The United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. We will turn to public comments, and we have one person signed up. Anne, if you'd like to take the podium, and remember that you have three minutes. Thank you. Daddy. D**k. Thank you. First, I'd like to thank Mrs. Hartman for showing knowledge of what all of you are voting on. You could tell that she really read it and had questions and wanted
clarifications. That was nice, because sometimes it seems like everybody just says yes. Now there is another person who questions things, and I appreciate that too. So it's nice that some who should know things didn't read what the policy was, and Mrs. Hartman did, obviously. And I have a question. I'd like to know who holds the bonds and who collects the interest from them. So if that could be addressed at the end, I'd appreciate that.
Thank you. Thank you, Anne. We will now turn to items of information requiring action. 3.01, consideration of the personnel report. Ms. Baker. Good evening, board. I'd like to recommend approval of the personnel report. Move to approve. Second. We have a motion by Mrs. Hartman and- Just a second ... oh, a second by Mr. Lewis. Any questions or comments by anybody? Quick question. It's not from this report, but I would like to see the statistic, as we see in student data, the staff statistic based on ethnic staff diversity. Do you have, or can we have access about it?
Yes. Yeah, if you can have the student diversity we have in Perry Township School District, the most diverse school district in Indiana, is it the first or second thought? So I would like to see the diversity staff diversity status, please, if you can have that. Thank you. Very good. Anyone else? Nope. Okay. We will now vote on 3.01, the personnel report. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. 3.01 carries. 3.02... Oh, I'm sorry. Mrs. Pollard, do you have some introductions?
I do. Thank you so much. Good evening, board. First, I'd like to ask our Director of Student Services, Stephanie Quinlan, to come forward and introduce her new administrative hire. Mm-hmm. Good morning. Hi. I am pleased to announce that Stephanie Speer has accepted the position to be the administrator of student services for the upcoming school year. She comes to us with a lot of experience as a director of guidance in the Cherry Tree Middle School. We have a strong mental health background. She's really going to help us out in our student services department.
Stephanie Speer has some of her guests that are going to be here today. She has two folks with her. Oh, thank you. Yeah. If you guys want to join us up front for a quick picture, that would be welcome. Good job. Congratulations, Stephanie. I'd now like to invite Southport Elementary Principal Kim Wittkemper up to introduce her new administrative hire. Hello, good evening. Good evening. I am very excited to introduce Christy Wasie. She has been at Southport Elementary her whole career. She's a lifer, and she just continues to move up because everyone loves her so much. So we are just very excited to have her join
us. And you go ahead and introduce who you brought with you. I brought my family, my husband, Justin, my daughter, June, and my son, Corbin. Excellent. Congratulations, Christy. Congratulations, Christie. Finally, I'd like to invite Perry Meridian High School principal, Kurt Boedeker, up front. He's got a couple of introductions for us tonight. Evening, Dr. Spray. Members of the board. I'm very proud to announce two new assistant principals at Perry Meridian High School, and this is a big event for us. We went through a very exhausting process, and I'm very proud. I'll start with Mr. Zach Baldwin,
who's joining us. He comes to us from Avon and another school out west. He's got a great deal of experience. Zach Baldwin. My wife Melissa came with me today, my son Leo, and my daughter Mimi. Wonderful. Yeah. Congratulations. He always takes snacks. Travel-sized. That's right. You see the first one. Congratulations, Zach. And also joining our team, someone who's devoted her career to Perry Township Schools and then to Perry Meridian High School. She's worked her way up not only as a career teacher, but also as a department chair, as an instructional coach, and our new assistant
principal, Sandy David. So I have my husband, John, who's a teacher at Perry Mill. My son Andrew, my daughter April, and then my parents, Ron and Karen Bolyard, who are also employees of Perry Township. They're retirees of Perry Township. Yeah. That's excellent. Come on up for a picture. Board, while they're coming up, Mr. Bolyard, who worked here many years ago as our director of personnel, was reminding me or sharing with me a fun fact about Perry Meridian High School. They will now be the only father-daughter team to have served in the role of assistant principal at Perry Meridian High School. Ah, wonderful.
Isn't that fun? Oh my God, that's wrong. Go over. To Ron Bolyard. Good job. Congratulations, guys. All right. We are going... Let me turn that on. We are going to continue on with our agenda here, but if you would like to move on- Mr. Hernandez. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Not to interrupt, but I will. Can I have a point of personal privilege for just a second? Absolutely. Thank you. I just wanted to make a quick address. Just because some board members don't ask things in public, doesn't mean we don't care or we don't read the board packet. There were some things said in public comment that would make people believe
because we don't ask a question we don't pay attention. Been on the board 20 years and that's not the case, and I can pretty much say it's not the case for anybody on the board. There are times I will pick up the phone and have a conversation with Dr. Spray about something I see in the board packet, because we don't see it just this morning, we've seen it for a week. So I just want to make sure that that's clear, that when we have questions as a board member, it may be the night before, it may be the week before, we do ask questions. Nothing wrong with doing it in a public forum, as you've seen Mrs. Hartman do. Nothing wrong with doing it in a private forum. But everybody does read their board packet. We don't just blindly vote. Mr.
Hernandez, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. As I was mentioning, if you would like to stay you're more than welcome, but if you'd like to go for ice cream or anything else, you are free to leave right now if you'd like to. And I know how to clear a room. But usually they stay. In our district people don't stay. Wow. Some districts they stay, and they are crowded. Yeah. Especially a new design, people should have the interest, yeah. Yeah, I remember when the kids were there.
Okay. We will move on to 3.02, consideration of policy. It's a second read, adoption, and policy retirement. Dr. Spray. We have one policy to bring forward this evening. This is one that has to do with the cellphone ban during instructional time during the instructional day at all of our schools and facilities, and it also has to do with the state statute, which does ban those inside of our public schools and our schools in the state of Indiana. So, this is the one policy. It really hasn't changed in here. We did select that the personal electronics
equipment, personal communication devices, whether they are connected to the internet or not, meaning smartwatches, those kinds of things, we're going to say that they're not allowed because we can't really police whether they're connected to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or those kinds of things. Hopefully that is one less thing for the teachers and the administration to have to manage as well. So, other than that, we would like to ask for your board's consideration on approval of Policy One other reminder is that going into our first year
of managing this mandate, this policy, it's going to morph and change as we go throughout the year and how the administrators handle those things We're certainly already communicating a lot to our families and to our staff about this policy and pushing out some different infographics, pushing out what the rules are. We'll be doing another step of that here even as we lead up to the school year. So, and we'll always continue to manage this and change this and try to work with our families and our staff. So this is just in regard to Policy 5136, the device
usage. Yes. Okay. Move to approve. Second. Motion by Mr. Shively, seconded by Mrs. Hartman. Any questions or comments? Not really a question, but I would agree with Dr. Spray. Any time we have a major policy shift, and this is obviously major, the last one that I can remember was dress code years and years ago. And we do, we'll have to massage it, we'll have to tweak it, and we'll do that as we go along. I think all school corporations that are going to be dealing with this, which is all school corporations, are going to find themselves in the exact same position. So, we stay fluid, and we adjust where we need to.
So, appreciate that. Yeah. I was talking with Dr. Spray and Ken this afternoon and shared that I just dropped Emilia, my youngest, off at church camp, and no phones were allowed this year. Last year, they were allowed to take their phones, but they were held securely by the group leader until times. And she's in high school. Okay? She's going to be a junior in high school. And then she, we're checking in her stuff, and they noticed that she had a smartwatch, and they asked me to take the smartwatch. So this isn't just schools that are
doing this now. And I said, "Her smartwatch isn't connected to her phone." Like, she has no internet. And they were like, "No, we're just saying no devices." So, it's interesting how this is kind of trickling down into other things. So I think that in society, we might see this in other venues or other avenues of our life a little bit. But I will say that some of my concerns is... Maybe not concerns. That's the wrong word to use. There is some area in here where each school kind of can decipher what they're doing or the progression of things, and that isn't
necessarily laid out in this policy, nor are we asked to do that. So, schools have some leeway from what I understand. Or the administration, maybe not schools, has some leeway as to decipher where offenses come if a student continues to bring their device to school and not have it properly stored away. There's also some other things in here that I was reading, like we are allowing kids to use them on the bus, but not on a bus on a field trip.
So, that is spelled out in here. But more than anything, I think that it's just communication, and how we communicate that, not only as club sponsors, athletic departments, those sorts of things, but in all areas of how this cell phone ban is going to affect students and at different times. Thank you. Dr. Spray, has there been any talk about being more uniform as to the different schools, or
are we too early in that process? We're going to be uniform in the fact that they're not allowed to have the devices out and on, and during the school day. They have to be put away or secured in some way, shape, or form. So very uniform with that. And so then also they have worked through the administration at the middle schools and high schools have worked together in both from the Perry side and the Southport side to talk about, okay, what kind of consequences are these? How do we communicate with parents? At one instance, will we be allowed to relinquish the device to the kid? I think it's maybe the first incidence. And then all those others, the parents need to come in and get them,
all the way up until it becomes an issue beyond, "I brought my cell phone." It could then become an issue of more like insubordination of just not going to listen or adhere to the policy or to the rule. But there's been a lot of collaboration amongst the buildings on how this will be administered. Quick questions. Curious to know, do we have the communication to the parents? And also, the second question, is there any potential reaction from students body in any problem, any emergency things? And first thing's that, how do the parents'
perception about that cell phone bans? So we have sent messages to parents, to our existing parents. We have put information out on social media as well, to not only let them know that this was something that was passed by Indiana Legislature, and that we're adhering to that, adopting the policy and making those things happen in our schools, and then also what our expectations are. And we'll continue that communication to parents and to students. I would say a very, very, very high percentage of students don't like it So there's that. But it'll be interesting because even with the cell phone
ban, if you will, a couple of years ago, that we have done during class time, et cetera, and some were allowed to use it. There are other schools around the state that just said, "No, we're not going to allow them." And so our leaders have talked with some of those leaders, and they've had some positive experiences from it as well. Kids actually have conversations sometimes at lunch and actually have conversations with each other when there is some downtime, rather than stuck on a screen. Kids are becoming more proficient at UNO at lunch and those kinds of things. And that's something that we will encourage as well, but
again, we're going to learn as we go what makes it more tolerable, what makes more common sense on the usage and that kind of thing. A high percentage of our students are going to comply, understand, and go about their day. And so we'll have a few that forget and a few that won't, and we'll be ready to work with them and their families with the administration. Good. Thank you. Anybody else? I just have a request to change a certain language that's used on the material that could be found on the phone potentially.
I know it's in there that it says child P, the rest of the word, and I just think it should be changed to CSAM, and I can send you that, what that stands for. But I think that's a more appropriate term to be used. Where is this at? Asking. I just have it in my notes. I couldn't tell you exactly where it is. It's like an inappropriate things that would be found on the phone and what that would do to escalate the matter. Are you
referring to if porn pornography- Yeah ... that kind of thing is found on the child's phone? Yes. I don't remember seeing- I'm assuming probably just on the last page it has the content restriction and that would- Searching their device. There is some... Right there. It's just a term that's not usually used anymore. Which term is it? Pornography. Pornography of that kind. Child pornography. Any suggestions for a term? CSAM, child sex abuse material. So somebody wants to... Have we made a motion and a second?
We have. The policy in general, yes. The policy in general? Yeah. Yes, that's right. If we want to- I see it. It's- So it's just a term ... under enforcement there. Yeah. To im- It says the building principal may also shall refer the matter to local law enforcement or DCS if the violation involves an illegal activity, and then in parentheses, example, child pornography. I think the proposed term is very clear on what it is and very understandable. I see that maybe
those terms could potentially be offensive or maybe not be as broad and cover as much material. Is that what the concern is? It's just not usually used anymore, that term, because it acts like it's abuse and not just something- Okay ... I don't know how to phrase it. At least it's referring to violations. There are probably a multitude of steps we can go with the typical, what's the parliamentary procedure called? Robert's Rules. The Robert's Rules, et cetera, unless the board would like to just have
a kind of vacate that first and second and make a motion to approve it with a change of that particular language and get a first and a second, and then we can vote on it. I was wondering if that was referring to an actual illegal activity that we need that description in. Not being a criminal attorney, I'm not sure whether that is what- And that's what our law enforcement call it when they work with us and that sort of thing, and that's really the term we use with students, I guess, when they have those items on their phone,
so they know that this can be interpreted as and looked at as those things Can we just put a slash and use both terms? That's a good point. I don't know. Then it's covered. It doesn't. I think that is what they usually refer to it as now, legally. They being law enforcement? Law enforcement. Okay. I've never heard the term, so that's why I didn't know what it meant until you said that. What is the term again? Child sexual abuse material. Child exploitation in possession of child sex abuse material, formerly known as possession of child pornography.
One is that term is used. So for the legal terminology policy manual, it has to be the common use terminology. And if newly invented terminology, then the student may not know, or they have to go to the dictionary. But it should be stated as clear as possible in common language. That's what I think. Yeah. So pornography, child pornography may not be offensive, may be offensive in some context, but in the legal policy, it has to be the commonly understandable, simple language.
I think that previously has been used, that legal term. Child pornography is very acceptable term in a legal policy manual. I think that's the legal term now. Yeah. Yeah. So if we could, if someone would like to make a new motion and a second to change the wording to child sex abuse material. Or include that. Or include it with it. Yeah. Okay. I'd like to make a motion on the current policy second read that we add, including in child pornography, child sex abuse material, just to
make sure we are as up-to-date as we can be with the current terminology. Second. Second. Excuse me. Okay. We have a new motion by Mr. Shively, and the second, again, by Mrs. Hartman. Any further discussion on adding that language? Okay. All those in favor of 3.02 as revised, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed, nay. 3.02 with the amendment passes. Okay. We'll move on to 4.01, student data review and strategic plan update. Mrs. Pollard.
Thank you, board, and good evening again. We are excited to be with you tonight to talk with you, not just about our student data, which we will review with you, some updates from the work that we've received feedback from this spring, but also, even more importantly, to talk with you about some of our processes that we've used this school year. June is certainly a time of reflection for us as we end one school year, and July starts the next one. So not that there's a lot of time, but in the last couple of weeks, we've been through several rounds of retreats, and we've done a lot of work
with these materials. And so we wanted to share some of that with you this evening. You can see the objectives, and hopefully you have in your green folder, Joanne's been kind enough to put a lot of these resources at your fingertips so that they're easier for you to see than they are on the board. We start all of our meetings now out with our strategic plan, just as a reminder to all of our participants the why behind the work that we do, specifically thinking about our mission and vision. This isn't just words on paper to us. This is the roadmap for how we do the work and how we serve the students
and family of Perry Township. And so we're going to dig a little bit deeper into some of the metrics and connections that the data gives us. There we go. You're familiar with the four pillars. Obviously, academic performance, school climate. We've got the school community and the fiscal stewards. And the ones that we're going to talk about, most importantly right now, are the academic performance ones and some of the metrics that we use to gauge that success. Keep going. So I'm going to highlight two initiatives that fall under that, again, just to do a little bit of a deeper dive. And they're initiatives you've been very
familiar with as we've done the strategic plan. The first one is around literacy, and the second one is around the math achievement. So you can see that these initiatives have strategies attached to them, work that we've actually been doing over the last school year, and then some metrics that identify the long-term goals for these initiatives, and then also some short-term benchmarks, and the data that we monitor along the way. So if you look at literacy, and again, these are all things that you are familiar with, but it talks about the foundational training, the
CKLA work that we've been doing. It talks about professional development for our teachers, and it talks about using our structures of professional development and in IET in order to enhance the effectiveness of these strategies. And you'll see at the bottom some of our data metrics that we want to review with you now. In April, Jeff and I talked with you a little bit about some preliminary data, and you know that we don't have iLearn data back yet. We won't have that until the fall. So it's kind of a rolling picture of the success that we're having with literacy, right? We'll have to look at this in a couple of layers. So Jeff presented that preliminary iLearn data.
Erin's going to talk a little bit deeper tonight about how summer school went and some of the gains that we were able to achieve during summer school. And then similarly, Brian's going to talk for a few minutes about graduation rates and SAT data and how these connect to some of these metrics that we're using. So I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Probus. Well, thank you. Good evening, board. It's a pleasure to join you and to share some of the exciting things taking place in the land of literacy in our primary grades. Mrs. Pollard was just talking about the effectiveness of summer school, but I think we can even extend that back, that fourth quarter push from our
teachers and our coaches in our classrooms and students, for that IREAD-3 retest, and then two weeks of intensive interventions in summer school with the final test. So I just want to recap some important literacy information. Spoiler alert, there's a lot of things to celebrate, a lot of gains being made. That being said, there are still pockets of concerns or question marks that we're left wondering about what is the next right thing for certain schools or certain students, but a lot to celebrate. So I want to walk through this with you. The table on the top left here, this is our overall pass percentage
of that IREAD-3 test. You'll notice all the way to the left is 2021, working your way to the right to this year, fresh off the press information, with 2026. You'll see the last three years are steady, incremental, significant gains with this year landing us at 77.6, or we lovingly round up to 78%, of students who have passed that IREAD-3 test. Our goal was 80%, and so we are relentlessly still in pursuit of that and expect to exceed that, but making significant gains. And of the students who did
not pass, we had 259 students who didn't pass, and this is pretty incredible. Only 32 of those students don't also have another layer of consideration. Like perhaps they qualify for special education services or EL supports. Only 32 of them don't have an extra layer of eligibility, which is pretty incredible. If you work your way to the right, the next table is looking at historical cohort data. So you'll see there's three different layers I want you to look at, but the takeaway is I want you to see how we're closing the gaps,
and we're doing it pretty aggressively. So the red bar is identifying the number of students that enter kindergarten each year ready, as according to beginning of year kindergarten assessment. So are they coming in with those kindergarten readiness prerequisite skills, ready to hit the ground running? And you'll notice from 2022 until now in '26, that red bar keeps dropping, indicating we have fewer children each year that come with that toolbox ready to rock kindergarten. The need is greater each year. So that tells us that we have a
gap to close, so that they are passing IREAD-3. The blue bar is the next layer of that gap monitoring system. That is our end of year second-grade assessment. So with DIBELS in class, they give you a predictor measure. At the end of second grade, they look into their magic ball of norming data and tell you whether students are anticipated to pass third grade IREAD or not. So you see the bar graph there, that we make significant gains from our kindergarten that are coming in underprepared to then several of our
students ready at the end of second, but still then the gold bars on the right are our actual students that are passing third grade. So you see that we're closing the gap at a pretty rapid rate. We only have that K to three time period, and we're moving students and progressing quickly. One thing I want to point out that might be a question mark in your mind, if you look at '25, you see 918 students that were passers to 891. That's not reflective of a lower percentage of passers. If you look at all numbers, it's lower enrollment.
So when we look at growth rate, it still exceeds the previous year. It's just a reflection of total enrollment. Okay? So the first gives you total passers. The second table gives you history over time. The bottom bar graph is giving you, it's always interesting to see, breakdown by building, and it's like a buffet line there. You've got some buildings who have consistently, steadily over time continued to progress over the last three years of testing. You've got some who have ping-ponged, maybe been down, up,
down, where those are our question marks of how can we best support them, digging in more about why we're seeing what we're seeing. And then you've got some pretty remarkable pop-ups. You look at Lincoln, jumping from 61 to 76. You've got Holmcroft that made a big jump as well from, what, 70 to 82. So we've just got a little bit of everything when we look across our buildings, but a reflection of each elementary working very hard and moving kids along. Now, my disclaimer there is to remember you're looking at three different cohorts of
children. I do have a quick question. Yeah. I'm sorry. I was so into it. No, that's okay. And I may have heard this, I could have made it up. But do we have a cohort of second graders that are able to take IREAD-3, and if they pass it, that's counted as part of the IREAD-3? Are those reflected in these numbers too, or are these just third grade students? These are our third grade students. Okay. Got you. Mm-hmm. But you're right. They are passing. They are included in the total percentage. Okay. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah. I've got one for you as well. Is this the time to be asking questions about the slide? Sure. Go for it. Yeah.
Okay. Did you say 259 students didn't pass it? Correct. Of those 259, do we know how many attended the fall intercession? We did not have fall intercession this school year, but we did invite, I think our total that we invited to summer school was like 843, and forgive me if that's incorrect. And that includes second graders who were at risk or third graders that did not pass. Did you say summer school last year or this year? This year. Mm-hmm. I don't have the attendance rate for you, I'm sorry, for summer school. Oh, that's all right. Not nearly that many children attended consistently, but a good number did,
and we were able to move several across the line with summer school. So would The second graders this year in summer school, are we preparing them for this as well? Yes. So they attended. They did not take a test again in summer school, but they received two weeks of intense intervention, so anyone who was at risk with that second-grade test. And then those children also, we've got great data then the minute they step into third grade, we are stepping right into interventions, intentional groupings, remediation for foundational skills. We're really upping our game with how promptly we can jump into those
interventions. We've only given the second grade iRead test the last couple of years. It's been a new thing for us, but it's because of what you're talking about, so we can predict. Well, right. I understand you don't give it to the second graders, but I feel like we would be recognizing certain students that may not pass that when they do reach third grade, and that we're taking the proactive steps to get them more attention sooner than later. Right. Yeah. Right. We give it to all second graders for that reason- Okay ... so that we can predict it, and then support those who are going to need help.
Okay. Thank you. Yeah. It gives them a chance to be exposed to the test, a chance to shine and pass, and then give us important data to prepare them if they haven't yet, for when they take it in third grade. I think the only other comment on this bottom table was that, and I don't remember if I shared at all, but those are different cohorts of children as well, so you're not really comparing the same group of kids each year. All right. So if we progress to the next slide, just a few high points or bright spots to share with you. This year, when we take all of our fifth graders, and we think of who's stepping into then the sixth-grade academies,
we have an increase on the Southport side of sending an additional 13% of them that are at grade level at proficiency in reading, which is incredible. Now, our Perry side friends also had gains, but just kind of not as significant as this 13%. So very proud. The blue box there is-- I just think this piece is incredible. It lists 868 students, and that sounds like a collective group, but I think of them as 868 individual kids sitting at the kitchen table with their parents or reading a book at bedtime. And it's so exciting to think, so those
children started the year at below or well below with their DIBELS measure, so they were red or yellow, the students that we're most concerned about. And of those children that were below and well below, 868 of them ended the school year at or above grade level. So that's not counting students who are already at or above. That's shifting their placement. That's game changer stuff right there. So 868 students. And then the gray box, or the different shade of blue, our goal for all children is at least a year's growth, right?
But when we consider the deficits that we start with or the gains that we need to make, we need our children to have more than a year's growth. And using the mCLASS composite score, we see that 41% of our elementary children are making above average growth and gains in literacy. So that helps us understand why we're seeing that gap close. The table on the bottom is a shout-out to kindergarten. What this does is it compares Perry kindergarten academies to the national norm. Is there a question? You're okay. Keep going. I'll ask you after this. Yeah. I must need like a big- Nope.
Okay. So the national norming study is composed of over 800,000 kindergarten students nationwide. And so you see there the top two bars are the beginning of the year. The very top bar is the national norm versus the Perry norm. So when you look at that, you notice we have a higher number here in Perry that are starting out in yellow or red, which means below or well below the kindergarten readiness proficiency line. But then you quickly see Perry kindergarten academies flip the script. By middle of year, we've already taken over
the national norm, and by the end of the year, we're kind of smoking it. We're really doing a great job with getting kids to at or above average with reading proficiency, preparing them then for that step into first grade. Okay. Help me remember. Yes, please. Or remind me- Mm-hmm ... because I'm probably going to forget again. mCLASS, DIBELS is synonymous, right? Yes. Like that's the test. Okay. And that is given in kindergarten. Mm-hmm. First grade. Mm-hmm. Second grade. Yes. But not in third grade. Nope, we go on up. Oh, we- All through fifth. Mm-hmm
... so it's K through five. Yes. Their mCLASS DIBELS is with them through the whole thing. You've got it. Perfect. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Then the table to the right is, again, looking at that, it's just always interesting to see building by building. So it's looking at what percentage of students were proficient at the end of last year versus the end of this year, and then the gains that we saw. So each building, with the exception of a couple that held the line and a couple of question marks there, most all of our buildings are also increasing in overall proficiency.
So that is kind of several little snapshots of things to celebrate, but you also see that our fire is lit, and we're trying to get early intervention. We're trying to adjust and differentiate support for buildings, and I just think it's all an incredible reflection of our students working hard and our families reinforcing what needs done, and our teachers and building leaders and literacy coaches really all firing at the same targets, and getting some pretty powerful outcomes. I want to thank our coaches, Courtney Stewart, and our coaches for putting this data together for us this evening.
How quickly do our teachers see data to know, we start in July, I'm a second-grade teacher. How quickly do they see this kind of data to know, okay, these are the students that I need to identify that may need additional support, and then as they move through the year, too. So, how quickly do they see that kind of data? With the exception of ILEARN, because we do have quite the delay there, we get our in-class data very quickly. And what's fantastic is, with the help of Kim Yovich and our literacy coaches, we already have reading plans. They're required by the state.
But we already have those created and ready to hand off to the next grade level. So it already lists out what interventions have been used, what gains are we seeing. They can quickly identify within the different probes of DIBELS, where are our greatest needs? Where are we successful? So they can hit the ground running. They have access to it. And I know our master teachers and ILTs are going to be structuring some data analysis. Mrs. Pollard and Mr. Spencer have ILT retreat sketched for July, and a big part of that is looking at data and what are we going to do about
it. And so, the leaders will then be structuring, how do we get this in the hands of teachers so we can get busy? Thank you. Just to add on the system side, Amplify is one of the fully integrated ones. That's where this comes from. As soon as the rosters are in Skyward with them the next day, the teachers can start pulling those reports and digging into Amplify. Okay. So in most cases, our teachers have individual students before school starts- Gotcha ... into that product. It's been a while since my kids were in elementary school, but I remember the days of benchmarks, which kind of gave them somewhat of an immediate feedback to know, "Hey, where are Johnny and Susie at?" And
then kind of where do we need to adjust if they need to or not. So, this kind of data is just, you go back to the day when I was in school, this didn't exist. I know. Yeah. It's really interesting. And I'll add to some of those in-class things. We're also looking at the middle levels, too, now that we are adding Amplify ELA, which is the complement to CKLA in grades six through eight. We're going to pilot some in-class work at some of our middle level schools. I don't know if we have the middle schools completely figured out yet, because they've just developed that seven and eight product. But hopefully, I think as we move to the secondary schools, we kind of switch from learning to
read to reading to learn. So I don't know if it's a tool that we will use for all of our kids in six through eight, but I think it's a tool that we can use for some of our struggling readers to try to measure growth, because sometimes when we get to ILEARN and Checkpoints, it's not the best tool to measure growth in those categories. If I'm way below grade level as a seventh or eighth grader, it's a tool that we can then use to maybe measure the impact of some of the interventions that we're doing. So we're going to try some pockets of that at the middle levels next year, too. So we may have some kids that we would have in class
if they've been in our district, in-class data on from the time they start through eighth grade that we could use as a tool to measure success and growth. Great. Thank you. I'm blown away by what our kindergartens are doing with the students. And I know you're not a sociologist or a demographer. As I look at the previous slide with the starting kindergarten on track, the decline, do we have any insights to why that is, or if there's any sort
of pre-K connection we're missing to make sure kids are better prepared coming into kindergarten? I don't know that I can fully answer that, but I do know that our families are trying to access high-quality early intervention and early childhood. And so, we are trying to partner with some of our local providers and create a little network of early childhood providers, because if students aren't in our preschool, we sure hope they'll be in a high-quality one, one of our neighbors are hosting. Because we think the more support and early intervention our children can get and
families can get, the better prepared they'll be coming into kindergarten. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Quick series, but curious about the immigrant children. We have a good number of students from immigrant families in English reading class, and how is the IREAD statistic impacted by the immigrant's family? Do they do differently, lower level? Do you have any data based on their background? Wouldn't that... Yeah. Immigrants group. Yeah. So we track it by subgroup, and we certainly can get you that data. In Perry Township, you know that so
much of our fiber is who we are, and so much of that data is the same because of who we are, right? But certainly, we track the data that way, and it does help us to provide specific interventions in order to support the students for growth. So yes, absolutely. We also work closely with the EL department because language acquisition is not the same as, I mean, it's related, but it's not the same as obviously, the necessary reading skills. And so we make sure with intentionality that we are targeting both. We're not just targeting language acquisition and then hoping that reading skills
come up. We are targeting both for the students that need that. It is impressive that here's the statistics that in the later years we do a really good job and most of the parents in this committee concerns that due to the influx of the immigrant population, this education quality could go down or the image could go down. That's really the concern for many parents with what I know. That's fair, but Perry Township has quite a bit of data that says that as soon as we can get our students past that language acquisition hump, they
thrive. They grow. So. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Brian, do I understand, so sixth graders will be taking in-class next year? Not all of them. Not all. Okay. We feel by that level, if they've already shown proficiency, that there's not a reason to test more as we switch into the secondary levels. But hopefully, we're going to try to figure out some patterns of how do we target specific kids, use some in-class data to then be able to drive and target interventions in specific pockets. And obviously, secondary schools are set up very differently as we move from bell to
bells and periods to periods. Intervention time becomes a little bit more challenging of when do we do that, and if we do it, it honestly takes away from something else. Both of our sixth-grade academies this past year did a really good job of building intentional intervention time into their master schedules. So all kids have the opportunity for intervention when they need it. And then we will be able to, I think, use this as a tool to target specific students for specific interventions as we move forward. But yeah, we will not test all of our kids in those. And it's still three times of the year, right? Beginning, middle, and end.
Mm-hmm. And about how long does that test, whether you're in kindergarten or sixth grade, about how long does that take to... Or how long are they allowed to? Is it like you're given as much time as what you need? Some of the probes are timed. Many of them are. So it's been a couple of years since I've administered it, but it is several minutes per individual student, but it gives us the most meaningful data. So the three formal windows, beginning, middle, and end, but then our teachers are using it as progress monitoring tools as well. So every four to six weeks, whatever the lowest
area is, we're often giving a progress monitoring check in between those formal windows as well. Good to know. And Ken, you mentioned benchmark, when we used to do the benchmark testing, and our teachers are missing that. But as Erin said, they don't have to give all of the probes every time they do this if they're just using it for progress monitoring. And so as they're becoming more familiar with the processes and the tools that we have, they're using it to progress monitor intervention, even between the different windows. I think Brian had mentioned the ILEARN checkpoints. Mm-hmm. And I know we've talked about this before and that
they're not a very good measure as to where you are. Well, not always, I guess. Is the data a little slower coming on those ILEARN checkpoints, or do you get that back quickly? Checkpoints we get back pretty quickly. It's the summative that we don't get back until... We won't have summative data until the fall. And the challenge with checkpoints are a couple of things. One, we're all still learning. They are new to us, and they've changed in the last couple of iterations. So we're all still learning about them. But two, they're not the same window to window. So you can't measure growth because it's a completely different test.
And so we're still learning how to use that data, and in true Perry Township fashion, learning how to use that data in triangulation with other forms of data that we have. Okay. So we're growing. Okay. So in checkpoints, if they take checkpoint one, it's going to measure a certain amount of standards or skills. Checkpoint two might be different. So we've been really intentional not to adjust curriculum just for those checkpoints. So they may hit some things that they just haven't covered yet. Also, the challenge with checkpoints that hopefully will be better next year is they can take the checkpoint, you can provide intervention, and they can
have opportunity two at the same checkpoint. But this year, the checkpoint was an adaptive test, so it adjusted and tried to level a kid. Opportunity two was a static test. So every kid didn't get necessarily the exact same test in opportunity one because it was adaptive. But then as they go back to checkpoint, or they take opportunity two for checkpoint one, it was just a static test this year. And we've been told those are going to both be adaptive next year. So it may give us an opportunity to do a checkpoint, look at specific skills that we know we have covered, provide some interventions
around those skills, give them opportunity two to see if we can see any growth in the interventions that we provided. This year, we didn't find great success in giving opportunity two because it was a different test. So we test them on one, we try to provide an intervention, then we give them a different test to try to see if there's growth, and it just- Makes sense ... it didn't give us data, so we kind of stopped doing opportunity two because it was another test a kid had to take and more time out of classrooms and those types of things. All right. We're going to keep going. Thank you, Erin. And Brian is going to talk to us about a couple of other metrics at the bottom of that strategic plan initiative and strategy, and that's graduation rate and
SAT data. Dr. Knight. Good evening, board. So one of the things we're excited about, obviously at the end of secondary graduation rate is always very valuable to look at to make sure we're getting our kids to that final finish line and across the stage. So I pulled data. Graduation rates don't finalize until October-ish, in that time. So I went back to 2025 to look at final graduation rates for Marion County. I always feel like that's a good comparison point for us to see how we're doing around our peers. So you can kind of see where Perry Township
falls there. Obviously, the town of Speedway, which is a very different 120-some kid school, very different population. Franklin Township, Decatur was right above us, and then Perry Township is outperforming probably most of the school districts that actually look like us. So you can see that we have increased graduation rates, but last year we were fourth, almost at a 97%. And then if we look at this year, these are tentative numbers. It's the initial graduation rate because, again, we have till October. There's probably a handful of kids in summer school that already reached graduation, that came back afterwards that needed another credit or two and
finished that during summer school. But this was at the point of graduation ... roughly give or take a couple tenths in that. For the township, we are at 97%, so we will definitely see an increase from last year from the 96.9 because I believe we're already above that, and we haven't even gone through the other process of trying to get more kids across the stage. Perry Meridian High School was at a 99% graduation rate, which is just phenomenal. And Southmoor High School has had some really great gains over the past couple of years and is up to 95%. So I always felt like as a high school principal, if you can get to 95% or above, you're doing some really,
really good things. 95% was always our goal that we wanted to try to reach, and then anything above that was just extra that we got to add to that. So you're looking at a class of 1,100 or so, and 97% of those is a very small number of kids that didn't reach graduation for whatever reason, a large variety of reasons, in all honesty. But I would guess a good chunk of those kids will be able to come to summer school, will be able to, any of our grade 13 students attend Compass, and Compass helps them. You can only get so many credits during summer school, but if they need another
five or six, a lot of those students will be able to start at Compass and in the first nine weeks get those additional credits and get to graduation. So I'm really excited about where our graduation rate's going to fall this year. I would hope we get somewhere in the 98% for graduation rate, which will be, again, if you look comparison in the past will put us way at the top of Marion County. Brian, for those students that come back into Compass that you said may need two or five credits, would their graduation fall in the year in which they should have graduated or in the year in which they do? No, you always stay with the cohort. So they're always with that cohort.
So if they get done, and I forget what the exact cutoff date is, but it's sometime in October. If they get done before October, they will count in the 2026 cohort. So that's why I said, having a rough number at 97%, that's only going to go up. It's only going to get higher as we continue to work through summer school, which we just finished last week, and then get into next school year and have a handful of kids start at Compass and get across the stage. Got you. Thank you. All right. Then SAT. So another one of our goals in our strategic plan
deals with SAT. I've got trend data here for SAT. I always feel like trend data sometimes looking year to year is sometimes a little bit challenging because it's completely different groups of kids every time we're looking. But I went just for the past three years, looking at where the state average was. So the benchmark is down there at the bottom. The benchmark for the English reading and writing is a 480. The benchmark for math is 530, and then a total of 1,010. So when you're seeing there that they have a percentage for
the English reading and writing portion, that's the percentage of kids that got a 480 or better in that section. If you look at math, that's a percentage of kids that got a 530 or better, and then when it's both, it means they got a 480 and a 530. Now, there are probably a good chunk of kids that scored above a 1,010 that may not be in that both category because they might have been a 520 in math and a 600 in the English portion of it. So they're going to have a fairly high SAT score. They may have just not met the math benchmark or vice
versa. So you can look at, I broke it down by the state averages that are there. I think our strategic plan goal is to try to get to where we're within 2% of the state average. The district average, which is obviously the two schools, and then Perry Meridian High School and Southmoor High School. So you can see where we have been for the past few years. I will add to that, and it's way too big to put on a slide. The one thing that I've really started looking at, as I mentioned, I feel like it's hard when you compare year to year because it's a group of kids, then a different group of kids, then a different group of kids.
Sometimes group of kids just test different than others. So I went back, and I don't have it done for this current graduating class, based on the timeframe we got all the SAT data back. This graduating class, I went back and I looked at their PSAT 9, their PSAT 10, PSAT 11, and SAT 11. Right? So I wanted to see how that cohort tracked as they went through their three years of taking those tests. And I think similar to what Aaron talked about, you would see that while we may not be getting our kids to that college readiness benchmark,
when you break it down into bands, it's also a little interesting to look at because the 8/9 PSAT, I think, is out of 1440. The PSAT is out of 1520, and the SAT is out of 1600. Right? So it kind of adjusts. And then the cut scores adjust along the way too. But if you look at growth of students that are in 200 band sections, right? So a kid that may be 0 to 200, 2 to 400, 4 to 600, right, trying to get to across that bar. You can see as those cohorts move through, that the students that are maybe starting out as ninth graders or I guess as they move from ninth graders
to 11th graders, that lower band greatly decreases. The second lowest band decreases. The almost there band really starts to increase. And we do get more of our kids across that from freshman to, I think PSAT's probably the better comparison if you're using all that to go from 9 to 11 in PSAT. You do see more kids getting to the readiness benchmark as they move along. Now, I think our challenge is, similar to what Aaron said, is coming into high school, we have some kids that are not quite prepared for that level of rigor. So the work that our high schools are doing and the intentionality of trying to
start using SAT and College Board have really expanded some of their resources. Khan Academy has partnered with them and has a lot of virtual resources that you can use on specific skills. So we're trying to develop correlations between eighth grade ILEARN and ninth grade PSAT to look at skill bands that we know we need to start focusing on more in Algebra 1. Algebraic thinking is one that tends to be one of our lower areas. I think it's also hard for some of our upper-level students or higher-level students that some of them by the time they're getting
reassessed as a junior on algebraic thinking, they're in pre-calc or stats. They're just a long way away from that type of thinking. So we're trying to figure out other ways to spiral things back in to make sure that if we're getting to pre-calc, that these are the key math skills. English, I think, is a little bit easier because that curriculum, the standards tend to kind of be the same with just increasingly progression of rigor as they move through high school. But trying to figure out specifically with math, and I think it's a challenge across the state. You can look at those numbers across the state.
This past year, we finally reached one in four kids across the state getting to that college readiness benchmark. So the math side is a little bit more challenging. The score is a little bit higher, but we're trying to figure out ways that we can spiral those key skills back in to our upper-level math classes as they move out of algebra into geometry or in algebra two, to make sure that they're not losing those skills that we know are going to help them perform better on this assessment. Has there been any discussion or thought, we let second graders take the IREAD test early.
Could we let high schoolers take the SAT prior to their junior year? I think the PSAT, we used to only give PSAT in 10th grade. That's the year the state- Mm-hmm ... pays for PSAT for everybody. That you can take it then. So it used to be every 10th grader took it. Our 11th graders that wanted to try to qualify for National Merit Scholars would take it, so you'd have a small handful of juniors. As we kind of saw the state shifting to SAT becoming our state readiness test, we added PSAT 9, and then required every
junior to take PSAT in 11th grade. So that day when we do testing, all three of our grade levels are doing it. So I think the PSAT gives them enough of a window into what the assessment looks like. It's all developed by the same company, same organization. So again, the complexity gets a little bit more difficult. College Board says it's a good predictor. I don't know if I've ever truly seen that being a great predictor of success on the SAT for the most part, but I don't think like some of our other pre-assessments are.
But they can take the SAT before, they just have to do it on a weekend, on a Saturday. And- The school-wide SAT day- Yeah ... I will say is really challenging to run because of College Boards. It's a certain number of kids in the room. Once you overdo that, you've got to have two proctors. You've got to have enough people in the hallway to monitor every four classrooms. Once you start the SAT, kids cannot move in any way, shape, or form. So you can't have school running over here while SAT's happening in this pocket of the building. We would violate all the SAT or College Board requirements for giving the SAT.
So I think to do it early, the SAT day is why we do an e-learning day because it is impossible. When you're testing 11th grade, it is impossible to run with everyone else. The other thing I was going to add is, they do have an opportunity for PSAT in the eighth grade, so we could have that data a little bit longer. We have not done that because they're still taking ILEARN, and so an awareness of not over-testing kids with data we're not quite sure what we're going to do. But it's in our back pocket because Brian's done a great job with his dissertation and continuing that work of really building connections for
our high schools around this data. You've heard us say for years we're data poor at the high school level. Well, not so much anymore. And making this data useful to our teachers so they can benchmark and follow through interventions and build connections has been really important to us. And so we know what tools are out there right now. We seem to have a decent system with ninth, 10th, 11th, with the PSAT and SAT. Potentially, we could add that eighth grade. If we find value, we can do that. I will say the other thing with staying with PSAT, the other piece of data that it gives you is, because AP is also run by the College Board.
So any time they take a PSAT, it gives them an AP predictor- Mm-hmm ... for every AP courses out there. So depending on how a student does, and again, that's data we've started using a little bit more, especially with some of the new graduation requirements of trying to get kids into AP and dual credit classes earlier than I think we used to consider. When they take the PSAT, it gives us AP potential for the gambit of courses that College Board offers through AP. So we can look at that data and determine here are student populations that have AP potential that aren't
selecting to sign up for those courses that we've been able to kind of start to push some of those directions and use some of that data to talk to the kid and say, "Based on your PSAT score, you are going to be successful in this class." And even AP, we want to try to get kids to a three or better. That's when they could start earning college credit. But AP will even tell you if they score a two on the test, they are ready for that college course. We're just not going to give them the credit yet. They're ready to be successful in that college course. The schools aren't going to award them the full credit without taking it. So trying to push a few more kids in those AP courses and figuring
out. And some of that was a long time ago of getting rid of valedictorian and salutatorian because it's better to take an AP course and get a B in it than it is to take the easy course and get an A. I have a quick question. So for the SAT, the percentage is those that are proficient, correct? Yeah. It's the students in the English reading and writing that have scored a 480 and in math have scored a 530. Okay. How do we explain that only 17 or 18% are proficient in both, but our graduation rate is so high?
I think some of that is it's an absolute college readiness exam and not necessarily... And again, you may have some students that score much better on the math side or the English side and not in both. Those percentages don't line up if they were apples to apples, right? You would think that if there are this many in math and this many in English, that it should be somewhere in between there, but it's always lower. So some kids do better on a portion of those. I know some of my kiddos were those kids that could knock the math one out of the park but then got to the English and
didn't reach that benchmark, but are very successful at the college level. It's a high bar. It really is a high bar. And it's meant to be a college entrance exam, and we have plenty of students that maybe don't reach that to go to college and are successful. We're somewhere between, and we've increased a lot of our college applications over the past few years. But we have 50% to 60% of our students, and we purchased a student tracker through the clearing house that allows us to track our kids after they've left high school, too. So anybody that's enrolled in college, we can track some of that data to see our retention rates in college.
And I think we see a pretty decent retention rate, from what I would consider probably the national average of retention in college. We see a pretty good retention rate of our kids that are getting there. So they're getting there, and they're staying, and they're completing the four-year, even though they may not be in that category. So quick question. The maths. We are low in maths and reading. So do we have any special research and investment to improve that area? In other area, we look like if we do a test on music, I think we do much higher than the other schools. But in maths and reading, so we
score lower than the state level. Yes. So- And what's the research and the investment? We do special project upgrade and- Yeah. So you've segued us right into the next slide, actually, because the second initiative that we talked about on that first slide in our strategic plan did involve math, right? And what are we doing to address the gaps that we're seeing in our math data, both at the elementary level and at the secondary level. And we talked about this a lot at the school board work session on April 27th, so I just wanted to remind you because there's a full presentation about what we're
doing with that math committee. I wanted to just bring it back up so to remind you that we have a leadership committee that has a three-year long-range plan, and that group, which has representatives from all schools at all levels, have done some intensive work around some of the stuff that both Erin and Brian have talked about today. What does our data say? What does it say about the cohort of kids that are traveling through? What does it say about each grade level and what that might mean for the curriculum or the instructional strategies that we are using at that grade level? They are in the process of piloting different curricular materials
because in three years, well, three years from when the committee started was when we will adopt an entire math curriculum for the district, and we wanted to be proactive about that, and we wanted to use the resources that we think are going to make a difference with our students, so we could track the data early to say, "This does make a difference with our students," or, "This one doesn't seem to fit well." We'll have that data. This school year, we have pilots going on at all levels, and we will use that to determine then where we want to go forward for the entire district as we make that curricular decision the following year. Great. Are we piloting one-
Three. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So quickly, I think both Brian and Erin alluded to this, but it's always good to remind people that we do have to look at data in lots of ways. We can look at it at the grade level, and that has some advantages, and it tells us some things, especially as it relates to instruction and curriculum. But it also, as both of them alluded to, has some limitations because the student population does change, and we see this with behavior, but we also see this with academics. Sometimes there's just a challenging year that comes through as a group, and if you see a dip in data, you don't want to draw too big of a conclusion if it indeed is a group that has
struggled as they come through, or vice versa. If it's a group that's high flyers and they come through, we don't want to be resting on our laurels there when in fact it's a reflection of who they are as a cohort. So then we look at cohort data, which is the group of kids that travel through, and we look at their achievement year to year to year. Best used then for being able to talk about student growth. Are the students growing? Are we closing those achievement gaps that Brian and Erin talked about? Of course, that has its own limitations because you have to be really on your game because our student population is transient, and we don't always have the same students year to year to year.
So again, both are valuable. Both have limitations. We just wanted to bring that out to the forefront. We've done a lot of reflection, but this is what we would do with our principals, obviously, and our leaders at this point. We would stop and talk about the trends, the strengths, the gaps. I think Erin and Brian have done a nice job of leading us through that, so I'll keep going. But certainly, as you get a chance to go through this, if you have things you want to talk about with trends and strengths or gaps, we certainly invite that discussion. Quickly, I want to shift to talking about what do we do with these things. Last year, one of the things that Jeff and I worked really hard on is creating
systems and structures so that everything that our leaders are doing has meaning behind it, right? We're not just grasping at straws, or one school has figured out some solutions that another school doesn't even know anything about. We've tried really hard to try to systematically approach some of our data discussions and our data meetings. And the group of us, Brian, Erin, Jeff, and I, last year sat together thinking about, "Okay, what do we want our goal for the school year to be?" We set one of these every year. And that was a hot mess, so I'll show it to you. This is our hot mess of goal setting. We struggled a lot to figure out what we wanted that goal to be, but we
kept coming back to we couldn't come up with something that was comprehensive enough. We needed to talk about student achievement and growth, but we also needed to talk about leadership and what our principals were doing to make sure we were utilizing the data that we have, and putting specific interventions in place, and monitoring those interventions. And then we also wanted to pay attention to the structures that we know are important for schools, such as behavior and resources, and how can our MTSS approach make a difference in the achievement that we're getting out of students. And finally, we always have to pay attention to the culture and the climate that we have in our schools. And so as we started to sketch all of this, we came up with the idea of an
umbrella and didn't really get a whole lot of places. But we ended last year with an umbrella goal, and then we developed four pillars underneath that, including culture, academics, MTSS, and ILT. And we modeled this for our leaders at last year's ILT retreat, which happens every January. And we asked ourselves to set some specific strategies around how we were going to impact those four pillars and what we predicted our outcome would be or what our desired outcome would be, if you will. I've gone ahead in this presentation and linked all schools' last-year umbrella
goals because you can see them school by school if you're interested. I will tell you, for all of us, it was our very first year of doing this. It was a lot last year for all of us. It felt like the right work. We just weren't sure we were going to be able to measure all of this as we were going. And so we are at the end of the '25, '26 school year and wanted to report out how that worked for us. ILT, one question, who attended this? So our July ILT retreat includes everyone at every school who is a part of the instructional leadership team. That means principals, associate principals, assistant principals, master teachers,
and mentor teachers. We have about 200 and some people who attend that. And we do a lot with them to get them going to set the framework, and then they go off, we call them war rooms. They go around this building into a room, and the principal usually, and assistant principals, lead that work with the master teachers and mentor teachers to develop this work for the following year. So every year, for the last couple of years, we have done a culture survey. We do it as a district-wide group, and then each school does it individually, and then we gather that data district-wide.
And you can see we've shared in your packet, you have the district results. It looks like this right here. So you can see some of the details. It's also linked in the presentation. But we wanted to talk to you about what we had hoped to see. If you look back on our goal, we defined an outcome. And well, I'll get to the results here in a minute. I will tell you some of the structural things. So we've done culture surveys the last couple of years just by doing Google Docs. This year, we switched to Panorama. Panorama has been a great resource for our district, both in gathering student data, but now we're learning that we can also gather some staff data.
We can do it efficiently, and we can do it in a way that teachers feel free to share information. So last year, we increased our responses... I should say this year we increased our responses by 169 teachers. We have to do some shift changes because we are changing the rating system from the Google to Panorama. So luckily, Brian Knight loves spreadsheets, so he's been helping us to compare data from last year to this year. But moving forward, we will use Panorama, and we'll be able to show you trend data from year to year and how we've grown in each of these
areas. But let's talk about some of our successes for this year. We had lots of favorable responses about the MTSS work that we've done, that we have a district-wide framework and a rubric to be able to measure the results of that. We worked really hard this past school year on inconsistencies in reporting discipline data, and responding to discipline data, and coding discipline data. And so our assistant principals worked relentlessly on duking that out, defining what the system should be, and creating and implementing a more consistent system.
We've talked a lot this year, you've heard us talk about it, interventions, both academic and behaviorally. We've been able to systemize some of those and talk about how to move those from tier one to tier two to tier three, and not just do that with intentionality, but how to monitor that progress and know what is working and what is not working from the data that we're looking at. Can I have a quick comment? Please. Yeah. While you are doing your report, we never have a report about staff happiness report and data statistics here in a board meeting. I think it is really critical, and I'm really
impressed that you do staff retreat and strategic planning. I think staff work environment has really critically important for productivity. Right. And also the staff retainment and the quality of the contribution to the student. I think this is really critically very important. It would help, and it will release a lot of work for Sharon as well, so for HR department. And this is really critical, I would like to comment about what you're doing. This is staff statistic and improvement and
leadership intentionality and cultural improvement in the work environments. Really, this usually happen in corporate society In a work environment contribute a lot to productivity and the quality of the service we do. Right. Thank you for saying that. And that's so true, and the research obviously supports that in the education field. You'll see on a slide here in a second. Mm-hmm. We've paid a lot of attention to the work that IASP has done about culture and climate. That has to come first before you can put systems in place if you want to get to the learning. So structure matters, right? And you're right. It is important that we have a collective efficacy towards the
mission that we're trying to accomplish here, and that's what we work really hard on. We were proud this year that our highest domain of growth and development, we had 80% favorable in a couple of areas. That was our highest domain, was growth and development. I'm sorry, I'm saying this backwards. And specifically, my development as a professional is important at this school. 90% of the respondents agreed in a favorable way to that. So we're pretty proud of that because we work hard on growing and developing all of our people. The second piece that we were impressed with was the shared mission. Our employees seem to have a clear understanding of our school's mission, and it
does inspire them to be their best. So those were some of the highlights from our culture survey this year. And you can see again those domains broken out. Is this culture survey, you mentioned the responses by teachers, so this is only teachers that- Certified staff. Certified staff. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Teachers and administrators, yes. So at our administrative retreat which is just all administrators, so principals and assistant principals, we were able to share this year's culture survey results with them. We did a lot of work, a session of work around
understanding those results, comparing the results this year to the results last year. We had them map out their strategies. Well, you'll see that in a second. What was the strategy that you used, and what was the outcome you predicted and what was the outcome you actually got? So what worked and what didn't work. And I'll show you what the principals have done with that reflection here in a bit. And I can add to that. Our ILTs take this also, but they're separated out. Yeah. So the principals, assistant principals, master teachers take this separately. They have that data too. But then they can compare that to just the certified staff in their building. So it isn't skewed in any way, shape, or form by the
principal checking all fours on everything- Right ... because they think they're wonderful. So that is just the certified staff in the building. So this data here is just certified. Just certified staff. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Brian. So another one of our pillars is our MTSS structure and the work that we've done around that. This slide right here is linked to this document, which I won't spend the time going through. We may do this in the future, but it's very interesting information. Dr. Spray and I were talking earlier. You guys approve a lot here at the school board, a lot of contracts for us and resources and you might wonder, what happens to these resources and how do they use
them? And in this document, it outlines in each one of our tiers how those resources help support students. So some fall in tier one where they're available to all students, such as the in-class data, such as some of the assessment tools that we use. Some, as Brian and Aaron mentioned, might be used just for a tier two, just with certain students, either for behavior or for academics to help monitor those interventions. And additionally, some additional resources might be used just for a tier three intervention. So MTSS means that students receive what they
need. Not all students receive every tier. That's what tier one is for. But you can see through this document how we connect the resources to that. So this is for your reading. And MTSS is multi-tiered- Multi-tiered systems of support. Thank you. So Dr. Molling, this is what I was referring to earlier. How does this all fit together? Why would we spend time paying attention to culture, and why are we strategically working on all of the domains? Why did we make our school goal something bigger than just we're going to grow kids and here's what we think we should do at the iLearn test?
And it's because we believe wholeheartedly, and I speak for Brian, Aaron, and Jeff, that if we don't create a system where we're paying attention to all of the pieces and parts, we're not going to get the outcomes that we want to. It's not as simple as just saying we're going to set a goal. We have to be intentional about setting specific pillars and specific goals and specific outcomes and attacking those so we can get the greatest potential out of our students. Thank you for mentioning that. Okay. So I said earlier that we did this in the '25, '26 school year. So as we were finishing this year and reflecting
ourselves on our goal, we were thinking about, okay, now what do we do? We set these umbrella goals. Now what do we do with them? So at the administrative retreat this year, we talked about, okay, we're going to model this reflection. How did we do? And again, this is all linked in here. I won't read it to you. You can read it later. But this is the process we used with our principals to say, before we march into the ILT retreat in July, we've got to pay attention to how'd we do. What strategies did we put in place? What are the metrics we used to evaluate that strategy, and what was the outcome? And then obviously what will come next is what comes next.
Each of our principals then set up a time. Some of the principals were able to present to all four of us. We didn't have a great system for that until it was far too late and schedules were too busy. So Brian and I attended all of the secondary, Jeff and Aaron attended all the elementary, and we crossed over when we could. Wanted to share with you a couple of examples of how our principals took that challenge and responded to it. One of them in front of you is Jeremiah Gray Kindergarten Academy, and you can see through her one-pager that she presented as she was giving her presentation the different strategies that she used in each of the four pillars, the
outcome data that they collected along the way, and then some reflection about what next steps might be. Similarly, Southport Middle School created a presentation. Both of these are linked in here. You have some copies of them in your packet But same. They each went through some of the hits, some of the misses, some of the successes, some of the lessons learned along the way. It was a really great process for our principals to go through this, and one of their first tasks at the ILT retreat will be they will be presenting their school goal reflection to their entire leadership
team. Again, master teachers and mentor teachers. Some additional work that we think it's important to talk about tonight is thinking about what the state is asking us to do with employability skills, and you've heard us talk about this a lot with our Lilly Grant. So it's not enough just to be monitoring the skills that our students are growing in, but we've got to connect it to something. Melissa Morris has put together this career-connected learning continuum. It is in draft format right now, but it starts to show you that we've got to connect the employability
skills and the skills that we know are important for our students to learn all the way through from kindergarten to post-secondary. And we've got to define that for our teachers, for our students, for our families. If we want to grow perseverance as an example, and we think that's a skill that our students need to graduate knowing and being proficient in, what does that look like at the kindergarten level, and how do we develop that as we go along? This is additional work that we have started and will continue to define as we march along. And we'll probably involve you guys in some of this work as we move.
Okay. Finally, we have, as you know, completed a review of our special education program this school year and wanted to bring that back up to the forefront for you. I know Dr. Sprays shared the complete report with you earlier, but wanted to point out tonight some key findings from that. We just recently had a meeting with the two reviewers and got some clarification on some of their findings. But you can see here that we have some work to do. We've got some alignment that we need to do. We've got some work on sharing forth the vision and mission and
making sure that it's not just a document, but that it's something that is understood by all. The report identified some need for more professional development for our teachers, some ways that we can support our classroom teachers so that we are meeting the needs of all students. It also pointed out some work we can do around developing systems for transitions as our students transition from one level to another. And then also some work around the department structure and how we can clearly identify roles so we can be more efficient and productive in the work that we're doing with the special education department. So this is just an early
share out for you guys about some of those key findings. We will continue to work on some identified action steps and metrics as we start the school year. Jane, take a breath. I know, right? I'm thinking, "I'm so sorry we're keeping you so long." I felt like I had to talk faster. No, that was great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, before we adjourn. Next regular board meeting, July 13, 6:00 p.m. here. And anybody have anything else? I have a question. Yes. Question. Yes. Really that's really impressive. I'm glad to see that
been going through a lot of work, strategic planning, and you accomplished a lot of marking in. How often do we plan to do that, or will they come back and do assessment progressive? Is it a contract already done with the organization we work with? For success level assessment, are they coming back for the company we work with? I'm not sure I understand the question. By itself. Oh, the special education- Strategy planning. Yeah, strategy planning ... review. Thank you. We don't have a plan for them to come back. It was a one-time review. Right. We will develop some metrics to see what we want our desired outcomes to be,
and then we'll work on a plan to get there, and we will monitor. And if we see a reason to invite them back for some external monitoring, we certainly have a relationship with them now where we could do that, but that wasn't part of the original agreement. Yeah. I think that would be really interesting for everyone that if they come back and see, because it's hard to see ourself. Right. I agree. A Japanese proverb say, "If you want to know the water is clean or not, then ask the fish inside the pond." So That's fair. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Again, thank you very much for all of you. That was very informative. Appreciate it. And with that, the
work session is adjourned. Thank you