I don't know if I am. >> Okay. Good evening everyone. It is 7 PM. I'm going to call the the meeting um to order. My name is Lauren Christensen. I am the school board president. I'm going to ask my fellow school board members to introduce themselves. Actually, starting to my right today. Switching it up.
Jennifer Voss, thank you for being here. >> Judy Wester, thank you for coming out tonight. >> Hi, Patrick Kio. Thanks for joining us on this cold evening. >> Good evening. I'm Anupam Chik Sudu. Thanks for being here. >> My mic thinks I'm very tall. Ahmed. Welcome everyone. Our student co-chair.
>> Good evening. Josh Patterson, Plymouth High School senior and student voice and action co-chair. Welcome. >> Dr. Merritt, can you introduce yourself and the team? >> Good evening and welcome. I'm Superintendent Monica Merritt. I'd like to begin by introducing my executive assistant, Miss Diane Robertson. We want to thank her for being here to capture
our minutes each meeting. We also want to um introduce Mr. John Kger and he is there to take care of our technology needs. I'd like to ask the remaining members of the team to introduce themselves to you. >> Thank you Dr. Merrick Curtis, assistant superintendent for student services.
>> Good evening. Jill Minnik. I serve as chief finance and operations officer. >> Good evening. I'm Jen Curry, chief academic officer. >> Good evening. Abdul Medune, chief human resource officer. >> Welcome. Liz Vartanian Gibbs, assistant superintendent, student and family engagement.
Thank you everyone. Now let's stand for the pledge. >> I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all. >> Okay, thank you very much. Now we're moving on to the adoption of the agenda and the approval of the consent agenda. This is action item number 26-11-18. Can I please have a motion? >> Madam President, I move that we adopt the agenda, approve the consent agenda.
Action item number 26-11-8. >> Can I have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. So, it was moved by um member Sidu and seconded by member Wester. Dr. Merrick, can you please take us through the agenda? Thank you, President Christensen. This evening, our consent agenda consists of human resources
transactions since our last time together. We have leaves, resignations, and retirements for your consideration. We also have the approval of the minutes from our regular meeting that was October the 28th, 2025, and our special meeting on October 30th, 2025.
Okay, thank you very much. Um, I'm going to call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes. >> Yes. Those opposed, say no. >> Motion carries. Okay, Mr. Mr. Maidun, can you please take us through human resources? >> Yes. Um I would like to acknowledge um
one of the one retirement we have um for um that for tonight, Rebecca Terry. Um she was retired as a teach um she's a teacher on special assignment, but she was um t she was been she was a teacher. She was a teacher at Bentley. Um she's been employed with the district since um
August of 2000. So we would wish her well in her future endeavors and like to give her a round of applause for her service to the district. And that's all we have. >> Okay, great. Short and sweet. Thank you. Okay, up next we have our favorite part of our agenda, celebrating uh success
with member Kho. >> Good evening. Tonight, the board of education is honored to ac rec recognize Evan Green, English teacher at Plymouth High School as part of the celebrating success recognition program. His students describe Mr. Green as an extraordinary teacher, someone whose
compassion, humor, and generosity makes a lasting impact both in and out of the classroom. He believes that the well-being of his students is just as important as their academic success. and he continually works to create a classroom environment where students feel valued, supported, and inspired to learn for the joy of learning at the
beginning. His classes are engaging, creative, and filled with opportunities for students to explore new literature, develop advanced writing skills, and connect their personal experiences to what they study. Many students have called his classrooms one of the most one of the highlights of their high school experience, where learning feels
meaningful, fun, and empowering. Beyond the classroom, Mr. Green continues to make a difference across the PAP community. He leads the PAP improv club, cing a creating a safe and welcome space where student can express themselves, build confidence, and find connection. He participates in school events,
attends football games, celebrates spirit weeks, and even creates an annual end of the year music video for staff, reminding everyone that learning and laughter go hand in hand. At this time, I'd like to invite Plymouth High School junior Anna Anna Carlesco to share a bit
about her experience as a former student of Mr. Green. Anna. >> Good evening everyone. My name is Anna Carlesco. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. And I would like to give a shout out to all the amazing teachers in the school district who go above and beyond to support our students every day. However, one teacher in particular
has been recognized by students and staff alike for their outstanding performance. Can I get a round of applause for Mr. Evan Green? Mr. Green was my 10th grade American lit teacher and I have never had a teacher that pushed me to achieve as much as him. He was the one who encouraged me to read more advanced books, write more
poetry, and to stand up for what I believe in. Whether it be an essay on my hatred of Colleen Hoover or Sydney's essay on the district blocking Papa's Pizzeria. So, if you guys could undo that, she'd really appreciate it. Mr. Green's unique grading system lets
his students mold their own pair of wax wings, making sure they fly far enough off the ground to avoid the sea spray and soar low enough to avoid the heat of the sun. When I felt like I was drowning in geometric equations and biological processes, I always knew that I would have Mr. Green's class to decompress in.
This feeling does not only extend to me, but all of his students. I have yet to meet a student who speaks ill of him because he understands what it is like to be a student. Mr. Green has something most people in this room cannot comprehend, a true understanding of the impermanence of life. In August of 2014,
Mr. Green received a life-changing double lung transplant after a year and a half of intense illness due to cystic fibrosis. After this, he vowed to seize every moment, every word, and every opportunity. And that's why I stand here today on the eve of his 44th birthday, a
day that he may have once thought inconceivable. To thank him for making his second chance count, to thank him for holding us to what we can accomplish. and for most of all to thank him for being a light in an otherwise
dark world. Thank you. >> Thank you for sharing such kind words, Anna. I'd now like to invite up tonight's extra mileer, Evan Green. I I don't like to correct students in a public forum, but I am turning 43 tomorrow. I would first, of course, like to thank
Anna, Sydney, and Veronica who nominated me for this award and for Anna's incredibly kind words this evening. Their devotion to improving as readers, writers, and thinkers in my class made my job almost too easy.
I would also like to thank my middle and high school teachers who inspired me to pursue this career. Without Mrs. Hy, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Preston, Mr. Dillah, Mr. and Mrs. Kefner, and Mrs. Clark, I would not have become a
teacher. By 10th grade, I was convinced due to their passion and devotion to students that being a high school English teacher was my calling. Although not all of them taught English, they all shared one core trait. They
were authentic people who clearly cared about me and my success. I don't think anyone who has ever won this award woke up and said, "Today's the day I'm going to secure the extra mileer award.
Instead, they show up as a human first and as a teacher second. Only by meeting students where they're at can we ever lead them to the places they never thought they could go. As Anna mentioned, over 11 years ago, I received
a double lung transplant. My wonderful wife and amazing son supported me during my two and a half years away from the career that I had always wanted to have. And then they encouraged me as I prepared to return to the classroom. I have now taught longer with my
transplanted lungs than I did with my original ones. I have had over 1,000 students in that time and I am ever grateful to the family who responded to an unthinkable loss with the decision to donate life.
It is literally because of them that I am standing here today. I will close by expressing my appreciation to the school board for selecting me for this recognition and for providing a platform where educators can be recognized in this manner. Thank you.
Mr. Green's dedication, creativity, and compassion embody the very best of Clement Community Schools. His work reflects what it means to see, support, and believe in students. On behalf of the board of education, we're proud to recognize Evan Green for his outstanding commitment to his students and the
lasting contribution to the Pep community. This concludes tonight's celebrating success. Please join Dr. Dr. Bartini Gibbs in the hallway for a photo to commemorate the special recognition. And congratulations, All right. Okay. Um, again, always a
hard act to follow. That's it. This is why it's our favorite part of the our board meetings. Um, let's moving on to board committee reports and action. Um, up up first we have my president's report. I have a couple of things I wanted to mention. Um on October 30th,
uh the board and uh Dr. Merritt as a team of eight got together for a board governance workshop um facilitated by uh an MASB. We really focused around operating or excuse me around updating our operating principle. So I appreciate
all of my colleagues work and effort in um pulling together that document but essentially it's it's a agre agreed set of norms that we all want to abide by when we come here and do this very important work. So each of the board members um signed these operating
principles. They will sit at our seats at each board meeting and they will also I believe they will also be posted on our uh district website as well um for others to to see. Um but our board governance work doesn't stop there. Um we have h our goals that
we've also created for the 2526 school year and um we want to continue working on developing action items around those board goals to hold ourselves accountable. And so um you'll see later in this agenda during our discussion
topic we have uh some some discussion around um board objective number one. Well, I would like to continue this at each of our board meetings um until we make our way through that goals discussion. Um next, I did want to mention that uh
Plymouth Educational Foundation has again announced their uh fundraising event. I just want to send out or share a reminder to the community that that's this Friday and it's a really important fundraiser as they provide um funding grants to educators through and and to
our students through scholarships and grants and this is on Friday evening from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Fox Hills. Tickets are still available so if you want to come out and um join everyone in this great event that'd be great. I also want to give a special shout out and
thank you to the board and core team, the administrative core team. We've all pulled together to become um a gold level sponsor for that event as well. Um I think that concludes my president's report today. Okay, up next we have student
performance and achievement committee with member Wester. Uh, Madame President, we the student performance and achievement committee last met on November 5th and we considered um two course two course revisions, new courses
and um the teaching and learning uh presentation data fall data presentation that will take place tonight. Actually, all three present all three items will be brought before the board tonight. Our next meeting is on make sure I get it right. December 3rd at 5:00 pm in this
room. Uh we'd love to have people from the community join us. So if you are free, it it meets in this room at 5:00 pm and we look forward to seeing you. Thank you. Up next, we have the policy committee with members to do. >> Thank you. I have no new updates since our last meeting uh because we haven't
met yet. Uh but we do have an upcoming meeting November 25th, which is right before our next board meeting and it'll be down the hall. So please join us. >> Bye. Thank you. We have finance and operations committee member Kho. >> We had a number of uh finance and operations uh committee members uh out
last uh Thursday as well as the uh um as as well as Miss Min. So we ended up rescheduling that or or moving those items to the next FNO meeting. That will be Thursday, November 20th at 5:00 pm. And we encourage the community to join us. >> Thank you. Student voice and action
committee. Josh, >> student voice and action has not met since our last meeting. We've made progress towards setting our initiatives uh for this year and our next meeting is Monday, November 17th at 4:30 in the Pioneer Media Center. We hope to see you there. >> Thank you very much.
>> All right, that concludes our uh board committee reports and action. Up next, we have our superintendent report. Dr. Merritt, >> thank you, President Christensen. I want to begin by sharing some exciting news that for the third year in a row, Gallamore Elementary School has been
recognized by US News and World Report as the number one elementary school in the state of Michigan. So, please join me in giving up a round of applause. We think about the US News and World Report. They recognize schools achievement based on their high
proficiency in reading and math, their language arts, state assessments along with other testing data. We want to shout out principal Amy Bell for her leadership and we want to thank the entire school community for their tremendous effort in supporting kids and
ensuring that they can reach their highest potential and continuing to get a world-class education. And I also want to say this is a collective celebration because as we know how our tag program at elementary is established through Gallamore. It begins in the third grade.
So every one of our 13 other elementary schools serve as the feeder program for this school. So it's something that we congratulate Miss Bell and her staff and we celebrate as a collective district um all of our teachers that are responsible uh for really uh feeding the the young
minds of our students in this in this school. So, thank you very much for that and I appreciate and celebrate their accomplishment. Also, this evening, we are proud to share our first edition of the PCCS Press. Should have landed in your mailboxes earlier this week. This
uh is a magazine that we've done now for a couple of years. We do it twice a year and it really gives an opportunity for our community, not just our PCCS students, but our residents of Plymouth and Canton to get an inside look at the best um things that we have to offer for our students and their families. This
issue will feature some new faces in our district. So, we have an opportunity to introduce some of our newest hires, some specialized learning opportunities at PCE, some of the recent successes of the international academy program, the academic successes of our PCCS students
are on display. That was my commitment to this board and community of delivering on a dashboard. So, we had a preview to say, "Hey, it's coming." So, uh, a component of that is represented in this magazine, and I will share December 9th, we're going to have a preview of that dashboard. We're going
to have our our partners coming here to talk through and share that with our our board and community as we move forward. We also have some 2020 bond updates in the magazine and our award-winning schools meals program. Finally, we have an invitation in there to our park
players. They're coming out with their first show for the 25 26th school year and that is going to take place is it next week? November the 14th. This weekend it starts. Yes. So we want to make sure that we um let our community know to come out and support support our students. This magazine is also
available online and it is in uh different languages online as well. So we encourage all if you did not receive it in the mail to go to pCCSK12.com uh to see this wonderful magazine. Parent Council. We want to invite all to
our next parent council meeting that will take place on Thursday the November the 20th. This is at 5:30. We are going to compete with the finance and operations meeting. So this meeting for parent council will take place at our PCCS educational support center that is
14967 Pilot Drive in Plymouth. And that's a nice opportunity for parents and families to get together and really talk about things that are going on within the district. This month there's going to be a focus on our food and nutrition program as well as Starkweather Alternative Educational uh
center. Um I believe that our parent council tries to meet the needs of our community by having morning meetings and also evening meetings. So this will be the later the first time this year that we've had a later start time for greater accessibility. So we want to make sure that we extend that invitation. I want
to end this evening with thanking everyone who came out last week to PC's community openhouse. It was a wonderful evening, an opportunity to showcase the in incredible programs and people that make PCCS so amazing. I want to um also
thank our communications team. They work with our school-based team in order to make this really a an exciting evening, an informative evening for our community. We had um tours of the building and I know when we think about our job to make big small, opening up
our community and our PAP campus and allowing our families to tour the building is really a a um I think a great step in that direction. We can view a video on the district website and I want to share that with you right now. thanking our partners from Highway Media
and the communications and marketing team for bringing the story of PC and PCCS to life. So, I just want to share you as we're continuing on um with our marketing our latest video when we talk about our students and the importance of
their voice. We want to um just share your attention to our latest video snippet of our students. We serve 16,000 students and that can be intimidating. So, we work really hard and intentionally to make large feel small. >> I've met so many new people and it's
like being accepted into a whole new community and it's really a nice environment to grow as a person. >> I recognize that a lot of schools, although great, don't have the same opportunities that we do here at PAP. The culinary program is incredible. The radio program is incredible. Everything is incredible.
>> We do a lot of deliberate things to connect with students. We make sure that students in their first year typically stay in their own building in their home school. We think that's important with getting them acclimated to the size of the park. >> Everything is very like chill and it's very just comfortable here once you know
like what you're doing. I know it might seem a little bit scary coming to this huge place, but once you are here, it doesn't feel as big as it looks. We really work very hard to make sure that every student feels supported. >> We know our students by name. We know our students by strengths. We know our
students by need. So, this web this video is available on our website and we'll think we'll also do some efforts to maybe get this out through email to our school community because we always want to um really brag on and share the amazing opportunities that we have for our students here in
PCCS. That concludes my report for this evening. >> Great. Thank you very much, Dr. Merritt. Okay, up next we have citizens comments. This is our first section of citizens comments. Um, it lasts 30 minutes. If we have any remaining citizens comments
that move us past that 30 minute timeline, we will hear them uh later in the agenda. Each, as a reminder, each citizen has three minutes to speak. The board will not respond, but this is your time to share. The administration will follow up with each individual who
participates in citizens comments. As a reminder, please do not share any names when sharing concerns or criticisms unless you otherwise have per permission to do so. Um, I'm going to start with the first comment here. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm all over the
place. We have Rachel. Uh, Rachel Hayes. >> Would it be okay if I gave my spot to hear any more? >> That That's totally fine. Let's see. Sorry about that. The kids are so disruptive. They They normally are really super behaved.
>> Don't apologize for them. >> No. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. >> They're wonderful. You're good. >> Good evening, school board members and superintendent. My name is Mary D. Martinez, and I am not Sorry. I am not a Plymouth resident, but I am a proud
Wayne County resident and owner of a local publishing company called 1995 Martinez Story Time. Through my publishing company, I created a children's book series titled Adventure Abroad with the Makama Siblings. The series teaches children core values and
the importance of making good decisions that serve your bigger picture. The story follows American twins as they travel across the Atlantic Ocean on an exciting adventure to Paris, France to study abroad. This fast-paced, entertaining story keeps young readers
engaged while also teaching them meaningful lessons that inspire success in their own lives. I absolutely love visiting classrooms to host unforgettable story time and creative writing workshops. I also own All American Parties LLC, a family
entertainment company that specializes in theatrical performances, balloon arches, and face painting. My main goal is to spark the imagination of young readers and show children the power of passion and effort, helping them see that they can too create their create
and share their own stories. If you know of any classes, classrooms that would like an author to visit, let me know. I'd be honored to connect. I will leave business cards for anyone interested. Thank you for your time and thank you for all you do for
our students and community. Thank you very much. >> Yep. Okay. Up next we have Rachel Hayes. Oh, you Oh, I'm sorry. >> I didn't know where. >> Yeah, I think.
>> Yeah. >> You got it. Okay. Okay. Bye. >> All right. Hello. My name is Rachel Hayes and I'm a P Flag board member and a member of Western Wayne Indivisible. This Thursday, the State Board of Education
will vote on long overdue updates to Michigan's health education standards that finally reflect reality by including gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. At the last meeting in Lancing on October 14th, right-wing extremists came
out in force to fight these evidence-based updates, including Moms for Liberty, who once again tried to disguise ignorance as conviction. They, along with one of our own board members, came armed with culture war talking
points, and lies, not evidence or facts. A favorite refrain of theirs is that we should focus on academics, not inclusion. Ironic words coming from people who reject science, rewrite history, and ban books. Here's the truth. Kids can't learn if they don't
feel safe. A child bullied for who they are isn't thinking about multiplication tables. A student hiding anxiety, fear, or shame can't absorb a grammar lesson. When we make children feel inferior, we're not protecting their education.
We're sabotaging it. Let's be honest. The focus on academics argument is actually saying don't acknowledge that those kids exist. But those kids do exist. Real children with real feelings. They're in our classrooms every day with unbounded potential if given the chance
to thrive. They're our future. If we fail them, we fail all of us. You can't raise performance by silencing identity. You raise it by building schools where belonging fuels achievement. You raise it by creating schools where every kid actually wants to show up. Here in PCCS,
we already know this. Our dynamic plans goal B commits to ensuring every student feels physically, psychologically, and emotionally safe and represented. That's not political. That's evidence-based education. We have a lot of work to do, but we should be proud of our inclusive
policy for trans and gender non-conforming students and proud of the board majority that continues to stand firm despite the constant noise from one member. Holding firm to what you know is right is holding the line for our kids. Thank you for recognizing your
obligation to every child in the district and not letting a small minority dictate what is best for all of our students. And I especially want to thank Jennifer Voss for showing that leadership isn't about appeasing anyone's agenda. It's about empathy,
courage, and the conviction to care for every student. That's the kind of leadership that reminds us what education is really about. Not just grades and test scores, but the human beings behind them. Because when students feel safe, they show up. When
they're seen, they engage. And when students feel accepted, performance doesn't just improve, it soarses. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Up next, we have uh Nancy Ferber. >> Nancy.
>> Good evening, members of the board. My name is Nancy Farber. Before I begin, I thought I'd try speaking the language of our students. Words like Riz, no cap, low key, it's
giving, and my favorite, 67. Okay, I have no idea what I just said, and I know it's pretty cringy, but here's the segue. Talking about what really matters to young people can feel awkward. Still, acknowledging the
realities of our world, of their world, sex, identity, and relationships isn't optional. It's essential. It's been nearly two decades since the Michigan uh state board of education last updated its sexual health
guidelines in 2007 and 20 years since our district revised its reproductive health and family planning policy. The world our kids are navigating is very different thanks to social media,
online access, and greater awareness of identity. As a result, young people are asking for broader, honest, more relevant info on sexual health and safety. They're asking
for classes that teach about healthy relationships consent digital boundaries, and emotional well-being. They want education that acknowledges trauma, reflects their lived experience,
and gives them real tools for adulthood. When we don't provide that, students turn to Tik Tok and peers who are just as unsure as they are. We owe them better. We have the means and ability to
provide medically accurate, age appropriate, and compassionate instruction led by qualified teachers who can answer questions with care, not judgment. Inclusive sex ed also strengthens school
belonging. When we teach about sexual orientation and gender identity with respect, bullying decreases. Queer and trans students feel seen and safe. No student should fear being themselves
in a place built for learning. Ultimately, this is about trust. When our schools offer research-based comprehensive guidance that reflects today's realities and is shaped with the input from our
local parents sexed advisory board, we send a powerful message to our young people. You matter. Your identity is valid. Kindness is the standard. and learning about who you are is something to take
pride in, not hide. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Up next, we have Jason Marcato. >> Good evening, Dr. Merritt, staff, and uh uh members of the board. Uh early last summer, uh several concerned parents and
athletes, myself included, approached the school boards seeking to reinstate our cross country coach. We felt that our boys had uh had prospered and grown under his tutelage and wanted him to finish the job he had started. With your
help, he remained our coach uh for this season. I imagine you don't always hear back on the results of decisions you've made. Uh but I'd like to take uh take a few moments to share some of the accomplishments this team.
They were the uh this year they were the Rambling Rock Invitational Champions that and that was both for varsity and JV and the freshman team finished second. They were also the Wayne County champions which was the first uh time
since 2014 that they won the uh uh the Wayne County Championship. and JV also finished first. They took third place in the KAA conference, placing only behind the eventual state champion Northville
and top five finisher Brighton. They were the PAP park champions. They finished second place at the MHSSA Regional 6 Championship and it was the first team qualification for the state
championship since 2020. In addition, we had four rocks make the all region team. They uh they finished fif in 15th place at the MHSAA state championships
and 10 runners broke the 17minute mark for the uh for the 5K including one breaking 16 minutes. 10 runners entered or improved their standing in the Century Club, which is for those whose
personal bests rank in the top 100 uh personal best in all um in school history. And then um four of the top 30 fastest uh season records were posted by this
year's team. and 20 and more importantly 28 of 34 runners achieved personal bests during the season. As you can see, this was a very good season where the team took significant steps forward, but more importantly,
these runners learned to set goals and work hard to achieve them. These are skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives. I've seen coach take the time to pull aside and coach up boys who are struggling, frustrated, or
disappointed in a result. He also publicly praises boys when they have achieved a personal best time or taken significant steps towards achieving their goals. My son really appreciates the coaching that he has grown tremendously as a
young man and runner by working with coach. I'm proud of all the boys and thank you for your uh for your time and for your help. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Up next we have Lorie Mayers.
Uh, members of the board, superintendent Merritt and administrators, my name is Lori Mays. I'm a longtime Plymouth resident and president of P Flag Plymouth Kenton. I'd like to talk tonight about the importance of representation. When children can see themselves
reflected in the subjects they are learning about, the books they are reading, and the media they are consuming. Dr. Lily talked last month about how important it is that each students name is known, including its correct pronunciation.
That's so important in our diverse community. Seeing people who look like ourselves also contributes to our sense of belonging, which contributes to success at school. That's why the new proposed state board of education guidelines on
health are necessary. Among its 51 pages covering mental health, substance use, healthy eating, and sexual health are literally three sentences in the sections for middle school and high school.
The guidelines, which are not mandatory for school districts, recommend defining gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation for middle schoolers and for high schoolers discussing quote,
"How to foster empathy, inclusivity, and respect around issues related to gender and sexuality." End quote. I know there are some people who hate those ideas, but we are not living in the 1950s.
Gay and trans people exist. Many kids in our school district have LGBTQ parents or grandparents. Many of our staff members are part of the community. Many students know themselves to be LGBTQ.
Let's tell them all we see them and we respect them. Representation in reading material is also important. There is a book being challenged in our schools now, a graphic novel called Drama by Raina Talgamire is
published by Scholastic and recommended for grades 5 through eight. It's a charming story about a middle school drama in which, spoiler alert, a girl likes a boy who likes boys. It's a sweet, popular book in its 20th printing
and the Canton and Public School Library have multiple copies of it. If we ban it at school, we're saying it's only okay for kids to read about crushes if they're straight crushes. Please don't remove it from our school libraries. Kids should be allowed to see themselves
there, too. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Up next we have Heather Gatney. >> Hi, my name is Heather Gatney and I live in Plymouth and have two kids in the district. I'm here tonight to thank you for holding the anti-bullying policy
training last Tuesday with our school principles during the professional development day. I understand this session covered both the district's anti-harassment bullying policy and the transgender and gender non-conforming student policy.
Many members of our school community, myself included, have been advocating for this training for quite some time. I really appreciate that you listened to our concerns and responded with meaningful action. Queer students in particular face bullying and harassment
every day at school and training like this sends the message that their school community will stand up for them. Now that the principles have received this important training, I'd like to ask, what is the plan to make sure all teachers and staff in our schools get
this information, too? Are there clear guidelines for when and how principles will share what they learned with their teams? Also, will there be any verification to ensure the training actually takes place at each school? It's crucial that everyone who interacts
with our students is included. From classroom teachers and cafeteria staff to office personnel and bus drivers, every single person matters. Recently, my own child shared an upsetting story about a friend at a PCCS school. The friend was asked by a staff
member to line up with other students. girls in one line, boys in the other. When the friend explained that they are non-binary and couldn't choose a line, the adult got irritated and told them there are only two genders. The adult then ordered the child to get
into a particular line. This happened while all of the other children were watching. These types of interactions leave queer kids feeling singled out, misunderstood, and unwelcome in a place that should feel safe.
This incident was entirely avoidable. School policy states every student has the right to be addressed by their chosen name and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity. I believe this situation never would have happened if the staff member had received training on the transgender and gender
non-conforming student policy. That's why it is so important that everyone in our schools receive this training. It's not just about policy. It's about protecting all students and making sure every child is respected and feels safe no matter who they are.
When every staff member understands the policies and knows how to respond compassionately, we can prevent harm, create a more welcoming environment, and show our commitment to inclusion and respect. To do this well, it's important to set clear expectations for when and
how this training will be delivered. There should be a consistent process at every school and accountability measures in place to verify that everyone completes the training. Ongoing opportunities for refresher training and open discussions would also help feel staff help staff feel confident in
responding to complex and sensitive situations. So, thank you so much for taking the step. It's making a real difference. Thank you. Um, up next we have Laura. It doesn't look like we have a last name. Do you mind sharing that when you come up,
please? >> Hi, I'm Laura Bevere and I'm with Drama Kids. And we are an afterchool developmental drama program that is for elementary school students. Um, so we're not a production drama. We get our students ready for developmenting
developmental drama, which means we're building lesson after lesson so that they are able to walk away from their classes um or walk away from their drama enrichment classes with confidence, with public speaking skills, with um social
uh you know, ability. I'm a a mom of a 5-year-old who is a pandemic baby, and she is a lot different than her older sister. her older sister's very outgoing um but her but she is not and um so I did a lot of research on these types of
children and there's a lot of them out there that need some more social engagement um so I started drama kids uh recently in Northville Leavonia Novi and South Lion and we're doing really well and so I'd love to figure out how to get it into the Plymouth Canton elementary
schools and I will be at the back um for the evening so if anybody wants to share any names with me or wants to take a card. I'd be I'd love to talk about drama in elementary schools. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Up next, we have
Michelle Mustakus. >> Good evening. My name is Michelle Mustakis. I'm an 11-year resident of Canton and a member of Western Wayne Indivisible and P Flag and I love our public schools. They are the heart and
soul of our community. And when our community thrives, so do our schools. But when our community suffers, our schools also suffer. Right now, we have serious concerns in our community.
budget cuts, hungry children who've lost stamp funding at the direction of our government, unaffordable health care, parents being deported, and gun violence, just to name a few. So, with all this going on, what do we
have a small but very vocal group focusing on? We have them focusing on taking away protections for our LGBTQ students. And why? Because they're stoking fears that these students will
be, particularly the girls, will be attacked in our bathrooms by transgender students lurking in the stalls. Let me make it clear. I don't fault the girls for being fearful. I put the blame on the adults in their lives that are
putting these fears into their minds. But here's the thing. Nobody ever asked them questions about where are these fears coming from? What are the facts? So, here's the facts. Researchers have found no evidence that
allowing transgender people to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identity leads to increased safety risks for other students. Indeed, the evidence shows that transgender people themselves experience high levels of harassment and assault in
restroom settings. So, what's Yeah, why are they so concerned with LGBTQ students? I think they're targeting them, it seems, because they're just uncomfortable with their very existence. For many, their
view is largely based on a few Bible passages which they have twisted to suit their agenda. But the good news is that there are a growing number of churches, including mine. Shout out to St. John's, that are appalled at the harm being done by people that wield the Bible as a
weapon of hate. We are fighting back in our church communities by choosing instead to focus on the gospel message of love and care for one another. especially for our vulnerable communities. We're not asking you to get involved with matters of faith. That's
not your job. We know you can't solve the problems of our communities. But you do have the power to approve and implement policies and curricula that will help our students learn to separate fact from fear. We applaud and support you for your efforts in this area and
ask that you continue to stand for every student's right to be supported, respected, and recognized as a unique individual with hopes and dreams that our district can help them achieve. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Up next we have is
it pretty kolari? Please please correct my pronunciation. >> That was right. It's Priti Kulkarni. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Thank you. And uh this is my first time so I have not prepared anything as such but I came here to represent one of the question uh one of my friend had
asked last time she was not able to come here. Uh so it's just give me one moment. So it's Hina's question and that was related to sustainability. So I think she had brought up in last meetings that the landfill in Canton is
kind of about 5 to 7 years now to be filled up. So obviously the whole community will be or should be thinking about what should be done because eventually it will fill up and then you know problems will occur. But then as a school what efforts are we taking to uh
bring awareness in children about what things they could do in their small little things to uh support sustainability or to you know make sure that landfills or how we can recycle and landfills will not be filled quickly. So
that was the main point that I wanted to bring up here and I just want to make sure that I'm not losing anything that she wanted to. Yes. So basically uh are there any measures in place currently to reduce the overall waste footprint generated by our schools and
our schools recycling everything? Are students encouraged to recycle food waste paper electronics etc. And how are reuse, reduce, recycle being implemented? And what about composting to reduce food waste? Especially since
the launch of the uh free food program, we do see that most of the kids do take the free lunches that are available, but we are not sure if they're consuming everything or they're trashing the things that they do not like. So that is a point that we would like to see that
you know how we are composting that. I think uh that's it. A lot of learning for me. Thank you everyone and uh thank you for listening to us. Okay, up next we have uh I believe this is Joan
Pence. >> Sorry, I was moving in my one hip b foot. Don't grow. whatever you do. I don't know what the alternative is, but hello. So, my name is Joan Punce. I'm a resident of the district
and have taught biology in the district in one form or another for 38 years. I'm also certified by the state of Michigan to teach reproductive health. I'm here to speak to the proposed new guidelines for reproductive health. There are two
things I have learned about my students in all those 38 years. In some ways, they know nothing about their reproductive system. The most frequently asked question, even with senior high school students, is I can't get pregnant
if dot dot dot dot dot. That's frightening. So, that was after the end of the unit. So, it's it's really it's hard for them to absorb this information because of the freight of it, but I feel like it's really important that we be
very honest with them. So, but in the other ways they know everything every that everything involves what kids know but rarely speak of to the adults in their lives. That would be gender. They
know in their hearts from a very early age long before they choose to speak to us about it what their identity is. And it is for that reason I believe that they understand and accept their peers
far better than the adults in their life are likely to know. So if we are teaching kids about LGBTQ identities, we might be reminded that we are not teaching them anything that they don't
all rather already know, but rather acknowledging their own lived experiences. The only thing our silence does is teach them that there is something wrong with this conversation and that what we think we are protecting
them from is our silence. Thanks. >> Okay, thank you very much. That concludes uh this section of citizens comments and we will not be using the overflow section. Okay. Up next we have administrative reports and recommendations. First we have teaching
and learning with Miss Curry. >> Good evening. Tonight Mr. Flukes and I we will be providing a highlevel overview of our district progress towards our goals. Oh, let me maybe not.
>> Oh, he's refreshing. I had to switch a couple. So, I I shared the PDF with >> Okay, point this way now. >> That way, it will work better for you. >> Got it. Okay, perfect. >> Point it backwards. >> Oh, there. Oh,
>> slow. So, you have to be patient >> here. I'll let you >> make a good team. So, good evening. Tonight, we will provide a highlevel overview of our district progress towards our goals, highlighting current data on student achievement, attendance,
and social emotional well-being, and how this information guides our ongoing work. While these data points do not capture every aspect of our district, they help us identify strengths, pinpoint areas for growth, and ensure we are meeting the needs of all students. Our commitment is to use this data to
drive improvement, advance equity, and celebrate our accomplishments. And tonight, we will focus specifically on goals A, B, and D. And with that, I will turn it over to Mr. Flukes. I usually get the pleasure of sharing
you all the nice fun charts and graphs. So I tried to intersperse some pictures of our kids throughout the presentation. So to kind of lessen the blow or or make it a little bit easier to um get through the slide presentation. So um slow.
There we go. So, I want to clarify what the pieces of information we'll be sharing tonight um in this slide and also point out that this is really large level data pieces. These aren't the data pieces we use to drive our everyday um steps in the classroom and the buildings, but they do give us some
directions for where to dig deeper and to seek more information to identify patterns that we might be seeing within our school district. and we're going to um talk about our demographics, um what we see this fall, attendance behavior, uh social emotional competencies and perceptions of school, which is the
panorama survey, and then we'll talk about a couple different pieces of achievement data. All right, demographics, they really have remained fairly unchanged um compared to last year. So, these will look fairly familiar um in terms of uh
the proportion of our students in each of the major race and ethnicity categories in the community. And this is what that looks like if you kind of stack that up and see what that looks like. Um looking at all the students in our district.
We also serve and support students and additional student groups. Um economically disadvantaged. Um, again, that's a few percentage points lower than it was prior to the um, universal lunch and um, meals program. So, that more than likely might be more students
that really do have some economic hardships. Um, but that is the official rate um, currently as well as students with IEPs and multilingual learners. So, let's talk a little bit about some of the attendance and behavior from this fall.
In general, it's very similar to last year at this point. Um, we're about a 95% current attendance daily rate, a daily attendance rate, and all different student groups are within about 2%. Um, when we were looking at just two months of the school year, things can get a little bit um erratic. So, we like to
look at um at at the end of the year, we'll share kind of that that full year data for all of our student groups. Um and then suspension similar um with just two months under our belt or about the same number of suspensions um as we had last fall. But also I'd like to point out that we um supported students with
over 100 um restorative immediative practices um not just um related to suspensions but to overall um incidents may have happened in our school buildings. And we will monitor those and we continue to monitor those throughout the school year with our um um the data tools we have. And then we'll present
fully year data at the end of the year. So up here you'll see some strategies and next steps for supporting students attendance and behavior. Our support staff include specialists in behavioral and academic needs as well as pair of professionals who and staff who focus on
guidance and restorative practices through an equity-based multi-ter system of supports. It's our goal to ensure all students have access to the help they need, including student support, check-in checkout, counseling, restorative practices, and strong
communication with families. Teachers and instructional coaches also collaborate to promote overall student success. so that we have to go too far. So now we're going to switch and talk about some of the social emotional competencies and we're going to start off by um kind of highlighting kind of
the why around why we collect information. >> Can you can you stand in front of the microphone Jonathan? Sorry, >> we're uh trying to make it too um easy for you. Um so so the purposes of this are really about capturing student voice. That's one of the main things and also um there's a lot of research around
why these things and looking at these things um what we know about learning and schools and the classrooms and improve those experiences for students. So that's kind of the why behind these um perception surveys and then we'll talk a little bit about some of the the supports.
>> Sure. So we provide social emotional learning lessons for students and use data and our staff expertise to drive targeted interventions where extra support is needed. Progress is carefully documented and monitored to ensure effective ongoing improvement.
Additionally, you've probably seen we have therapy dogs um throughout some of our schools who offer student a calming environment to help them manage emotions and recover from challenges. Now we'll look at some of the um data to share. So I'll start by with the
Panorama survey. So these topics haven't changed. Um so you'll see the next few slides are about the topics that are in each of the different surveys. So those haven't changed, but you can they're here for your reference. And this is what's on the the teacher perception of K2 student survey. These are the six um
topic areas. And then I'm going to share the um topic areas for the three through eight survey. So these are the surveys that the students themselves uh take in grades three through eight. Again, these haven't changed, but these are kind of some example um questions as well as an
overall um topic area. And also want to point out that um at this grade, students are also, if you see at the very bottom, they're also asked a free response question where they get to share what um can teachers or other adults do to better support you or better help you um in the school. So we did collect that um the words directly
from students um on the survey as well. And then our um 9th through 12 survey did change a bit. So we did pair down uh the topics that were covered in the 9th through 12 survey um in part to um kind of focus in some of the topics that we
felt were most important uh for the high school students and to hopefully encourage a little bit more participation because we did have fairly low participation the previous um uh spring from the students. But again also they have a chance to share um what teachers or other adults can do to
better support them as well. So this is a um multi-year slide. So each bar starting from the left is when we first started um collecting some of the student survey data um both in the K2, the 35, the 68, and the 912 and how many participants or how many responses
essentially we had for each term. And so um you get to see kind of whether how much that's kind of been volatile at the high school level. Um so it's part of the reason why we want to kind of focus some of our efforts on some of the topics and really get the word out. And on the right side of the screen um are the current participation rates for this
current um data collection from the fall. since we had all that data um all the the multi-year data let's let's look at all the topic area um changes over time. So we'll start with the K2 survey. Um I want to start with the takeaways here because really want you to kind of see
the forest through the trees in terms of um going back to the previous slide and that we've had very high participation um basically from K8. Um and you'll see that their students consistently um are rated higher in the spring. Um, you can kind of see the up and down, up and
down, up and down with the K2 survey because students, again, these are our youngest students, K2, and so they tend to develop a little bit more throughout the year. So, they're slightly better at emotional regulating. Um, they're better at some engagement and some uh emotion
regulation, social awareness. So, they tend to get better throughout the year. So, that's why you see kind of that up and down from the fall to the spring. But in general, um they've been very consistent and and that we've we've seen emotion regulation and social awareness and engagement being some of our strengths of our students. Um but also
seeing that um we still need to develop and help those students develop their self-management skills following that same uh trend. So now we'll look at our our elementary students in grades three through five. Again, these are the topics that are um
assessed and asked about on the survey. Again, going back to the previous we have high participation. Um all of our topic areas from this fall, those are the kind of that center column there with the um around the 70th percentile in the middle. Um they're ranked highly when we compare ourselves to a national
sample of of other third to fifth grade students throughout the country. And what we see is that we have some pretty consistent strengths in terms of supportive relationships, uh, self-management and teacher student relationships. And then growth, mindset, and emotional regulation, um, continue to be areas
that we like to see. We like to, uh, improve more and grow more out of our elementary students. Now, moving to our middle school group. Um again uh referencing the high participation um our topic areas ranked pretty highly
compared to a national sample. Um you can see growth mindset has dipped a bit in terms of the comparison. um and it's one of the ones that we would might highlight as an area for improvement. But diversity, inclusion, supportive relationships, and self-management have been consistently um performing high in
terms of percent of students rating them favorably and as well as our comparison to the national sample. And when we move to our uh high school um survey now, just looking at the topic areas that we um are addressing uh in this fall, we're
looking at the the trend over time and we did improve our participation um compared to last year and we are seeing if we look at some of the highest so we've seen the students are reporting the highest favorable ratings to date. So we look at this fall as some
of our highest of those four areas since we've been asking um those questions of students over the last few years. Um but our sense of belonging and teacher student relationships um do kind of warrant some greater focus and those have been highlighted in um our building improvement plans. That sense of
belonging is a core piece of what you'll see in our building improvement plans um throughout the district. I do want to highlight this is just it's hard to see here but I just want to highlight those two um uh spring testing times when we had really low participation rates. So we just want to
be careful about make making too much or drawing too many conclusions um from those two dates there since we had very low participation rate um those two times. And this slide just links to uh a newsletter that we have available on our website that just talks about a lot of
that information. Has sample surveys. It has some of the logic for why we collect this information. Has a link to the Panorama's privacy um information as well as um in this slide that links to this fall's summary reports u for each of those uh four major surveys.
And now let's talk a little bit about or a lot of it about achievement. So I wanted to point out so we're going to be looking at four different assessment types um to kind of highlight some of the things that we're seeing this fall and some information from uh this past spring. But I want to
highlight that not every assessment was built the same way and they are built for very different purposes. So, we're going to first look at the state assessments which were built and designed to measure how much how much students know um in relation to the state content standards and they provide
you know kind of at a very high level for the state and um for the nation to really look at how well are our systems doing overall. We'll also share um some local NWA map growth data. Um and these tests were designed for slightly different
purposes. They weren't designed to specifically measure whether or not a student was um uh at their grade level on their content standards. This is more about how much do students know and how much are they growing um throughout the school year. So that's why NW map is as
part of our system and it does not indicate whether or not a student's proficient or on grade level. It's about what do they know and how much are they growing throughout the school year. We'll also highlight um some positive information we found by looking at some of our high achieving students who are
participating in our AP C courses and taking the AP exams. Um and those things are those tests are designed to measure whether or not students are mastering the content and skills of those courses. And part of the purpose of that is to offer students um opportunities to um
receive credit or advancement um at higher ed. And we'll also share some of the work we're doing around early literacy by sharing some of the Dibbles data um which is designed to identify students who might need some additional support um around those foundational literacy
skills. So, starting with the state assessment, um this is a four-year trend of percent of students who are meeting state standards um on each of the content areas, grades three through 8 and 11 in ELA, math, science, and social
studies in the grade levels that they're collected. And if we look at our comparisons of the previous year, we saw some some improvement in grades three, five, and six in ELA and math and grade eight science and grades five and eight in social studies.
And uh as a comparison to that blue line are the rest of the state in light green and the rest of the county in red. Now looking at our PSAT and SAT performance. Um this is also a four-year trend, but you can see there's kind of a
break in the line there. That's when the College Board switched from their paper test to their digital test. And it did we did see some impacts across the state on how students performed once they made that switch from paper to digital. But if we look at our performance from uh last year in grades 8 and 11, we've made
some improvement in ELA and improvements in grade 11 in math, English arts and math. And again, we'll have the state and Wayne Resa as kind of comparisons. Now switching to NWA map. Again, this is
about student achievement and growth. So that's where these tests were designed. And what they changed this year is they updated their norms, which these kinds of companies do um on a regular basis every several years. Um and this is probably more important because it it captured some of the
post-pandemic effects. So they wanted to um capture kind of post-pandemic um how students were doing. Um they wanted to update just demographics always change around the country. So that includes updated demographics as well as a new logic they put into their test to um
pick items that were more grade level specific for students. Um so all of that was incorporated into their new norms and this is kind of a sneak peek at um cohorts of kids. So if we take um the same group of kids um over the last 2 to
3 years and the kind of average or the median uh percentile rank uh for those students um over that time and generally what you see here is that um overall the the district is very high performing. That gray bar is the national average
range of 40 to 60th percentile and um PCCS has consistently has has been consistently above that for the last several years in both reading and mathematics. You can see that we're pretty stable in some areas. We've made some gains in some in others and some we've had some dips and then rebounds.
So, um again, these are satellite data and these really kind of um give us information on where to dig deeper um and get more information. And if you want to look at our specific um data this fall, the slide will advance. There it is. So, this is just
highlighting this fall um and grade level performance. Um so, you can see them next to each other in both reading and math. So again, that kind of gray bar in the back represents the national average. And you'll see here that all grade levels um as a whole are are well
above the national mean. And if we look at our student groups um positives and some areas for support, you can see here that not every student group is performing um above that u national average, but we do have several groups within that national average range. Um, but we still need to continue
to work continue to work to to reduce um the achievement gaps of some of our student groups. Switching gears to our AP. Um, so again, this represents um the scores from last spring uh for students who took the AP exam. And what we found out is that the
district has far exceeded far exceeded uh national standards when we talk about the percentage of kids who are getting a three or higher and the overall average score um on those assessments. So 91% of our students who took those exams um received a three or higher on the tests
they took um compared to 60% um in the national sample. And you can see here um we actually broke it down by each of the levels 5 4 3 2 and one. And a very high percentages of our students are um at the five and four range for each of the major content
areas and going all the way from high school AP exam performance to um early literacy um and foundations. So when we look at our Dibbles data again, so this these assessments were created so that we could identify which
students might need some additional support um in their early um literacy skills. We looked at last fall very similar in terms of perform the prop proportion of students um in each of the performance bands and that what we'll
see is that most kids are are on track um to continue to develop their literacy skills with um core support at the classroom level. And so the next slide shows um what that looks like. A lot of colors, a lot of bars, but I wanted to um kind of show
what that looked like because the dibbles collects very specific skill information. These are designed to be very quick screening measures. And the slide here, you'll see letter name fluency, phone segmentation fluency, and maze reading comprehension. And you'll see two bars for each grade level. So
that's their previous fall um and and or last fall and then this fall. But I want to point out that phoning segmentation that we see that you might wonder like why is that bar so red? Well, these are phoning segmentation and those are kindergarten students. So that's one of the areas that kids just aren't ready to
really grapple with yet at kindergarten. But if you look at what happens when they get to first grade, that red bar is quite low. So those are the kinds of things that we're identifying supporting and that these are things that you know continue to students continue to develop with that core support at the classroom
level. Again you'll see kind of very similar proportion of students um in that potential area of support. And here are some of the other measures collected by Dibble's um oral reading fluency and oral reading fluency
accuracy. And here's some of the academic strategies were. >> Yes. So, um I would say our overall approach to student achievement is anchored in high quality evidence-based curriculum. The slide that you even saw before that is a result of the UFly
curriculum. As you saw those kindergarteners when it was Can I back this up one slide, Jonathan? Do you mind? If I Oh, so each I'm going to go back one more.
So even the letter naming fluency you'll see incoming the young five or kindergarteners right then when they became first graders you see the need for intensive support greatly reduces which is the result of that evidence-based curriculum in those grade
levels. So I just wanted to make sure I pointed that out. Um, we are also focusing on strong tier one instruction. Our team is getting out to buildings, looking at engagement along with our evidence-based curriculum and giving our teachers and our principles professional
development around what is strong tier one instruction and also providing timely targeted interventions to support all of our students. Ongoing professional development is a priority with principles and teachers collaborating through MTSS and PLC's to
use data and promote equity. We are also pursuing additional training opportunities such as letters language essential for teachers of reading and spelling for literacy to further enhance instructional practices and support teacher growth. And I just want to to point out that um
some of this information was included in that magazine that went out this fall. Um you'll see there's a slide uh or a page I should say in in the magazine about key data metrics which shares some of that information around the AP some of the state assessment uh information as well as some of our course grade data
we that we' shared last spring at our end of year um data presentation. That's it. welcome any questions or feedback. >> Great. Thank you very much. I'm actually gonna start with Josh, our student co-chair. >> I have like three kind of groups of
questions. So, one around the PSAT and SAT data. I noticed that you didn't include the PSAT and 9 and 10 data. Is there a reason for that? Um so the nine and 10 are part of um what students participate in but they're not
part of the state and federal accountable assessment system. Um so I what we have typically presented is the state and federal accountability test but we do have that information. It's just not um and that's something we couldn't decide to include but we wanted to keep it to what's required um um from
the state and federal laws. But that's a good question. >> Um and then slide on slide nine and you don't have to go all the way back. You talked about the number of restorative practices which was around 100 and then you had the suspension number. >> Are the restorative practices included like in the suspension number or is that like a separate >> No, those are like those those would be
like actions that we might take as a as a result of an office referral. >> Um those are independent of a suspension. So they may have been related to a suspension or they may not have been just these are the kinds of things that happened. >> And then lastly um the at the high school level the Panora data is way up.
So woo. >> Um, >> I will say I took it um as normal and the length to take it was like under five minutes and also um I will say my class was one of the cookie party classes. So,
>> we we had a a good turnout in the survey data. Um, with that said, like we didn't get an extra advisory day and especially now with the past couple years, we've been getting um part of our advisory already taken away for things like fire drills or tornado drills um because those are now prioritized in that
advisory time. So, we're already losing time to that and then you maybe have to go to another school. says it's another 10 minutes like you could working to either make sure there isn't a fire drill or other drill on that day or again adding another advisory day now
with that it's shorter just make I would say just removing the um making sure there isn't a fire drill on the day that you're put putting it out and then lastly I'm going to say I really would encourage you to go like full circle mode so communicate communicate and communicate what you do with the data
that you just got to us so that when it comes springtime like you can be like, "Hey, we already took this data that you gave us and this is what we're doing with it." Um, that way again that brings more people to give you more feedback and then you can just do more. >> And you're referring to the student survey, right? Like how are we using that to then drive what happens at the high school
>> and you communicate that directly to the students. >> Good. We'll take that to our our high school team and and we'll do something with it for sure. >> Thank you. >> And I did want to point out that a few kids said in in those three responses, there's not like anyone's ever going to read this and I'd read that. So I read
that I did read it. >> So, someone did read it and they did say I said it's not like we see changes. So, some people mentioned that too. So, they mentioned they they want to see change as a result of what they're they're responding to. >> Thank you, Josh. Okay. Um, member boss,
>> um, my only question or concern is, um, do we have specific things that are happening to increase the belonging for the students in high school? Um, I see that as
worrisome and I want to know, >> what are we doing to make them feel like they belong? They'll I mean, we you're telling us that they'll do better. they'll perform better if they feel like they belong. So what do we do?
>> And so I don't I don't have those things. So that's part of our high school team plan. So Jen, I don't know if you have any information about that. >> You know, I think from just initially even just all the clubs and activities that we offer, but actually in the classroom too, I was just out doing um
walkthroughs and things that seem so little but are so big. The teacher knowing every single name of every student in their class, right? greeting them when they come in the door. Um, noticing when they're not feeling well or when something's going on. I was in a classroom yesterday and within the first
five minutes of the period, the teacher literally said every student's name, notice we didn't even have somebody sitting next to them, ask if they wanted to move so they'd be able to connect with the group. So, those are even just some of the daily things that are happening. um hallways you will even see
at passing time staff is greeting saying hello even if they don't know them just making that eye contact and so eye contact so they feel heard and seen um along with also some of the curriculum in the classroom right making connections with kids um and how they
make connections with each other there's some examples >> a layer on to that um when we look at individual school improvement plans um the target is to look at areas so when we see the survey When we see our achievement data that informs their school improvement plans
in terms of their goals at a school level, you'll see those highlighted. For example, we've seen through Dr. Lily's presentation for the elementary really kind of an aggregate of what they're doing at the elementary level. You'll see, I think next month will be the middle school. So, sense of belonging because that is an area that needs to be
a focus based on the data at every single grade level. You'll see that as informing um really their plans for school improvement. You'll also see it at the high school level, but it will be individualized based on their individual data. So for some, if it's really around strategies of of inclusion, some it
might be around even the discipline if they're looking at the high school level with increased bullying or things along those lines. So they're making some specific efforts to address that through various um means or strategies within their school improvement plan. But we'll be able to communicate high level at the
board um through these elementary, middle, and high school. you'll actually see sense of belonging in everybody's because it's really shown up as a space that we need to put some more attention. >> Thank you. >> Member Wester first of so first of all I got to see
this presentation in the spa committee and I want to thank you for uh taking all the suggestions that we made and including all the trend lines and and everything. Um I was wondering um with the teacher student relationships
on the 9 through 12 since there was a free response was there kind of any that was specifically around that were there any kind of trends that you saw in terms of the free responses? >> Um not yet. Um, so with looking at those
7,000 free responses, when you think of like the 3 through 12 or yeah, 3 through 12. So it's take a while to kind of get through them to see patterns because those are all, you know, some kids said a lot. Um, and so haven't seen any patterns yet. We haven't, you know, gotten too deep in yet. So that's something we want to look at and see if you see any patterns of what what kids
said. And so we will read every every com we have read every comment and now we need to kind of like consolidate that to see like what was actually said that can help add to what we've asked them. those closed response questions. >> I will also add that that is disagregated for the schools by school. So they take that information as well so
that it's actionable as a part of their plan. >> It's not just me reading it. So every building has that as part of their plan. So they're looking so each building can see their say 200 responses >> um and kind of make sense of those as they build their sense of belonging within a building. So there's probably more than more of that happening that I'm not aware of at each building.
>> And Dr. Mayor, I don't know if I can add that elementary principles began that today. So there was six elementary principles along with Dr. Lily beginning to go through that data and their data story and looking at their fall results and do exactly that.
>> Awesome. Thank you. >> I want to thank Josh for going first. Uh he had great questions. Um I did want to follow up on one of the things that he asked the PS18910. Um you mentioned that we're only looking at the state and federal uh required programs but the NWA is not state and
federal required. Right. >> Correct. So >> see, >> I think he was answering just the question around the PSAT, >> right? But so why did we choose to include the NWA but did not include the PSAT 910? >> Um probably just because of historical
reasons. I mean that's also because that's what the state reports. The state doesn't report um 9 and 10 because it's not a technically a state test because they don't offer an alternate form for students who might need an alter alternate assessment. And so it's it can't be used as part of the federal accountability system. >> No, I understand.
>> Yeah. So it's it's just just kind of so we mimic how the state reports the state assessment data really was the core reason. >> I understand. But if if we're choosing the reports that we're bringing forward because they're part of the state reporting standard, then we should not include the NWA.
And if we're not choosing them because if we're choosing the reports because they're valuable, then we should include the PSAT 910 or we should stop doing the PSAT 910 if we don't find that they're valuable. So I wouldn't say that a board meeting is the value because also when
we're um there's a lot of information that we share and so that's why you get all of this the the documents as well but when we're getting the presentation the importance of NWA as we've shared here at the board table is when we get our instep MSTEP results that's after our students have already left the
classroom when we look at NWA it allows us really real time actionable data so you're going to to see that multiple >> we've talked about the value of NWA many many times My question is, do we find value in the PSAT910? >> You want to ask me personally about a lot of assessments?
>> Well, ultimately the question is >> I'd like to get to more common assessments. What's happening? >> I think the struggle is is that we're testing our kids a lot. Yes. >> And if we don't find that that that test is valuable for us to bring to the board level, unless that test is valuable in the regular process, we should stop
doing it. So that's I because it's not coming forward to the board level, then that's the that's the ultimately the question and that that's what I'm trying to get to the heart of. If if if the answer is we actually find this incredibly valuable, but we use it in these other
ways, then share that with us. >> And I don't think by it not including it wasn't a comment on whether it was or was not valuable. It was just we were mimicking how the state reports those the state assessment data and just doing the same thing. So, I think it it's something we can discuss as being part
of a future presentation. Um, and we can even include it in some follow-up information if to see, you know, how it adds to that. So, yeah, it's not saying it's not is or is not valuable. It's just it was just we were just mimicking how the state reports the data. And I would also say just advocate for the team again the presentations because
we've come here before where it's like too much too much get down to eight minutes and we're like well we need a little bit more time for so we just want to just get consistency on what so it's not this is not a value statement but I appreciate >> I think it is an important thing that we need to consider because our students feel overested 100% >> and I think that's something that we
need to take a look at to see whether if the tests and we've had a lot of dialogue and conversation about the NWA and even though they're not required by the state there's a lot of discussion on how important those are. And so we're deferring to your judgment on that. But when a test doesn't come forward,
>> it feels like maybe it's not as valuable. And that's that's my questioning, my wondering to use a new words. >> Appreciate your question. >> And and I also want to commend uh the entire team including the spa committee for the work that you've done in creating the visualizations for this.
You've brought a tremendous amount of information really made it really easy to comprehend. So, thank you so much for doing that in a really concise way. The other question I had was to follow up on one that Josh mentioned on the suspensions and restorative practices.
I thought restorative practices were baseline for everything that we do. I would have expected to see double the number of restorative practices as number of suspensions. You know, the fact that we have 250 suspensions but yet only a 100 restorative practices feels like we've got those numbers
backwards. So um in terms of restorative practices it may not be a onetoone correlation. So there there may be times when we always have to consider is a restorative uh work necessary. You could have a suspension that's based on let's even
say um this sounds counterproductive when we talk about attendance but as our policy would say you know you have a detention for missing and then eventually you might it might result in suspension. You're not restorative. um it might not be a restorative meeting that you have because you haven't harmed
caused a harm to another student. So in terms of what is calculated as restorative um meetings um it might not be that one correlation with >> and you also have to have >> I'd like to maybe drill down on that later. Um and because to me when a
student is not present in class and then they come back in after a substantial number of absences they end up harming the rest of the class because the rest of the class has to get that student up to speed. So there is a restorative aspect and the whole premise of the restorative practice is non-punitive and
suspensions are typically viewed as punitive in the process and I'd love to see us move to one where we're trying to do more restoration rather than more punitive. >> Yeah. So yeah, I would agree. I think what's reported would be that incident. So if you share that they might cause
harm to us, we would not necessarily say this student has missed school. Now parents, do you agree to bring this student in front of their class and do a restorative circle to say I haven't been here so that there there's not going to be a >> restorative distractions don't have to be a whole circle but there's still in the restorative meeting that you're
doing to try to instead of >> we can talk about it. Thank you. >> Y do you mind if I jump in really quickly uh on the PSA? >> I was I was going to just say one second. Sorry. No, you go. No, you're fine. I just wanted to give you the
opportunity to acknowledge Yeah. Your sister. >> Yeah. Yeah, move back around. >> Josh, go ahead. I'll allow you to >> I was just going to say on the PSAT 9 and 9 and 10 data, it is helpful for the students as well. Um because like we get to practice for the SAT.
>> Okay. Appreciate that feedback. Um a lot of my board colleagues I mean gobbled up what I was going to say. Josh, you and I I think um coalesed around the same topics um around the restorative practices and suspensions. You know, I think you did a really great job in
terms of just packaging all this data. My wondering was you mentioned suspensions was very similar to last year in terms of our um number of restorative practices. How does that compare from last year? And are we seeing a correlation of less suspensions
as we do more restorative practices? Is there enough data to to show some sort of trend between those two? >> I don't know, but that we can find out. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um, and then the other thing that I I I had questioned, this came up in our student voice and action uh
committee uh over last year. We we had a great meeting with you and and some other folks from the district as well as some folks representing the panorama survey. So my wondering is, you know, did we take some of that feedback from the student voice team um and implement
that into this year's panorama survey implementation? >> Right. I I think we did and I think this can continue to work as we now that we have data at as at as the the administrative team at at at Pep and Sarkweather got together and decided on what were the top carriers and then kind of more consolidated move forward and to
Josh's point and then saying now what now how are we going to use that information and then make >> make it better for students. >> Yeah. >> So yes, they had they did we did take that all that in kind of incorporated that as we kind of revise that survey. >> Sure. Sure. Well, I also these are just more observations than questions. Um,
you know, I noticed that growth mindset in middle school is an area of focus. So, I look forward to the middle school presentation to see how we're tackling that. Um, and then, you know, from the achievement standpoint, we those gaps still persist. So, I think that's an
area of focus that we all um ask about every year and are very concerned about. So, we want to want to see how we're always focusing on on closing those achievement gaps as well. Okay, those are my my two cents. Thank you, member Sudu. >> Um, great conversations, great
questions. I'll touch on a few. One I brought up during SPA, which was the percentage of students that are taking AP tests. So, if you could get that to us, I did not see that in board notes. Um, and SPA, we did have a conversation, would it be worthwhile to look at IB students? Um, and I thought that's also
another data point. If you have it, it's easily accessible with the AP. I'd also like to get demographic data in terms of subgroups. students are actually taking that opportunity. So again, this can all go on board notes. Um with regard to
growth mindset that was just mentioned, I think it would be helpful for the community to know in some of us, this was a conversation in our board governance workshop. Why is growth mindset important? >> Why do we talk about it?
>> If you want to answer that now, you can. If you want to do it in board notes, you can. if you um but this is something that has come up at the board table and I think it's important for the community to understand if we're collecting this data on growth mindset what is it why is it important the interesting piece and
we haven't really had a chance to talk with the full team I shared with core I shared with the board that um I had the opportunity to join the Wayne Resa team to see John Hattie Dr. John Hattie um and the interesting piece that he brought forward which I said this is going to be something that we need to to chew on because we talk about growth
mindset so much but in terms of the indicator for success he's now saying that that is not one of the higher factors that would determine su success of students. So why are we speaking of it so much? Right? And so that is some work that we need to do in terms of you know let's look at what the research is
saying. We put so much of an emphasis on this but what where are we really getting the movement for students and how do we focus more on those >> and I would go beyond John Hattie. Some of the the stuff that's come out has >> his has gone back and forth. Um so I would look at a wide range of research
on that um because some is very convincing. So that's I'll throw that out there in terms of however you want to respond to that. You can chew on that. U but again I think it's important for the community to know and understand and for students to know and understand
what is it and why does it matter if it matters. Um we had actually talked about in spa the NWA grades 2, four, five, six. What's contributing to the downward trend? Um,
you know, you talked about you're working on the analysis. I think again at some point it would be helpful for you to come back to us and say this is what what we found. >> Um, and I made a statement in SPA that as a board member I don't want to look at this data for the sake of looking at data. I want
to question I want to probe for deeper understanding. I want to challenge all of us to find out where can we do better? Where do you need the board to invest more resources and support? We don't know that until we have these conversations in in much more detail.
And um the last thing I'll talk about is the slide I believe it's 29 where we continue to see the the gaps with subgroups >> in trying to get a better understanding
what factors contribute to these gaps. And you know, we've had these discussions year after year after year. And I went back to the slide three, I believe it was, where we said our goal a was to raise achievement for all
students and eliminate the gaps, but we still struggle to do that. How, when, what do we need? Um, and this is my year eight, nine having this the same conversation. I'd like to get clarity on what do you need from the board
>> to move these so that all students are achieving at higher levels um to look at some of this the scores of our students you know lower end of the gray area is not somewhere that I'm comfortable we
can grow students a little bit more so >> right and I think that and I think Jen highlighted some of the activities that you know we're banking on and the research is saying that are are benefit beneficial and and is if we do it well, we'll contribute to, you know, more students learning. And so,
unfortunately, you I mean, education as a whole hasn't figured out the gap yet. So, we're trying our best based on kind of what we know is best practice and works for most and all students um to to chip away at that, you know, and it's it's it's a difficult task because we we haven't found if we knew a colleague
that that fixed it, we'd be right there next to them figuring finding out what they did. So, we're all kind of trying to to figure this out and and doing what we think is best. Um, including all the things from, you know, student voice and just getting all those things putting it together to kind of increase, you know, >> and I think that's the challenge for you
all in terms of researching school districts that are um breaking this norm and moving beyond. >> At MASP, I did have an opportunity to attend a school district workshop where they were shattering this and moving beyond and I shared those in my notes.
if you all would take a look and I would say study some districts. I don't know if what they're doing there can be replicated here or some pieces but I think it's worth looking >> absolutely >> on that point. Do we see within our district uniformity across all of our schools in the subgroups or do we see
some schools that are performing better than others? >> I don't know >> and I know we don't I know I know we don't I know we as a board don't drill into that. I'm asking the question as an administration. Are there lessons to be learned within our own district? Because then we've got uniform curriculum and
everything else that we're doing. If we see some teachers, some schools that some grades that are doing a better job, is there an opportunity for us to learn from ourselves internally and lift up those best practices? >> Yeah, that was part of those discussions
as Jim was talking about with the elementary team today. they I mean they were talking about where they were seeing gains, you know, and positive success and like whether it's a grade level team, whether it's students in some of their buildings. Um it's hard to compare building to building because they serve such different neighborhoods and population of kids that it's a lot
of times it's hard to compare, but yes, but those discussions happen. >> If you're looking at these same subgroups, then you can start to analyze the data around that. I mean, this isn't something that can be done at a school level. It's something that has to be done at at the district level where you've got access to all the different data and then start asking the wise.
>> Well, I I would agree and it still definitely can be done at the school level because your your needs >> um could be just because of some group of students. Understand understand I understand that you may have uh double categories in some sense or intersection of those things and yes
I just >> it would be useful for us as a board to to to see to hear feedback from the administration on that point that we're seeing success in some areas and we're looking to learn from those things or we're seeing uniformity across the whole
district. When we look at our subgroups of economically disadvantaged students, they're consistent across every school in the process. That means we have a systemic problem across everything that we're doing, not a problem isolated to a particular building. >> We got a systemic problem in the whole assessment system. I would say it was
created with without many sub with demographic groups in mind. The system of education was created without many >> demographic groups in mind. So I just have a fundamental problem. That's what I would love to do. I love to blow it up. >> Blow that up. I love it because it does not indicate. I want to also at the same time we talk about these gaps, I want to
celebrate our students when we look at that range on the national average that our students are with all of these things and this assessment to my point is not designed with them in mind and still have the ability to uh perform.
And so there's some things that we celebrate and we have to work to eradicate >> because that gray band is across the national average period across all groups. It's not based upon the the subgroups in there. >> That's right. >> But we made it a goal for many many as it should be. >> I'm on board as it should be.
>> I'm asking the question. I just was trying to do a followup. >> So that that's when you ask like what as a board we definitely have made it a goal. We have work to do and what can we do is is is hold our feet to the fire to improve it and celebrate for our students because what I can't stand is when we walk away and people think, "Oh,
you've done all of these interventions. You put all of these work and black students just can't learn." That is an absolute false statement. But people believe that because they continue to think, well, you're doing all this, you've been working for it all these years and students aren't achieving. And I think that that's a disservice to our young people.
>> I think the question is where are we missing the mark? >> Yeah. >> Even that that question about miss like how can we do that better? How can we >> That's what I mean. How how do we serve our students better in these subcategories knowing that different students have different needs? >> Yes. >> So what support systems can we put into
place? The support system for multilingual learners may not be the support system for other groups. Yes. So this is where you all have to dig deeper in terms of what do students need and it is so individualized. >> Absolutely. And you did such amazing work on the grading policies um at the
at the middle school level and how that changed the outcomes of those students. I mean that was fantastic work in that process. So I think you know that kind of thinking applied across the editor. >> Absolutely. You know you know I didn't want to belabor the point, but I'll just add one other thing. When our students
do go on to the next level of higher ed or whatever it may be and having now serving in some higher ed capacity, these gaps per just persist. If we can stop this, especially with math, our
students can excel in going into nursing school, going into accounting, going into business schools, not being held back by those classes that they have to repeat over and over and over again. Absolutely. You know, the a workshop that we had a couple I think it was last year. It's it's another it's a bigger community conversation. So, when we even
look at our students that are testing kindergarten and where they're coming in at that year, we showed the data. I believe that they were 13 percentage points down. The gap already existed in very first assessment, very first experience with school for math and 21% for um ELA. And these are babies that
are growing. They're making their year of of growth. We have to in order to catch them up off the gate, they have to grow a year and a half, right? And we still they need to be kids and we have to supply them with what they need. So even when we think about community and what are we doing for our our youngest
learners before we get in school and now we have to deal with the fact that Head Start or programs that are in intended to help even at a federal level are at risk. So it is such an I'm so glad that we talk about it all the time because we must it's a I almost say an epidemic and it's pervasive and um it has to begin
with all. So it's not not just the time that they enter school, you know. >> Thank you. Member Sudu, any more questions? >> Okay, member Ahmed. Um I had a couple of questions. One of them was around the slide on the achievement gaps and my
question was how many people how many students fall into multiple categories? So are we double counting or how do we isolate the kids who perhaps might be in multiple categories? Um this I mean this there are some um and we could that's something that we can find out how many students are in multiples. Um so this
would be just you know alone you know like for example multilingual learners could be in multiple they could be in you know a specific you know racial ethnic category they could be economic. So um that somebody can find out um and we we absolutely know that information >> it actually be good information to do that same workshop that I was talking
about. We talked about that intersection and when we look about, you know, I'll I'll speak again to our our African-American and black students when um it's 11% of our overall student population, but of our economically disadvantaged, they made up a disproportionate amount. And the number
one indicator really of student success or would be their um social economic status. So we have students that are showing up as e economically disadvantaged which is one barrier also receiving special education services which is another barrier. So it would be good to get the updated information of
the intersection of those uh demographic groups as well. >> I think we did that >> a couple years ago. I think we did that for one before you were on the board. I think we did present some so it might be worth looking at that again. >> Thank you. >> And then my other questions were on the MSTEP uh performance trend.
>> Yep. So I'm curious uh what the leadership teams think about like the really great improvement in the social studies curves and then the counter to that is like what's happening in fourth grade. >> So
>> so the social studies could be that um the state set new cut scores this past year. So my my guess is that it had to do with so every um I think I don't know if it was new I think they just looked at the cut scores again like are we drawing the line where we think it
should be and so they they decided you know maybe it should be here. So it could be slightly artificial or it could be real. So either way, um it's probably partially due to the state changing the cut scores, but also could be due to um how there's really no way to tell other than looking at the relative performance
um to the state and um the county to see like how much of that was um from state cut scores changing, but positive nonetheless. >> And then what we think is happening in fourth grade? >> Uh four so fourth grade, let's see, go back to that one.
This was in the trend of MSTEP, correct? >> Yes. Okay. >> It's slide 33, I think, if my numbers are right. Excuse. >> Fourth grade math or fourth grade in general. >> And fourth grade in general because both ELA and math, you see the dip. >> Yep. Um and those are um interesting.
So, fourth grade. So, >> yeah. So, that's part of the um kind of looking at that, digging into that. So, there is some things I think we um kind of focusing on those activities to kind of figure out where we are. I think we're we're increasing our um knowledge
about kind of more common assessments across the grade level that give us more information. So we're doing much more work at especially in math at the elementary to maybe collect data that are closer to the instruction to give us more information before they get to the end of their assessment and find out oh wow they didn't do too great or they did
great. So um we're putting more efforts into as a grade at grades grade grade level teams in math specifically. >> Jonathan I can add to that too. I know they've also drilled down to the data to really look specifically at problem solving. So, we're doing math labs in some of our elementarymentaries where
that was a very needed skill. So, we have instructional coaches and district coaches working with teams of teachers on specific math problem solving skills in the classroom. >> Thank you. That's really helpful. >> So, next year we should see this trending upward, right?
>> Hopefully. I mean, so what we know is that sometimes good work takes a long time to to impact. So yes, we hopefully we'll see it next year, but it might take time of doing good work to really infiltrate across the board and really make that huge impact. So yes, hopefully we see some increases next year for
sure. >> Great. Thank you very much. Appreciate the presentation. >> Okay. Okay, up next we have um >> a first reading for the approval of a resolution for a new course proposal. AP physics C mechanics.
>> Great. Thank you. Um advanced placement physics C mechanics would be a year-long calculusbased physics course for students in grades 912. It is designed for students interested in physical sciences or engineering. The course offers rigorous college level content
align with college board curriculum and provide students the opportunity to earn college credit. Students would investigate key physic topics through conceptual study, mathematical modeling, and hands-on laboratory experience experiences. Enrollment requires completion or concurrent enrollment in
calculus. The course supports the learner profile by fostering collaboration, critical thinking, communication, innovation, and global citizenship. The total projected cost is 25,000 covering digital textbooks, test prep, lab materials with additional
teacher training cost to be determined. If approved, the course would be begin next school year. And we do have a course of the book or a copy of the book if you'd like to see it as well. Okay, we'll open it up to questions. Josh, do you have any questions?
>> No questions. I just want to say that this is amazing. I know a lot of um high schoolers that I know wanted to take the AP class. um for physics but then realized that you it wasn't calc based so this is a great resource for them now um sadly won't impact my year um and
then just thank you for putting this forward >> member boss no questions thank you member westra >> I have no real questions I'm grateful that you're bringing this forward because I know that the enrollment and they I know that it's needed so thank you
>> and I'm sorry if I missed this is this replacing the uh the nonphysics based one or it's an addition to >> it is not y >> I'm sorry non-calculus based one >> no currently we have AP physics one that is an algebra based course uh we are not
replacing the course right now we want to offer both um this is AP physics C mechanics and it's part of the AP physics C um so we have AP physics C mechanics and AP physics C electricity and magnetism right now we're only looking at the first course um and that
will offer more credits. So, we're not looking at replacing the one we have right now. >> So, I guess towards that end, I mean, as as I've spoken to students and my own students went through this process, the algebra race physics was deemed interesting but useless for them for
college credit. >> That's exactly why they're doing this. >> And so, I guess why are we still offering that class? >> Well, >> instead of because we we have a limited number of educators and a limited number of things. Why wouldn't we just move to the to to this and to the the magnetism
uh class? >> Uh yeah, so so far we chose to keep the class uh because we'll have a handful of students still interested and we want to offer that to the students that are not enrolled in calculus because this new course will have a calculus requirement. Um
>> and will the magnetism class also have a calculus requirement? >> The which one? on the first one >> you said there was uh this is the mechanics and you said there was a a physics magnetism >> if we eventually long-term think about offering the other course it also has the calculus requirement
>> okay thank you so this is this pro keeping the other course provides an option for students that are interested in physics but are not yet to the point of of achieving calculus >> correct >> okay thank you >> no questions for member su
>> we discussed this in spa as well and agree with the move in terms of students asked for this um they need especially if they're going into some calcul based engineering programs and I do agree keeping with um AP physics one for students that are not kelkbased but also want to pursue AP courses I think that
option is good for them >> okay thank you very much thank you >> okay Miss Curry do you want to take us through the next >> yes thank you so peer-to-peer elective of course provides a collaborative
environment where neurotypical and neurodeiverse students learn together, build meaningful relationships, and develop skills for lifelong success. This proposal seeks to further expand the program to include a music elective with curriculum lined to the Michigan performing arts standards. The course
fosters inclusion, leadership, empathy, and community benefiting students by improving academic, social, and behavior outcomes as demonstrated by positive data and feedback. No new staffing or significant costs are required as existing teachers and resources will
support the course with instruments funded through special education activity accounts and current software licenses in place. If approved, the implementation would begin January 2026, so next semester. >> Okay, >> Josh, any questions?
>> Um, no questions. I just want to say I'm very very very very very excited for this class. So, I actually had the opportunity to do the peer-to-p peer arts class um this semester and it has thoroughly changed my life. Um and then because of that, I've now done the
unified sports teams working with the same kids and it's been amazing. Um so, I'm really excited for this class. I'm actually trying to sign up for it and move my schedule around which is really complicated. Um but yes, this like this class is needed and then it also gives the um the peers their opportunity to
get a new um elective into their schedule. So a lot of them have been using um art and cooking over and over again for the last several years. So they'll be able to experience music now. So a great change in addition. Thank you. >> Member questions. Thank you.
>> Member Wester. >> I e I echo Josh's enthusiasm. So thank you for bringing this forward. I I'd love to hear the uh enthusiastic endorsement. How is um enrollment in these peer-to-peer classes is what? >> Yeah. Miss Williams, do you want to come
up? >> She can give you the exact numbers. >> Uh the the class is full. Half of it is general education students, half the class is special education students. And so um it runs at 15 and 15. >> Okay. And so we're full. And we only
offer one section then? >> Yes. >> Okay. Are there is there room for I mean obviously we're adding a whole another class. Is there then room for additional sections? Is there more demand for this class than than what we have? >> Uh I would have to look into that but to
my knowledge I think this is sufficient with the students that we have to participate. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Member Sudu. Any questions? >> No questions but I think we need to take Josh um and make a commercial out of this so people understand
and more people take it. No questions. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Okay. Up next, we have finance and operations with Miss Minnik. We have um actually this is an action item. So, it's action item number 26-11-9.
Uh consider approval of a resolution for an agreement with benchmark transport transportation. This is a final reading. Can I please have a motion? Um, Miss Christensen, I I move that we consider approval of a resolution for agreement with benchmark transportation. This will
be a final reading and the action item is 26119. >> Okay. Can I have a second? >> Second. So, it was moved by Treasure Kho and seconded by member Ahmed. Um, we already uh we had a first reading of this and had discussion. Um, any other comments, questions about this
particular resolution? No. Hearing none, I'm going to call. wanted to thank the FNO department for doing this and looking for opportunities for savings. >> Great. Um, all right. At this point, I will call for the vote. Those in favor, please say yes. >> Yes. Those opposed say no.
>> Motion carries 6. >> Okay. We do not have any citizens comments overflow section. So, we are actually going to move on to the area of discussion. So, as I mentioned in our uh my president's report, um the board um
and Dr. Merritt were working on of course our our board governance. Um and part of that is developing our board goals. So, the team got together, you know, over over the series of meetings and developed our goals for this year, but we want to develop some action behind each of our objectives. So, at
tonight's discussion, we'll be focusing on objective number one. You all should have a physical copy of our board goals on hand. We really want to um you know make some smart goals around our goals if that makes sense. Um so I'm just
going to read this out loud so the community can um follow along. But board objective number one is really around strengthening the connection and communication between the board of education PCCS community and broad groups of community stakeholders through a layered approach. And we have some sub
goals within that goal. Would another board member please read the first first one and we'll kind of popcorn if you don't mind. >> Sure. The first in addition th those this objective number one aligns to goals C and D as part of our dynamic plan. So we take the same approach that
the uh administration does in all of our work in aligning to that dynamic plan. So the first sub goal that we have is develop a 2025 2026 board of education calendar of outreach efforts designed to engage the PCCS community around various topics including dynamic plan updates,
bond and capital projects and how education is funded. >> Yes. So I'm going to open this up more in as like workshop style. So I'm I'm would love to have a more uh casual dialogue around this. What do we have any ideas on how how we can make this
more actionable? >> So, I I think the topic of education funding is always one that we've we've struggled with. We've done some nice webinars and that's in the past and I think we should consider that again. Mhm. >> There's also um an opportunity for us to
talk about not only the the three types of potential or or the multiple types of different funding mechanisms that exist from our standard funding that we get from the the the state government to the uh regional enhancement millillage to
the the capital programs that we do with our bond and then the potential for things like syncing funds and to use as an opportunity to educate our community. um on what those programs are and how they uh they fit and how they work.
>> And in the past, I've mentioned that we have community members that are not connected to our school district, meaning they don't have students. They're not teaching here. And when I walk my dog around my neighborhood, people always ask me, "What's happening with this? What's going on here?" And um
and one of the things I suggested a little while ago was inviting the community, everybody in PCCS, because it took everybody to pass that bond. Yes. >> Invite them to see our projects, see the upgrades through the bond um that was passed bond 2020 and give them an
opportunity to maybe do a little bus tour, go from building to building. And it could be, you know, high school one day, elementary is another, or it could just be, you know, however we want to do this. But my proposal is bring everybody out and have them um look at what we're
doing and questions if they have any. I do like that because I I I you know, I think that's a good suggest suggestion in terms of seeing where these investments are going. I do know though that the district has done it versions of this. Correct. I I was not able to
attend but there was an event where believe it was community members, board members. Um it was a couple parent >> it was parent council but it was limited to the outreach was limited to our families. >> What was the one that we did at the high school?
>> That was the community. We didn't have as much turnout in terms of invitation. But was it I know we invited many um many people in the community and that have been involved with the project and those that have been supportive in the community, but was it a broad >> did we broadcast this in an invitation
to the the community as a whole? >> We definitely could open it up. So it was by invitation. We didn't just put on the website here everybody show up on fair. >> Yeah. So I I think that's one of the things that a new trying to >> perhaps do. I'm not sure that the bus I think we should probably try to do it at
one school because you really don't know who's going to show up. Um, and you don't want to have, you know, 500 people waiting for one school bus. >> Bummer. That would be a real bummer. >> But yeah, >> hey, the interest would be there if you saw that many people. That's exciting.
>> No, I know. Just I think that >> I know what you're saying. >> Yeah, we need we I think the I think it's a really good point is how do we promote this to the different groups? You know, we do a really good job when we, to be frank, when we have an ask of the community, when we need their support for a bond or any other project
like that, but I think we need to find a way to be able to go out to them as well and update them on the initiative and the work that's gone on. And I think that the the newsletter, the the the magazine, what whatever we call it, is is a fantastic thing. But that is that
only going to family members? >> No, that's going to community members. So that goes to everybody. Fantastic. Okay. >> Yep. >> So that could be a good way to advertise if we have some type of >> if we do an event like that to be a way that we can let people know. >> Yes. >> I think another thing would be taking
the road show concept around our school board things to places like the Rotary, >> you know, the community organizations that >> oddfellows >> display at the library. display. Yeah, the library is often times looking for
displays. They uh at least in Plymouth, I don't know about uh Canton, but they have displays that they do. >> I wonder too, just along those lines, is there a way to sort of double dip in some of these ideas? Um you know, you mentioned inviting the community to see
our projects and our upgrades. Could we perhaps host something at one of our new newly renovated spaces that maybe speaks to how schools are funded or maybe speaks to a topic that's important or maybe >> come you do coffee with Monica quite
often. Maybe there's a you know an event where we have um an open conversation with those who would like to to >> come hang out. >> Could we do a board meeting in a different location in one of the newly renovated spaces? It's a good question. I think there's some logistics in terms
of filming, but I'm sure that that's something we can investigate or explore. Yeah. >> Can we do it in the pool? >> Board meeting in a pool. I don't know. I don't know. >> That's exactly.
>> We have to float for two hours. >> Yeah. I was kind of thinking that'd be kind of fun. >> Okay. >> I'm sorry. takes us off task. >> Yes. Yes. I think these are great ideas. Um what I would like us to see is maybe
build out this calendar around some of these things. So um you know the work outside of maybe this dialogue or this uh conversation, maybe during our next agenda review planning meeting, we can put people into teams and and do some work around this if that's okay.
>> I feel like we're going to be volunttoled. >> Oh yeah, you are. You will be volunttoled. Please and thank you. Please and thank you. Everybody here will all have a part in this. So, I appreciate some of that feedback. >> Um, is there anything else that we want to add to that first portion of the
objective? >> No. Okay. >> I do want to add this piece as my la final uh plug for that last bullet. I was going to move through each bullet if you if that's okay. >> No, you're perfect. I missed that. >> Yeah. No, no, no. But >> we were ending the conversation.
>> No, no, not yet. I think we're still we're still that's okay. >> Um so the next one is really creating a tracking mechanism uh to measure those engagements around uh both board of education and and broader groups of the PCCS community stakeholder in during our
board workshop. This is something I I volunteered myself or I volunteered to take this on. Um, so as I think each board member attends these events that we get invited to, we encourage the community to invite the team or individuals to anything that's out there. Um, but we certainly want to
track it. I don't always know where we have all been. So I would like to collect that information and put it on a calendar. You know, maybe that is something that eventually becomes public facing. I'm not quite sure, but at least some way to track where we've been, what we've seen, who's been there would be really great. So I I'm happy to handle
that tracking mechanism. President Christensen. Um I wonder if there could be and I'd be happy to build this like a little online Google form we all have access to saying I'm going here and you fill in who you're going to see the date and it
automatically goes into a spreadsheet for you. >> But the protocol still um exists that we let President Christensen and Superintendent Merritt know when we're going into school related events. >> Um but I do want to broaden this. I want to, you know, ask the community like bring us along to where you are in the
community where you feel like um we need to know more about the community, more about our students, more about, you know, different um cultures and events, especially when our kids are present in these u organizations. And for the teachers, students listening, please
invite us to events. Uh I think we did this really well two years ago. We had so many student groups reaching out to us and I loved the options. And of course, not all of us can be at all of these events, but I think we'll do our best to um go to as many as possible.
>> Yeah, I appreciate that. I think that's a really good idea. I try to do my best too during like each board meeting, during the president's report um acknowledging some of the events that our team members have been to. So again, that helps helps reinforce uh that component. So I do appreciate that.
Um anything else on a tracking mechanism? Any other ideas there? Okay. Okay. We can move on to the third third uh bullet point. Enhance and improve communications about board engagement and activities through the website and district magazine. Dr.
Merritt, I think you had something you wanted to say. >> A result of that conversation. We talked about doing the board bios on the website. And so we have I asked for this Friday to be the last date if you hadn't responded yet because I don't want to
put them up. We only have a few like hey introduction and we don't have all seven. So if you have not responded yet to the little form just fill out a few things and the team will build out that bio and we can have that on the website. We really want to um work if you can also like I think you talked about a
committee who wanted to work on even the redesign of your own website so we can really make it engaging. That would be helpful as well. So that was just my ask to get those that information so we'll build out your bios for that website. >> I was one of the delinquent folks. I just turned mine in today.
>> You actually were I counted as one of the two cuz we did yours first. >> Oh, good. So, I double dipped. I filled out the Google form today, but we had the bio from our presentation. You're right. Yes. >> You got yours. That's right. Now, you guys are done.
>> We're done. Okay. I like that idea of of a committee to the red uh of the redesign. And there's been some really good ideas during our board workshop sessions around that engagement piece. Making it easier for someone to understand how to address a concern is is an idea that was born out of some of
the board workshop um work. So really being um purposeful on the information that we do share on the board tab of of our uh school website would be um very helpful. Okay. Anything else from the team? Any
other ideas under this objective that we could make actionable or that we could build out? >> Capture pictures when you're at the locations for board one and then we can actually even get those with board members at events. I wanted to just thank uh Trusty Voss for inviting us to
the events um when we had I think what was it two weeks ago um Miracle >> League last month. >> Yeah. >> And I forgot to take pictures, but maybe if we have more of those opportunities for us to um do some of that work collectively.
>> Yeah. I like I I'm glad you brought that up because I I I do have a wondering if we could commit to like from a um uh community service kind of point of view quarterly as a board committing to maybe one event together as a team
building community building um effort and I I that stems out of your suggestion certainly >> and if we all come next Friday that will be our next community event for our fundraiser for >> it's this Friday. >> Oh, it's this Friday. >> This Friday, November 14th at 7 p.m. at
Fox Hills. >> That'll the PCF uh foundation fundraiser. >> Yes. Yep. Okay. Any other thoughts there? >> Okay. Well, I appreciate your input and uh work on this objective. The next
meeting will will focus on objective two. Um and I will also have assignments for for the team on objective one items. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you. Okay, last but not least, we have follow-up
board questions. Um, I believe these were satisfied in board notes from previous meeting. Um, but tonight I believe there were a few that were flying around and I want to make sure that we capture all of those. I did not jot them down quickly enough. >> I have some if if I could just repeat.
>> Yes, if you don't mind. >> I asked for the percentage of students that are taking AP courses. um in all of our high schools and also subgroup data on the students taking AP courses as well as if Dr. Mayor and her team feel
it's helpful to have IB data. I will leave that up to you, but I think since we're already talking about AP courses, I'd like to dig in deeper in those. Okay. Um I had a question about um the number of restorative practices. How does that compare year-over-year and if there was
a maybe a correlation between our um suspension data? And I had a you had a question, Judy. Yes. Well, I wanted to clarify. So, Dr. Merritt, you mentioned um the research that was showing that perhaps growth
mindset is not as big of a a indicator of future success. And I was wondering what was. So you don't have to answer right now, but I was wondering what that research was showing >> in particular. >> Okay. So So
okay. And then Patrick, I believe you had a a question. Did you? >> Yeah. On the restorative practices, it's just I would have expected that for >> the vast majority of suspensions, we have a restorative practice that we do around that that that process. Um
because ultimately our goal is to repair the harm >> that happens. And if we're just doing punitive, then it just feels like not doing things the way we want. And I think the second question was around that PSAT test, the nine the 910 and whether the test is valuable to us. I mean, Josh definitely mentioned as
practice for students, that's important. And I certainly don't want to eliminate it because of that. But if we're not actually using it, then make it an optional test. Give people another choice for it. If we're using it, I'd like to understand why. >> Okay. So, around the restorative
practices question, you're is it really are they be being used? >> Why are we not using them more often? >> Okay. Got it. >> Okay. >> Why isn't every suspension not a restorative practice? >> There's a question that I had I'm coming up because I was going to ask you,
Jonathan, are those unique? So, if you have a restorative practice, would those be unique suspensions or not? >> Um, the the restorative practices would be uh an action you might indicate with a behavior incident.
>> There's also there also could be a penalty. So they could be both. They could be separate. So it could be so that's something we can dig into see like how many of them are are they're happening in conjunction with a suspension or independent of a suspension or in lie of a suspension. Um those are things we can all investigate.
>> Okay. Jennifer, I believe you had a question about the student data presentation, but it was mentioned that it's going to come up in an upcoming presentation. So, we're satisfied there. Anyone any other open questions? >> I had a question about um on the
achievement gap gap slide, how many students were falling falling into multiple categories. >> Yes. >> And then also on the fourth grade MSTEP data. >> Yep. Thank you. I did type that one down, but it's not on my list here. Yep. Thank you.
All right. I would say also um there were some questions that came up that I answered in advance of the meeting, but there's still I think there might have been a couple more questions from there. So, if those we can just put those in board notes. That's perfect.
Okay. All right. And I want to thank everyone for hanging in there with us. We are at my eyes are blurry. 9:14 p.m. and I'm going to adjourn the meeting. So, thank you very much.