Evening, everyone. I'm gonna call the meeting to order this evening at 7PM. My name is Lauren Christiansen. I'm president of the school board. I'm gonna ask, the remaining members of the board to introduce themselves starting to my right. Member Boss, you're up today. Hi. I'm Jennifer Boss. It's nice to see you. Hi. I'm Patrick Keogh. Thanks for joining us on this lovely warm evening. Good evening, everyone. My name is Anupam Chik Sudu. Thanks for being here. Hello. I'm Sheryl Picard, and welcome, everyone. Our student co chairs. Hello, everyone. I'm Arjun Swaminathan. I'm a sophomore at Kent High School and SBA co chair. Thank you all for being here. Good evening. I'm Josh Patterson, Plymouth High School senior and student voice in action co chair.
Good to see you all here tonight. Introduce yourself and your team. Good evening and welcome. Glad to see everyone here for what promises to be a very exciting school board meeting this evening. I'd like to begin by introducing my executive assistant, miss Diane Robertson. We wanna thank her for being here capturing our minutes. And also, mister John Krieger, who takes care of our technology needs. We appreciate them for being here. Like the remaining members of the staff to introduce themselves to you beginning on my right. Good evening. Jill Minnick, chief finance and operations officer. Good evening. I'm Jen Curry, chief academic officer.
Welcome, everyone. Liz Vartanian Gibbs, assistant superintendent, student and family engagement. K. Thank you. We're gonna stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America Okay. Up next, we have the adoption of the agenda and the approval of the consent
agenda. This is action item number 26 dash zero four dash 58. Can I have a motion? Madam President, I move that we adopt our agenda and approve our consent agenda. This is action item twenty six zero four fifty eight. Can I have a second? Second. It was moved by Treasurer Kehoe and seconded by seconded by Vice President Sadu. Doctor. Merritt, can you please take us through the agenda? Thank you, President Christiansen. This evening, our consent agenda consists of human resource transactions since our last time together. We have new hires and retirements for your consideration. We also have the approval of a minutes.
That's from our regular meeting on 03/24/2026. And we have some out of country field trips for your consideration that were vetted through our SPA committee. Thank you, Doctor. Merritt. Okay. Those in favor, please say yes. Yes. Those opposed say no. Motion carries five. There's five of us. Five zero. Thank you. Doctor Bartinia Gibbs, can you take us through human resources, please? Absolutely. Good evening, everyone. First, I would like to recognize a new teacher we've just hired in our district. Her name is Megan Fletcher. Megan, are you here this evening?
Welcome, Megan. We're so thankful to have you. She will be an elementary teacher teaching resource room at Gallimore School and Smith School. And at the end of, this segment, if you can come on up, we have a chocolate bar to congratulate you. So welcome, Meghan. And also, I would like to share with you the retirement of two fantastic teachers. First, we have Elaine Julian Price, who has taught in our district for twenty eight
years. Elaine is retiring from Allen School as a GSRP teacher. So congratulations, Elaine. And next, Thomas Kimball, who teaches at Plymouth High School as the digital multimedia Photoshop teacher. He's taught in our district for thirty one years. So congratulations to Thomas. And thank you, Elaine and Thomas, both for your service to our school district. Thank you very much. Up next, we have celebrating success with member Ahmed. I'm glad I made it and time was running behind today. Good evening. Tonight, we have the pleasure of celebrating an exceptional group of 27 middle and high
school students whose talent, dedication, and passion for music have seen them selected for the All State Band and Orchestra, as well as the State Honors Choir. We are proud to honor them as this evening's Stars Award recipients. Will the students please join me at the podium? Are they all outside? They don't have time. Okay. Thank you. The students we honor tonight earn their places in these prestigious state ensembles through rigorous auditions conducted by the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association and the Michigan School Vocal
Music Association. Their selection is a testament not only to their individual commitment and artistry, but also to the strength of the vocal and instrumental music programs available to students throughout our district. Our honorees this evening are and please forgive me if I mess up anybody's name. I'm gonna do my best to not mess them up. But All State Band West Middle School, William Rauch. Is he here? He's not here? Okay. PSAP, Cole Payton, Owen Hamilton, and Shashank Mor Morali Dharan, hopefully.
I hope I didn't mess it up. Okay. And then All State Orchestra, PSEP, Anushka Vikram, state honors choir, discovery, mister no. Wait. Brooklyn King, Brianna Kozheji, and Nagasnigda Bommesedi. Close enough. I'm sorry. I really apologize. I know how important it is to get names right.
Aya King is also from the Discovery, and Milan Silvaraj is also from Discovery. Then we have from Liberty, Sabrina Purin, Oliveira, Sofia Kramer, Olivia Mattson, Clarabel Robertson. And then from Pioneer Middle School, we have Drume Dave, Grace Monty, Samantha Kelliher, Clevis, verbally, Mehreen Shafit.
And then from East Middle School, we have Rory Ayavan, Madhu Raghunathan, Clara McClellan, Myra Shah, Alina Ahmed, Pratika Kanukuntla, Christian Moore, and Sanj Thakur. And we also have this evening with us PCCS curriculum coordinator for for k 12 electives and specials, Kathy Williams, as well as the PSEB director of bands, Mike Wells.
So I'd like to invite both of you to the podium if you'd like to say anything. Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting us all here. I just want to acknowledge there are many students that are not here tonight because we have many students that are involved in lots and lots and lots of things. You know, they obviously thrive at music and arts, and they're also, you know, playing sports and doing clubs and other activities. So this is, just one little snippet of what they're able to do, and they're really incredible students. I wanna thank Doctor. Merritt and the entire board, for for inviting us and for celebrating these amazing students. On behalf of all of our music teachers in the district, that's the high school teachers, middle school teachers, and most importantly, the elementary school teachers, we wanna thank you
for your support of the arts. You know, the elementary school teachers are really where it starts, inspiring these amazing students to do amazing things, and just instilling the love of the arts at an early age. So we wanna thank them as well. And they're they're not here, but, you know, we wanna thank them for their support. These students are really, really incredible. I can't overstate enough and and and really just emphasize that the students are really doing amazing things and going out of their way to do things outside of the classroom. This is completely optional for them to put themselves out there and go through the audition process and, you know, get feedback from, adults that have been doing this for
a very long time. And not only are they, you know, putting themselves out there and thriving, but they're doing it at the highest level possible in our state. And so this is a really big deal for our community. It's really rare to have this many students that are involved in our in a district. You know, even our size, it's very rare to have this many students selected for it. And and again, it starts with the the adults that are around them and inspiring their, you know, them every day in the arts. And so we're very thankful for that. I want to turn the microphone over actually to Ursula Mason, who has a few words as well. Thank you so much. I'm not on a Firstly, you gotta come to the microphone so everybody at home
can hear you. Okay. Thank thank you so much, Mike. Thank you to doctor Merritt and the board. We have wonderful students here in our district, and their talent just speaks, for themselves. And we are just so happy that you are taking this time to, encourage them, with your with your reward. And just thank you. We just want to keep that up so that they know they can reach higher heights. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us here tonight. I will be very brief. I know you have a full agenda, but I did wanna say awards for one
are typically the, work of many. And so I want to honor the work of these students, but their families as well, as well as the staff and the board members for supporting all these great programs. I believe every board, you are celebrating students just about every board meeting. And our goal in our district has been to create belonging. And where there's courses that students feel like they belong, they excel. And this is proof of that as well. So thank you for that.
Okay. Okay. Okay. So we've already, miss Williams has passed out the certificates. But on behalf of the board, it's our honor to recognize all of these students for their hard work, dedication, and achievement. And we would like to invite those of you who would like to say a few words up to the podium. So please come on. Sure. I foremost wanna say that, Pisa performing arts has taught me what it means to be excellent, and not just the final product of that, but the journey it takes
to get there. And even beyond that, the mindset and approach it takes to get on that journey. That approach has been something I've been able to apply to nearly every single part of my life, academic or otherwise. Hi. I just wanted to say thank you to my choir director, missus Mason, and everyone on the board here for this amazing award and these opportunities, and I really think it's helping me strive not only in music, but in school as a whole. Thank you. I would like to thank, all my teachers and especially my choir teacher, miss Lawrence,
for giving me this opportunity, encouraging me be encouraging me to be able to get this and convincing my mom that I was fit for the state honors. And I would like to give a great thanks to my mom and my dad for giving me their time and to be able to drive me across the state to do what I love and so much more. Anyone else? Okay. That concludes our celebrating success segment, but I would like to invite the students to join me downstairs for a picture. Okay. All right. We are going to move on to the next section on our agenda, board committee reports and actions. Up first, we have the president's report.
I just have a few things that I wanna mention. First of all, I wanna wish everyone a warm welcome back from spring break to all of our students and families. I think the keyword really is warm. If you all haven't noticed, it's nearly 80 degrees out, and I can't believe it's spring. I feel like we've skipped to summer. As a reminder, you know, two of my board colleagues, but just to share with the community as well, we have a board governance workshop scheduled for April 22 next week, to really focus on our goals in our board objective number three, primarily around, updating our operating manual and guidelines.
So I look forward to working together as a team to to, you know, check that off our list and and get that done. For those of you who are interested, it is April 22 at 05:30 in this room. I do have a few forward shout outs. I wanna give a shout out to member boss for attending and enjoying the PCF jazz band concert last week on April 6, so thank you for attending. Also, I wanna share a little story. I had, the opportunity and the pleasure to attend a Cub Scout meeting last week, for PAC fifteen forty at Isfister Elementary School. They had a question around, you know, what does it take or what does it
mean to be an elected official? So I got to chat, with that small group and talk a little bit about our role as school board members at PCCS. One topic that the group was really excited about was SBA. So we may see some SBA future SBA leaders as they move up the ranks into middle school. And that's it. That concludes my, present's report. Short and sweet. We'll move on to student performance and achievement committee. Judy is not here. Do you mind taking over for her? I do not mind. If you just give me a second to pull up my notes.
I was at that meeting last Wednesday. We went through sorry. Multiple things need to happen in order to see. We went through four big presentations. One was the early childhood presentation. This was a really exciting program where we got to see the outcome of high school students working with early childhood students and not only do they get that experience working with early children, but they also have the opportunity to earn an associate's degree while they do this work.
And they have a certification option. It's a really exciting program that we were really grateful to hear more about. We also got to hear the high school math curriculum adoption, and you're gonna see that in today's agenda. And I'm sure we're gonna get more information around that. We also had the multilingual curriculum, and I think that's also on the agenda. We also had two out of country field trips, which were part of the consent agenda. And that is it. And, oh, the next meeting. Let me next meeting for student performance and achievement is Wednesday, May 6 at five
p. M. In this room. Thank you, Vice President Sidhu. Up next is policy committee, and I'm gonna kick it back to you for an update. I have no update because we have not met since our last meeting, and we have a meeting coming up on Tuesday, April 28 at 5PM down the hall. Please join us. Thank you. Finance and operations committee with treasurer Kehoe. Thank you. We, did not meet last Thursday as we normally would. We had a light agenda, and we had some conflicts with the board members that were present. So that meeting was skipped and the materials will be sent out to the board
in notes as part of that process. We're also going to miss the traditional next meeting in next Thursday because of some absences at the administration level, as well as also some board processes. Our next meeting will be Thursday, May 7, here in this room at 5PM, and we encourage the community to join us. Thank you, treasurer Kehoe. Then we have student voice and action committee with Josh and Arjun. So SVA has not met since our last board of education meeting. But at our next meeting, we will be hosting elections for my coach, Tracy, as
I'm graduating. Our next SBA meeting will be on Monday, April 20 at 04:30 in the Pioneer Media Center. I hope to see you there. Okay. Thank you for that update. Okay. Moving on, we have the superintendent's report. Doctor Merritt. Thank you, president Christiansen. As you know, I never miss an opportunity to brag on our amazing students and our staff. And tonight, I have so much good news to share. I almost popped out of my chair this weekend when I received a text from doctor Bartanian Gibbs sharing with me this wonderful news that our very own Kathy Grotes,
that's our psychologist and mental health manager, was given the well deserved recognition for her work with students and families when she was named the National Alliance of Mental Illness Michigan's secondary educator of the year. So let's just give it a heads up. Kathy Grodus. To know Kathy Grodus is to know someone who is completely dedicated to supporting the mental health needs of our students. She moves in silence. I will say that she never wants the accolades for that work that she does. She's been so instrumental.
And this award, she was recognized from her peers in the work that she's done with our mental health fair. I know that that's coming up on April 25. That's the fifth year that we've been doing this, as well as just our mental health programming that's really helped to, remove the stigma as a part of our student family engagement, department. So, she's she's helped with our partnership with suicide prevention. We've seen that here at the board table. There's just so many things that she does, and she never wants to credit. So I'm so glad to see her recognized. At that same time, our young man, SBA cochair, who is now a senior, I
remember when you were just a bright eyed freshman, Josh Patterson was also recognized at that same award. So please just join me in saluting him. I'll tell you what his award is gonna be. Josh was named one of three Michigan youth advocates of the year for his work with students versus stigma advocacy group. And this group is a subdivision of the suicide prevention coalition. This offers a chance for student voice to be elevated through student led mental health awareness campaigns. When I talked about that eager young man as a freshman and just the fact
that he has excelled and elevated and used that voice here at the board table and in a greater aspect around our school community and across our state. We are so proud of you, Josh. Please keep up that good work, both of you. Wanna take a brief moment to encourage our families and communities who provide your voice and input. Our 2026 school relationship survey is now open, and we encourage everyone to participate. We know that strong student success comes from schools and families working together.
There is no greater partnership. Your input is important in that role, and we are committed to listening. We always hear, you know, what what happens when I complete these surveys? Is anybody really paying attention? We absolutely pay attention. We analyze. We divide out to the various departments to departments to make sure that it is actionable as a part of our district improvement plan. We are always on that path to continuous improvement. This survey will remain open through May 1 and can be found on the district website. Now earlier today, as I like to brag, I had the opportunity to brag a
little bit more as I attended the state of the Plymouth Community Luncheon. I didn't know we have pictures for that. I didn't get to see those first John. Yeah. It's all good. Passes the test. We have that annual, we call it the power lunch, where local businesses and community leaders come together to connect and share ideas. And it was definitely a wonderful opportunity to highlight what's going on here in our schools, as well as learning about new initiatives and developments in our broader community. I was honored to join our Plymouth mayor, Linda Filipczak, and our township supervisor, Chuck
Kermy, on the panel discussion, and that was facilitated by West Graff of the Plymouth Community Chamber of Commerce. It was an energizing and an informative event and a great preview of what's ahead for our community in the coming years. And I was really excited to hear the new housing, those always impact schools, share the partnerships that we're involved in as we had our business partners there, dropping some seeds in case anyone else wanted to partner. We are here because that just creates pathways for our students, which is wonderful. Going back to bragging on our young students, I'd like to congratulate the PCEP and
East Middle School HOSA students for their outstanding performances at recent state and regional competition. HOSA provides students the opportunity to grow as leaders and future health care professionals, and these students truly represent that mission. At the middle school level, East Scuden students, Pratyusa Yane, Madini Shyam, and Meher Basu placed in the top three and will advance to the international competition in June. At the high school yeah.
Let's go ahead and let's go. At the high school level, PCEP students excelled at Region 5 with at least one team in every event, placing in the top five and advancing to states. Notably, all five finalists in CPR and first aid preparedness were from PCEP. So let's give it up to our nation's nation. I have to tell you, our co chairs, they are the gift that keeps on giving. So right now, we need to give our full attention to Arjun right here. So let me tell you what he's been busy doing.
Arjun, is hold on hold on, let me go. He won the twenty twenty six University of Michigan BRAINBI. BRAINBI is a high school neuroscience competition where students identify neurological disorders and diseases and demonstrate an advanced understanding of the function and anatomy of the nervous system. Arjun will be representing PCCS in Southeast Michigan at the USA National Brain Bee Championship at UC Irvine on April 25, getting a chance to compete with top students across
the nation. And just, sophomore this year. Right? So we have years to continue to see this excellent young mind just developing to soar. So just congratulations. You know the success of our students would not be possible without our amazing staff. So tonight, I wanna send my congratulations to Stark Warder Starkweather Academy staff, member Stephanie Mcmaster and Belial Kaulge, who were recently recognized for their work with students by earning honors from the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.
McMasters, who teaches English as a second language, received the Up in Corner Award for her enthusiastic and engaging teaching methods. And adult education supervisor, Bajit Kaul, received the department's unsung hero award for her administrative work at Starkweather. These awards reflect the quality of education that our Starkweather students receive, and we are so excited for both of these talented professionals to receive their awards at the Michigan Adult Education and Training Conference in Kalamazoo on Tuesday, May 5.
Please join me in congratulating them. I don't have a copy in front of me, but I believe our board members do. Please hold up the most recent edition of the PCCS press that should be in your mailboxes. This has an opportunity to capture all things great that are going on in PCCS. We really had a focus on innovation this year because innovation again is so important as our work is to prepare students for jobs that don't even exist. So we see that we have a focus that is from kindergarten to twelfth grade and beyond. Our recent partnership with ORSA, our robotics program, our esports team, the successes of, many
students, AI courses that are now offered at PCEP, Enrollment, of course, because who wouldn't wanna be a part of such a great opportunity for kids? So that new, magazine should be in your mailboxes, and it's just a lot of things to be proud of. And in addition to being delivered to our mailboxes, we also want to share that our magazine is available on our district website. As I wrap up this evening, registrations are open for the twenty twenty six s j five k. And this is a charity run walk on the PCEP campus. This will take place on charity run walk on the PCEP campus.
This will take place on Sunday, May 3. We're gonna hear a little bit about the SJ, five k event. I'm gonna ask some of my student chairs to come forward for me this evening. We have, Charlotte and Sharben coming forward today. And for those that don't know, in terms of our, s j five k, it is help from the PCCS community that has changed the lives of dozens of our families and raised more than millions a million dollars in total.
This year's race will benefit five local families who are facing financial hardships due to medical issues. Now I know that we have a video. So are we gonna hear from you first, or would you like us to show the video first? You can show the video. Alright. So if you can give us a few moments, while we're getting the video chewed up, I also want to acknowledge oh, okay. I'm sorry. I'll do that. Yeah. You often hear me quote the African proverb that it takes a village.
And so I am so incredibly proud of our village here in PCCS. When we hear that statement, we are a community, that's one of the strongest words in our name, Plymouth Canton Community Schools, and supporting our young students as this is a student led initiative with the help of I want, Melanie Burkett to to to raise her hand here. She is, our adviser for the s j five k and just provides the space and opportunity for our young people to source. So I invite you now to the microphone to tell our community a little bit more about this year's events.
Hello, everyone. As you probably know, we are from the s j five k leadership team, and we're very excited to talk to you today about this year's race. My name is Sharbine, and I'm one of the co managers this year as well as the logistics coordinator. Good evening, everyone. My name is Charlotte Andrews. I am the other co manager as well as in charge of Race Day Logistics. So we're just here to touch a little bit about already you saw the video, but just telling you a little bit about our recipient families this year. So our first recipient is Grayson Grayson Weeks. He is a 13 year old student at Discovery Middle School who suffered a brain
tumor and had it removed via surgery in January 2025. He underwent over 30 rounds of chemotherapy following the surgery. And he also experienced some difficulties with his speech and mobility following the surgery, so underwent occupational therapy to help with that. We also have Matthew Juarez, who is a seven year old student at Farrand Elementary. He also suffered a brain tumor, also had it removed, and continues to undergo chemotherapy infusions every six weeks, as well as on Monday through Friday, he has radiation therapy. Mila Kalash is a seven month old. Her siblings are students at East and Miller.
She was born with heterotaxy syndrome as well as congenital heart disease, so she has undergone many surgeries following her birth, and may require a heart transplant in the future. Paisley Long is a seven year old student at Isbister Elementary School. She was born with scimitar syndrome as well as a collapsed airway that caused her to frequently go into cardiac arrest, and she still does require around the clock care. Finally, Henry and Charlotte Kelsey were twins born prematurely at twenty six weeks, and their parents, mister and missus Kelsey, are math teachers over at Plymouth.
So obviously a very close connection, similar to all of our families. So Charlotte experienced a buildup of spinal fluid in her ventricles and required additional oxygen support and a feeding tube tube, but was recently able to go home from the hospital. And then Henry struggled with respiratory support and later developed a disease called NEC, that did unfortunately take his life on February 15. As we as we prepare for race day, our student team is busy hosting events and supporting these families, and we need your help to make it all happen. Whether it's donating, registering to run or walk the s j five k with your
friends and family or reaching out for local businesses to become sponsors, your contribution will make a difference. We would like to recognize over 50 local businesses in our community that have already sponsored us this year's race, including all the congresses at the PCCS schools who have donated a combined amount of 5,500 this year. This year's race is going to be our biggest one yet. Sorry. And we need your support to make it all happen. We wanna reach as many people as possible and it'll be possible with everyone here's help. Even if you're not available on the race day or unable to run or walk it, you're welcome to register or help support or make a donation.
Race day will take place on Sunday, May 3 at the PSAP varsity field at 8AM. Please visit our website at www.sj5k.org for more information. We can't wait to see you all there. Thank you. That concludes my report for this evening. Thank you, doctor Murrett. Thank you to our students who are here to present on that important fundraiser. I have to admit this is a very emotionally charged meeting, highs and lows. So excuse me while I compose myself. Okay. Up next, we have citizen's comments. We have a pile here. This is, the first segment of citizens comments that will last thirty minutes.
If we have citizens comments that move us past thirty that thirty minute time limit, we will hear the remaining comments later in the agenda. Each citizen has three minutes to speak and the board will not respond. This is your time to share. The administration will follow-up with each individual who participates in citizen's comments. As a reminder, please do not share any names when sharing any concerns or criticisms unless you have their permission to do so. Okay. Up first, we have, Michelle Mustakas. Is this Michelle Mustakas or Michelle m?
It just says Michelle m. I think you need to flip it. That's the last one. Last one. Okay. Maybe I had it this way. K. K. Chris Robbins? Does that make sound right? Hi, Marie. Nice to see everyone. I remember meeting a couple of you guys. I was here when miss Murrah came in, back in 2016. So about ten years since I've been here. Still just love PCCS. So glad to be back. So really quick, wanna give a shout out to the s j five k people. Awesome. Every time I did it when I was here, I was a student back in
twenty fifteen, fourteen. Always an amazing experience. So definitely, strongly, strongly recommend. Everyone who can do it does that. They're a great great cause, so definitely support them. Also, just wanna say the main reason I'm here is we're celebrating America two fifty this year. So I love seeing all the enthusiasm around our school district, on the streets and people with the American flags all over the place. It's been awesome. But this week and coming up in April is the anniversary the two hundred and
fifty first anniversary of the events that happened in Massachusetts where we really kinda got our start as a country. So that's when you got Boston, Lexington and Concord, shot around the world, Power of Yours Ride, all those sorts of things. And I feel like there's a big deal about America two fifty because the declaration and everything like that. When it's also really important that we really kind of take a look at everything that happened, that's responsible for why we're here today and the whole war of independence and not just one specific thing that happened, one specific weekend, and one specific year.
So I just wanna make sure that we make sure that we cover everything that happened, and we don't leave our students undereducated on the entire process of the revolution, because it takes, as we've said, more than a village to be able to get these types of things done. So, while we give our shout out to the members of congress and everything like that that signed the declaration too, that wouldn't have happened without the events that happened in Boston, this week, two hundred fifty one years ago. So thank you all. Appreciate you guys for all you do for our community. Nice to see you guys again. And, thank you for your service.
Appreciate you guys. Love you. Go peace out. Out. Thank you for your comment. Up next, we have Rachel Hayes. Before I begin, I just want to acknowledge the families sponsored by the SJ five ks and, say that our hearts are with them, and we're wishing them the very best and congrats to the students. So, hi. My name is Rachel Hayes, and I'm a member of CAPEs. I want to take a minute to connect something happening at the federal level to what it means right here in our district. Recently, the federal government stepped back from agreements it had in place with several school districts. Agreements that required schools to actively protect transgender students under federal civil rights laws.
Those agreements came out of investigations where districts were found to be out of compliance with title nine, specifically around discrimination based on gender identity. They laid out clear practical expectations using correct pronoun name using correct names and pronouns, ensuring access to facilities, and having consistent procedures when issues come up. Now those agreements are being canceled. And along with that, there's been a broader shift in how protections for transgender students are being interpreted and enforced. What that means in practice is that the federal direction schools were operating under is
being pulled back. The clarity around how protections are carried out is weakened and districts are left to carry more of that responsibility on their own. And that's where local leadership becomes critical. Here in PCCS, we are fortunate to have strong protections in place for our trans and gender nonconforming students and strong protective policies in general. But those policies need to be protected. They are also only as strong as how they're enforced. They're only as strong as how well staff are trained and how consistently that training shows up in practice in every school across this district every single day.
While we don't control federal decisions, we do control our policies and how we enforce them. You, the board majority, have taken steps to support all students. You've put structures in place. You've made commitments. You're working with CAPES to improve our schools for every child in this district, and we thank you for that. But the question now is, what does long term follow through look like? What does it look like to make sure every building is aligned in policy implementation? Every staff member knows what's expected of them, and every student has a consistent experience no matter where they are in this district.
It requires extensive training, repeated, reinforced, practiced because staff need to know what this looks like in real situations. They need to know how to respond in the moment, and they need to feel confident doing it. They also need to know without question that the district is backing them up when they do. This is where local leadership sets the standard. This is where you remove ambiguity, and this is where you make it clear through action action that every student in this district is supported and able to walk into school focused on learning, not on whether they belong.
Because regardless of what's happening at the federal level or in other districts, students will walk into our schools tomorrow and what they experience when they get there. That's on us. So let's get it right. Thank you. Thank you very much for your comment. Up next, we have Heather Gattney. Hi. My name is Heather Gattney, and I live in Plymouth. And I have two kids who attend school in the district. I'm here today as a mom and as a member of CAPEs. I wanted to speak to you all tonight because I'm concerned about the safety and well-being of our students regarding the threat of ICE in our community and the lack
of clear communication from the district on how we are protecting our families. Last week, I was driving my kid to elementary school, and it was just a normal morning. And then out of nowhere from the back seat of the car, they said, my friend is afraid of ice. I honestly thought I misheard them. I asked them to repeat it, and they said it again very clearly that their friend is afraid that ICE is going to come and get them. For privacy, I'm not going to use the child's name tonight. But when I asked if they were immigrants, my kid knew exactly what country they
were from. I'll be honest. I had no idea. My kid talks about this friend all the time, but I had no clue their family was living under this shadow. I tried to ask more questions over the next few days to see if I could help or offer resources, but But my kid is really young, and they just couldn't give me any more details about the situation. But that conversation has been stuck in my head ever since. I don't know if this family is okay. I don't know if the parents feel safe enough to go to work or to buy groceries or even to walk their kid to the bus stop.
What I do know is that it kills me inside to think about a child sitting in our classrooms every single day trying to learn math and reading while carrying the weight of that kind of fear. We tell our kids that school is a safe place, but for many of our neighbors, that doesn't seem true right now. I think this story highlights a huge gap in our district. If I didn't know this family was at risk, there are likely hundreds of others we aren't seeing either. Fear grows in silence, and right now, PCCS has been far too quiet.
We need transparency. We need to know that everyone working in our schools is being trained to handle a situation where ICE tries to enter our school grounds. We also need the district to publicly share a clear list of resources like legal aid and community support so that families don't have to hunt for this information themselves. PCCS shouldn't just be neutral on this. We need to be proactive. Every child in PCCS deserves to feel safe, and every parent deserves to know the district has their back. Please get these protections in writing and make them public.
Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Up next, we have Michelle Mostakis. Good evening. My name is Michelle. I'm a twelve year resident of Canton and a member of CAPEs. And CAPEs is very excited to be having a booth at the district's upcoming mental health and wellness fair on April 25. We are having a blast preparing for it, and we thank the district for recognizing the importance of mental health and wellness as a key to not only the success of our students, but to building a healthy, strong community.
So please come to the fair, and make sure to visit our booth. Capes would also like to congratulate the students of the Polycon Club and their adviser for the excellent job that they did in putting on the first ever student led town hall. Their adviser gave them all the credit, coming up with the idea, planning it out, inviting the candidates, and running the program. The students asked meaningful questions, and each of the five candidates was given the time to thoroughly answer the questions rather than just respond with a bunch of talking points.
Afterwards, the students said they'd like to do more informational, nonpartisan events like this. We encourage them to do so, and TAFEs will be very happy to work with them to publicize their next event so that more community members will know about it and take the opportunity to be informed about local issues, particularly those that impact our school students and their families. And on another subject, I was taking a walk by our local school with my geriatric, but still goofy golden retriever.
This is Moose. I had to bring him along with me tonight. And we noticed what a beating the snow, rain, and windstorms had taken on the school grounds. When I talked with our capes direct board of directors, we decided we would love to sponsor or participate in a school grounds cleanup day. My ask tonight is that you get back to me with information on who we should work with to make this happen. Finally, I'd like to touch on something that we heard at our last school board meeting, and it's a phrase that I hear often.
And it goes like this. Our schools just need to get back to the basics. Yet everything I just talked about would not be considered basic in the traditional sense, but they're still critical to feeling safe, valued, respected, all of which are vital to a student success. The basics that most of us older folks were taught may have been heavy on teaching ABCs, but left tens of thousands of children behind who had special needs, emotional issues, or just plain didn't fit society's narrative of who they should be.
We weren't old enough to vote, so we were just ignored or discouraged from taking on issues that would impact our future, leaving us disinterested and disinvested from our role in building our democracy. We've made some progress in moving beyond the basics, but there's still lots more to do, and CAPEs is ready to stand with the board majority and our district to do that. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Okay. Thank you. Back back. Oh, you have one more? Okay. You're able to submit.
Thank you so much. Okay. We have another comment here. We have Caitlin Reynolds. Okay. Good evening. My name is Caitlin Reynolds. My son is 13 and a freshman at Plymouth High School. He participates in lightning robotics at Canton. I'm here to share with you the assault of my son at robotics on March 26. That evening, a group of seniors effectuated a premeditated assault on my son, which was video recorded and subsequently shared with other students. This detail supported by the fact that the senior who recorded it claimed he didn't
have it anymore on Friday morning when I was at the school filing my reports, but another boy in my son's class had it that morning. According to my son, the issue started on either the twenty fourth or the twenty fifth at robotics. He saw a senior he knew walking down the hall with a young woman he didn't know. Later that evening, he asked the boy, who was that fat girl you were walking with? And my son is acutely aware that his choice of word to describe her was horrible. But in his statement to the school, he said, I was only trying to describe her, and I just wanted to know who she was. Hurtful and thoughtless, absolutely. And the words of a boy who I know who's never intended malice, has a
big heart, trusts every single person that he knows and thinks everybody is his friend. Following this, what my son said was relayed to that girl's boyfriend. Thursday evening, the main coordinator of the assault came to my son and kept telling him, h is coming up here. I'm a momenting the name. H is coming up here. You're cooked. And kept repeating it. Apparently, h was not in attendance to robotics that night. He just came up there to assault my son and then leave when he was done. My son said he wanted no part of it, so he packed up his bag and went to the robotics field house. The head of robotics, mister whoever, was letting the kids in later that night.
H walked in, winked at my son, and then proceeded. A short while later, the boy who will then videotape the assault came to my son insisting he go with him or the situation would get more serious if he didn't. My son kept telling him he didn't wanna go, but he did thinking that they would just yell at him and make him apologize. A group of four seniors walked my son down the hallway and into the fabrication shop, auto body shop at Canton High School and shoved him into the bathroom. At the time, another freshman tried to push his way into the bathroom to stop it, but he was shoved away according to my son. The person who assaulted my son was twice the size of this other boy. H kept telling my son, pick a wire, eight or twelve, eight or 12.
Two of the other seniors present kept telling my son, pick eight, pick eight. My son being naive thought the smaller number was the smaller wire, and this is not the case. The smaller gauge is the heavier wire. My son was whipped with, like, which left him with a sizable bruise on his right buttocks and no adults were anywhere around to notice that any of this was happening. And if you know your history, you'll know that that was a practice by slave masters as a psychological tactic to induce humiliation, fear, and powerlessness. Latent effects could be PTSD nightmares, advance avoidance of school settings, learn helplessness, trust issues.
My son is biracial. Another student overheard the seniors talking after the incident and heard h say, if he tells anyone, the next thing that happens will be worse. She convinced my son to report it. I'm sorry. Thank you, Melanie. He convinced my son to report it to mister I'm I'm sorry. We are only allowed three minutes. I do appreciate your time. We would love to connect after the meeting. Alright. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much. Okay. That concludes our citizens' comments. Thank you to everyone who shared this evening. We are moving on to administrative reports and recommendations.
Up next, we have student and family engagement with Doctor. Liz Vartanian Gibbs. This evening, Caitlin Apferman, early childhood coordinator, and Kitty Yamrut, special education supervisor of early childhood and speech language pathologist, will share highlights of our early childhood program. This is a true celebration of our youngest learners and the dedicated professionals who champion their growth every single day. Thank you. And thank you to all of you for the opportunity this evening. We are very, very excited to share all the wonderful things happening in our early
childhood program. You saw a lot of the bigger PSAP students earlier this evening. And we're excited to show you some pictures and share what we're doing with our very youngest learners. The early childhood program is grounded in the dynamic plan and aligned with the components of the learner profile with strategic focus on increasing achievement for all students and closing achievement gaps, ensuring students' physical and emotional safety, and strengthening meaningful family engagement. The early childhood program enhances academic achievement, focusing self regulation focusing on self regulation, language,
communication, and early problem solve. Skills. Through high quality instruction, inclusive practices, early intervention, and strong family partnerships, the program supports the diverse needs of all learners and builds a strong foundation for long term success. Our early on program continues to see strong growth, currently serving two thirty three students through caregiver coaching model, with 268 referrals received since 07/01/2025, and we had 336 referrals
in the prior school year. This work is carried out by highly skilled and specialized team of 21 teachers and therapists whose expertise allows us to deliver individualized, high quality coaching to each caregiver. The program is fully funded through Wayne County Act 18 funds. At Allen, we serve a 163 students across our early childhood special education programs and services. This includes our ASD and early childhood special ed classrooms and students receiving ECSC services and speech and language services.
Alan also serves as a hub for our centralized preschool evaluation team with a 181 referrals for the 2425 school year and currently a 151 referrals this school year. Our our work is powered by a highly skilled team of 30 professionals, including teachers, therapists, paraprofessionals, all committed to supporting student success. Our Great Start Readiness Program, or GSRP, is the district's no cost preschool program for our four year olds, offered across six locations with 18 classrooms serving 324 students.
This number is up from a 140 students in the program last year. This program is fully funded through the per pupil allotment from Wayne Risa. The district's tuition preschool program includes six classrooms currently serving 100 and 23 three and four year old students. We also have 80 exceptional and dedicated staff members who provide outstanding support, guidance, and care to our very youngest learners. Here's some information regarding our current preschool program. You will see our three year old program, which consists of half day and school
day tuition preschool. Our four year old program, which offers half day tuition preschool and the free GSRP preschool. As the state of Michigan moves toward pre k for all, all four year old children are eligible to participate in our preschool program at no cost to the families, regardless of the family income. We are very excited to say all families are welcome to our program. All preschool classrooms utilize the teaching strategies curriculum and the gold assessment program. Here, I have a little bit more information about those programs.
The this curriculum is research based, developmentally appropriate, and it's a curriculum that focuses on meeting the needs of every student. It focuses on purposeful play that encourage discovery and exploration. Teaching strategies gold is the assessment tool we use. It is an observation based assessment tool that helps us understand and support the students' growth and development. There are 38 core objectives, which are organized into six learning domains. We use these color bands here to show the developmental ranges that students typically move
through as they grow and learn at this age. These color bands are not grades. They're not scores. They simply show us where the student is currently developing and helps teachers plan experiences that meet the children's needs. Here's some data from our gold. You will see that this chart shows the percentage of students meeting expectations in the six domains I mentioned earlier. The blue is where they started, preschool in the fall, and the green is where they were at in the winter. You can see that as a whole, students grew in all six domains.
For example, if you look at the first one, social emotional, only about 20% of our students were meeting expectations when they started our program. And already in winter, it's over 80%. We also, as, you mentioned earlier, partner with the educational careers high school teacher to provide hands on learning opportunities for high school students through placements in kiddie campus at Canton High School and preschool programs across the district. A total of 48 students participated this year with three high school students on track
to earn their child development associate's degree and their high school diploma. Five of these students have been hired as PCCS employees to work for the extended day preschool program. So they're both students and staff within our district. So our special education services in preschool. Plymouth can is recognized by Wayne Risa as a model for early childhood special education inclusion with several districts across Wayne County coming in partnering with us and observing, to replicate our approach. This marks our sixth year implementing this model in our preschool programs.
In the 2526 school year, twenty percent of students with IEP successfully transitioned from center based classrooms to the preschool classrooms. Two ECSE inclusion teachers collaborate in preschool classrooms to support all students. They provide direct specialized instruction to students with individualized education plans while also ensuring access to the general education environment. Our focus is on building academic, social, emotional, communication, adaptive, and positive behavioral skills to
increase student independence in the classrooms. In addition, inclusion teachers provide ongoing coaching, modeling and support to preschool staff, strengthening instruction for all learners. Early On, which is our birth to three, program, serves our community ages newborn to age three. It emphasizes early identification and early referral. Referrals come from hospitals, pediatricians, community agencies, and family members. Our approach is caregiver centered and focuses on using everyday routines and natural environments to
support each child's growth and development. We deliver services year round. The early on program staff are early childhood special education teachers, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, physical therapists, nurse, social worker, and school psychologist. Supports are in place to guide children and families as they transition to preschool at age three. In our early childhood special education, programs and services, each child has an individualized education program or IEP, which outlines their current level of development, measurable goals, and services and
supports that they will receive. Services are provided either in a center based classroom or integrated into the general education environment. Students receive specialized instruction through a combination of large groups, small group, and individualized teaching. Instruction is play based and developmentally appropriate, ensuring that each child's learning is meaningful and engaging. Our goal is always to transition students to the preschool classrooms with their peers. Well, we've got lots of celebrating to do. The early childhood program has a lot to celebrate.
We're excited to partner with the food and nutrition department to provide breakfast and lunch in our early childhood special education classrooms. This is new this year. We've also expanded programming by adding two new placement options for students exiting early on who need special education services but don't necessarily need a special, self contained classroom. As a result, we've doubled our number of students receiving special education services while reducing the number of students in our early childhood special ed classrooms. We have more to celebrate. This year, we increased our free preschool program from eight to 18 classrooms, and all
classrooms were fully enrolled. We also wanna celebrate that more preschool families are making the choice to stay with PCCS for their child's young five or kindergarten experience. 66 of preschoolers enrolled in PCCS young fives or kindergarten for the 2425 school year, while 82% enrolled this school year. This is due to the amazing work of our early childhood educators making a difference in the lives of children each and every day. There's more. Our program partnered with the extended day department to offer summer preschool camp programming for
the first time this summer. This year, we've also partnered with the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative to offer free educational advancement opportunities for any of our staff, supporting those pursuing a child development degree, an associate's degree, or even a bachelor's degree. As part of this partnership, our program was featured in the Detroit Free Press and the Bridge Michigan newspaper. Before we move to the next slide, I'd just like to take a moment to highlight the photos in these slides. All of them are current preschoolers in our programs, and we just wanted to show
you their learning in action. For example, the photo on the top right captures a group of our Gallimore preschool students exploring outside in the rain, fully geared up in their rain suits, and embracing the moment. This is just a perfect snapshot of curiosity, play, and the simple magic that is early childhood. Our ultimate goal is to provide every four year old in the community the opportunity to begin their educational journey in our program, ensuring a seamless transition to kindergarten and
beyond. We are hopeful to expand our GSRP classrooms from 18 to 20 to better meet the growing needs of our community. Due to the expansion of GSRP free preschool, more families are interested and enrolling. We currently have 409 families interested in GSRP for the twenty six, twenty seven school year. We hope to develop a district early childhood hub to support staff collaboration, strengthen our inclusion model, and ensure broader access to services for all learners. We are very excited to continue our partnership with the food and nutrition department to
offer free family style breakfast and lunch for all preschoolers that spend their time in our school day program. Together, our programs are comprised of 131 staff that support over 850 students ages zero to five. Our program is committed to providing high quality, inclusive, and engaging learning experiences that support every child's growth and development. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I'll open it up for questions. I will start actually with member Boss. Thank you. That was a great presentation.
I was just wondering with the, increased GSRP enrollment, Do we have enough staff and locations to make that happen for for what the enrollment will be? At this time, we do not have enough classrooms for that, but we do have enough staff to support that. Okay. Are we working on getting enough classrooms or that's not Yes. Yes. Every day we're working on it.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Treasurer Kingham? So along those same lines, that's my same question. Is this a, a building space limitation? You know, help help us understand where the the constraint is. I think we just have to look at, current locations of some programs that might allow us to shift programs and then open up new programs. Okay. So then just towards that end, we have more demand than we have space available for the GSRP program that we're doing today. Very much so, yes.
And not to discount the programs that are not GSRP like our tuition based programs, but is there any thought or discussion of allocating some of those classrooms to GSRP? Or or I don't know if they're also, have if if their need exceed I'm sorry. If their, demand exceeds the the space that we have for those. We'll we'll be talking a little bit more about that. But the goal is, as you see, just from the state level, preschool for all. Uh-huh. And so GSRP is fourth grade.
So I'm not Four year old. Four year old. Little young girl program. So as you see the expansion of GSRP, what we're seeing is, the reduction in the need for the tuition based program. So we're anticipating maybe four classes versus six classes next year. So it's just around placement. We'll be able to locate we're eagerly embracing. We want four year four year old program free for all because, again, that prepares our students early to transition to kindergarten. Excellent. And one other question for you is on the percentage of children meeting expectations for
each domain, what group was that done? I mean, there's so many groups that are being serviced by the team. What age group or program was that a reflection of? Thank you for asking. This is our GSRP program. So that's the 324 GSRP students, which includes the 24 students from Katie's program receiving seventeen fifty five services within our classroom, as well as the other four year old GSRP students. Okay. And then so the students that didn't meet those expectations by the end of the year, are we using this data and information to target them for, for interventions or
additional supports, as they move up in the the process? Our teachers do a variety of communications with their future teachers, to help ensure a seamless transition. Okay. And then my last question is, for the students that don't you you get a pretty good retention rate of the students that are staying in there is eighty two percent, I believe. Do we know where the 18% went? I know where each and every one went. Yes. Some of them are in not from this community and go to their local school district.
The majority are going to charter schools. Most of them have siblings already in charter schools, and we don't feel we can persuade them. If they are the oldest, we do try to persuade them to come to our school district. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Member Sandhu. Thanks for ask asking one of my questions. So with regard to growing the plan for space, that's a separate question that was already addressed. My question is more about growing the program for the CTE part of it, where high school students are engaged in this. Two part question.
One is how long have you been doing this? I think it's a couple of years, but when did it start? And what's the growth process for that part of the program? Can you answer when it started? Katie Campus is the program that, Caitlin's preschool teachers are working with high school students. It has been in our district for at least forty years. Fifty. I I attended any campus, so there you go. Around a long time. Yeah. I guess my question was more around the students earning an associate's degree. Oh. That part of it. I would have to get that inform get that back to you.
We work directly with Chelsea Kaske, who works at the high school and works with those students as their high school teacher. Only last year did the programs at Katy Campus become GSRP programs. So that might be the change, you've noticed. But in terms of numbers and how long, I'd have to get back to. Okay. So the second part of that question is, do you have a plan to grow that program, meaning more high school students participating, earning their associate's degree, and getting a job as you shared? I mean, this is like a win win win at so many levels.
Absolutely. We're absolutely. We actually grew it this year from two classrooms to three Okay. Within the, preschool program. And we are hopeful that I think there needs to be more information for students about the program, and we're working with Chelsea to provide that. Okay. Thank you. Well, thank you for your presentation. I just have a question and more on the finance end. So are all these or which programs are mandated? Is there certain ones that are mandated by the state? Like, I know that Yeah. All of my special education birth to five classrooms and services are mandated by the
state. Okay. Alright. That's what I figured. But, But I had a question too, like, for the, for the funding of everything, does that what's covered, like, the money that you get to cover, like, the free preschool? Does that money cover, like, other expenses? Like like do we have to take anything out of our general fund for that to supply that? Because like is it providing extra funding for our infrastructure like playground, care of the buildings, cleaning of the buildings, does that support that, or does that, like, something else
we're we're providing for the general fund? That's kinda what I'm Help my numbers that we get. What is that? $50,000 start up? Is that part of the grant? We do receive start up monies for new classrooms. One time. Mhmm. One time. And that can be used for, whatever needs may be needed to set up that room, classroom supplies or furniture or what have you, food and utensils, start up, silverware and things like that. There's, we don't use any grant funds for maintaining the space or the grounds per
se. We do use the bond monies for, improving the playgrounds and things, purchasing structures, etcetera, for the playgrounds. I would say the business model for the GSRP appears to be more sustainable than, for example, our preschool based, programs where we're not receiving we're receiving the tuition from it. We try to remain competitive. I think we might be a little less, expensive than many of our neighborhood, programs so that we have been, supporting that with the general fund, our tuition based.
Our tuition on okay. And just concerned because I know our our priority is the k to 12. And I know there's a lot of people concerned, like, with the pay to play and the different funding that has to happen. And I just you know, which is also a reason why a lot of people leave for sports and things. And not that that's sports are you know? But I just hear a lot of things about our our grounds and things. And I was just concerned on how much money we are sending towards programs like this that are you know, there's a lot of programs offered in other areas, but that was one. And, yeah, I guess that was it.
So pretty much covered it. So but I but I I mean, I've I've worked at preschool, so I love that age. So it's not anything against that. It was just more the, you know, as a district, what our priorities and things are. So thank you. Okay. Member Ahmed. Thanks. I don't have any questions. My questions have already been asked by fellow board members. So thank you very much for your presentation, Danielle. Thank you. I'll go to our our student co chairs. Josh, any questions? Both of my questions were answered, but thank you for all your hard work. Arjinda. I just wanna start off by saying, I really appreciate all the work you guys done, and it's evident by the graph.
I just had a quick question or, I guess, suggestion maybe on, you know, when you look at the overall dataset, you can see the means obviously trending upwards. But I'm curious on how you guys are working with the students, you know, who may have already been at the 80% data point and if we're, you know, tracking it individually to make sure that those 80% students are going up to 90% and not just saying that it's gone from 50% to 80%, so the job's done. Absolutely. Thank you. We can go back to the bands. So that's what the the beauty of our gold program is it identifies where the
student is and then where they can go. And so they're able to flourish within their own program. And our teachers use observation based assessment systems, we're never sitting the child down and saying, Tell me all your letters. Tell me all your numbers. We're watching them interact with peers, play, learn within our classroom. And so that's the opportunity for all of them to grow as as far as they can. And we push all of them to meet meet their needs with that. Thank you. Thank you. You have another question? Yeah. When you're when you're done. Okay. I'll I'll So my other question is just a follow on question, in terms of
the the tuition based programs and the ones that we're doing here is, ultimately, when we see many of these students staying with the district, that's essentially part of a marketing activity. If we were to look at our marketing costs that we would incur in trying to reach out and bring people in, this would be one of those things that we could evaluate as part of a marketing program and say, is that investment that we're making in this program not only serving the needs of those students in our community, but exposing them early to the benefits of PCCS? Mhmm. So the That has been intentional work when you see the growth.
I think we've kinda shared that in some of our meetings last year, the work that we've done in marketing, and then the follow-up. So when Caitlin shares that she knows where every family is, that's intentional about why you're saying the, marketing of the programs and district. And so my point to to that is is just to to emphasize that even though a program may cost us money and that we may not get as much, from the tuition as it does to support the program, that could be considered an investment in growing a student that we're gonna keep in our district for thirteen years.
So it's one of those things that we should consider in that process. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Up next, we have actually, I'll let Ms. Curry take us through that. Great. Thank you. Girls meeting. Up next, we we have mister Joe Green, the executive director of high school education, who is here to share some of our high school program highlights. Thank you. Good evening, members of the Board of Education, superintendent, core team, and members of the PCCS community who are present and watching online. It's my pleasure this evening to present the high school level highlights for dynamic goal
a, specifically, in the subject area of math. Sorry. Everything we're doing in the teaching and learning department this year is focused on building an equity based multi tiered system of support, so that we can achieve the learning and mastery for all students and support achievement of both dynamic goals a and b. For your reference, here is our logic model. I won't bore you by going through it in front of you right now. Our work over the past two years in our math department, they've engaged in professional
learning about an implementation of instructional strategies that foster curiosity, deeper student thought and deliberation, encourage metacognition and reflection on process over simply arriving at an answer, making students' thinking visible, both to the teacher and other students, so that they can model, explore, and revise thinking. And so it moves from it moves not getting the right answer into an opportunity to learn and grow, rather than a judgment of us and our performance. If you think back to some of your own math experiences, we can understand why
a lot of our peers say they're not good at math. This hopefully starts to unwind that. These, strategies are also underpinned by ongoing collaboration with other students and the teacher. And all of these things have and will help our students gain greater mastery in math, which you'll see in the data in a moment. It also helps them learn and embody the elements of the learner profile very specifically, particularly being collaborators on a daily basis, questioning and contributing to diverse community as ethical global citizens, becoming goal directed and resilient and focusing on revising the process and the
thinking, not just the answer. Critical thinkers as they think critically in math. Being a communicator by contributing to the thinking and ideas of others around them. And finally, being innovators by approaching math with curiosity and problem solving as opposed to just memorization. So this prepares them with mathematical and problem solving and soft skills necessary for the rapidly changing world that we find ourselves in and that they'll live into. Additionally, as we mentioned earlier in the agenda, we've engaged in a math pilot that I know was recently presented at SPA and the board will have a first reading
of this evening. During the twenty four-twenty five school year, a comprehensive data review and curriculum selection process was conducted to identify math curriculum that are aligned with the Michigan merit sorry, Michigan mathematics standards, the PCCS dynamic plan and the learner profile. Priority was given to programs grounded in research and best practices that are problem based, student centered and designed to build deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. This year, a pilot team of 22 teachers representing approximately half of the math department as a whole across the park participated in the curriculum pilot.
The teams included teachers from Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II, honors level equivalents and middle school courses supporting advanced Algebra I and honors geometry. The team selected I'm three sixty, a high quality open source curriculum. Three curricula were piloted. Kendall Hunt, which includes printed workbooks and assessment for assessment and data collection, Imagine Learning, a comprehensive digital platform of printed workbooks and Amplify, a primary digital curriculum, was also piloted for comparison. All of these capture and embody the strategies and approaches that our teachers were starting to use and bring the appropriate approaches to math that we'll need for our kids
in the future. So let's look at what all that translates into data. Here, you'll see the overall percent of students earning a passing grade in semester one math classes. We're focusing on grades here because we don't use NWEA at the high school level because it tends to have less of a predictive value as you go into sophomore year. And the SAT data that we have arrives as an autopsy at the end of the story when it's too late for us to do much about it. So when we look at these grades, we can make some calibrations throughout the year, and we're hoping to push into more localized data than that as we work our
efforts forward. So you'll see here that the trend line overall for student performance during semester one has consistently trended upward over the past five years with a close to 3% improvement in students passing and earning credit in their math classes. And that's pretty strong because we're approaching a 6% failure rate, which we can nibble at and this curriculum will help us lessen. The story gets even better as we delve into our special populations. You'll see similar growth trends and a particular note of celebration, I believe, is that we see greater increases and a narrowing of the achievement gap across our special populations.
Across three of our largest demographic groups, we see growth for our Asian, White and Black students and a particular note, we see an almost 10% increase for our black students, which shows a significant closing of the achievement gap. When we turn to our economically disadvantaged students, we see a greater or sorry, we see a gain of just over 10% and a closing of that gap. When we look at our students with IEPs, we again see a gain of over 10% as well.
Our MLL population sees a gain of 3.5%, growing a little bit more than our overall students. We see fluctuations here as this is one of our most dynamic special populations, and that we see students level out of the program across the year based on mastery of English, and we see new students entering who have a limited English proficiency. So these aren't always the same students across a given year, and there's usually some struggles with some of the technical language. And so we're diving in to try to figure out and isolate where kind of some of those dips come from so we can increase this.
When you look across our high schools, it's stark weather. They function a little differently. So we have a smaller data set. Two years ago, they switched to quarter grades and a block schedule where students take three courses per quarter and one academic skills class per quarter. So we only have two comparable years of data to look at here. It's worth noting that students that traditionally struggled in a six period day, and often particularly struggle in a math class, are arriving at stark weather and are passing eight out of 10 greater than eight out of 10 students are passing their math classes
and earning credit at stark weather, which is a huge turnaround in transition. We see, a great opportunity to capitalize and build on that. In summary, we see that we maintain high success rates of students earning semester one math credit across all classes. These are all of our math classes combined across the park and Starkweather. We see steady increases across all demographic groups and narrowing of performance and achievement gaps over time for all groups. We think the curriculum adoption is gonna help us escalate that and keep building on that success. Our next steps, each building is continuing to work on its MTSS tier one so
that we can track students more closely and really intervene. And so to your question earlier, Arjun, like those students that are at an 80 are pushing along as well as the students that might be performing a little beneath that. Right? We also see that our high school instructional coach will continue to work with the math department as we do rollouts so they can better embed strategies and he can work in, integrating some of those interventions that come with tier one. We're going to continue our work on equitable grading that focus this year on building common assessments so that we can get more, timely data than just semester grades.
So that we can get things, at best within a unit or sorry, at the beginning within a unit and hopefully closer and closer to within each lesson. That's one of the things we noticed in the pilot is the new structure. The pilot allows teachers to see student performance more regularly in class as a result of the structure of activities and approaches. And that segues into implementing the newly adopted math curriculum, which we're excited will help really capitalize on, the practices that teachers have brought in, the energy and the passion there. And we're really fortunate because they were seeing the need the same time that we
had the adoption, and it's really come together well. So at that point, I will be glad to take any questions. Thank you for your presentation. Member Ross, any questions? Yeah. Just one question. Thank you. The slight dip at stark weather, do we have the reason behind that, and is there a plan to shift it the opposite direction? We are looking into that right now because we only have the two years of data. So we have two kinda sets of different students. So we wanna take a look and see what we can find out. So Kim Domen and I will be diving into that.
And again, with only two data points, it's hard to see if we have a trend. But that is on our docket to talk about. And then we're making sure that, the Starkweather teachers have it embedded in the pilot as well, so that they're a part of everything we're doing. So that we're making sure what we're doing at the high school level cuts across the entire high school level. So we can return back after we look a little more on that. We can get you more information to you. Thank you. Mhmm. Thank COVID years.
Was 2122, I know it was in COVID, but we had was it the beginning of COVID or when did Second year. It was the second year. So it brought about more normal grading processes and and everything else that was occurring during that time. Because I know we had very relaxed grading processes in the beginning of COVID. This would not be reflective of this. It would be more traditional grading, although students were still in a very difficult learning environment in that year. That is accurate. Okay. So I discount a little bit the improvement from that year to this, but I
do appreciate the slow and steady progress that we've been making for all the years in addition. I'm not trying to say that, that doesn't matter. It's just we're still continuing to see that progress every single year. It's not maybe as quite as dramatic as it was from that very difficult learning year, but I want to congratulate the entire team for the progress that we're making and continuing to see this, with that slow and steady progress. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate your presentation because I had jotted a few questions down, you know, when preparing for today, and you answered them all.
So thank you. I have members to do. I took that now. Yeah. You did. You did. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. Let's talk about, like, trend data looking at the dips. Yep. So remember, Voss already asked one of the questions. My question will then go to the slide that talks about special populations, MLL. Mhmm. We again notice that dip, a quick big dip Yep. From 2023, '24, '24, '25, even going up to 2025, 2026 is not at the same level as 2022, 2023. Given that you have more data to look at, what do you attribute that dip
to? And in going back up, but why not more of the increase? So with what we're looking at right now, this recent increase from one year over the next, I think, has a lot from what we've been able to tell and what I've been able to observe in classrooms, has a lot to do with the strategies where they're at the boards and working together and doing the math and sharing some of the language and working together, not in isolation, but constructing language and meaning together. So the academic language becomes less of a barrier and it becomes more social. So I think language becomes less of a barrier, and it becomes more social.
So I think that can explain kind of the move from one year to the next, at least in what I've observed since I've been here. It is a note of curiosity for me to dive deeper in to look at the last couple of years and see what happens. Did we have a change in how we're delivering MLL services? Did we have changes in populations? Was it, hey, we graduated a whole bunch of people out of WIDA and picked up a whole bunch of new students that are lower in scores. Right? So I wanna do some diving into that. And so that's something we'll be looking at this spring and into the summer to have plans for next year. There's some pieces built into the, curriculum adoption that help along the way with some
of the resources being readily available in other languages. And so we're hoping that we can capitalize on that. And we want to see if we can identify particular populations or particular languages that might be where this is occurring or if it's across the program. So a lot of questions and would be happy to, once we dig into it, return back with some answers. Okay. As you talk about returning back, is there a plan to give us a full year snapshot with what semester two grades look like as well? Yeah. We could definitely do that. Can we do that? Can we put that on so we have a full trend of first semester, second
semester? Okay. And then, my next question is around teachers, staff involved in this work, particularly with the students. Do they have an opportunity to participate in professional learning communities with dedicated time looking at the data, looking at strategies, given that they're the ones that are in front of the students doing the work? Do they have that time built into their schedule to dig in and parse out what's going on? Yep. They have two meetings a month that they have, that occur on Wednesdays where they'll
meet and they'll go over data. One of the reasons we're pushing to, develop and improve our common assessments and get better alignment on that is to provide them more frequent data. What we did find during, the pilot is that they were having more frequent conversations about what they were seeing with students in the classroom because it was more readily visible, both with kinda how the digital interface is set up and what teachers can see, but then also the fact that instead of having to monitor 36 or 34 individuals, they're now able to look and listen at groups and attend more.
And so they found that they were getting more frequent data, more frequent feedback about kids. And I think that's another reason why we saw an increase this year. And I'm really banking. I'd be willing to bet that's where we're gonna get a lot of growth going forward. Okay. Thanks. You're welcome. Thank you. I just have a question. So a passing grade is considered? Would be 60% or higher. Okay. So and so my concern is is it's hard to tell, like, how many of these students are just getting a 60%, you know. And so, which if they're only getting a 60% that first semester and they move
on to the next semester, you know, there is is because 60% sometimes it might be passing, but are the concepts concrete enough to carry on to the next semester, which is harder? And then how does that that's kind of what I wanted to see, how that progresses because and it's hard to tell how effective that is because you don't know what all the other grades are happening. And so it's hard to know, like like I mean, you could say, well, all of them are 60, and that would not be good in the sense of there
are students that might achieve, you know, at the other end of that. But when the lines just kinda stay kind of consistent, then it kind of appears that if some are passing, like, it doesn't show that the from the upper end. Like, who's progressing up? Like, that seems like it should be tighter or something, you know? This when we start looking at this, right, as we're looking across all classes in a particular subgroup, we'd have a very long presentation if we were to break it
out. Five letter grade, way longer. Right? I can say that on the whole, the skew of our grades in terms of Cs, Bs and As, they're the predominant set of grades. That we are at worst, and I'll have to double check, but I'm pretty sure we're in mid teens combination of Ds and Fs and typically less across the board in math. Our failure rate right now is less than seven percent, about six percent in math, which is pretty good. And we can hack away at that and diminish that even more if we keep
doing this work. And the d's are not that much more. So the vast majority, and I can kind of pull some of that data together, the vast majority of the grades are c's, b's, and a's. Okay. Yeah. Because that's hard to tell them because it's like And grades too, really, aren't really the best indicator of mastery all the time. And that's part of one thing why we wanna do our equitable grading work and our common assessments so that over time, what we see within a given lesson in the classroom shows up in the common assessment, shows up in the next common assessment, ultimately shows up in the grade that they should almost be predictive in the point
that we can then say, oops. Something's not right. Let's intervene and get this now. And also, too, we need to be a little bit flexible because a student might not learn it in November when they're supposed to. But if they get it by May right, and so that's the pieces. Sometimes it takes a little more time. And so we have some practices that we're gonna weave in along with the new curriculum that I think will help with that. And so the kids that have failed, do they just keep retaking the class till they pass it? Like, what what do you do with them as far as, like, what are their
alternative? Many of them will do credit recovery or a summer school piece to kind of boost it. There's a number of different options. They could repeat the class, but that's a lot for a whole year. They could take it in summer school, take it in ingenuity. There's a number of different options for them to do that. And what we wanna do is catch them before we get to that point, and that's what we're trying to build towards and work to. And I think as we build this new as we bring this new curriculum online, we can weave some of those components in with that work. Yep. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Mhmm. Thank you. One of my questions is the same that, member Picard already asked.
And my other question is, you mentioned that this gives more frequent data. Could you elaborate on that a little bit, please? I know you explained, but, I lost you somewhere along the way. Do you mean the curriculum? Am I referring to the curriculum? Yeah. The curriculum. So the curriculum, depending on which they piloted, they all do this in some fashion. Okay. So some of them will have a digital interface where the teacher can see all the kids' screens and see what they're all doing as they work in groups. Other options, have it where the kids are doing it as a group at a table and their work is very visible, either up on a wall, on a board,
or on a piece in front of them. And so instead of looking at 36 different students, the teachers looking at groups and listening and being able to kinda get a feel for everybody is and they see what's happening in the classroom in real time instead of waiting for a quiz or waiting for an assessment. They really have a much more, achievable way of observing what's happening with the kids and attending where they need to where they think it's not working. So they get more minute to minute data. And part of the thinking is, we want the common assessments so that we can capture something at a unit and have conversations around a unit.
Then once they get really good at that, we'd like to drive it to now, can we take a look at what we're doing within lessons? Because this new curriculum has some, like, mini not assessments, but mini measures built in in a day where you'd have a sense of where kids are. So we wanna kinda move it closer and closer to within the class, actually, where they're making adjustments on a more regular basis. Did that answer your question? It does. And I have another question that I have to follow-up that how does this, how does this interact or not interact with some of I know at the high school.
I don't know if it's currently happening, but, the flipped classrooms that were, like, the were, for especially for math. So does this like, how does this interact with that or does it not? I think it's a totally not totally, it's it's a different but similar model in the sense that the resources are all there and available. There's online digital resources, plus they get a workbook that's there. So they can go back and see their work online. There's lessons and videos and different support structures that are available with it, I believe. So that will actually kinda take the place of it, and our teachers won't be
generating all that. Because the other hard part about a flipped classroom is you are kinda double planning, like, for things outside and inside. And so this will actually make that easier for our teachers. And if they do wanna supplement, there's tools that they can pull from to make available to students. There's tools students can go find. And then we're freeing up if they do have to create something, then they can get together as a group and plan that and create that based on data and what they're seeing. Thank you. You're welcome. Could could I ask another question? I'm gonna make it around, and then we can come back to you. Josh, do you have any questions?
Yes. So I was just curious if the stark weather data on the pass slash fail is included in our special populations or if that is not included? Separate. I treated them kind of as a separate entity because they're totally different structure. Okay. Right. So they they wouldn't be included in the 93% or anything? No. That was everything else we had before this, sorry if I wasn't clear with that, that's all PSAP. Starkweather is the conglomeration of all students that are there, though. So we didn't break that date out because it's only a 170 students. And then, I can quickly speak to the flip model.
I found it good and bad. So so there's definitely positives and negatives, and that's something that I would encourage the board to look into and have possibly presentation on. This year, I've found it amazing, an AP Calc, AB, as well as the way my teacher handles it, where we watch a video. And then in class, it is very much group work together on whether it's your homework or figuring out problems for, the videos that you watched. So I would encourage you to look into that model and figure out maybe in surveying students on whether they like the flip model or not as well as, looking
at flip model versus not flip model. Because I know for AP Calc AB, for example, there is a class, my class, where it's flipped, and then there is a class where it's not flipped. So comparing that data as well could be an interesting look. And then for the grade breakdown, I do think it would be interesting to see I know we were talking about the pass fail rate and how someone with the 60% could would be included in that passing. Well, like, I know that data would take forever to dive into even if it was just just a simple, like, this we know that ninety three percent of students pass on average across our or across the high schools.
So just seeing, like, what that breaks down to would be kinda interesting, even if it was just, like, one slide. So would you think, like, for a sample set of, like, the overall population Yeah. Just overall. It doesn't even have to break into all of them. Thank you. This is kinda touched already by other board members, but I was curious if you knew the data before COVID. Because as a student, I can attest to the fact that even coming after the first year of COVID, I believe some classes were still virtual if you wanted it to be. And, just things weren't the same.
I think people were still used to the virtual learning. It's completely different. And I was wondering if you'd had if you had grades before COVID, like, 2018 and 2019 on hand. I would have to look to see if I have those readily accessible. I've only been here since last August. So, I can definitely deep dive and look. And I kinda cut I made the act active choice, I think, to board member Kehoe's point, knowing that COVID was its own kinda break point, really kinda moved the data forward from that for the return. So, yeah, I could look into that and break that out.
And then one more thing is, I think Josh already talked about this, but I think student feedback would be really helpful. I mean, I took precalc, which is flipped, and then I'm currently taking AP stats which is not flipped. And me, personally, I think I like the not flipped more. And I think it really depends on the teacher, the class, how things, work. And I think getting student feedback on something like this since it's, you know, the main people that impact your other students will be really helpful. I think it's widely known the students have opinion on math, good or bad. But, I think if you get a form out there, they'd be happy to share
their input, and that could help you figure out, you know, maybe this teacher is doing it better, this grade these grades look better, or, you know, this needs to be fixed, looking at stuff like that. And we have a model that might be able to help with that with the pilot. I know that Mrs. Russell Gentabo, gave several surveys out, and we got some really good feedback from students. So we have a model that we could leverage in that direction. Perfect. Thank you. So do you have any more questions? Think the member of the card. I have a question. When when they work as a group in math, I'm concerned just from experience and
kids' ex my kids' experience, things like that with the group. Is how do they keep track of who really knows? I mean, some of the grades, some of the kids rely on so many of the other kids. And to have some kind of evaluation, I mean, I guess it would show up in the tests. But to know if they really understand it, is there how does the teacher as a group, she may see the group making progress, but individual students, I think, can get lost in that in that process. And then I think some kids well, one of my was upset that couldn't get
his homework done in class because he had sports after. Mhmm. But because and he would get, penalized if he went ahead and did his math. He had to do in a group. So how does that work with is there options for kids? Like, some kids do do better, just getting it done and be done. Some kids do need benefit by sometimes other kids in a group. I mean, I I sometimes I think kids get lost in a group, and they They they can. They can get lost in a group. But these structures are actually designed where the teachers are moving moving around and noticing
who is and is not contributing. Typically, they'll often have a board, like a whiteboard hung up on the wall, and the group has to show their work, and they'll randomly get called on for one of them to explain the work. So there's some piece in there to hold accountability. Okay. The teachers are also moving around the perimeter of the room listening to who's talking and who's not. And I've heard them say, like, hold on a second. We haven't heard from Joe. Oh, okay. Like, I'd really like to hear that. And really, what they're listening for isn't the answer. Because really, that's not the important part of math. Well, because it is. No, no, no. Hold on. It's the thinking. Because if you get the thinking right, the answer will follow. If you focus on the answer, most people just fill their head with it and
move on. Or guess immediately. Or guess. Yep. And and either way, they've now just done time in a math class, as opposed to actually mastering it. So there are a whole bunch of different pieces that they use to kinda make sure that the groups are not some place for somebody to hide, that somebody doesn't get lost. I understand. And this is way more engaging. When kids talk about process together and they can find, like, a sense of value and get validated by their peers, it's pretty amazing to watch because they're like, wait a minute. I can do this? And they're like, yes, dude. You can do this. Like, you just gotta be patient.
Think through. Remember that thing you did there. It's pretty powerful to see. Yeah. I if I can add to it, I'm definitely not an educator, but there is data around peer to peer learning. So you're learning from, you know, your materials. You're learning from, you know, your teacher. But hearing it from a peer and and maybe at a point where you're not quite getting it, but maybe a new book can can help me get there, not only reinforces your learning, but it also helps me if I'm struggling with the concept. So there's a lot As long as they know what they're doing. Yeah. That's what you say. The teachers monitor you. Well, and the peers actually monitor each other.
They like high five and fist bump each other when somebody gets it. And they actually get productive struggle and enjoy it together. And that's the part we can't we shouldn't save our kids from. They should have to grapple with productive struggle with with support around them. And so that's kind of the the environment we're creating. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. One Oh, one more. I'm sorry. I No. I think we both have questions. I didn't see sorry. One thing that I was thinking of while we were in this discussion is maybe offering an option between flipped and unflipped and maybe looking into that.
Because I know there's definitely a house divided on, you know, whether flipped or unflipped is better. And I'm sure you could get students to go for both. So looking into that would probably be a great idea. And then I know you were this. I just wanna say something as a student. I think it's really easy to see that people prioritize, you know, getting the right answer in the end on standardized tests and, you know, in your class. But, I think that if you have the process, it's really easy to make. You know? Sometimes you'll make silly mistakes. You'll forget to add a number, something like that, and you'll get the wrong answer.
But if once you have the process, it actually makes math more fun, you can say. And it makes it feel like you're not just going in there and writing for an hour and then leaving. And then one more thing is in terms of actually making sure that the groups isn't just one person doing all the work and the other guy just copying the answer and stuff like that, me personally in my, math class, the teacher sets up groups, based on grade. So and, you know, like and they take time in making the groups.
So, you know, it's a group of people who have above 93 and a group of people who are, you know, maybe struggling on the same concept so they can work together. And the teacher makes sure as walk walks around the classroom to make sure that the students are actually, you know, participating, and it's not just one kid doing all the work. So I think that's a lot of, It helps. Participation of the teacher to make sure that it's not just one kid doing the work. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate that. K. Miss Terry, will you take us through the next slide, please? I sure will. Thank you. This evening for your consideration is the first read for the new high school math
curricular resource, Imagine Learning Illustrative Mathematics, I'm three sixty. The Imagine Learning I'm program aligns with the Michigan k 12 mathematics standards and mathematical practices, emphasizing essential skills such as problem solving, mathematical modeling, abstract reasoning, and argument construction. It is a research based program that fosters deep conceptual understanding. Furthermore, its seamless integration with Canvas, our learning management system, ensures a cohesive digital first experience for both students and educators.
The Imagine Learning I'm program aligns with Michigan k 12 mathematics standards and practices to emphasize essential skills. This recommendation follows a comprehensive two year review through our curriculum review and revision cycle, ensuring our educational standards remain current and effective. In year one of this process, the high school math committee identified the need for new materials, investigated research based resources using ed reports, and the Achieve EQIP rubric, which aligns which allowed a rigorous evidence based evaluation with an out come of selecting the
highest quality standard aligned curriculum for our students. In year two of the process, the committee evaluated Imagine I'm Kendall Hunt I'm three sixty and Amplify across high school and middle school levels. Feedback from teachers, students, and the pilot committee was quantified and aligned to rubric indicators, ultimately leading to the selection of I am learning three sixty I'm sorry, Imagine Learning I am three sixty as the premier resource for the district. The program will be rolled out over two years across our high schools and for
middle school students enrolled in high school level mathematics. This phase implementation is designed to support a significant Instructional shift, fostering vertical alignment, and a clear progression of skills and concepts. In 2627, all algebra algebra one, advanced algebra one, geometry, and algebra two courses will transition to the new curriculum. And in 2728, implementation expands to honors geometry and honors algebra two. The total cost associated with this adoption is $1,206,676, which covers a six year implementation
period. $1,000,173 and $1,173,176 is dedicated to the curriculum licenses, student workbooks, and digital subscriptions for both students and teachers, as well as ancillary materials and assessment and intervention. The cost will be managed through an initial year one payment of $205,529.34, followed by annual payments of a $193,529.34
for years two through six. Additionally, the budget allocates $1,500 for necessary classroom materials to support hands on activities and $32,000 for two years of professional development provided by the Michigan Math and Science Leadership Network to ensure successful implementation, and our team is here to answer any questions you may have. Thank you. Mhmm. Member Boss, any questions? I don't have any questions. I got to see the presentation at SPA, and I have no questions. Thank you. So my question is really on the types of materials that are provided.
Our first question is, I know that there's student workbooks and there's also a student digital subscription. Are they complementary? Are they duplicative? Do you have to have both? So the teacher can good evening. The teacher can, choose. They can teach everything of the print, but they can also teach part of it online. So the way the curriculum is developed is by having a warm up and invitation to the lesson so that they would show the screen and have some some activities there and then students can write in their workbooks.
And then again there are other slides and activities using hands on manipulatives and there's a lot of resources. I think Mr. Green explained earlier that there are several resources. It's also translated in Spanish. And again, we can access also a PDF or the workbooks. So they go together, but for teaching, the teacher can really choose either a blend or, just print. Great. And so I understand that we're a one to one district, and we offer an
opportunity for every student to have an electronic device. But we don't require them, and we don't provide them. It's an opportunity. For students that don't have an electronic device, how would this work in that particular classroom? So they wouldn't need to access the digital platform in order to learn. They would or would not? They would not. Okay. It's really a supplement for the teachers. It's a supplement for them during class because they can look at different simulations, things
like that, but it's not part of their homework or after school learning. Perfect. So they can do everything on their workbooks. Fantastic. And then my my last question on this is how does the pricing for this curriculum compare to the pricing that we've seen for previous math curriculums? It's very competitive. It's the for this quality of program, we were able to get the price done. And it's very comparable to the other curriculum we piloted.
And is this typically what we would end up staying for a six year period? Is this Yes. And okay. Yes. Great. Thank you so much. I have a question around funding. Is this a general fund expense? Yes. It is. I assume so. Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. No more questions? Thanks. I had the, privilege of having this, in spot. We asked a lot of questions with member Voss. I just wanna share with my board colleagues some of the questions I asked and just to just so that you all have the depth of information.
And I say this because, remember, I have the math teaching background, so I'm trying to look at it from a teacher, lens as well as a parent lens, as well as an observer who's seen kids do math on screens. So my biggest question was since we have these courses in seventh and eighth grade, algebra one geometry, as well as stark, stark weather, will there be alignment in making sure all teachers get the same PD? And I was assured that there was because again, we we wanna make sure that our school our students in middle school are getting the same information, the same best
resources and, pedagogy. So I was really glad to hear that and I asked about where research supports this And, I think if we could get more of that information board notes in terms of what research supports this program in particular, the little bit of research I did do looks promising, but I think I'm gonna leave it to the experts to give us that research. I asked for time and coaching for teachers along with multilingual support. And one of the research articles that I read really talked about you could have
the best resources, But if you don't give teachers the adequate time for PD, those resources are not gonna give you the return on investment that you're looking for. So we see these promises in a really great curriculum, but the research I was looking at showed if the teachers don't have the adequate time to learn, brand new curriculum and especially if you're teaching two or three classes, you know, you've got to prep as a math teacher, algebra one, geometry, and algebra two. You're learning a lot all at once. So I was assured that the teachers were gonna have adequate time built into their
schedule, and I think I was really pleased to hear that they're gonna start as early as this summer. In May. In May. In May. So, again, I hope that the teachers are being supported with adequate time and resources because that's a lot of work on them. And, the last question I asked was, what other districts are using this? And we got that information. And my follow-up question to that, if we could get in board notes, is, what lessons can we learn from those districts that have already implemented this so we don't have to have those stumbling blocks ourselves if they're willing to share?
Can I answer some of this? We can also share in board notes. The lessons that we learned, so working with the MMS and the Michigan, Math and Science Leadership Network, it's all about professional development. So we need to really support the teachers which is also why we're proposing a two year rollout to allow enough time so teachers can really focus on one prep, so one course at a time and really learn the curriculum because it's way beyond just delivering the lesson.
It's a story line that we're telling and we are really focusing on the conceptual understanding, so they can get to the correct answer. And at some point next year, if we can remember this, can we get some student antidote like feedback from students as far as what do they think about this new curriculum? Yes. So we surveyed the students. We had over a thousand students responding to the survey. All the questions were really so we went with the equip rubric which is how you analyze curriculum for math.
We took the pretty much the same questions and we asked that to the students. So that's how we surveyed them. Students were really agreeing that it makes them think they can use their reasoning, they can collaborate. Also the teachers' feedback was really high on engagement and collaboration which was a big ask and what we embrace. So the student feedback was really positive. Now I want to add that yes, support and professional development will make this a success. All right. Thank you so much. So they wouldn't implement this for two years after the teachers have the two year,
or this would be starting out right away? So it will start right away. What you can see on the proposal next year will be algebra one, advanced algebra one, algebra two, and geometry. So that will be the rollout. We're going to really focus on those courses. At the same time, we're also going to work on the vertical alignments looking at how honors, is going to differentiate from those courses. So, and then the year after that, which will be '27, '28, it will be everyone. So all the courses will be rolled out. So some of the kids that are just starting out with the teachers starting out,
that could could that affect them? It it I think it would eventually affect them because, we're also working with, the, assistant principal responsible for their math department to create a schedule. So teachers we're trying to have teachers not with multiple preps so they can really focus on one or two courses at a time. And, one thing that we're looking at is maybe a teacher can teach, say, algebra one and, algebra two and maybe an honors algebra two as well.
So then they can start really understanding how the curriculum can, be delivered and, eventually, it's going to affect the students. This is what we want. The sooner the better. This is just our focus, so we can make sure that they are the teachers are supported. They implement with fidelity and we also look at the particular alignment with the owners. Okay. So they're trying to do it redesign the curriculum in too many classes, too many different preps, we get a lot of diminishing returns. It's hard to reinvent. So we're trying to minimize how much they're changing, but then also be smart so
that they can see where they can extrapolate it to other classes and begin to practice with a lot of the same thinking. And they'll get training so they can start to embed some of the thinking and approaches so that they're even kinda getting a runway to be ready for it. Okay. So so the kids won't have a disadvantage of because they were in the first ones. Because I I I do have experience with that from one of my kids way back. And so just that it started out a program in one of the math programs and it just was, you know, it's a struggle for a few years. This is a major instructional shift.
It's not just looking at what probably all of us experience in math and just replacing it. It's really looking at the conceptual understanding of math. So for the teachers, it's a heavy lift and they have to really get the support because we're really focusing on instruction. So all the teachers, will be trained regardless of what they actually teach next year and they will all be trained at the same time. So the plan is to train everyone for two years, including all the PDs, built
in PDs from the district and we have some release time as well and we're starting this in May and we're training everyone. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I don't have any questions. Thank you. I just have one question. This might have been answered. I noticed that there's, like, the delayed rollout. Are we paying for the licenses for the delayed rollout starting in 2026, 2027? Are we waiting for the Honor Yamiche and Honor's algebra two license to purchase those, like, next year. I think that's what you're going to spend on those kind of It is all
included. The fact that year one is a tiny bit more expensive is because of the teacher additions that we have to pay. It's just a one time and the the shipping as well. Everything is everything is included in between the code. So we're paying for Right. But we're paying for curriculum for a year that we're not using. You think that's yeah. That's what I was trying to ask, I guess. Did you negotiate that with the vendor saying these courses aren't gonna be rolled out? Can we get, like, an extension? So we already negotiated Oh, okay. A lot. I think it's something we can look into, but we also get got a big
discount to get this deal. Yeah. And I I agree that it looks like we have two classes in this that would be stayed off for the time, but you gotta remember that that training is gonna be in place for those teachers over two years. They're gonna be piloting other versions of the curriculum. So they're gonna have the ability to tap into and use some of that stuff. We're just not requiring them to invent everything all at once in one year. So yes, you're right. There's a trade off there, but we're trying to be humane so that they can deliver it effectively with fidelity, just given some human limitations.
And teachers already have access to the curriculum. I just spoke with a company today, and they already gave access to the teacher so they can start planning. Again, the sooner, the better. It just doesn't matter what we actually focus on, but everyone will be trained. So they need access to the platform. They need to be able to start delivering using the instructional strategies that is in place in this curriculum. So our teachers will have access before we even start paying the bill on July 1, which is a great advantage. This is not a new thing that's landing on them in the summer or the beginning of the school year.
They've got some runway. Guys, one more thing. One more question. We interrupted you, Josh. I'm sorry. That was my only question. Really good question, Josh. Yes, it was. If I can just clarify, going back to the flipped classroom, this is not a flipped classroom. So for Algebra I, geometry and Algebra II and the honors, it won't be flipped. Now it's a good question you have about pre calc and calc. That's something we can look at. I think you have one more question. So like for when they so they have the workbooks to take home in in hand. Mhmm. Is is do those you know, like, a textbook would have explanations and everything on
how to do problems and stuff. Do those just have the problems they have to work out, or is there also something they can learn from the workbook, or do they have to rely on all the digital information in during the day at school? Everything that is digital is also printed in the workbook. So they can literally teach of the workbook. Okay. It's just the interactivity you have with the with the slides. That would be more on the teacher end. And then there might be there are also the assessments, that's something we need to talk about, the assessments and the platform that would give you data that teachers can
use to inform instruction. That's why we also picked this, platform. Is there any way, as board members, we can see some of this or, you know, if they're, like, something to check out or see here? Yeah. I I can ask for a demo call, just to kinda have a sense. I don't know if it's done. I'm sorry. Pick up something. I don't know. We'll look at that on the website. We'll add yeah. As a follow-up work question. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Really quickly. Sorry. Oh, no. I have another question. Sure. Are you I don't know if this is possible, but I would say that it
would be it would be helpful to know how many, like, licenses we're paying for that wouldn't be required to be used before the next meeting and what that cost looks like, before So one thing as well is we're we'll have this we will have the subscription for six years. But because of the two year rollout, we're not going to use those licenses, but then it will be pushed for another six years. So let me get this right. Are we paying for six years? And then that six years we'll lose a year of that six years for the
honors in geometry and honors algebra two. So they'll only use five years with the subscription, or is that six years starting when they roll out in 2027? I would have to double check, but I believe it's starting later. I will have to double check that. And is this a site license, or is this a specific number of seats that we have? It's a number of licenses we're paying based on enrollment we have, right now, and I bumped it a little bit. Okay. So this could go up or would it go down if we see declining enrollment?
So the number of seats we're asking for now is fixed. Okay. But if enrollment is going up, then, yeah, we might have to look at that. So it'd be good to understand both the number of seats that we're purchasing and the enrollment that we currently have? Because I know you purchased a little bit more because you don't want to be without, but it would be good for us to understand both of those current situations, average enrollment across these classes across the last two years, for example. Yes. That's what I looked when I put the quote together.
Yes. It would just be it would be good for it to be in the presentation when we're approving this in the recommendation. Okay. All right. Thank you. For prosperity. Okay. Miss Curry, you wanna take us through the last one? Sure. Will. Thank you. This evening, for your consideration is the first read for the adoption of National Geographic LIFT for English language one and two language development courses at Plymouth Canton and Salem High School. This recommendation followed a comprehensive review through our curriculum review and revision cycle, ensuring our educational standards remain current and effective.
Teacher and student feedback also confirmed that the materials are engaging, appropriately scaffold, and culturally relevant to the backgrounds and experience of our multilingual learners. National Geographic Lift provides a comprehensive content based program that teaches the academic language and literacy skills our students need to succeed. This adoption supports a dynamic plan by advancing strategic things of equity, inclusion, and student centered learning. Furthermore, the inclusion of the Spark digital platform provides additional support such as oral reading, fluency tracking, and discussion frames that empower students to become active participants in their own
language develop and language development and collaborative learning. The total cost is $9,306.22, which would be funded through the general fund. This includes teacher resources, language companion workbooks, and student books with integrated spark platform access. Teacher books are a one time purchase. The student books are yearly consumables. Implementation would be the 2627 school year, and our team is also here to answer any questions you may have. K. Thank you.
Member Boss? I have no questions. Thank you. Member Quito. No questions for me. Member Sue? No questions because we discussed this again in SPA, and, it is similar to the program that's already being used. It's an updated version. So and it, my notes from SPA say that it's aligned to Rita. So thank you. I just have a question on I know, like, it's you know, there's diversity and everything, but, like, when we talk about global citizens, what what do you mean by that? Like, what is it gonna support as a global citizen instead of an American citizen?
That is aligning with the PCCS learner profile. So the materials reflect that value that we have as a district. So just ensuring that they are able to communicate with various citizens and, just world views and, being able to engage in those topics, which the program does, elicit. Okay. Thank you. Member Ahmed? No questions. Thank you. Josh? No questions. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much. Okay. Up next, we don't have any additional citizen's comments, so we will not move forward
with that. We have discussions and action items. Doctor. Merritt, can you take us through that, please? Yes. I am pleased to bring before you as a first reading your consideration for a sponsorship agreement with Henry Ford Health, Systems. This partnership we've been working on for the last few months, and this marks what I would say is the beginning of what I hope to be a long term partnership. This is actually a partnership that was cultivated through our athletic, department in particular.
Plymouth High School APAA, Shaka Johnson really took the lead, on this program. As you know, we work currently with health, Henry Ford Health Systems. They sponsor our trainers for our athletic department. And in this partnership, for one year, they would provide $20,000 that would be divided equally among the three PCEP athletic departments. In exchange, Henry Ford would, provide signage at many of our high school athletic venues and mentions of the sponsorship on district promotional channels.
Now this is not a naming rights agreement as we've dealt with before. However, through policy 9,700, this is still something that we bring forward for the board for consideration. We would hope that we would, evaluate this partnership over this year and move towards something that would be more long term. It's my understanding in talking to mister Ruizurello today that there was some excitement among Henry Ford representatives about further expansion and where we could go with this. This agreement has been vetted through our legal team, so we've gone back and forth
to make sure that the best interest of the district and both the organizations that this is mutually, beneficial for both. So we're bringing this before you for a first read and, answer any questions that you may have, get any information that you may have back to you. We would then come back at our next meeting in hopes of, approval for this partnership. Alright. Thank you, doctor Marriott. Member Voss, any questions? I have a couple questions. I'm wondering, are there any limitations as to how the money can be spent by the athletic department?
So I will I need to probably have a representative here, but the answer would be no in general because that would be within our, general fund. So not from the partnership agreement itself, but within the parameters and guidelines of Plymouth County Community Schools. We're not going to use that money, for example, for staff salaries that would benefit the athletic program itself. So would athletic directors be the ones that determine where the money is spent? Or Let me find out that answer for that. In fact, that'll be a follow-up question.
Okay. Thank you. And then, one thing that I brought up just through an email was about, a morals clause or reputational thing when we were working with ORSA. Yes. Would that be something that we need to go through policy the policy committee to, just protect our district? I'm I'm not speaking evil of ORSA or Henry Ford or anyone, but, you know, just in things that we see in the world, we would wanna protect our reputation.
I know we don't have a policy in that. Right. I don't think. So this was raised before, I would say, as a part of this agreement, as with the ORSA agreement, there is a clause that, ensures that the organization in this agreement, follows all work policy. So current work policies as they exist, if there's ever any change in board policy, they would still be subjected to that. So if this is something further that, to your point, we don't have the specific, moral clause as a part of our current policy, but anything that would be disparaging,
those are a part of our our policy. So the agreement as it stands, it actually specifies that it has to adhere to board policies as well as laws. And at any time, as you as a board, if you wanted to change policies or enhance them, this would already be color covered under the current agreement. So that might be something you wanna take up at the policy level. Okay. Mhmm. Thank you. And, again, I as I say, it has to also go both ways. So we wanna make sure for them as well, if we are you know, we're a human service business and if we have anything that they could also, consider as
that clause as well. Number two. I'm excited about this opportunity. I see this beginning of a potential, journey, and, you know, we see a lot of these kind of partnerships. So these these can go a long way towards furthering the work that we do as a district. So excited. Appreciate that. I know there's a lot of work that we're doing right now to look at how we can support athletics as well as activities. So bringing forward more partnerships that really would be geared towards that program, I think, will help us to achieve some of those additional costs that might, come from that.
Yeah. I agree with, Member Kehoe's sentiment. I don't have any further questions. Member Sadu? No. I appreciate Member Voss' questions. Those are exactly my questions in terms of how the money is being spent. So I would love to have a representative, be in attendance at the next meeting. And, I do have some wonderings in terms of trying to fill in the gaps where we know gaps exist, but, again, that's gonna be part of that larger conversation. I just wanted to ask. So it's just for the signage? There's no services or anything. It's just signage? Yes.
Okay. Alright. Yes. Thank you. I'm running it. No questions. Thank you. Josh? My questions were answered. Thank you. K. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alright. And that, that's a wrap, folks. We will adjourn this meeting. Wait. Wait. Oh. Four four follow-up questions. You're right. And I've been you know what? That's not a wrap. Shoot. Sorry. I got my yeah. I have a whole list. You can't No. No. I have a whole list too. So I've been writing them down. You're right. We've had a lot of questions this evening, so forgive me. Indulge me for an extra few minutes. So follow-up for questions.
Here's what I've captured. Please correct me if I've missed anything. So, one question we have is, we want to know the number of students earning their associate's degree in early childhood education and how long has that program been running? We want to see second semester math grades to see progress as part of our math high school programming presentation. There was a question. Do we have data pre COVID on math test scores as it relates to our high school programming presentation? The test scores are grades. We're looking for grades. That's what we're we're grades.
Grades. Okay. So grades. Thank you. Alright. So that's a good correction. Okay. Then we have what resource research supports the the new math curriculum adoption? What lessons can we learn from our surrounding districts who have already adopted this curriculum? I know we did receive an answer here and understand that understanding that professional development is key and that two year, rollout was going to allow for that adequate time. Do you feel that that was a sufficient answer? And she answered my student feedback as well. Okay. There was a question, so I'm gonna delete that.
There's an there was another question about, the number of seats, that we are purchasing for this math curriculum and how that relates to our current and projected enrollment, for for our math classes. And then there was the question from member Voss around Henry Ford Health, that sponsorship, are there defined defined parameters on how the district will be utilizing that funding? And, also, I wanted to know if we can see get some information on the math curriculum. Yes. So if we can get a demo of the new math curriculum.
And when we are looking at our full year data set, there's also a question that maybe you mentioned and I missed it, a breakdown of, at least for one class, a, b, and c's versus d's and e's or or d's. So yeah. She had talked about it, but I think they were gonna dig deeper into getting you getting us a better snapshot. Yeah. Of the breakdown of passing. Right? Mhmm. Of grades of passing students. Yes. You're right. Thank you. I think there was another question I think you guys had on like, is there
an option for, like is it possible to have an option for the type of class? You know, like, whether you can work alone or the flip or the math class. I think the flip classroom is there versus So current the question was around, currently, you aren't able to pick whether your math class is a flip class or a, like, standard sized class. And that was more of, like, a wondering if that's something that you could look into going forward is maybe giving an option between a flipped class and a non flipped class. With that said, though, we are kinda it appears moving towards the non flipped with
our curriculum, for some classes. We're non flipped for the first grades. Yeah. I I don't think we actually saw flipped until, the advanced classes anyways. Did did we? Advanced algebra two has flipped classes, I know of, and then I know calculus classes. I think this is more of a suggestion than an actual question, though. So I appreciate both you and Arjun's feedback on your own experiences with the flipped versus non flipped, And it sounds as though the district is taking all that into consideration, so I do appreciate that. I think towards that end then, it is the honors algebra and honors do we
have honors algebra two in this list? Because I didn't there wasn't an honors algebra two in this process, was there? There is? Right. Okay. Okay. So so that so that will that will no longer be a flipped class because that's what they've identified is that this curriculum is a non flipped class curriculum. Primarily because it's collaborative and discussion based. Fine. It's just that it answers Josh's question, and I I misunderstood it. I always thought that it was only for, like, calc and the other classes, but honors eligible two would not be a flipped class.
K. Alright. Do we have any other follow-up board questions that we did not capture? No? K. I will now, We did capture we wanna just check off the previous two. Oh, you know what? So we did enter these over two, different weeks of board notes. The first was around the annual community budget survey over the past five years. I think there was two board notes ago. And then this latest board notes, the summary of responses from the family exit surveys completed by families who have left the district. Yes. And I just want to add that, all the data that you gave us was
great data to look at. I had a follow-up question that I emailed you earlier today, so whenever Okay. No hurry. But just reminding, that there's more questions on there. Perfect. K. Anything else? She's dying to get out of here. No. I'm really not. Okay. That being said, I will adjourn the meeting at 09:22. Thank you, everybody.