March 27, 2024 — Meeting Transcript

Machine-generated transcript — may contain errors.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you Thank you Okay we going to go ahead and get started It is Wednesday, March 27th, 2024, and let's go ahead and start with the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, Stacey, I think we need to adopt the agenda first.

I move that the Board of Education adopt the agenda as posted. Second. It's been moved and seconded. All in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Luke, do we have any public participation? So, Dr.

Patel. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I hope everybody had a great spring break.

I can't believe we're into the fourth quarter. It's a mad rush to the summertime. So hopefully everyone got some time to relax and rejuvenate. So a couple of highlights I do want to make that occurred actually during spring break.

So I always like to start off by recognizing some of our students. The first is our Vivace and Vibravo students. They actually went to Louisville, Kentucky, and they play second in the National Orchestra Festival. And they are actually the youngest members in a group to play in the history of this program.

Because we have from fifth graders and sixth and seventh graders attended this. So very proud of them for their dedication, hard work, a lot of planning went behind this. So I do want to thank all the staff members that were involved with this as well. So huge congratulations to them.

And then also during spring break, we had our second annual HBCU tour. We had one last year, if you can recall, and I wanted to thank the Clayton Education Foundation, actually, for helping fund this event. And what's really neat about it is we have 16 students that went this year, juniors and sophomores. And what's really neat is from last year, the students that went, two of them this year have committed to two of the universities from the tour that they went to.

So very happy about that. And I wanted to thank, again, the foundation for helping make sure that we have this opportunity for our students. And then last night, many of you were there for the PTO candidate forum, and I wanted to make sure I thank the PTO Council. Because this, again, there's a lot of planning that goes into this.

They created the website. You know, they did a lot of the promoting for this event, and we had a great turnout. So I wanted to thank the PTO for giving our community an opportunity to get to know our candidates more. And so that went off really well as well.

Spervantage, Bord of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. And the building principals will be presenting. They'll share our state data results about that. And then they'll talk a little bit about Educlimber, the data visualization tool that we've started to use to really identify each student and where they are on their learning trajectory.

And then the building principals will talk about what they're doing in their individual buildings to make sure that our students are successful. So they'll share a little bit of their journey as well. And then we have our counseling update. And then we also have our social work department Thank you, Jason, is going to be here as our curriculum coordinator as well to be a part of that.

And then last but not least, we did not do a recognizing our own. If you didn't notice, we didn't start off with that because I want to recognize our school board. So March is National School Board Month, and so with us having our board meeting today, I thought we'd take a few moments, and Luke, if you could click that for me, We could have a few moments just to thank you for everything you do. In front of you, you'll see a little, well, some of you put it behind you because there's a lot.

In front of you, you'll see some gifts from all of our schools. They wanted to donate that to you and just show you their appreciation for what you do for our school district You can also see some cards and banners that the kids made around And we really want to thank you for all of the time that you spend for us I know it all voluntary and it a lot and a lot of it is time away from your families You make the tough decisions. You have to make sure that you're moving the district in the right direction. And I think what makes this board really strong is that you have your own perspectives.

You have your own areas of passion. But you are committed to common goals. And that is focused on students and moving the district in the right direction. So really want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and personally thank you for all the support you've given me and the belief you have in me and you also challenge me.

So I really appreciate that. Then also, I wanted to give a special thanks to Amy, because this is Amy's last board meeting. Amy has been with us for nine years. That equates Amy to about 162 board meetings, which equates to roughly 650 hours in just school board meetings.

So that does not count for the community engagement forums, the town hall forums, the homecoming parades, the conferences that you do, the MSBA training, that's not included in all that. But I just want to thank you, Amy, personally, because you have, the past three years, just being here as a board president, you have really helped me grow, and you've challenged me and supported me and believed in me. So I wanted to thank you for that. And I'm going to hand it off to Stacey, because I know Stacey wanted to say a few words as well.

Thank you. I apologize, Amy, that I'm going to read this. On behalf of the board, Amy, it's hard to believe this is your last meeting after nine years of service on the board. You've been an incredibly thoughtful, supportive, respectable, and collaborative leader, not to mention a friend to all of us.

You have shown us that a strong leader does not necessarily need to make a loud presence, but rather be an active listener above all else. It is obvious to all of us who have served with you that you make every decision with our students' best interests at the forefront of your mind and only with the best of intentions. You have led us through rewarding, exciting, and yes, difficult times, but all with professionalism and integrity. I know I speak for all of us when I say we also appreciate your fun and self-deprecating sense of humor.

And I'm not sure board meetings will be the same without watching you, as I just did tonight. At the start of every meeting, look around over each shoulder, unsure of where the flag is, to say the pledge, which it hasn't moved in years. But it always makes me giggle, and I will miss that lighthearted start to every meeting, which brings me a smile every time. Some of our best memories as a board with you are not even at the board table, but rather when we can get together socially and further develop our real friendships, which I know you will continue with each of us.

Being a school board member and certainly being the president of the school board is often a thankless job and certainly time consuming. We hope you and your family and your boss will enjoy your newfound free time. Thank you for all you've done to improve the experiences of our students. Thank you for all you have done to support our teachers and all the staff of the district.

Thank you for all you have done to inspire each one of us on the board, and thank you for all you have done to support the entire Clayton community. We will miss seeing you at least twice a month. Thank you. And we have some gifts for you, which you can open later.

We made a donation to the Clayton Education Foundation in your honor. We have a box of goodies here, and we have a vase with flowers for you, too. You're welcome. I actually did not prepare anything to say.

But thank you, everybody. It's been a really fun nine years. I will miss all of you so much. I know I've told all of you this before, but I truly believe that this board is tremendous.

And the group of people we have is, each of you brings something different to the board, Thank you. I also wanted to share and read a few cards that our kids made for the board And so I going to start with this first one It says Ms Rubin dear Ms Rubin you are my favorite school board president I love learning the social studies curriculum The time and effort you put in this is incredible You make outstanding decisions You are so caring. I appreciate everything you do for the district. You're awesome.

It's from William. You absolutely mean it. This one is from John to Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson, dear Mr. Wilson, thank you for working with the school board. Every bit helps.

Thank you. Could you pass that to Mr. Wilson? This one is thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dear Ms. Rubin, I really love the curriculum. You've obviously worked very hard. I get teached.

You are such a good president. You make such good plans. Thank you from Bernie. Bernie.

This one is adorable. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Hurst.

Thank you for being our treasurer and making sure our money is being stored and going to the right things. I hope you have a successful rest of your life. And then this is entire school board from sixth grader, Alexander. Thank you for everything you do for my school.

I wanted to write a thank you letter and ask a question. And thank you for giving me three snow days this year and making decisions so I can have a good education. My question, could you make the amount of school days go down by 15? There we go.

Ask him if he wants to join the calendar committee. Calendar committee. Calendar committee. Well, I just wanted to share a few of those adorable cards from our students as well to just show you appreciation from them.

And then last but not least, they actually have a video to show you guys. We now go live to Clayton, where a special session of the School District of Clayton's Board of Education is underway. Welcome, everyone, to the Clayton Board of Education meeting. We are now in session.

The first order of business is to approve the minutes from our last meeting. Mr. Chen, please read the minutes. Yes, Penelope.

At our last meeting, we approved the motion to have chocolate milk available to students all day. I voted to make Friday wear your clothes backwards day. Great. Thank you, Mr.

Chen. Evelyn, please tell us what the first item on tonight's agenda is. Yes, Penelope. The first thing to discuss this evening is Glenridge Elementary's proposal to extend recess by an extra 30 minutes.

I believe we owe it to our students, but is it enough? The data says that students like recess, so I say we increase it to an hour. That is a great idea. Let's vote.

Those in favor of extending recess, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.

That settles it. What is next? The next item is why down middle school thinks we should not allow homework in schools anymore. I agree.

I think so too, but what are the students saying about it? I make a motion that homework should not be allowed at any school. Can I have a second? Second.

All those in favor, raise your hands. Aye. Great. Since this meeting has gone way too long, Evelyn, can you please tell us what we will be doing in our next meeting?

Sure. At our next meeting, it looks like we'll be voting on running in the halls and most importantly... Thank you, board members. So thank you, truly, on behalf of all of us for everything that you do.

All right, Mohini, I'm going to hand it to you. After meeting with elementary schoolers a bunch, it's very accurate of the power. I hope everyone had a great spring break. Students definitely did.

It's been a little rough getting back these last couple days, because everyone is trying to focus back in on learning. And, you know, try our hardest to end the year strong. In all classes, students agree that teachers are really trying to create a schedule to make sure they can finish and review curriculums before AP tests are final, just so that everyone's ready for the next year. And so students are really seeing the end in sight, and especially the juniors or seniors are ready to go on summer break.

And so a little update from Clayton. We moved towards video announcements, which it's instead of going over the intercom, now you see two individuals from the Rehau News Network who present information about clubs and new aspects. Usually over the intercom, everyone really just tunes it out. And so now everyone watches it, looks at the information, And it's going to be a really cool new way to share opportunities with the entire student body.

Well, only the classes where the teacher remembers to put it on. But other than that, the video announcements, I think they're bringing it back from it used to be. So, yeah, that's like a new update at Clayton High School. And then finally with Y-Down, I've visited Y-Down twice to talk to teachers and students.

Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of the school year. I'm excited to see the change. I know especially now when we're looking at students who are going to change the student body and looking for a new student rep, it's really excited to see that kids believe that change can be made in the district and are really reaching out in order to do so.

So I'm really excited to continue important discussions with both the middle school and the elementary schools in the next couple weeks. Thank you. Okay, so we are going to move on to our annual assessment reports. I'm going to invite Melaina and our fabulous principals up.

Good evening. Good evening. So I'd first like to introduce our team and thank all of them for the work that they do. I report out a lot of information, but they're doing the heavy lifting in the buildings.

So starting over here, Jorba, Johnson-McQuarrie is our instructional coordinator at Glenridge, and she's sitting in for Dr. Murdoch. Patrick Fisher, our principal at Merrimack. Jennifer Martin, our principal at Captain, Jamie Jordan, principal at Wydown, Dan Kaczewski, principal at the high school.

So thank you all. Oh, Jamie's back. So tonight, obviously the report that I provided to you is pretty comprehensive. It's a lot of information.

And so trying to figure out what we would focus on tonight with you. The written report is going to have a lot more information than what I'm going to present verbally here. What I think is the most important for us to do is highlight the information that's generally shared publicly and to give some explanation to that information. And then, like Nisha shared, we'll talk a little bit about Educlimer, which is our data visualization tool that has helped us do some of our work at the ground level.

And then each of the building principals will share some information specific to their building, really specific to how do we use these data to influence our work on a daily basis. So the annual performance report comes out, and so the Missouri School Improvement Program is currently in its sixth cycle. This is the second year of the sixth cycle so it the first time in a long time that we been able to compare data from year to year So while local data informs our practice more frequently state data is what public it on our data dashboard and it what DESE reports and ultimately will use for our accreditation So school districts currently, because of the move into the sixth cycle of MSIP, are not currently receiving official accreditation information. That'll start next year, in the third year.

So the way that MSIP 6 is different from MSIP 6-5 is that we have about 30% of our points are coming from what they are calling continuous improvement. And so the continuous improvement includes such things as a school district having a strategic plan, so a comprehensive school improvement plan that they're using to inform their practice, that we're using culture and climate surveys to determine how well we're doing and that we're serving students, staff, and parents within the community. The success-ready students pieces are that we're giving kindergarten readiness assessments to at least 95% of our students, that we're giving individual career and academic plans starting in eighth grade that go through the high school to at least 95% of our students, and then that our attendance is that 90% of our students are in attendance 90% of the time. And then the other pieces are required documentation kinds of things.

So they're required things from us, and so we're getting minimal points for those pieces. This constitutes then 30% of our overall points. Performance then, which is the part that I think you all are more interested in, is the part that constitutes 70% of our score. So throughout this presentation and throughout the report, I'm using the MAP Performance Index as the way to report those scores.

If you remember back with, all of you have been around for a while, when I presented during MSIP 5, students would receive a static score for below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. The shift to MSIP 6 allows students to be rewarded for progress within an achievement band. So if they're scoring, so if they're making progress, but they're still below basic, but they're higher within the band of below basic, then they're going to fall with more points. And so that is benefiting our students as a whole.

And so it's a way of allowing students to show progress without necessarily moving between achievement levels. So when we look at our overall population, the MPI is a range from 100 to 500, and the target from the state, they want us to be within the 400 to 500 range. And so when you look at our overall achievement for our student population, you'll see that we're well within. In all content areas in all schools, we're well within that 400 to 500 range.

So we see that we're overall doing quite well. Our student group, if you remember, the student group includes black African American students, Hispanic students, those who qualify for EL services, those who qualify for special education services, and then those students who are part of the federal lunch program. The ideal is for this population's scores to be the same as our total population scores. There is some within the state, they give a little bit of leeway with that to say that your target is somewhere within the 365 to 500 range, but the goal being that this population represents the same as your total population.

So as a district, we are surpassing where that target range starts in all areas. And so we see that we're doing well. There continues to be a gap between our total population and our student group scores. So we are not yet at that place where the delta is zero for those scores.

Like I said, because this is the second year of MSIP 6, it's the first year that we can compare data between years. And so this is the first time we've been able to do this for a long time. So the way that I planned these charts sort of for ease of reading was anything that's a blue is a positive increase. Anything that's a red is a negative difference.

And so when you look at this overall, what you see is that between 2022 and 2023, in most content areas, in most schools, you will see an increase. There's a couple places where you don't see that. One of them I want to highlight is the math piece. When we did the math review with you two years ago one of the things that we talked about and then I sent another memo last year about this was that we made some decisions about realigning our curriculum to the standards And we knew in doing that that we were going to have a year or two where the data was going to look a little bit off for us because we were realigning where we were teaching standards.

And so it wasn't necessarily aligned to where the kids were tested. And so that's what you see here. The other piece that I talked about with math in that meeting as well as in the memo to you all was the change in testing eighth graders on the end-of-course exam. So the state changed their rules about when to test end-of-course.

It used to be that the district made the decision as to when to do the end-of-course assessment. And we had our Algebra I standards spread out through three courses. Now the state has changed that to say that you test the EOC at the time of the name designation of the course. So we had a course in eighth grade called Challenge Algebra.

So that meant that those students then took the Algebra I EOC. And so our eighth grade algebra scores then are separated out by eighth grade students who are not in Challenge Algebra taking the eighth grade assessment and then the Challenge Algebra students taking the Algebra I EOC. What that also does for us then is that means that those students who took an Algebra I EOC in the middle school will now have to take a second math EOC at the high school, so they'll end up taking the Algebra II assessment at the high school. The reason why we never did that in the past was because we believed that the EOC was a high school assessment, and it really didn't benefit our students to take one in the middle school and then have to take a different one at the high school.

We now sort of don't have that choice, and so we'll continue down that path. But so that's a piece there. And then the social studies piece, it's sort of a nominal difference. So there isn't, I will say that when I look at these MPI scores, no one has told me like, here's the number, here's the magic number that you should look at.

But when I look at these, when I get the data in, if I see a difference of five on the positive side or on the negative side, that gives us an opportunity to say, let's dig deeper into the data and look at it and try to get a better understanding of what's there. So that's a Milena Garganego number decision. That's not like a state told us that five is significant. That's just where I feel like there's significance for us to dig into.

So when you look at the student group population, this is the chart that I think we as a team maybe are most proud of, is that there's a lot of blue on this chart. And I think in previous years, we have not seen the same kind of celebration, and so we're excited to see that the work that we're doing within the buildings, we're starting to see some positive increase with our student group population. When we look then at the data broken down by race, and I'm going to go through these. You all have these within the report.

I'm going to go through these a little bit quickly. I have them by race, and then I have them by students who are receiving special education services. You're seeing a lot of the same kind of information, a lot of blue, some instances of red that are just things that, That as we start to dig into data in the building, we start to look at it, and then we start to triangulate it with our local assessments that inform our practice on a more frequent basis. So that's English language arts.

This is math. So we spent some time talking about math in that piece at Wydown. Science. And then social studies.

And social studies is the only time that we assess social studies is at the high school. And then this is our students receiving special education services, a similar kind of pattern of more prevalence of blue, but instances of red where we need to spend some time digging into those data pieces. So after we talk about status, and one of the things that I think is oftentimes really confusing with the state is they also use this term growth. So like I just showed you a whole bunch of charts that look like we're making growth.

Because when you compare year one to year two, we are seeing positive increases in a lot of instances. Growth is not just the difference between the 22-23 assessments. The way that the state, and I'm going to try to explain this well. The way that the state determines growth is by using the Missouri Growth Model, which is a model that's developed by economists at Mizzou.

And the way that they do this and they done this for years with us for elementary through middle school so grades four through eight If a student took a test in grade three Thank you There are other things that factor into the Missouri growth model that we are not totally aware of everything that factors into that. There are some pieces about movement of students. There are some pieces about marginalized populations, etc., that factor in that. And we do not have any sort of like technical report that gives us all of those pieces.

The grades four through eight, if there isn't a third grade score and a student has a fourth grade score, then they don't factor into the growth model. All of that makes sense to us. That's been the same for MSIP 5. It's the same for MSIP 6.

What became new this year was the addition of the end of course exams at the high school. So for the first time this year, they used the end of course exams at the high school in all four content areas to determine a predicted score. So what they're using for the predicted score for the high school tests is an eighth grade MAP score in any content area. So for social studies, you don't have an eighth grade social studies assessment, so they're using math, ELA, and science to determine the predicted score.

So this is new for all of us, like within the state. And so the way that they then, so they take your actual score, and your residual is your actual score minus your predicted score. And then if that's positive or bigger than what they anticipated, you get more points for that. And if it's smaller, then you're receiving fewer points for that.

So a couple things that are a little counterintuitive for us are the fact that those assessments are now no longer, They don't have to be in consecutive years because we're using eighth grade assessments. And then the second piece is that they don't have to be in the same content area. So they're using, for science, they're using ELA and math. For social studies, they're using ELA and math.

That's a little counterintuitive for us. So the other piece, so then this is our overall total population of like when you look at the growth model, how things are falling out. And you'll notice that you have two areas where significantly where we're below average. I've already talked about the math piece at Y-Down, so we knew to anticipate that.

We did not know initially to anticipate the science at the high school. And so the reason why that came through, and the reason why the below average is for Clyde School and district is because the only science assessment that they're using in the growth model this year is the high school EOC. Next year, they'll use the fifth grade and the eighth grade science tests also. But so that was a surprise to us.

And so when I dug in deeper with this, this is where it gets really complicated. When I dug in deeper with this, what we found out is that we traditionally test biology in 11th grade. A lot of school districts teach biology in 9th grade. We test biology in 11th grade because we teach in 11th grade.

We test government in 11th grade. The students last year who were in 11th grade, when they were in 8th grade, it was the COVID year that we did not test them. And so their scores, so we tested 227 students in biology. Only 15 students factored into our growth score.

So those 15 students represent seniors who we were responsible for testing all students before they graduate. We grabbed those seniors before they graduated. They happened to have an eighth grade score because they were the year before COVID in that. So this is a one year anomaly.

We are one of a few districts that this is affecting because of our sequence in science. So other districts, it's not affecting in the same way because they test science. Generally test science in ninth grade. Because we're a physics first district, this is why this has had an impact on us.

You see the same impact, but not to the same extent with government, that we tested 220 students, but only 56 of those students factored in. So when you think about that, a population of 15 students, there's not a lot to draw from there to determine whether they made their predicted growth or not. And so I've had conversation with the state about this. I haven't gotten a lot of response from the state.

I've expressed my opinion on it, but I haven't gotten a lot of response. But I feel like I owe it to you to explain to you why I feel like this is such an anomaly and why I don't anticipate that it's going to be an issue moving forward because next year's group, so this year's group that we're testing, will have eighth grade scores. Okay. So, what do we do with all this data and all this information?

So, one of the things we talked earlier with you in the year about Educlimber, and so this is a new tool that we brought into the district this year, and one of the things that we have as a goal, as a team, is to know our students well as learners and have a plan for all of our learners, especially those who aren't yet meeting grade level expectations. And so that is a goal that we as a team share. And so we really want to make sure that we can name those students and that we can have a plan in place for them. And so Educlimber has become a tool that has been really helpful to us in being able to track information and data in this way.

So like I said, it's a data visualization tool. It allows us to look at patterns. And it's what we use as a data warehouse. So anything when you approve the assessment matrix in May, anything that's on the assessment matrix now we are entering in as data into EduClimber.

So my team does that. And so that includes local data. So it includes grades. It includes attendance.

It includes some of our local assessments that we're using. It's a tool that we can use for communication between teachers, and it's a tool that we can use to generate some important information to share with families. So all of you at some point, if you have children who are K through 8 or K through 10, actually have received a report out of EduClimber from us when your students were tested on FAST this year. So that's a way for us to do things.

It's also a longitudinal data tracking system. So we can track cohorts of students, we can track individual students over time, and we can use that data collection for identification for programming. So when you think about our identification for our gifted programming or those types of things, we're using this tool to help us keep track of all those data and all that information. So what does that look like?

So everything that I'm about to present to you is in top secret mode so that I can maintain the anonymity of our students. If I was not in top secret mode, all of those little dots would be little faces of our students. And so one of the things that's really cool about this is that it keeps the student in the front of our conversation. So everything that we're looking at, we can see the faces of our students.

So this is like a big picture view of like when we first enter information or data into the system, what's our first way of looking at? Like how many students do we have that are falling within a range that we need to talk about? So if we need to grab and talk about all of these students who are in the below basic range, how many students are we talking about at that point? This is all elementary students, so 52 of our entire elementary population, 52 students are falling in the below basic range.

I can then click on each of those students to get their individual information. But so the team can start to talk very specifically, very quickly about individual students and groups of students. From a teacher level or from a classroom level, I can pull spreadsheets, like at the click of a button, I can pull a spreadsheet, and our team has set up the system in a way that the color coding means something to everyone in the district. So a red means we should be having serious conversation, a yellow means we might need to be having some conversation, a green means we're in a good place, and a blue means we're at the highest place that we can be for right now.

So it's not important for the teachers to know exactly what each of those scores means. The color coding is a good, easy way to look at this. So as a teacher, I can look at this spreadsheet in two ways. I can look at it as an individual student, which is a line, to say how is this child doing across the board, or I can look at it as an assessment, which is a column, to say how is my class doing overall, and to start to be able to have conversations within our teams about what those things look like.

We also can use the system to group students, and so you'll see that the third column in, so the boxes, then the student number, and then there's a third column. That's a way of us, we tag students. So we say, these students fall into this particular group of students. We can grab that group and follow that group if we put an intervention in place or whatever, and it's very quick and easy for us to grab the information on just that smaller group of students.

So this is what a teacher could look at or a principal could look at with a classroom or a grade level. And then this is an individual student profile. So when I look at the individual student profile, you'll notice on the left-hand side there's a lot of demographic information. Across the top there are tiles that talk about attendance.

They talk about whether there are things that we have created within the system, so tags or forms that we've created in the system that inform us about this child. And then the tiles across the thing are all assessments that they have taken this year. And then the middle piece is and this is the newest piece for us is if a child is in an intervention we now keeping track of what the intervention is and we progress monitoring that intervention And so the last piece is I going to skip it This piece then is for an individual student, their progress monitoring. So to say, we've identified this child as having to do some work on word blending.

We put a plan in place with instruction, and then weekly we're assessing that student to see how they're doing. So the blue up and down line is the child's data. The green line is the goal line. So that tells us how close we are to the student's goal.

The other thing that we can do with the system is set up a threshold. And so this allows us that any time we give an assessment, we tell the system, we want you to grab all students who fall within this threshold. So this one is anyone who falls within the 31st to the 49th percentile in reading. We say we want to know how many students in the school that is, and then we can make the threshold, tag the student to say that they're doing that, create a form for the student that allows us to create an individualized plan, and inform the teachers, the principals, the counselors, whoever needs to be informed of what's going on with that child.

And it also allows us to see like patterns of who's falling within that threshold. So we can do it at the individual level or at the bigger scale level. So this tool really has become pretty integral to our work this year. Our goal this year has been for this team to have a really good understanding of what's going on with the tool and what the capabilities of it are.

Our goal next year then is to start to roll it out more thoroughly with the teachers. So it oftentimes what'll happen in a meeting is one of us will bring up the data and talk through it with the teachers because the lift to get people into the system is a pretty big lift. And we wanted our team to be really versed with it before we start to roll it out to the teachers being able to. They can interact with it now, but they haven't necessarily been trained with that piece.

But I think all of us are in a pretty solid place with it. So now what I wanted to do is shift over to the principals being able to share with you their stories because these pieces of data are so big picture and don't necessarily affect our day-to-day interactions with students. Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. One of my favorite quotes by Mike Matos, who is a leading researcher in the work of professional learning communities.

And what this quote is, is a journey does not begin with the first step. Instead, it first begins by facing in the right direction. And so we have worked really, really hard in all of our time here in Clayton, and we are really, truly at a point where you can see by that data, we are facing in the right direction and we're moving Professional learning communities are an ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in reoccurring cycles of collective inquiry to achieve better results for the students that they serve. A key component of this improved learning for all of our students is the way that we see our role in continuous job-embedded learning for our educators is directly impacting the outcome of our students.

I'm going to walk you through four pictures here, and these four pictures represent the four guiding questions that we use to guide our work through PLC work. The first picture you see there is Captain's fifth grade team and our math specialist, Dr. Harger, and they're gathering together to really respond to the first question of the PLC cycle, which is what do we want our students to know and be able to do? And while that might seem pretty simple, when you are working in a unit with sometimes 17 standards that all seem really important, having a conversation to ensure you're all on the same page and that you're unpacking and really truly understanding those standards in the same way is crucial.

The other thing that we can do during that time is really tease out what is most important for kids to know. And by that I mean if they don't master that particular skill, then they move forward in their learning, they're going to have lagging skills or gaps in their learning. So we have to get really clear on what standards are essential for kids to know and achieve mastery on and what standards are nice for students to know and have exposure to because they going to get other opportunities later in their education to really reinforce those skills So our teams come together and they meet in the areas of communication arts so both reading and literacy and phonics and also in math And so we prioritize our work based on what our students needs are. The second question that we work to achieve is really determining how will we know that our students have understood it?

How will they demonstrate mastery? And that might look different than just your standardized test that we just talked about. So teachers will talk a lot about what does the end of unit assessment look like before they ever begin teaching the very first lesson of the unit. That helps this team come together with a very clear picture of what that outcome is and how we're going to ensure kids are really truly meeting it.

We use an assessment cycle that starts frequently with a pre-assessment that helps us understand what the end of unit assessment looks like. What prerequisite skills are students are coming to us with? And if there are anything, any particular skills, maybe we need to shore up or freshen up before the unit starts. We also use something called common formative assessments, which are checkpoints throughout the unit.

And the reason that they're called common formative is because the team comes back together and they talk about that. Teachers might use their own formative assessments just as a way of checking the learning and making sure students are progressing. But a couple times throughout that unit, they The team that is a PLC will commit to coming back together, sharing that common data, and really monitoring how students are progressing throughout that unit. That is so important because if students aren't getting it, there's still time within the unit, within the learning, for us to respond and to approach this differently.

If we get to the end of the unit, oftentimes the next unit brings new standards that they need to master. So the most important opportunity The goal is for our kids to be able to demonstrate their learning throughout the unit so teachers can provide the right feedback and respond and support them accordingly. And then the end of that assessment cycle is that summative assessment. Sometimes we consider that autopsy data because the unit has stopped at that moment in time.

But it is important for us to look at that with the sense of, did every student reach that milestone? And if they haven't demonstrated mastery on those essential skills, then we get an opportunity to look at how we're going to use our multi-tiered system of supports to continue to address that skill, because we know it's going to be important for students coming forward. We answer two more questions through the process of unpacking a unit and really preparing for instruction. This picture represents what will we do for students or how will we empower them if we teach that skill, but they just didn't get it.

So not every child learns to walk at the same time. We know that. Not every child is going to master a learning standard at the same time. Students often need multiple approaches to learning, and they need multiple opportunities to see that learning and interact with it in a different way.

As the experts who have taught this grade level or this content for many years, we can anticipate what some of those hangups might be for students because we've experienced those with other students before them. So taking time to really plan when a student gets to this particular challenge, how will we collectively address this concern so that students get to that finish line at the same place at the same time? We want to make sure that we are responding within that cycle to ensure that success. And the last picture represents the fourth question, which is what do we do when students come to us and they already know it?

And so we have a responsibility to grow all students. So if they're coming into this unit and they've already mastered all of these skills and they've demonstrated their proficiency, what will we be doing to ensure that those students have an authentic learning experience and they're not just given some additional packets or busy work to kind of keep them busy? And maybe a little bit of challenge. We want to make sure it's rich and it's rigorous challenge and that every single child is growing throughout the process that we love to call PLCs.

So I'll hand this off to Dan. Good evening. I'm going to talk a little bit about how we use end-of-course exam data to inform planning and instruction. And one of the really the charges that we've given our PLC groups this year is to really look at data.

And so there has historically been a little bit of an element of we get together and plan, but what student data are we really, really looking at? And one of the challenges of the end of course exams at the high school course is that a student only takes it once while they're in the high school. So for longitudinal data for an individual student, it's not particularly useful. But what it is useful for is looking at the item analysis to look at curricular alignment with state standards and how our curriculum aligns And it also looking even looking at the types of questions that are being asked on the exam As Melinda mentioned earlier, we test in algebra, biology, government, and English too.

And so one of the things that we did this year is really charge these respective PLC groups to really dig into the end-of-course exam data and look for those trends, look for those patterns to see how our curriculum aligns with the state standards and how we can help our students do the best they can. This was particularly useful in biology this year, and that's actually the biology group up there on the screen. And because one of the things that we've historically in our science program or in the biology program, we rewrote our curriculum based on the next generation science standards several years ago. At least initially, the next generation science standards were not the same as the Missouri Show Me standards.

And there was a feeling that the NGSS standards were better than the Missouri standards. And so that created a level of, I'll call it skepticism for the value of the biology end of course exam. So the group really dug into the data this year. Like I said, that was the charge they were given.

What they learned pretty quickly was that the new Missouri Show Me Standards are aligned with the NGSS standards, so that was good news. But one of the things that they recognized was our kids didn't do particularly well on the ecology questions, actually, that were in the exam. And it's a pretty significant portion of the exam. Well, you know, upon further review, looking at when we cover the ecology material and when we give the exam, we cover ecology generally in late April and early May.

Spervantage, Bord of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Timelines, but then also to any curricular strands to make sure that we are aligned with the state standards. So I'm going to talk a little bit about MTSS and then specifically what we're doing at YDOWN.

So MTSS is another educational acronym, and this one means, and Jen mentioned it earlier, but multi-tiered system of support. And as you can see from the upside down triangle, it's based on the PLC work of the four questions that Jen mentioned, But specifically looking at a data-informed framework that helps us ensure that all kids are getting what they need both for academics and then also socio-emotional support. So tier one is sort of your core curriculum and learning essentials, what you would see in a classroom when you walked in in a classroom setting. Tier two is more interventions that target a specific skill deficit.

I think one of the ones we talked about was like inferencing or something that comes up very specifically for some students, and you identify that by assessing that specific skill. And then the tier three is sort of outside of the classroom setting. That's a prolonged period of intervention, more by a content specialist, like you would think of a reading or a math specialist. So those are the three tiers when you're thinking of the MTSS.

So at Y-Down, where we really looked, as we know as a building and honestly as a district, our teachers are excellent in their craft at Tier 1. They're really working at that, and a lot of our professional learning around empowerment and different things that we've done has been a lot of work around that Tier 1. At the secondary level, Tier 2 is pretty hard, mostly because elementary teachers are trained more in how to do Tier 2 within their classroom. You think of like a circle table with a small group of kids sitting or groups flexing in and out.

So, at the secondary level, teachers aren't necessarily trained at that initially, and so it's a lot of things that we're doing to work in how do you do this when you're having a classroom of 25 students and how do you make sure kids don't feel One way or another, when they're pulled in different groups, and so it's a little bit trickier. So that's where we decided to focus our professional learning at this year. Over the summer, we worked with our math and literacy coordinators and our department chairs at Wydown to really look at the alignment of our full year of professional learning, both content and building days, to really capitalize. And we focused really on math and with literacy because those have the most grounded assessments and a good place to start.

So we had an assessment matrix already set. We could do something in the fall. It would be assessed again in the spring. We could measure things throughout with our own classroom data and have some ideas.

So that's where we started our work. We also identified through these assessments the students that scored below the 30th percentile, and they became our spotlight students. So, essentially, each quarter, our math and literacy teachers come together, and they are reporting out about where these students are doing. And we started out by talking about, and I think Melaina talks about this personalized process, and we're planning for them individually.

So we want to know the whole student. So on this massive spreadsheet, it has grades, but it also has, you know, like what interventions we're trying, what are the skill deficits, but also like who are they as a learner, what other things do we know about them, you know, all these kinds of big projects and ideas about each of these students. And so each quarter, we come back together and the teachers will bring student work and they'll talk about the students and what they're doing. And so for example, Mr.

Mayosaka is working with an eighth grade group of boys and really looking at that group of boys, specifically looking at critical reading and writing. And he's working with them in a small group, not only within his classes, but also in our learning center support classes. And the teachers all had different ways that they were coming about working with these different kids because each individual kid needs something different. But the day-to-days have been something that's been really great because it's sort of a shared accountability.

And you also know, like, in – and Clayton and specifically at Y-Down, when you give teachers a charge to really do what they can for kids and own those kids' success and those pieces, they really go above and beyond. So that's what we did. So I've been tasked with telling the story of our last three and a half semesters at Glenridge Elementary School as we work to deepen our understanding of PLCs and add that layer of MTSS. Really thinking about how those systems work together as these lovely individuals have already cited how they work together to really bring about student success.

So in thinking about that, this story has chapters to prep you in advance. Chapter one, we work to establish collaborative teams. So at the beginning of last year, really digging into that PLC process. So I'm going to tell the story through the lens of our third grade team.

In that time, our team has been teaching for a very long time. I'd say collectively, they have more than 100 years of service. So they know the PLC process. Thank you.

How did we think about how to respond to our students who are not yet making that growth? How did we think about, we have to think about, how could we better understand Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports for our students? So, we sent two teams of teachers and specialists to RTI, which is another acronym that basically is MTSS, training last year, so in the second semester of last year. And in that time, our teams were able to deepen their understanding of one, Tier 1 instruction, and what that means for all of our students.

So often we had some gatekeeping that was happening. If we noticed that students needed some support from earlier or previous years, we didn't always corner away or make sure and sure that they had that tier one time so that they were learning the standards from their current year. Instead we'd say, oh, you need this intervention. It's okay if you miss out on that.

That only increased our gaps in those students' learning. So we were very intentional after coming back to say, how can we revamp as an elementary team our schedule in order to maximize that opportunity for tier one time? And then the other piece that really came out of that was the sense of understanding of collective efficacy around unpacking our standards. Oftentimes we would say oh yeah these are the important standards We all agree walk away do the thing in the classroom Coming back together and really sitting down and making sure that we have that common understanding so that when we're assessing those standards, we are all looking for the same thing and the same level of expectation for our students.

So, as you can see from that graphic, really thinking about how that PLC question three And that PLC question four could help us to better address the learning of our students. Okay, so I missed chapter two. It's okay. It had a cool name too, but we'll go on to chapter three.

I said everything in chapter two. Coaching teams and unleashing potential. So this year, starting in the third semester of this cycle, of this entire cycle for our system, We went through coaching cycles for our teams. So I, as the IC, partnered with our literacy coach to provide coaching for our PLC teams.

And our third grade team, this time around, decided to focus on summarizing, saying that this is the linchpin. If third graders leave us and they can't summarize, they will not be successful moving forward. So, because of all of our learning, because we were able to send so many teachers and specialists to the RTI training, we were able to really dig in deeply into our Tier 2 instruction for classroom teachers and better understand how our Tier 3 supports that happen outside of the classroom can also benefit our students in a more purposeful way because of that structure. Moving forward, chapter four, we also want to make sure that we have those opportunities to look at that satellite data that Milena was talking about before.

So our data teams met together and unpacked even that satellite data to say, yes, we know that our local data says this about our kids and we've put these things in place, but we'll also take the time to make sure that we're responding to our satellite data as well. So this concludes our tale. I think I made it in three minutes. Huzzah.

All right. So I do get to be the last one to kind of share some of these things. So I'm going to try to tell this first through the context. We've heard about PLCs.

We've heard about MTSS. We've heard about several of those things. So I want to kind of talk about this. One, what does this actually look like, and how might this look for one of our students?

And in particular, Melaina mentioned in one of her earlier slides about our goal of having a plan in place For all of those individual students who may not be meeting grade level expectations. So what does that look like? So the first, to kind of explain, we talk about MTSS, we talk about RTIs, and we talk about tiers, and we talk about those things. I think it's also sometimes helpful to have a bit of an analogy, while not maybe 100% perfect, but that we can all kind of relate to that explains a little bit of the education, what I would say is the educationese, that language that educators speak in that maybe not everybody else does.

So, thinking about that pyramid, I think sometimes there's a medical analogy with some of these things. So, like a universal screener, the universal screener that starts a lot of this process or those tests, those things that you do at the beginning. If you think about your yearly physical, the blood work that you get done every year that you take to your doctor and they look at and they say, what does this mean? That's kind of a similar universal screener.

Every person who might go see their gen ed doctor takes that and it tells a certain amount of information. Then you go to your tier one. Your tier one is that initial first best taking care of yourself. Are you eating the right things?

Are you listening to your doctor, taking the supplements, the medicines that may be prescribed to you on a regular basis? Keep doing it, working with your doctor to get exactly what you need. If that's happening, your blood work looks good, you're getting all those things, you're taking care of the things that need to be taken care of, You may stay in Tier 1 and just continue doing what you've been doing and keep growing and learning and keep doing what you need to do as you kind of develop. If, however, something comes back on that universal screener and it may come back and say, well, there's something off here.

Maybe your cholesterol is off. Maybe your sodium is a little too high. Maybe your blood pressure is off. You may work with your Tier 1 doctor.

They may say, well, you need something else. And it may be something that they can try to fix. They may try a couple of different things. Or they may say, this looks really bad.

We need to send you immediately to something else. So it's almost that triage. And that may send you to a Tier 3 where now you're seeing a specialist or you're having to go through some additional things with your doctor at the mill that goes beyond just that normal welfare. And that's your Tier 2.

So your Tier 2 may be, you may be working with your general ed, you know, your general practitioner, and they may be giving you some specific additional medicines and checking back in a little more frequently and progress monitoring that. And if you get right back where you were, then you go back to Tier 1 and you stay there. But again, if you have to go see that specialist, then you may get bumped down. You may be talking to a specialist who also then is collaborating and working with your gen ed doctor and working with you.

Or not gen ed doctor, but your general practitioner. So that we're all kind of talking and collaborating and working together to provide that best care for those who maybe have the most needs. And so essentially that kind of the way this pyramid works that medical analogy that hopefully we all get to stay in tier one But every once in a while things happen and you end up with a cast So what I would say is in this the other part we going to use now to take that to the educational world and what we been kind of using I wanted to do this through the lens of what we've been using this year through, first it started with the state and a law that was passed in the spring for our reading support plans, our reading success plans as we would call them. So essentially what that does is we give the students a universal screener.

On that universal screener, there may be some kids that get identified in certain areas, and I'll make sure I've got all the right areas, but there may be things such as being at risk for dyslexia, performing one or below grade levels in reading and reading readiness, or have a formal diagnosis of dyslexia. Now, those are the criteria from the state that said any student who meets these things on the universal screeners, and they gave us a list of universal screeners that we have to make sure we use, any student that meets those is required to have a reading success plan. In Clayton, we said any student who's going to be seeing one of our reading interventionists needs to have a reading success plan. Within that plan, what you're talking about is looking at what is that intervention, communicating that intervention, making sure we have intensive reading intervention, Make sure there's progress monitoring and that utilizes the EduClimber, which Milena was talking about.

That progress monitoring is tracked, is communicated with the parent. So again, this isn't done just as you wouldn't want your doctor doing things and not talking to you about it. We're not going to do things and not involve the student and the families and those things in that. And then there's also like, and that's that regular communication.

So that's more frequent progress monitoring. It's more frequent checking. So the picture there, if you're facing the screen on the bottom left-hand corner, is one of our reading interventionists working with one student. And then the picture on the right-hand corner is that same student working with his classroom teacher.

So this is the same student, and this is looking at how does that pyramid actually work where they're all working together and collaborating. This is the work of the PLCs where we're talking about those individual teachers, where that collaboration happens, where that communication between our reading teacher, our reading specialist, our coaches are then helping to triangulate these services so that this same student is getting supports that are benefiting him in the gen ed classroom, But also in that targeted intervention. Just like you wouldn't just take the medicine and not still practice your exercise and good diet, you want all of the above. Nobody's going to say just do this and not do the other part.

So we want to try to figure out how do we put all these things in place so nothing's falling through the cracks. And that's that idea of having that reading success plan for each of these individual students. Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you.

Thank you. So what questions do you all have for us? Who wants to start? So let's just start with the statements.

I'm really excited to see a lot of blue. The blue was important going back to the data sheets. Can we go back to those sheets, somebody? I know, I know, I know, Melina, you said that this is good, but you had to compare it to what the state is saying, right?

But I mean, how, just, so, you know, in our own house here, how do you feel about those numbers? Like, what are you thinking when you see these numbers? I mean, I'm pretty much all those sheets right here, but how do you feel about these numbers? Right.

So there's a lot of things that I think, like I said before, there's a lot of things that I think that we can celebrate as successes. And when you look in the report, the comparative piece to like state averages and how our students are doing, they're doing well. I think we continue, and I know that I talk about this each year, but we continue to talk about the discrepancy between our total population and our student group. But one of the things that I think is really important to celebrate about our student group is I feel like in a long time this is the most growth that we seen with this group of students And I think it has a lot to do with the work that the principals and their teams are doing within their schools specific to really knowing our students well and being able to respond to their individual needs When you think about our strategic plan and the goal around personalized and individualized learning, that's what we were talking about.

We have to know all of our students well, and Jamie's got it on the board in her office, because when she came back in the summer, she and I were talking and we wrote it up there, but it becomes something that's really ingrained in our work. I think all of these people who are sitting with me here can name students. Jamie calls them spotlight students in her school. Everybody has a different term, but they can name those students and they have an identified plan Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I'm looking at like, let me just go to a couple here. I mean, I don't mean to hone in on the African American students here, but let's just go to this one. I see for science, like 9% gains in the district. Late in high school it was like 7%.

Glen Ridge had like 21%. How did you all do 21%? What was that? Yeah.

But that's what I'm saying. Like that's really, really good. I just want to know, you know, is it something you all did? Is it just the teacher itself?

Like what's, you know, like what was the strategy that was implemented to see this kind of growth? So one of the things that we did at the elementary level is we assured PLC time for our specialists. And so for the first time ever, I mean, they always came together for like curriculum meetings and they did collaborative work. But for the first time ever, they were we gave them dedicated time in their schedule where they could come together and they could do the same work that grade level teachers do for their students.

So the power in that collective efficacy that Yorba spoke about is transcendent. And so when you're all on the same page and you're all expecting the same thing, you are having conversations that are challenging each other's thinking, and you're raising the expectations for your own instruction and the outcomes of students. And then when you have the opportunity to have the exact same goals and you're all working, even though you're in three different buildings, but you're all working toward a common goal, Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. All three elementaries in the area of science.

One of the things that we did specifically was give them dedicated time to carry out this work. The other thing that we have gotten really good at doing is looking at data by race. And I would say, you know, several years ago, we started that process with Jamie Almazan, if you remember that he came and worked with our district. And he really challenged our thinking.

We've continued those practices and we've refined those practices. So, you know, there was a point in time where the first, you know, that going back to the quote I said, it's not about, your journey is not about the first step, it's about facing in the right direction. So he helped us face in the right direction, then we could take the right steps. And so it is an ongoing process where we examine our own practices through the outcomes of students and we refine our own teaching practices to be more personalized in our approach.

And the opportunity to go on in this cyclical fashion of saying, hey, which kids are getting which kids are not, gives us the power to be able to differentiate our instruction, intervene when that's necessary, and make sure that the kids get the right touch points they need so that every single student is growing. I think also at the elementary level one of the things that I think we've done is the principals have come to us with some pretty innovative ideas of ways to support students and we've said yes, try it. And let's see what happens. So like a theory of practice being if I put a third Third grade teacher in a fourth grade classroom during math time to help support.

My theory of practice there is having somebody who knows the math, who knows the students because they taught them last year, can have a different kind of impact on providing support to those students. So let's try it. And we've seen some of those things have great success. We've also seen things that were like, I don't know if we need to continue to do those things.

But I think us being able to be in that space and be able to do those things is a great thing. And that communication of like, yeah, let's try it and see if it has an impact and like challenging some of our old theories and our old models and being able to say we have a new theory of practice and we want to try something out. And we've had a lot of conversation about what that looks like. And then what I think happens then is that the secondary schools hear some of that and they say, so how can we replicate some of that within our structure?

Because I think what Jamie speaks to is a secondary structure is oftentimes very challenging to think about Tier 2 and Tier 3. Tier 3 oftentimes means that a student is not in an elective because of when that programming happens. That's a hard decision to make for a student. And so trying to think about how can we grow and learn from what's happened with our elementary colleagues Spervantage, Thank you.

Thank you. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you.

I don't know that I have enough institutional memory to be able to say that. But these are large gains. Let me ask you this question. Did COVID play a part in seeing these leaps and bounds gains?

Because I'm going to say I think 10% of anything is a lot, 10% gains. Yeah, so what COVID I think did for us, and we actually talked about this this morning with the secondary principals, I think COVID allowed us to start to think differently about how we engage in our practice. And so at a certain point we were forced to think differently but there were some lessons that came out of COVID that I think helped us to be able to I liked what Jen said about the flexibility with our human capital which is really what making like if you think about a lot of the research it talks about like in order for kids to make significant gains one of the most significant factors that impact that is a strong teacher And so I think Jen's story is a really good example of us being humble enough to say you're the right person to work with this child in order for this to happen. So I don't know if that's really an answer to your question.

No, it's a good answer. But I feel like a lot of the work, it's like we're all on the same train, moving in the same direction, and I'm not sure that we necessarily felt that as a team before. It was often like a lot of silos, and we were trying things, and we're always trying to do right by kids. But I think what we've noticed is being on the same train allows us then to engage in conversation.

Like Jamie was talking today with me about, like, she came to a meeting with the elementary instructional coordinators, and her learning coming out of that and their learning as a part of that allowed us to be a stronger system. So, like, we've had strong, like, buildings and strong grade levels and strong those kinds of things, and now we're working towards being a strong system. Gotcha. One last question, and I'll let you all rock on it, but a quick question about EduClimber.

Yeah. So I'm excited about that. So, can you talk more about that, about being able to extrapolate data like that? Because you're getting it almost in real time.

Am I right or wrong? Yes. It seems like real time to me. And this is what I think we talked about this back when Amy and Sean was here.

We wanted something like this. And now we, is it, you remember that, the conversations? Yep. Now we have it, so tell me how that works for you and how you all feel about being able to hone in on a student quickly and see something that might be wrong and then go in there and be able to correct it.

Tell me how that works. Yeah, so do you all want to talk about it? I can talk about it from a district lens all day. I just like listening to you talk anyway.

I joke with Nisha because I have my nerdy edu-climber moments, but I'll let one of them talk about how it's helped them. This is entertaining, by the way, to hear you talk as well. Let's go. So engaged.

There's hazing going on, I feel it. So Educlimber has been transformative in the way that our teachers and our system as a whole have been able to engage in data. We've had spreadsheets for a number of years, and the color coding is something that we have created, But sometimes there are glitches within the system, right? So we've had teachers who've gone on to add their data to a spreadsheet and completely deleted everybody else's data.

Like situations like that have happened in the past. So those little kind of pieces are a thing of the past. What Educlimber allows us to do in that real time is to look at a student. So to say, if we're looking at a fifth grade student, we can see the entire spectrum of their data in all areas, all at once.

And that helps to inform us about what we have in place for that child, what we need to put in place for that child, and then what we need to communicate as we are having those meetings of transition towards YDOWN. And it's such a way that when we're adding tags, those tags are meaningful across our district so that we're able to talk and have those comparable conversations that I feel like in the past we would come together and say, oh, what are you doing? How does that look? How does that work?

We spent so much time catching up on those aspects that we wasted and missed out on those opportunities to capitalize moving forward. So again, it's that systemic view of how we respond to our students. It's made us so much better as educators. Awesome.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Does anyone else talk? So I'll get with just one more real quick thing, Jason.

Sorry. I think the other thing that is going to be more helpful with it would also be a longitudinal approach. Because one of the things that happens as students move from grade level to grade level is at times we have to, Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. So it hard to say is it this because is it some changes in the curriculum that benefited that next group of students that the first group of students didn have Because that literally one grade level of kids who took the test two years in a row So is it enough data to really say it was this or whether it was that or do we need a couple more years This is still something I think we have to consider also, just so we can keep tracking some of these things as they're going.

So we want to celebrate those things and hopefully hold on to it, but also seeing that longitudinal approach through some of this will be beneficial, especially when we talk about, going back to the quote that, like I said, was Melania, where it's that plan for each individual student. So when we talk about the, I can tell you about the kids more than I can tell you what 398 means on this. I can tell you who those, if you show me who that kid is, I can tell you about the kid. Equitability, like, it also helps with equitability, right?

So being able to. Well, even, I mean, like, so even just, like, like I was thinking if you could see the, when Melina had the top secret mode, you can see the faces. Right. Right?

So you can, you can just, there's going to be things that you're going to be able to recognize just by looking at it. That's cool. And just also on that side, like what we were talking about, like those bridges of those success plans, and I think these are things that as a board you guys have asked us for for a couple of years. Like it shouldn't be starting new when they come to sixth grade.

We should know what specific skills they have, how we bridge that in sixth grade, and then how that goes on to Dan. That's exactly what we talked about today. Who is eighth graders that he needs to have an eye out that may need intervention into reading? We're a small enough district.

It should be very continuous. And that way we're not reinventing the wheel every year also. So we know it's been tried. We know it's been successful.

And so that we can hopefully continue with that success. And we're talking a lot about academics, but it also holds place for socioemotional. So, like, what social emotional support was in the elementary schools that we should just pick up and grow with versus, like, learning this kid new each time they come. So, it's going to be great.

Gotcha. Well, thank you all. I appreciate you all answering the question. And congratulations and good job.

Okay, I'll go. Thank you for all that. And I guess while we're on the EduClimber talk, I feel like anytime we're shown EduClimber, we all get so excited about it. I really think in my years on the board, our investment of money and your time to learn EduClimber is one of the best investments we've made to make a real difference in each of our students, truly.

Because everything you all just shared, that you can learn so quickly about how to intervene with our students is so important. And we'll help all of them. Most importantly, as you said, more quickly. It's just in real time to know how fast and where you need to intervene.

So I love that we're doing the EduClimber. I think it's great. I wanted to thank you, Melina, for explaining the Missouri growth model and those anomalies because it did help put in perspective some of those red numbers or below average scores. So now that we understand that, I think that helps a lot too.

Do our students receiving special services take the same assessments? So the majority of our students take the same assessment. There's a small population of students who are identified to take an alternative assessment, but it's a very small percentage of our students, so the majority of them take the same assessment. Okay, because that struck me as a question because that is one of the student groups So, we have a lot of reports that, not in what you showed us here, but in the bigger report, had a very low percentage of them meeting the benchmark for like the fast for the reading.

Right. And I was just wondering, but are they even assessed the same way? I guess, you know, even in a big picture in this. Right.

And with our local assessments, we have more control over what that looks like. And we've put some things in place. So Robin's office and my office have been partnering with Special School District to put some things in place to have some really deliberate structures to be able to make decisions about what assessments students take to better reflect their ability or their growth over time. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

I'd honestly say like all of your examples answered a lot of my questions because a lot of my questions were like, how do you handle this in the classroom? So thank you for all of that. Let me see. I think the only other thing I was just so impressed too with those like APR reports and we scored 100 and like the continuous all of the areas of continuous improvement and a lot of those areas of performance which I think is great I loved what Dr Martin said about we have a responsibility to grow all students So I think that's a perfect example.

We see these above average and 100% ratings and scores to remember, of course we need to pay attention to the red numbers in those student groups and the individual students that need help. Thank you. I'll just go. I'll jump in.

So first this is just a clarifying question. The numbers that we see up there, are those derived from which, I guess, which assessment? It's the grade level assessment. So the state grade level assessment grades three through eight and the end of course exams at the high school in the four content areas.

So at three through eight, it's math and ELA every year, science, fifth grade and eighth grade. And then at the high school, it's algebra one, English two, biology and government. So I guess, so it's a combination of like, of a standardized test and then our local. So these are just state numbers.

It's not the local assessments at all. So like in the report, we gave you the stuff really, so the local assessments like NWA and FAST, we gave you in the report because of the change to from M-5 to M-6, I decided to amplify just the state stuff in our, in our presentation tonight. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great. I always worry that just with respect to the standardized testing that we're not letting just the one standardized test define a child and making sure that within EduClimber that we are also looking at, you know, in addition to the standardized test, you know, growth that kids may have.

Spervantage, the the the the the the the the the the And then some of the ways that we have made decisions in tagging students. So like at the high school, we've had some conversation about tagging students by athletics in order for like coaches to be able to look and think through that. And for teachers to be able to look at that as like a more 360 view of a child. So like they're more than just a test score or something like that.

But being able to sort of triangulate some of some of those data. I agree with you. None of us is ever going to make a decision that's based on one test score. Oftentimes when we're starting to have these conversations where we're putting like a reading success plan in place or something like that, that's based on multiple data points.

So what about just the kids, a student's grades that they receive on their report card? How is that factored in too? So that can be, so if I extended this spreadsheet out, you can extend it out to include all of their grades and all of their courses, which also allows teachers to be able to look at, like, one of the things that we've been trying to do at the high school, but we keep getting snowed out on professional development days, is to work with the teachers to be able to, like, as I inherit a new group of students at the semester, I want to look at, like, how have they historically done in English class, and what does that tell me about this student? And then how can I triangulate that with some other assessment data or some other information?

Arguably, this system is limited in the sense that it's not going to give you a complete picture of the student because it's intended to be a data warehouse. So it's intended to house that type of information. We've been working with Panorama to figure out how to be able to have that be a component of this also because that piece ties into what Jamie was talking about, So, I think that's a really good point about like the social-emotional side of pieces and being able to have that as a part of the Conversation. So while it's not in the system now, when the teams are having those conversations, they're able to talk about the students from like those pieces also.

I will add to that, like one of the things that Melina's having us help to do in working with the ICs is actually like in the care team process, like having the same language all the way through. And EduClimber does have a form that you can complete the form about strengths and weaknesses and parent concerns and all of those things. So it's like housed in the same spot. So if they have these meetings in fourth and fifth grade, when they come to sixth grade, We're starting to see some struggles.

We can pull it up and we can see what you're talking about, sort of like the whole child. Like what are their fifth grade teachers, like the qualitative data around what they said about them? What are their parents saying? You know, things that we know about them that a lot of times really isn't discussed unless you're in an IEP or 504 meeting.

It's a more comprehensive view that we can allow for all the kids to have some of these pieces. When we developed that form, we paralleled a lot of it off of IEP type forms and the fact that the first thing on the form is like, what are the strengths of this child? So to start from a strengths-based conversation of, like, there are places that we can celebrate with every child. Let's start there before we start to talk about the other pieces.

So we had control over the development of that form. Yeah, I think that's great. I assume there's times when there's just a complete disconnect between, like, the child's grades and their standardized test scores. And then that would allow you to, you know, whether or not, you know, let's say that they perform really high on the standardized test, but their grades aren't so, you know, they're making D's and F's, and you can make appropriate interventions.

Well, I mean, to kind of tie with that, maybe it's, and sometimes it's grades and it might be there, but other times it may be that we have, I guess, we try to have frequent conversations about what does it mean to be successful. Right. So when you're asking what does it mean for the student, it may be, you may have a student who performs very well in all these assessments. They're performing advanced, but they were having a lot of anxiety or they're having a lot of mental health issues or they're having a hard time working with others.

Is that student successful? More or less successful than another student who may be in a reading intervention performing at a basic level but growing, but is the kid everybody wants to work with, feels very positive, feels a lot of strengths. Which one of those students is successful? The truth is they both are in some ways and they both aren't in some ways.

So how do we make sure that we're framing that conversation around the kid? Superexpensive, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. More than what that number means. And so what are we looking at for the kid and can we talk about that child?

Entry climber, is it algorithmic in any way? I know it's as good as the data you put in there now, but could it be algorithmic where it starts to capture some characteristics about these kids? Something about kids in the middle, right? Kids in the middle are the ones that might need other programming and things to help keep them interlocked into education.

So is it algorithmic? Could it be algorithmic? Could you make it algorithmic? Could it capture characteristics like that?

It will do whatever we force it to do, if that makes sense. So, like, when I talked about the threshold piece of us being able to capture it. So, like, this is a good example of a threshold of kids in the middle. So, like, when we think about the students that we're going to intervene with, we're talking about below the 30th percentile.

The next tier of students, the 31st to the 49th percentile, 50th percentile is considered on grade level. So that next tier that's, like, close to them, let's capture those students. Let's talk about those students. Is there anything that we need to be thinking through with these students?

And so looking at those individuals. So looking at 68 students is different than looking at 650 students, right? And, I mean, this is only, yeah, this is for all three grade levels. So 68 students allows us to have conversation.

650, that's a harder conversation to have. We don't have time to have like that. Like we can't sit down and talk about 650 students in a meeting. But if you break this up by grade level, you're looking at 19 students in 6th grade, 29 in 7th, and 20 in 8th.

Those teams can have those conversations to say like what can we be doing to support these students Because they may just need a little bit of a bump for them to be in a much more secure space with their work So algorithmic I don know that I know what that means but I will say that I can force the system to do whatever I want the system to do So you are the algorithm. I am the algorithm. Right, right. So the matrix here.

Yeah, so I just wanted to make sure. I just wanted to know that because I wanted to be clear. Thank you. So Dan's team invited me to one of their grade level meetings to just experience their grade level meeting and like how they go about talking about students and how they go about identifying the students that they're going to talk about and everything.

There's a lot of human capital going into developing spreadsheets, to pulling data from different pieces and everything. So I came back from that meeting, developed a threshold for them that was a weighted threshold that identified the same students that they had spent a long time doing. Now the system is doing it automatically for them. So now the person is coming in, and now the system is also pushing an email to that person once a week to say, here are the students that now we need to talk about in this meeting.

You can then assign a meeting in the system. All the kids are then there. I now invite you to my meeting. You already know coming into the meeting who we're talking about, and all of their data and information is there.

So we're not spending the time. So it's like we can spend the time to do the work as opposed to spending the time figuring out who we're going to talk about. Now we've made the system do that for us, and so now we're putting the energy, because our time is really precious. They only have planning periods for this amount of time.

And so now we can spend that time really focused on what needs to happen for this individual student versus who are we talking about. Gotcha. Okay, great. So I'll stay on EduClammer just for a little bit.

So I'm still a little confused only by virtue of it sounds like we're using parts of Educlimber, but then I also heard that there's a big lift to get people into the system. So then I also heard, you know, that we're at Y-Down, we're using a massive spreadsheet, right, to identify spotlight students. So I know we're in the first or second maybe year of Educlimber. First year.

And so my impression was it was kind of more of a beta system that we're trying out and that you're piloting in a few different areas, but we're still using these massive spreadsheets and everything else. So for the most part, we've moved away from the massive spreadsheets at this point because, so what has to happen with EduClimber is my team has to enter all the data into the system. Okay, so your team controls the data lake? Yes.

Okay, then my next question is, is that data like, how asymmetrical is the information between students? For example, I'm in 10th grade, for example, and Jason's in kindergarten. Well, EduClimber is going to be great for Jason in kindergarten with the data that's getting entered this year, but I've been in the district for nine years already. Are you entering my last nine years of data?

No, we're entering your last three years of data. Okay. So we started from, so the decision that we made was the most pertinent data for us that usually informs our practice is three years of data. Okay.

So at this point, my team has completed entering everything from the assessment matrix for the past three years. For every student in the district. For every student in the district. Okay, that's great.

And then what's the cost of this system? I am the treasurer, so it would be, you know, remiss of me not to ask that. And what's the ongoing cost of maintaining the system? I mean, it sounds like it's a great tool.

It sounds like we're getting use out of this tool. It sounds like we're saving teachers and administrators on planning time. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I think we've increased that cost with EdgeClimber.

So it's like, I think, I'm pretty sure it's a net increase of zero. Well I thought John you and I maybe can connect after and figure out what the I just curious as to you know are we talking hundreds of thousands of dollars Are we talking for the licensing What are we I want to say Well I was going to say Oh John says Oh, excellent. That's money well spent. So it keeps going down.

Can I respond to one other thing that you said about the lift? So when I was saying that, what I was saying was what we learned with the rollout of SchoolNet. So I also rolled out SchoolNet when I first came into this role, and I didn't roll it out well. And so as a consequence of that, only three of us really knew how to use it.

So what I learned from that then was in moving to a different data warehousing system, what's the onboarding process for this? So what we spent was last semester, so last year in the spring, the spring semester, this team and a little bit of an extension of this team got trained by the company. And you had super users. Not really.

It was as good as it could have been with that kind of training. So then what we have done as a consequence of that is that our team has committed to, within our monthly meetings, that we have Educlimber training sessions from me, where we use our most practical information. So it's like, here's what I want to do at YDOWN. Okay, here's what we have done.

Now let me show everyone else in the district how you can now use the system to be able to do that. So once this team is really good at that, then we feel like we can roll it to the teachers. So the teachers see things, they're just not accessing it in the same way that we are. So they're not using the system to create the spreadsheet.

We're creating the spreadsheet in the system for them right now. The goal is that they will be able to do it themselves. Okay, and that'll be part of professional development that you have planned over the summer or over the course of the year? It'll be through next year's PD plan, yeah.

Okay, great. Okay, and then actually, you know, since I've been on the board, we've gone from MSIP 5 and we're now in MSIP 6, and I'm sure before I'm gone, there'll be MSIP 7. And my struggle with, and I thank you, by the way, every year for faithfully reporting these numbers, even though the goalposts always seem to shift on us. The most, I think, meaningful part of the discussion that I always get is when you guys talk about how you implement it practically within the schools.

And then because the goal posts always shift, I think, you know, as a board or personally as an individual board member and I know as a board collectively since we've, as this board, worked together for so long, we're always interested to see how we compare against other schools that we're often compared to. So I went and did a search of how Captain is compared to Ladue, Kirkwood, Parkway, and Rockwood. And I would say, congratulations, you know, we are ranked the first of those school districts with the exception of social studies. And now I know why, because there are only 15 students in the high school that took that end of course exam.

That one was 56. So, or 56. So we're third there. So I thought that that was a positive indicator just in terms of how we assess our school district in comparison to our peer school districts.

Then the other thing that I did is I looked between the elementary schools within the same MSIP plan. And, Melaina, you said that a five-point plus or minus difference, at least to you, is statistically significant. Well, there exists a pretty big gap within our elementary schools. So there's a 28-point gap between one elementary school and the other elementary, the highest and lowest elementary schools in science.

There's a 10-point gap in math and English language arts. So how are you guys then assessing what's working well in, for example, Captain and Merrimack for ELA, but not as well at Glenridge or in some of the other areas? Are you guys looking across to see what's really being done well in one elementary school and we could maybe benefit from some of that? I know you talked about, Jen, using human resources so that you've got the best position teacher to help the students really benefit from her or his experience to get them up to whatever tiered intervention that they're in.

Are we going to try to do that across elementary schools so that we have more consistency in the levels of reporting amongst the elementary schools? Or why is there such a big difference if five points is the statistical difference? So, you know, one way that, as you're talking, something that kind of comes to mind is the fact that just like we provide a dedicated time for our science specialists to have a PLC, the elementary principals have developed their own PLC. So we believe in this practice.

We want our teachers to do it. And we also engaging in that same practice so that we can continue to share our best practices and what happening in our schools Even just the beginning of the school year as we were onboarding new curriculum in the area of mathematics, we got together on our own. We visited each other's schools. We went into classrooms.

We saw how it was being implemented. We had conversation about the ways in which we were supporting teachers to try to build better alignment. And then we also do that Thank you. Thank you.

As we mentioned, we haven't been using, at least as a principal, I have not been using Educlimber yet for even a full year. So I think there's a lot of room to grow in that retrospect. But I'm really supportive and proud of the collaboration that we've developed as elementary principals and the way that we're working together. In my 10 years here, I can say I've never collaborated with my colleagues in this district as much as we do now, and we really have a nice synergy building.

So I think those things will give us some pathways to start engaging in some more conversations in that area. But I also wanted to say, too, we have different cultures to our communities, right? We're talking about different kids. Spervantage, Spervantage, So, I think that's a big part of what we're doing, and I think that's a big part of what we're doing.

Spervantage, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Spervantage, Propriety, and Equality. I would hesitate to go into why is this versus the schools versus the other schools and just look at how do we then take collective responsibility for we're all working within the same district and how do we help support whatever, if something, if Glenridge has a different group or one year it's likely to be, it might be Merrimack. And so how do we kind of look through that if we have a cohort that's experiencing a challenge?

I've talked to, you know, Tarita at Glenridge about having a fourth section because we're You may have a fourth, a big group, and how do we build some of these, when you've got four versus three in the system, and having some of those discussions that she may be experiencing that I haven't, and how do we continue to kind of work with each other to grow and make sure that, but I do think that support from the central office is something that helps us kind of as we look to go and overcome some of those challenges. Yeah, and I think that's all great. I think my overall, though, question still is, if five points is statistically significant by our own measure, the wondering is, there's a much bigger gap than that between those elementary schools. And all of those elementary school students eventually come together in the middle school into, you know, into Jamie's school.

And then what you would like to see is that everybody's getting the same quality collectively of education regardless of which elementary school you go to so that the kind of width of students that you're receiving looks like this instead of like this. Where one elementary school has a lot of kids in a particular subject that's on this side of the spectrum and another elementary school is coming into the middle school with students that are further along. And so I don't know if that's statistically, it's your number, it's five is what you said. Right, I want to be careful about the statistically significant.

It's just my number that I start to have conversation with. Right, and you're looking at other data besides just this one test, but I think that, you know, within our district, it is normal, as it is within other districts, for people to compare elementary schools to each other. And to the extent that we can ensure that there is what sounds like we have a desire to share best practices and make sure all of our students are receiving, you know, the same type or similar types of experiences in all three schools with respect to learning, that that is actually the case. Because otherwise, we already have it just based on, as you said, the culture of the schools.

People choose to move into a particular ward based on what they perceive as the, quote unquote, not my words, but other people's best elementary school. And you don't want, you know, scores, reflection of scores like this to either solidify an opinion or change an opinion. I think we want the perception in the community and within the elementary schools to be Y down is just as good as, you know, captain is just as good as captain. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Spervantage, those are two different groups of students. In order to see growth, you would have to look at it from the third grade in 2022 to the fourth grade in 2023. So that's part of the reason why when I report stuff, I lift it up to report it by a whole school versus by that school score. I'm not looking at the growth scores.

That's what I'm referring to. So I'm not looking. I agree with you. The growth thing is wonky.

I'm looking at the absolute whole school scores. So that's the only wondering that I'll leave with you guys to come back with. My question, my last question actually is for you, Mohini. So you've taken end-of-course exams.

Your peers have taken end-of-course exams. We have a policy kind of within our high school now and maybe even within the middle school that, you know, sometimes your first test isn't your last test. How do people, how do students in the high school, you know, go into these exams? Do they make an effort?

Do they take them seriously? There's just been a change in perception, I think, amongst high school students in particular. I'll just talk about what I see within my own household about which exams are important, which exams you try on, which exams you don't try on based on whether or not they quote-unquote count. So, you know, you've taken these exams.

How do people take them seriously? I mean, our scores reflect, like I said, we're doing better than the other schools, but how do students go into these exams? Well, like last year we took the English exam, I think, and it was sort of like two different kinds of students, right? You had to sit in class and you couldn't really go on your computer or your phone if you didn't have time to.

So a lot of people decided, oh, if they set a time, might as well do it. That was sort of like the first thing. So people who genuinely put in effort. But then I do agree that there definitely a good chunk of students who clicked through the whole thing and probably didn do much Because if it doesn really have any impact in the grade and the way you know a sophomore or junior doesn really see it as you know worth their time to really invest and work on that And sometimes even the teacher will say, you know, like, they're not going to really look at the end of course exam, like, when it comes to evaluating the student itself.

And so if it's like not even going to matter within the class, you know, it seems like that's, you know, just like the general opinion about these state exams. Yeah. So I think, Dan, that's probably something for us just to be aware of and for you and the teachers at the high school to be aware of. I don't know how we change that.

I would say that that's not a new mindset. I mean, having been the testing coordinator in the district for 20, well, I started out in my first role 23 years ago as that. And we had the same issues 23 years ago where if it didn't factor into their grade, they didn't care. I'm like, and so like, and then now they know that they have, the students know they have to take it in order to meet the graduation requirements.

But the scores, I mean, for an individual, it doesn't really matter to them. So we work with teachers to try to emphasize the importance of it actually in showing growth. I recognize that, but it's an ongoing issue, but certainly not a new one. Yeah, and maybe perhaps it's a universal truth, because like I said, it doesn't seem to affect how we're baselined against our competing school districts.

That's it. Thank you guys for the very informative report. I'll try to keep it short. I'll actually be the exact opposite of the other Jason.

I'll start with Educlimber and I'll come back to some of the opportunity gap stuff. But on Educlimber, going back to part of what Kim was talking about on the implementation of it district-wide, it seems like this is, and I'm just as excited about it as everyone else, so don't get me wrong. Enterprise software implementations are horrible, right? And I guess, like, is there a plan yet to implement this?

To, like, we have a documented plan to implement across the district? I have a documented plan in my office. Okay. And it's, like, so we're sort of in phase one right now of the plan of, like, making sure.

Because the other piece is, like, when I was saying, when Kim was asking the question, the things that I learned from the old system, One of the things was I was the point of truth. So then I was responsible for training all 500 teachers within the district. It wasn't going to happen, right? Right.

So now it's like I need to have a team that can, like you used the term super user, like I need a team of super users who can help me to implement that piece. And the other piece that I think is really important that we've learned is we have to have it be meaningful to the groups that we're presenting it to. So what we've been snowed out twice at the high school with, we were really deliberate about having that conversation with Dan and his team about like, what's the data piece that we can show to teachers that makes them feel like this is an important tool for me that's going to help move my work forward? The high school is probably the hardest of all the schools in order to implement because there's the least amount of data in the system for the high school because we test students less frequently on the localized things on the assessment matrix.

We test students the most frequently at the elementary. So that's all part of my plan. Have you considered an external implementation partner? Meaning from the company?

Yeah, or some sort of a third-party consulting firm. So I would ask, like, if you look at the faces of this group, the training we got from the company was not helpful to us. From EduClimber or from, okay. From EduClimber.

So what has been more helpful has been me partnering with people from other districts who have the system, me coming in and working with this group, because then it's the same thing. I can make the data pertinent to them. Educlimber is presenting stuff to us. At one point they were talking to us about stuff.

We didn't even have data in the system, and they were talking to us about it, and we're like, well, we don't know what we're doing because we don't have data in the system. Yeah. Just for what it's worth, you know, in terms of board investments and our budget for next year, if there's a quality third-party implementation partner who knows how to do enterprise software implementations in K-12 systems, I'd certainly be open to, you know, voting to fund that. So I just, you know, wanted to make that point.

Thank you for listening. Sure. Going back to some of just really quickly on some of the test score stuff. Pres So Court again that portion of the Commission just asked you know is there something that we could be doubling down on through investment as a board to support this continued work and this continued success Human resources.

I mean, honestly, like, I guess you are the elementary school teacher. Talk about it. And I'm just putting my plug out there. Nisha's smiling at me.

But I know everybody needs to be fiscally responsible, but there are some things that would really help in terms of human resources in regards to, you know, like, that's where hiring great quality teachers, maintaining great quality teachers. I mean, I don't know if that's the answer you're looking for, but that's what popped in my head. Yeah. I think what popped in my head is, you know, when we think about the whole child, oftentimes as my colleagues and I come together for our principal meetings, we're still talking about our social-emotional needs in the district and really thinking about what our students need.

So while a lot of times this particular report reflects a lot of our academic progress, I think continuing to be innovative in the ways in which we are funding and supporting Social-emotional growth in our district is going to be a priority for each school here. I just want to say ditto. I think that's exactly, I think when we talk that is, that if you talk to teachers, the mental health is something that you may not, I mean I think it's a, it's probably a lagging indicator. Sure.

That at some point in time if we don't take care of that you're gonna see it show up on here, but it's one of those things that if you talk to, I don't know, I mean, that's probably not just us in this district, other places, but it is, it's where most of our energy goes. Yeah, sure. One more question, then I'll end with the comment. So, exactly symmetrical to Jason, I guess.

Nice. Yeah. That's why I said it. I thought it was nice.

Yeah. Is the APR results the right way to think about how we're doing in closing the opportunity gap, right? We do a bunch of assessments. We pick some, like, I, you know, this is the thing I ask about the most if there's one topic, right, in a meeting.

Like, what's, you know, and I'm like a measures guy, right? So how do I think about that? What's the right way to look at this in terms of how we're doing there? The reason why I would say no, well, so what I would say is it's a data point in that conversation.

It's not the data point in that conversation because it's based on one test one day for each child. Sure. That changes every two years. That's sort of why I ask it, right?

So I think the pieces that we've been talking about, about knowing our students well, being able to respond to their individual needs, thinking about goal two of our strategic plan that focuses really, like we call it empowered learning, but when you look at the definition of it, it's around personalized and individualized instruction. The pieces that the principals have talked about tonight, I think what Patrick talked about with the reading success plans And so, I think that the But now we're having much more deliberate conversation in teams about those individual students, and that's what I feel like is going to be the power to help with that. Yeah, okay. Not for tonight, but at some point, at least I could use some education on, like, hey, these are, like, the five things we sort of look at, you know, or whatever it is.

So, again, not for tonight, you know, maybe something for next year even, but, you know, that's something that I would appreciate. The last thing I'll say is Jason asked a question that was basically like, how'd you do it, right? And Dr. Martin, you start with your question.

Your answer, everyone jumped in. And what occurred to me is really what you guys are describing, you're sort of too humble to say, is cultural leadership, right? And we all know the importance of school leadership. We all read articles about how it's hard, hard to find great leaders.

Thank you That would be when a student was not performing or was not getting it in the classroom and so then the teacher was doing either some small group instruction either in a pullout form or even within the classroom actually working with a group of students while other students did other work It's also like the implementation of Greyhound Time. Like the thinking of Greyhound Time was really around that thinking of like how do we provide additional support where needed or like additional touches with a teacher where you may, like you may need to touch base with that teacher in order to do that. And then we also have some co-taught models that we do too where we use two teachers within the same classroom. Okay, go now.

Any other questions? I have a lot of, five more questions. Just so back to what Jason said though, what would be your ideal situation, your ideal training scenario? If you can come up with one and get this stuff implemented and you We want to be as efficient as possible, if we can, efficacious, what would be the ideal process?

For me, and I'm only speaking from my perspective, to really rely on somebody within my building that knows the system and knows the system well. I already know who that is in my building, that's my instructional coordinator. And she has been working with our other building leadership team members to start kind of already expanding that responsibility. So our literacy coach, our reading specialist, our math specialist, they are like this is already probably maybe a little bit further down the road of implementation than even that plan originally laid out.

And so really dedicating time and effort and energy to somebody within the building who can be that point person, who can respond to questions, is very knowledgeable about it, has access to Milena when we need to develop something different. And that is really, truly becoming a very effective practice. So continuing to provide some of the ongoing training and empowering the instructional coordinators, or maybe it's an assistant principal or another administrator. Who can kind of have this as part of their job detail and responsibilities.

At the elementary level, I think it makes the most sense to be the instructional coordinators because they are building test assessment coordinators as well. And they're often very integral in the PLC process. And when we have student study teams or they're monitoring student intervention, they also have a hand in IEPs and 504s. So I think continuing to give that training to kind of that train-the-trainer approach will be very powerful.

And like I said, we've already seen it starting to kind of move past what our current expectations were as far as usage at the elementary level. You all feel the same way, I guess? I mean, I would say, sorry, but I would say similar. I think we also, one of the things I know we've kind of worked on recently is that culture of coaching.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Superroportionate, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. I was meeting with the Kirkwood team looking at math and how they're using it is also would be helpful. So I think all of these rollouts, but I absolutely do believe like keeping it tight in the beginning.

Coordinating, making sure we're coordinated, and then going for that. And that's exactly what Melaina's done. I think it's been the right rollout compared to where we were. And not to just be redundant, but I would agree 100%.

I think Melaina's been very thoughtful about working with the administrative teams, then working with probably like our grade-level teams and learning center folks who are going to be the super users or the heaviest users, and then basically working down from there. Thank you. She's always been very responsive, but having someone locally based that was that skilled would be huge. I would say also that our new director of professional learning and assessment is also a user already in her current district.

And so that increases my team and our capacity to be able to extend our reach also. So her usage has been more than mine. And so I think that also helps us as we're moving forward. Thank you all.

I appreciate that very much. And while they're sitting here, I don't have a question. No worries. No worries.

I just want to take this opportunity because they're sitting here in front of this board that these individuals in front of you have put a lot of work, a lot of work to move our kids and getting to know them. Our biggest goal was get to know the kids by name and their needs and move the needle. That's the charge. And they have been amazing at it.

And, yes, we have a long way to go still. But I just want to tell you guys publicly in front of the board how much I appreciate your commitment and passion and, you know, appreciation. But even when we push a little more, then, you know, you're willing to take it. And we are a fun team.

They always take it. They always take it. We're all about fun. When we have our meetings.

It's really fun for you to be here at 930. They always say, Nisha, this is a fun meeting, so I just want to appreciate. All the time. All the time, right?

But I do want to thank you for all the hard work and commitment behind this, because it's making a difference on our kids. So, thank you. Thank you all. Thank you all.

Thank you. You all are having fun. It might be a love event. I don't think you would.

There would be. I wish. Can we take a five-minute break? Yes.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Good evening again. Good evening.

Welcome back. Tonight we're going to start with the next several meetings we'll be talking about the content areas that have finished. They're in the spring of their second year of their self-study. So with me is Jason Thompson, the coordinator for counseling.

Thank you for your time. Is the work that the team has done through a two-year self-study process of identifying long-range goals and the financials that are attached to those goals. So at the next meeting, you will take a vote to approve their long-range goals. Why counseling is different is because counseling is both a curriculum and a program.

And so what I want to make sure that we highlight with this is that tonight, our focus is going to be around curriculum. And it's not going to be around the programming components of counseling. While Jason will touch quickly on these four components of a school counseling program in his introduction, the rest of the presentation will be focused on the curriculum piece. What we have then decided as a consequence of that is for counseling next year to go into a program review.

And so they'll be in a two-year program review that Dr. Wiens will help run with the group to focus on those other three areas. So I think that's important to share with you now so that you don't feel like there's a big gap in what we're presenting tonight. It's just the first part of a bigger process for this team because they represent both a curriculum and a program.

So with that, I will hand it over to Jason. All right. Thank you, Melaina. So two things.

Full disclosure, number one, I normally go to bed at 930. So I'm going to be up, and I'm doing the 75 hard challenge, and I haven't done my evening walk, and so I'm doing that too. So anyway I told Blaine I had this awesome SEL activity to do for you all but I don want to prolong it so I just gonna hand out the gifts now So Chocolate this side and stress balls that way Enjoy that. Get your SEL mojo going.

You're welcome. Thank you. My name is Jason Thompson. I want to thank Melaina and Robin and Janet Cruz who did some early work with us in our committee and our department.

We have an awesome department that's here to serve the students, and so I hope I do them justice today. So number one, as Melaina mentioned, there's really four major parts of a school counseling program here in Missouri. So we have the school counseling curriculum, the individual student planning, responsive services, and system support. But today, again, we're going to focus mostly on school counseling curriculum.

I'm going to briefly touch on two through four now, and then I'll focus on one for the rest of it. So individual student planning, if you think about that really like a one-on-one, counseling one-on-one, school counseling one-on-one, think about transitioning. What we're doing for our kiddos to help them transition to the next level, next grade, and then even post-high school. So that's developing our ICAPS.

That stands for our Individual Career and Academic Plans. So in eighth grade, every student will get that plan. We start that then. And then that plan will continue with them throughout their years and tenure at the high school.

Then scheduling post-high school information and then also working on activities for them too. Responsive services tends to be a bulk of what we do too. That's really that individual counseling, that group counseling, crisis counseling, consulting, then also coordinating with our outside agencies to support that tier two, tier three support. Then finally, system support.

That's really what we do to help the system of our schools, our buildings, and then our school district and our communities in general. That's us involved in committees, advocating, evaluating our programs, and things like that. So it's basically what we do for a comprehensive school counseling program. One thing I would stress is that when you look at your school counselors, just don't see them as individuals.

They're a full program. And so this is the things that we do. So focusing on number one, school counseling curriculum that we're working with Melinda the last two years. This is when we actually go in and teach lessons on various topics.

In Missouri, they focus on three specific areas for our lessons. Number one is SEL, that's social emotional growth, also academic growth and academic skills. Then finally, that career awareness. And so we really want to make sure we focus on those three things throughout our students tenure.

Yes, thank you. So with that, we had a few goals that we actually started a few years back before COVID. So really goal one and goal three are two that we did not really meet at that time just because of COVID and slowed things down. So we felt that as a department, we really want to make sure that we focus on those so that every student has, are able to fully implement the SEL in our third goal, which would be career.

I'll talk about that in a second. So goal one, our major goal is to have a cohesive and vertically aligned K-12 social emotional curriculum. So that means when the kiddos come in all the way to 12th grade, that they're getting some type of SEL knowledge. As you all know, of course, with COVID, things kind of went down.

Students were stressed out, anxiety, depressed and things like that. So we really want to make sure that when students come in, they're getting C's, they're getting information throughout their time about SEL. How that's done is sometimes through curriculum, outside agencies coming in speaking with students, and also through counseling and responsive services. So that's our first goal.

Then our second goal is awesome, too, because when I say our department, I'm also focusing on our student service department. We partner with our social workers, which you'll hear probably around maybe 1130. And then we also partner with our wellness center. And so we work together on goal two because we really feel with SEL, it's not something else to add to the plate.

SEL is the plate. Things are added to it. So for instance, I know sometimes in course, not this district, maybe other districts, you may have some teachers that say, well, I don't go to school for that. I teach math.

I teach social studies. I teach science. I don't teach SEL. Well, it's hard for a kid to learn how to do math if they're frustrated, if they have anxiety.

It's hard for a student maybe to write a poem if they're stressed at home. It's hard for a student to do an art project if they just saw mom and dad get into this huge argument. So SEL is the plate. Things can be added on to that.

So how do we help our staff? We want to make sure that we're providing them resources. And so the social workers, wellness center, and the counselors are going to work with Goal 2 on having a website, maybe other resources, and then we're going to be able to help them. We're going to have resources that our teachers can go to to assist them on providing SEL in the classroom.

It can be something really small, maybe a quick check-in or even something more elaborate. So with that resource, we're going to have videos, we'll have websites, we'll have journals that they can go to and look at to enhance their programs. And of course, they'll have us as consulting. And some of us have already started co-teaching with individuals.

I know in some schools, working with PE, working with health, working with art teachers, just combining their curriculum with SEL to work that together to focus on the whole child. Then goal three. So once again, this was another goal that we had carry over from COVID because we didn't get a chance to really complete this goal. And that's really to have a K-12 vertically aligned career awareness and career development program for our kiddos.

So I'm going to pause there because I know one meeting I went to, a parent asked a great question. So are you going to ask our kindergartners what careers they want to do? Absolutely not. But we want to drop that C, like, hey, there is something called the world of work.

Also, with middle school, there's something called a world of work. High school, there's something called a world of work. But how do you get there? Number one, how do you get to be a good student?

Study habits. How do you get to make sure that you have self-awareness of yourself? Working with people that's difficult. Making sure you're turning your assignments in on time.

All that really equates to work also. So we're talking about careers and other lessons that we do, but Desi also mentioned that they want us to focus on career awareness. So we do that through elementary level, sometimes through books, through activities. It could be career fair, high school, maybe job shadowing, having people come in and share information about their careers.

So we do that throughout our time at K-12, but we're not trying to tell students at this grade level, you must understand what a career is. It's more so focusing on those soft skills that's going to help them when they get to their careers. Any questions on that one? Okay.

So goal three. I'm sorry, next one. How we're working on these goals make us better. So number one, it really will assist counselors with connecting with the Clayton's profile of a graduate.

If you look at the profile, I believe that all of our goals either directly or indirectly focus on those components of a profile of a graduate. We want to ensure these competencies are ever present in everything that we do. Then last one, number two, we want to assist councils with connecting to the district's strategic plan. Goal number three, which really focuses on that SEL also.

So by what we do with our three goals, we want to make sure we're connecting to the district's goals also. So that's how it's going to make us better. Then how do we get to the point where we want to get to completing those goals? Next steps would be number one, updating our department websites.

We actually worked with Milena's group, the Teaching and Learning Council, maybe back in November, October, and we saw that there were some gaps in our websites. They weren't really cohesive across the board, so we want to make sure that when stakeholders come in, they can find who we are, find what we do, and have the curriculums there, both in the buildings and the district level. Accumulating curriculum resources. Robin was great.

She found an awesome resource that we use now to kind of assist and enhance our curriculum that we're using in the district where we're actually teaching other SEL lessons to the students. And our teachers get a chance to use those also. We want to do more research to see what we can come in, bring in to make our best better in that area. Consulting with Java-like peers.

That happens here in the district, statewide and nationally. So we're trying to figure out what we can do with our peers in our buildings to support our work. Again, partnering, co-facilitating lessons about how to bring SEL, how to bring career life to our students. And then also looking at other councils in other districts and across the nation.

To get again, get there, I believe in getting other people's nose, K-N-O-W-S, in our business. Because we know a lot, but we don't know it all. So get other people's nose into our business to help support our kiddos. And then number four, ongoing professional learning.

You always, we should be a culture of learning. So we want to make sure we're doing things that's going to help enhance us to reach our three goals. And the final one, supporting teachers' SEL work. Making sure that we're doing things to support the teachers as they work with the kids in the classrooms because, of course, they're student facing more than we are many times.

So we want to support them in that work and know that we're there to help them with that lift. And I believe that's, wow. What questions? Oh, what questions?

Okay, thank you. I agree. I had a note here, exactly what you both started off saying was we don't typically think of counseling as having a curriculum, but I actually think SEL curriculum is more important now than ever. Exactly what you said, that it is the plate.

Like, no student can be successful academically if they're not mentally stable and healthy. So I just had a couple questions and comments about the goals. Goal one, I love the idea of being vertically aligned for the continuity. I think it helps our students teachers and families all be familiar and know what to expect year to year school to school And because I on the teaching and learning advisory and I was there the day we did this to me that really highlighted the need for that alignment There was definitely, at least in my little group, a disconnect between schools and elementary and secondary with where we were.

So I really like that that is a goal. I had a couple questions on goal two, and you even mentioned in next steps about supporting teachers' SEL work and helping teachers identify needs there. I'm just wondering, like it says, it's not in this presentation, but I guess in the larger document we had, report, that you're proposing an opportunity for professional development around this work. Is there a reason that it's not going to be mandatory?

I think it is so important for teachers to have this work. I think back even to my own teaching, and I got a master's in school counseling, and how much that work and study of mine helped me in the classroom, just to understand kids' social and emotional well-being. And so I wanted clarity on that, that you're proposing an opportunity to do it. No, we're proposing the assured professional opportunity.

Oh, that specific one. Okay, good. So it will be assured for all staff. Okay.

It will probably look different level by level, but we'll be vertically aligned. Okay, good. I just wanted to make sure we really, like, beyond what you're saying about posting things on the website or whatever, that we definitely are making sure our teachers all are trained in this. Yes.

Okay, good. And then my only other question is, at the end of the report that we got, not in this presentation, You listed some funding needs at the end, and they weren't anything big. So my question is, do you, though, really have larger funding ideas that we could support, like what Jamie just said, human resources? Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Is the piloting of something 9 through 12 around SEL? Because we have this program and resource that we're using K through 8, character strong, but having some opportunity to pilot some stuff there, which is bigger, but a lot of the stuff is going to come out of my existing budget. So that's why we're not asking for sort of an additional influx of funding.

Right, I guess, right. Because I think it's going to come from the programming aspect. Yeah, I just want, like, I think this, so beyond curriculum, I guess, so we'll get to that, but I think this board has shown that it is a priority to us, too, that we'd be open to, and the Wellness Center is proof of that, that we are open to, like, come ask us for that. Like, I think we all believe in the importance of mental health services and support for our kids.

And I'm going to ask for that early, so thank you. I appreciate that. Well, I definitely, it's a need. I think wellness centers at all the buildings, maybe more staff to support with the SEL is important.

So I'm glad you all are thinking about it. Yeah. Thank you. Just go around.

So I love the – I love – thank you for the report. And I love that – those three goals. Maybe just the way that like in my brain that I look at it as it's almost, you know, you've got the school counseling program and it's sort of then there's two arms to it almost. It's kind of bifurcated.

You've got the social emotional arm and then you have the college and career readiness component. Superintendent Board of Education Proposition O levy agenda motion carried Yeah both of those how they all fit out under the school counseling umbrella but then you know that versus you know building a more comprehensive and intentional college and career readiness program seems like a whole different animal than the social component of it And I guess I'm just wondering if we're thinking about it that way or if maybe I'm thinking about it wrong. I would say so. Go ahead.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry, were you finished? Yeah, I'm done. Okay.

I would say so both and. So I believe both are important. Again, both the SEL and the career were goals that we had before that that moment we didn't get a chance to meet because of COVID and slow things down. But because of that, we think they're both important.

So number one, you need that SEL just in general and day-to-day. But you also need the other goal three. You need that, well, it's a DESE standard too as far as career. So we wanted to include that because DESE said that's what every student should get in K-12 learning.

But if you combine them both, that means you're making a well-rounded student and a well-rounded citizen. So I think that we're going to work on both of them. And then the goal would be hopefully over the next three years when we do our review for our program, If we find gaps, then we'll come to you all to kind of share, here are our gaps, and here are some things we need to fill those gaps in. I think a lot of what you're talking about, Amy, falls into the individual student planning piece.

But thinking about it, what I think I hear you saying is like thinking about it also from like throughout a child's career within the district, that it be sequential and purposeful, and that it's maybe not feeling that way to you right now. Right. It feels like, I just, yeah, it doesn't feel very, like I agree, like I do agree that both of them are equally important and exposing students to, you know, encouraging them to find their passion in middle school so that once they get to high school, they can, you know, further explore their passion. Spervantage of Education, Pursuant to Education, and the Education of the Student.

Thank you. And to tap into that potential as being part of the college and career readiness. I don't know. I probably don't know what I'm talking about because I'm not an expert.

No, I think that's a great question. And the hope is once we can continue is that we are doing those things. We're talking to the elementary kiddos about just what it means to be a good student, a good person, self-efficacy. Yeah.

Think about what you want to do. What are some of your hobbies? And then the ICAP follows them year after year and they check in with their counselor at least once a year to build that ICAP. And then that's used when you talk about 12th grade and getting ready for college and post high school.

So it does stay with them. And again, that's a DESE requirement too to start at 8th grade. Makes sense. Okay, so you'll have to stop me if it's not part of curriculum and it's more part of the programming.

Just say no, Kim, we'll talk about that next year. So, but one of the things that I've noticed as I've had kids kind of come up through the elementary and then the middle schools and now all of my kids are in the high school and now I have a daughter who a senior who has just gone through the college kind of post school application process is when you considering the curriculum at least from our experience in the district, and I know we're not supposed to talk about individual experiences in the context of the board, but I'm in this instance going to make an exception. MIA is the kind of program that high school seniors use, and they start using that when Thank you. I think waiting until the start of your senior year is a little too late for that, kind of back to what maybe what Amy was trying to get to.

And maybe this is because we're both having kids that are having just experiences for the first time. If there's any way to get, from a curriculum standpoint, some of those tools or some of that type of exploration done earlier. And there are other classes in the high school that allow for that. Some of the, oh, what am I thinking about?

Catalyst. Catalyst is one of them, but there's also the biomedical, explore biomedical careers classes and some of the other stuff. Lead the way, project lead the way, thank you. That's exactly what I was looking for.

I think that stuff is great and probably part of the interdisciplinary curriculum stuff that you think about from a counseling department when you're working with the different departments within the high school. The other thing that I've heard just through feedback of other parents experiencing kind of the what happens after high school, you know, experience with their own kids this year is that I think as a district we do a pretty fantastic job about college readiness and that aspect. And particularly for traditional kind of four-year college. I don't think we're particularly strong though at espousing the benefits of community colleges or technical schools or students that may be interested in being policemen or firefighters or golf course managers.

Spervantage, I think that's going to be important. Just a quick question and I thought maybe this might be also part of where Amy was going, but what is the line of sort of demarcation between counseling and social work? And maybe You guys want to respond when you come up next. But I think that part is fuzzy for me.

Actually, we used to have a Venn diagram. So I'll say for the counseling part, so we focus on those four areas. And so I think for us, when we normally bring in our social workers for our buildings, it's at that tier two, tier three. So tier one, that's all the kids are getting there.

So if they're a school counseling curriculum we're talking about today, all the children get the same lessons. Or we may bring an outside speaker in to talk to you about, they say, anxiety with grade level three. So all the kids will get that. When students need more support, kind of think about what their principals are here about a half hour ago when they were sharing some of that tier support.

When a kid needs more than just that check-in, as Jason mentioned, that check-in, they need something additional. So then we'll say social workers. We have a kiddo that maybe has school refusal or having some anxiety going on where just checking in with me, Periodically, it's not enough right now, so let me call my social worker to see how she can support that student on an ongoing basis. And then we collaborate.

It doesn't mean that child still won't come to the counselor, but that Tier 2 support is more involved. Also, the social worker can assist with connecting those parents to an outside agency if need be. So, yeah. So, kind of working in tandem, but, again, we're counselors, again, more so Tier 1 when need be, social workers Tier 2, Tier 3.

Yeah. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

And then just a comment, and I don't even expect you to respond to this, but we talk a lot about social emotional wellness and learning for students. You know, we don't hear a lot about that for teachers who go through their own You know, mental health issues, dealing with kids that have mental health issues. And really, I guess it's an employee benefits question, perhaps, more than anything else. But, you know, I'd be curious to know at some point what we do for teachers, whether we have an, you know, it's an EAP or something.

Staff of general teachers. Yeah, yeah. We do have an EAP program. And just so you know, that website for GoTo, one of the links is going to be self-care.

Yeah, force that out. Yeah, okay. Great. Thanks.

I don't have much to say. This was good, and I will just make a statement. I think it's great that you're using the strategic plan as your guide. I mean, sometimes we kind of miss that.

We miss that opportunity, and we can kind of get off a little bit from sidetrack, but I think that's going to help us stay focused. Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you all. I appreciate it.

Thank you for the candy and the... Now y'all are making me just feel bad. Now y'all are just making me feel bad. Oh, thanks, Jason.

I appreciate the two minutes. I feel like we're the closing pitchers of a very important game. No pressure. We got this.

I got the ball. I know. We got this. We got this.

Well, thank you, everybody, for your patience. And I want to thank Jason Thompson and Melina Garganigo also for their work on that counseling report. And I look forward to collaborating with them on the next phase of the program study for that team. And certainly grateful for their leadership and collaboration with the Social Work Department, which falls under Student Services.

Education. And tonight I have Katie Burkhard who services our family center and our three elementary schools and Lauren Stolting who services Y down and Clayton High School. To the table tonight with me, a little fun fact, the social work department here in the school district of Clayton is only seven years old. So these positions were created right We're going to talk a little bit about our background, you know, more background about the program itself and what we learned during our time here at the school.

We'll go over the goals and how it connects to the profile of a graduate. So as I said before, the social work positions were created about seven years ago. And the ethics and principles of the social work team are really rooted in the National Association of Social Workers and the School Social Worker Association of America's standards and ethics. And we have also, over time, aligned their evaluations to those standards as well.

So back in the fall, we also participated in a meeting with the Teaching and Learning Advisory Council that had parents, students, and staff. And we were interested as a team to learn more about what the perceptions were from our community and stakeholders about the social work role in general, what their understanding was of how to access our district social workers, and then also what their current level of visibility was around the resources that are available through our social work team. And we found a couple of really interesting things First of all we found out that we have a lot of work to do around visibility Some folks didn quite know that there was a social worker assigned to certain buildings and didn know exactly who they were or what they did They also weren aware of some of the direct outreach both supporting our parents again information available through our website and then also how to access more information through our social workers So we realized that was something that we wanted to use to inform the establishing of our goals. Another thing that we did was we looked at a lot of data that the social workers had been collecting on an annual basis.

And some of those data sources were reasons for referrals, how we were using our money, what does the work actually look like in terms of providing service to our students and families and staff. And what we found was that on average our social workers receive about 100 referrals each year. This does not include referrals to our special education social worker. And the top reasons for those referrals were anxiety related based on the student and then also the family needing assistance with community-based resources.

Other reasons for referrals included family challenges such as family separation or divorce, peer relationships, and then challenges with attention and impulsivity and then also challenging feelings that students were experiencing. And so all of that work informed the way the social workers approached their goals and what the steps were going to be related to those goals. So at this point, I will hand it over to Katie and Lauren. Okay, so now, so as a result of the self-study and all the feedback that we got, we did, as a social work department, have three goals.

The first one, as you can see, it's up there. It's really about that visibility piece that Robin talked about. We want this district and the families to know that we do exist. We're here to support students and families and teachers.

So we kind of have next steps in terms of that first goal in terms of resource distribution and daily work with children and families. There's a couple things that we're going to do. One, we do already have a social work website that Katie's already built. This is my first year.

Most of it's back on her and aren't the former social worker. We're going to take a look at our social work website. We're going to see how we can update the resources, some of our community partnerships, any other relevant information that parents need or families need or students need. Make sure it's accessible.

Make sure it's functional for them so they know how to find it. And then another second step is that we're going to start adding some more community resources and events into district communications, so newsletters, emails, anything that might be coming up or things that might be, like, pertinent for families to know about. Things that we're seeing in terms of a trend of students that they're dealing with, like if it's anxiety, maybe we can send an article on anxiety to families. And then we're also going to create a family-facing needs assessment, which we don't currently have, but it's a nice way for families to anonymously either contact Katie or myself to fill out a survey, say this is what we specifically need without having to wait for us to email them about holiday assistance or any other resources, them saying this is what I specifically need.

And for us to kind of gauge a pattern of those needs for the family or for the district. Goal two is to strengthen our assessment intervention practices for the purpose of accurately measuring student growth. Next steps for that over the next couple of years will be K&A are going to research an evidence-based assessment for like social emotional concerns. So we can better identify students that have specific concerns and then how we can help them get better interventions for those, you know, difficulties that they're having.

We're going to acquire that assessment once we find it. We're going to keep collaborating with the counselors and the building teams. So I know the principals all talked about that MTSS structure, the multi-tiered systems of supports. So we come in.

Jason did a really good job explaining, like, the tier two, tier three. That's when Katie and I will come in and kind of talk about what have we tried at Tier 1, what can we try at Tier 2. So we'll often be added to those meetings in terms of like kind of talking about what are next steps for students that are still struggling with Tier 1. And then we're also going to create another survey for caregivers.

So once Katie and I work with them, what do they enjoy? Was it helpful? Do they have suggestions for us? Do they need anything else?

So that's just data for us to have based on like what families, whether or not they liked us or if we did a good job. How we can improve supporting families. And the third goal Jason already talked about, which is the one that we are sharing with them in terms of that tier one support for teachers. We're helping kind of collect those articles, the videos, the podcasts, anything that's going to be on that teacher website.

And that way teachers can access it. We'll have it kind of in different categories, whether it's conflict or anxiety or other resources that teachers can have. And then we going to make a teacher resource page and then Katie and I are going to try and find a universal screener so we can kind of identify bigger patterns within the district of other concerns So when we consider the connection to the profile of a graduate all of the work that we're doing with students, our goal is always to increase access to learning by removing barriers, whether that barrier be access to food or housing, whether that barrier be relationships with peers Thank you. Professional responsibility to use evidence-based assessment, intervention, and then evaluation practices.

So we hope not only to grow ourselves as practitioners, but also strengthen our department and thereby the work that we're doing with students and families. And then by collaborating with the Counseling Department and the Wellness Center to support all staff, we hope that we can really make an impact at that Tier 1 level in how we're supporting students across the district. What questions do you have for us? How do you have the time to do all of this additional administrative work and measurements, which I think are very important when I know for a fact that you guys are, as only two of you covering five schools, already overburdened with the amount of actual casework that you're dealing with?

That's a great question. I mean, I know you guys are like super women, but before I came on the board, I worked very closely with your predecessors that were here. So I have some inside knowledge as to the types of cases and the types of casework that you deal with. And I'm just wondering, I mean, I think that this program is, what you have laid out here is great.

I just, I mean, I find it hard to fathom how you're going to be able to get all of this done in addition to the service work that you're already doing professionally to support students and families. I think a lot of, I mean, the goals we've laid out also involve a lot of collaboration with the rest of the student services department. And also, we are both very involved in a regional network of school social workers that we meet five times throughout the school year, but then there's constant collaboration like online and in different ways. So I think a lot of the work that we're doing, we're not recreating the wheel.

We're going to be working closely both with professionals in the district and outside of the district to take what's already working and, you know, apply it to our own practice. But it will be difficult and it will take time. Yeah, yeah. It is difficult.

But I will say we're also really blessed with really good community partnerships. So we have Center for Mindfulness. We have Kids in the Middle. We have Safe Connections.

Thank you. That also come in and help us service those students that have those specific needs. So even though we do take the brunt of the caseload and working one-on-one, we are very lucky to have people come in and help us with bigger groups of students that have the same need. So that kind of helps us.

So do you feel like there's additional resources that you want to ask the board for or think about asking the board for maybe before you come back? I guess we'll see how you do here in this first year of trying to climb this mountain. Yeah, I would say that our students' social-emotional needs and mental health needs are evolving very quickly, and I think going into this school year, we probably felt it the hardest since the five years that I've been in this school district. And so I think the information that comes from the counseling study as well as the work with these two will be really, really important because even though maybe our enrollment isn't dramatically different than what it was maybe five years ago, what is very different, though, is the level of need.

And so I think one of the advantages of investing some time in universal screeners and some of these other assessment tools is, one, to find out what are the services that we're currently providing that are the most high leverage moves, and then what are, how can we help find students and identify students with needs before the needs reach Tier 3? And so that way and can we identify them sooner so that way we are sending healthier and healthier students to the middle school you know if we find them earlier in their growth So I do think that that is something that we need to take a closer look at because to your point you know if we look at the number of students, like the denominator and then the number of adults, that need is definitely feeling some pressure points. Yeah, and I know it's not just students that we have in this district. Thank you.

So, yeah, the work that you guys do is the most important. Thank you. And that's a lot more work that I just saw that's getting put on your plate, so good luck with that. I'm sorry to go out of order.

What I was going to say was exactly like piggybacking on what Kim was saying is I want everyone to realize at the board and watching over whatever, We are so fortunate to have social workers in our district, first of all, just even to begin with. Most school districts do not have social workers. And even like Kim saying, we only have two for five schools, but we are so fortunate to have two for five schools. And so I want everyone to realize that just even having them here is so great.

And also what Kim said as far as additional funding needs or even human resources or whatever. As we've always said, we're here for it. And I know you mentioned in the larger report, you have a discretionary fund, but I know that's funded just by PTOs and parents. So if those needs grow, just like we've always said, our mental health and wellness of our students and families is important to all of us.

So if you identify more partnerships that you need or whatever, just don't hesitate to come. Thank you for all the very important work you did, just like Kim said. And I feel lucky to have social workers and lucky to have the two of you as our social workers. So thanks.

Well, Stacy sort of took my first comment. No, it's fine. It's fine. No, I just, just to say, I don't, I'm not going to repeat the whole thing, so, but I agree with that.

But I do want to ask, you said something about sharing resources with parents and families, like, you know, and I see in the email blasts, you know, go here, you know, whatever it is. I do hear from parents, you know, that, like, do we ever think about how we're going to Helping parents think about exactly what the, how to talk to their kids about something, right? Like, an event happens, you know, an event today happened at Merrimack, you know. We've had other instances at Merrimack recently.

You know, like, you know, where you say, this is what we told your kid, you know, and these are some bullet points on what you might want to, like, say to your kid. Because I think that's just sort of what I hear from the communities, like, this is all great. You know, like, I tense up. I really don't know how to talk to my kid about what happened last month, you know, for example, whatever it is.

So does that, like, do we think about that or is that maybe outside of scope for the work? I think we're doing that a lot on an individual basis with individual students and families that we're working with. I think it's definitely an area we could look at for growth on just a more kind of systemic level as, you know, when things occur. Or as Lauren mentioned, part of the needs assessment work that we want to do is looking at trends that parents are seeing so that we can be more responsive and more proactive in that sense.

So I don't think it's out of scope. Right? And we've taken, you know, as an example with what Katie just said, you know, with my work with them as well as with the counselors and what I hear from the principals, you know, that creates opportunities for us to leverage, for example, our partnership with the All in Clayton Coalition to figure out who are some parent education experts that we can bring in and tag team some things on. And a lot of them more recently have been related to social media, mental health, how to have those hard conversations with your student about, you know, how are you going to exit stage left if there's a party that, you know, things are happening, et cetera.

And I think that we need to continue to normalize those conversations, especially being more proactive, so that way when the reactive moments happen, we can supplement with additional information, but that we also have built a good foundation. And I think that's something that's important for all of us. Yeah, that's great. Well, I just want to say...

I just want to say, once again, I appreciate you all using the profile of the graduate as a reference, as a guide. I think we kind of got off course during COVID. And just getting back on it, it feels like the work that we put in when we created that strategic plan is not going to waste. I think it's very important that we use the plan and seeing it come alive.

Superintendent, Board of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you. I just have one question related to, I guess, accessibility, which I guess falls under visibility, kind of. So, can a child, do they have to be identified somehow as being, like, in need of a Tier 2 intervention to access a social worker, or can a child, if they feel like They have a need to discuss an issue.

Do they have access to you without that tier two identification? Well, I'm at the middle school and the high school, so it's basically like an open door. I mean, it's better sometimes if we have a referral from like a counselor or a parent, so we can kind of get more information of things that have already been done to support the student. But absolutely, if one of the students even like drops by my office and says, I had a big fight with my parent this morning or I'm having a breakup or something like that.

They know that they can come in and talk with me. It doesn't have to be this formal social work referral. Should it move on to where I need to start meeting with them more frequently or they're in need of more coping skills or they're just not managing the situation well, then that might be more of a more intensive intervention where I would get the parents involved. But no, they can absolutely access us and you as well at any time.

There's no closed door or anything. Do they know? Do you feel like the kids know that that's available? So that's a conversation that we've had ongoing over the last seven years of just what is the best way to, I guess, like advertise or, you know, kind of give that messaging to students.

Because in one way, we wanted to really follow the MTSS model, and part of that was so that we are utilizing our human resources most efficiently, in that having the counselors be the gatekeepers in that first line of defense, and then if greater support is needed, the idea is that a counselor administrator would make the referral to us. So we have not yet put out like a student referral form where students can just say I need to see you similar to the way the counselors operate We have not done that yet in some ways to protect our time But at the same time just naturally it evolved that you know staff and students know who we are and know they can come talk to us I would say it's probably more frequent at the secondary level that students will just walk into Lauren's office versus mine. And I think a lot of that is just also the differences in counseling from secondary to elementary and just that the elementary counselors, I think, spend a lot, a lot of time in the classroom. So a lot of the students know them and they see all grade levels.

So I think it's just a little bit different, but it's something that we constantly are going back and forth on on the best way to do that. I have one more question. Is it safe to assume that there's a correlation, obviously, with the way kids are learning and mental health, correct? Yes.

All right. So could Educlimber be, is that a part of your system? Could Educlimber be a part of the process? I don't want to go up into a long explanation, but can you with brevity tell me how it will work with Educlimber, how different teachers and counselors can see this and it works so that we can identify folks who may need help?

Can you also, when you're answering, talk about how that works with HIPAA? Yes. Thank you. Yes, so we have to be really thoughtful about the amount of information that we put into the shared platforms for FERPA and HIPAA related reasons.

One data source, though, that is very, very helpful to this team in terms of kind of being able to triangulate some of the other data points is our panorama information. So while obviously we don't know how students answer very specific questions, when it aggregates their score, we can use that as a way to figure out, like, how are they, what has their challenging feelings overall score been, and how does that compare to their peers? So that has been a really important piece, and as they mentioned in the earlier presentation, we are working with Panorama to figure out the best way for us to be able to import some of the data that we collect after each survey to create a more full picture of each child. But in terms of the MTSS process, it's a huge piece in helping understand the historical performance academically, also helps us with attendance as well.

Gotcha. Yeah, I think there's a HIPAA part to that too. Did you answer that part? Yeah, so overall, I think when it comes to any of the shared platforms, we are very intentional about what remains in personal notes versus information that should be tracked in any of our student information systems.

Gotcha. All right. That seems very difficult, that balance right there. So, good luck.

All right are there any further questions Thank you Yes thank you Okay, so we are on to consent agenda. I move that the Board of Education approve the consent agenda for agenda items 6.02 through 6.10. Second. It's been moved and seconded.

I do have a couple questions. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry.

I noticed one of the things in consent agenda is increasing the price of KidZone, and it just brought up the question for me, do we ever or often have families that say they need KidZone but it's cost prohibitive, and how do we work with them on that, or do we? We have, in the past few years, we have not had that. However, we would work with the families. Usually the director will inform us that we have a certain family that needs that, and then we would work with them on scholarship.

Okay, good. Thank you. And then my second consent agenda, actually, it was just a comment that I'm really happy to be voting on the field hockey partnership with the other two schools, U City and Rosati Kane. I think our football partnership with Brentwood has proven how great it is for all of our kids, but also just as a community partnership with other, you know, schools in the region.

And certainly, U City and Rosati Kane represent two completely different schools. Thank you. So, I think it will be great for our kids for many reasons. I mean, first and foremost, to have a field hockey team for all the kids that want it, but also, I just think having peers and teammates from other demographic areas and just for our districts to create partnerships that might lead somewhere else.

But anyway, I think that's great, and I'm happy to be voting for that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I think that's great and I'm happy to be voting on that tonight. Yeah, we should thank Steve Hudson and the other athletic directors for their, you know, creativeness in making sure that those types of programs survive through cooperation. I think it's great. All in favor?

Aye. Aye. And you opposed. I want to thank on behalf of the district Positive Black Men, Inc.

for their generous donation of $1,000 to the Boys Basketball Booster and Clayco for their generous donation of $5,000 to support the robotics program. Thank you to both of those entities. And let's see, now we are on to board communications. I don let see Jason was there equity Yeah yep yep so equity walkthroughs start next week Building equity progress report data is getting hammered down in terms of what data we want to include Started discussion for the equity committee retreat this summer.

That's it. What's that, the equity retreat? Say that again? What is that, this summer?

Yeah, there's an equity retreat. Cameron, you want to expound upon that? Spervantage of Education, Proposition O, levy, agenda, motion carried. Thank you.

Thank you. I think everything else, I had a, you have an update? Yeah, I had, I'm on the calendar committee, and we had our first meeting tonight with the goal of developing, Next year's calendar is set, but with the goal of developing the calendar for two years from now. This is the first of, at max, five meetings, but hopefully three or four meetings.

And it's a great, we had a great first meeting going over and kind of ranking and rating priorities and kind of wish list items we'd like to see in the calendar. It's a great group of all levels of teachers, support staff, administrators, parents, and me. And so it's very inclusive of all stakeholders' opinions and views on the calendar. So that was great.

And then the only other thing I wanted to mention is that Chris and I both registered to go to the MSBA Advocacy Day in Jeff City on April 9th, which I'm looking forward to. I haven't done that before. And if anyone still would like to join us, you're welcome to. I think we're going to just drive up in the morning and drive home that night.

Just go for the day. Can I go with you? You want to? Okay.

So, yeah, that's it. All right. I do have one thing. Yes.

I was sick for it, but there was a Clayton Education Foundation meeting, And so I'll be remiss not to mention the gala on April 13th. And I was going to go this year, but I just brought to my attention a few hours ago that I'm going to a dance recital instead. So sorry, Allie, if you're actually watching this. But I do think in general, I'd like to go next year.

I do think it's something the board needs to start to go to and support is one annual dinner a year. We should start going to that stuff. Awesome. Okay, so I think with that we can adjourn.

I'll have Stacy. I move that the Board of Education adjourn. All in favor?