2 19 26 Board of Education Meeting

you you you I'm calling the meeting to order officially adequate notice has been given and I'd like to invite everyone to stand and join us in 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 Thank you and Chris could you please read the motion to adopt the agenda? I move that we approve the agenda as posted Second Okay It's been moved and seconded all those in favor? Aye Any opposed? Okay motion passes recognizing our own is okay I'd like to call upon Dr. Garganigo to recognize Daniel Henderson Good evening I have the pleasure of congratulating Daniel Henderson our fine arts coordinator and orchestra director recently he received the national federation of state high school associations outstanding music educator for Missouri award Daniel has been with us for 11 years and is not only an amazing educator and musician but he's a great leader in the district his calm approach to his work his thoughtful questions and devotion to his work his students and his craft is admirable I feel privileged to work alongside Daniel each and every day congratulations Daniel I want to say something Thank you Well I was honored to win this award I feel that and I told my students I accepted it on their behalf because I don't know that it would have happened if I wasn't in a community that has such support for the arts that in a place where I get to work with administrators who make it a joy to work in their buildings and of course with the best students around so it's really an honor to be recognized and I think it speaks to our whole community here thank you Thank you And I'd like to call up Steve Hudson for a second recognizing our own tonight with the coach to whatever whoever whoever's joining you whoever's joining Yeah Yeah I'll take care. Well thank you all for having us as you can see I have the 2025 2026 boys basketball team behind me. Not only did they have a successful season last year but they're continuing that success as we go into this year, and I do want to introduce you if you've not met him to met him Our 2020 10 Clayton High School graduate and head basketball coach Sumner Ahern and he's going to say a few more words about his team and specifically a couple of players. So thank you Thank you, Steve. And thank you all for having us. As most of my guys are laughing at me up here now talking. First of all, I want to thank you all. I know you guys played a big role in the renovations of our gym, which I get nothing but compliments from from coaches across as we you know travel to their places and they let us know how much they like our jam we've been fortunate enough to host a couple events we're hosting districts for the second year in a row this year. Coming up in a couple weeks. So I know all of that it was stems from you all as well. So I want to thank you for that. Next up our guys here we are having a good year. Last year we made it to the quarterfinals of state which was the first time we had been there since 1980. It just so happened in 1980. My dad was on the team. The last time the last time we made it to state was 1975. So that was we were one game away from that and it just so happened my uncle was on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So my uncle was sure to be on the team for that one. So I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there when I wasn't there voted most likely to stay in the Clayton bubble in my high school yearbook. My friend that currently lives in LA was that. So I think that we should revote and I should be on there. But I want to quickly mention two of our guys and they're gonna come join me up here. Sebastian Bolden and Matthew Hurst, you guys wanna come up here? Look, we even got your pictures up there, now you gotta come. Both of these two have been very big parts of our team. This is my third year as the head coach. Both of these guys have been on the team all three years. I'm gonna start with this one here cuz he's the younger one. But Sebastian Bolden, January 12th, became the sixth Clayton High School basketball player to score 1,000 points in his career. He did it in the fastest amount of games anybody else has done. He's still only a junior, so we got another year to go for a little bit higher of a number. But he is also in the time since then become the all time career leader in deals at Clayton High School and all time career leader in three point field goals made at Clayton High School. All as a junior with more games this year and a whole other season to go. He is a very talented basketball player, but I tell people all the time he's even a better kid and young adult as he's growing up to be. So I hope he continues to put forth the passion he has in basketball and being a leader and a friend to all these guys here. And then the second guy, Matthew Hurst. I believe someone up here knows him pretty well, so I'm told. Matthew is a four year varsity starter for basketball. He started with me on the JV team. I was the JV coach before varsity as a freshman. And he quickly was stolen by the varsity head coach up to varsity and became a starter. He became the all time leader in career assist at Clayton High School with 279, the game after Sebastian scored his 1,000th point. Little known facts, Sebastian's 1,000th point was an assist from Matthew. And then Matthew's leading assist to take the record was an assist to Sebastian Bolden as well. So they're connected forever in that sense. But he's the only player in Clayton history to have over 300 assists in his career. And he recently, as of two games ago, became the all time single season assist leader as well. One quick more stat, I know I've been talking a while. But Matthew is the first player since pre 1999, that's when we have the most recent school records. The first player to have four straight seasons of an over 500 record in the basketball program. So we've never done it four years in a row. And he's the first guy to do it. So I wanted to celebrate these two, all these guys we have here, and continue the year and what we're growing. So thank you all. And I'm happy toway I've come this far in a row, I've come a longway in a row, I've come a longway in a row, I've come a longway in a row, We have us three in here. That's right. I wasn't there when I was wasn't listening to you guys, I wasn't listening to you guys, I listening to you guys, I wasn't I wasn't there when I wasn't Thank you. Congratulations to Mr. Henderson and the boys. Thank you all for being here. Okay. I don't believe we have any public comment tonight. No? Okay. So we are moving on to superintendent communications from Dr. Patel. Okay. Thank you everyone for being here tonight. We appreciate it. A few highlights that I just wanted to touch base on. The first one is we would like to invite everyone to our third installment of the Clayton Cares community speaker series. It will be held on Monday where we are going to have a celebration of black achievement night. It will be at the high school starting at 630. We're going to have students performing. We're going to be highlighting several students across the district and we will be recognizing and honoring two Clayton alum. And they will be sharing their personal journey and how the school district of Clayton has impacted their path. So I hope everyone can join us for this celebration. And I want to thank Dr. Poole for organizing this because this is our fourth annual one that we have in our district. So thank you. Hope to see everyone there. Second one, this is just a little bit of fun. It has been 100 days of school so far and these are just a few pictures of some of the events and how our kids were dressing up during this time. They dress up as 100 year olds. And I just wanted to share this because it's a good reminder of why we do what we do. And I also heard this morning we were in a conversation that some of these students even for the day changed their names to olden names. I don't know what that means. I'm not going to offend anyone by giving names out but we had to call them that name that day. So that's pretty impressive. But again, a little bit of fun but even though the 100 days have flown by our work continues the next few weeks and months. Important work. So speaking of moving forward we are continuing to focus on making sure we have open lines of communication with our community regarding Prop O. We want to be transparent. We want to offer opportunities for people to come and learn more about it, ask questions so they can make informed decisions on April 7. So we're hosting two coffees as of now. The first one will be next Thursday at the center of Clayton. Any community member can come in. We will be there to answer any questions, share information and again a chance to connect with our community. Also we are going to be hosting three more community tours at Glenridge Elementary all throughout March. We are going to be hosting three more tours at Glenridge and Dr. Murdoch has nicely, graciously offered to host these tours and she will be able to share the challenges that we face at this facility that's nearly a century old. So we have one on March 4, March 11, March 25 and again a chance for people to really understand the challenges that we face every single day. So I hope community members take advantage of this and come in and see firsthand what the facilities are like. And then we also understand that there are questions from staff and families as well. So we will be hosting these events that are listed above one at each building for staff members to come and learn more about Prop O for families to come in. And also these are open to community members as well. So I wanted to make that clear. So any community member in addition to the coffees can attend any one of these and we will be there with like ready to share any information that we have and answer questions. Again, we just want to make sure that we are providing ample opportunity for our community to come in, come and ask us questions so they can make informed decisions on April 7th. And then finally today we have two presentations. The first one, even though we may share the same information we did last time, but it will be from BSI and our design team. And really we're giving an updated report in terms of costs for each of the projects and also sharing with the community what the design process looks like because that impacts the costs. So we'll talk about that for a bit. And then the second presentation is really the teaching and learning department along with our building principals who wait all year for this meeting and are so excited to be here on how our students are performing. And each year I do want to make this clear because each year we have this assessment report but starting this year we changed it a little. So we've had to the first semester we focused on our local data and this tonight will be focusing on our state data. So that way we separated the two and with that I'm going to hand it off to Nina because Nina has been talking to our fifth graders and has some great things to share with us. So over the past two weeks I've had the opportunity to meet with fifth graders from all three elementary schools. Their excitement and enthusiasm were evident and it was truly a pleasure getting to know each and every student. I asked each group a similar set of questions which I'll share shortly but first I'd like to highlight one question I post specifically to Glenridge students. So the question I asked just then was which areas of your school facilities do you believe are most in need of improvement. Their responses included the current classroom layout creates too much separation between classes and offers very limited opportunities for collaboration between classes let alone between different grade levels. They talked about that there was some mold in the bathrooms in certain corners of the basement. They talked about how classrooms feel a little bit isolated especially fifth grade which is located in the lower left I think corner of the basement and they said a few of their classrooms lack a lot of natural light. And then they talked about how the floors and ceilings feel a little bit outdated and need and in need of renovation. This one was a big one and in fact every student felt the need to share with me approximately how many times they had slipped on these floors which was a little bit of a concerning but funny touch. And they were super excited about some possible renovations. And so now I'll talk about some of the key points I heard from the other questions I asked all three groups. Something asked them was what does your school do to make everyone feel included and is there anything that they don't do that you wish they did. Most students share that they genuinely felt like their school does everything it can to ensure that every student feels comfortable and at home with their classroom family which is a term I learned and thought was super duper fun. And they did share however several students expressed a desire for more opportunities to connect with peers and other classes as well as more time with their younger buddy grade. I think it kind of varied for all three elementary schools. I know that Merrimack met with like second graders I think Glenridge it was kindergartners but the overall consensus was that increased cross-class interactions could help new students adjust more easily and feel more welcomed quickly. And on the topic of warming new students I heard a story that truly warmed my heart and illustrated the many meaningful things happening beyond the view of teachers. Students in my captain group explained that whenever a new student joins a school the entire grade comes together at recess to play one large group game so the new student feels included. They shared that it doesn't matter whether someone usually plays basketball or prefers tag everyone joins in. So this is a super nice thing to hear and I thought really demonstrated just how many wonderful things our students are doing. And another important question I asked all three groups was how well do you feel like your school is preparing you for the elementary school to middle school transition because they were all fifth graders. The overall tone of our conversations about middle school were overwhelmingly positive and it's clear that why down can expect a highly energetic and enthusiastic incoming group. And many students share that they appreciate when their teachers begin preparing them for what might feel different next year. For example students at Merrimack mentioned that their teachers sometimes time how quickly they can transition between specials to help them build efficiency for next year. Students at captain share that their teachers have incorporated more group work to prepare them for the increased collaboration they'll experience next year. When discussing ways to further ease the transition students suggested inviting elective teachers from the middle school to the elementary schools to introduce their courses and allow students to explore potential options and providing more guidance around homework expectations and study strategies to help prepare for the increase of out of school work. Once again I was blown away by how well spoken and intelligent even our youngest learners are and I absolutely loved spending my afternoons with them. Thank you Nina. Great information and glad to hear from the Glenridge kids that what they think needs help in the building is what we all have realized needs help in the building so thank you. Okay it's time for our first of two presentations of the evening from John and the design teams. Thank you. Good evening. Our design teams are represented here tonight as well as our construction management team. We're going to update you on the progress. A big discussion tonight will be the estimated cost of the projects. Here we go. Okay, I think I'm going to kick us off. This is a schedule that should look familiar to you. It's been on the screen quite a few times. The red line just keeps moving to the right. So here we are February 19th and we are I think roughly seven weeks away from April 7th if I counted the weeks right on my calendar. So it's kind of it's approaching quickly. And so tonight we have so there's a lot of work that's been done over the past months starting back in June with building tours and going through workshops and so forth. All of which we've continually updated the board with and the community as well. Tonight we're going to do a little bit of a look ahead at what might happen after the bond issue but we're also going to share mostly just quick snippets of the projects this evening and spend some time focus time talking about where the numbers have landed for those. What's coming after what's it what's been done so far to the left side of the screen. We've completed schematic design on all the projects and schematic design is really figuring out where do the rooms go. There's portions of the buildings that are going to be demolished which portions are those and why sort of replanning the buildings looking at building elevations and massing and materials and so forth. The last bullet that you see down there is cost review which is those documents were turned over to BSI the construction manager and they prepared cost estimates and again we'll be talking about those this evening or they will after the bond election. If things go as as everybody wants them to go we will be launching into the last two design phases that we call design development and construction documents. The design development phase is mostly about layering on detail we have the basic scheme of what is going forward design development is layering on more design details so we're selecting specific finishes exterior materials which would exactly what brick are we looking at windows systems and the colors of those systems. All that information is important in terms of completing the design. Okay again that phase will end just like schematic design did with a cost review so there'll be a deliverable that will be handed off to BSI and they'll take that information. They'll probably do a little bit of comparison sake of you know what we see at SD and what we're seeing now and they'll be updating all of their numbers and so another estimate will be produced at that time. We'll make any adjustments we need to based on that in the construction document phase but the construction one of the other important things I should mention in the design development is we will have some rather intensive meetings with all of the building users so we'll sit and talk with grade level teachers will talk with our teachers will talk with PE teachers specifically you know and really across the board administrative folks to understand the nitty gritty details for every single space in the building so. Where's the technology going where is storage how much storage and so forth so all that gets detailed ultimately in the construction documents phase which is a little bit frankly more of us working on our own we've got all the design input that we need from you as a school district and we are. You know the doing the proverbial dot in the eyes and crossing the T's you know we're a roof intersects a wall what's that detail look like how are we flashing it what's the roof you know how do we keep the building warm safe and dry so it's the layering all the specific detailed information that's necessary. And and then creating what we call a specifications or a project manual that's a written document that accompanies all the drawings that goes out then to BSI again they will work with the bidding market their subcontractors the parts that out to all their subcontractors and then bits will be received so. Construction construction document phase is the last design phase it's certainly not the end of the project because it's really just launching into getting the documents and getting the projects into construction. The projects that are proposed in the as you know in the proposed bond funded projects are those that are on the screen so the renovation in addition to Glenridge the construction of the learning lab at the high school really geared toward those hands on experiences around engineering math and entrepreneurship and all the improvements at gay field that John will be talking about. The what's that schedule look like after the bond issue this is a snapshot of it I suspect you're going to see this more than more than just this evening it's you know after the after the seventh but you'll see over there in orange to the left or the design phases. This is both the design development and the construction documents phases for the all the projects the bond funded projects are at the top of the screen those that are budget funded are in the center section of the screen and those that are anticipated as future phases Merrimack and captain are at the at the bottom of the screen so you can get a sense of you know obviously it's necessary for the design phases to happen first the gap in between those is where the design phases are. The second phase is when bidding will be happening and then launching into construction so the longest construction phase that you see up there in the in the in the phase one bonded funded projects is Glenridge it's the most intensive project from just a sheer size standpoint so it's got the longest duration and then those the others are gauged towards the scopes of those projects. The the future bond funded projects as you see with a note on the bottom those are as has been talked about in prior meetings depended on the debt reduction and the assessed valuation of the district in terms of when the board elects to this board or future board elects to say we're going to go back out to the voters for those projects. So we're going to launch then into a quick description of the projects and then get to the cause. Okay we have Glenridge Elementary School here so why Glenridge this is established as a priority of the first phase of the on funded projects so looking back at the facilities long range facilities master plan we did a lot of assessments and also did a Hawkins Lillie school appraisal so up on the screen we have those results and what that included was a current couple members of our team and the building administrator walking around the facility and ranking many different areas and categories according to the appraisal process that includes just educational environment the systems of the building mechanical electrical plumbing safety security the site parking playgrounds those type of things so then they score those accordingly so then those results are up there you've got that middle table there on the right that have the overall scores of all the schools and then on the left side we have the breakdown of all the different categories so blue is a score of excellent green satisfactory yellow is borderline and red is poor and if you see Glenridge at the bottom left it does have more red poor items than any other facility so it is an older one of your oldest buildings in the district and a lot of its systems are coming to the end of its life so we have some examples on the next slide of some more context of those red poor items. So on the top left of a window AC unit hanging out of a classroom so is the HBAC systems meeting with the demand requirements of the space at certain times of the year another thing with the HBAC systems is the airflow in the basement addressing that we've got a couple photos there of the basement as well where there's signs of water infiltration also looking at the other photos there we have some ceiling tiles with some water damage another sign of water infiltration also warping ceiling tiles and then we have some ceiling tiles so humidity issues as well so looking at those finishes the HBAC systems the foundations those type of things so we're looking at getting those kids out of the basement I think Perkins and Welk can talk through those designs a little bit more. So this is what the possibility of design is for the interior of Glenridge so along with what Nina said in her survey of the fifth graders it's collaborative, it's open, the classrooms are all connected, the grade levels can be connected, it's purposefully and intentionally designed so we shared this with you last time. This is a current rendering and this is the what would be the backside of Glenridge and it's just showing it's very much in keeping with the same style architecturally as it is today so it's really just meant to be a natural extension. It's a renovation in addition to Glenridge. Okay Clayton High School. Here we have the Career Technical Education Edition this is an interior rendering of the STEM Learning Lab so a large open space with high ceiling gives you a flexible use for many different programs. We're currently showing the robotics field on the left there with workstations on the right and then just expose structural and give it a nice industrial tech look. Then here's the exterior rendering of the CTE Edition 10,000 square foot single edition overlooking at the corner of the STEM Learning Lab and the entrance to the edition and just tying in with the existing architecture matching the brick and then using some aluminum composite metal panels. The project at Gave Field will rectify a lot of the challenges you are having at that facility to date. It will now house locker rooms for female sports at Gave Field. It will accommodate the athletic equipment storage that you see being a problem, adding additional parking, larger locker rooms and concessions and toilets, basically creating a new space for women's sports. It will be a great place for your community to gather and celebrate. All right. So I'll talk a little bit about the schematic design update. So about a month ago when we last met we shared some early budget ranges for planning purposes which were based on other projects in the area with similarities to the proposed Clayton projects. Since then, as Steve mentioned, the design team has completed their next step of the design process which was schematic design. They produced a set of documents which consisted of some drawings and some narratives that describe the scope of work. Based on those documents we put together the first comprehensive cost model for the projects. These cost models are based on actual quantities where possible and unit price estimates that are specific to the Clayton projects. There's been many conversations and collaboration between BSI and the design team over the last few weeks. We've asked a lot of questions, discussed the anticipated design challenges with the projects. So we have a lot more design information now than what we had previously, but there's still a lot of unknowns, still months of design work to be completed and figuring out solutions to all those design challenges. So that work will continue in design development and construction documents. And just want to mention the schematic design estimates. These are still just estimates. They're snapshots in time of the projected cost at this point. The subcontractor bids have not been solicited yet for any of the projects, for any of the scopes. And the numbers will continue to be updated over the coming months during design. And then ultimately the construction costs won't be locked in until the projects are bid and their GMPs for the project, which is anticipated to be towards the end of this year in early, early 27. So this slide just kind of captures what we presented last month, which is the expected range was in the $110 to $135 million range. So that's the total program costs for all of the Phase 1 on funded projects. And then if you go to the next slide. So right now the good news is that the current estimates are tracking within that range and currently toward the lower end of that range. There's still variability in the numbers and they'll continue to evolve over over the coming months as the design process evolves. The numbers could go up higher than the one 14. They could go down. They could they could stay the same. But this is just a snapshot of where where they are right now. And then this pie chart is just to illustrate that the one hundred fourteen million dollar estimate is not just construction costs. It consists of soft costs, project contingencies and escalation. So it's total program. And then this is the breakdown by project. So Glenridge total program budget is around 74 million. Currently, the Clayton High School CTE addition 17 million and the gay field athletic complex around 23 million. OK, so for the district capital improvement, more of the budget funded projects, just starting with the Clayton High School, we have the performing arts center. So looking at those HBAC noise improvements at the band choir and orchestra, doing some light renovations to the auditorium, just seating replacement, carpet lighting and light refresh the restrooms and then incorporating a new school store at the main entrance of the high school. The work in Shaw Park, the district is currently working with the city to provide improvements to this field that will benefit both your girls softball team and the community as well. The work in AdSic would be completing that previous project by providing permanent masonry structures for the dugouts and press box. Then the work at Wydown will be replacing that beleaguered natural turf with a synthetic turf and also a walking, running track providing lots of flexibility and usability that you don't have right now. The fifth item is a bridge campus that we're working on. Currently, we've looked at a couple of locations. This is the one that's getting the most focus currently is on the Fontbonn campus. This is the Fontbonn campus location within the district. The shown there with a red circle. We would not only have the modular campus, we'd also make use of the Dunham Student Center, which is that for the gym and the cafeteria space. Those pictures on the right side reflect that space. This is how it would potentially lay out on the space. We're having some conversations this week about exactly where that would land, but you can see in the middle photo how a modular campus would lay out. Those are drawings from a modular company, and they've got some pictures on the right to show what they look like on the inside. On the left side picture, the highlighted area in red is that Dunham Center for the PE and cafeteria. The modular campus would be towards below that, or to the south of there in one of those parking areas. Fontbonn's actually talking about demolishing a couple of those buildings in the south, and that will expand the available space. So that's the current estimates for the budget funded projects, or 17 to 20 million dollars, and these would be financed through multiple years, where we were able to complete all these projects. So we're just going to briefly show you some renderings that you've already seen from Meramec. The front entry, again, accessibility to the front entry is shown here, bringing that entry so that it's just flat ground, and the front door can be where the front door should be at the front. And then the back is, again, very much keeping in that same architectural style. That's the addition that has very similar classroom components as Glenridge does. And Captain, this is a newer view of Captain since we've been doing more work on this since we last saw you. So this is an axonometric view. It's a 3D view from above, and this just shows you what that looks like moving Captain to the left on the site, and the current building is where you see that turf field and that brown rectangle in the parking, so that's just going to shift the building over where there is no building now. And that's what it could look like. Thank you. Any questions from the board here? I appreciate that presentation and especially appreciate the estimate coming down. So thank you for that. Okay, I'll open up the floor to anybody with any other comments or questions. I just have a comment piggybacking on that. The reason it's great to see that cost code come down is because it makes it realistically plausible to get to the next parts of this project sooner. And so we love to see that cost come down because it brings those things more into near focus, so appreciate that. I had a question about the construction timeline. Did it look like Glenridge was two full years or is that? We have blocked two full years out on that schedule there. We would still hope that construction would take 18 months or so, but the two years provides us margin not only for construction to get completed but for us to move in smoothly. Okay. Thank you for that. Any other questions or comments for anyone? Okay. Thanks as always for being here coming to town. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're free to ask for anything more. Yes. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Appreciate being here. Thanks so much. Yeah, appreciate you all. Yes, coming in from out of town. Thank you. And now we will have a presentation of the assessment report from Dr. Gargan ego and our school principals. Good evening. First I would like to introduce the team and I am amazed each and every day for what these people do with the children that are in their care and I think you're going to be really touched by the stories they're going to tell tonight. I'm touched by it and I'm really impressed with the work that they do each and every day. So start Dr. Fisher principal at Merrimack Dr. Knight principal at Captain Dr. Murdoch principal at the Glenridge Elementary School. Dr. Jordan principal at Whiteown Dr. Hogg director of assessment and PD you know me and then Dr. Kachewski principal at the high school and I'm proud to be a part of this team each and every day. So I'm going to start with our work continuing to be grounded in our profile of the graduate and our CSIP and the competencies of the profile of the graduate are what we work for each and every day with the children that are in our care. Tonight we're going to focus on goal two of our CSIP and we've intentionally highlighted educational growth because that has been our focus this entire year and Robin and I came to talk at the table in the fall we talked about the needs of the students and the need for a focus on growth and we continue to focus on that with all of the work that we're doing. So to keep us all grounded at the table Nisha alluded to this at the beginning we Robin and I came in the fall to focus on achievement and reading and math with local assessments at that time we shared with you the fact that our children are growing each and every day but they're not growing at the rate that we would want them to be growing at. And so that's continued to be our focus as we've been working this year. So tonight we're going to focus specifically on state data which feels to us like really old data but it is something that's important to to our work and in a way for us to calibrate some of our work. I think it's always important when we talk about these data to remind you and ourselves that these are one data point on one day. So it's one day that the children take the test but they are used they're pretty high stakes they're used for accreditation purposes. It's used to judge us. We're in the paper about these data so we think it's important to share with you. So tonight we're going to highlight achievement and growth data on those state assessments and try to explain some of the complexities behind those data which is hard even for all of us to interpret as educators who have been working with this for a long time. So I'm going to start with our overall performance over the past four years. So we have been in the sixth cycle of the Missouri School Improvement Program since 2022. You'll notice that our our overall district score has remained relatively flat a little bit above 94 percent except for the year 2023. And if you remember at that time we made a significant change to math. The state made a decision about up until that point. EOC's had been districts making decisions about best time to assess students. We at that point had our Algebra 1 standards spread across three courses and so we gave the assessment first of all we saw it as a high school assessment and not a middle school assessment and we gave it at the end of the first semester of Algebra 2. Since then we have realigned our curriculum moved all the Algebra 1 standards back into Algebra 1 and the state has made a requirement that we give that assessment at the end of the course holding the same name as the test. So therefore we now give the Algebra 1 EOC which we still consider a high school assessment but we give it to a population of eighth graders and those students who take it in eighth grade then have to take a different math EOC at the high school. So either geometry or Algebra 2 the bulk of them take Algebra 2 and then we have a group of freshmen who also take that. So we predicted we told you that we knew that that was going to happen. It happened and we predicted our theory of practice was that we would rebound and we have rebounded. So we feel pretty secure with those data pieces. So to ground you in our annual performance report it's really broken into two parts. Performance is 70% of the score continuous improvement is 30%. I'm actually going to treat these backwards because the 30% is just quick and easy kinds of things to talk about and then we'll dig into the performance part. So the 30% of continuous improvement the response to standards is a report that I write to the state every couple of years which tells our story. So it's really the part of M-SIPS 6 that they allowed us to do was to give backup to the data to say what are we working on? What are we focusing on? And to really expand on our CSIP. Within that also are some compliance things related to kindergarten entry assessment. So we have to assess at least 95% of our students. We assess 100%. Individual career and academic planning. We have to give that to 95% of our students. We do 100%. Attendance is the percentage of students attending school at least 85% of the time. So that is a difference from previous years. It used to be 90% of your students being in attendance 90% of the time. The state has changed that threshold. And then the other compliance pieces are that we do an annual audit that's submitted to the DESI that we have timely submission of core data files and that our secretary of the board report about district finances be submitted. So those are all compliance pieces. There is one the response to standards that I write includes information from panorama data. Those data are not included in this report because we're focused on goal two of the CSIP. They're focused. We talk about those in goal one and goal three when we give those updates to the to the board. So then the 70% left of M-SIPS 6 is determined by performance. So performance includes graduation rate. So in order to get full credit for that, we have to graduate at least 90% of our 92% of our students. Ours is a much higher rate. It's also about successful completion of a CT SAT AP project lead the way kinds of assessments, dual credit, dual enrollment kinds of things. So the percentage of our graduating class that meets those standards. So we've consistently received all of our points in those areas. So then that brings us to the map grade level assessment and the end of course exams. Again, I remind us that these are one data point on one day. But as we unpack these data, I think there's things for us to celebrate and there's places for us to grow. So districts earn 100. Our district has earned 100% of points possible for the total population and the student group in all content areas for achievement. Both for our total population in our student group. A reminder that our student group includes black and Hispanic students, students who qualify for federal for the federal lunch program, students who speak English as another language or students who receive special education services. So that's the population that falls into that. On average, our student achievement scores are strong for perspective, an MPI score. So that next to last column of 400 is equivalent to proficient and 500 is equivalent to advanced. This has been consistent over the years with our greatest increases in math and most recently social studies. We aim for no difference between the scores of our total population and our student group. And we've worked hard to make strides in this area over the years. And we're proud of our progress. While our student group average scores are strong, when we disaggregate these data by identity groups or by participation in programs, we see asynchronous results. A particular area of focus for us will continue to be our black students. While their average scores this year are within the target range delineated by the state and ELA math and social studies, there continues to be a discrepancy between those scores and our total population. So we know that it continues to be a place for us to work. OK, so growth. This is where it gets complex. So growth is the other area where a district receives a large percentage of their APR points. It's determined using the Missouri growth model, which is established by statisticians at Mizzou. And it really has two parts. So part one for grade level assessments, so grades three through eight, and then the second part, a comparison between the current year score or like little Malina's current year score and a predicted score determined by a previous year's assessment. This assumes that there is a previous year's score. If not, the student is not counted in the estimation. And so then the residuals, so the difference between those scores in the tested year and the predicted score, if it's positive, the student performed better than expected. If it's zero, it's what was expected. And if it's a negative residual, it indicates that the student didn't perform as well as expected. These residuals are then averaged for the site, so the school and the district for the EOC. The previous year's score is not actually the previous year. So the previous year's score is the eighth grade assessment. And so when you think about like Algebra one, we generally give a ninth grade biology. We give in 11th grade government. We give generally an 11th grade. The previous year's score is from several years prior. And so and it does not have to necessarily be in the same content area. So obviously social studies when you're thinking about growth, there isn't a previous year. And so they take all of their previous year's scores to determine a predicted score. So then part two of the growth model is that growth points are assigned to a district or a school in a continuous manner, meaning that all the average growth scores are compared across the state and those are divided into quartiles and points are assigned. So where will you see 50 percent of points earned here for ELA for all of our students? That does not mean that 50 percent of our students made growth. It's actually a much larger number. It means that our district's average growth falls within that quartile, the third quartile among all state schools, among all schools in the state or districts in the state. Sorry. OK, so for the purpose of this report, instead of replicating tables in the actual written report, we thought it might be interesting to give you a perspective on how achievement and growth match up at the different levels for the total population and the student group, especially as growth has been our system system wide focus this year after receiving these data. So just a reminder. So when I go into these charts, so to sort of orient you to these charts, when we consider achievement, we're using a map performance index. The range that we're aiming for is above 400, which is the equivalent of proficient. And for growth, we're aiming for at least zero that they met the predicted growth. So this is the elementary cohort altogether. We see that the average achievement score, so the X axis is squarely within the proficient range for all three subject areas, and we see that the growth, the Y axis, is at or above the predicted line for all three content areas. For the middle school, the average achievement score for our total population is squarely within the proficient range for all three subjects, but the growth is below the line in all three areas. And then at the high school, both the average achievement and the average growth are in the quadrant that we're hoping for. And I see this as a direct consequence of the work that the teams did last year to understand better these data and to make some instructional decisions to better teach the standards, which Dan really referenced in his presentation last year. So then when we look at our student groups for the student group, we see a different story. While average achievement in science and ELA are within the range that we're aiming for, math is below. Additionally, math and ELA average growth for the student group was below the expected growth. For the middle school, we see a similar picture with content areas transposed. Science and ELA are the lowest average achievement and growth, and math is right on the cusp of both achievement and growth. And then finally, CHS math is a celebration while we still see areas of growth for our student groups in the achievement and growth in science, ELA and government. And it's important to note that as a district, we're aiming for the average achievement for our student group to mirror that of our total population. But from an APR perspective, the threshold of 100 percent of the allocated points is lower than 400. It's generally in the three sixty five to three eighty range. So from the state's perspective, our achievement for our student group is falling within that range of 100 percent of the points. So now I'm going to hand it over to Robin to talk about what our theory of practice is to continue to grow and make improvements. Good evening. Thanks for having us. So last year at this time, I sat at this table, I waxed philosophical about hexagons and we talked about how they show up everywhere in nature. Right. They're in honeycombs, they're in DNA, they're in hydrogen molecules, they're in snowflakes. You knew I could get to read on that one. So we love hexagons. Right. But there was a reason there was a reason for that. So we're going to talk about the hexagons and the balance of the two elements because they represent that balance and that harmony and because they are the thing that shows our alignment. And so we are going to start there again this year. So we brought to you again our hexagons because for the last two years we have consistently gone back to this hexagonal graphic and everything we do. So we brought it into our new teacher training. We brought it into our career review training. We bring it into our coordinators council meetings. We bring it into our PDC conversations. We have taken everything and looked at these four areas and thought about how do we continue to move our work forward based on these areas? So we're going to ground ourselves again in that and think again about these four areas. Number one as a whole system but then also we're going to take each one apart and talk about how each one of those areas. What are we doing as a system to respond to some of the data that you just saw? So we start with our strong collaborative teams. The first component of the framework is those strong collaborative teams because it is the teams in our building. That's where the magic happens. Right. Those are the places where they're talking about teaching and learning. That's the place where the results are kind of coming from. And so those teams are using edu climbers we've been talking about for a couple of years as a data visualization tool. And the reason they do that is so that we can tell an entire story about our students. And this year as Elena just talked about we have been on a crusade. So we have really been trying to help people to see how they can use edu climber to dig deeper and to really look at student growth because that has been our focus since we sat at this table with you in October. Really thinking about growth. And so one of the tools that we have been using is a tool called Students 3D where you can actually this is in the mode where you can't actually see the students faces. But whenever you can you can see the actual children's faces alongside the scores because that's the focus right. We're here to talk about our learners and we're here to think about the data that goes along with our learners. So we've really been leaning into that tool and then also showing teams how to pull data walls and edu climber and add growth data to those data walls so that they can look at the performance of their students and then also look right alongside at the growth of their students. So we have been actively working to move that growth forward by bringing an awareness to the tools that we can use in edu climber in order to have that conversation specifically in our PLC's. And then sitting side by side with our strong collaborative teams is our foundational framework for instruction. So it's that tier one assured experience. That's where our teaching and learning work is really really grounded. So before we can really start to talk about interventions or what we're doing for those students who maybe aren't making some of that growth we really have to think about what are the things that all of our students are getting right. And so when we look up there the guaranteed and viable curriculum the equitable practices the effective pedagogy the responsive assessment and a positive learning environment. And so we've made a lot of moves in this area this year as well. One of those is that we have really started to focus on clarity and dig deeper into our proficiency scales. So we started this year with all of our elementary teachers getting some training in August on the use of their proficiency scales and the reason for proficiency scales that it brings clarity around what all of our students should know and what all of our students should be able to do. So now K5 we have proficiency scales for all of our report card indicators and as a result now our families our students our teachers have a lot more clarity around what our students should know and be able to do. Again you mix that with the teams really having clarity around which students are growing which students aren't and we're really able to move that work forward. Also our coordinators council has been a huge part of this work so they have done site visits to other districts that are using proficiency scales and really looking at competency based learning and clarity. They've done book studies. We have some coordinators who have really dug in. They're looking at rubrics together. They're looking at scoring practices together really doing the work to think about how are we assessing our students and how do we know where our students are. So that's been a big part of our foundational framework for instruction. And then the third component of our framework is the continuum of tiered support. So here's where we really start to dig into what students need to receive help and at what time and at what level of intensity and we've had a lot of conversations about that this year. How do you increase the intensity and decrease the intensity based on what our students might specifically need. And so our focus primarily this year has been on tier two interventions. That's the support that occurs within the classroom before students require more intensive instruction from a specialist. And we sometimes talk about what needs to be done in order to support our students but we don't always put the professional learning behind it. And so one of the things that I am very excited about is that this year we were really doing that. We were putting the professional learning behind what skills do we need to provide for our staff in order to be able to do the interventions that are necessary. So we tried a new PD structure called an innovation cycle and we had a tier two innovation cycle where teachers were receiving specific learning and specific coaching directly in the classroom about how to do tier two interventions. We also were piloting our K5 tier two literacy interventions in edge climbers. So again looking back at that data those sit alongside our K8 tier three interventions and we have also been doing some intervention professional learning with our new teachers and our career review teachers. This is messy work though like at a systemic level we are having really hard conversations about what intervention even means. That's not an easy conversation for anyone to have but we're doing it like we are bringing that conversation together and people sometimes disagree on those things but we're bringing some awareness to what intervention looks like and really providing the tools to be able to have those conversations. And then finally I don't have favorite hexagons but honestly I think this one might be my favorite if I were to choose. So the final component of our framework is the systems and structures. This is what ensures that our work is consistent and sustainable so that it's going to stay no matter who or what document or whatever is happening. Right. It's what systems and structures can we put into place to make sure that our work is moving forward. And one of the things that I'm really excited about is our creative use of another system our kick up professional learning system. So we use that currently whenever we think about our professional learning data and whenever we have a PD day we've started to really dig in and use it as an MTSS support. So we have two tools in kick up that some of our buildings have been using and that we're really trying to start using on a systemic and district level. One is an individual reflection tool for our PLC's. So we have a strategy implementation guide for our MTSS work. It helps teams to see where are we where our PLC's or intervention and where do we need to go. They actually self reflect and score themselves so you can kind of see it as a building and then also see it as a district. And then our second tool we have combined with student services with the professional development committee and we have created one district wide walkthrough tool. So it's going to be a unified tool where we won't be looking separately at equity data and academic data and social emotional data. When we walk into classrooms we're seeing all of that data together right. It's no longer siloed and so we have been working all year to bring that all together so that no matter who is walking into a classroom and putting data about a classroom into our system. It's all going into the same system so that we can have a systemic response. And so that's another tool that we're really excited to roll out next year that we've been working on this year and all of those things that I just talked about all of our structures and our systems and the ways we're working with our teams and the ways that we're doing professional learning. Are all the ways that we're trying to bring some balance and alignment to the MTSS work that we're doing. All right. So thank you Robin for getting that started. I think I want to kind of pick up off some of what Robin mentioned. So I know some of my teammates here are going to be talking about some additional tears. I want to start with that tier one. And before I kind of go into some of our work I at the very bottom of my slide there says no our learners will and respond to their needs. I'll say Dr. Garnego says a lot of great things but I will say this is probably my favorite thing that she says and repeats and I steal it and repeat it often as well. I think this is essentially when you go back to Robin's hexagon that's right there at the top in the center. That idea of do we know our kids and are we responding to their needs. So when you think about that and you think about that first initial place and we think about this the the foundational framework for our instruction and that hexagon and then also our strong collaborative teams. That's kind of that essential part of our tier one. So the first thing is what do we know about our students? What do we know about who they are? Where they're coming in? That's that database decision making. So the first thing we have to do is get to know them both as academic and students but also as little people so that when our building what that looks like is universal screenings. This is fairly consistent across the district. You're looking at things where we're doing NW a at the beginning of the year. We might be doing some a reading all the way down to kindergartners. We're assessing them when they come in. We also are having teachers reading individually with kids. We're getting to know them. They're doing lots of pre testing lots of things like that. The very beginning of the year to understand those things. And then I'll say one thing that we started doing a few years ago was having conversations around case. We know who they are when we listen to them read. But are we actually taking the time to stop and listen to our kids? So for the last couple of years our librarian has taken on this initiative where she does is she offers a time to every class across the building at the beginning of the year where she will take their kids and they can send. She gives them her office where the teachers set up and meet one on one individually with their kids just to get to know their kids. For anything other than just knowing who their child is as a human being and getting to know a little bit more information and does a student interview with them. And I said in the conversation really was about OK, so we take the time to know who they are as readers and mathematicians. But do we know who they are as humans and when they walk in and what are the things are bringing in with them and how are we starting to make those connections right off the bat? So the first thing we have to know is what what do our students bring with them? So then we can talk about how are we going to respond to their needs? Now some of those needs are based on what is in our guaranteed and viable curriculum. The things that we have to make sure every kid gets that sandbox is designed for us and we have to make sure we know what that is. And that's that first CLT in our buildings you might call them PLC questions of what we want all students to know, understand and be able to do. And then we start to have conversations around that. The next thing that is driving that instruction was common formative assessments. As we're building through that, how are we actually looking at knowing are we getting the data? Are they making the learning in small increments that we need them to make? And if not, what is our lesson the next day need to look like? A recent example of that is we had some recent phonics data where our reading team, our reading team of the reading specialists, our reading, our reading coach came in and met with each of the teams and went through some recent some recent data and said, is this a tier one initial instruction issue? Do we have a lot of students that didn't get this when we need it or is this something that we can use an intervention, a tier two or something else to address? And as we looked at it, we realized there might be some things we need to redo tier one wise, which means we go back and teach it more whole group and thinking about what does that look like? And so that's driven by the data that we're given from our students. And so that is what do we know about our kids? What are they telling us? And then how do we make those adjustments? How that's done is through those CLT. So that's that collaborative part where everybody is working together. I will. The other thing I mentioned in this is over the last few years is that we've had a good deal of new staff. We've had staff members that have retired. We've been we've been bringing them in and part of what we have to do is when we're doing this is like making sure that there's a common understanding of what are we trying to teach and then having conversations around how we can actually teach it. So as we incorporate them or meeting in grade level teams, I will say we meet at least once a week. Most of our teams meet almost every day. They're meeting and collaborating and talking. And that's whether they're with a coach, whether they're with myself or our counselor meets with them, our instructional coordinator meets with them and they're having conversations about kids in a variety of ways. But they are really driving that through that data. But then part of that conversation is not just what do we know, but how are we actually going to instruct this? And that's where some of those structured autonomy comes in. Like I mentioned earlier, we do have a defined sandbox. That guaranteed and viable curriculum. We have to teach these things, but every teacher is also an individual and we have to appreciate that what they bring is unique to them. And if we're asking them to, we don't ask them to leave that the door either just in the way we wouldn't want our students. So they're going to approach that a little bit differently. So they do have some autonomy in how they're going to do it. But then we use that data to decide is it working or is it not working? And then if it's not working for a student, we want to think about what we can do to address that. What kind of interventions can we put in place? A lot of work around tier two. Like I said, I know some of these other are going to talk about some of those things a little bit more in depth. But at the end of the day, it's really it all is about how well do we know our learners and what are we doing to respond to their needs? Good evening. I want to talk a little bit about our tier one work at the high school. But if you'll remember, if you think back to two years ago, I think we were talking about concerns about science scores and what we talked about there was we were really we were really dedicating time to going back and looking at our curriculum and looking at those power standards, those priority standards within the state curriculum framework and seeing how they line up. And what we found was our theory of practice at the time was that that by just making some small adjustments, we could get some real gains. And last year we made some significant gains in that regard. And then one of the so what we did is we replicated that in all disciplines this past year. And one of the things that we spent a lot of time doing in our PLC groups is really unpacking the state standards and looking at how that aligns with our curriculum and looking at what those priority standards are and how those align and fit into the work that we're already doing in our in our building. And we feel like that had a large impact on some of the growth and the improvement that we saw this year as well. And what I think is really great about the work that we're doing this year is that we really kind of had this mental model of a rising tide lifts all boats. And we wanted to go back to make sure that we were having assured assured experiences in all of our classes that were aligned with the curriculum frameworks that were aligned with the state curriculum frameworks and that we have that we're implementing universal practices that are good for all kids across all all courses. And so we really spent a lot of time on tier one practices of best practices for kids universally and really spent a lot of time in our professional development on that. And then one of the things that we we did is Robin mentioned is the the district developed walkthrough tool and we have we have found it super useful and we were an early adopter in that regard and have been using it actually since since late first semester. And we've dedicated time in our weekly admin team meetings. We the entire admin team gets together once a week and we've we've taken a portion or sometimes all of that time to do walkthroughs using that tool and we use that tool to identify you know the practices that we're seeing in the classroom. And we are also using it to identify the practices that we're not seeing on a regular basis in the classroom. And as part of those walkthroughs we go in pairs and we we use the walkthrough instrument and what we'll do is we'll leave a note for the teacher that usually is affirming in some way of something that we saw that we thought is great to practice that they should continue. We log all of our observations at the end of the observation period in the kicker or using the kick up tools so that we can house all of that data in the same place. And so then as we've done this week over week we start to see trends and so one of the things that we're doing is using that data to then determine our professional development direction and where we need to focus our professional development efforts moving forward. The other thing that that as Robin said is that but that that with that walkthrough instrument being pretty comprehensive it also gives us a pretty good gauge on how we're doing with our SEO SEL practices also how we're doing with our equity practices and those culturally responsive practices that are going on or not actually in our classroom. And I will say like one specific connection so that one of the things that we have noticed actually in already in using the tool is that we we do do a good job with some formative assessment but we we don't necessarily maximize using the assessment to drive instruction in the moment. Now some of it could be part of the tool because we're it's just a snapshot for the period of time that we're there but but that's one of the areas that we've we've are really focusing on moving forward in our November PD day. We we Tony rival from Adlai Stevenson High School who's kind of the resident expert there and a lot of work around their assessment work and working on the idea of making sure that kids have maximum opportunities for practice before they're expected to perform kind of the practice before the game model. But we're having a lot of conversations around that in our work and that came directly out of some of these observations that we've made during our walkthroughs and our tier one practices of tier one practices. Hi so I'm going to talk you through our tier two system that we're using at captain this year. So obviously this is my first year but I know that they have been working over the past three years to really build up their tier two interventions. So our goal with this is just that system that ensures every learner receives that timely targeted support. So we are using screeners to identify our students that need more from that tier one instruction. So during that we are trying to identify those students and then launch those interventions right away within that same screening window so that our students get what they need in a timely manner. We're structuring them in eight week cycles within it is we can progress monitor the students so that each week we have a pulse on kind of where they're at and when we need to pivot. One thing that we worked really hard on and our teachers are absolute rock stars with this because it is one more thing on their plate when they have a lot of students already and those needs that they're trying to meet. So we're trying to make sure that we're not just trying to get rid of those students that are in tier one but that the classroom teacher who is the expert is delivering those tier two interventions instead of other individuals like our TAs and things like that. So that the teachers who are really resourceful and trained in those areas are delivering those interventions for our students. And then another thing that is part of it is that if our students are in tier three when they are released from that tier three instead of just putting them back into tier one and really getting rid of those supports we're transitioning them to a tier two so that we aren't just releasing them and hoping for the best. It's a process. It's a gradual process where we're continuing to monitor and make sure they're still in a good place. And then within that we're having weekly conversations like Patrick mentioned during PLC meetings and so we're talking our teachers through our tier two interventions that they're doing and we're doing on the site in the moment PD for our teachers. One thing we're also doing this year is walk throughs in math and ELA so our teachers are getting to observe their colleagues in the same grade level. They're getting to do some vertical alignment by seeing the grade level before, the grade level after so they really know where our students are coming from and where they're headed to make sure that they're prepared and know where they're going. Some celebrations. We're really excited that most of our students are meeting their goals within one to two cycles of those tier two interventions. We're using grade like collaboration so for example instead of just me as the classroom teacher being in charge of my interventions my teammate might be delivering those interventions during their science block so we're really using all hands on deck for this as well. The teachers are really taking ownership of these interventions like I mentioned. They know their students best and they're able to speak on them and so we're really trying to equip the teachers to have all the resources they need to have those interventions. They are flexible, student centered and then we are because of the interventions we're putting in place early we're noticing that our tier three caseloads are decreasing and so they're getting more one on one support from the teachers and then the result of that is that we just get fast response to student needs. Obviously there's always still more work to do and room to grow so the main thing that we're really working on is making sure that we have tier two interventions and that we're getting to do that. So tier two interventions for any area that is a need is a priority standard that we're providing our teachers with the resources that they need and the support and relying on all of the experts that we have in our buildings to help us and deliver those and just continue to see the growth from all of our students. Thank you. All right. I think I prepared too much for today. All right. So I'm talking about tier three. So tier three. So my teammates talk about tier one and tier two. So if you think about tier one that's our universal what all students receive and usually after tier one instruction you have about 80 percent is what research says that actually is able to master that concept the first time and then you might have 15 percent of that hundred percent that need a little bit more help so they can move on to tier one. So that's what we're doing. So we're moving to that tier two intervention and then you have ideally maybe five percent zero to five percent students who need that more intensive targeted support which we call tier three. And so new at Glenridge this year is our site intervention team which we call the city. So the city team this team is a combination of experts from the building. So for my first two years as principal we would meet weekly sometimes bi-weekly and we would just talk about the students that they were servicing for tier three and it just felt like we were meeting to meet and just talk it with no action and no purpose. And so that summer before the third year I'm like we need a purpose and we need somewhere to go. We need to talk about tier three. We did our T.I. training. We went out and did the training and taken action chapter eight talks about developing a site intervention team. And so last year instead of developing the site of adventure team and just going full throttle we took the entire year to learn. So we slowed down to go fast. We were a branch of a branch of a branch of a branch of a branch of a branch of a branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch branch we have representative from all areas in the school. After that, we decided, like, what is our purpose? When we're presenting this to the school, what is our purpose? And so our purpose is to provide equitable targeted support for students facing significant challenges, to collaborate as a team to remove those barriers to success, and to ensure that all students have an opportunity to thrive academically, social, emotionally, and behaviorally. So this is our first year doing it. Of course, we hit some rocks in the road, and we had to refine it. And so now, after refining our process, this is how we build our strong foundation. So we had a retreat, backed up a little bit, talked about how it went first semester. And then what we learned is that we needed to make sure that each grade level had a representative that they would be able to talk to from our SIT team. So anytime they're having struggles with students, they have a rep from the SIT team that they can go and consult with. SIT members monitor their PLC agendas for student data trends. So we're catching students early. And then if we have students who are not responding to the tier two or tier one interventions, then that SIT team member is sitting alongside the teacher to fill out the referral form. And when they fill out the referral form, as a SIT team, we all get it. We review it. We meet. We identify a desired outcome. So the teacher might identify a lot of different outcomes, and we try to narrow it down for the teacher. We review everything that's already tried. We go to Educlimber, look at all the student data. We conduct observations if needed. We gather additional academic data from specialists, previous teachers that had the student. And then we have a list of supports that potentially the teacher can initiate for interventions. Based on that, we then set up a meeting. So within two weeks, we have a meeting with the teacher. And it has all 12 experts around the table, as you see in the top right-hand corner. All experts are around the table and the referring teacher. All of this is kept in Educlimber, so it follows the student. So we clarify the concern with the teacher to make sure we understand. We share strategies. And then we create a plan with the teacher. And then in that plan, we don't put it all on the teacher, because we have all these experts around the room. So the teacher might have a role. The reading specialist might have a role. The counselor might have a role. We decide the frequency and duration, and then we set a meeting for to check in right away. The outcome of every SIT support meeting is clear action steps, a data collection plan, and then we schedule the meeting. If the student is responding positively to it, we continue the interventions. We just don't throw them back. So if they are from tier three, they might go to tier two. We do ongoing monitoring. And then the SIT representative for their grade level will email the teacher to see how it's going to do check-ins. If the student is not responding to the interventions, and then that's when our care team kicks in. Care team is experts, again, around the table, in addition to the parents, because they know their students well. Sometimes with the care team, we get to the fact where we might have to do a 504, an IEP, we talk about therapy, all those different things come into play. As a result of us having the SIT intervention team, we have small group instruction that happens from different grade level teachers during their science time. We have peer buddies. So we have fifth graders that are assigned, maybe a younger learner, to do some SEO work with, and then we also have teachers feeling more supported. And then we have increased teacher collaboration because of this. We use evidence-based strategies. We do collaborative problem solving. We have stronger connections between our PLCs and our specialists. And then students are starting to meet their growth targets because of this. Here we go. All right. So what I have up here, and what I've put together for this evening, is my hope is that it illustrates the heart of the work that we're doing at YDOWN around MTSS, as you see a unified system of where we're going and what we're doing as students go between the different tiers and what we're doing as a building. This is a cycle for continuous improvement with the growth for all learners. I will tell you that this work started this summer with tier one, when we're really talking about growth, even before the 2025 data came in. This was a conversation that we knew we needed to have. And so we started this summer by meeting with our department chairs, the coordinators, Robin and others who came together to say, what is the data and where do we need to go? So I'll start with science for tier one. If you ever want to dig into data, sit with two scientists, and they will really get to the heart of things. And what was great about that meeting was, and I attribute this hard work to them, is before we got there, they had really dug into the questions. And over the years that they looked at the data, they indicated that we have kind of hit and missed on different standards, but had done pretty well. But what we were really missing out was the constructed response questions. And we call them claim evidence and reasoning questions. And if you looked at that consistently across the board, our students were not scoring high there. They were doing fine on the selected response. In fact, they were doing pretty well, but we weren't really hitting those marks. So the science group took that lead, and they said, okay, we're gonna really address this. So they came together as a team, they developed checklists to use for kids, they developed scaffolds, they're using it as their educator plans for growth across the board, really diving into that work of what we need to do. So that's a really good example of a tier one. Every student is looking for that because every student we want to grow. Not just different groups of students, but every student across the board needs to grow when it comes to that. We also took that CER and that common language out and tried to look and see what is it doing in social studies? How does that look in a social studies class? How does that look in other different classes? Because as we know, as we use common language across the building, it's easier for kids to know and understand how to do it. And they've even started on their own, using checklists across the curriculum and different things as they work together in their teams, which is great. The other area that we knew that we needed to address was literacy. Our ELA scores have not been where they needed to be over the last couple of years, and so we knew we had to come together with that. And actually in, I guess, February of the previous year, we started a literacy redesign where we really looked at what was happening in fifth grade, what was happening in ninth grade, and our reading and writing at the same rigor and hitting those guide points across the board. So the teachers all worked independently. We looked to see how many, about how many books kids should be reading, about how many written essays should be happening, and really trying to increase that as we went across those pieces. But we also know that reading does not just need to happen in literacy. There's no way we can get done what we need to get done if it's just in literacy. So we took on reading as a full building-wide goal, and as Dr. Patel can tell you, I wanted just to have reading as my goal for my school improvement plan. And I was about there until about September, and she called me and said, no, you need to have a math goal too. So I went back to my math department, we got a math goal kickin' and we were rollin' with that too. But it just shows that we really wanted to focus on reading across the building. How are we dealing with nonfiction and social studies? How are we looking at vocabulary and science? How are we doing all these different pieces? Because when you come to take the tests and the different tests, they're not just looking at literature. They're looking at all these different pieces. And so we were leaving a whole bunch of information and learning on the table. We also just looked at reading during pack time. We started off with how many kids were just reading during pack time and dedicating reading for individual reading and all those different pieces that we went through. And also just a specific framework on nonfiction reading. Those are just kinda some things that got a little bit left off in literacy. So we tried to bulk it up in literacy and spread it across the board for our elective classes for everything. Part of the work we did on tier one this year with our department chairs is that we all met to talk about what does MTSS mean across the building? What does it look like in health class? What are the reading strategies that you can do in all the different classes when you're reading an article in speech and debate? What are the ways that we can approach this reading curriculum? Because we know that it goes across the piece. And then we also looked at just generally edgy climber on those proficiency scales. So in January we stopped and said, okay, now we have two benchmarks. Who's growing, who's not growing, what do we need to do? And looking at those kids' faces with their teachers, looking at them to say, okay, we're in January, we still have half of a year, where do we need to go? So really taking what was going on at the district and trying to coordinate it for where we needed to go. Then you move on to tier two. And tier two at the secondary level is incredibly hard. I think Dan would probably agree that it's just not something that most secondary teachers are trained in, that it's not something that they're used to. And so to say, okay, go do a tier two intervention, there has to be a lot of professional learning around that. So we partnered with the innovation cycles. I asked each of my departments to send a representative to be a lead teacher. And they went through that innovation cycles. I also tried to go through the innovation cycles very unsuccessfully. You did great. But where we actually went in and tried some tier two options with the specific, the coordinators that helped us and the partnership was just really great. And it was good for me to experience how hard that is, the difference between differentiation and actually tier two. And it comes down to what Malena has said over and over again is, do you know your students well and what they can do? And if you don't, you're never gonna get there through tier two. So we started that capacity building around all of the tier two interventions. We're also very lucky that we have what we call a learning center and we have that space for our teachers to teach learning center. So that allowed the space within the day to not only have it happen within the classrooms but also in this learning center space. So we restructured literacy this year where our literacy teachers worked with our reading specialists to provide, I think what Erin was talking about, like sort of that step down. So you're done with reading in the reading specialist classroom but before we completely release you, we're gonna spend some time doing application work with those same reading skills in a tier two specialized classroom. And so really again, looking at what we're doing and again, working with our teachers to know how to teach decoding fluency and some pieces of that, which a lot of secondary teachers may not be as familiar with. And then we put into that the specific data driven followup. So we meet the literacy and reading specialists meet quarterly together to talk about the specific kids in tier two. How's it going? Where are we going? How can we push together to support these students? We even had some former reading specialists, teachers come back and help work with tier two interventions with those literacy teachers and some professional learning. Because sometimes we assume teachers know what they need to do and sometimes they don't know. And so it's like, especially when it comes to teaching of reading and the complexity of that, it's so important that we provide the support that we need to because we have amazing teachers. It's just getting to be make sure that they know and feel confident in their own skills. Lastly, sorry, I was talking very fast. Tier three, the add intensive intervention. So we, and you saw from the scores, our math, we did great with our math work last. We talked about that, it came to develop in the map scores as well. So we modeled our literacy intervention in the same way. Using not only a specialist to teach and work with those high intensity students, but also working with our literacy teachers to work with those tier two and replicate that model of how we're gonna do it. We also are expanding Wilson and SIPs and looking creatively at our schedules so that if Wilson needs to be given every day for 40 minutes, how do we actually give that to a child every day for 40 minutes in a secondary schedule, which can be quite difficult. And there's some differences and balances with it, but we've tried to make it work this year and hopefully we'll see some good returns from that. And then accountability. I know that we've been asked this before by different people, but why are we using EduClimber? Well, we're really using EduClimber right now. And so right now we're really trying to track that. And as we go into transition. I'm proud, Cam, I'm proud to share. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. So this year we have tracked 198 interventions in EduClimber up to this point, which is wonderful. And that we're able to actually click and see which students are making progress, which students are on track, which students we need some different kinds of intervention on. And like I said, we're about to transition the fifth graders in, so now we're able to, and even moving the eighth graders on to Dan, we're having conversations today about what is the needs for reading at the high school. And we're able to specifically look at, here's the programs, here's where they're scoring. It's all at our fingertips. So we're getting better and better and better at using that data to do what we need to do. And then the last thing that we're just starting, but I'm really excited about is our tier three specialists at the secondary level. So like reading specialists, math specialists, social worker are all gonna come together around a PLC around the students that they're working with. Because oftentimes those are the same students that are dealing with a lot of different things besides their academics. And we don't have a structured way for them to meet, so we're trying to build that in as we move forward this semester. Because that group will be able to share sort of what's working, what's not working, and where we need to go. So all of this to say, the reason why the other part up there that was really been a focus for us this year is that this is not siloed work, it's all together, but really it's based around that honest and vulnerable conversations. At YDOWN, we've talked about this a lot this year, that we have to really start confronting those brutal facts of where we are and where we need to grow. And we have to be able to do that by really addressing the reality in front of us, while also saying that if we have faith, if we do this right, we will see improvement. And I know that's the Jim Collins good to great quote, but I really do believe it. And so we've invited Tabari Coleman in to work with us on several different professional learning days to really teach us how to have those vulnerable conversations around discipline, around race and ethnicity, and all different things we do around academics. When you're working with the PLC with people, like what are some things we can learn and what are the elephants in the room that we need to address? So we're hoping that through all of these pieces, that when we sit here again next year, we'll see some of those movements in growth for all of our learners, not just our students, but our teachers as well. So I know this is a long presentation that we give every year, but I think it replicates what I was talking about with the continuous improvement part of the M-SIP 6. It's the story behind the work. And I think you can see the passion that these educational leaders have in working with the children that are in their care each and every day. So what questions do you have for us? Thank you. I just want to respond to, yes, it's a long meeting every year, but I think we all appreciate hearing from each of you because just hearing about the data isn't really helpful without understanding the context, like what you're doing with the data. So thank you all for being here and making a long day and a late night to do that with us. But I will open it up to the board for questions on any of that. I think everybody probably has some questions. Who would like to start? Huh? Okay, sure. I'll start with Ben. All right. Good evening. Thank you all. That was a lot of great information. And I guess one of the things that came to mind was something that Dr. Knight said around teacher, kind of their load, which I, you know, is significant. So how, maybe I could ask a question, anyone can respond. How do we ensure that we kind of have that right balance of instructional time, all these other things that we're asking of them? I know one thing that we just, we're working on as our admin team is, and I kind of alluded to this, but like it shouldn't just be on the certified teachers and staff. Like we have a lot of highly qualified individuals in the building and making sure we're sharing that load. Whether that means, you know, I'm working with fifth grade and so during a certain period of time, when they're working with small groups, I'm pushing in and helping with tier one at that point. We're relying on, you know, even our ed tech specialist because he was a certified teacher. We're having him push in and do different things. So I think obviously time is always something that we can't create more of, but just getting creative with it and using all of our resources in the building so that our teachers know that we are all in for all kids. And that doesn't just mean, that is not just defined by your role, but that we're all there for all the kids. I think it's also those places where we maybe were redundant with staff and thinking differently about ways to maximize that. So like the science block is a good example at the elementary school where we were, the classroom teacher was pushing into science and you have a certified teacher teaching science. So we had a lot of hard conversations about when does that make sense and when does it make sense to have that teacher, the classroom teacher go somewhere else and support in that way. And that's not a uniform decision across every grade level, but it's conversation to have to say, sometimes redundancy is important and sometimes it's not. Also real quick, I think, but this one, your question would remind me of is actually where you're in the process of doing some interviews. And today one of the candidates was, we were talking and one of the candidates mentioned something and it's kinda coming from another district. I'm not gonna go into in depth on much of that, but one of the things they said was they were reaching out to Clayton partly because they've heard from other people who were here how some of those things are taken care of. And I think one of the things Melina brought up in this conversation was it's not just our building, but there's also like, basically we're saying you're gonna have to get used to seeing central office people in there because it's a whole system approach. And whether that's a central office administrator coming in and working directly with the teacher, whether that's coming over and doing recess duty. So like it's all those kinds of things that it is a full village and do I think it's a constant balance? Yeah, do I think we're always 100%? No, it's a hard job and we know it and our teachers are tired. And I'll tell you right now, there's times throughout the year, this is one of those times right now through conferences. I'll just tell you in the classrooms this October, late October, early November, and then late February, early March are the times where you feel it. And especially as you're getting ready for parent teacher conferences. And so some of those things as they're coming up, it's there's certain times of the year, but I think it's important for us as the leaders in the building to know that part of our job is to take care of the adults as well. And I would add one thing. I think it's partially about building the culture and letting people know that it's okay to be vulnerable, that we don't expect you to always have all the answers all the time. And your bag of tricks may not work with every kid. And so we have resources and we have other adults in the building that are there to support kids and support you and that it's okay to ask for help. Cause I think a lot of times people, maybe embarrassment is the wrong term, but feel like it's their job and they really wanna own it. And they're sometimes, at least at the secondary level, afraid to ask for assistance. That's excellent, thank you. I was kind of thinking of another thing. It sounds like we do have a lot of platforms, but it also sounds like we're moving towards more of a unified system for the MTSS. Do we have a name for that? Do we? Educlimer is our system. So it sounds like there's their integrations that are kind of evolving and pulling data into there. Yeah, so the data in Educlimer comes from sort of multiple places. It comes from the assessment places, it comes from PowerSchool, from our SIS, and then it comes from what we enter manually in there. And then the piece that Robin talked about with KickUp is the, so that's a professional development platform that we use, but we've expanded our use to be able to integrate this idea of this walkthrough tool and to be able to have longitudinal data to respond to across the system as well as within a site. So those, I would say, are two big systems that are operating our MTSS process right now. Okay, okay. And then you mentioned longitudinal assessment. I was curious, how do we look at different kind of, I don't know, maybe like tranches of students in their performance? So I get that we look at cohorts year over year, how they compare to each other, but how do we ensure that we're looking at that same cohort and how they're progressing and then how do you slice that a little bit in different ways to see that the growth is happening at all levels? Yeah, so the data visualization piece within Edge of Climber is the piece that really helps us to do that. And so when we committed to moving into that platform, we also committed to moving five years of longitudinal data into the system, so old data, and then we continue to add new data within. And so there are a couple different ways for us to be able to look at that. There's one report that probably is maybe one of our favorite reports, and some people call it the swooshy report, but it's basically a longitudinal piece to be able to look at points in time and what the progress of that group has looked like so that we know, and it's a dynamic tool in the sense that you can see visually what's happening with a cohort group of students, but then you can also, when you hover over it, it gives you specific, like drilled down more information, and then you can continue to click into it to get further and further until you're at the student level. And then the data walls that we build within there, they look essentially like spreadsheets, and then we have made determinations on how to color code them so that people don't have to remember what like a 175 means on a particular test. The color coding is very specific for us, and so red meaning essentially below basic, yellow basic, green proficient, and blue advanced. You can see really quickly across a student, so a line or down a column across a class to be able to make instructional decisions. So those two pieces within, and then the piece that Robin talked about with the 3D is the piece that really kind of brings it home because I've always loved the 3D, but I've had to help my team start to love it because it's a little clunky, but when you do it, you see the faces of the children, and that's what reminds us of, this is the purpose of our work. We exist as a system only because of these kids, and so for us to know who they are and who we're talking about, that creates a very different kind of conversation than when you're just looking at numbers. It's sort of easy to forget who you're talking about when you're looking at numbers. When the faces are there, it's much more like, I'm talking about this child, and what's the influence that I'm gonna have on that child as a learn. I think that's it for me for now. I'll start off with a comment that kind of mirrors back some of what Melana said at the beginning, but I think it's worthwhile to mirror it back from the other side of the table, which is there are a lot of, I just want you to understand, know that I understand that there are a lot of weaknesses and challenges with this data. I get it. I understand that these are imperfect measures. They're just the measures we have, and they're important because they're what we have. The most interesting part of these presentations to me was a couple comments I heard, and I wanna see if I understand them right. Difficult conversations about what intervention means and the challenges of identifying tier two, what tier two intervention is at the secondary level. And I wondered if you could expand on that a little bit, because I think you're barking up the right tree. I think you're talking about the right thing, and I'd just like to hear a little more about that challenge. So when we think about intervention at the tier two level, I think the reason that it's so messy is because tier one is like everybody gets it, right? In tier three, I think people understand it at a level of you go to a specialist in a lot of ways, right? So tier two has always been super messy because sometimes a specialist is involved, and sometimes a coach is involved, and sometimes the classroom teacher is involved, and PLCs are really involved, and so it's hard to define. It's especially hard to define at the secondary level because no one trains a secondary teacher how to pull a small group, let's say, right? So in general, when you go to school to become an elementary teacher, you learn how to pull a small group or how to do a writing conference or something like that, or do some leveled reading, something like that. But as secondary teachers, those aren't generally parts of the pedagogy that you're trained on. And so that was a big conversation that we had this year, and that's why those conversations are really difficult, because we said what sort of training do we need to do? And that's what Jamie was alluding to, which is so great and how she's so vulnerable, right? Is she did the training with us, right? And then she went in and she tried at tier two intervention with students, and we all did. I went in and tried a tier two intervention with students. Mine also didn't go great. So it's just really hard to intervene while the rest of the class is there at a secondary level because there are so many more students, and also because it just isn't something that feels natural. And so one of the conversations that we had with a secondary teacher at Wyedown was, I don't know, what will the other kids think? And so we said, let's just try it. And we talked about ways to word it, and he did it. And all the other kids didn't care, right? So they really didn't. So he pulled kids, he gave them what they needed, everybody moved on with their life. And so it's just helping to understand those sorts of things too. And Jamie, I don't know what you want to add to that. It's similar to what you said. What you said is exactly the background of what we're trying to do. And what we're trying to really figure it out is basically you have to really know those kids on a specific standard. So when people say, oh, I used this exit ticket and the kids don't understand dividing fractions. So I'm gonna do a do now for everybody about dividing fractions. Well, that's not a tier two intervention. That's a reteach, right? So and the problem with reteaching is that it takes time away from moving forward for the kids who already have it, you know what I mean, but at the same time. So we're trying to move away from that. The other thing we do is like, offer a whole bunch of different scaffolds, right? That's what I did wrong when I did it. Is that like I was doing a CER lesson and I had a whole bunch of scaffold. Well, I didn't know this kids well enough and guess what scaffolds they picked, in terms of like what level they wanted. Kids were picking the wrong ones and didn't know what they were doing. Or we've been taught a lot about differentiation, but that's also not tier two. So at the middle school level specifically, there's a lot of concern around, will the kids know which groups are being pulled and the impact on SEL and how does that work? So it's really trying to figure out all those different parts and people feeling confident in how to do it. But we're just not as trained in small group. You know what I mean? And then there's also the cost. And I think Dan, at high school probably is more as like moving through the curriculum versus going through and reteaching. So there's just a lot of, it's just really hard. So I think that it's just gonna be more and more training as we learn how to get better at that. Because what the elementary were saying, which I think is right is like teaching in the minute, right? So one of the things we're also working on at White On is the common form of assessments. And so we've constructed these data team meetings and we learned from first semester as we entered into second semester that like those when we get done with the data team meetings it's not a meeting about the test. It's not a meeting about the validity of this question or we need to put more answers. It's actually like based on this standard these specific students need this, these specific students need that. And what is that intervention plan? But then you have to actually do it, right? So there's multiple years and steps in learning all of this. And I think the teachers are doing amazing and like trying to figure it out and work on it in real time through real PLC work. But it is it is probably one of the most complex things that I've known coming through education in my years. I think also we've been trying to pilot some. So Robin and I coach all new to the district teachers. And so one of the pieces that we've been trying to work with is like that's a captive audience. So we're going to take you to an elementary classroom and we're going to spend like a couple hours in an elementary classroom seeing what that looks like. So like how do they pull the groups. What are they doing with groups. Because it is such a natural part of the elementary process. And so the we've done it with some literacy teachers and it's been really like they've come back with like, oh, now I have an idea of what this looks like. Cause we can talk about it in theory all day long. But when they see it in practice with children and they hear what the teacher is saying and how it sounds different with different groups and everything like that, then they seem to have a different kind of confidence to try it on and see what it looks like. And then we bring the coordinators in to do a coaching cycle to say, okay, now you've seen it. Now we're trying it. Now let's really make those, those like strong instructional decisions to decide what are the data and the information that we're using to inform what is the next step with a smaller group of students. And so we've seen some success with that also. And it's just sort of a small component of the bigger work that we're trying to do. I also want to jump in. One of the things that I'm learning around it too is that one of the goals that we need to work on at YDOWN is when I say growth for all students, it's growth for all students, right? Like so oftentimes we talk about the kids who just need tier two or tier three, but it really is growth for all students. So every minute in the classroom is valuable. So the more you're doing consistent reteaching of standards and things that the students already know that's wasting that time as well. So in a small group, you may be able to work on a targeted instruction with these kids and then extend when you meet with the next group or do something different with the next group. So every child's getting what they need. It's just, if you think about it, you're planning multiple lessons within one lesson. So you really have to come together as a PLC to help design that. And you just are gonna over time be able to do more and more of it. Because as you guys I think started, one priority standard at a time, and then you just build on it and build on it and build on it as you move forward. Thank you for all of that. That was, no, it's great. And I'll just reiterate, I really appreciate this kind of thinking and I think you're thinking in the right direction with this stuff. My next question was gonna be about English or literacy, but I think you gave a really good explanation of that. You mentioned focusing on the student group and particularly the black students within the student group. I just wanna ask, what does that focus look like for you guys over the next year? What's the focus? I think a big piece, sense of belonging, it's a focus. And then at Glen Ridge is reinstating our equity committee. We had an equity walkthrough and we had glowing grows from last year to this year for district officials who walked through our building last year in comparison to this year. But continuing on with equity walkthroughs, not just doing it once a year, but maybe doing it once a semester and building on that and using that data to make informed decisions. But then also reinstating our equity committee so we can be more intentional when we talk about culturally responsive teaching and then the sense of belonging. And then sitting in interviews for Robin's position. You always learn too from the candidates. And one thing that they talked about is taking the academic data and comparing it to our sense of belonging data. So that's exactly what we're going to do. I brought it back to Glen Ridge. So I'm gonna sit down with my instructional coach and we're going to look at our academic data from NWEA and STAR and compare it to our sense of belonging and see if there's a correlation. Thank you. And thank you guys. No, I just wanted to add, we're doing a lot of the same things, but one of the things that we've been working on for a couple of years at one of our school goals is this idea of removing barriers, particularly to honors and AP classes. For African-American students, because we know that we've actually made a significant amount of progress, but the demographics of our school building aren't necessarily reflected in our honors and AP classes. So, and we've learned a lot actually in that work because one of the things that we, our theory of practice was, okay, we're gonna remove the barriers, we're gonna identify those barriers and then that'll solve our problem. And so what happened was we went to open enrollment in some places and the problem got worse actually. And part of the reason was because when we removed, when we removed the gatekeeping mechanisms, in some cases, non-African-American kids went into those courses that wouldn't have typically gone into those courses that the African-American students didn't just naturally decide to go to those courses. And so what we were doing and are doing now is just being very intentional when we look at data profiles of kids and actually doing personal invitations and having like adults say, hey, I think you can do this and talking to parents and saying, I think that you're a great candidate for this. And we've had a lot more success doing that than we have just like going open enrollment and kind of throwing open the gates. So that's one thing that is a work in progress that we're working on right now, but we've also really worked on the sense of belonging idea. And one of the things that we've done to kind of address that and are continuing to do is that we have the Academy of School Success with Chandra Brown and an outside facilitator where we're engaging African-American students and parents around academic college readiness skills, executive functioning skills, and they meet weekly and have an affinity group where they get together. We also have affinity spaces for African-American boys and girls that are facilitated by outside facilitators and some internal African-American staff. One of the things I just wanna give her a shout out, we've been talking about the whole idea, the sense of belonging. We give the panorama survey and we know what kids are reporting low sense of belonging. And the question is why? What do we do about it? And I gotta give her credit, Dr. Moore said, well, I'm just going to ask the kids actually, like actually, and so she kind of took the initiative of like actually, it sounds crazy, you know? And so she invited a group of kids, literally got African-American staff members together and it was just come have lunch with us, let's talk. And she literally started with the panorama data and said, okay, this is the panorama data for the building, this is African-American kids. Actually like the sense of belonging is lower, why is that? And they had this really amazing robust conversation and she said, what do we do about it? And like the kids had all kinds of ideas. So now they're going to have weekly meetings and after one meeting, they've got all these action steps that they're going to do, but it's all about building the connection to the school environment and the individual students' sense of belonging. Now we can also then, because of Educlimber, we know who those kids are with the panorama data and we can cross-reference the academic data with it as well. So I just wanted to give her a shout out because she was very excited when she came back and I'll be honest, I didn't even know she was doing it. Actually, and we have got a lot of traction and a lot of folks like very excited about this and kids very excited about it in a short time and this literally has come about in the past few weeks and so I'm excited, I'm really excited to see where it goes. Thank you and thank you all for the presentation. I wanted to ask Nina if you had any questions. I actually did have one question. So everything you guys shared was amazing, but I was wondering, especially for the fifth and eighth grade students who are kind of about to go through a transition, how do you make sure the students, especially in those tier two and three groups, get kind of consistent support through the transition so they're not kind of shocked when they enter a whole new school? So you won't even need me next time. From fifth grade to sixth grade, we have a lot of meetings, a lot of meetings. A lot of meetings so therefore. So we have IEP meetings and we invite the Y Down Team to the IEP meetings for students from fifth grade to sixth grade, we do the same thing for our 504 meetings and then the district math coordinator and literacy coordinator meet with the teachers as well to get a picture of where students are. And then the counselor also meets with the counselor. We also take a certain group of kids over to Y-Down to have like special time with the counselor and lunch and things like that for transition. And then the principals, we meet again in June, we meet and go over again students and we talk about the needs that they have and where they ended up at the end of the year. So we do a lot of talking and a lot of meetings with different people throughout the school. And I will say over the years, both meetings on either side, over the years both meetings on either side have really developed based on data. So like when we talk about the intervention classes specifically, like I can pull up the, I will start the meetings with a spreadsheet that says these are the kids that we think should come and then you use the teacher's information and input to determine exactly what the need are. So and then we do the same thing up at the high school. I think the other piece is what Educlimber has done for us is we piloted the first year tracking tier three interventions. This year it's consistent K-8. So at those transition points, sometimes a teacher, a receiving teacher doesn't know what information they need until three weeks into the school year or whatever and those meetings have already happened. So the system allows you to go back to be able to say, so what are the things that were put in place for this student and what has worked and what hasn't worked? So all of those things are in there to say like, if we had an intervention that didn't work, we abandoned it and why did we abandon it? So don't try it again. And the systems, the interventions that did work, let's replicate those pieces where it makes sense. So I think that piece is consistent. So the high school is now gonna inherit a class that has that data for the first time. So now across the system, there's that information so you don't have to restart with a student. Yeah, great question. It was a great question. That's why I was calling on you. Okay, Chris. Okay, I'll start out by saying, I always look forward to this meeting every year. I'm sure it's very difficult for you guys, but the work that you put into it is really helpful to us and what I wanna say about that is that we maybe don't do as a board good enough job of celebrating the fact that 90% of the stuff in this report is beyond amazing. It's just fantastic what we do here and we've continued to get better every single year in my opinion, in terms of how we address our learners on so many different levels, both academic, social, social, et cetera. So I just continue to be more and more impressed with all of you. So thank you for all of that. I just wanna start out by saying fantastic work. Some of my specific questions have been asked by, one of them, why a student? But let me just sort of maybe a big picture question first. I'm sure, Melana, you got the questions that I sent in today. Sorry about that. But when we look at charts on page seven, the exact chart is the comparison of 2025's district data to state data as MPI and we look at total population versus student group. You had a slide on it. One of your first slides had this. So just talk about what you think as educators, because you've been doing this so long and you've thought about this for so long, as you mentioned in your presentation, what are the factors that play into that? And I'll say that one of the things that I'm wondering that may play into that and what your response would be is how learners are coming to us, what point they're at when they come to us, if they start in kindergarten, great, but even if they don't, are our student group populations coming to us without the background that our total population tends to have and what can we do about that? Because we're just the district, right? I'm not the city, I'm not the mom. You know what I'm saying? We all have to address this problem, right, Terita? But as a school level, what can we do? And I'll go on further to say, especially with reading, what are we gonna do with those K through three kids who need more time learning to read? Can we prioritize it over, not math maybe, but social studies and science? Doing the 40 minutes on the Wilson, et cetera. Those kinds of things seem to be, addressing that reading right away, is that gonna end up helping us on page, whatever was our last one about where they end up in 12th grade? Just speak to that, and I know it's messy because some kids come in fifth grade, right? So it's complicated, but I want us to really think about and tell me if you've thought about and what would be the challenges or about having kids that really need it in those key stage one, really getting more instruction in reading because then it's the basis for all their learning in all the upcoming grades. Yeah, so I think you're saying what we're doing. So it is that piece, and I think that's a good point. I think all of us recognize that children come to us as they come to us, and it's our job to address their needs. And so that's why my big mantra is knowing our learners well and responding to their needs because what little Milena needs and what little Robin needs are completely different. Even what big Milena needs and big Robin needs. They're completely different too. But so it is that piece of like we have over the past like year and a half, two years, dedicated our energy to talking about individual students and what needs to happen. And sometimes that means that we're having hard time to read. And I just had a conversation the other day about a child who's struggling as a reader and made a very difficult decision about what instructionally was gonna happen for that child. And it's exactly what you're talking about. We have to look outside sometimes of what we traditionally have sort of seen as acceptable to be able to say we cannot continue to send this child on without triple dipping sometimes and everything like that. So I do really truly believe that these leaders are having the hard conversations and they're coming to us to check, like help me calibrate this. Like am I thinking about this correctly? I can look at every single one of these people around the table and say we have had at least one, oftentimes many hard conversations about individual children. And the fact that I know these children's names and I know the children as a human, I think speaks to what Patrick talked about about sort of our system approach of like when I'm in a classroom and I see, like I don't have to say who is that child. I know because we've talked about the child, I've been in the class, we've worked through it. And I mean some of these conversations have been really painful. And we don't know because we have a theory of practice that we operate from and we think it's gonna make a difference and like Patrick and I have celebrated a couple recently because it's like we made a really hard decision that we agonized over. And to see this child then flourish in a classroom is like that's why we do our work. So when I think about different identity groups and everything like that, yes we talk about identity groups as a whole but I've really been pushing our team to not even talk like that but to talk about individual children. And to think about it in those ways. Because I think what we've realized is that like we can't make systemic change in this way. When you look at our systemic data it looks good. Yeah. Right and then when you unpack it, there's like still things that we need to work on. And I think we've figured out that that has to happen at the individual level and not at a, because they're a part of this identity group, this is what we should do. I love it. So and the reading programs and those kinds of things, you and I have had conversation meant for many years about those kinds of things. I think we have changed significantly our philosophy of like what is in our teachers toolkits to be able to address that. I think all of us would agree that getting a child to be able to read and still love reading at the same time. So like that's an important balance for us of like, it's not just about decoding words. It's about, we still have to build a love of reading so that they're gonna continue to do that. But I think we would all agree on that. And the amount of training and sort of diversifying of training that we've done over the past like three to five years, I think has been pretty significant. Like we even had a conversation about like what the training looks like there. Because Dan's about to inherit kids who have supports that haven't necessarily traditionally been supports that we've used at the high school. And so how do we make sure that that can still happen in that structure? That's huge. That's great. So I just wanted two real quick things specifically and actually one of them, I know Malina is thinking of the same kid I am because we just saw this recently. And this is a little girl who will, she's gonna be in that subgroup and will probably be in there next year because the growth that she's making isn't necessarily gonna show up in there. But it was so far behind but just recently we watched her get called on by somebody who didn't know any different and she went up to the board and was able to teach the class about her mathematics assignment. So you've got adults. Is it going to show up in this? No. But is it the amount of growth there is something that it's hard to actually put a measurement on because we were all kind of stunned. We were all nervous but she went up there and it was, and it was. But she did it. And I will say, or the other side of this is students who have these reading things but they also may be, for one reason or another, unable to get things like medication and we then work with families to figure out how do we get that, how do we make sure we get whatever that takes. It might be that that's what's actually missing in their ability to take in the reading that's being delivered to them. So we can say, is it a reading program? Yes, but if we stop right there and think, well it's just like, they're not formulas. It's not if you just do X plus Y equals Z. We have to think, well what is it that we're missing? That this kid may need that we have to think outside of the box and honestly when we think about the difference between say an RTI framework or an MTSS framework or when Teresa talked about care teams, that's the piece that sometimes is missing is it's not just the science. These are complex things and there's a part to it where you have to get to know them on a human level. That's fantastic. Couldn't I answer that any better? My next question is, I can't. We almost never hear about that. Am I right? Am I crazy? You as parents or you as the board? Both. Okay. Both. So I just wanna sort of, and it's barely talked about in here, right? And it's fine, because it's not really, it's just mentioned because it's something that has to happen by, you know. But I, again, everything we do is to make sure that those students go on to be successful at whatever they choose to do in life. And I just wonder what you think of, I mean, it's mandatory. So what you think of the system, how it's used, like do you think there's things that we can do as a district to make it even better? And are you, am I missing it as a parent that I don't hear about it? No. So Jason Thompson, the counseling coordinator, and I literally had this conversation yesterday. Yes. So the piece, and I'm the one who hounds the counselors at the middle school. So the eighth grade, the official place for the ICAP to start is in eighth grade. And so because we report it through Core Data, I start hounding at the beginning of the year, and then I come back and I'm like, well, how are we doing with the ICAPs? Because I know what percentage we need to have done. So he and Jenny Todd and I met recently to talk about rebooting the ICAP process for the entire district. The state is looking at starting them earlier. So thinking about starting in sixth grade to really start to have those conversations. The other conversation that Jason and I had was, how are the parents aware of ICAPs? And came to the realization that parents are not aware of ICAPs, partially because parents have told me that they're not aware of the ICAP. And so we actually met with Luke yesterday to talk about what's the best way to get the ICAP to the family once it's developed in eighth grade. So we're working on that now to be able to start that. And then what does that look like moving through the high school? So there is a system through the state of Missouri that we have not historically used, which actually may make the lift a lot easier for us to do. And so we're exploring that piece, but in the interim, we're working with Luke to figure out once the ICAP is written in eighth grade, how do we get it to the families so that they're aware of the conversation that has initially taken place with the counselor? And then what's the longitudinal piece through the high school? We've toyed with the idea of putting it into Educlimber. The challenge with that is that there's not a student-facing side of Educlimber. And so while that would be good as far as like for us to maintain like a longitudinal record of it, the purpose of the ICAP really is for the child. And so we've abandoned that idea and so are moving to sort of thinking through what does this Missouri platform look like to sort of help with that functioning. That's fantastic, great. Last but not least, I just wanna reiterate, you guys did a really good job of honing in on something that I have been seeing as a board member. And like as I've watched these presentations, something has really clicked in in me that you said tonight, and I'm very excited about it, which is that that sense of belonging should be looked at at the same time as our academic achievement scores. No kid is gonna feel great about where they are if they're not really feeling successful in their classes. And so combining these different data sets and doing this supports and systems, I really like that one because it only makes sense because then we can individualize based not on all of the pieces of the puzzle. So I'm really excited to see what happens once we really start looking at those two pieces together. I think we could make some huge progress on sense of belonging, I think that's amazing. So great work, thank you for everything. All right, the back half. Okay, well first of all, I just wanna congratulate the team on overall a good report. So congratulations on another strong year and all the good things. So I'll pick up quickly on where Chris left off and commenting on including the equity data and everything into Educlimber. I think that's a great step. You know, every year, Milena, you remind us we're not talking about numbers, we're not talking about statistics, we're talking about individuals. That's true. And my pushback is, it's not really pushback, I guess at this point, my concern has been that we miss trends that might inform choices that we make as a system by focusing too much on the micro and not looking at the macro. So I appreciate that we're doing this. This will be my version of the ELA question that could go around the table here. So I really appreciate the sense of urgency around this. I think there's not anyone sitting at this table or in this room that doesn't care deeply about this, otherwise we probably wouldn't be in this room to begin with. My impression listening to you guys was that we're trying a bunch of stuff, all really good stuff, but we're trying a bunch of stuff because of that sense of urgency. How close do we feel like we really have it, whatever it is, in order to move the needle from a growth perspective, right? So like if you look at page, I don't know what I emailed out, page 16, I think it was, 15 and 16. Thank you, Dr. Pam. How close are we to moving the needle on those red squares, particularly in the ELA column, with what we're doing now? So I'll start and then let you go. So from a system lens, I think this goes back to something that Robin was talking about, about the deliberate infusion of professional learning with what we see within the data. And so at the elementary level, our theory of practice is helping all teachers to be trained in letters. And so all of our elementary classroom teachers at this point have done volume one of letters, which we are seeing an impact then on instruction within reading at a decoding level. So children being able to decode differently than they have been able to decode before. That doesn't necessarily address the comprehension part. And so the deliberate focus on comprehension, but we have prioritized the decoding as a place to start and really get some systemic movement there. And I think we're seeing evidence of that within our local data right now. And with our youngest learners, and so we're not gonna see that within state data for a little while, because they're not assessed, we don't assess until the beginning of third grade. So I think that's a piece. The other piece is the big sort of vulnerable conversations at the middle school related specifically to the volume of reading and writing that we're doing. And so I've brought this up a couple of times that like that is really important to us. And infusing with that, an understanding that the teachers have of the data to feel that same sense of urgency that we as leaders are feeling. I think Malena said it perfectly, but really looking at like how the time reading and the time writing, like real authentic writing, essay writing, argumentative writing, narrative writing, like looking at forms of writing and how are we scoring them as they go up. And then also just the amount of time reading. Most of you have had middle schoolers go through. So like how much time are they actually reading and what are they doing with the texts and how many texts are we getting through? And then, like I said, as I said earlier, like really expanding that outside of just the literacy classrooms. We have also seen some good growth from the STAR test from fall to winter for our tier two students. So hopefully we'll see that transcribed onto the MAP test. But I do believe that like we really looked and said, okay, and we actually have a meeting in two weeks with some fifth grade teachers at captain where, how many books are they reading as fifth graders? What types of books? We know that complexity moves up, right? So it's not one for one, but at the same sense, we wanna make sure that we are holding those same standards. And what we sometimes find, it was Nina, when they talk about going to middle school, everyone's like, oh, it's so hard. But sometimes what we find is they can do a lot more in fifth grade than we're expecting them in sixth grade. And then, you know what I mean? So really making sure that we're real curricularly tied together between fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and then into ninth, where I know that they have the writing program and different things, but to make sure that those are really clear so that the kids are prepared as they move forward. So that's sort of what I do believe that work will be our biggest bang for our buck as we move forward. And then this is, it's a sort of a technical question as to how I should read this entire report. How should I pass this just in advance? But like on page 25, there's the star, projected students lead projected growth from fall 25 to winter 25. Like how should I as a board member think about the numbers on this table? So that's similar to what we presented in the fall that we don't feel good about those numbers. So like when you look at, you know, sort of in the 50% is meeting projected growth, that doesn't feel good to us. The one caveat that I would say with that is like the way that I make this data clean for you is to say it's literally if there's a delta or not a delta. Understood. And as students age up in the system, those like how the discrepancy between growth is many fewer points. But I think to like we talked about it in the fall, this is part of what we said is like the urgency across the system around growth is like, this doesn't feel good. Yeah, yeah, okay. So I think you would read it the same way we would. Okay, I just wanted, I'm sorry, I probably asked those questions a little bit out of order what I should have, but I just wanted to make sure because I was reading, I just wanted to make sure I understood that right. Okay, thank you. I guess the last thing I just want to say is, you know, you guys said a few times like, we're here for the kids. And I appreciate all that. I think it's also worth mentioning like, the kids are here because of you guys, right? Like parents choose to move into this district because of all the good things that we just heard about for the past like almost two hours at this point, right? And so, you know, I just want to say, you know, I just want to finish off by just saying thank you for another good year, another strong report, and we all appreciate the work that you do. It's my last meeting. No, so I want to echo first what Melana said. So I, you know, Melana said, I'm proud to be a part of this team. I am also proud to be on the outside watching this team as I have. This is my sixth time hearing your presentation on the board, and I heard it a couple of years sitting in the audience before I came on the board and then crazily decided to come on the board anyway. So what I think I'll say just from a macro perspective, having seen this evolve through the years, and it's evolved a little bit through both the makeup of the board, the makeup of the leaders at the schools, right? We've had a change in leadership across almost every elementary school, except Wyden, the high school, and Meramec. And we've had changes except for Melana. We've had, I mean, and they've all been positive. Change is good, right? I mean, so, I mean, so change is good. Me going off the board, change is gonna be good. You know, and I think what I've heard tonight, which is great, is that you try some things, they don't work. You don't keep trying the same things over and over again, and then you try some new things. And then I think everybody's already said it, that you teach individual students, you don't teach necessarily to a specific demographic or a cohort. But we also know what gets measured gets done, and what gets measured gets funded, and all of those other things, right? So we are a public school, we are held to certain standards, and whether we like those standards or not, we're accountable to those standards. So yeah, some of the data in the document, which you guys rightfully acknowledge isn't the greatest. So, but it sounds like you are working to try to move that needle in the right direction, which I acknowledge. One of the questions that I had, and I think we've kind of gotten a sense of what the answer may be, but I'm just gonna ask it more directly, because you guys know that's who I am. So the question that I have is, do you feel like, as you guys are implementing these Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 interventions, trying to come up with common definitions, common language of what is Tier 2, how do you implement Tier 2 and Tier 3 at the secondary level, when it's not traditionally been a strength of teachers classically trained. Do you feel like practices are consistent across all of the elementary schools today? So that they're all arriving to you at the middle school? So it's probably a two-part question. Are practices consistent across how you've implemented this across all three elementary schools? Yes or no, or were there differences? And are you guys learning about who's doing things better or worse? And then the second is, if I would think that you guys, you see that the most when those students come to you. So the same time you've got Edge of Climber, and it shows both the individual student across the top, and then the cohorts that they're in, vertically, horizontally, I would think that also points out potential hotspots as far as opportunities to educate whoever's in front of the class of a certain cohort of students, right? So that's my other question is, is it also identifying where you've got staffing that needs additional training, specifically at the elementary school, maybe less so at the secondary and middle school and high school level, where we've got beyond just the professional development that everybody gets or the new teachers that are onboarding, you're doing interventions for specific teachers. Like there's a difference in the, I'm making this up, there may be a difference in one school between this third grade teacher and another third grade teacher, and you're seeing more students in this class having issues in this particular area than another. Is this data also helping you guys from a management perspective as far as your staffing? So in terms of kids that we gather, I've never noticed an academic difference in terms of where the kids come from school-wise across the 11 years I've been there. I will be honest that there are different groups of children and we joke about, I won't mention specifics, but this group from Glenridge or that group from Miramac. As they come, you can tell a difference within their dynamic of their grade, right? So there are definitely those things that come across, but when it comes to academics, we don't see that as much. I question you're having that specific professional learning, I think is a really valid one. However, it's really complicated to tease out, and I've done a lot of data digging around different teachers, because we can, right? Like in terms of this teacher, that teacher, whatever. The data doesn't show up that way, the instructional walkthroughs might, but the data itself doesn't show up that way, partially because the kids are different, the test change or the students are different. And also I think we're really good at being administrators, if we see someone who is ineffective, they're not with us very long. So I do think that that's actually a piece of our job that pertains to the student data that's not always talked about. But as far as the elementary, and you guys can talk a little bit more towards that, but that's how I personally feel about it, but I do think the specific learning is gonna be important in terms of not just choice, but also helping people get to what they need based on observation data, based on other kinds of things. I think that's also the piece that you talked about with the talent of the teachers and what they're able to do. When we're able to identify that, we pretty quickly triage something. So that's where the coordinators really do a heavy lift for us because they're content experts, they're pedagogy experts. Robin and I coach pedagogy. We can't coach content in every area, but we know what good teaching is, and we know how to coach that piece. The principles are the same thing. Everyone at this table is a generalist, and that's why we have the org structure that we have with specialists in content areas to say we really need to get in there and coach content. We have some instances right now where Julie Power, our literacy coordinator, is coaching how to confer with students. Because what we're finding is that it's a gap in our professional learning with our teachers. We're expecting them to confer with students, but we clearly have not provided all the tools for people to be able to do that. So some people are well-trained in that, or they have an interest in focusing on that, and then other people, we've got to provide that support. And so when we're able to identify that through walkthroughs and that kind of stuff, then we can partner. So the principals will call me, we'll work with the coordinator, and we'll get people in to do coaching cycles. So I will add that we were just over here pow-wiling. We all have a tier three, some type of team, to attack tier three interventions. Tier two, we all do our tier two. We all have PLCs, and we're small, and we talk all the time, we text all the time. Another piece of it too is that Melana and Robin are in our buildings. And so Melana comes to my guiding coalition academic, and so she sees my agenda. She's like, hey, I was just that captain. This is what we did. You want to think about this. And so we get resources that way from Melana and Robin. We had equity walkthroughs, and now captain's about to have equity walkthroughs. So that's informing their walkthroughs and things like that. So we share a lot of resources. We do pretty much the same thing, but we get the autonomy on the how. For example, Treet asked me, do we use our science teachers in the same way? And the answer is no. We are looking at it. I think the difference is, the other thing we have to consider is some of our class sizes are bigger. And so what does that look like in a science lab? What does that look like in other places? Because we do have a few more students. And even as we move forward to next year, when we have four third grades, the science schedule is even going to be very different. And so we've had to figure out, what does that look like? But also the other side of that is, we do have additional TAs to help with some of the enrollment. So we've been able to assign TAs to grade levels, which also allows for another adult. So whether that's a TA that's able to help with a tier two, or whether that's the teacher doing it, and the TA is able to help in a classroom. There's different systems because of what we have in terms of human resources, and in terms of what we're facing. So it is slightly different. But what I say, like ours is called TST, we don't call it a SIT team. And so are there different experts that sit on it? Yes, so there's slight differences, but the idea is the same. Okay, so I ask this question every year. So I'm sure it won't be a surprise, but what is the lowest hanging fruit? So when you come back to the board next year, and I won't be on it, what do you hope to be able to report that has improved? I'm not sure I would say it's lowest hanging fruit, but I think, and we keep talking about belonging data with some of the groups, but one of the things I will tell you is a lot of times it's not our belonging data that I'm noticing as the gap, it is self-efficacy. It's the efficacy data that is actually the more difficult, and I think that's where, and it's really, really hard to address. We can make a kid feel loved, but if they pick up on the fact that they don't feel like, I mean, I've had kindergartners who will say to me, how does that kid already know how to do X? And so then, and I get that what we wanna do is we wanna say, well, they need more of X, but the problem is when you give them more of X, and X is what they struggle with, we're also reiterating the fact that they're not good at X, which it's a self-perpetuating loop if we're not careful in how we do that. So then there's a lot of nuance, and how do you make sure that when a kid goes to a reading intervention with a reading interventionist, that they feel safe, they feel secure, they understand they're building their skills, we can build confidence, and that may look like our reading teacher does this thing where she has the kids that are older teach the kids that are younger reading skills so they can express some success, and that's, so it's addressing both the self-efficacy but also some of the reading skills. So I'm not sure it's a low-hanging, I think it's difficult, but I also think that if we don't, if we can't some point in time get to some sort of strength-based initiative and not just seeing kids for what they're not good at, we're going to continue to see some of this because if I'm not good at something and you keep making me do it over and over and I feel like it's not a strength, all that's, in some ways that's, if we're not careful, you're hurting that side of me. And I would actually just like to expound on that. I think at the high school level you see it, and one of the things, I almost said this earlier actually, when you look at the panorama data, one of the things I've always been surprised by over the years is because I know a lot of the kids and I see them in the classroom, but then when they self-report their self-efficacy, because the way the question is asked actually in the panorama is like how confident am I that I can do the toughest work in this class? And you'll have kids that are all honors, all AP, that do really, really well in school with incredibly low self-efficacy because they have imposter syndrome. And there's very much the peer pressure of kind of keeping up with the Joneses and that, and that's I think really tough to get at, especially because I truly believe that it's not a deficiency, it's all in self-perception, and so how you change that self-perception is a challenge. I would say we're killing it on sense of belonging. All right, why not? I think we are the highest that we've ever been when we took it in the fall, but where we're focused and where we have to see change is on student growth, but student growth for us is where it's about. So next year when I'm sitting here, hopefully we'll be able to really talk more specifically about student growth across the board. We should not be in the lower 50% of schools in the state. We need to be higher than that, and so we're working as hard as we can, and I really do mean like we're having these really hard conversations that don't feel great all the time, but unless we really have them, we're not gonna be able to move forward. So I'm really hoping, you know, science is gonna be a little trickier because it's only eighth grade, so you know, these things we're implementing in sixth and seventh, it may take a minute, but just in general, I'm really hoping that we see movement in student growth. So thank you. I wanna echo all of the positive things that they have said. I mean, I like almost came to tears multiple times. I'm taking after you, Tarita. Like you really, each of you has, you do so much for our community, and I really love what Jason said, that you say you've got these great students, but these families move here because of what you do. So thank you, I wanna start with that. You speak, and you spoke your first time about, we have to know our students, and I know you all speak to this. And then you spoke about how much harder it is to do these interventions, these tier two, tier three, or maybe even really spoke to the tier two interventions at the secondary level. And it just kind of this light bulb for me of, it's much harder for a teacher in the secondary level to know their students the way that our elementary teachers know their students. And so I just wanted to highlight that, I see how that's really hard. And so I can see why these conversations are difficult, why they are vulnerable, because that's hard. So I just wanna thank you for that. One, if two main questions. One is, how do you, with these tier two and tier three interventions, communicate back to parents and guardians? A few times, families have been mentioned they're incredibly important piece of these children's lives. And so how do we communicate with them and say, these are the interventions, this is what we're seeing? So at the elementary level, it's a phone call from the classroom teachers. Sometimes it's a phone call from the instructional coach or a specialist, and just saying, this is what we're working on with your child to give them a heads up. And so it's a personable phone call. And then we'll follow up with the email. But first, it's always a phone call from someone in the building, whether it's their classroom teacher or a specialist. And I would say, just to say, referencing the tier two and tier three interventions at the secondary level, and I don't wanna speak for a while, I'm like, we're solid on tier three interventions because we have an interventionist actually and like in a particular discipline. So by the time you get to tier three, you're with the reading specialist, you're with learning support. So that part's not the issue. It's more of that tier two actually. But to your point, no, when a student is receiving intensive one-on-one, particularly like in tier three, that would be a phone call. We definitely broke the families in pretty early in that process. I would agree. I do think it gets a little more complex as you get through the middle school and the high school in regards to actually having honest conversations about where these children are and where they need to go. And that's something that we're working on because there's a lot of complications of who they think they are, who they are as learners, and sometimes we tend to sugarcoat the picture a little bit. So we're really trying to figure out what is the right medium for that, and it does have invest when it's coming from a specialist that can not just say, here's a score on paper, but like here's all of the things and all of the growth and here's what specifically they're able to do. Like the Fontes and Bonnell tests really were able to like drill down, like comprehension is a piece or decoding is a piece, but to give some tangible things so that parents can attach that to know where they need to go. But really making sure that we are including the parents is something that we probably continue to do work upon because like there is a phone call made home and there's parent teacher conferences, but we need to make sure that they fully feel engaged to come to those, is also think of like non-traditional ways to engage the parents beyond parent teacher conferences to make sure that they really know where their students are and that the kids know. That's a huge component of it as well. I think the model also with the reading success plans, so students who are receiving tier three intervention on reading success plans, it's a pretty delineated process from the district. That all exists within EduClimber and is initially a phone call home and then a push of a document home and then continual progress monitoring. So that model I think is a model that we could probably replicate in other ways to help families feel more a part of the educational experience for their child. Thank you. Okay, and next one is ELA particularly paying attention to what was happening or what is happening at the secondary level, particularly at the high school. And Dr. Jordan, it was great to hear you say, these are the things we have just noticed or we are noticing and these are the interventions that we know we need to do. And that can actually explain a lot about what we see at the high school because those are the kids who didn't maybe get that. And so I do look forward to being here at this table in the next many years and seeing how this changes. And I want to press that this is really important, especially, not especially at the secondary level, but that's where I wanna say this is important coming from this side of the table. So keep up that good work. That's it. Thank you. And the questions I had written down, I keep crossing out because you all have answered them. But a couple of things I wanted to say and this is also my last assessment meeting, just one more year than Kim has been here, have I sat through this, but many years ago at the board table, I didn't mean that in an integral way. I just realized how that came out. Have I had the pleasure of sitting to this? But many years ago at the board table, I remember saying, I wish every student could have an IEP. I was coming on the board as a member with a student, one of my own children with an IEP thinking, you know, here is a plan, an individualized plan based in data that has all these goals of how to ensure that student is successful. And I feel like through everything we've talked about, that is what we're doing. We are looking at individual students using data, figuring out how they can be the most successful. So just to see, like Kim said, where we've come in all this work, that was before Educlimber, before we had hexagons on MTSS. So I actually love seeing this at my last assessment meeting, that we have come to a place where we are looking at individual students and their needs, and not in silos, like a couple of you mentioned, that as a whole child, how do their social, emotional, sense of belonging, self-efficacy play into their academic success? So all of that makes me feel really happy and proud. And I love, Jamie, that you said next year, you hope to be here, I wrote down what you said, that you hope that we can see growth of all learners, including our teachers. And I love that you said that, because this is, as you've all said, learning experience and a growth experience for our teachers as well. And I feel so thankful and proud to be in a district that is investing so much in our teachers, and all of you administrators, to be able to do this work. Not just the time, but the financial resources to be trained in this and to have speakers come in. So I appreciate that so much about our district that we are prioritizing this work and investing in it with time, money, and partnerships. So I just wanna thank the board and everybody for doing all that as well. So thank you again, it was a great presentation. Congratulations on all the success, and look forward to hearing more. And before you go, I don't have any questions. So you could just take a breath, but I wanna echo what everyone said, and I want the board to know this very important fact, which I just found out about it a few weeks ago. So typically, I'm gonna publicly thank you in front of the board, because usually, when you leave these meetings, I text you. So I have a text group that says 18, and I send them texts. Well, most recently, I found out they have a text group without me. I did. I did. I did. Exactly. And so I'm like, huh, interesting. So I wanna publicly, all jokes aside, publicly thank you for all the work that you do, truly. I have been in your seats, and I know what it's like to run a school building. And this is the majority of your work as instructional leaders, but you also have the rest of the work that you do that falls in the managerial job, where the parents are coming. You have student discipline coming at you. You have so many things coming. So truly, when you look back from a macro level, as we have said in the five years that I've been sitting here, I want you to really think about all the work that you have done. Five years ago, I remember my first year here, I said, there's no reason why we don't know the resources we have in this district. There's no reason why we don't know our kids and know them well, and how do we work with them, right? And then the second year, I know you were so excited when I said, all of you are going to a PLC RTI conference. I know in your A plus text group. I know. If it's WTF. Yes, thank you. It was a past demon. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. I know they sat there. And they were like, why is she making us go to this? We have been doing this for 20 years in this district. I know it, but I truly believe the work is here. And then you brought a system in. You implemented the system, and now we are talking about data, like truly looking at the data and seeing where the kids need to go. So think of your own journeys in this process, and pat yourself on the back. So thank you, no text for me tonight. Thank you. Keep up the great work. Thank you, good night. Good night for being in your text group. Okay. And I also found that the CEO team has the same thing. Just saying, they have a text group without me on it too. Yes, there is. Yeah. I don't, but does anyone else? I mean, feel free to just take one. Let's just keep going. Okay, policy. We have some first readings to review tonight. First one is policy KH, public gifts to the school. John is here. I noticed that Kim and Stacey both mentioned the number of meetings they have left, and minor limited as well. Yeah, oh yeah. I'm not gonna say the number. Policies before you tonight, minor, KH, and FFA, if these look familiar to you, they were on the agenda several months ago as first readings, and I think there were some questions around crowdfunding at the time, and we didn't bring it back for a second reading. We played around with it for a long time just looking at it and having conversations. It's coming back to you in its identical form. There's no modifications to it, and I'm happy to discuss any of your concerns that existed then and hopefully resolve them. FFA is easy. It's a rescinded policy because the provisions of it are just moving into KH, so if you have concerns about KH and crowdfunding, I'd be happy to discuss them. My recollection at the time was concerns about how it might impact the Clayton Education Foundation or. PTOs maybe. PTOs, et cetera. Booster clubs. And sports boosters, yeah. So this is a policy for just our district and for the entities that are legally separate, like the Education Foundation, like PTOs, and potentially like a booster club that's independent. This is really them. They can do their own thing. This is really guided towards anybody that's under our umbrella. So there are booster club groups that operate under our umbrella. We manage their funds in trust, so I would put them subject to this. But anybody that's completely independent of us, I would say they're, they cannot be subject to our policies at this level. Yeah. Oh, okay. That makes sense. I'm sorry, I'm gonna ask really like a detailed, what about, question, just because I think it's worth airing this out in case there's an issue some years down the road. What about donorschoose.org? I was gonna ask the exact same question. Donorschoose.org, where a teacher can go and set it up. Teachers set up. And then you can go and you can pick, like I wanna fund this project. Or Amazon Wishlist. Yeah. Well, we've had a number of conversations over the past few months at the CO team level about that exact issue. We're a well-funded district, and it's really inappropriate for one of our staff to go out and start a GoFundMe if they haven't approached internally for funding. We're here to supply all the needs of the district, and it's really kind of out of bounds for somebody to try to bring some other funding mechanism in sort that doesn't run through our systems, it doesn't maintain equity across classrooms, and isn't necessarily approved as part of our overall curriculum. I have no issue with that answer. I would just suggest that there might be a conversation that might need to be had with teachers that do this currently, right? So they have ample time to wind that practice down before it becomes an issue, that's all. Yeah, there have been some of those conversations, whether they're comprehensive at this point or not, I can't speak to that. Yeah, I had the exact same question. Anybody else have any comments on this one? Go ahead, Leo. The only thing, I went back and looked at this because I was just trying to remember what had happened with it, but the only comment from the previous meeting that I thought I would pull forward is this or a district foundation, that language in here, and I understand it's undefined in here, and so maybe just clarifying that CEF is not a district foundation within the meaning of this policy. There are districts that create captive foundations for themselves, and they're actually under our, the district's umbrella, and the board is controlled or appointed by the school board. Ours exists completely outside our umbrella. And so I just wonder if an additional word or two, making it clear that CEF is not a district foundation. Yeah, that's a good idea. That's all I got. Good. Okay. All right, well then let's move on to, we have some second readings of policies. The first one is policy GBEBA drug-free workplace. If you'd read that motion, please. I move that we adopt policy GBEBA drug-free workplace with the recommended changes. Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Any questions or comments about the updated version? Nope, okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No, that one passes. Now the second reading of policy GBEBA employee alcohol and drug testing. I move that we adopt policy GBEBA employee alcohol and drug testing with the recommended changes. Second. Okay, that's been moved and seconded. Any further questions or comments with the recommended changes? Nope, all those in favor? Any opposed? No, that one passes. GCBA professional staff compensation. I move that we adopt policy GCBA professional staff compensation with the recommended changes. Second. Okay, moved and seconded. Any comments about this one with the changes? All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that one passes as well. Okay, moving on to action items. Classified staff pay salary structure. 8.1. I move that we approve the classified pay salary structure as presented. Second. Okay, that's been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments from anyone? Or Kelly on this one? No. Okay, all those in favor? Any opposed? Okay, motion passes. And the next one, which is classified staff tuition reimbursement structure. I move that we approve the classified staff tuition reimbursement structure as presented. Second. Okay, now that that's been seconded, any questions or comments for Kelly on this one? I just wanna comment that this is an important, it's really important. It has come up in the past of should we continue to provide this benefit to our staff and I feel like it's a very critical component to attract and retain staff that we have here. And there's also no reason why we shouldn't offer an education to, in my personal opinion, to the children of staff that are employed in the district. So I hope that future boards consider that if this ever comes up for debate. And I also appreciate removing the wait period that it's available immediately because we should be treating all our staff the same and they should all be able to take advantage of this. Anything else? Okay, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No, okay, that motion passes. Thanks. And moving to the consent agenda. I move that we approve consent agenda items 9.2 through 9.5. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, consent agenda passes. Moving to board communications, I think. Maybe just Pam had an equity meeting. Thank you. We talked about the MTSS walkthroughs that they were just talking to us about, which was something that Cameron and the equity committee, it seems spearheaded. And so it's great that it is now universal for all of the buildings. And the equity part of it is being rolled into all of the other pieces that are being looked at. And so then we spent the rest of the meeting in small groups talking about a survey for faculty and staff about having affinity spaces for them. And so kind of writing and editing questions for a survey for them. That's it. Great. Did anyone else have any other committee meetings that I'm not aware of? Leo, Pam, and I just did a walkthrough with Dr. Patel at the Family Center. Which was great. And it always is such a happy place to be. And I was just so impressed by even witnessing our youngest learners work on some of the same skills that our older learners work on. In particular, I'm remembering, the three of you might remember also, that in one classroom they had collaborated on like a city or a town or some kind of scene. It was a zoo, right? Oh, was it a zoo? Okay. Because Taylor Swift was the zookeeper. Because Taylor Swift was the zookeeper. Which I found hilarious. But each student was coming up to explain what piece they contributed to the whole class project. And I just like, you know, they were three. And so they were able to stand up there and say, I added the drone so he could look over the whole city. And I added that. So anyway, I just think just that sense of collaboration and but also the individualized learning that was taking place was great. The three-year-old has drone in the room. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, he showed us how it works. Taylor Swift and drones, it was a very 2026. It was great. I'm old. Yeah, yeah. And I also, which Dr. Patel mentioned earlier, was going to encourage everyone on the board and in the community watching to attend the celebration of Black Achievement on Monday. If you have not been before, I highly recommend it. It is one of the more impressive events. I'm gonna give kudos to Dr. Poole that I attend annually in this district, truly. And I think it's obviously a great way to celebrate and honor Black History Month, especially honoring the achievements of our own graduates, which I think is so cool because there are many other events around the city that we can go to to listen to and learn about achievements of famous black Americans or even Missourians or St. Louisans, but to hear from our own graduates, I think is really special. So hopefully everyone can mark their calendars to plan to attend that. And just wanted to also recognize that this week also brought Chinese New Year, the first night of Ramadan, Ash Wednesday. So I just wanted to acknowledge everyone in the community that is celebrating all of these holidays and honoring all of these days with their families. And with that, we can adjourn. I move that the meeting be adjourned. Second. Second. Okay, all those in favor? All those in favor? Okay, meeting is adjourned.