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. Nobody has signed up for the public comments, so we will move on to the items of information requiring action. Mrs. Baker. Good evening, board. I recommend approval of the board personnel report. Move to approve. I'll second. We have a motion by Mr. Mertz and second by Mrs. Hartman. Does anyone have any questions or comments? All right, we will vote on that. All those in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. Item 3.01 carries. All right. I think we have some introductions here. Thank you, Mr. Hernandez. Sir. Yes. After 33 years of service, Mrs. Angela Swales announced her retirement this spring, and so that led to us looking for a new principal at Rosa Parks Kindergarten Academy, and we are excited to have Missy Decker come up. Okay. Missy is going to be our new principal at RPK. We're going to give her a chance to introduce her guests that she has here with her tonight. I'd like to take an opportunity to thank the board, Dr. Craig, Mr. Spencer, for this opportunity to continue to serve Perry Township
and Rosa Parks Kindergarten in this new role. I'd like to thank Angela Swales for being an outstanding mentor. And I brought my family with me tonight, my husband, Cody, our oldest son, Kellen, our middle son, Kerrick, and our youngest son, Connor. Wow. Great. Congratulations. Congratulations. Picture time. We're going to do a quick picture. Oh, they're all dressed alike. Good job. Thank you. Good evening, board. We also have another retirement we will be celebrating, that's Mr. Tim Lovejoy, who is leaving the Compass Education Center, and I'd like to invite Mrs. Sarah Brewer forward. Thank you, Denise.
Hi. I greatly appreciate this opportunity to come before you to serve the rest of this school year. Awesome. Sarah's going to be our new director. Please raise the platform for me. There you go. You can take your picture by yourself. You're good. Also, board, we'd like to invite Mrs. Stephanie Quinlan forward. Okay. Stephanie has been selected to lead our Department of Student Services. We're so excited. She's stepping up from the assistant role, and she's going to be the new Director of Student Services. Welcome, Stephanie. You may introduce your guests. Oh. Thank you, guys. Thank you. My husband, Brian Quinlan, is here. Oh, he can be last. I took his
camera. Congratulations, Stephanie. Thank you. Is that it? All right. Well, if you would like to stay, you can, to hear about our literacy data and Lilly Grant update. But you can take this opportunity now if you'd like to leave. And guys, I think ice cream is in order on the way home. So yes. Yeah. At Ritter's, I think I would approve of that.
All right. Thank you. Okay, so we have the literacy data and Lilly Grant update, and Mr. Spencer and Mrs. Pollard, tag team on this? Yes. Yes, we will. Thank you, board. I'll get us started tonight. We're going to talk about some elementary literacy data. Also, just wanted to bring back, we start each of our meetings with our mission, vision, our values, and then also a connection to the strategic plan. That's been something that we have continually brought to the forefront of our leaders' minds as we begin meetings. And so, seeing that continue to school level is really
important as well. It's aligning the work that we're doing. So, this slide shows at the beginning of the '25, '26 school year, this was the kindergarten composite scores for DIBELS in class across the country. The national average is at the top. So, over 850,000 students did testing in the beginning of the year window. And you can see red is well below, yellow is below, green is at, and blue is above. And then you can also see where Perry Township students start. So, we had over 900 students that were first assessed upon entering Perry. And you can see that the amount that were well
below is significantly higher than our national average, 59% of our students versus 43% of the others. And then our below was also lower, or was greater than the national average. So, that just gives you a snapshot of when our students are entering our system, how they are coming to us. And so, we can't control that. But once we get students into Perry Township, it's then our job to make sure that we're delivering high-quality instruction and quality interventions that are allowing them to access and gain those literacy skills. And so then we take it again in the middle of the year. Jeff, is this test done at the very beginning of
the year? Yes. It's not like the first days of school, but once they've had a little bit of time to acclimate, then it is pretty much right away we are doing this beginning of the year assessment data. But it's not part of the pre-kindergarten like- That's correct. They are kindergarten students when this data is takenAnd so then our middle of the year window is in December and January. And you can see that now we start to see a reverse in the trend, and that by middle of the year, our students have already caught up and surpassed the district average. We have significantly reduced both the students well below and below, and we've grown those students in the at and the above.
And so that's an apples to apples comparison. That is again, at the kindergarten level, where certain students come in a little less prepared than what their peers nationally are doing. But then in just a semester of literacy instruction and intervention, we have moved the needle there. Jeff, I see beginning and middle of the year. Do we do anything at the end of the year? We do. Usually in the summer, we do a summative data look at iLearn, and we can include that part too, just so you can see how we finish the year as well. So those are the three data points that we're always looking at, and
it used to be K2, and now we give it all the way through fifth grade at the elementary level. And so this is the second year of giving it at the third, fourth, and fifth grade level. But yeah, those are numbers that we will update when we get to that end of year. All right. So this DIBELS test, you said, is given K through fifth grade. Yes. Okay, so is it the same test in August, is the same test in the middle of the year? So it's like end of year, do you see what I'm saying? Yep. Like- It's a great question. So the composite score is the combination of five
different sub-tests. And so those tests are the same in the grade spans, but the mark to be at or above changes based on the year. So it's a kind of a sliding scale, as you go through the year, you're expected to be able to do more. Right. Again, this is a nationwide test that's given to, again, nearly a million students a year, so there's a large sample size of data to look at. Okay. But the mark does move throughout the year. With that mark moving, is it well below jumping to above, or is it everybody moving up one tier, or is it a majority of them jumping two tiers? That's a good question. I could give you the chart. I can send it to you.
It lays out what that metric is. It's not as clean as saying it goes from red to green. Okay. So another data point that we check that we have in this, which is also nice, it's called Zones of Growth. So every student at the beginning of the year are clustered with students around them, and there is an expected amount that they should grow based on where they started, and it tells us did we move the mark for that student. So it's not comparing a student at blue's growth to a student at red's growth, because we would expect somebody at well below, they have to make more than a year's growth if they're
going to catch up. But it's a great metric for our teachers to see, for my students that I had in class, did I move the needle the expected amount for that student. That'll work. Thank you. So that's for each student, the zones of growth? Yeah, every student is assigned a score at the beginning of the year that is their target growth, and then that's a metric that we've started using in the last two years as one of our guiding principle, guiding light data pieces, because it's specific to that student and did we grow that student how much they needed. Bless you. Any other questions about DIBELS? I'll come back to some data points related to iRead here at the end, but I wanted
to give you an update on something that you've previously approved that we're starting to see some value, and that's exciting. So Project Read is a project that we brought last year. It was a relatively new product at the time, so we've kind of been with them from the very start. And so there's a couple aspects of the program that I'm going to highlight, but Matt's been a great benefit of helping us work through some technology issues and data sharing. The CEO, there's a picture of him, Viv. He actually has visited Perry Township. That's him in a Clinton Young classroom. They've been super responsive to our feedback in customizing things, and
they were excited because we are a large district that's diverse but also has a lot of languages spoken and diversity that allows them to design a really great tool for all types of learners. And so, there's a couple different aspects that I'm going to go through with Project Read. One of the exciting things is this weekend, Time Magazine named them one of America's top ed tech companies, which is super exciting that, again, we identified them really early on as a potential piece of the solution here in Perry Township, and others have seen that same value. And so, one part of it is UFLI monitoring, and so UFLI is one
of our literacy tools. We have a couple schools that are using it as a tier one, so it's foundations of literacy. So it's a lot of the science of reading explicit phonics instruction. We've used it as a tier two tool for a period of time in interventions. So with UFLI progress monitoring, teachers can monitor skills weekly, and they enter it into this portal that Project Read provides to us. And then the portal will identify, based on those project monitoring scores, what are some gaps in that student's learning. It will give you grouping recommendations.
It will also give you scripted interventions for our students. So for our teachers, instead of having to do all of that thinking on their own and planning on their own, it's giving them some efficiencies to when they enter this data, it gives them some solutions where I now can print this out, work with my small group, and give them really high-quality instruction based on that. So that's one aspect that we're using it for, which is exciting. Any questions about that, or I'll move on to the next? Does this go ... So Project Read doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with our curriculum, right? So the nice piece about it, and again, through working with them, they've been able
to create alignment with both UFLI, which is one of our interventions everywhere, but we've got a couple schools using it as the foundational skills part, literacy foundations part, but it also is aligned to CKLA. So the next piece talks more explicitly about that. But yeah, it has alignment to the tier one and tier two curriculums that we're using, which was part of the reason why we were excited toTo implement it, because again, it creates that alignment and support for, it's not another thing, it's bringing the things we already use together. Yeah. So then this next piece is the AI tutor.
And so this is where students are putting on headphones, as you can see. We've had to troubleshoot some of this. This is one of the things Matt's helped with, is that they can read it directly into their computer, but then if you're all doing it at the same time, that causes some issues. And so we've had to work to find some headphones that are durable enough, but also can pick up the level of specification of what they're saying. This gets down to the phoneme level, so the sound level, and so it gives data that teachers can view, and then they can provide, again, targeted interventions based on as the tutor's listening to them read, it's identifying that they're not able to make this blend, or they're struggling with this sound.
And so then the teachers can look through that data and give targeted, specific instruction to that student directly based on their needs. There's also a word mode option. It allows them to have some more scaffolding for the students that they're still reading sound by sound. So like when they're encoding and putting sounds together, they're still struggling to not be as-- They don't have the automaticity yet. So there is a piece on this that provides some scaffolding around that too. So we have a data agreement with UFLY actually, that's looking at some of our data. Looking at some. Looking at a lot of our data to show us how it's impacting, and so
we've got some, I won't say final results yet, but we have some positive indicators that this tool is for students that are using it with the expected frequency that it is having an impact positively for them. So that's another aspect of it. And how many schools or buildings are you saying are using this? So we've got it for all. We've targeted the schools that were below 70%, the schools that were not getting the results that the state is expecting. They're the ones that we've supported the most intentionally this year, just because
time's finite. And so that's the group that we've really intentionally built some supports around. Once we've learned from that and identified like, "Here are some things we've learned," we plan on assuming we get the data results to then continue to roll this out more intentionally in other spaces. And is this where teachers need to go to training or go to workshops? So is this something that we're offering in the summer, or is it kind of train the trainer kind of thing? We've done some of each. So, with UFLY because we've partnered with them and provided them some access
to data, they provided some for the UFLY specific pieces. They provided some training for us, and we'll continue through this summer to do some of those. With Project Read, it's been more, again, intentionally supporting the leaders in that building, so then they can support the teachers. Our district literacy coaches have been a big part of this as well, so they provided... It kind of depends on the space. Some buildings, they've taken it, and they've had the capacity to work directly with teachers. Others have had some extra support from our literacy team. I have a quick question. What percentage of their lesson is the AI tutor? That's a great question. It's a small percentage. It's like 15 minutes a day.
It's like whenever they're doing stations. So some of them, when you walk into a room that's doing this, and I think we've talked about maybe seeing it, so if that's an interest, then let us know and we can figure out a time that you could come see it in action. But you'll have teacher working with a small group of kids individually, and then you'll have some students what look like they're doing independent tasks, where they're reading to the AI tutor on their headphones. And then there's rotations for that. So they might have one third of their rotations might be get on my computer and use my AI tutor. And do you have the different breakdowns between the schools and not just the
overall increases for the scores? For the M class piece? Yeah. We do. We probably would present those at the summer when we get to the end of the year, and you can see the details of school by school, how they did. Okay. So UFLY is a portion of Project Read or are they two separate things? They're two separate things, but they partnered. So UFLY is a science of reading-based foundational literacy program. So it has its own scope and sequence of how do I teach students to break down sounds? How do I teach them to encode and decode?
How do I teach them foundational literacy skills? Project Read, I would say, is a technology solution that's helping us use our data better, and also in the instance of the AI tutor, provide our students specific feedback and instruction while the teacher maybe is not sitting right there, the tutor's doing it for the student. There's some gaming aspects of it too, like you earn coins and different things like that. So they've used some gamification that seems to be motivating with the students today, and as well. Oh. Go back. Oh, no, that's right. Thanks, Ben. So one thing I'll mention that we didn't highlight on there is that,
so CKLA, finding high quality text anytime in literacy is important. So one of the thing that Project Read does is they have a decodable text generator. And in our case, we're able to, say, align it to CKLA. So when it prints text out that teachers might use in a small group or an intervention, it's going to be aligned to our tier one curriculum. Which is another piece of why we felt like this tool was really valuable, because again, it'sIf you're not doing that, you're probably trying to use Google or you're trying to find texts on your own. And so this is something that, again, efficiently allows our teachers to get
texts that are high quality that they can use in their classrooms. Okay. Middle school is going to CKLA, correct? It's called Amplify, but yes. Amplify. Same company. Okay. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So is Project Read something-- Is it specific to K-5, or is it something that can move into- They've used it in limited ways with middle schools. I think as we're getting to an answer with the middle school curriculum, I think a conversation with Viv about that will be something on our list to do, because it's much more used...
I mean, it's a relatively new program too, or a new company. But it's been mainly in elementaries, but he has had some adaptations that they've started working with in the middle levels. And the only thing I would add is we use UFLI all the way up through high school, and with lots of success. And so, as we are putting together our intervention plans and figuring out what our best practice is, we'll consider everything that's being successful in other places, for sure. Okay, so then second grade, iRead Foundations. So, just some reminders about the second-grade test. It is the same test as the third-grade test. So it is third grade iRead given to second-grade students.
And so, 65% of that assessment is third-grade standards. So our students are being tested on things that we haven't explicitly taught them yet. If you look at the three graphs, you can see this is our scores in Foundations. So this is what is assessing their understanding of foundational literacy skills. What we know about this, if they don't have these skills, them passing iRead 3 is going to be very difficult. Or it's usually the first thing that you have to get to above or on grade level before you're going to get a student to pass. What's exciting with the implementation of the new curriculum, you
can see we went from 8% of kids exceeding in 2024 to this year, we're up to 22%. So nearly tripled the number of second-grade students that are at the exceeding level, which again is that first piece that you have to get to in order to see them have a chance to pass. Our second-grade scores went up another percent this year, which is great overall. Again, when we get to summer, when we've finished, the second graders get two takes, so they'll get a retake opportunity in May. And then when we get to the summer data piece, we'll give you updates on overall how we did in second grade and how we did school by school.
But positive signs in second-grade data as far as significantly growing that amount of students that are exceeding. And this is, we started Amplify CKLA in '25. Yeah, we started it- The testing ... '24, '25. So the far left number would've been our last year with HMH 2024. That would've been spring of. The middle one would've been last year, our first year using CKLA, and then the '26 piece would be then this year, our second year of CKLA. What is going on with the does not meet students?
Because that seems like it's not really changing. It has gotten to where it's under 30, so we are moving it in the right direction. Obviously, we want to continue to see that number decrease. But more kids passed this year, and we have gotten a lot more that are in that, at the foundations level, they're at consistently meets or exceeds. But you are correct, we need to continue. If we're going to get more kids to pass that line, I think we would hypothesize as you see kids that have been in CKLA from kindergarten year, next year those kids will be third graders, that you'll continue to see those
gains. Obviously, the data that you're showing tonight, we're seeing growth in certain areas. What kind of feedback are you getting from the teachers indicating what's working and what's not working, I guess? So we do culture surveys that will go out here shortly that will give us some teacher voice in how things are going. I can say, anecdotally, I think teachers, we've been able to continue to use our CKLA embedded coach to provide teachers trainings on how to use the curriculum well. That's been a piece that
in year one, we spent a lot of time training our leaders and our master teachers so they can give that instruction to teachers. Our CKLA coach also coordinated walkthroughs to collect data on the effectiveness of how we're implementing. This year, especially this semester, we've really shifted because this is the end of our time with that resource to doing some teacher training. So we had teacher trainings over spring break, we've got some over summer, we've got some before and after school to give as much support and capacity building as we can. And so, I think the feedback from those trainings have
been that they've been valuable, that they've been able to have a deeper understanding of the curriculum. So I think the feedback we've got is that... And I think another piece that I would want to highlight is that as we've gotten, because Dr. Spray's push has been to align things more, because we have a lot of students that move from building to building. And so I think our teachers have recognized some of the value in when I get a student that transfers in from Perry side to the Southport side, they already know the routines, they know where we're at in the curriculum. It's a similar experience even though they transfer. I want to say it's maybe your third slide where it
showed the start of the year numbers. Mm-hmm. Yep. Has there been any kind of discussion on how to try and get that initial testing number to be lower that doesn't meet the standard? Is that just maybe a correlation to the number of kids not in preschool? I was going to say that I think it's probably a representation of what happens in homes before they get to us. Obviously, continuing to provide better pre-K experience and opportunities is important. We have adopted, it was a couple of meetings ago, we adopted a pre-K curriculum that's aligned.
So again, we're hoping that those things improve and grow our pre-K students that we have in our own district. Bless you. As a part of that grant, we're also bringing providers in the community together for some professional learning, which hopefully if they're not in a Perry pre-K, if they're in a different provider's pre-K, hopefully gives them some more resources related to literacy and the basics of things you can be doing in pre-K. I'll add one more thing. Our EL department is making a big push to make sure that our parents know what it means to be kindergarten ready.
And we have found that's been a real gap, and so hopefully through some education, we can start to make a difference there as well. Have you seen any kind of increase in your enrollment in your pre-K programs? I think it's pretty flat line. Okay. We're... Because we can't accept more. We're pretty full right now, if you look at just capacity. Okay. And so- That's kind of where I was getting at. I didn't know- Yeah. We don't have- ... if we had spots still available, and people weren't utilizing them, but we're at capacity then, huh? Yes. Okay. Thank you. And our last piece is just talking about some IREAD-3 pieces. So first time testing, so the blue line is last year,
and you can see where second grade was. And then, you can also see where third grade was. And so then the '25, '26 line you can see is a little bit above last year's line, so we had about a 2% increase at this time. What's exciting, last year we grew about 5% from first to final. We did have a couple schools last year, Jeremiah Gray and... Who else? Jeremiah Gray and, oh, Douglas MacArthur, that from first take to second take, saw really high rates of growth, and then Winchester was third in that line.
And they had all followed a similar intervention plan that we have then decided this really works well, so before spring break, we went with all the schools to walk through the steps that they took. And so we're hoping, we would anticipate, that we're going to see even greater growth this year before we get to the end. So 80% was our IREAD-3 goal this year, and we are in good shape for that. The other piece, we had two schools this year that both went up over 10% increases, and more significantly in the rate of growth. So that was exciting. Students that score 400
on their first take, but don't pass, we've found over the last couple of years that those students should pass by the time we get to the final take. And so we had over 150 students in that boat this year. And so looking at that plus some other ones that are just a little below, like that 380 to 399 range, we feel that we have really good interventions going on each day with our schools, and that we'll be in good shape to progress for that goal of 80%. And again, in the summer, we'll have school-by-school results and where we finished up. So just to review the timeline, they'll take it again
before they leave school in May, sometime the last couple of weeks of May, and then third graders have a third attempt. So any third grader that does not pass gets to come to summer school. We have two weeks of some interventions, and then another opportunity to take the test. So both second graders and third graders get a second retake during the school year, but only third graders get the one in the summer. That's correct. If you're a second grader and you're at risk, you come to summer school, but you do not get another opportunity to take it. You're considered a third grader at that time, so you wait till the next year.
You said those second graders are coming to summer school? If you're an at risk. At risk. Okay. Just at risk only. All of our students in second grade that were at or near, they will take it again in the school year. At risk, it kind of depends on the student. If it's a student that is far enough off that we don't anticipate them passing, and we don't make them go through the test again, but they come to summer school, and they'll get three opportunities in third grade. Any other questions about IREAD? I'll turn it over to Jane. Okay. I'm sorry. I do have a question. Nope, you're good. So
are we communicating any of this information other than parents all get information as to whether they pass the IREAD test. But is there information in data... I'm thinking evaluate, right? My kids always knew what their evaluate score was. And it was made to be a big deal. And I think I was talking with one of you guys about this, or maybe Dr. Knight. Because my nieces were talking
about the test that they take. Checkpoints? Yes. And so I asked my sister-in-law, "Hey, do you know what their score is?" And they were like, "Eh"No. So I ask, is there a way that we can communicate this information? And I don't know if it's an easy way to communicate it. Do you know? And I know that our Parent Square readership is not exactly high. Do you know? But for parents who want to know, do you know, is there a way that we can say, "This is where your student is," or does Project Read have that, or I don't know.
Yeah. Project Read probably is not a solution there. So since we went to retention law and second graders taking it, our schools have IREAD-3 nights to make sure parents are really clear on what this looks like and what's at stake and what's expected. After the first window, everyone gets, I think, via Parent Square. Via Parent Square, they get communication on where your child fell and what that means and what the target score is, and then we'll have another batch of communication at the end of the year before summer school
to know where you're at. As far as students, a part of the intervention piece is we've created in Canvas some resources that allow them to have resources that are aligned to the IREAD-3 depth and rigor, and it looks like the test. They progress monitor on it weekly until students know how they're doing based on when they first started. And that's a piece that, again, a couple schools did last year that we've replicated across the board this year. So just to one of the things that's changed this year with checkpoints is specifically the state has made a portal this year.
So in November, I believe we sent out the first Parent Square, and they get a code for the state. So a parent can go in and look at checkpoint data and all the summative data all in one spot. It's called the Parent Portal that DOE has put out. So they can go pull those scores. Similar to evaluate, they can see those checkpoint scores in that Parent Portal. The Parent Portal. Thank you. You ready? Okay, you may remember that in December we shared the exciting news about the Lilly Grant, and so we wanted to come tonight and just give you an update on what's happened in the last four months. It's just been four months. We sure have accomplished a lot. So
one of the things that we're really proud of is that the Lilly Grant does help us advance our strategic plan goals, and so tonight we want to talk to you a little bit about that. Specifically, there are three pillars and ways that we see these connections. One is obviously in improving academic performance. We're going to talk about that and some of the benchmarks we've put in place for that. Also in helping students prepare for success beyond high school, which is a huge part of our Lilly Grant, and then strengthening our school and community partnerships. Those are the three things we'll take a focus at tonight. So that first area is academic foundations, and you heard Jeff talk about some of
the literacy interventions, but I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about the work that Jessica Witt, who is our district math coach, has done with the Math Leadership Committee. So you probably remember that we are an Everyday Math district, and we have been for more than 20 years. And we have seen the decline in our math data over the years, and there could be a lot of reasons for that. We have a lot of questions about it. Is it fatigue from the curriculum? Is it that we're used to it? Is it that we teach by the way we've always taught? Does the curriculum not meet Indiana standards anymore? Et cetera, so on and so forth. Also, the Department of Education has updated
the math standards and included process standards through the year, so that misalignment could be part of the problem. We will be adopting math curriculum three years from the beginning of this school year. So now that we sit at the end of the school year, two years from now, we'll be adopting math curriculum. So Jessica decided that we needed to have answers to those questions as we looked forward into what was going to be best for our students with math curriculum. So she put together this leadership committee that includes representatives from all grade levels across the district and representatives from all
schools. And that group of teachers has been phenomenal to watch. They've come together to really learn the issues, to understand what's going on with our students, with our data. They've taken the time to look around to see what else is going on in the world and who is having success with math instruction and what we can learn from them. They've thoroughly investigated the variety of math curricula that are out there and developed common rubrics so that they can compare one to the next, which isn't easy when you're looking at different companies. Everybody offers something a little bit different.
And probably most impressive from my perspective is they've also really sought to grow their own math mindset. They've really tried to understand from a teacher's perspective, how do we know what's working for kids and what's not working for kids, and how can we apply that to our particular situation? So this group is in year one of a three-year implementation, and it's, again, I can't say enough about it. It's been very impressive to watch. They have a long-range plan, and I just snipped a portion of it here for you. This has been year one. They've accomplished everything
in year one up to and including, you'll see one of the bullet points there is that they were to attend the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics conference that happened to be local in Indianapolis this year, and we sent quite a few of these teachers, actually, the whole committee went. They didn't just attend it, though. They presented this entire plan that they have for adopting math, and deciding on the resources that work for our students at the conference. And so that was fun to be there with them doing that. They will continue their work in years two and three, and as part
of the Lilly Grant, we just finished, it will be coming to you next week, the interview process for a secondary math coach to mirror what Jessica's doing. Jessica's been doing the K through 12 and doing an outstanding job, but now she'll have a counterpart to focus specifically on grades six through eight. So we're excited about that. Questions about the math leadership?Okay. I'll keep going. I'll be quiet actually, and let you read what Jessica has to say about this work. So while this work is led by Jessica, there's a lot of voices that contribute to
it. So really I invite Jeff, John, Matt, anybody who has anything to add to this, feel free to step up. It's been nothing short of impressive to watch this group, and they really are a force to be reckoned with. It's fun to watch those voices be carried back into the buildings. Can I just interject here a little bit? My sister-in-law was at that conference. She teaches at a different school district on the east side. And she texted me and said, "I am so jealous of your school." And I then said, "I've been trying to
tell you that you need to apply here for a very long time," but I digress. But she said that she was just in awe that our township would even send that many people, because her township sent her. And, she has actually kept in touch with Jessica and has learned a lot from her. That's awesome. So our peers are noticing what we're doing too. That is awesome, and thanks to the Lilly Grant, we were able to send quite a few people. And thanks to it being in Indianapolis. Yeah. It's a little bit easier. So our second area of investment that we've got some work going on right now is that expanding our
career-connected learning, you know that was a big part of our Lilly Grant. Our first initiative is that PBL expansion. We've started that several years ago, but we've now reinvented it with a lot of intentionality. So what that looks like is we have a set of cohort one schools. Our cohort one schools are those schools, or the teachers within those schools, who are our inventors. They're our risk-takers. They're the ones that say, "Don't tell me what to do. I'm going to go blaze that trail and figure it out." And we're learning through our partnership with Magnify that that's important, because this group, this is what
they enjoy. They're also working now to develop what is successful and what our cohort two skills might need. Those are our friends who say, "I'll do it, but I need something before I get going. I'm going to need these things to be figured out." And so cohort one is challenged not only with going first, but also then with providing some resources to support the rest of the district. And we have about 173 teachers currently trained. That's ongoing. These schools continue to train their leaders and to support their
teachers, both in bringing these ideas into the classroom and in scaling this so that that learning is authentic and real, beyond and outside of the four walls of the classroom. And on a side note, Rochelle, who is our Magnify representative who works with us, she listens so well. She was listening to our high schools say, like many things, "This is great for elementary, I'm not sure how it looks in high school." She said, "Well, then let's go find it." And so she took both high schools and the new innovation center crew down to a school in Columbus, and they were able actually to see it in action, to get their questions
answered, and she gave a report to us today, and she said the conversation was good. They're starting to put pieces together. So it's fun to have that support from them and to see that come to life. Magnify is hiring the PBL coach, and they're in the process of doing that right now. So like Jeff talked about with our Amplify coach, with our CKLA coach, we have found that when we can get that level of support, that our teachers do better with implementation because they have someone that has that focus to get their questions answered, who can be side by
side with them in the classroom. These coaches, similar to Amplify, they're not going to be a Perry Township employee, they are going to be a Magnify employee, and the Lilly Grant supports that funding to do that. We're also getting started, we haven't gotten all the way down this road yet, but we're obviously having conversations about what do our partners look like. Where are our community people going to be relevant in our classrooms, both for PBL experiences and also for just that career-connected learning and field trips? Dr. Ballmer has actively sought partnerships for the Entrepreneurship Center. As you know, well, I'll talk about that in a minute. This is kind of all connected.
But we have students coming in just a couple short months there, and they are planning out that curriculum and how they're going to meet those competencies right now. And of course, that involves business partnerships, so they've been actively working on that. And again, this is an area I think you'll see a lot more intentionality and systems built around, as we continue to seek that ability to grow the vision for our kids, and how their learning in school connects to whatever is next in their life. Can I ask just one question? Just because I'm trying to keep all... I know we've talked about all this.
Magnify is project-based learning. Correct. Correct? They're hand in hand. Correct. But Magnify is not a curriculum as far as like we think like math- Correct ... or language arts. Okay. They are really supporting teachers. It's strictly project-based learning. Right. Okay, thanks. So always exciting to talk about our Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center. We are launching that program this fall, and we are finishing up our agreements with the University of Indianapolis. We will be over in Martin Hall, in some beautiful
space. I'm so excited to share that because there were lots of options, and we ended up in a really pretty one. So that's going to be fun for our kids. The faculty is being hired right now, so we've got obviously the director, three coaches, and three teachers hired. We are in the middle of hiring one additional teacher and one support staff for this fall. And then we'll continue to increase staff as we increase students being enrolled in the program. They're working, as I said earlier, on their industry challenges. They are finalizing their design thinking process.
There have been lots of conversations, both with our friends up at the Fort Wayne AMP Lab and with other facilities around the country who are doing this type of learningWe also have had lots of conversations with the University of Indianapolis, and the excitement continues to grow as we get closer to that date when we're going to be on campus. Going to be fun. Additional work that they've done involves those industry partners in developing not just what they're going to do with the students, but then opportunities to go K12. Melissa Morris has done an outstanding job. She is just a powerhouse in building connections.
She's got us connected with the chamber now, and with Industra & Hauser. She's always finding alumni from somewhere. From Perry Township schools, from the University of Indianapolis, or just someone who's driven by us at one point, and connecting with them to see how they can support our students. So, again, remembering that the impact of this work means that we're going to bring authentic learning, authentic problem-solving, and really thinking about getting students to have the evidence of that learning as they grow through our school system and beyond. The other piece that's coming together is our advisory board. And so we will
work with a team of experts in entrepreneurship. The goal of the advisory board... And when you get this presentation in its electronic format, these documents are linked, so you can see the executive summary and the playbook that they've received. We're working really hard to make sure that the experts that we have supporting our thinking actually understand their role so that they don't think that they're being over-committed or whatnot. Because we're asking some well-known people to give us voice into this. And from that, we think that we're going to be pushed outside of our
comfort zone, outside of our ideas, so that our students can have an even more powerful experience. This morning, we had a meeting with the University of Indianapolis, and we specifically were talking about this, and how even some of the tasks that we come up with that a group like this might support, probably the people on the board are going to still serve as guidance, and then we'll take from that and do work groups where we'll have work group Bs doing other things. And that keeps those high-level people engaged with us without having to overwhelm them. So we're excited. Our first advisory board meeting is, I
believe, May 12th. So we're excited to get that going. And I'll be quiet while you read Dr. Balmer's reflection. Our next area that we've done some work around is work-based learning. So Indiana has obviously changed the graduation requirements, and a big part of that is the seals that we can earn and the requirement for work-based learning hours. And so we are really working hard to figure out what this looks like for our students, as is the entire state. Our work with CISC and Employ Indy, they've engaged with Employ Indy to help their member schools both in how we're going to
meet these requirements, how we're going to create opportunities for students, and kind of the things we're worried about, the logistics of it. How are we going to document all of this? How are we going to keep it recorded? And how are we going to report it out to the state? So we have lots of support in figuring that out. We have identified a person at each high school that's going to work to lead this work at the schools. It's Dana Dillman at Perry Meridian High School, and Jordan Deaver at Southport High School. And so we believe that along with the rest of the state, we will learn a lot this year. Our goal is to really be sure that we are maximizing the
work that's happening in our classroom. Our PBL opportunities will turn into some work-based learning opportunities that happen right in the classroom. We know there's a lot of work around our schools that we can connect students to. You've heard us talk about working even in our own district and connecting students to internships within our own district, and obviously with the University of Indianapolis and the work that we're going to do that way. So we're at the beginning, but we've started that work and we'll continue to grow from here. So a little bit out of order, well, a little bit of backflow here to
our community industry partnerships, which was our investment area number five. I mentioned the advisory board development, so there you can see the industries that are represented there. We are still seeking some connections in finance, healthcare, hospitality, and tourism, and so anyone who has some specific connections in those areas, we would love to talk to them. Almost broke it. Overall, I think the emphasis we want to put on our Lilly grant and the work that has started and that will continue for the next five years, is that this work is not just impacting
our schools, but it's impacting our community. Because of Lilly, we're able to accomplish core academics, career-connected learning, a state-of-the-art innovation center, work-based learning systems, and deepening our community partnerships. And it's a transformational moment. So we're excited. The excitement has not stopped from December. I don't think it will stop for the next five years. We believe that this is going to directly impact each of our students in Perry Township. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great information. Anybody have any other comments? Do we have a name?
It's okay if we don't. That's okay. It's a question. I'll tell you why we don't. Thank you. So when the students come in July, they're going to be learning the design thinking process that the program has set up. And as part of that, they're called design sprints. They get to practice this type of thinking. So their very first design sprint is going to be around choosing the name for the entrepreneurship center. So it's been kind of twofold. It's allowed the coaches and Brian to develop their systems and their frameworks for how to work with community partners because their first community partner is Perry Township Schools.
So this spring, we've been having meetings as they would with community partners. I've had to fill out paperwork saying what I want our deliverables to be, what the parameters are, and it's all around naming the program and branding the program. So yes, we've been a little bit tongue in cheek about that because people keep wanting to call it something, and I understand we're causing a lot of stress by not having it. But we want the kids to be involved, and it is allowing us to practice the frameworks that we're going to use then outside of just ourselves. So that's where we are. Perfect. We will have a name by the fall.
I love that. How many students are we anticipating starting in the fall? So anticipating, we're prepared for up to 100. We currently have 50 students who have chosen the program. That doesn't include students... The next layer of students are the students who need a pathway. Because remember, as a CTE program, they can complete a required graduation pathway in one year, and we have a handful of students in each school who are going to need to do that, and the counselors haven't gotten to that part yet. So we have 50 students enrolled who chose the program.
We anticipate, I don't know, probably between 25 to 40 more that will come through the pathway. And those 50 students are currently sophomores? Currently sophomores, yes. So they'll be juniors in the fall. For the most part. There are juniors and seniors in there in this first group. Okay. Yes, but there are juniors and seniors. Anybody else? Nope. All right. Thank you very much again. Thank you. And just to let everybody know, next regular board meeting, May 11th, 6:00 p.m. right here. Thank you all very much. Good night