October 25, 2023 — Meeting Transcript

I'm going to call the meeting to order. It is October the 25th, and let's go ahead and stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Okay, Gary, let's go ahead and adopt the agenda. Move that the Board of Education adopt the agenda as posted. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, great. All right, Robin.

Good evening, everybody. I didn't use the handheld mic today. Thank you very much for allowing me to be a part of the Recognizing Our Own this evening. And tonight we wanted to recognize the significance of Disability History and Awareness Month, which is the month of October. And one of the longstanding tenets of the Clayton Pack Ed is to create a positive awareness and understanding of students with disabilities. And I also wanted to recognize Christina Blankenship, who is the president of Pack Ed, who's joining us tonight. Some of you may remember that one of the last Pack Ed series back in 2021 actually received a national award. And so tonight we wanted to present our most recent collaboration between the school district of Clayton's communication department and Clayton's Pack Ed community. And so we're excited to share with you tonight a really special project that focuses on the theme of it is all about the possibilities. So there are just over 42 million Americans with disability, which makes up about 13% of the population. And tonight we wanted to celebrate and recognize some of the contributions of a few folks who have disabilities and have added a tremendous amount of energy and talent to our community. I'll hand it over to you.

Disability History and Awareness Month is a time to highlight those who've reached amazing heights. Some giants in their industry have overcome disabilities to not only achieve their goals, but also help change public perception and stigma. Two local women, paraswimmer Maggie Schurter and former wheelchair racer Dr. Carey Morgan, have made headlines as athletes and excel in other facets of their lives.

It's really cool that I'm a top high level in swimming and I just love it ever since when I was young.

Maggie began swimming with a club team at age nine and now travels around the country and internationally to competitions and dominates. She feels the sense of camaraderie is just as appealing as the races.

And people have like different disabilities like me and that's why it was really cool seeing them

Maggie is in her junior year in UMSL's Succeed program, studying education and sports management. Succeed helps students with intellectual and developmental disabilities gain independence through academics, vocational training, and student life, setting them up for success in the next chapter of their lives. Maggie's friends and family are her biggest fans in the pool and classrooms.

They are so proud of me with my swimming career. That's something that I'm really good at, that I'm really passionate about.

Just like Maggie, Dr. Carrie Morgan made waves on land as an internationally recognized wheelchair racer.

I have been pretty lucky in my athletic career to have a lot of different experiences traveling and competing at really high levels. Things that I thought would never be possible as a kid growing up with a disability.

The first sport she competed in was wheelchair rugby, which lit the fire of her competitive spirit.

I really didn't find that fit until I was in my early 20s and found adaptive sports and wheelchair sports and that you really can be an elite athlete and have a disability all at the same time. And when that clicked for me, that just opened up a whole new world for me.

She then got into wheelchair racing, eventually competing in three Paralympic Games and several world championships with her final one in 2019. Even though it's been four years since she competed, she's never stopped being active.

People ask me what I'm training for, and I keep saying I'm training for life. I have two five-year-old twin boys that I'm trying to keep up with.

Carrie is now an assistant professor and occupational therapist at Washington University, where she focuses on coordinating clinical trials and writing grants for projects. She says sharing her story is very rewarding and feels October is a time to remind others of all that's possible.

put focus on people with disabilities can have lives and have quality of lives and be employed and be athletes and be parents. So I feel like Disability Month gives us an opportunity to talk about that.

So I just wanted to thank PAC ED and our communications department for bringing awareness to the stories and lived experiences of Maggie and Dr. Morgan, and for bringing the energy of their lives as possibility models for so many folks in our community to the forefront in the month of October. So thank you, Christina, and to the communications team. So at this point, I wanted to go ahead and hand it over to our athletic director, Steve Hudson, for our next Recognizing Our Own moment.

Thank you. By the way, I think the soccer hounds won 5-2 tonight, if your phone didn't already get. Yeah, so pretty awesome. Yeah, so I'm here to recognize Clayton's second year athletic trainer, Amar Karvasevich. to paint a picture as to really the root of the reason why she's here tonight. On August 7th of this year was our first day of fall sports practices in the state of Missouri and she got a call up to the upper level practice field above Gay Field and when she arrived she found one of our soccer players in distress down with pain in their side. And when she got there, she assessed the situation and the pain started to travel up to the student athlete's chest. She did some preliminary tests and found his oxygen levels were low and his heart was out of a rhythm. So she decided to call 911 right away. About that time is when I showed up to the field just by chance, happened to be heading over there. And with that, with the individual's oxygen levels being low, she started to provide the student some supplemental oxygen. EMTs got there, they did some tests themselves, decided to transport the individual two childrens due to the fact that they were seeing a lot of the same things Amra was seeing. We decided between the two of us for Amra to load into the ambulance and go with the student and the MTs to Children's. I waited on Mom to get to the field, and I followed her to Children's. When I arrived, Amra was in the room. She came out, went into the waiting room. And then Mom and I stood in the room, which felt like days And three different doctors came in, two different cardiologists reading ultrasounds with all this equipment. They stabilized him. And I quote you, the doctor turned to mom and myself and said, this is the luckiest day of your son's life. He's in the absolute best place he can be. And whoever called 911 saved his life. So we both just kind of looked each other in awe, and we'll come to find out the individual had a heart defect. And I stayed a little longer, comforted mom. They admitted him, and then I decided I needed to leave and get Amra, who's still in the waiting room, waiting, back to her car here at Clayton to go home. And when I got into the waiting room, I looked at her, and she said, how is he? And I couldn't speak. I couldn't get it out of my breath without getting emotional. And we walked, I don't know, 15, 20 feet. And I said, Amra, the doctor, his words were you saved his life. So, of course, she got the chills and we wrote back and just kind of reflected on the situation. I got her to her car. And then obviously, as many of you know, News Channel 5 picked up the story. And here we are today. I am happy to say that the student, you know, that happened on a Monday, the 7th. On that Thursday, the child had open heart surgery. They fixed it. He's been healthy. He's back at school and succeeding. But clearly, she's special and we're lucky to have her.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

That's an amazing story. And with that we are going to move on to public participation and Suzanne come on

up. Welcome. Hello. As many of you know, my name is Suzanne Whitman. And I have such a pleasurable thing to say tonight because I'm here to say thank you to the administration, to Dr. Patel and Dr. Garganigo, to Julie Parr. Kim Smith and I met with them, and they went over the new literacy curriculum that they're planning to implement, and we are so, so happy with it. It really, with fidelity, implements the new law about using scientific and evidence-based learning for students to learn to read. It starts with phonemic awareness. It goes on to phonics. And I'm so grateful and so hopeful for the students who are going to be coming up with all of these skills. It really is going to be life-changing learning. I also want to say thank you now to all of the people who have supported me along the way. Board members, you all know. Thank you so much. To the teachers who pulled me aside and just said very quietly to me, you know, keep on going. You're doing the right thing. Just keep going. And that just was very supportive. I want to thank all of the parents who were part of the Parent Coalition for Excellence in Literacy. It was really helpful to share our stories together. And not all of them could come to board meetings because of their work schedule or whatever, but knowing that they were there and that we talked about this together was just really helpful. I also have to ask some forgiveness. There are conversations that I had that I wish I could redo now. It's very hard and very stressful to try to implement change, and there are things that I wish that I had been able to do better than I did, times when I was unskillful. So I ask for forgiveness for any times when I might have, through my words or my actions, caused anyone any kind of suffering. And I also want to say that if anyone did those things for me, then I've forgiven you. I want you to know that. I don't look back very often. And I'm so hopeful for the future. And I'm grateful to have this opportunity to say that. So thank you very much.

Thank you. We appreciate it. You're speaking to us tonight.

Okay, Dr. Patel. Thank you. All right. Superintendent update. There's a few things I just wanted to go over and of course I always want to start off with some celebrations. Since the last time we met, we did have homecoming. It was a great event. The weather, it was a little chilly, but that's okay. We had about 75 alumni that returned because that's a big event for all of our alumni to come back to. We won the game 40-0 against U City. It was a running clock, so there was a lot of excitement. Students were there, and we had a great crowd. So another successful homecoming event that brings the entire community together. So we always look forward to that. And then now we are into fall sports, so postseason, and we've seen a lot of success already. I will start off with, of course, congratulating our varsity girls tennis who won state. Last night, if any of you got to be at the volleyball tournament, district champions, first time in 40 years. The last time we were district champions was 1983. So it's been a while, but it's an exciting, exciting time, and they play again tomorrow night. So we'll look forward to that as well. And then, of course, we've put the list up there, but football, we're going to host a playoff game this Friday, and it's the first one since 2018. We should have a big crowd there. Cross country district meet is this weekend. Boys soccer district tournament starts this weekend, and they're the number two seed right now, so. Looking forward to some great competition there as well. Boys swim and dive state meet is coming up in November. And then girls, of course, the golf and softball were conference champions. So a lot of great things happening in athletics as well. And I think it's going to be a busy week in a good way this week, starting since yesterday, actually, and Monday. So a lot going on there. And then shifting gears, Monday, as you know, our students were at home, but it was a professional learning day for us and our staff. And I do want to just thank our entire teaching and learning department, our coordinators. They plan. There's so much planning that goes behind the scenes to have these days occur for our staff. And they present all the information, and their teachers are there learning and engaging and just immersing themselves in that. So I really wanted to give thanks to them. And any time we have a professional learning day, we always do a survey with our staff to see Was it beneficial? Did it help you? And so I always share this stat with you as well in terms of the survey data. If, Luke, you can change that for me, thank you. So we asked them four questions. The first question is basically do you agree or strongly agree that the opportunities they had reflect on the ways to incorporate the learning into their practice? And so you can see 93% of the individuals that filled this out, which was about 444, members of our staff that did that. And then we ask 93% of our respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the professional learning experience was relevant to their needs and their role. So that tells us that we provided good choice based and some assured learning pieces for our staff, and they felt confident in that. And then the next two questions really are for us in terms of next steps. 63% of the participants had a strong working knowledge in the areas covered prior to them coming to this professional learning. And then 88% of them had a strong working knowlege in the areas after their experience. We had different ones so so all the elementary teachers did content based. So there was basically content in terms of literacy and they had math and then the high school and the middle school did more building based professional development. So why down for example really focused on literacy and math and then the others did different areas that they wanted. High school, they did data dives into EduClimber. They looked at equity-focused lenses. They did a little bit of AI updates on that. So it depended for the buildings at the secondary. It was very building-level professional development. And then on November 7th, we switch it. So then secondary will be more content-based and elementary will be building-based. So it was a good, good day we felt. And the interesting thing that I like about this is that your name is associated with the response you give. So if there are questions that come up or something that an individual maybe has thoughts on, the teaching and learning department always reaches back out to them to fill that, close that gap. So we appreciate the input we get on that. and then lastly I do want to remind everyone the board members especially Friday we have our next st. Louis school boards PLC advocacy meeting on zoom you should have invites on it but that's invite invites for any board member in the greater st. Louis area so St. Charles School District, Jefferson County, St. Louis Public, and Jerry Hockman facilitates that. So this Friday's agenda, we just mapped it out this week. He's really going to talk about giving the board members a recap of the legislative session from last time, all the bills that were passed, didn't pass, etc., Then he's going to talk about just legislation 101, how a bill becomes a law, when board members should really start paying attention during the public hearing part, et cetera. And this is really just for us to educate our board members on all of this before legislative session really takes into effect in January. So we're having that this Friday. And another thing just to pay close attention to, I'm not sure how many people read this or heard about this, but the Missouri Commissioner of Education has decided to resign as of June 20 next year at the end of June I think it was unexpected but she did if you recall she served in that role from 2015 to 2017 and then came back in 2019 and has been our commissioner since then so it'll be interesting to watch especially also because on the state board of education there are four seats currently that are being filled past their term And the governor has said that he will be appointing them, no timeline given, but at some point. So it's just going to be an interesting dynamic to continue to watch and pay attention to. And yeah, that's what I've got today. Bohini. Student perspective.

Yeah, right now all the students are really excited about sports. And we can definitely see that. All the district champions and everything, everyone's really come together. But one thing that has grounded us is first quarter grades. And this is a great time for everyone to sort of focus on the learning and what we're here to do. And so when we're looking at grades right now for students, we've seen that after the pandemic, the way we've looked at grades have sort of shifted every single year with teachers and students trying to get back into things. And students right now are really concerned with making sure that their grades reflect the learning they're doing because I think because some students have had different teachers have different ways of the percentage points and whatnot people they're really interested in seeing how we can improve that and most recently the transition which has gone really well is a transition away from homework on to test homework being a lot less points with you know, participating in it if you want that sort of structure to make sure you're learning every single day. But then test at the end of the day to make sure that's the bulk of your grade and to make sure that that's really what you're learning. But what students have really agree with and are looking forward to is seeing more teachers take advantage of projects when it comes to grade percentages. Because we can see right now in science, for example, we have labs and tests, labs worth around 40% and tests worth around 40%. And that balance right now is really allowing students to sort of focus on you know, what they can do during class to show that they've been learning and show they've been following along. Also on the test day for the teacher to figure out where everyone's at. And so students are just overall really interested in seeing that sort of both project and tests being put in more subjects. And so, yeah.

Makes sense. Well, thank you. Dr. Poole?

Well good evening everyone. All right so again to those listening at home I'm Dr. Cameron Poole and I'm the chief officer of equity inclusion and accountability and.

Good evening everyone I'm Jenny Todd and I'm the coordinator for equity and inclusion in the district and work with Dr. Poole.

So tonight we're going to give you all an update on a lot of the work that we're doing and a lot of things that are being put in place in order to really gauge where we are as a district from an equity standpoint and trying to create evergreen systems so that we can continue to be reflective. So, of course, our strategic plan goal one, which has our equity focus, is we will ensure all learners, regardless of their identity, feel safe and valued. That is something that sounds very good in theory, but it's definitely something that we've been working really hard in order to do. So before I get going with my report, I wanted to say a few words just to shed some light on some recent events that have happened, especially how we as a district has responded to the Hamas attack on Israel and the ongoing war and conflict that is happening. First off, the first thing we wanna do is make sure that we as a district care deeply for our students and our community and our hearts go out to everybody who has been affected by these attacks and the ongoing conflict that is happening. And just knowing that things will continue to happen and we need to continue to be proactive in making sure that our students and our families feel valued and safe within our walls. It's also our duty to not only support, but also promote our profiles, principles of empathy, collaboration, helping our students be self-actualized and developing their cultural consciousness so that when these things are occurring, we, our students have the right foundations to be able to respond to those. It's important that, again, we continue this work during times of non-conflict so that when conflicts do arise, we're in a position to where we can respond in the proper manner. And some of the ways that we've been trying to do that and working to get better at that over the last few years is creating support networks for those affected by political conflicts that happen and ensuring that students still feel safe and supported within our building and within our walls, fostering an event where diverse voices are heard, respected, and valued regardless of culture and beliefs. So making sure that our students have that arena to have open conversations and to learn from one another. and evolving our school curriculum to be culturally responsive and inclusive of all cultures in order to build a mutual respect toward all identities. That work is extremely important in times of non-conflict, so when conflict happens, students are able to develop empathy and really have an open support system for their peers as well as us toward them as administrators and educators. So again, as I stated previously, you know, that's just, you know, our work is ever evolving within that area. Um, and each conflict presents new problems, um, and new things to work through. Uh, but we are confident that with a lot of the work that we have been doing, uh, especially curricularly, especially by providing resources, uh, to teachers during times of conflict by having different, uh, you know, um, opportunities for teachers and staff and students to have conversations. that we are creating a place for everyone. So no matter what happens outside of our walls, we know that our students are being taken care of within. Okay. So then we will get started with our report.

And so where we would like to start is just taking a look at what does equity look like. When we're talking about a place where students feel as though they belong and where we value each individual student, we want to look at students as unique individuals. And so we want to recognize that each student has their own experiences, their own challenges, they have their own goals, their own hopes and aspirations. And within equity work, we want to make sure that we address all of those individual needs. One of our favorite quotes that we love to share with staff when we do our professional development is that looking at each student individually is equity and navigating those differences among students is also equity. And then we want to make sure we address those individual differences. In addition, it's extremely important that students feel as though they have a stake in whatever learning environment they're currently in. So today, Dr. Poole and I are going to speak with you about three different areas that we work with our staff to improve our equity practices. The first one is intentionality, and I'm going to go into more detail with respect with what we do to be intentional when we work with our staffing students within our school district. And then Dr. Pooley is going to talk about some recent work that we're doing with respect to accountability that we're extremely excited about and then as in every aspect of equity you want to be reflective and so we're going to talk about what that reflective practice looks like with our staff with respect to our school district okay so intentionality So one of the things that we're extremely excited about is our professional development offering to all new district staff. And so we divide it into year one, year two and year three professional development. And essentially what our year one professional development addresses are those equity foundations These are our new staff. And so a lot of our staff are coming into the district with different experiences surrounding equity, different experiences maybe that they've had with other school districts. And so we want to provide them with the foundations that they need to start thinking about equity with respect to our strategic plan and our strategic goals and making sure that students feel valued within the community. And so we wanna make sure that our staff takes ownership. And we've had such positive experiences with our year one teachers, and because they do come in with different experiences, they ask great questions, they give us great ideas, they give us good feedback, and it's a great opportunity to collaborate surrounding equity. For our year two teachers, so they've already had the foundation that we've laid down, we talk about putting our equity practice into focus, and one of the things that Dr. Poole and I focus on are recognizing our blind spot 20. So what we believe is that a lot of our educators come in about 60% prepared to work with the students that they're going to work with. And that could be done with their education program, things that they've learned. as they're gaining their certification. And then the other 20% is life experience. Every educator brings their own life experience into the classroom. But all of us, Dr. Poole and myself included, we have that blind spot 20 where we may not be addressing all of the equity opportunities that we see. And so what we encourage our educators to do is to focus on that blind spot 20 and be reflective about their practice surrounding equity. And we'll talk about the reflective piece a little bit later on in the presentation. And then finally, in year three, we talk about strategies for humanization. We put the year one professional development and the year two professional development into practice and ask our staff to apply what they've learned to the educational setting that they work in. So whether it's a secondary teacher, elementary teacher, counselor, campus administrator, this is where we give them the opportunity to apply all of the knowledge that they've gained. And these professional learning opportunities take place four times a year. So for example, the year one teachers meet four times a year for the equity foundations. In addition to providing professional development for our year one, two and three teachers, we also provide professional development for our more tenured teachers as well. And so the professional learning cycle is on a two-year cycle, and we ask them to attend equity training every two years. So what we went over last year and in the last cycle, um, the topics that were discussed for our tenured teacher were African American and LGBTQIA plus identity. We also gave our staff different choice options. And so they were able to do a book study, read a book individually, maybe listen to a podcast, um, take a class and write a reflection on that choice. So they had three opportunities, um, to explore a topic of equity. This year in our current cycle, we're extremely excited about it. We're going to dive deeply into the experience of our multilingual learners here in the district and our students with IEP and disabilities. And in addition to that, we are going to provide a hybrid course to our tenured teachers as well. And so this was some feedback that we got from some of our year one through year three teachers when we asked them to give us ideas on how we could improve our practice. And they thought that maybe providing a hybrid course that took some of the main topics from year one, year two and year three professional development as a review for our tenured teachers would be a good idea. And we thought it'd be a great idea as well. And so we're excited to provide that opportunity. As a matter of fact, Dr. Poole and I met with the tenured teachers and they were so excited about all of the different choice options that we were offering. So for example, we're offering four different choices for our multilingual learners. four different choices for our IEP and students with disabilities. And they're only required to take one, but many of the tenured teachers were saying, can we take multiple if it's a topic that we're interested in? And of course, we were like, we would love for you to do that. So that was very exciting for us. And then talking about reflections, asking staff in the district to reflect on their learning. And so based on the surveys that we've sent out, 100% of educators have indicated that they felt that bias is something that they can overcome with work. And it doesn't... indicate one's character. Everyone has bias, Dr. Poole and I have bias, and it's recognizing that bias that you have and taking strides to move forward and to work on it. And then 88% of our educators indicated that they feel equipped to examine how implicit bias affect their teaching or whatever it is they do in the district, whether it's working, as I said, as a counselor, campus administrator, regardless of the role. And so now Dr. Poole is going to talk about accountability and reflection.

All right. Thank you, Jenny. I will take it from here. Two new things that we're implementing that I'm really excited about, and I think it will really give us a great snapshot in terms of where we are and how we can be intentional with our work. The first thing we're going to do next semester, we're implementing equity walkthroughs to be something that we do systemically. We've done them in the past sporadically at different times, but again, one thing to note is that our equity needs are ever-changing and evolving. And because we do it one year, equity needs the next year may change. So implementing these, that's paramount within our work. Pretty much long story short, equity walkthroughs is when we go in and do a bunch of series of observations at each building, engage things like student engagement, what that looks like from an identity standpoint, how teachers are using culturally responsive practices within the classroom. You know, what does it look like in terms of getting a snapshot of each kid's individual experience and kind of using that as a, you know, a small sample size for us to really see, you know, do we see evidence of our professional development within the classroom? Do we see students historically who have not, you know, who have had a disproportionate experience? Do we see them, you know, having a more equitable experience? So just kind of giving us an opportunity to see up close and put a story behind the data. that we are keeping. So we're kind of going through that process within our equity committee and fleshing out what our equity walkthrough tool will look like and working side by side with building administrators to get those rolling next semester. And then another thing that we will be doing that is kind of bigger picture and our equity walkthroughs will be a part of that is creating a building equity report for each individual building and looking at different pieces of data broken down by different identity groups that are listed there like race, gender, students on free and reduced lunch, our multilingual status, students with IEP and disabilities, and then our enrollment status in terms of we have great diversity in terms of where students live in terms of board grant students, in terms of resident students, in terms students in the VIC program, in terms of tuition paying students and statutory tuition students as well. So being able to look at experience across enrollment status too. Right now, and within the Equity Committee, part of the goal is looking at elementary, middle, and high school as well as the Family Center and figuring out what data pieces we deem as important for our work to put on the report. And making sure that we cover all of our bases from an academic standpoint, a behavioral standpoint, SEL standpoint, things like extracurricular activity, enrollment, staff and hiring demographics, and so on. So in this comprehensive building report that each building will get, they will have a breakdown and an analysis from the equity blast walkthroughs. And they will also have a huge data dive and analysis of the data pieces that are chosen. And the goal with that is to give the principals a tool to create their school improvement plans and their building goals. And to give them as many resources as possible so that they can be as intentional as possible with the work that they are doing. And then also this is informing us from a professional development standpoint, from a building level in terms of where our gaps might be and where we need our new areas of focus to be. And then the next portion is our reflective practice. I'm super excited about this. And I'm sure you all will get more reports about Educlimber, especially from the teaching and learning department as we continue. But we've adopted a system called Educlimber which is an interactive system that takes whole child data. So every type of piece of data that we have, one of the biggest things that was a growth area for us as a district is that our data was sporadic so you had to go to different places to get it. Which made it quite difficult to really look for the types of data that we needed in order to improve. So now we're creating, or we have an interactive system which is going to take all types of data and put it into one system where we'll be able to track a student's performance and their experience from the time they start in the district all the way through. So we'll be able see a sample size of where their growth areas are. If a student has struggles, where have we implemented interventions? Upon implementing those interventions, do we see any growth occur? What does behavior tracking look like? Attendance, we're looking at putting in their school activities that students are a part of, possibly putting in each student indicating that they have a trusted adult in the building, that being a part of the data. And the big part of this is when we are trying to figure out where do we start to give a student an equitable experience, this gives us the biggest snapshot possible for us to be intentional with our work. A lot of equity work is like cast a wide net and see how many kids we catch. With this, we can be more intentional, and the data that we'll be able to use as well as tracking student experience will be phenomenal, and I think will be a huge leg up in helping improve student experience. Another focus that has been within the district is adopting a multi-tiered system of support. And this is another way in which we're able to really track our students' growth. With this, it's a tiered, data-informed framework to help meet student needs. So it kind of hinges on... You know, on the level that our tier one or universal supports the things that we naturally do as educators within our buildings meet the needs around 80 percent of our students. So then the next 10 percent to 10 to 15 percent of students may need some level of supplemental intervention or individualization. And then we have our tier three students, which is around five to 10 percent of our population that need more intensive education. interventions as well. So the good thing about this system is that it gives us an opportunity to see where all of our students fall in terms of interventions given at the building level. Educlimber will be used to really supplement how we look at our students on a multi-tiered system of support. Right now, our buildings are in the process of having something universal where each building is kind of linked together. So there's been a lot of great work between our elementary buildings and being aligned with what this looks like in each building. So when we compare Tier 2 or Tier 3 students in Merrimack to Glenridge, we have an accurate representation of where students are, as well as having connection between middle and high school with that too. And then the next thing that we are focusing on is shoring up and strengthening our professional learning communities. This is where I like to say this is where grassroots equity work will take place. It's teachers within their professional learning communities, and that could be grade level teams, and that could you know, teachers who teach alike subjects, like U.S. History is a PLC or English 1 teachers are a PLC. And looking at students individually, not only at their Tier 1 practices that they're working on, but also students that they may be struggling with and having conversations with their team to better meet the students' needs. And using EduClimber within that to really look at their students, their interventions that they're trying, and really tracking their success to help them be reflective. So four key questions that fall within the PLC's framework is, what do we expect our students to learn? How will we know when they have learned it? How will we respond when students do not learn? And how will we respond when student already know it? So those will be kind of the four bedrock questions that PLCs will lead on when looking at student experience. So just in review, kind of looking at the three levels of our work, intentionality through our system of professional development, accountability through adopting our equity walkthroughs and building equity reports, and then building in areas for us to be reflective through our EduClimber data system, our multi-tiered system of supports, and then professional learning communities.

Okay. Thank you. I'm going to just go around and start with Chris. Let you talk.

I don't really have any questions. That was a really great presentation. I am so excited to be part of this district that has such a great group of people who are just, you're excited, you're intelligent, you're doing some amazing things. work for our district. So I just want to say thank you for that and tell you that yeah I'm very impressed. I don't think I have any questions I might at the end maybe but I really don't at this time. I love I know a lot about some of the things that you've been talking about and I do feel it was it's just going to make a huge difference for our students and our staff so great work.

Thank

you.

Jason.

Thank you so much. I... I love the idea of collecting that data in Educlimber for our kids. I've long said like wouldn't it be ideal if every kid could have an IEP you know like using that as an example just because every kid learns differently and every kid has other social emotional and varying other factors going on in their lives that it would be so beneficial for every kid to have something individual to follow them so that teachers you know would know them as a whole person right. So I just think that's great. And I just had one question about the who has access to that eduClimber data is it just is it like at the start of a school year a teacher would have access to seeing all that for their new class so that before it starts they kind of get a picture of each student or is it just to inform you about the work.

So there's different levels of access. So building administrators would have access to every student within their building. Teachers would have access to all of their individual class rosters. You know, us as a district are able to see each school and each individual student. So pretty much whatever your wheelhouse is or whatever your sandbox is with the students you work with, those will be the students that you would have access to.

Great, thank you. And I just love the variety of data you're including in there, that it isn't just it's academic, it's really everything else about them as a whole person. And I think that's really most important for your work, but also for teachers to be effective working with their students. So thank you. I think that's great.

Thank you. Thank you both. I think this question is for you, Jennifer, but it doesn't matter. Will you just explain the... The pre-tenure and the tenure, both what that means because I'm not sure that necessarily everyone would understand just where teachers fall on that scale and when they're in those different categories. But then also because the pre-tenure 1, 2, and 3 does seem pretty different than what alternating years. I mean, are we making an assumption or a choice there that if you are a tenured faculty member, those are things, experiences that you have already had or that you don't need to have? Or I guess just maybe if you could explain that thinking a little bit would be helpful.

Sure. And so that's a great question. The professional development model that we use started when Dr. Poole started in the district four years ago. And so the year one, two and three are for new teachers. It started. So the first class, we call them our graduating class. The first graduating class graduated last year. And so this year, for example, all of our new staff are participating in year one, new teacher year one professional development. And then if they participated in year one last year, they're now in year two and so forth. And so we're on our fourth year of implementing this model. And so for the career and tenured students, Teachers, they participate in a cycle every two years. So we completed two different groups of teachers over the last two years. And then now our next cycle of career review is about to begin. And so sometimes teachers may not know exactly where they fall. So Dr. Poole and I make sure that we communicate that information clearly with them so that they know which cohort that they are in. And as far as your second question, do we assume that your career review teachers don't know the basics about some of this information that we're presenting? What we're trying to do is just give a comprehensive overview picture of areas where we feel like all people could use professional development. So for example, with this cycle, we're going to work with multilingual learners and we have different options available so people have choice. So if people feel they have an expertise in one area, they have a choice to participate in another area. So for example one of our offerings for multilingual is the Multilingual Experience 101, which is just kind of a basic offering of someone who may say, you know what, I may just need the basics of working with multilingual learners. Some of our staff may have that knowledge, and so they may choose the life and experience of an immigrant student, which is another one of our offerings. So we don't necessarily assume, we give our staff choice. Did that answer your question?

I think one thing to add on to that too with when part of what motivated our thinking to add the hybrid course on there is that a lot of our tenure teachers were not having the same professional development unless they started you know on the on the year one year two year three cycle. So we implemented and put in the hybrid course this year that kind of wraps you know like kind of a small comprehensive course that wraps up year one and year three into one session. So they at least have an opportunity to get those foundations until we get to a point to where everybody has had that course and has those foundations, then we would transition that out and add in something else.

Yeah, it's interesting. It almost sounds a little bit like, I don't know if these are the words that you would use for it, but It sounds like you're personalizing and individualizing the professional education. It's like we kind of have a goal with our students, too. And I think the interesting observation about that is the note that you had in here about, I think it was like 100% of people realized that now I'm Yeah, 100% of educators understand that bias is something to be improved, overcome. It's just an example of it's a process rather than we've done a thing that's now checked off, which I think there's a big difference there. as an interesting kind of approach to it. While there is a program to move through, it's also a little bit of a constantly personalizing and thinking about that development process. So I thought that was just the way that tied into the way we talk about our students too, I thought was interesting. So yeah, that's it. how we work through that and you know being in different different years at different times or different people coming in at different times where they

I have a few questions so I'll just continue on Gary's thread for a while so If I'm understanding correct is it just new teachers that started three years ago that started on this tenure track three years in and then your tenure as far as the equity training. What about teachers who are already in the district have all the teachers that were in the district gone through that or is it just new teacher's starting three years ago.

So that's the thing. How do you implement a new system while grandfathering folks already within the system into that new system as well? So pretty much if you're starting from the beginning, of course, you have your first three years, which is just this is what equity means in the school district of Clayton. There has not been, our tenure teachers have not had that experience that have been in the district. So what we have done with their professional development has been the very first year before we had the system built, it was very kind of umbrella level one-on-one. And some of those things that we did with that before we started the year one through year three teacher system was implemented into that and just expanded. And then, but then with our tenured teachers we wanted to make sure that we were concentrating on identities that we were looking at as a whole, as a district. So the big question was how do you continue to rotate different identities and learner profiles all while giving our current tenured teachers a foundation? Which is why within our rotation now we've added the hybrid course. So after teachers choose from a course under the multilingual experience, they choose from a course from the IEP and disability experience. They'll also be taking a hybrid course, which kind of encompasses all of the year one through year three teacher principles. So they won't be getting the full year one through year 3 experience, but they will kind of get a very like a cliff note. type of version to at least have those foundations and i think also one thing to note as well is that there was a lot of equity work happening in the district prior to my role it just was not systematized right so there's been a tradition of teachers having equity foundations in terms of their professional development really for the last five to ten years, but it's kind of just like, okay, now that somebody is in and that's exactly what they're doing, which is me and Jenny, us finding a way to systematize it. So while also giving respect to the work that was previously done, it's also kind of giving a little course so they can see how the work is evolving currently.

So if I've been here for 20 years as a teacher do you believe that I have the same foundational principles based on the previous equity work that occurred before you were here and the cliff notes versions of the training that I've received so that there's some common understanding of what equity means to the district. There's a common language across the teachers that we have.

Yes. So, again, going the year one through year three teachers definitely go into more detail than a 20-year teacher would be. But like you said, those foundations, when we talk about humanization, when we talk Everybody understands kind of that baseline foundational language, that we have an equity policy and what that looks like and how our work is ever evolving. How the strategic plan is shaped and how goal one is pretty much a goal that's centered around equity and our equity work. So pretty much understanding those foundations and kind of what things look like in terms of growing an equity, I think is consistent. And I think that's the goal of what we're doing.

And then the other wondering I have is new board members that might join the board. A board member serves a three-year term. It might be a good idea to see if the board could do that same three-year training so that there's a common understanding, especially amongst new board members, of what that looks like, sounds like means from the district. I think that would help you guys as you're coming to deliver this type of information to the board. So

we're game. Let me know when y'all ready. Let me know. When y'all ready, let's my

last term. So whoever replaces,

um,

and then a couple more, sorry. Um, it's the first year of the building reports, which I think is a great idea because we've talked about, uh, how that's kind of needed and the atmosphere of the building is unique to the student's perspective, especially from a student perspective in the building on the edge you climber. I think it sounds great in theory, but who is managing the database? What actual data is going in there? Are you including IEPs? We've heard a lot from SSD in the last two board meetings we've had here. And they're collecting a ton of data. Who is managing? That system sounds like it'll be great, depending on what gets put in there. And are you targeting a particular group of students first to try to figure out what should go in there? Is it pretty standard what goes in? Is it IEPs, discipline reports, intervention reports, attendance, activity? I mean, how do you decide what goes in and really who's managing that? Is that Luke? Are you managing that?

So it's our teaching and learning department. So pretty much with

it.

Yeah. She'll speak more to it later on at another time, but so pretty much the system is synced to power school. So all of the data that we have in power school will automatically be synced over. into EduClimber. So the things we keep in PowerSchool, like attendance, like grades, historical grades, behavior, you know, students' IEPs are a part of it. 504s are part of it if a student is gifted. All the tags or identities that they have will be a part of it, race, socioeconomic status, geography. So a lot of those things we keep in into the platform to make it more user-friendly. It's also being set up to where our test scores and standardized testing will be synced in it as well. So as soon as we get those in, it's being set up through teaching and learning and technology, and they can explain the technical aspects a lot better than I could. But all of that stuff is being synced out. The big thing is a lot of our data is housed in different places, and this is taking the data from those other places and automatically syncing it into one system.

So it's really a reporting system for data that we already have, whether it's through PowerSchool or standardized MAP testing or NWEA testing or any of that other.

Yeah, and I think what the great thing about it is if I wanted to look at an individual student, I can get so much data from PowerSchool. Then I got to get so much data for maybe school net. Then maybe I've got to email teaching and learning department to get another piece of data. Then I got to talk to the instructional coordinator to see what interventions have been tried. Then I got talk to the previous year teacher to figure this out. So in getting the data, it was very hard for us to be very intentional with our work because just it was exhausting to go from place to place to place to play to place. So with this, we can kind of kill eight birds with one stone but typing in a kid or pulling up our class and then you know all of that is synced into one place and i think in terms of being data driven um and really keeping track of the progress that we are making um we can be very intentional and less vague with you know our data and how our data dictates what we do

right And I think to add on to that, like to the question, who really owns all of that data, right? It does come from our teaching and learning department who are like continuously still inputting it. And this is still in the infancy stage. So there's a professional development that they're trying to get all the administrators to understand how to use it, then tier it to the teachers. You know, so there's a lot that happens. And I know principals are texting Milena all the time. Can we do this now? Can we do this? Now it's a, it's a process that we're going to

get through. Great. And then my last question is, on your last slide you had the 80%, then the additional 5% to 15%, then the additional 1% to 5%. What percentage of students are we targeting? Are we still in that 80% zone or have we moved into that second level? I know we're probably not in the third level. But where are we in terms of how many students are we serving?

Well, we're serving all of the students. I think the great thing with the MTSS system is that it pretty much just puts us in a position to where things are more systematized. We're doing a lot of great things, but we're not keeping track of what we're doing and systematizing what we're doing. And then it gives us an opportunity to track students from semester to semester, from year to year. And I think the great thing with our district is that there were so many great things taking place and so many different things happening, but how do we systematize what we're doing and how can we be more collaborative? So if we have some students that we're really struggling with within our tier three range, our principals are working as an active PLC. So if there's a student in Glenridge who has a similar situation as a student in Merrimack and Merrimack is doing some great things to help move that student along, they now can look at the tier three students and work collaboratively as a team and say, okay, this is what I've done to move them along. And then the other principal can say, okay, well, I can try that because I have tried these things and they have not worked. So it's really just a way to make things more organized. if that makes sense, so that we can be more intentional.

So it's not targeting the absolute number of students in the district. It's only targeting the students that you're focused on within those tiers? I guess I interpreted it as the number is the absolute number of the total enrollment in the district, and 80% gets you to Tier 1. The additional 5 to 15 gets you to Tier 3. Did I interpret that wrong? Yeah, so it's pretty much...

it's looking at what types of things do we need to give to each student. So if it's like, we do things that are universal, that we just naturally do. And most of our universals that we do reach 80% of our students.

Oh OK.

So now for the next 10 to 15 percent that aren't being reached that's where we go into more tier 2 supports.

So it's measuring the activities it's not measuring the absolute number of students it

touches. It's measuring the types and depth of interventions that we have to try.

I also thought that was great so thanks for putting it together. Just. Totally out of curiosity, how do you select the identity groups that are part of each two-year cycle?

Good question. So a lot of it is high level data, student voice, parent voice, and taking those voices and looking at it from a data standpoint and seeing where we need to make growth. clearly coming in, it was looking at our African American students and then a lot of the conversations and things that I was pulling had a lot to do with our LGBTQ plus students. And then talking to teachers as well, like what's our knowledge base on these students and their experience? So that kind of dictated our first two year rotation. One thing that we noticed as well within the last couple of years is and in light of a lot of the conversations that we've had at the board table the last couple of meetings, understanding our students with IEPs and disabilities and what their experience has looked like as well as our multilingual students as well. So having parent engagement nights with parents within our international parent community and understanding their experience, talking with students about their experience And then just kind of talking with teachers in terms of, you know, what baseline knowledge are they getting about students so that they can serve students well. One thing that we did within our equity committee last year was we took one grade and really dove really deep into their data. And in looking at that data, we saw a lot of disproportionality with our multilingual students and our students with IEPs and disabilities as well. So that data dive kind of helped inform us with that too. The hope is that as we're within this two-year cycle of the data, I'm able to get more data or more student experience, especially as we shore up our systems and to make this be a two-year rotation every year. So when it'll be two years from now, Hopefully, we have that answer. We will have that answer at the end of this two-year cycle. And I think keeping up with the fact that our equity needs and where we need to grow from an equity standpoint is always growing and always changing. And how do we create systems that we're staying current on our students' experience and growing with that?

Great. That's helpful. Thank you. And then the last question, I love the building equity reports as well. Can I think of that or could one think of that as a more holistic way of looking at how we're closing the opportunity gap over time?

Yeah, and that's part of it. I think it's how many data pieces can we pull together to really look at how effective we're being? And again, I think there's always a story behind data. So especially if, you know, we see a piece of data as it pertains to maybe map testing or NWEA or something to that level, and then... When we see math instruction, we're seeing the students who are not Scoring at a proportionate level disengaged within the classroom Now we have a snapshot where we've seen a visual and we can kind of see what the data point looks like So now we can say okay. This is what this kids engagement looks like in the classroom this is what their test score looks like um on paper now what do we need to do from a system standpoint in order to improve so um i i think it gives us a story and really gives us a visual on kind of what that experience is rather than just looking at a number you know um on a piece of paper or a data point on a computer screen

Yeah, well, that's helpful for me. I mean, when I think about equity work in the K-12 system, the end point is closing the opportunity gap for a lot of people, right? And it's a shame to look at just one delayed assessment a year to say how are we doing against that, right? So sort of guiding us in a more holistic way of thinking about closing the opportunity gap I think is helpful. So thanks for that. I

have one question about the data. Is there a way that this data can be misused to stigmatize children? I just want to make sure we stay away from stigmatizing children and putting them in a bad position.

I mean, the reality is that's always... possibility, bias creeping into how we interpret data and not having an impact on the interventions and things we put in place. The hope and the goal is that through our professional development that we're working through those biases so that when we do get real intentional with the data and student experience that we're aware of what those biases are. That's why we like to focus on And one of our vocab terms is our blind spot 20. Every person has at least 20% of their students that they are not reaching because they have not had an opportunity to humanize what that student's identity is. And that could be changing from year to year to year. That might look a certain way. One year, the next year it could be three totally different students and it's up to us as we kind of continue to reflect to understand where are we missing the boat with certain kids and where exactly is our blind spot it could be race it could be students with IEPs it could be you know students who don't who are not resident students and live outside the community is trying to figure out you know where that is um and as we continue to do our work that we grow in it um I think the big thing is it's a process, you know, so it'll definitely be something that will take time to really get to. But I think we're putting in the right foundations to where, you know, at some point we'll be at a place to where that won't creep

in. So that's at the forefront of the process as you build this model out. You're thinking about how do we make sure and kind of prevent it from being stigmatizing children.

Yeah. The goal is that the professional development takes care of that.

Gotcha. Mm-hmm. All right, thanks. I appreciate it, bro.

Mohini?

I mean, my question was sort of is like how is this data being presented to teachers? Like is it just like numbers based on the students or is there like if you have a class, like how does it categorize like the students?

Good question. So teachers will have, like if we're talking specifically about EduClimber, teachers will have access to the students on their roster. So they'll be able to look at Mohini. You know, this is where, this is what Mohini's, you know, race is, socioeconomic status is, gifted or not, recognized as gifted or not recognized as gifted. 504, no 504, IEP or no IEP. If there is an IEP, here's what the diagnosis is. Here are Mohini's test scores from sixth grade all the way up to 11th grade. I can see where Mohini had her most successful year. Who are teachers? How do they reach her? I can see who Mohini's trusted adult is within the building. If there is a situation we need to look at, I can look at Mohini's panorama data and be able to see where Mohini is in terms of sense of belonging. From freshman year to sophomore year to junior year, it's when teachers see a need to improve with how they're reaching a student, they're able to dive deep into what Mohini's experience has been so that they can make the right judgment call in working with you.

Cool. Okay, so I just have one question and it's Like who and how often do we or do you guys or does the district do a deep dive I guess both comprehensively and individually to make sure or see if we're actually moving the needle and to make sure that what we're doing is actually working. Does it happen like once a year twice a year and then from there are you guys tweaking this or. How does that work?

Yeah, definitely. So the goal is moving forward that the building equity reports will let us know exactly where we are. So if three years from now we line up three building equity reports and we look at data, what growth have we seen within a three-year span in terms of those data points? On top of that, as things get more into the weeds based off of different departments, they're also doing the same work. So from a district standpoint, Jenny and I are doing it at a very high level. So then once we kind of give it to the buildings, then the buildings can look at what does that look like within their building? And if it's the math department and the math coordinator, she can look at her data and say, okay, this is what data looks like, you know, math K-8 or K-12 here. And same for literacy and same for science and same for social studies. So everybody kind of is in their own little wheelhouse. And the more and more you get into the weeds, the goal is that the individual teacher within their PLCs is the deepest in the weeds with individual kids. And then as we go up from a PLC to a grade level, to a department, to a level, to the district level, that everybody kind of has their own level of accountability with it. And they'll be reviewing data within their sandbox each year.

So... Like, so you're, what, like once a year it'll get reviewed or?

Well, it'll be ongoing. So during our professional development days, PLC work and content area work and building work is something that is ever flowing. Like Dr. Patel mentioned how secondary was doing building professional development, which will dive into specifically building data. And then elementary was looking at content level professional development, which is diving right into content data. So it's kind of an ever fluid kind of schedule. Okay. And then

so then once the kids get into high school and they have different teachers, is that I guess at the – who would at that level – I mean not the individual, you know, the math teacher. Is he responsible for reviewing all of his kids' data or is it more like at Angie's level? Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.

So one conversation that we have had is how we handle transitions and as we pass kids off from level to level, how much information is being passed on. And that's definitely been a conversation in terms of making sure that things don't fall through the cracks as a kid goes from 5th grade to 6th grade, and then 8th grade to 9th grade. So we've talked a lot about transition meetings, especially for our kids who may fall into Tier 3, being attentive with those transition meetings, as well as creating practices to where it's commonplace to where I have a new group of students. I can pull up all of my student data. I can look at, hey, I've got a pretty high group this year. So I know that my Tier 1 instruction needs to go a certain direction. Or I've got a lot of striving readers this year. So I know I probably need to be more intensive on literacy and some foundations. So the goal is that POCs and groups get together at the beginning of the year and kind of see a sample size of where their students are and are able to kind of manipulate their curriculum to meet the individual needs of that group that they have.

Okay, that sounds good.

Question for you. Do you, Gary and Amy, do you all remember us having this conversation with Sean about something very similar, having a database that had contained the information for each child similar to what, wasn't quite what you're building right now, Cameron, but it was something similar. Do you all remember that conversation about just the data can be manipulated incorrectly, misused? Remember that?

I remember having, like, conceptually us saying to Sean that, like, we would love a system in place so that it was – we had a universal place. You know, when our – as we're trying to create a more individualized and personalized learning experience for each child that, you know, we have a – Vertical system you know that works vertically I guess so that each teacher or.

Yeah yeah yeah. But I

don't know that it was ever really implemented at least in the way that I envisioned it.

Yeah I think so we thought about this Cameron a lot talked about it at the table which we had like you can go to the tape and look at the footage from our conversation then. We don't, so we're going off my memory. But from what I remember, it was a good conversation. The one thing that we all kind of... Yeah, disciplinary data. And just being misused. That's the one thing I'm... This is a great idea. I just want to make sure that we're building and we're constructing this model. so that it can't be manipulated incorrectly, that it can't harm these children, that it's not tagging these children as they go through the system. And someone can look at it and be like, oh, this child here, problem shot. That's my only concern. So

you're saying, is what you're saying, like you don't want to use this as like a system so like a kid is being tracked or labeled?

Exactly, yeah. So refer back to the word stigmatizing. Yeah, tracking and labeling these children. I mean, I trust you, right? So I know you're going to make a great decision. But if you were to leave, which you won't, you can't. I can guarantee it. No, but like... You know, I want to make sure the next person can come in. They can also manage the system so that it's also done correctly and it's not labeling these children in a bad way, in a negative way.

Yeah, I definitely hear your concerns. I think... To be honest, I think we already kind of did that even without having a system. I think that's kind of how we already have a lot of the –

You mean what we're talking about? Yeah,

in terms of students being – I think in terms of students and identified. And I also think that a lot of students got labeled and identified because we were only going off a lot of surface level data. I think now – and I think that's the – that's kind of been the great discussion. Like if we're looking at data – all of our black students aren't struggling. All of our Asian students aren't scoring at high levels. And the problem is a lot of those stigmas are being carried because we're not really looking into the data. We're seeing a face and we're making an assumption. So my hope... is that by diving deeper into the data, I'm not going to stereotype or stigmatize a kid. I'm going to say, oh, wow, like that. I looked at the data and I see though this kid has an IEP or a 504, they're advanced and proficient in all of their tests, you know, in all of their standardized testing. So I'm not going say, oh, here's a kid with an IEP or 504 and have some type of deficit mindset. So the goal is the more data will keep us from assuming and actually give us an actual picture.

I appreciate this discourse. This is a great conversation. I want to make sure you all know I really do appreciate this kind of conversation because this dialogue is what I think people need to hear. I mean, you're not being defensive. You're actually coming back and you've thought this through. This is important to me. I appreciate this. So thank you very much, man. Your point is well taken. That's what I'm looking to hear. Just reminding everybody here at the table that we're not looking at it from a deficit. What do you say again? What's the vocabulary? Deficit mindset. But yeah, so I appreciate that. Thank you. No problem.

Okay are there any other

questions. Go ahead Chris. I knew I'd have questions after because going first it's a couple of things. The EduClimber how do parents see that. Where is their access and does it look the same or different from what the staff sees.

As of right now as far as I know parents don't have access to it. It's more of an internal tool. that we are using. So parents will have access to PowerSchool, like they do now, and be able to see their students' data through that. EduClarity kind of goes a bit deeper in terms of being more from a user-facing standpoint.

Okay. Is there... utility in making something like this available to parents. That's what I'm wondering. Again, you know, talking a lot about the SSDs, students who receive services through SSD, you know, one of the things that parents are saying is we want to really be able to see how our child is progressing or not. It's really important. And not only to see it over a year's time, but I think to maybe Amy's point, every quarter what are we seeing? Because, you know, Every quarter matters in every student's education, right? Because it's a chunk of time that they won't get back. So yeah, I think parents, you tell me how that, at this point, I think it could be just as useful for me being a different format or whatnot for parents to see.

Because

it could really boost their understanding and make them either more confident or let them know exactly where they need to discuss, hey, tell me why this is happening this way sort of thing.

I agree, and I think especially within whether it's intervention meetings, whether it's IEP meetings, a lot of the data can be printed as reports. So parents, the goal would be that everybody is using it to some extent within their wheelhouse. So our case managers are able to pull the data for students that are on their caseload and be able to share a report or data taken directly from EduClimber so they can see, okay, this is where we are, and here's a visual representation. Great. So they won't have access like a username and be able to log in, but that information will be paramount, especially in those intervention meetings and meeting with parents and using that data to make more informed decisions and to inform parents on how their children are progressing.

I think that's huge. And I think it's huge if you have these parent-teacher conferences, right, and you can be able to say, you know, if a parent says, well, I'm not sure about blah, blah, blah, just to be able to, like you said, the teacher... Let me show you, because it does add a lot more. It's more tangible instead of saying, well, I'm not sure how they were last year. You know what I'm saying? So I'm excited for parents to really be able to, not just the staff, but be able to really get a lot of information out of this.

And I think to add on to that, Chris, not only would parents have access to power school right now, right, with the current grades, et cetera, but at the end of each testing window, the teaching and learning department sends a report home, you know, that they get. And they're working on actually trying to make that longitudinal so that when the parents get that, they would have that.

That would be great. Okay. Thank you. The other question I have is, All of the EDUCLAIMER reports that the staff sees are the exact same no matter what, whether the student is receiving services. It literally looks the exact same. Is that correct?

Yeah, the limitations come to access to how many students, more so than data. Of course, from an administrative standpoint, we're able to see a lot more and create deeper reports. That's what I'm wondering. And the goal, the vision is that teachers will be able to create you know, a level to the same thing for the kids within their wheelhouse. Okay. That's what I'm wondering. As you get higher, you know, higher up, it just kind of expands. Yes. And then who has access to what or to what students and then the ability to input data and manipulate and put in data and stuff like that, like teachers being able to put in interventions, instructional coordinators being able to put an intervention and track that. Yeah. Those powers and responsibilities will be there based on who those students are and whose roster

they belong to. So for a kid who's receiving special services, theirs will look – those staff can do a deeper dive into exactly what – that has looked like for them and track that specific, you know, those interventions, et cetera? Yes. Okay, that's awesome. And then last but not least, you guys are doing this amazing professional development for our district and for all of our staff, and where do you guys get your professional development? Because you guys obviously have these – you're bringing amazing and just really important work to our district. So how do you – I want to make sure we're supporting you and your professional development too, and what does that look like right now?

Sure, that's something that is important. So monthly, all of the folks with equity roles within public and private schools meet monthly. Awesome. And we share a lot of the things that we're doing. Like as we talk about like the equity walkthroughs, a lot of the information and a lot of the foundations were you know, shared amongst different folks and sharing resources. We also attend different conferences throughout the year. We're going to a conference in December, a learning forward conference, which has a lot of equity, you know, focus sessions. And we're also leading the session. at that as well with a lot of the work that we're doing so um it's just staying up to date on conferences and different webinars and things pop up regularly so um a lot of time is put forth to that awesome um as well as different books and things like that so yeah definitely getting what we need from a professional development standpoint cool

if you i just want to make sure that we are very supportive of that and you know that you guys do have that not just giving it to the district, but we are making sure that you get what you need to.

Mm-hmm.

and i think i didn't anticipate this many questions on the edu climber part of the slide from this presentation so i know that dr garganigo is in the back and i hate to put you on the spot but if there are any other specific questions she does really have the entire 360 view on this platform in the system so if there are any more i'm sure she would be okay to answer them or clarify anything

And all the EduClimber work is thanks to Dr. Milena Garganigo and her department in terms of putting everything together. Her department has been doing everything they can to transfer data and get more and more data in so that it's getting to a point to where it is operable. So without the work from her and her department, a lot of this work would be impossible. So special thanks and shout out to her on that.

And all the EduClimber work is thanks to Dr. Garganego and her department in terms of putting everything together. Her department has been doing everything they can to transfer data and get more and more data in so that it's getting to a point to where it is operable. So without the work from her and her department, a lot of this work would be impossible. So special thanks and shout out to her on that.

All right. Well, thank you for answering all of our questions. We appreciate all your hard work and important work. So, yeah, thank you. And now we need to approve our consent agenda.

Move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda 7.02 through 7.09.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. And on behalf of the district, the Board of Education would like to thank the Girls in Sports Organization for their generous donation to the High School Girls Basketball Booster. So thank you. And we are now on moving right along to Board – Calendar committee updates Jason Growe teaching and is there a teaching and learning update.

Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. And on behalf of the district, the Board of Education would like to thank the Girls in Sports Organization for their generous donation to the High School Girls Basketball Booster. So thank you. And we are now on moving right along to Board – Calendar committee updates Jason Grow teaching and is there a teaching and learning update.

Yes, I forgot to give it last week or last time. So I subbed in for Stacy who could make it to the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council meeting. And it was really great. I really appreciated the presentation that Janet Cruz did about professional development. And we saw the evidence of that in the superintendent's comments. There's clearly just a lot of thoughtful, you know, proactive work that goes into that. I think my big takeaway is that there's also attention being put towards making sure that the community knows that the professional development work is meaningful, right? So when parents have to reschedule their workday, stay home with the kid, find coverage, all that good stuff, it's for something that actually is for the betterment of the kids. So that was great to hear.

Okay. Jason Wilson, Equity Committee.

I missed the meeting. Okay. But I think that was a good update. Good job, Cameron. Thank you.

um are there any other updates anybody school walkthroughs

anything oh okay i did do a school another school walkthrough um with nisha to the family center the other day which if you guys haven't been there or haven't been there in a while um i highly suggest you tag along to one of those It's a really magical place, and we are really lucky to have the Family Center as part of our community. First of all, you know the high school classrooms are all moved over now, and they've now swapped for the space. The high school is now that stay, play, and learn program, which used to be called Open Times, and they're now offering that five days a week. So hoping to grow that program as well. And I actually happened to just randomly ask one of the teachers that had moved from the high school to this location, how it was going. And she said, um, she really liked being at the family back at the family center that for her as a teacher, it felt better to be around more of her colleagues. Um, and that even the kids too, when they're on the nature trailer, the playground and to interact with more different age kids was good for them. So I think it's working really well. And, um, Amy, who, you know, is the new director who started, seemed great and because she had been a teacher there before she's a really good relationship with the staff that was really evident and knows a lot of the kids like a lot of more coming up to her hugging her saying hi um and she also told us about some of the teachers went to visit a school in i think boulder somewhere in colorado where they learned a lot of good stuff they've brought back so they do a lot also of growing and learning and professional development um there and the kids are just so cute so little so little so cute anyway but it's a really nice space and all the work we've done to you know construction wise to kind of changing some of those classrooms and everything is great so

that's it all right all right good well I think we can adjourn

Move that the Board of Education adjourn.

Second. All in favor? Aye.