered for monday close to 97 on tuesday and about 50 on wednesday through kids zone and so i'm happy to say that at least we were able to do that and i really just want to thank the community and the parents and everybody for the support in this because it does it is going to help our students and our staff to just get the you know emotional well-being and focus on that so we can finish the semester strong on it so thank you itana hand it off to you oh go ahead yes

Right.

We are actually looking to do an evening one. There will be a need, yes. So we're trying to see if we can have another clinic as well. Good question.

Alright, thank you. So I'm going to start off by giving a bit of a summary about our Wydown and Captain District Advisory Council meetings that we've had. So a couple weeks ago, Wydown met for the first time and there were about 10 students, half of whom were teacher-nominated students and the other half who just heard about the council and decided to join on their own. And these were some of the main topics that we talked about. The first thing was masks and like COVID safety. And this is something that we also heard at Captain. And I think something that's a big experience at the high school too, is that the majority of students are doing really good with keeping their masks up, but there's always still a small population who will like tend to keep their mask under their nose. And I think it's, that population is decreasing but there's still some students who are continuing to do that and then we had a very long conversation about school lunches and especially how safe it was because at YM what they have right now is that there's allowed to be four students per table and then they have to sign their name for the purposes of contact tracing but they feel at least the students that were at the meeting felt that it was still kind of easy for students to turn around and be talking without masks on which made it less safe And more importantly, what they felt was that the custodians didn't have enough time during the passing periods between lunches to clean all the tables. So it seemed like they weren't sanitized well enough. So they thought of the idea to have maybe spray bottles or just napkins to be able to clean the table to make the custodian's jobs easier and to make everything more safe. So they're going to be having some sort of conversation about that with Dr. Jordan soon. And then we talked a little bit about how the school is handling bullying and how there might be some disparities in disciplining. And the majority of students were basically saying that they felt that sometimes teachers or maybe the administration weren't necessarily listening to all sides of the story, and they felt that they just had their voices a little more heard sometimes. And then we touched a little bit on how mental health was going and how it's greatly affected you know, affected by social media, especially at such a young age, but we haven't really gone very into depth about that. So we're hoping to talk about that at the next meeting, which is going to be the Monday coming back from Thanksgiving break and then at captain. Um, so this is what some of the students were saying on the like interest form. And I just thought I really wanted to share this cause it's very impressive. Um, not really what I expected to see. These are very like real issues. And I thought I'd be hearing more about like like longer recess and stuff. So yeah, it was very impressive to see how they are all very focused on these issues. So then when we actually talked about the meetings, well, we had to split up fourth and fifth graders because they still are mixing grades. But so Anisha and I were with the fourth graders and Zoe and Caitlin were with the fifth graders. But both grade levels had kind of similar things to say. Mainly, we talked about food waste and how we can have maybe more environmentally conscious options in the cafeteria. And that's also something that a lot of the high school district advisory council members are passionate about. So I am hoping that we can maybe get them to collaborate eventually, and we can start thinking of some ideas to really help these issues. And then one thing that teachers are trying to do to make sure students aren't talking to each other with their masks down during lunchtime because they're all in their classroom is maybe having something like playing on the screen that they have there. But the feedback that we heard from that is that there were just it was like a lot of additional screen time to what they already had, and that it was somehow leading to more conversations being had. So we're going to try and talk to them more about how we can find more ways to reduce this contact while being able to have a fun lunch still. They also were a little worried about their nutrition. They basically said that they felt that their meals weren't nutritious enough, that they were either too filling or not filling enough. I'm not really sure what that means. So yeah, I think it's great to see that they're very conscious of what they're eating. But hopefully we can find ways to solve that as well. And then regarding more academic things, the biggest thing was that they felt that with the students that were in the accelerated learning program, some felt excluded and some felt that they just weren't getting the same opportunities. And I think if you look at how at the high school now there's students who maybe were in the gifted program and now they're not really interested in more like accelerated learnings. And then there's students who are maybe now in honors and AP classes who weren't in the gifting program. So it's interesting to see how at the elementary school we're having I don't know how old fourth and fifth graders are, 10 maybe? 10, 11. 10, 11. How these 10-year-olds are also seeing the same problems, how them being sorted into these gifted programs is maybe not as fair as it should be. And then an interesting thing I saw is that in Ms. McGaughy's fourth grade classroom, she had standing desks and also little chairs like groups of desks and, you know, individual desks. So I asked what it was about and basically they were allowing kids to say if they wanted to work alone or independently. So I just thought it was pretty great how we're getting more like flexible learning environments. And I think that's a really important thing to really value how students learn and help them learn in their best way. And lastly, they just said that they felt that they had a lot of screen time and that they wish they could maybe do more things on paper. Okay. So I'm not sure if everyone's heard about the toaster incident at the high school yesterday, but basically there was a toaster in the math office that started smoking. But I thought it was a perfect example of how our fire drills really are good because everyone evacuated the building very fast. So I think even though it was a very small occurrence in a bigger situation, it shows that we're all ready. Yeah. And then Ydown's going to have their first performance this weekend for Snow Angel. I'm not sure if they ever managed to have any live performances last year. I think they might have had them all virtual over Zoom, so it's nice to see that they can finally be performing in front of real people again. And then these last three things are things I... I think are kind of related to how we're going to handle going into these darker months, because it can be really hard for some students. So first, Stucco at the high school is having these Friday events, where every Friday is kind of like its own spirit day. So this Friday is anything but a backpack, and last Friday was mismatch day and then yeah we have our winter sports starting soon or that are that have now started so the swim and dive team started this week basketball started last week so it's great to see how um hopefully we can use these sports as a kind of spirit event how we were able to use like football and other sports and then lastly this um extended thanksgiving break has definitely been a relief for a lot of students i've heard a lot of cheers um yeah we're We were all very happy and thankful, so yeah. Just wanted to say thank you again.

Thank you, both of you, for those reports. Any questions or follow up on any of that? I think it's really great that you're getting feedback from the students in those other schools, and I'm impressed with the level of topics that they're bringing to you and discussing, so thank you for that. All right, we're going to move on to 5.01, our information item to grow as learners.

While we're waiting, I do want to give kudos to Aitana because Aitana really was strategic in terms of going to the middle school and going to the elementary school and developing those district advisory council chapters. Like I've been noticing a lot of emails going back and forth and how they're organizing it and then even keeping in mind the mitigating factors. So they were like, oh, we can't combine the fourth and fifth graders in one classroom. So then they had like two separate rooms and... So thank you, Aitana. I know that's a lot of work. So good leadership on your end.

Aitana, can I ask you a question? How were the fourth and fifth graders selected?

So we were also considering that. Basically, honestly, it was so long ago that I don't remember exactly what the process was. I think we had the teachers recommend and they also mentioned it in the classes because I remember some friends said that their siblings had heard that we were coming to them. So I think it was similar to the middle school where the teachers were mentioning it and they also kind of selected some students. Great. Thanks.

And that was the same process at the middle school as well, I believe, right? Yeah.

Nice that we're keeping a consistent theme tonight of technology. Isn't it? Technology, right? This is why Amy can't miss any meetings because we all fall apart.

Exactly. Exactly. So

VA, this is what?

technology.

Oh, that's true. If it starts working, it's good. That's

true. That's a good point. All right. Thank you.

Uh, so being prior to focusing on the professional learning and the similar work related to, to goal two, we think it's important to share some high level data with you about how our students are performing. So these data are generally broad brush strokes. Um, and we will follow up with more in depth assessment with a more in-depth assessment report in January, um, with much more specific data about our overall student population and then different identity groups, um, and their data profiles. But before I start with the data, I just wanted to sort of get ourselves regrounded in our learning models that we've had since the spring of 2020. So when the nation went into shelter-in-place, we provisioned devices to all of our students to be able to provide a learning opportunity for them. It was an asynchronous learning opportunity at that point, so teachers were posting lessons, students were completing things on their own, and teachers were engaging with students in a not very synchronous way. When we moved into the fall of 2020, we offered two options to our families. So the responsive learning plan or the learn at home if families chose to keep their children at home for learning. At that point, all of our virtual options became synchronous. So our teachers, whether it was when we started the year in responsive learning or whether it was children who stayed in the learn at home option, they were learning synchronously with teachers and pretty quickly we turned around and started bringing our responsive learning students back into the classroom. We started with our youngest learners and then by second quarter, by the end of second quarter, we're bringing our secondary students back into So the spring of 2021 looked very similar to that. Most of our students back in school modified schedules across the entire system. And so at that point, we also were told by the state that we needed to do the state assessments. We needed to do them on site. So we not only tested our responsive learning students, but as many of our learn at home students as possible on site. So So I think that's important to, like, this data picture. And then moving into the fall of this year, the majority of our students moved back into in-person learning, but we still offered a virtual option. It was not through the school district. It was through the state's model, so MoCap. And the majority of our student who are participating in the virtual option are participating through our district preferred provider, which is LAUNCH through Springfield Public Schools. And in order to still take care of some of our risk mitigation strategies. Our secondary schools are on block schedules for now. So I think that's important to just get ourselves grounded in like what our trajectory has been over the past almost two years. So like I said, we gave our spring state assessment in 2021. We did not give the assessment in the spring of 2020. So that's important to know when we were sheltered in place, we sheltered in place before we gave that assessment. So the comparative data on these slides shows you these data from last spring in comparison to the data in 2019. So this is communication arts, math, And then there are two grade levels that we test, fifth and eighth grade in science. What these data show us is there's not really a significant difference between the way that our overall population was scoring on these assessments in the spring of 2019 and then again in the spring of 2021. It is important to note that all of these are different groups of children. The fifth grade class of 2021 and the fifth grade class of 2019 are not the same children. We're not comparing child-to-child data here, we're just comparing overall picture. of what that looked like for us within the system. So then in looking at local data, we have continued and I had updated you several times last year about changes and when we were giving assessments last year with local data. This is the reading assessment that we give to students at the beginning of the year. So the percent of students in each grade level meeting our benchmark standards. That benchmark is set by the assessment, um, by the assessment company. It's not set by the, by the district. Um, and then this is a picture of our youngest learners. Um, so our kindergarten and first graders. So when the, our first graders are current first graders and when they were in kindergarten. Um, so you, so you continue to see growth with these students. You can send you, um, and these data look very similar to what they were looking like prior to the pandemic. And then this is math. So the district chosen assessment for math is the NWA map. What I did with this again was trying to compare data from the fall of this year to the fall of 2019, so pre-pandemic. And then the blue column is the nationally normed scores. So you can see that our students consistently are scoring, like our overall population in each grade level is consistently scoring ahead of the norm. And in many instances, the data between 2019 and 2021 is comparable. There are some places where there are some differences with those data. Because of the differences in the learning models over the past 20 plus months, one of the things that I thought was important to highlight within this piece also was our students who were learn at home during that extended time last year. So what we see with these data on the local reading assessment as well as the math assessment at the local level is that those students are scoring comparably to our total population in most instances and sometimes they're surpassing um our total population that's as far as we disaggregated these data for tonight and i thought it was important to talk about the learn at home piece because i think there's been questions about that and also because of that idea of we've had interrupted instruction for students for a lot of different students throughout the pandemic and so we wanted to present those pieces but like i said i'll go more in depth in january with our identity groups and all of that other data the way I typically do with an assessment report. So what do these pieces of data mean for us for learning? So over the, throughout the pandemic, what our teachers and what our staff have been trying to do is to make adjustments throughout content areas. So make adjustments to curriculum, knowing that while we were teaching asynchronously, that was not the ideal learning structure for anyone. So being able to, the decisions that we made at those times of things that we didn't feel like were things that we could teach asynchronously, figuring out how to make those experiences still happen for children, but then in the subsequent grade level. So we've compacted some things. We've spiraled some things. We have looked at our curriculum to make sure that the places where content comes back again, we may have to teach it differently. We'll continue to make those changes for years to come. So those are not things that are just quick fixes, but they're things that we will continue to study over time. Our teachers are working really hard during the summer to make those adjustments and then making those adjustments as students present within their classrooms with different learning needs than what maybe they have previously presented with. Um, so I look at that as like tier one instruction being for everyone, um, with, within the system we've had to make adjustments and we'll continue to need to make adjustments. We've also then looked specifically at individual students. Um, so individual students from these big picture data, as well as from observational pieces or more localized classroom type data and needing to, to make interventions for them, provide additional practice pre-teaching reteaching. So we have a lot of different plans in place for individual students and it's a very individualized piece based on whatever their need is. And that can either be presented by the classroom teacher or we have support like ancillary staff within the schools to help us with that also. So all of that leads us really nicely into goal two. So if you remember, goal two of our strategic plan talks about us committing to an educational growth of our learners through equitable personalized and individualized learning experiences. Um, the first thing and Stacy, I remember you and I talking about this really early on was that the first thing we needed to do as a system was identify what these terms meant to us. Um, so that we had, uh, an overall understanding of, um, and, and like a shared language across the district of what these definitions meant to us. So we did that and we defined these terms. And if you look at this slide, it looks like a whole lot of words. And while they all sort of mean something to us, like from a teacher facing document, it's just a lot of words. So we tried to then develop it into something that made a little bit more sense and was a little bit easier to understand. And so by developing this Venn diagram, it really shows the interconnectedness of these terms. And the idea that all of these terms are grounded in standards and objectives, and that the learner has a certain level of agency in learning, and that not everything will look the same. So pace, product, materials, all of those things are going to be different depending on the ways that the teachers develop their lessons. This continued to prove to be a bit messy for us and not really easy to explain or to use. So you'll see like within our journey, the messiness ideally is starting to become more clear for us. And so what this past summer, a teaching and learning team developed a newer all encompassing graphic. The intent of this was that we didn't really want people spending a lot of time determining whether something was individualized or personalized or differentiated. That wasn't really what was important to us. What was important to us was that students had agency within their learning experience and that these were different ways that within the planning of lessons that teachers... could make change that would allow students to have more voice within their learning. So pace, place, path, voice and choice being the ways that we were looking at trying to make adjustments within our lessons. So the goal being that teachers are not assigning something and then 20 people are handing in the exact same thing. So moving away from exercises and compliance to this idea of empowering learners to own their learning and to have a level of autonomy as well as a level of independence within that. So this year, we began the year in professional learning. We started with a shared experience for all faculty around the aspects of empowered learning and then had choice sessions. So we were trying to model this same idea of empowerment within our professional learning. choice sessions to better understand how to make these adjustments in planning and within our teaching. Um, this represents what we, we made a teacher facing website of empowered learning. Um, and this was a place where we could start to crowdsource strategies. Um, so what's in place right now is that teachers have, um, there's one of these for each of those areas. Teachers have a form that they can fill out. There's a team of us that then takes that form each month. and updates the website with these different strategies. So if I'm thinking about altering pace within my classroom and I'm thinking, well, what are the different ways that I could do that? There's a place for all of our teachers to go and look at that. And it is leveled by age group. So there's elementary examples, middle school examples, second high school examples. So then what does this look like in our practice? So I have two quick stories to tell you. One, I would invite you into a kindergarten classroom and to think about literacy instruction within that kindergarten classroom. So if you think about the teacher using assessments and conferring to determine the student's needs, so each individual student's needs, and then determining an individual goal for each student based on what they know and they're able to do and what their next steps in learning might be. So then students throughout the week practice with their goal in mind. They have their goal on a post-it note that they carry around with them and it's stuck to their plexiglass partition. So it's very present for them and for any adult who will interact with them throughout the day. So when I'm in a kindergarten classroom, I know the goals of all of those students. So that's how I can interact with those children. Then they use many different ways to practice. They can use Seesaw to write their words, they can use Seesaws to write and record their words, they play tic-tac-toe with one another practicing the letter sounds, the letter formation. They're practicing writing, they're looking for their words in their reading. The teacher is choosing texts where the student will be able to find those words, will be able to practice those words. and every adult who's conferring with students is talking with them about their goal. The goal is then tied to the text that they're working with, and the parents are all aware of what their goals are so that they can practice at home too. The teacher then confers with the students throughout the practice time, and the teacher and the student together are collecting data on their progress towards their goal, and then determining what their next goal is once they've met that goal. So what you see with those pieces then, I'm sorry, I don't know how to go back. Oh, there we go. What you see in that example then is this idea of voice, choice, and pace. Each student is moving at their own pace. It's individualized to them and what their need is at that time. They have voice and choice in how they practice. And the teacher is leaning in and assessing all throughout the entire time. So then a high school example that I have for you. Again, an English classroom and thinking about this idea of... Chris, I don't know what to do with this. Sorry. So maybe an overarching topic, so some kind of an enduring understanding or an essential question related to love or something like that. And so the students are choosing book clubs, so they have choice in the books that they're reading related to this overarching topic. Students working with their book clubs to read and discuss however they want. They pace it themselves within the club. They determine how much they're going to read, how much they're gonna discuss at what intervals they're gonna discuss. Individually and collaboratively students choose ways that they'll demonstrate their understanding of the particular standards in the unit. So this is actually a digital portfolio that the students are using. The standards are outlined for the students and the students make choice as to how they're gonna demonstrate their understanding of that learning standard. They could write poems, they can create podcasts, they can develop character timelines, whatever makes sense to them in how they're going about presenting their understanding. And then the unit culminating with students writing a creative composition that showcases their learning from the text and from the other components of their learning. so here again you see a lot of voice and choice and this idea of path which in some ways is a really complex way of trying to determine like different ways for students to demonstrate knowledge that's a pretty complex thing for teachers within planning but i think it's a really good example of giving students some ownership and agency within their learning So as we continue to make changes to our pedagogical practices, we really need ways to measure the impact of those instructional changes on student learning. So we aren't doing this as a goal in order to raise our test scores. We're doing this related to our profile of the graduate and by default then the idea is that our test scores continue to be solid or that things, so students have independence within their learning so that when they get to those opportunities, they're able to demonstrate that learning. So the measuring of the profile, Joe, you and I have talked about this a lot. This is a really complex thing. So like how do we measure the competencies of the profile of the graduate? So we've begun an elementary committee. We feel like this work has to be vertical and starting with our youngest learners and then moving through the system makes the most sense to us. It also happens to be an easier place to start because the elementary report card If you're familiar with the elementary report card, the front page of that right now is called Approaches to Learning. So it's about behaviors. It's not about academic standards. And so that's an easy place for us to start to make changes and tie it directly to the profile of the graduate. So the committee... is beginning to work on that we have at this point developed measurable statements for the competencies that we're now trying on in the classroom so the teachers who are on the committee we developed these statements they're working this month within their classroom to see like are these actually measurable for us and how would we go about measuring them so it's it's pretty complex work but it's exciting work like people are excited about doing this kind of measurement Um, the, along with these statements, we're also developing tools. So like progressions to be able to provide to teachers. So if I give you a measurable statement, but I don't give you a tool that helps you to understand like how one, how students might progress through that, then I don't feel like I'm setting you up as a teacher to be able to report. well around this competency so we're developing these progressions for teachers and students alike to be able to use to assess where they are in a continuum of learning related to the profile competencies so that's some pretty exciting work that we're doing right now and we're in the throes of it And then we'll start to move that towards the middle school and towards the high school. That structure will end up looking really different because we don't have those same kind of like that part of the report card is not in existence at the middle school and the high school. So there's like some cultural pieces that we have to work on at that place at that point, too. So then that really brings us all back to the profile and reflecting with the end in mind. And so the assessments that we administer, the data that we analyze, the instruction that we prepare and execute, and the ways that students demonstrate their selves all tie back to these competencies of the profile.

Questions?

All right, thank you, Milena, for that. Take any questions or comments. I guess we'll just go around and start with Stacy. Jason? I don't know

if I

really

have any questions, but I guess, you know, the one question is just being a teacher sort of wrapped up in a new way of learning and teaching. Yeah.

I would say, yes, teachers are receptive to it. I agree it's difficult. And I think that we have teachers sort of in all different places with it. So we have some teachers who were very good at this from before we even started this work as a system to think very differently about the ways that they have students demonstrate understanding of content. So those those sort of trailblazers are also the people who are helping us lead the professional learning and the people who, you know, they teach next door to me or they're on the team with me. And so now I can sit down with them and plan with them differently so that those are the ways that we're approaching some of that work to sort of help it spread. It's also kind of an interesting, like an exciting time for us because it's influencing the way we write curriculum also. So thinking about particularly elementary social studies right now is in a pretty big overhaul of their curriculum writing and really thinking about the writing through this lens of like not thinking about like memorizing dates, landforms, those types of things, but thinking about like ways that students can understand concepts and but be able to demonstrate their learning in more creative ways. And so, like, those are some of the examples of the work. But I would say, yeah, it's a pretty heavy lift.

Yeah. You know, for remote students who have, like, follow-up or plan, they need to do whatever. It just seems like that's the first thing on their mind, those kids who might be really super far in charge. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think the theory behind this is if we're not all trying to march to the same pace, then that allows for that individuality for children to process at different speeds, for children to think through things differently. For me to be more interested in something and go in more in-depth in one space, and you're more interested in something else, and you're going more in-depth than a different space, but we're sharing that learning experience. So I think like theoretically, This caters to all different kinds of learners. Because

I... Yeah?

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe? Two quick questions. Thank you. Relatively quick. So the first is, I know you said you're going to come back in January with a more detailed report. Will that include things like a cohort analysis, things like how other districts are doing, a comparison? Yeah,

that's my plan. Right now the state hasn't released any of all that data. December 1, right? Right. So I have from December 1 to whenever the January board meeting is to, yeah.

Gotcha. Okay. Thank you. And then relative to that, like when I think about, you know, self-actualization, collaborator, creative thinking, intellectual curious, right? That's not necessarily how I did on math or how I did on English or ELA or science. It's a little more holistic, which is great. So that leads me to my next question, which is, And are we thinking about, and I thought maybe, Maybe Robin, you told me. Maybe Melina, you told me, I don't know. But, you know, Panorama has their student success module which includes assessment and academic and social emotional learning and attendance and behavior, right? All in one, a snapshot. And that's not the only one but are we thinking about a holistic almost report on how our students are doing? Because it seems a little, sometimes it feels like at the board table it's a little bit siloed. Right? And if we're thinking these broader, you know, I mean, it really is a holistic. We've got to wrap around Joe Miller and think about, you know, Joe's struggling with emotion regulation, although he's doing great in math and he's struggling in science. And he seems to come late to school every day. And sometimes he picks fights. Whatever. Right? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, he does a lot better in school than he does on, he seems to have test anxiety and doesn't do so well on the standardized tests. Well that's a different picture than Joe Miller's grades or Joe Miller's whatever. Right. So have we thought about like how we can more holistically look at this in each student?

Yes. And, and what I would say is Robin and I are partnering to, and it's really in its infancy. So, so like, I'm not totally comfortable talking about like too far down the line, but what we're partnering on is the, the group that I'm working with around the elementary piece related to the profile, Robin's starting to work with a secondary group and then we're merging those groups together. And the, the piece started as, as like a focus on the profile and like ways to report the profile. It has, The way that she and I are envisioning this is expanding it to include this idea of the social-emotional component to that also. So like that sort of 360 view of a student. We're doing some work within the system right now related to a book called Street Data, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but I think it has a lot of, the same things as you're talking about, of this idea of like it's not just about testing data today that we're gonna talk about and then these other pieces tomorrow that we're gonna to talk about. It's like how do we look at all of those pieces together as well as have the student voice as a part of that work? So like the student being able to articulate these are the places where I'm successful so then thinking about that empowered learning piece of like well then if you're successful in those ways what are the ways that we're tailoring our instruction to help support that and help you to grow still.

And then to piggyback with that, the flip side of that is once you have that, we have to come up with the way to actually visualize and report it out from the technology side of it as well. So that's a whole parallel track that's going along at the same time.

Thank you.

qualified to speak on any of this. I should just cede my time to Joe or Stacey or others. But I will tell you, I really appreciate the update. And the thing that was most useful for me is watching the evolution of how you guys were trying to determine what individualized versus personalized versus other learning looked like. That empowered learning slide that you had for me was very powerful, no pun intended on the word. But I think that would be really useful just for the broader parent and Clayton community as a whole to understand that because it can be very complicated with all the pedagogy and the terminology that is very intuitive to people like Stacy and to Joe and to Misha, but to others who are not and who have never been involved in administration or in a classroom, that was great.

Thank

you. That's a really good point.

Steve? Also, I thought this was great, and I particularly liked the examples you gave. And I think what would be really interesting in a future presentation or something would be to have, I'd love to hear kind of a case study by one or two teachers, for example, in that kindergarten example you gave. I'd love to hear from the kindergarten teacher, you know, what worked? What didn't work? You know, why did they have problems with, you know, some sort of real on-the-ground feedback or the high school example. And, you know, we got sort of an overview but it'd be really interesting to hear actually from a teacher and I know teachers love presenting to the board so that's an opportunity for them. Thank you.

Did you have anything? Stacy, we will come. Yeah, thanks. I found my

notes. So as far as the data on the testing goes, I know these were just general, but I'm happy to see that really our scores were so similar to 2019. I am looking forward to the subgroup scoring. I think it will be enlightening to see how the pandemic did affect different groups of our students. So I know that's coming in January, but I'm looking forward to that. I wanted to thank you for the definitions and the graphics based exactly why Kim said that not just for the board, but for the community. I think to understand the graphics especially, I think do a really good job explaining all those terms. So thank you for taking time to do that. And I had made a note here that just said IEP students. Back to kind of what Jason said, but not just IEP students, but I think this whole thing is so great for kids with all kinds of learning differences. um, whether they are labeled or diagnosed or not. I've always said like in an ideal world, every single student would have an IEP really like how does each kid learn best and how does each kid perform best? And how does, how do we assess each kid, you know, um, best. So I think this is like heading in that direction, right? Like giving every kid an opportunity to choose and how they learn and how they're assessed and, you know, using their voice, their choice, their path. So thank you so much for all your work on this. I really think that all of our students will benefit from this for sure because every single student has different learning needs and different learning styles. So I'm happy to hear, too, that the teachers are on board because that's, of course, key to this. But thank you. Thank you. I

have one more question. Last time, so... Maybe what I said didn't even really happen. Question for you, so systematically how does it work in the long, I guess in the macro? How do you, how does the school district really, going back to what Joe was saying, measure, Are we structurally changing things systematically also to fit the needs that we're teaching these kids under? Like, does it make sense? And we're allowing them to learn at their own speed and their own pace. I guess what I'm trying to say is, like testing is still a big deal, a big metric. So how are those two coincide if... Does that make sense? I'm probably not saying a bunch of words.

Yeah, I think what I hear you asking is, like, if we're still within a system that requires traditional assessment and traditional testing,

how... What I'm trying to say is, if we're That's exactly what I'm trying to say, though. Traditional assessments and things like that.

So how does this fit with that? Right. Thank you. And I really think, like I was saying before with you, that our theory of practice here is that ultimately our goal is not the test. Ultimately, our goal is more tied to the profile of the graduate and who we want people to be and what are the competencies that we want people to have. But I think we're not straying so far from the foundational pieces of pedagogy and teaching and learning. But it's like we're allowing a different sense of agency. So it's not about me as the instructor saying, this is how you're going to show me that you have learned this and you have to do it my way. It's actually more about me bending that. as the instructor and me bending the curriculum to be able to capitalize on the things that are strong for you to be able to show me then that you understand these concepts that we're learning. So we're not changing the concepts. We're not changing the standards. And so like that one graphic with the Venn diagram of like standards and objectives being the thing that grounds this, those are still the same. But the ways that we approach things give students some sense of autonomy and being able to do that. So if we're still focused on the same standards and objectives, ideally then the tests that still test those things, the students are still going to be able to perform on those. But now they're not as dependent on me as the instructor to tell them how to do those things.

I think that's what I'm most eager to see is culturally how are we as the teachers and the professors, how are we going to change and really continue to allow and bend and allow these students to learn with their With their own autonomy.

Right, and that is a heavy

lift.

Yeah. Because when I went to school to become a teacher, it was about being the person in front of the room who kind of had the answers, right? And now we're saying it's not really about figure out what's in my head and tell me back what I want to hear. It's more about how do you... as the learner, execute those things so that you're not depending on me moving forward. So like students come to us at five years of age being relatively dependent learners. Like they're dependent on us to sort of understand the components of the system and how schools work and those kinds of things. But it's really our goal to help them to build independence so they're not dependent on us moving forward. So that's ultimately our goal. But that is a heavy lift, especially I think it's harder in some instances for people who are content experts. Um, so typically like your older, your teachers of older students are content experts. They have a whole huge vast knowledge base that they want to share. Um, and so it's, so there's a lot of conversation right now about, so like what does that look like in the classroom? Because this, like this instruction is not absent of me as an instructor sharing knowledge. It's like how we go about it. And if we think about the pie, like how much of that pie is allocated to me talking And how much of that pie is allocated to you as the learner doing talking? So like Zaretta Hammond will say only the learner learns. So like the student has to be talking and doing the learning to learn. So sometimes I got to shut up and get out of the way.

Right, right. Gotcha. That makes sense. That's interesting to hear. Thank you very much.

And that whole part, Jason goes back to what I always think about culture. It's structure for breakfast every single time. Culture eats structure. restructure for breakfast every single time and so the heavy lift is actually changing the mindset of our teachers who you know may be those content experts and how do we really bring the learner into this journey and then we can figure out some of those structural pieces that will come along but the mind shift is the one that's And it's a

cultural shift for the learner also, because if you've been in a system for a while where you're sort of waiting for the adult to tell you what to do, like that's sort of the way that school has looked for a long time. Then the older you get, it's just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it. There's a certain level of compliance that we have. There's a level of trying to undo that within the culture also so that it's not like, just tell me what I need to get my A or tell me what you want me to do. So when you start to open things up really widely, that can also be really difficult for learners because if it's the first instance that that's happened for them, then like they need some kind of direction. So you have to provide some scaffold to it. Like it can't just be this wide open free for all.

Right, right, right. Yeah. And so we as parents, I guess we as parents as well as school board members, we have to be patient with you all as you all put this together because this is kind of like constant delta free flowing. It's always changing. You know, they're always trying to put a model together that works. I guess I'm assuming is that how you look at this or? Yeah.

Yeah. And like the example I gave of rewriting the social studies curriculum at the elementary level is like a good example of this. So it's like an opportunity for us to say, let's kind of blow up how we've like pedagogically looked at the instruction around social studies and think differently about it. And that may also alter like the breadth of the content, but it may allow students to go deeper with fewer things, like fewer topics. This right now, I can find most of the information on it. So is that important to us or is it more important for us to focus on the thinking skills around that versus the factual recall?

Thank you.

Really interesting. Thank you. I think the example that you gave about the learners coming as dependent and our goal for them to be independent, I just think about that so much when I was in school versus what I've seen even with some of my own kids and how much more independence is being built into what are being emphasized and how they learn. So it's really interesting to think about this. So thank you very much for the

update. Thank you.

All right, we are now moving to 6.01, and I believe Dr. Wiens is going to lead us through that.

Good evening, everybody. Tonight I am presenting two policies, and the first policy I am sharing with you for our first reading is Policy IGBCA, which is Programs for Homeless Students. So the update from our current policy to the one that is up for reading this evening has been modified to specifically address the needs of students who are experiencing homelessness, who meet the definition of unaccompanied youths. And it also revises the dispute resolution process to better align with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's model. Just a little bit of background information. We do have students in our school district who are currently enrolled under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Act, and some of those students do qualify as unaccompanied youth. In general terms, students who are unaccompanined youth are students who may have left their home for a variety of reasons, oftentimes due to a pretty significant disruption in the structure in the home. and face a lot of really unique challenges not just around housing and getting their basic needs met but also making sure that they have a stable education particularly if they're in a transient situation

do we have any questions or comments about this policy for first reading

um thank you okay i had a couple questions about the policy so it mentions in here preschool i think oh sorry i'm trying to think where and since our preschools are at early childhood fee based how does that does that change anything

I would have to research the answer to that one. You know what I'm saying? Yes. I would say that for the compulsory education and for grades K through 12, if a student is going to be enrolling as unaccompanied youth or meets the criteria for McKinney-Vento The standard practice is to enroll right away and not to put up any artificial barriers related to records, et cetera. So as it relates to the younger age group, I would have to do a little bit more research with DESE around that. I will say we have not heard during my tenure here in the school district of Clayton, we have not had any preschool students enroll under McKinney-Vento.

Thank you. And then just a small question. comment here. There's a part, um, about, Ooh, these aren't page numbers. Sorry. Um, it's under homeless liaison responsibilities, I guess. Um, so number 13 is about like college readiness and college selection and college applications. I'm just wondering, can we add, I didn't see anywhere in here where it just is general post-secondary planning. Got it. So specific about college that I just thought it should be more broad. But thank you. That's it for me.

Great. Thank you. Anyone else? Kim?

Yeah, there's just one thing. On page two, you use parental slash guardian everywhere except under placement on page two where you only have parental involvement. So I think you need guardian there, especially if you have unaccompanied students in our district.

On page

two under placement. It's in the first sentence.

Got it. Okay.

Great. And for anyone who may not be familiar, we always, whenever we're making, considering changes to policies, we always have a first reading and there's opportunity to have feedback and get questions answered and things like that. And then it comes back to the board for approval. So this is how that works. Anyone else have any comments or anything? All right, let's move on to 6.02. Again, Dr. Weems.

Great, so the second policy I am presenting this evening for first reading is policy EBBA which is entitled illness and injury response and prevention. This policy was updated to reflect the state law that requires that any CPR courses that are taught must include training in the proper use of AEDs and so the change to this policy just reflects the requirement as it relates to the training that students in grades nine through 12 receive. And this is, in practice, a change that we have already made.

Any questions, comments? All right, we'll see that one on the second reading. Okay, thank you. All right, moving right along, 6.03.

Okay, that is for first reading of policy BBB for school board elections. And we are seeking to update this due to House Bill 271, which shortened the filing period for candidates for election for school board members. So that candidate filing period was shortened by three weeks. So now the filing period will be December 7th and done December 28th.

Thank you, Sandy. Any questions or comments about this?

Yeah, I have a question. To me, I think there's a trick to everything. I wanted to figure out why are they shorting this? Why are we even focused on the shortening? Does anyone have any insight on why we're shortening this? There's something else in here that was It's a little of the same line. I mean, there's a trick involved. But, like, do they say why they're shortening this?

No, I think we're all wondering that as well, but I don't.

Who does this benefit? We don't know

because they shorten the period, and it's right during the holiday season when most districts are closed. Interesting. So most districts, you know, the districts that are closed are having to open just for that last day for the filing period. Yeah, it makes it harder to sign

up.

That's it. Yes. But on everybody. Being shortened by three weeks. On everybody's heart.

Everybody.

I'm just saying. When I say everybody, I think you all know what I'm getting at in this. All right. So what else? What else am I missing here? Is there anything else in here that I'm missing?

Well, they're also, like, clarifying language regarding, like, if there's the same number of candidates, you know, you don't have to have an election. They just clarified that, and they struck out in the ballot language about...

Yeah, and then there's, like, so it starts off as two for one seat, then that person drops out, it's still one for one. But then can someone jump in again?

I'm just joking.

I'm just saying it's just kind of a trick. I want to make sure there's no tricks involved.

I know, I know.

Does anyone else have any questions like that at all? Or am I the only one that's thinking there might be a trick? Oh, good. I think

all the districts are kind of

questioning. Oh, good, good, good. Go ahead.

Um, so I have a question about, so because some of it is over winter break, right. When we're not open, I did hear that. I think some districts are saying that, um, so that like you wouldn't have to come in when we're closed candidates could go straight to the County and file there. Right. Or they could,

if you do the whole thing, like you would have to go to the County, but I'm going to be here. So it's not a problem. So we didn't, I think we would rather as our district to take the candidates here because we can accept the packets, we can talk to them. Well, I guess that was kind of my question. If you do it with the county, you don't get anything until it's done. Got it. Okay.

I just heard some others were doing it, and I guess it was more to like give you time off. But I wasn't thinking about what that would mean about that. getting all the paperwork back. Right, plus a lot of those

districts give all their employees the entire week off. Got it.

There's a lot of unanswerable questions about this, in my opinion, but we're essentially tracking what the law says they changed it to, so there's not a whole

lot. Nisha, did you hear anything about this at all? Any feedback from the state? Maybe Brian or Ian might have some insight on this?

No. No one's shared anything about this. Almost to the point where some districts had to be really alerted, like, heads up, this is a big change coming your way.

Right, right. Yeah. That's very strange. All right, we will see that again as well. All right, moving on to 7.01, which is the second reading of a policy, IGCD. And do we have a motion?

I move that the Board of Education approve policies IGCD and IGCDA for second reading and adoption as submitted. So

I move.

All right, we have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion or comments about this? All right. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes. 7.02, another second policy reading. Stacy, do we have a motion?

I move that the Board of Education approve the second reading and adoption of policy AH, use of tobacco and vaping products.

We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? All in favor?

Aye.

Moving right along, 8.01, Consent Agenda.

I move that the Board of Education approve the Consent Agenda 8.02 through 8.05. The

motion is second. Any comments? All in favor. Motion passes. And we do want to recognize that part of what we just accepted was approving a donation from the Optimist Club of Clayton. They made a generous donation to support the RoboHounds program at Clayton High School, so thank you very much for that. All right, moving on to 9.01, public comment. Do we have any public

comment?

That's a great question. I'm assuming it's a... I apologize. Does anyone... I'm still trying to learn all the different clubs and activities we have. Does anyone in the audience... Oh, yes. There are...

Very old St. Louis institution. They're an old St. Louis Institution that promotes public speaking, and I know when my kids who went to Merrimack, we used to have a big program of encouraging kids to learn public speaking. I don't know what it is now, but that's their goal is to promote public speaking.

Kind of like Toastmasters? Yeah, I

think so.

Thanks. Well, there we go. Well, we're thankful. And a long, long

time ago, the Parks and Rec was sponsored by Optimist. So all the shirts that folks would get to play basketball or baseball said Optimist. It's called the Optimist League, just FYI. There you go. Wow.

Well,

that's great.

All right. Now, public comment. Did we have any public comment? All right. Well, then I think we can move on to board communications. Does anybody have any updates from any committees or any other groups that they've participated in to update us on?

So Nisha and I attended the Education Foundation's meeting last night, CEF's meeting. And they talked about, I think, some of the similar things that we gave during the last update. They are beefing up their committee memberships, adding a couple new committees. They're looking for volunteers. So if you know of interested alumni or non-alumni Clayton community members who would be interested in serving there looking for volunteers and then Nisha and I both wanted to thank them on behalf of the school district they let us use for the second year in a row I believe the foundation as a vehicle to collect money for the food bank donations which were completed at the end of last week and they were very successful they raised over $6,000 in addition to all of the pantry items that were donated. So that's a huge help for district and for family in need.

Thank you, Kim.

Did I miss anything, Nisha?

No. I think you've got that.

Great.

Anyone else? All right. Well, if we don't have any other updates, I think we can take a motion to adjourn.

I move that the Board of Education adjourn.

All in favor?

Aye.

Thank

you all.