Alright. Thank you, and welcome to this afternoon's business systems review. I guess we're gonna go ahead this this is an informal meeting, but could we go ahead and, just for everyone's sake, take roll call of who's here in terms of board members. Mister Jenkins, could you do that, please? Board member McKissick? Here. Board member Garcia? Here. Board member Love? Here. Board chair McKinney? Here. Alright. I think we do we have a quorum or do we need a quorum? I don't think we need we don't have to have a quorum.
Alright. So let's go ahead and begin called order opening discussion. So I will, give it over to you, doctor Richmond. 2.01 student achievement business systems review. And just to remind everybody what this is, this is again, by policy. The board is to take a look at all of our business systems, including academics, including contracts and procurement, including HR, and a plethora of other things. This is the first of, I think, about seven or eight that we will be
having. I want to let my board members know that, we're going to go through this, all the systems this one time, and then we will be talking about how we're gonna set up a rotation so that we're not doing this every month. So, but this is a great start, a baseline for us. And so with that, I will let you take the helm, Doctor. Richmond. Yes. Thank you, madam chair. I'd like to first of all thank the board, for, indulging us in providing a
business systems review. I want to thank my team for working extremely hard. This evening, we'll kick it off with, Bill White who's responsible for research, research evaluation and accountability. He's the officer of that department. I wanna thank him for all of his, hard work this year. And then you all will hear from Doctor. Whitelaw as well as, miss Kiner who will go through, our academic plan, but pretty much, again, our academic business system, reviews. And so I'm excited about us, doing this for the first time, I guess, in
many, many years. But I think it's extremely important work. So at this time, I'll kick it off to Bill, and then we'll get, into the presentation. So thank you all for indulging us this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you, doctor Richmond, and good afternoon, board members. As chair McKinney stated, this is actually driven by board policy. It's policy 27, which is a board governance policy, and it's business systems review. And as doctor Richmond said, it's been a while since we've done this.
We appreciate, chair McKinney and the board working with us. It's a collaborative effort, of course, between the administration and the board, to get us back in line with this particular policy. It's an important policy, which gives the board an opportunity to review major business systems of the district, really related to integrity and performance. The board chair noted that there are several areas that get looked at according to the policy. One of those areas that's actually not listed in the business systems review policy, but
is listed in the data dashboard policy. Those two overlap, a lot, but is student achievement, which is obviously, our core business. So it's appropriate that we start, getting back into this routine with that topic tonight. As the superintendent stated, one thing you'll note about this as compared to previous presentations about departments is that there are certain things that the board systems review policy calls
for that are to be discussed at a minimum. And those things include operations performance and scorecards, strategic plan goals and outcomes, audits, if there are any, school performance data, research reports, major program initiatives, and system integrity. So as doctor Whitelaw, makes this presentation, you're gonna see that she's made sure that all of those areas are covered, and then the expectation of the board per that policy is that you may end up using some of the information to help you
as you are reviewing policy in terms of making or requesting policy recommendations. It may be that there are, internal or external audits of business systems when we go through this that the board thinks would be needed or important. And then, you might end up needing some follow-up reports or other information based on, what you learn. So, those items again come from policy. Again, thank you to the board for, working with us to to make sure that
we implement this policy with fidelity. And given that, I will turn it over to, the person who's responsible for this first topic of student achievement, and that is Doctor. Whitelaw and Deputy Chief Kiner. Thank you, Bill. To the superintendent and to the board chair, tonight the academic division and in front of you, you should have, a booklet and this is just a copy of our presentation. We're gonna walk through. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on each slide, but we will be
summarizing so we can make sure that we get those key points on each slide. So again, you all have it in front of you as we walk through. But the first thing that we wanted to do was really just to go over in our agenda. So basically, through this business system review for the academic division, we wanna make sure that you know how our academic strategy systems and results work together to deliver outcomes for our students. And so, again, you'll see the goal, what we're trying to, provide for you all
in this evening as well as the things that we'll be going over through the presentation. For academic vision and and really our theory of action, basically, our vision is rigorous and is equity centered instruction. And what we want to really pull out for our theory of action that it is aligned with capacity building and it really focus on having access to high quality instruction that drive outcomes. So the instruction should drive the outcomes that we see in our district.
If you go on to the next slide, here we want to, give a shout out to the council of the great city schools as well as to our deputy chief, and she's going to be chiming in as well. So we're gonna be, working together as a team, through this work. But our framework focuses on seven pillars. And, again, we aligned our work with the Council of Great City Schools, and we pulled out these seven titles, governance and leadership, rigorous academic standards, high quality instruction, professional
learning, teacher quality, accountability, progress monitoring data systems, and support for chronically low performing schools and students. So that's what our work is built on built on when it comes to the academic plan. The next, just our department overview and admission alignment. This is going to show how we are structured in the district and how we deliver on the district's mission. So the academic, when you look at our org chart, again, we work for and
we serve, a great group of people that work alongside of us. And inside of this department, you see the deputy CAO, director of curriculum instruction. We have early childhood, exceptional children, CTE, advanced academics, virtual learning, teaching and learning, alternative schools, charter schools, and ESL. And so we all live in this one area together as well as pre k. If we look at our department overview and what we focus on, we really we
set the academic vision, the strategy, and the programs when it comes to accountability across the curriculum, and we lean in around instruction and leadership development. And what I wanna focus on that we establish the instructional goals and the curriculum alignment, and we also talk about continuous improvement models on how we're going to get this work done. We're gonna also spend some time talking about each department and talk about the work that they do. Here, deputy CAO, again, the role for the deputy CAO that she's the primary lead
for the planning and development of the high level MSCS academic plan. And that she's ensuring that every initiative that we have is backed by data and research to get us to the next level. When we talk about our regional superintendents, they serve as direct supervisors to our principals, our instructional coaches, and they support the coaches in building the capacity of principals, IOTs, and PLCs. And again, they're over our feeder pattern management.
When we look at the other departments, pre k, again, provided high quality full day early childhood education around literacy, social emotional development for our four year olds. So again, she drives the early literacy in the academic division. ESL, again, work with our ESL students as well as making sure that the instruction, the content area are all aligned in the work as well as addressing any language barriers. Exceptional children, they manage, and they make sure that our students are identified as well
as they make sure that we live up to the IEP and that anything that students need in this area around modifications, accommodations, that's where this lives with our exceptional children. Curriculum instruction, again, responsible for the implementation of high quality instruction under the leadership of our deputy CAO. Professional learning under the leadership of our CAO also is responsible for providing the PD to drive the curriculum to ensure that we have effective teachers as well as effective
leaders inside of classrooms and schools. We move on to CTE. Again, just making sure as as we talk about doctor Hogan's work and her being on board with us, really just looking at how she's managing those career clusters and really making sure that we have career ready goals as well as we're getting our students ready for high demand local careers. Advanced academics oversees our our AP work, our dual enrollment partnerships, optional schools, state credit,
dual state credit, all of those things that live inside of advanced academics. Alternative and virtual schools, we put them together, but they're separate on the org chart. But basically, just talking about they they specialize in academic and behavior intervention. They ensure that we have options for our non traditional learners, and and we wanna make sure they are engaged and on track. Charter schools, they serve as our authorizing body for the district portfolio of public charter schools. So again, we wanna make sure that we are providing a menu of high quality
options throughout the city of Memphis. Here when we talk about our system landscape and core functions, what do we depend on, to get this work done? Again, won't read each, up under each heading, but we pulled out PowerSchool just making sure that you understand its core function, the impact that it has inside of our district, behavior and discipline tracking. Again, how we're keeping up with it as far as Power BI using that particular software and making sure that we're in compliant, as well as moving students to the
in the right direction. The Go Engage system, we pull that out because that is a system that our pre k department uses and it mitigates the student data in PowerSchool. That's again, that's another landscape or a core function that's inside of the district. Virtual and remote learning, platforms, not only are we talking about Canvas, iReady, virtual textbooks, as well as, grade repair, course recovery, all of those things living there. Our 10 pulse here talking about our IOPs, our IEPs, as well as, looking at
our ESL learners and the impact that this has, it drives our formula as well as as we talk about the unique learning needs that we capture to report to the state. And then we look at our multi tier support. Whether we're looking at RTIA or RTIB, just making sure that we have response to intervention around academics as well as behavior, and we are required. And as we identify students in tier two and tier three based on system data, then it helps us to create a early warning system. Major prayer program initiatives, we we could stay here, all day because in each department,
we do have initiatives. But what we want to pull out, we want to maybe just pull out a couple initiatives, and make sure that you all know that these initiatives currently drive our instructional improvement and making sure that our students have access to quality instruction no matter where they live inside of our district. So again, we list each department here. We list the initiative. We list the status update as well as any projected impacts that we are looking,
to see how they will have an impact on our students. Again, this continues with curriculum instruction, talking about literacy commitment, leadership development, where we're talking about the focus role in providing PD for our leaders. Then we talk about virtual schools. Here, we really focus on project graduation because it has an impact on our graduation rates and how it supports that work, our CTE, and looking at the industry certifications as well as looking at how we can get better with tier two and tier
three industry credentials. Here, I'm gonna kick it over, to, our deputy CAO that's gonna walk through our academic performance. She's gonna walk through the data that we have as well as talking about our strength and challenges and how it is aligned to the board priorities. Okay. Thank you, doctor Weilau. We are the academic performance section. This section shifts us from systems to results. Alright. Our pathway to greatness, it actually aligns academics, attendance, the arts, behavior, and enrichment from
birth through post secondary. Just a summary about performance. As we know, MSCS is a level five growth district with rising grad and ready grad rates. We are outperforming state run alternatives. When we look at our district level trends, we see that all test tested subjects have improved over four years with our strongest gains in math and science. Even though, we've had those improvements, the growth is uneven.
It's, particularly uneven across grade bins and courses which help us pinpoint where tier one instruction and materials need to be strengthened. Here you see our school letter grades and other proficiency comparisons by grade. Let's look at the root causes of how we got here. These gaps reflect system misalignment and instructional inconsistency and but it does not reflect our
student ability. I wanna make that clear. Three main root causes about inconsistent implementation of tier one. We had some misalignment, between materials and expectations and, professional learning, as an uneven educator and leader capacity. And so our current academic plan addresses all of these root causes and our four district wide trends. We're moving to the academic score cards accountability.
Now these score cards actually translate the academic plan into a measurable time bound outcomes. I want to draw your attention to ELA just as a reminder in a one two and reading in a one eight. In a one two, we are talking about increasing TCAP, proficiency. And remember, TCAP is about standards, English standards. And then in a one eight, we are talking about increasing the number or the
percentage of third graders who read on grade level to 75% and that is currently measured by iReady. We can through the scorecard. You'll see that we have some leadership goals here. And right now, we are still in the goal stage. This is for the most part, the year that we, set the benchmark for many of these where we had no data. Each scorecard holds the system that's accountable for academics, leadership, teacher quality, theater patterns, art
access and special populations. And I am just moving through these slides so you can see the data that we have here. This is an example of our COMSTAD model. This is how we measure our progress each quarter. Each of the divisions that you saw listed, in the beginning of the slide and all the divisions across the district have learned this model. Doctor Richmond has, taught us this model where it begins with what our target is. We have baseline assessments like where are we beginning, what the current data reflect, then
we have to ask questions about how we got the current data, and that's what you see in feedback. And then from feedback, we create a strategy to, to attack for lack of a better word, the issues that are causing our data not to move in the direction, that we wanted to move and then we talk about how we're going to execute. This happens every quarter. Yes, we stand and deliver in real life. Here, I do wanna draw your attention to the part where we, have board goals
and initiatives. The last approved board goals and initiatives we have are from August 21 I'm sorry, August 2021, and those are the ones we are currently working from. We do know that we were in the process before our before Snowgate came through, Icegate, whatever you call it, came through and ended our last retreat earlier. So I know that we are on the path to completing or to updating these goals, but currently, these are the ones that we are working to, to meet.
When you look at the initiatives, the first initiative is to strengthen early, k two and continuing literacy. That's three to 12, and these are the ways that we, are currently working in those areas to do this work. Most of these are all of this is actually inside the academic plan. The second initiative is to recruit and retain the best district leaders and teachers in the nation. You started with the best district leader last week. Great job in the nation.
And so, we're going to continue to build on that with, what you see here on the slide. The third initiative is to create relevant and equitable academic choices, and we have a bevy of them listed for you there. Here's some evidence of some outcomes we've already achieved. We are are an advancing district. That's extremely important. We have, 6,000 as of 2425, 6,885 industry credentials. We have historic TBAS growth, four consecutive years.
That's awesome. Rising graduation rates, 84.4% for the class of 2025, which was notably an 8.4% increase from the year before. Graduation rate is not easy to increase so that is a tremendous effort. Ready graduate success jumped 11 points and then school turnaround. We have 16 schools who earned an a on the state report card, 61 of our schools improved their letter grade by at least one level, and nine schools made
transformational jumps from an f to a c or even higher. Here's some areas that have not yet been met, but we are we have we have dug in. Third grade literacy targets. We had a secondary, a slight, sixth of a tenth, six tenths of a point decline in EL secondary ELA. The early grade social studies, mainly they're tested in grades six through eight. We have a teacher shortage in key areas like ESL and exceptional children, and then
our kindergarten readiness. We still have some work to do there. When we talk about system integrity and risk, we really are digging in around what's happening inside of our district and and what do we need to be mindful of, cautious about, and then how we're gonna mitigate those risks. I I think that you heard miss Kiner talk about the fidelity of implementation. We're we're calling that out because we do know that that we're working hard around instructional coherence, and that was even called out in our academic review.
So that was something that we want to say, we have noticed it. Council of great city schools have called it out as well, and this is part of the information that they have also shared. How we how we plan to mitigate is to really leverage academic plan, to develop an instructional roadmap. We're in the process, miss Kiner, on the last call with the council, they talked about the great work that we were moving into and how to really make it a nonnegotiable inside of our district around instructional practices to support the development of coherent
coherence across all departments. And and so that's an area where we're really focusing because what is evidence based and in align to our values, that's the integrity anchor. When you talk about instructional data, that's that's another assessment integrity and data governance. Again, the risk, we're always thinking about and always going back checking, our data even when it's brought to our attention. We're talking about the inconsistent assessment administration because, again, we want all of our schools, to be tight tightly aligned in that area as well as data data integrity or
poor data literacy. Helping people to understand, the data points, what we need to do about it, and then the strategies we need to create. Our mitigation strategy, again, is really building the data governance and the verification controls, and so we're really working with the bill. And so we're all in the same meeting talking about the work. The data must inform instruction, not protect reputation. So, again, how do we make sure that we have integrity? The next one around compliance and special ed populations, the oversight.
And and we wanna call out again, the federal compliance, because of the fact that we were suspending a subgroup, or the data led, the federal due to federal compliance that that's one area that they want to call out for us. It's an area that we're working on and because of it, we have hired, behavior techs as well as reset room assistance. But not only are we looking at our federal compliance with exceptional students, but we
also focus on anything that it deals with our EL students as well as any other subgroups. So again, building those early warning and routine audit systems, and making sure that we're checking on the things that, hold us accountable for the work. And finally, technology. On this one, plat platform outages, consistent being inconsistent with our connectivity, having a pool from different, PowerPoints as I was looking and we were working today, making sure that things can talk to themselves, talk to each other, as well as inconsistency with how
we distribute technology in the district from school to school. So again, this is a risk for us and how we plan to mitigate. We plan to maintain device replacement cycle, as well as conduct stress tests, as well as develop a sustainability plan. And that is something that, again, how do we sustain the technology in our district, and how do we ensure that it's meeting the needs of all of our students. And then finally, technology must be reliable, secure, equitable, and instruction centered.
And as we talk about our strengths and challenges, again, I think it leads back, to the fact of going back, looking at our data and how Kiner and especially curriculum instruction and PD, regional superintendents, how they have called out, the instructional challenges or the challenges in our district as well as our strengths. So we'll start with the challenges and strengths and, kinda will walk us through as well as you'll hear her talk about some of the things that we're gonna be
doing for our recommendation for next steps on how to address these challenges. Okay. As we look at our challenges, we know that we have proficiency gaps in literacy and math even despite our growth gains. Implementation inconsistency, that's something we are working on now, because that will address the proficiency gaps. Staff shortages in critical areas, SPED, ESL, early childhood, and STEM. We have a rapidly changing student, demographic. We have, especially with multilingual learners, and they are outpacing our current capacity.
The high needs populations in alternative and exceptional education settings require intensive supports and oversight demands for charter school stretch, you know, our capacity right now. With our strengths, I think our strength will start with executing the academic plan. Everybody has been moving in the same direction at at breakneck speed, to make sure that we are implementing the things that need to be implemented so that we can see growth, this year as well.
Creating the four regions plus the I Zone region for our leadership and aligned academic support for feeder patterns. We've defined very clear academic priorities, and we've monitored for those academic priorities. Demonstrating student growth with the consistent level five, that's that's just the answer there. Implementing robust program options or offerings, and you'll see the choices we have there. Implementing standards aligned curriculum, We're really excited about the lesson plans we released this year. We've already begun, the corrections and adding additional scaffolds to those plans to support teachers.
Growing supports for diverse learning including multilingual students and students with disabilities, committing to professional learning, providing specialized environments, and connecting to strong community assets. That's it. Okay. Going to address those challenges in a district wide recommendations. So again, you've talked to you've heard us talk about the strength and alignment of pre k and kindergarten. That's that's critical for us. I think that our pre k teachers who work collaboratively collaboratively with our kindergarten teachers,
how do we improve that number of the number of students who come, come ready for kindergarten? Strengthen the RTIA implementation, I think you've heard about that. That how do we ensure that our students in tier two and tier three, that we identify them, and then we provide the instruction that they need, with fidelity. Leveraging our academic coordinators strategically. The fact that, again, going back to regions, having those coordinators in the region, how we deploy them, and and I know that miss Connor meets with them, meet with the regional superintendents, meet with the instructional leadership coaches, and making sure that we're trying
to really support the teachers and the schools in a way where we model, co plan, and do instructional coaching. Here, we wanna continue to call out maximize recruitment and staff supports along with HR. So we know that's that we're gonna be working together, because we really do need to focus on early hiring, hard to feel, and again, aligning school needs with teachers. Increasing our follow through. Even though we're in schools, how do we continue to do progress checks and make
sure pea our our teachers feel supported? And how do we then define the ownership and let them define accountability? The next one, how do we utilize CCIS in a RTI action plan? So even though we have CCIS, the RTIB, that's our road map. So if we do that well and we continue to do those things that we need to do, then that's going to automatically reduce the number of students that are, being called out for the CCIS. And finally, to support the charter school office, it's a small office, but how do we work and make sure that we support them and we, help the office to
leverage tools and staff strategically. And we worked on this again, just talked about this on yesterday with the entire academic division, and so these are the things that we're calling out as a team, about our next steps. Our policy review, again, one, promotion and retention, that's where our third grade commitment, we're constantly looking at that. Policy, fifty fourteen and fifty fifteen, if I'm not mistaken, we looked at that last semester. But again, making sure that grading protocols, however we have the grades, just constantly being
in tune to how do we make that better or how do we make sure people understand what we're trying to accomplish. Online courses and then charter schools. Here we're already working on that with the charter compact. In the back, before we go to questions and feedback, you had in the appendix, While I gave you a big over well, I, talked about a big overview for the academic department. If you wanna know what lives in curriculum instruction, exceptional children, as well as all of our departments, CTE, advanced programming, then you can go to the back because we
do have that listed. Also, we have listed around professional learning, how we provide professional learning at the district, the regional, and school because it's aligned, and so that's in your appendix. The multi tiered systems of support, you'll definitely see it here because we're talking about RTIA. But when doctor Broadway comes, you'll see her talking about RTIB. And then we talk about how we connected to school performance and how do we do this work in maximizing efficiency. So we put those things in the back in the appendix if you have some
additional questions or concern. So again, thank you for allowing us, to talk about the academic division and all the things that we try to do to serve students and families. Doctor. Richmond. Thank you, Doctor. Whitelaw. Thank you, miss Kiner. I also wanna thank the entire, academic team who contributed along with our communications team and again, Mr. White. At this time board members will take any questions that you all may have, in regards to the business system review presentation. Thank you Doctor. Richmond and team, this is great information.
Before I go to my first question, which is, board member Love, I want to acknowledge the other board members that have come in. We have board member Murphy, and we have board member, vice chair Coleman. Okay. Alright. Then we have, board member Love. This question is for the superintendent. We know that we are going through, I want to form my words correctly.
We know that we are going through a sped issue with black boys. What is the, agenda for them? We know that you implemented a plan, but I'm concerned about the suspension rate and the services Because we can't keep suspending time and time again without addressing the issue
of why they're being suspended. Yeah. Thank you, board member Love, for that question. I see miss Davis over to my right. I'm also looking for doctor Broadway, but I'll I'll answer the question. First of all, we're implementing seven mindsets. Seven mindsets, is part of our RTI2 B, programming around character education as well as social emotional learning. So those things should also help to support, students not being overly suspended. Also this year under, this administration, we have asked principals, principals cannot suspend students for
over four days without first speaking with their immediate supervisor. The reason we did that is again we don't want, our students, none of them regardless of what color agenda they are, to be over identified and over suspended when people use exclusionary practices with our students. We are also trying to ensure that we have a catalog of what you would call responses to interventions. And those responses should be, how are we working with students who are, maybe misbehaving.
So we have reset rooms, we have in school suspension. We're also asking, principals and schools to come up with other forms of intervention. But also on the flip side of that, we're asking them to put in place, ways to reward students. So a behavior plan should have three components, rules, consequences, and rewards. Each school should have what's called an RTI square b plan, that Mr. Bates as well as Miss Davis were over there, along with, Doctor.
Phillips. Their role and responsibility is using a rubric to, evaluate those RTI square b plans so that we can sure ensure each school has one. And again, students are not, just being suspended, as an exclusionary practice. I have another question. I heard you. All of that sounds nice. But are the issues being corrected? Great question again.
So one thing that we've noticed is looking at the data, when students are being suspended, it impacts your chronically out of school rate. We've noticed that our chronically out of school rate is down. I haven't had a chance to look, but I'm a look over here at miss Davis. Our suspension rate and days suspended should be down. But also what I'm hearing you say, and I wanna be clear about this, you have what's called technical and adaptive work. So I'll use high blood pressure for an example.
If I have high blood pressure, taking a blood pressure pill is a technical remedy to having high blood pressure. If I focus on adaptive work, that means I have to change my values and beliefs and lifestyle. So what we've gotta get teachers to understand and principles, suspending students is a technical reaction. Change in a student's behavior is adaptive, and it doesn't happen overnight. It happens over time because many of our students, you have to work with them
around their values and beliefs. I'll use fighting. Many of our students, I remember when I implemented what was called fight free schools in some of our students neighborhoods, their values and beliefs is if someone hits you, you hit them back. So when that's your quality world picture, that's how you choose to react. What the what schools are responsible for is educating students and getting them to see that the larger population's value system in one where you strike someone back.
So you then have to help them to unlearn certain behaviors and teach them other behaviors. So I hope I'm answering your question because in some instances, we can change it overnight. But in some, in doing adaptive work, which is behavioral, you can only change the behavior over time. If I might so how might we measure that? Okay. How might we measure that? Again, everyone has to do the comp stat report out. I'm saying we are measuring it because I've gone through the comp stats.
Miss Davis and her team as well as mister Bates, they presented and we see where our attendance is going up, our chronic absenteeism is going down, our suspensions are going down, particularly those suspensions that are less than ten days. And one reason that is is because we have told principals you're not going to be overly using, exclusionary practices because it not only hurts students, but it hurts you and it also hurts the district because chronic absenteeism is a measuring, an evaluative measure
that could negatively impact our school and our school grade designations. But does the school have everything, he or she needs to, remedy that problem? I'm gonna ask, doctor Broadway and or miss Davis so, to weigh in, they should, but you also saw where in this report, one of the challenges go to challenges right quick. We know that fidelity, implementation across schools, where you see across implementation inconsistency across schools
due to staff turnover, coaching variability, and resource differences is a problem. We are trying to that's why consistent stability and continuity is so important. We can't continue to have turnover in schools in key roles and key positions and expect us to really, really be able to press forward. Stabilizing, providing continuity year after year is what's gonna help us turn our school district around. Doctor Broadway, you wanna add some additional context?
Yes, sir. Good evening superintendent and, school board. Yes. For miss Davis and mister Bates, and also our social emotional learning, we have an ecosystem of supports. We have our behavior specialist, we, we have our attendance liaison, reset room. We have a whole bevy of people that we have put together a presentation that we presented to principals, counselors, assistant principals of supports. We have given out our phone numbers. If principals need, we did principal pulses if they need any assistance or is coming
to schools, we actually now have principals calling us saying, hey, I have a student. We're we've tried everything. So we are picking up the phone, we are giving out our phone numbers, any assistance that is needed we are there to support. Thank you. Board member McKissick. Thank you chair, Doctor. Richmond mine is a bit more of a statement, but also I guess a little bit of a question. In terms of thank you, first of all, to everyone for this very comprehensive report, and I like that it that it it's spoken so plain. You know, you didn't put a whole bunch of, like, education ease talk in there.
But how how do we track and monitor this? As a board, we've spoken about just at each board meeting saying we are having categories and, like, okay, to know that what we are addressing at this month's board meeting or what on the agenda speaks to, you know, this this robust academic plan. So how do you go about, keeping track of this, not just for something that shows up at the end of the year or whatever, but just monthly? One way board member McKissick is to continue to keep, the academic plan in front of you all.
We want the academic plan to be a living, breathing document. When we went yesterday and we spoke before the county commission and they were asking about the facilities plan, that's the one thing we told them is we wanted it to be a living, breathing, document. Sometimes you may even see draft because when you think a plans, plans should be, plans may have to be changed. They may have to be, adapted. And so we wanna continue to do that. One way that we've tried to do it and we did it during the fall
was I don't know if you all recall miss Jordan had started to come monthly and to talk about our pathway to greatness which was broken down into those gray bands. That's one way we wanted to continue to, educate as well as inform the board. Now that we know February, March will be when we would do our academic, business systems review, that's something we can start doing early on in, like, June, July. So by the time we get here in February, we've gone through all of our
pathway to greatness, FOCI. Now what we do is we have our report out. So where you see the ComStat report out for ESL, quarterly, the team is having report outs where we're reporting out on these very important data so that we as a team don't wait and get to the end of the year. If ever you all wanna come to those ComStat report outs or if you even want us to bring them before the board, quarterly, to report out on certain topics and areas, we can do that for you all.
So, again, all of our our academic plan, as well as which each department is responsible for, we're keeping it in front of us so it's a living, breathing, document and plan. Great. Thank you. And so, and just this nice high level overview is really good. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Board member Murphy. Thank you, madam chair. I have a maybe one question, maybe two. I don't know. But, it's concerning the truancy. Some of the parents have letters on file stating their child has, a disability.
So when they're absent from school, then it shouldn't be counted towards them, but they're still getting letters and emails saying that their child is truant when they have a letter on file stating that their child has, these disabilities, and they have an excuse from their doctor. So we were trying to figure out how, we go around that because I know my son has one. He has, severe migraines. So when he's not in school, we have a letter on file from the doctor, but they're still sending even me a truancy letter. Yes, ma'am. Board member Murphy, I'll allow miss Davis to answer that question.
So she can add context as to why we as a school district still have to inform parents around chronic absenteeism and absenteeism. So miss Davis, would you share that with board member Murphy? Thank you, superintendent Richmond, board members. Commissioner Murphy, one thing that we have been diligent about this year is our communication to parents. Informing our parents that chronic absenteeism is just not for those students who with unexcused absences, but it's also for students with excused absences. We've been diligent about going through, making sure that our students who should be on
a health plan are on those health plans. However, if parents do not submit a note, and in your case, it sounds like you're doing what we want all of our parents to do. But in the event they're not submitting a note and they can do it two ways, handwritten note like we did years before or submit them online. If we don't receive those notes, if the parents submit the note, student doesn't get the note to the teacher, teacher doesn't get the note to the upfront office, those absence absences will be unexcused until we receive such documentation to make sure that they're
excused. But I think it's always great to make those touch points with parents because oftentimes parents are just not informed and they just don't know. So when our truancy liaisons reach out, when our attendance engagement liaisons reach out, we're simply informing. We don't wanna send anybody to court who shouldn't be going to court. But the communications that we are doing on a daily basis, I'm seeing some of those results through our numbers. So we'll I'll follow-up and make sure that that is consistently being done. But I wanna add to what miss Davis said because I think this is something
that really needs to be captured. If, let's say, a student has asthma or in the case of your son, has bad migraines, what we as a school system wanna do through what would be called our SART team meeting or, an SST team meeting would be, does that student need a health plan? Is there something we need to do either at the district level or something that the parent we need to support a parent around, hey.
Is there something we can do to better help your child with asthma? Is there something we can better help your child around why he or she has migraines? Do we need to help you? Is there somebody we need to refer you to? Do we need to help with a health plan so that we can better address the needs of the child so that he or she can be at school every day? And that's why we do that because we wanna provide those wrap around supports for students regardless of what the need may be. Okay. Follow-up question.
And I'm glad you said that because some students have to take medication in school. And if the if there's no, health professional there, then the mom has to come. So what can we do? Because the mom can't run up there every day. I can't run up to school every day to give him Tylenol or give him a pump. So how can we, get somebody certified to do that when, when there is no health professional in school and the parent can't get there? There there are ways that if students are on medication, there should be a nurse
assigned. I'm gonna allow doctor Whitelaw to add more context. But if that is the case, we need to know because every situation is different. So doctor Whitelaw or doctor Luckett, if one of you all can, add more context to that question. Thank you, superintendent. I just, look back to doctor Luckett because what we wanna be able to do, definitely, we have a nurse that are assigned to schools, but also, doctor Richland, we try to train at least one person in each building to be able to administer medication. So what we will do, we will make sure that we team up with the
nurses, team up with doctor Broadway's team, and we'll just double check as well. We'll go back and provide training. This may just be a good spot for us to do a refresher, because people may not be in the building that we're in the building last year. So thank you for bringing that to us, but we should have at least one person in each building that has been trained. But we'll go back and look at that. Okay. Because I didn't know that because I had to run and to the school and give Ethan some Tylenol because he had a bad headache. So I had to stop what I was doing, and I don't know if there wasn't a health professional there or a nurse.
So that's why I asked that question. And we'll go back and do research, to superintendent board members, we'll go back and do research and then make sure that we have a plan so that we can, bring that to Doctor. Richmond. Okay, thank you. Board member Garcia. Thank you. So I'm looking at three slides in particular, and I appreciate the level of overview, and what I think are honest assessments. So I'm looking at system integrity and risks, challenges, and district wide recommendations and next steps, thinking about, I would ask anyone who isn't in a decision maker in our
academics team. From a board perspective, we're entering budget season. A lot of these, my read of it is there's a there's a training staffing component to this, the the fidelity, of implementation. Where would additional resources help academics be strengthened? If we if we if we wrote you a check, where would you spend it? Feel feel free, doctor Wylaw, of of miss Kiner. To be to be honest, doctor Richmond and I'll let Kiner chime in as well. We we've had conversations, and we've had I guess, top level conversations, but I would love for us to go back and
work with the team and get real clear. Because I don't wanna provide a laundry list, but I want to make sure. Because every department that's in here, they're probably like, yes. Bring us up. But to your point, we do want to we know that we need support and help, and I'll let, miss Kiner just give you some things that we know we've talked about in every AOTI meeting, in every academic meeting around the things we know right now that we need, and then we'll go back and have a bigger conversation to make sure we have everyone included. This doesn't have to be the last conversation and like the the buckets of which
we're thinking about, staffing or materials, training, like, where where would we make the biggest impact with the limited discretionary budget that we do have outside of, you know, fixed costs. So where would you invest? My answer would be d, all of the above. And then I would look, specifically at, substitutes so that we can, we don't have to have PD after school.
We can have PD during school where teachers can teachers and leaders can get the support that they need, any professional development they need during the school day. And and just having money to pay subs is just such a huge lift, for us. Obviously, all of the other things you said, materials, those kinds of things. But I'll be honest with you, when you purchased, my access, when you purchased, Performance Matters, the Advantage Learning.
Yeah. That's my access. That was a lift. That was a huge lift, that we are taking full advantage of right now. But now it's just about the training. It's about because we have so many novice teachers, how can we pull them in and support them towards becoming certified? But having somebody to be in their classroom while we do that work. Who can we call in to help us get them certified? That that kind of cost, those kinds of things would be extremely helpful now. You gotta stop me because I'll keep spinning.
No. That that's really helpful. I think the the focus on investing in talent, right, making sure the the professional development that was one of my questions on the recommendations and next step. What is the what's the ideal feedback loop for professional development for teachers? So if you say, hey, submit a exemplar lesson, they upload it and wherever it is. What are those, like, are those conversations happening with all teachers?
Are we prioritizing our our teachers who need to grow the most? Are do we feel like we need more support there? Is there is there a strong feedback loop on the training we're doing? There is a strong feedback loop on the training that we're doing. We use the resources that we currently have to do surveys, to to check for we always lead with a task, right? We want you to practice while you're there so we can give you feedback immediately so that when you go back to where, you know, wherever you're working, you'll have that feedback to guide you as you continue.
But principals are trained to when you talk about lesson plans, I wanna be real, specific. They are trained to give, teachers feedback. The great thing is that we've done most of the lesson plans for them. So there's not much feedback needed. It's probably more in the feedback of how they present and what they know about the lessons that how they internalize. So that's the kind of feedback they're getting right now unless they are, you know, an extra subject or a subject that's not tested, then they'll have to get that feedback. But the feedback loops are pretty tight.
I will say that. And and, Barbara and McCarthy, if I could take this point of privilege, I I also wanna talk about the work that Kiner and the team that they've done, and that I think that is really changing the culture of our district that, they're going in, but it's a different way of just really listening to principals. I've been on I try to go on, not as many, but definitely half of the walks. And what I hear kind of asking the principals as we go into schools, what is it that you need from us? Right? What do you need from us to be successful?
You know, whether that's training, whether that is coming over and modeling for, a teacher, or even if it is, and I and Sharp is just sticking out for me right now, that what else can we take back to other departments? Because sometimes we're there and we find out other information. So when we talk about feedback loop, not only for teachers but for leaders as well, and we don't go on those walks alone. So the regional superintendent, the instructional leadership coach, and it's not a got you. It's really how do we support you.
So I just wanted to take that as well. Thank you. I took the, under your system integrity and risks. I thought the data must inform instruction, not protect reputation, is that we can't, we gotta own what we don't own and own what we do. And the data is a flashlight, not a hammer, so let's get better. Yeah. And then the la my last comment, sorry, is we will have preliminary forensic audit findings coming to us, is that, after we receive those, I would like us to
evaluate our system integrity and risks and, mesh those two together so that we are being responsive to, anything that that does come out in our academics. So we're because we've had the the privilege of, a deep dive into our work. So just keeping that in mind, I will say that for every business systems review. Thanks. Thank you. I have a couple of questions, then it will be, vice chair Coleman and Love. First of all, this is a great presentation. I want to, commend Doctor. Richmond for remembering in his, the greatness grows here of adding student engagement.
I appreciate that. That's very important because they're ultimately our our number our number one focus, and that is our customer, our students. I have just to piggyback on board member Garcia. I think she asked you what I also would like to ask you how much it costs, Because what I think would be helpful for us is to give us the wish list, but prioritize it and then put the cost to it. So if you believe that you have these district wide recommendations and next steps and
you put these in order of priority, what's your big bet items? I think I've heard board member Garcia say, what's the big bet? What do you think is going to put us there, fastest? I also want to bring to your attention too. I just want you to think about it. I saw the policy review. And as we think about our five a's and we think about how these things connect to academics, think about the policies that you you need to look at as well that we may need to adjust Okay. In order to get you there. So I'm thinking about art.
So I'm thinking about, is there a policy that's on the books that we need to put on the books that keeps us committed? Athletics, I know we have the athletics policy. Is there something that we need to do that keeps us committed to doing this work in that way? There's also attendance. I think about attitude, then I think about our discipline policy, And I think that's something that board member Love brought up about how are we how are we dealing with some of our youth who we might have to provide different types of resources
and strategies when we come to discipline. And then, of course, there's you gave us all the academic policies. But I want I I really would like to encourage you all to look across, across the the, policy manual and find out what are interconnected and aligned so that we can we can make sure that we're doing what we need to do on that respect. And, again, on the budget respect, ask us for what you want, because I certainly did it down at county commission yesterday. I told them we're coming back. We're going to ask you for what we want, because if you don't, you know,
closed mouths don't get fed. Okay. And then, I'm gonna leave it there and let board member Coleman and Love go, and then I'll come back in the queue. Thank you, chair McKinney. I was in agreement with board member Hill Garcia. That was that was one of my questions. My second question is something I'm a stick with about is the neighborhood feeder pattern. How can we strengthen that? Because I know in one part of my district, if I have a child missing out of middle school, I have this sibling missing either out of high school or
elementary school. So what what can we do to strengthen that so it makes it easier that we don't have the same repeat children missing from school and most of them are coming from the same household? Yeah. Thank you, board member Coleman, for that. I'm looking again over at, miss Davis. I know each of our schools are assigned an attendance liaison. And in many retrospect, those attendance liaisons are assigned to schools by feeder pattern.
And that allows them, we know when we look at attendance, you're absolutely right. You could have several siblings who reside in the same home that if you find a way to impact the attendance of the one sibling, you can impact, the attendance of all of the siblings. So that's the answer to the question around attendance. In regards to feeder patterns, what we're asking network rest with, regional superintendents and we're asking them to really be, focused on shoring up every single feeder pattern.
When we were down yesterday at the county commission meeting, commissioner Sugarman asked about having a steam focus in one of her feeder patterns, and it's the South Wind feeder patterns, so that would be Highland Oaks Elementary, Highland Oaks Middle School, and South Wind High School, and so we're going to be responsive to that, and that would be the responsibility of Doctor Lowe, who's the regional superintendent for that particular, region. So we think about the areas that represent you, I know for example, the Melrose
feet of pattern. How are we ensuring that, Dunbar, Hanley, Sherwood Elementary, Sherwood Middle School, all of those schools within that feeder pattern, there's their vertical alignment, we're looking at if there's any particular foci in that particular feeder pattern, we're shoring those things up. So, that's part of the work of the regional superintendent, the instructional leadership coach, as well as those academic coordinators that support all of the schools in that particular feeder pattern.
It's also how we're deploying people. So, when we think about the regional deployment, is to provide equity and access, but it's also to be more efficient. So, people are not just housed here in Central Office and they're having to drive all the way to Southeast Memphis. That's why we have that, Eastern regional regional office for Northeast and Southeast so the people who are housed there can immediately be deployed to those schools to allow and
to provide support. Yes, ma'am. Two questions. This is a great plan, but how are you going to hold the staff that do the work and supervise the teachers and principals accountable? Great question. Board member Love, as I see it, regional superintendents, each regional superintendent has an ecosystem of support that is deployed to support, schools. So we have two different things going on here. We have decentralized support and we have centralized support.
So certain things like mister White's office is a centralized support because we can't decentralize all that mister White does. Security is a centralized support But when we start talking about academics, we've tried to arrange academics and professional development. We've tried to decentralize it so that they can go out into the communities and support. I'll use Ms. Davis, I'll use Ms. Davis a lot today. Miss Davis is responsible for 75 attendance liaisons.
And I forget what the budget amount is for those 75 attendance liaisons. But I've met with those attendance liaisons and I've shared with them that we are expecting an ROI. That's a return on investment. If we're hiring 75 people to support improving attendance, if we're not getting a return on the investment of those 75 people, we're not going to continue to be able to invest in those 75 people.
So each one of them are assigned schools and they know that the schools that they're assigned to, they are responsible for improving the attendance outcomes in those schools. We have what's called RTI squared B Specialists. Those RTI squared B Specialists are supposed to support schools with behavior. We know that, behavioral incidences should be going down. Suspensions should be going down. Students who should have what's called a PSAP, a parent student attendance plan. Every student who has five or more unexcused absences should have a plan to impact
their attendance getting bet, better as part of our truancy policy. So all of these different groups, we're having them to come in. Their responsibility is to report out, to follow the SDIS process quarterly. So we're looking at the data to see if they're moving the needle. So at the end of the day, it's not about how I feel about you personally. What it is about is the work. You You're gonna continue to hear me say, we always gonna be easy on people, hard on the work. Easy on people, hard on the work. Everybody has a responsibility and we're expecting you to That's why we started off with
job descriptions because these job descriptions next question. The regional superintendents, are they going to carry their evaluation, for the principals they, are over? Yes, ma'am. Everybody has a scorecard and that's why, Commissioner Thornton asked an interesting question yesterday and
the question she asked was, she asked about student proficiency versus, growth. And what immediately resonated in my head was the regional breakdown. And we know the Northeast Region and the Southeast Region, when we look at the data, their data is always better than the students' data in the Northwest and Southwest. And you know why? Because of social economics. Social economics. We have the data to support it. The data supports it.
So when she asked the question, I didn't wanna entertain it there. But clearly, the metrics for doctor Britney, We'll look at all of his schools, what is the baseline and what does 5% look like in ELA, for example. And my expectation for Doctor. Brittnam would be to increase his region by five percent. If he has a total of 40 schools, that means each one of those schools need to increase by 5%. But guess what? One of them may stay stagnant.
Another one may be increase by 10%. That may offset it for doctor Grinder. But each regional superintendent will have a scorecard that's aligned with the schools that they supervise and that they're responsible for. When they come and report out quarterly, they're reporting out on their schools, attendance, academic, and non academic metrics every quarter. I have a a couple of questions. You brought it up with growth versus proficiency. It is important, and I appreciate the comp stat that you have, that slide that
you had, the comp stat, that it's focused on proficiency versus just growth. I think it's important that as much as we can as board member, McKissick said, as we are trying to educate not only ourselves and and to stay transparent, and accountable, but educating our parents and the public about this work and what it looks like, what proficiency means and and how the state decides what proficient means from year
to year. It's it changes on an annual basis, and what growth means and how why our data look the way they do because of what you just said around, the external factors. And I think I've said this to the county commission yesterday, based on that question, that Britney Thornton commissioner Thornton said is that, you know, there's research out there we already know. That 60% of the change in test scores are due to out of school factors. So it is literally, we get children how they come, and we have to try
to move them even in even with the things that they are doing with what they're they're experiencing outside of the schools. No excuse, just a fact in reality. So what it so I will again commend you on this, and I think this is a stopped board member McKissick real quick before she had to go take care of her her child. This is something that I think would be great every month at the board meeting that we see a proficiency target and that is clearly explained for the public growth
and proficiency. And then I have a question for you too. We we have, and and letting the the us and the the, community know what's our target for growth and what that means and what's our target for proficiency and what that means. Yeah. Thank you, madam chair. Miss Davis, let's bring, if you don't mind, Tuesday under my report. I'd love for you to report out so that, board members can see how we're looking at attendance and using the SDIS. So if you don't mind, I'd like for you to be first up, to show
and use the SDIS process. I'd also like to let board members know, as we start to implement, we've started to implement the SDIS process with staff. The SDIS process is adopted from the Efficacy Institute and what it speaks to is that smart in something you are, smart is something that you can get through effective effort. Our next iteration of this will be to really teach this to not just students, but parents. So if I'm a student and I wanna make an A, my proficiency target is
to make an A. My baseline would be what have my grades look like in the past and what are my grades now and what do I have to do to make an A? So their students own being proficient. The same thing with parents. If you want your child to be a straight A student, what have their report cards look like? What is the data currently? And what do you as a parent, why isn't your student making an A? And what do you as a parent have to do in order for doing the B? So, everybody all the way down from the superintendent is being accountable for what's within
their sphere of influence and accountability. That's one part. What you just asked for, we can bring because what we've tried to do is to set proficiency targets. We also do this with principals. So we've asked principals to set their own proficiency targets at the school level. Next iteration would be teachers, students, and parents. So, everybody throughout the whole entire community is using the self directed improvement system to improve not just academic outcomes, but also life outcomes.
Thank you. I have board member Love. What are you doing for the parents? What we're doing with the parents is we're working closer with our family and community, engagement department. I've talked to the family and community engagement department because I've also asked for each school to have a site based decision making council, which, per title one, every school should have. In the past, we haven't been doing that with 100% of, fidelity. So I'm hoping we will start to do that with fidelity and I'll be inviting the presidents who are parents of those site based decision making councils to, quarterly meetings,
to meet with me. As well as as early as yesterday, our communications team sends out, monthly, family newsletters. And within those family newsletters, I also unpack and provide, certain, things for parents, resources and things for them to use and to know about. For example, our personalized learning plans. When we sent home the family letter yesterday, I asked the team to always show where parents can go and see my weekly recaps around what I'm doing, but also
I wanted them to see the personalized learning plans. Each student gets a personalized learning plan after a report card goes on. And that is similar to the ComStat self directed improvement system because we want parents to know what they can do at home to better help their child to have better academic outcome. Can we get a preview of that as well, the personalized learning plan so that we can see what that looks like? Yes, ma'am. I'll I'll resend it to to the board. Yes, ma'am. Actually, I think it would be something good to do a board board work session
or, board meeting so that, again, this is a way to educate our public of this is the way that you can get involved. Yes, ma'am. Does anyone have any more questions? Well, I am written. Yeah. You guys okay. Well, the this business systems review is adjourned. Thank you.