Good evening and welcome to the Rochester community schools, board of education, regular meeting. Call to order at 6:08 PM. For those who choose to do so and are physically able please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance. The United States. The board of education, regular meeting is a meeting of the board. In public for the purpose of conducting the school board's district. Business to preserve its freedom to act. This body follows Robert's rules of order, newly, newly revised edition. This process is not a tool to be used to circumvent fairness in its president of this governing body.
I will work to ensure that it, this isn't the case, but please know. I'm not a parliamentarian. So I hope that you will extend. Grace to me, and I will extend grace to you in not knowing everything regarding that process. For the public before this school board who may be asking. Why is it so important that we follow Robert's rules of order? There are several reasons. Reasons. This is a public meeting of a board of education. But it is not a public meeting. A town hall or a political rally. Expectations of decorum will be enforced on this body. And on the public attending this meeting. By following Robert TRUS of order.
It also allows the body to go on about their business in an orderly efficient manner. It also allows for every member to have a voice about the issues before this body. Ensuring fairness for every member at this table, including an, especially for. Those members who are in the minority of opinions on matters before this board. When you enter the auditorium. You may have noticed a large poster. With the school board's norms and information on effectively communicating. With school partners, these norms were agreed upon by the board and reflect our commitment to ensuring that our business
of this school board is done in a fair and expedient manner. You can also find a copy of the chain of information that helps parents and community members. Effectively communicate with school partners. Partners. This information is also on our district website. Within our board of education handbook. We value the community input and public comment. And that will be heard under agenda item five. If you wish to speak tonight and have not already filled out a yellow card and they look like this. Oops. I'm sorry. They're found on the table, near the entrance where you came in. Once you have completed the card, please put it in the box on the same table. Please note that cards must be completed prior to speaking.
I will call the names of those who I have a card for during public comment. For roll call item number two on our agenda. All board members are present. Item number three on our agenda is communications. Item 3.1 specifically. This is where we referenced communications that have been received by the board secretary of Butell. Would you like to report how many communications we've received? At this time we've received four communications and they are in the board packet. Great. Thank you. Item 3.20. You're next. I am 3.2 as members of the board of education. This is where members of the board of education share communications that were shared directly with them, but were not
sent to the full board. Did any board member receive communication from the public? Trustee I did. I received a UN. An email from a community member who saw that I was running. And wondered if I had a website and I responded. Okay. Anyone else? Dr. OSBA I received communications from the rah rah board, which I sit on as a board trustee. So I got information about. Their packet and when the meeting was, and I did attend it. Thank you. Anyone else? I did receive an email from Brad of M a SB regarding a question I had related to trustee LAI's
proposed policy, which we will be speaking about later on our agenda. Onto item 3.3. We have the PTA council update. And for that, we have their president. Jamie Rockcliff Jamie. Jamie's a little short for this. All right. Good evening. I've got some extra things to report on since we haven't been here since February. Last month we held our district wide reflection ceremony. We honored over 200 students in kindergarten through 12th grade who participated district wide in our program. Since that time we have received the state results. 27 RCS students placed at the state level.
Including nine, who took first place and are moving on to the national competition. And in fact, there was one category at high school music composition, where first, second, and third all went to Rochester. Community school students. Students this past weekend at the Michigan PTA convention. One of our own was honored as this year's statewide PTA member of the year. Maria Munos Maria has served as our district reflections chair for five years. As well as serving as both an elementary and middle school chair for authors in April. Speaking of authors in April visits are right around the corner. In fact, Neil Schusterman will be visiting west middle
school. This Friday and hosting career presentations at Adams, Rochester and ACE on Thursday. Then next week, the other three authors will be joining in for the elementary visits, the remaining middle school visits. And Ben Haki will be at Stony Creek high school for an illustrator's workshop. Our green schools teams are hosting spirit weeks in honor of earth day. This week, each school has a few of their own special ways. They will be celebrating by promoting recycling. Reducing and cleaning up school campuses. Our health and wellness team is preparing for the district-wide health fair that they are teaming up with the district
for. This will be held on Saturday, May 2nd from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at Rochester high school. There will be free skin cancer screenings, comfort canines, a distracted driver simulator. Hands-only CPR, training, nutrition, tips, boxing, demonstrations, fitness classes, food samples, and a lot more. And then one of our final events of the school year is coming up in a few weeks. Our second annual college, 1 0 1 night for parents and students throughout the district. This is an informal night where they can find out more about the processes of applying to college. Applying for financial aid, getting their students ready for college
and more. We will have test prep representatives from the college hub. Of consulting and Zara tutoring. And we are also working with some law firms to be there, to talk about the paperwork and things you fill out when your kids turn 18. As well as possibly some other people to talk about answering questions on special education. Accessibility at the higher education level. So that will be May 14th. Seven o'clock at Stony Creek in the auditorium. Thank you Jamie. One question. Yes. Are there any. Tickets still available for the AIA, the authors in April banquet. Banquet there are, and I would be the person to
talk to. So, can you share what date that is by the way? So that will be next Monday night, the 27th at twin lakes. Lakes. Yeah. Anyone. And how can someone find out information on how to get into, they can go right to the authors in April website. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Next up, we have item 3.4. And that is the pack update. And for that, we have their chair, Jackie Marquette. Thank you. Good evening. I'd like to begin by sharing highlights from the recent 2026 sparkle awards. Thank you to the board of education and members of the cabinet who attended and showed their support. It was an emotional and heartwarming event. Celebrating the students, staff and community members who go above
and beyond for a special education students. Students, this year's program was especially meaningful featuring performances by the Meadowbrook music makers, the ATPs trailblazers, and the Ruth choir. Packs very own. Karen Packwood also created a moving video, highlighting some of our special education students alongside the nominees. Complete with a heartfelt tribute to our beloved RCS teacher, Katie Gidner who passed away last year. We were proud to receive over 500 nominations, which truly reflects how our district is living inclusion in action every single day, the sparkle book, which includes the fullest of
nominees and special recognition winners can be found on pack's web website. At our April meeting, we were pleased to feature a student's spotlight on Casper S a Rochester high. Robotic student who introduced us to his book. I grow with my own words. Which focuses on building confidence through overcoming challenges. It is also worth noting that Casper was one of this year'sspecial. Recognition winners at sparkle. Our past packed chair, Melissa Hoffman provided us with an informative presentation on IEPs. As we head into the IEP season. As a reminder, the special education administration's IEP 1 0 1 video. Remains available on the pack website as a helpful resource for families.
PAC is also pleased to be partnering with the district. To host the second annual. Sensory swim event on May 2nd at Stony Creek high school. While the event is especially ideal for students in the categorical and ATPs programs. It is open to all special education students. Students pre-registration is required and the registration link can be found on PAC's website under the latest new section. It is hard to believe, but our final pack meeting of the year will be held on May 12th at Stony Creek high school. We are excited to welcome Stony Creek teacher and also one of this year sparkle award nominees, Jason Lacey. Lacey who launched bread by the Creek, a microbusiness where students build independent living and employment skills by making sourdough
bread. Sold at the school, the pre-order link can be found on pack's website. Sorry guys. I don't know if that's me or. I'm trying to like back away. Anyways, we will have bagels from bread by the Creek. Pre-order is encouraged not required. And you can find the pre-order link also on P's website under our latest news section. At our may meeting, we will also be. Hosting a brief presentation on assistive technology tools that are available to students. Students, just a reminder, all PAC meetings are open to the public and everybody is welcome to attend. We would love to see you there. Thank you. Thank you, Jackie. I, I just wanna add that.
That sparkle award event is just. It's so heartwarming and it really fills up your bucket to go see that event. And see all the great things that folks do for our special education kids. I did also wanna say that I reached out to superintendent Russo and to Janae who's part of the ATPs program. Because I would love to have the same performance that the ATPs students did. At the sparkle award signing the national Anthem. To come and do that here for an opening of one hour meetings. So if it's not this year, it
will definitely be at the beginning of next year. So, yeah. Awesome. Of course, that'd be great. Thank you. Of course. Have a great night. Next we are going on to public comment. Item four. And this gives an opportunity for board members to hear from community members. If you wish to speak, but have not already filled out a yellow comment card. Please fill one out now. And they are at the entrance to the room. You just walked in. And we will have 30 minutes for a public comment. And anyone that we don't get to in this 30 minutes will be heard. Under agenda item eight, when your name is called, please
move to the microphone and address the board. When addressing the board, you will have three minutes to speak. We will try to let you know when you have 30 seconds remaining, please be mindful of this time limit. When addressing the board, please state your name and your relationship to the district. And to protect student privacy. We ask that no one identify a student without their permission, even if the student's name is not used. Any comments that could directly identify an individual student. Are not appropriate in this forum and will not be tolerated. We will stop the meeting to protect students' rights and privacy. Please keep your remarks focused on broader issues and
avoid personal references that may compromise privacy. Also we ask that you address your comments to the entire board. And not to individual board members, school, district employees. Employees or to members of the audience. The board will not be responding to comments or questions during the meeting. However, someone will follow up if needed. The board reserves the right to exclude from our meeting, an individual who engages in conduct that constitutes a breach of peace. So first up, we have Shelly brown who would like to talk about the millage and the board. Mrs. Brown. Hi, I am Shelly brown, taxpayer and district resident.
At the board meeting on April 13th, trustee sbatch retch referenced my email dated March 25th. Which had been addressed to all board members. She said that during the March 9th meeting, her millage comments were not directed at any taxpayer or any citizen. Or constituent. So there was MIS a miscommunication or misunderstanding. I believe I did understand what was said. I'd like to remind the trustees. Trustees that fellow trustees are taxpayers. Taxpayers and citizens. So comments trustee, sbatch made that a trustee voting against the millage resolution.
Is voting against public education. Is in fact directed. At all taxpayers, citizens and constituents. Constituents that oppose the millage. I found her comments appeared to be reckless at best. And at worst appeared intended to intimidate fellow board members from voting against the resolution. And or an attempt to damage them within the district. If I were a board member, I personally would not have voted for the millage. Resolution based on the absence of information. Critical to determining the effect. This millage, if approved would have on taxpayers in this district. The response to my referenced email.
Contained few answers to basic questions. Questions. Here's a few highlights. The initial donor amount reported for this district's taxpayers of 80,000. Was adjusted to $202,334. An increase of 153%. With no explanation for the increase. Deception, poor math. You be the judge. Our district's enrollment projections. Reflect declines for the next nine years. While the millage calculation is based on a steady county student population. Of 172,000.
733 students during each. Of the six years. Why is this not based on each district's enrollment projections? What is the disparity in our district's values? Those. Stab established in 2026. Property values in relation to Clawson halo, park, Ferndale, etcetera. What may it grow to over the next six years? 30 seconds. Steadily de declining student population. And increasing taxable values. Do not seem to equate to an annual increase in donor status of only 3%. All of the math involved here is limited to addition, subtraction. Multiplication and division. I believe that is taught in elementary school.
Perhaps you could request greater detail from the county. And ask an elementary school class to complete the calculation. Thank you for you for your comments. Comments next up we have Stephanie van Dale. My name is Stephanie Vandel and like, Shelly, I am a taxpayer in this district. And I would like to say. That I find it outrageous. That we have this meeting. In this building. The sound quality socks. Socks hard and it doesn't do anything for anybody who lives. South of this building. Everything out here are dirt roads.
So I had to te I could have gotten here straight down this dirt road. I don't wanna take dirt roads because it ends up. Destroying my vehicle. So I take the pavement roads and I have to go all the way down to tin and all the way up Rochester road, or I could go. All the way Upbound road and down to 32 mile road. And here. It's ridiculous that meetings are here in this building. With crappy sound quality. And Mr. Sound engineer. I know it's not your fault. But it's the room, but, and I appreciate all that you do to try and. Help, like, you know, maybe suggesting what this.
Setup here was, but anyway, but these meetings. Meetings are public meetings and they should take place in places. That are convenient for the entire district. Which means centrally located. Which means at Rochester high school or at Adams or at Stony, because they have better. Sound quality. And this is ridiculous. That we have to come all the way up here. To have horrible sound quality. And, you know, another thing I really hate about this building is that it ends up being a monument to
Barb's really bad ideas. Ideas. So, you know, besides that that's my own personal feeling. But other than that, this is ridiculous that we can't get to a building. That has the sound quality. That should be here. So that's my take. And also I concur with Shelly's. Shelly's calculations. I've done the calculations. Myself and, you know, I don't wanna pay any more money. For somebody else's kids. I have no problem with PE people in my district. I don't wanna shell out any more money, 30 seconds
for other people's kids and some other district. All right. I I'm done paying more money for everything. Stop raising my taxes. Taxes. I find it completely ridiculous. That four of you. Went and agreed to put it on the ballot. And two of you are not even gonna be here. After the fall, this is ridiculous. You deserve something bad happening to you. Thank you. Next up, we have Lawrence Haluka. I have number three, he's Lawrence Hika. Are you gonna speak? Okay. Hey, good evening, Lisa Haluka and I am a resident of the district. I have five children that have gone through Rochester, public schools, and I am an alumnus as
well. And I wanna talk a little bit about transparency. As I said, at the last meeting, I have grown increasingly concerned. About the lack of transparency on this board, the refusal to allow minority dissenting, voices to speak. And the centralization of board authority in the office of the president. At the last board meeting, two members of your community, myself and Mr. Haluka reported a violation of the discrimination policy committed by trustee Blake and asked that the issue be on this week's agenda for full board consideration. Not only is the issue, not on the agenda, but
president Anez has not contacted myself or Mr. Haluka by email or phone since the last week's meeting. From all appearance appearances, she has determined to ignore the complaint. Complaint as part of the open meetings act, public boards must report correspondence received by members of the board. As these communications are considered public record. Generally, these communications are posted in the board packet. Board members are then asked to report additional individual correspondence. When that question was asked last week, interestingly trustee Blake declined to report that he'd received communications from Mr. Haluka.
Last week when Mrs. Lak attempted to speak president and ness interrupted and continuously attempted to shut her comments down. And then later in the agenda, when Ms. Le kuey attempted to ask questions about committee reports. She was told that because she was censored. She could not ask those questions. Questions now here's something that I want the community to understand. You have to know that this board has amended its board policies to require that for an item to get on the agenda for consideration, it requires three members of the board and order to bring the, to the president to be considered for board posted on the agenda.
Up until recently we have had a five, two majority on this board, which means that the minority voices are basically. Out of luck having their items. Open for discussion on the agenda. And I might also point out that I spent some time doing a. Research on other Oakland county schools. And with that rule change and the refusal to have board comment. We are in a small minority of Oakland county schools, jurisdictions that does not in some fashion. Allow comments on the agenda. Comments for future agenda items as well as 30 seconds or comment. For the first time that I can recall. Today, the board will be considering a vote on both
a new literacy curriculum and middle school, social studies resource adoption. The vote will be taken without an opportunity for the public to comment on the curriculum, ask questions of the board and communicate any concerns or support for the new curriculum to the board. Whose children are going to be learning literacy and social studies through the curriculum, the tax, paying public families in this district who are effectively blacked out. And commented. Thank you for your comments. Children will learn. Next up, we have Lawrence Haluka. Thank you. My name is Lawrence Salka. I am running for. Board of education. Lisa said most of what I had
to say. So I'll probably be the shortest one here. Of course, every time I say that I go over. I had said when I was going through my interview, that there were two problems that we had had with integrity. One was that there was a serious perception problem with a lack of integrity here. What I have found now, just in being here for the last couple of. Of weeks months. Is, there's an actual lack of integrity problems. So the perception isn't off. Now, what do I mean by integrity will integrity is the quality of being honest. Having strong moral principles and maintaining consistency in actions. Values and methods now like a sense of humor. Everybody
thinks they have integrity. My morals are right there for. Therefore, but being honest and consistent. Means listening to both sides and applying these things across the board. So I'm not gonna go through. Another long list of things, of what had happened with trustee Blake and what he had said, what he wrote quoting me only one time. Repeatedly. And now in writing. That I said diversity. Equals division. Now I've looked at that thing three or four times, and I never said it. And I know you said we have a philosophical difference. I stated what mine was, and I'd love to know the difference that you have from that. We stated that you could probably discuss this. We said
probably get along talk openly. We talked twice in person about getting together and wrote a couple times, and haven't heard anything. Haven't had an email back. President Ernest is determined to ignore these complaints from residents, not to deny them not to investigate them and put the concerns to rest, but just to ignore them. Again, these are views that you don't necessarily agree with. And when it comes to integrity and having. Consistency in actions across the board. It's important that you look at them, make your decision, even if people would not like it, but to just ignore them, says something about that lack of integrity. I was told as we, before we did this, that
someone will follow up. Well, two complaints were made. There was no follow up. Again, a question of a lack of integrity. When it comes to accountability. I said that I was gonna hold this board accountable. I'm running for the board to do that. But whether I'm on the board or not, now that I've turned my eyes to her and see that there's a problem. And there's many out there who agree with it, they're gonna be held accountable. This board cannot move forward. 30 seconds without. President the, the president. Moving forward on these complaints. So we've reached the limit of process for the normal board disciplinary procedures. Procedures. This is supposed to be about the education of
kids. I don't want to have to have these conversations, but I'm learning that this board is so steeped in political power games. And ideology and strategic secrecy that transparency and accountability fall prey to them. Continuously. Thank you. Thank you. For clarity. If you have a formal complaint to lodge against any member of this board or the administration. There is a link on our website, which you can in writing, provide that complaint. I have yet to receive any formal complaint. Complaint in writing. So therefore I have nothing to consider. Next is Diana Harless.
Diana har president. Next good evening. I'm Deanna Harless. I'm the parent of two students at wreath Ruther. The past few years, I've intended, I'd estimate about a hundred board meetings and probably spoken at about 50 to 60 of those. At almost every meeting, we hear the same. Line, no answers will be given tonight, but someone will follow up. In my experience that has happened once. It was actually when Mr. Russo first started. I spoke at a meeting and it was his first day on the job. And he called me the next day. And we had a real conversation. I don't think either of us like changed each other's position, but I
came away from the conversation feeling. Like he'd heard me. And he understood my point of view and I understood his point of view. And so I thought it was a great conversation and I thought, and other people told me they had. A similar experience where Mr. Russo was following up. And that really mattered cuz compared to the two previous administrations where it felt like. We weren't being heard that made a big difference. It felt like we finally had leadership that valued community input, not just as a formality, but as a conversation. But since that first week, like I mentioned, it has not happened again in my opinion, but the fact that it happened when he first started and hadn't happened under
the two previous superintendents and has stopped happening, makes me think we don't have a problem with our superintendent. We have a problem with our. Culture as a whole. And to me. The culture doesn't happen by accident. It's up by leadership. And in this district, the leadership starts with the board. Time and time again, this board has framed engaged parents, not as partners, but as opposition, it's framed board members who aren't in the majority also as opposition. We saw it under previous administrations and we're starting to see it again. It was especially clear at the last board meeting and what, and in what followed. Board vice president. Blake has reportedly declined multiple invitations from
speakers at board meetings to have direct conversations, but instead twice in the past two months, he's chosen to attack those speakers on Facebook. This is not leadership. Speaking of about people is not leadership. Speaking to them is leadership. So, how do we change the culture? We change the leadership, and this is one of the reasons why I'm running for this board. We need a district that welcomes input from all stakeholders, not just to select few. A district where engagement is met with respect, not resistance, where differences of opinion are seen as a chance to collaborate, not as a chance to fight. Change is possible, but it won't happen. As long as
the board members choose controlled common sections over real conversations. With the people they were elected to serve. Thank you. Last up for public comment, we have Nora Delora. My name is Nora Delora. My husband and I have been in the district since the 1970s, all of our children are products of the Rochester community schools. It prepared them well for the past that they have chosen since then. We believe that RCS was a great school system with a strong administration, dedicated staff and excellent teachers. Teachers, we continued to believe that RCS is a great school system.
With strong administration, dedicated staff and excellent teachers. Teachers, they have earned our trust and support then, and we have continued and they have continued to earn it now. There are three action items on the new business portion of the agenda. I would like to address. The middle school, social studies resource adoption, the elementary resource adoption, and the reaffirmation of the parental and family engagement policy. The 10 member middle school. Social studies review committee represented all four schools. And three grade levels and they tested their three credible
resource options against the district. Pathological needs. Like inquiry based. Learning disciplinary literacy. College readiness and active engagement. They made their recommendation based on this process. The elementary. Literacy resource adoption group used a comprehensive process. Informed by the district leadership team, the elementary school educators. Educators and the administration leadership. As a result of this process. They are recommending majestic. Literacy as the optimal choice. Three affirmation of the parent and family. Engagement policy directs a superintendent.
In consultation with the parents. And families to develop and implement the regulations that will guide. Family and parent engagement in their student's development. In a safe and positive environment. The superintendent will have the task of developing. Title, one compliant regulations that respect the rights of all constituents involved. The parents, the schools and students and the teachers. Teachers I'm confident that superintendent Russo. Russo understands. Well, the rights of those constituencies. And will not be influenced. Influenced by the distorted view of parental rights, 30 seconds.
Attitude advocated by some with each of these action items, the administration has done a good. Job appropriate committees and app comprehensive processes were used in making the social studies and literacy resource resources recommendation. The responsibility of the superintendent in developing the reaffirmation of parent and family engagement policy is clearly. Defined the administration has done its job. That's time, Mr. Delora. I asked support. Thank it's job and respect professionals who did their job by voting? Yes.
For these action items. Thank you for your comments. Comments next on our agenda. Madam president. Who was that? Trustee Lak. I have a point of information to make. You responded to the Hallikas about their complaint. And I looked up our complaint process. On our website. And I just want to clarify that it says. In our policy, that members of the school community. May submit complaints against board members through the issue, a serious complaint portal on the RCS website. Can you sign which page of the policy you're you're can you please cite which page? The quality you're I'm supposed to be
able to finish my, my. Just tell me what page of the policy that you're on on the handbook. Just tell me what page I have. I have it right here. You don't listen. Thanks the website, Madam president. It's on the website. It's number 6.2 0.1. And what it's says is members of the school com community may submit. Complaints against board members through issue a serious complaint on the RCS website. And I just wanna clarify that, you know, from a legal sense, I believe that. May doesn't preclude making a verbal. Complaint. If it said shall then that would be different. Thank you for that point of information.
Moving on to the consent agenda. Lemme just back on my spot. Agenda item. Let's see where we are here. Agenda item five is the consent agenda. All matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature by the board of education and will be acted upon by one motion. There is no separate discussion of these items. If any member of the board requests discussion of an item, that item will be removed. Removed, please say which item you would like pulled from the consent agenda. As a reminder to members, the maker of the motion will speak first on their, on their motion. However, any further explanation beyond the number item number has
been said is considered out of order. So on our consent agenda this evening, item 5.1. Current bills payable for February 1st, 2026 through February 28th, 2026. In the amount of $14,943,324 and 67 cents. Cents item 5.2 current bills payable for March 1st through March 31st, 2026. In the amount of 15 million, $100,243. And 67 cents.
Cents. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved by trustee Butell. And seconded by trustee Blake. All those in favor, you should ask any discussion points of order. Can I please review? The there is no separate discussion of these items. Do you wish to pull something? Sure. I will pull both items. Okay. So trustee Lak has moved to. Pool item 5.1 and 5.2. Trustee Lak. Kuey would you like to speak to why you removed those? No. What point of order? You should take a motion to approve 5.1 and then she can speak to
it. Oh, okay. I'll take a motion first to approve item 5.1. Trustee Blake and trustee Butell. Go ahead, trustee Lak. okay. I, I would've said this. For both items, but I just wanna state for the record that I did request documents, referenced. In Bill's payable, legal invoices for both of these months. And was told that the district is not in possession of any of the documents referenced. Okay, thank you. And for the second item, 5.2, same comment. Yes, same comment. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. We'll take a vote now. All those in favor of passing 5.1 and 5.2 of
the consent agenda, please say aye. What, what did I do? You technically have to. Amend the either amend the motion to include 5.2. Okay. Or. Okay. Pull it from the floor and start over or pull it from the, okay. I'll amend the original what's that? Okay. I'll do the, I'll do them one at a time then. So first we'll take the vote on item 5.1. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I, so that is a seven oh vote. No. Okay. So that's a, I, I abstain also. Okay, so that's a five zero. Two, two abstentions five.
Yays moving on to item 5.2. Can I get a motion? For item 5.2. Trust EBI second from trustee Blake. same comments, same comment applies. Thank you. All right, we'll go on to a vote for that. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. So that's five. Any. Nos. I abstain two abstentions. Abstentions. Did you get that secretary? Thank you. Wow. Okay. Okay. Now we're gonna go on to item six on the agenda, which is reports. And 6.1 is the superintendent update. Superintendent Russo. Russo. Thank you. Madam president.
A couple things before we get into our strategic plan, we do not have any updates from any committee meetings since the last meeting. And so as part of. What my reflection in terms of improvement. What I have noticed is that. I have not been forthcoming with all the great things that are happening in the district. And this seemed like a good time to insert that. Considering that this is a public meeting and it's recorded. And I want our community to know what's happening across the district. And some of, some of our areas related to safety related to teaching and learning. Facilities, et cetera. So at every, every. Report. I will be sharing just a couple items.
For today, just a couple things in re in regards to safety and security. Visitor management is something that we implemented this year in our district. And if you have visited one of our buildings, you know what VI visitor management is, you have to show your driver's license to make sure that you are. You are not in any type of. Not preferred list. Let's say. And so since we've implemented that just from January to March of this year, we've had 45,300. 30 students and guests have used our visitor management system. Something that didn't exist. Even last year. District wide as of August 25, we have 380 coaches
and staff members who have completed CPR first aid in a E D training with another 54. Who are on the process of completing their certification? In terms of technology, we've deployed over 3000 Chromebooks to refresh six and ninth grade devices and to new students who have entered RCS. RCS in terms of communication. You might be familiar with parent square. If you are a community member or a parent or guardian. Who who is receiving these messages? I know as an administrator, I receive. Probably a hundred a day across the district. But out of the 134 similar size districts across the country.
That are using parent square. RCS is rated number one in contactability. Which is incredible in terms of not only our adoption, but the use by our principles and secretaries. In terms of teaching and learning. AP students. Students this in 2025, we had 2017 students who took AP or 2017 AP students. Students with 86% of them scoring a three or better. And then back to safety and security, just a couple things that I wanna mention. We have a hundred percent of our staff trained in behavior threat assessment of the teams that are created for behavior threat assessment. A hundred percent of them have been trained. They received identical training and processes for safety and
security, and they have been implemented equally and with fidelity across all of our buildings. Buildings. And then last, I will say just last one for today. A shout out to our finance department. Our our, our assistant superintendent for. Business operations, Mr. Major Daniel and his team. By budgeting conservatively. We are. One of six school districts in the state of Michigan with a double, a bond rating. So just a couple things to, to start us off on a good note at our board meetings, because I do know that as we go through. You know, one of my, one of my goals when I came here was to be an ambassador for the district. And I do believe that our cabinet team does
that by visiting our buildings and always being a cheerleader and an ambassador for everything we do in RCS. But a board meeting seems the appropriate time to, to announce that. So we'll continue to do that through our superintendent report. In terms of our strategic plans. So I have two verbal updates to share with you today, and I believe that you have a copy of them in front of you. We'll start with plan 16. I don't know which side our board members are on. A strategic plan 16. We are focused on developing a comprehensive process to identify, communicate, and check for understanding regarding district expectations. The core goal of this initiative is to foster a culture of transparency and empathy that promotes professional growth and
a sense of belonging for every member of our staff. To achieve this. Our primary deliverable is a creation of an RCS all-employee handbook. With the success criteria of ensuring 100% of our staff has access to this resource by August of 2026. We are pleased to report that we are currently on track for a full implementation for the 26 27 school year. All foundational research and material gathering are now complete. Providing a comprehensive library of district policies and procedures to anchor the document. Feedback has been sought and integrated from our bargaining groups. To ensure the handbook reflects a collaborative and predictable work environment for all our staff. We are now transitioning into the final production phase to
ensure every employee has access to these uniform. Expectations. Strategic plan 18. This focuses on exploring opportunities to enhance a digital content in alignment with American Americans with disabilities act best practices. Practices, this deliverable ensures digital content on our website is accessible to all individuals with exceptionalities. Because web content is constantly changing. Organizations must continuously evaluate and adjust their tools. And processes to ensure accessibility. We are proud of the work being done in this area in RCS. RCS, the district is partnering with national center. ONAC accessible, digital educational materials and instruction. Pronounced N academy.
This technical assistance center is funded by the office of special education programs in the youth department of ed. Through monthly meetings, the district collaborates with experts to gain additional perspective and guidance. Accessibility audits of our website have enabled us to identify areas for improvement while determining the need for additional training and support. An accessibility statement was added to the district's website, informing users of our process. Along with our commitment to serving the. The widest possible audience. The district invested in audio eye. A digital accessibility tool that provides real time. Real-time AI-powered monitoring fixes. Testing and audits from our website. And professional learning resources and materials continue to be created to support district staff. As they've developed their understanding of
accessible best practices. Practices. And those are my verbal updates on strategic plan. 16 and 18, I will now turn it over to well, before I do that, actually, before I turn it over to Mr. Kuzma. To present his strategic plan. Update. It's important to note that we have another strategic plan update. That is, that is part of our new business item, that strategic plan one. So we'll be exploring that during that portion. Mr Kuzma. Good evening. Good evening. Members of the board of education. Very excited to give you a little snapshot. Of where strategic plan 11. Is today and where we're going and what we've done.
And I have two wonderful leads of this plan. I am the owner and I'm lucky to work with amazing people every day. But these two people that I've introduced are fully engaged in the work, leading this with the committee. So before I talk about introduce them strategic plan 11. Is implement and access responsive instructional practice practices. So the teaching and learning department does a lot. Of different things, but instructional practices. Practices constant. So this is a really neat plan to evaluate where we are. Move us forward, but it will, it will never stop. Cuz this is something we talk about instructional practices every
year. On our, our teachers. Teachers trained, equipped. To serve all students in our district. So I'd like to introduce. Julie Schmidt. She is our RCS. RCS middle school, math instructional coach. And Lindsay Woodward is our RCS English language development coach. And they're gonna walk through. Where their team is with this plan. So. Thank you. We're gonna fix. It. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for having us. We're really excited to share where. We are on strategic plan 11 tonight. So with that, Julie, do you wanna take it away? Thanks, Lindsay. I'm Julie Schmidt. as mentioned, I am the district middle
school, math instructional coach, and Lindsay. Yeah, well, yes, I'm the English language development coach TK through 12. Yep. We're really excited to be here tonight. We have some. Awesome updates to share about the progress and, and the product of what we've done this year with our strategic plan 11, but we're really just two representatives of a larger team. Many of our members chose to come tonight. They're out here. So we'd be remiss to say, you know, without mentioning that it was a large team and we're happy to be representatives of that tonight. Yep. Oh, I have the clicker. Yep. so it'd
be. We really need to mention that strategic plan 11 is an extension. Of the work of two plans, strategic plans from last year. Last year planned three centered on differentiation strategies. And plan three, I'm sorry, 13 centered on tier one instructional practices. The, the work that was done last year in those two plans has really. Combined and focused us this year on strategic plan 11. The vision statement states that. By providing a variety of evidence-based resources and supports RCS educators are empowered to personally meet every student at their
level. With appropriate pacing breath. Depth in level of challenge. With that we, the deliverable. States that we are going to be implementing responsive instructional strategies. In K-12 and adult special education classrooms and mentioning that our project title is. Implement and assess responsive instructional practices. Structural practices. Okay. So in order to bring together the previous plans with our current plan, it was important to understand. Responsive instructional strategies. Framed within the response of instructional cycle. So that cycle is an ongoing process. Where teachers gather information about student learning to make adjustments
in real time. While they're teaching. It's important to note that the learning goal of any instruction is a critical component and you can see it right there in the middle and it shapes the entire cycle. From there. The cycle is comprised of three important processes. Formative assessment, gathering data on student understanding and learning needs. Timely feedback, giving students students goal-oriented actionable information that allows them to apply it immediately to their learning. And instructional adjustments that changes teachers make to their instruction to either support. Or extend learners. It's important to note that these.
Stages all work together and they do not need to be in a specific order. Mm-hmm . Now that we have kind of an understanding of what the response been strike. Responsive instructional cycle entails. We're gonna be utilizing, this is our timeline for implementation with our committee throughout the year. We're gonna be kind of using that to frame how we talk about it today. So just giving like a general overview. There, you know, in October there was a launch and call for committee members. October through March, we really engaged in professional learning. Research and resource creation. Then moving on to kind of where we're at right now, cohort implementation and resource. Refinement with the hope of continuing forward and implementing district
wide. Okay. So as we began in October of this year, launching call for committee members. It was really important for us to create a comprehensive. Well represented group of educators. And so in order to do that, we presented to building. And district level administrators to really share the vision of strategic plan 11. And create a shared understanding of the work and the goals moving forward. From there building administrator shared. The information with their staff and an interest survey, went out district-wide to all of our buildings. And Julie's gonna
share a little bit about that. Yeah. After partnering, after partnering with building and district administrators. We the dis it made the districtwide call. We were able to compose a collaborative and res representative. Committee members, a composer of around 30 educators with teachers. Teachers consultants, administrators and ancillary staff representing elementary, middle and high school levels. Including general education, special education and our ELD professionals. Given our first success criteria, it was identified that all subject areas, grade levels in staff members needed to have a thorough understanding. And depth of practice with the R I C responsive
instructional cycle. This was our main focus in cultivating a district-wide representative committee to participate in the professional learning, which you'll see is our success criteria. Number one. And then once the committee formed. We explicitly went over success criteria two and three, which involved teachers participating in a two cycle iteration implementation of the response of strategies and then gathering teacher reflections and student-focused groups to indicate improved. Improved engagement and growth. Mm-hmm . So we're gonna talk a little bit now shifting into the professional learning research.
Research and resource creation. So for the professional learning, the committee used research, backed resources. Resources developed, shared understanding of the response of instructional cycle. Including formative assessment, instructional adjustments, and timely feedback. Then leveraging that shared understanding the committee formed. Subcommittees that designed district aligned resources to support coherence and ongoing professional learning. And then beginning in April until June. We've really delved into cohort implementation. So we've had teachers committee members who have been pilot teachers on our plan. Implement the responsive instructional cycle.
We've gone through one iteration using district created resources. Resources. And from now until the end of the year. Our pilot teachers are going through another cycle. Teacher reflections and that student focused group. Have already indicated improved engagement and growth. Mm-hmm . There's been a lot of talk about the district created resource and so, well, that's not ready to be shared. Wholly right now, it's still in draft form. What you're looking at right there, where it says responsive instructional cycle. That is just a snip of the preview of the introduction page. And what we've, what our committee has worked on creating is we've created a playbook. And I wanna give you a little bit more context to what that playbook is.
The response of instructional playbook is an instructional playbook and is user-friendly re this is our goal for which we centered all of our work. So the instructional playbook is a user-friendly resource. That provides tangible tools for implementation, and it builds clear understanding of the responsive instructional cycle and each of its components, formative assessment, instructional adjustments, and feedback. So through, as Lindsay mentioned through the structured reflections and feedback, our committee members have completed one round of revisions. To the, to the, the playbook, the response to instructional playbook. And upcoming as we finish our second iteration, we'll have
a second and final round of feedback and revisions. So in review of our previous slides, our committee has participated in responsive instructional strategies, PD. Which is illustrated with a blue check mark as complete. Additionally, we are in the second cycle of our pilot process. And continuing to get continually gathering that feedback. So you'll see a green check mark. That means we're on track and we expect to have that completed by June. Responsive instruction is Pasquale mentioned previously is really the essence of teaching and learning. We wanna be responsive to every single student that's in front of us. So our committee and pilot teachers have engaged in this
plan. Fully, and we are happy to share some of the pilot teacher reflections from the cycle. So, what did our educators have to say about the responsive instructional cycle district developed resources, some thoughts. Thoughts. It really refor reinforced the need for formative assessment and timely feedback. It helped me to think through the entire process. It expanded my toolkit. It provided new options and alternatives. When looking for new ideas to support students, it was helpful when struggling with the student's needs and running out of ideas. Ideas. And so looking forward to next school year, fall of 2026, our recommendation is that we continue collaboration with
the teaching and learning department. All of our administrators. Educators to continue supporting future professional development initiatives. Initiatives. We really hope that this work continues to move forward. So all educators can partake in this journey. As Julie said, the responsive instruction is the heart of teaching and learning. Mm-hmm so thank you so much tonight. And thank you for taking your time. Yes. Questions. Questions for any of us three or all of us. About the plan, what we presented. Who has questions? Questions, trustee Patel. Tell, well, thank you so much for your presentation and your energy. I loved all of that. I was just curious to understand some of the scope
of this. So in your success criteria, when you talk about, and maybe you answered this and I just didn't catch it the first one, when it talks about 80% of staff in identified needs area. I'm I'm curious. How many people that is, and what is an identified needs area? That's a great question. And that's one of the questions that we really took very seriously. When deciding, you know, how do we invite people to be a part of this committee who should be part of this committee? And the answer was, this is part. And should be a part of every single educator's toolkit and knowledge, and really be versed in this. So what
we did was we. Worked with the administration. We said, we're gonna invite everybody in the entire district who wants to come. And so the, the, the advertising that I advertising, the hype video that went out, it really said, come with previous experience or come ready to learn. And so everybody that came really wanted to be there and we represented all different core content areas. We had electives, we had counselors, we had. Administrators and really it, all those people should be involved. So that was our initial identified needs. It should be all people. So they, they self-identified themselves came learned and engaged. And our hope is to scale this to all
educators, our district. So is, was that then the 30 people who were on the committee? Yes. Correct. So 80% of those 30. Participated in this. And then just the follow up on that is. Who were the piloting teachers? Is it. Were there 30 actual teachers who piloted. No. So it was within our, because we had all that shared learning and understanding, and also our subcommittees who are doing the work, developing this process. We took volunteers within our committee to be pilot teachers. And so we have a little bit more than a third of the group who volunteered to pilot and those pilot teachers are.
Also in all three areas, elementary, middle school, high school, we have special ed. We have general ed. So we have, oh, oh. And all English language development we do. We do. Yes. And so it's very representative and, and we're proud for them. Okay, thank you. Trustee. Do you have a question? Mike. I was one of the trustees that was like, what are the new district created resources? I was curious about that. So I'm not sure if this can be answered yet or not, but responsive instruction is really familiar to me. And I know a lot of, we do a lot of that when we're teaching. So I was just curious what. Kinds of new ideas were being implemented within this plan
or perhaps within the toolkit. Toolkit. Yeah. So we have taken a lot of research based. Content so right. Like we have work from John Hatty, Carol Anne Tomlinson. Jim Knight. Great Wiggins. There it is. Grant Wiggins. And so we've just really compiled. All of the research from those specific people. And have put it into a, a playbook. We've also drawn from experiences from our educators who have different content and context rules. And yeah, it's just, it's a very. Robust playbook that we're just really excited to dig into.
We're excited to go through the revision process. And just really get it into the hands of all of our educators. Mm-hmm mm-hmm cool. I'm excited to see it when it's ready. Yeah. Adding on to, to what Lindsay said, we had, you know, our, on our pilot team, we have everybody from first year teachers to teachers who have been teaching 30 years and some of the fee feedback we got from them when we were doing our reflection. After that initial coaching side. What were people like? I tried something new, like, you know, I have my, my go-to strategies that I use all the time, but it was so helpful to have a one stop shop where I can go and say, what other ways can I use formative assessment? Or what
other, you know, instructional adjustments must I track? Or might I try so well, we have a lot of, you know, routines that we might use typically having all of this in one place. Really gives us different options that we might not have considered. Cool. Thank you. Trust you. Pito just a follow up on that. Did you say when you thought this playbook might be available? So we should have a working draft by the end of this year. But we will be working with some of our partners in the teaching and learning. Department to make sure that it is ADA compliant and most usable for, for all stakeholders in the district. So
while we'll have a working draft, we will continue that work to make sure it is optimized in the most user friendly. So do you think that it will be available to. All staff at the beginning of next year. So it's something that they'll be able to utilize. That would be our hope and our goal. Thank you. Yeah. And any other questions from the board? No. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation. Thank time. Super informative. Thank you. Moving on to new business. Item 7.1 is the middle school, social studies resource adoption. This is an action item. And it will be presented by Mr. Kuzma.
Is there a motion to approve the teacher's curriculum? Institute's digital platform with teacher addition, resources and classroom printed textbooks. Textbooks for all middle school, social studies classes and the amount of $350,000 for six years. Trustee Blake. Do I have a second trustee Butell. And now we can have discussion. Go ahead. Right before introduce the, again, I get to work with some magical people in this district and I'll give you some context here. The teaching and learning department recommends the purchase of a new middle school, social studies resource from the teacher's curriculum Institute.
Also known as T S T starting in the 26 27 school year to replace the current textbooks at each grade level. Middle school, social studies courses are concurrently using. Are currently sorry using resources purchased in 2010. The Michigan state social studies standards were revised. And published in 2019. After evaluating our current textbook resources, it was determined that they did not align to the standards. Standards support the C3 framework or provide differentiated support for all learners. Learners the review committee consisted of 10 members. Representing all four middle schools and all three grade levels. 40 40, sorry. 44% department participation.
Three resources were evaluated, which they will discuss more in the presentation, discovery education. Sovi learning company and teachers curriculum Institute TCI. The committee determined that TCI be met. The district's pathological. Needs through the following features. Features inquiry-based learning disciplinary literacy. College readiness and active engagement, which they will go deeper in their presentation. In those areas, the committee formally recommends the adoption of the following TCI programs for the 26 20 seventh school year. Sixth grade geography alive. Seventh grade history alive the ancient world.
And eighth grade history alive the United States through in industrialism. In the board packet, you will see the timeline that the process. Carried on starting in April all the way till now, March 23rd. This proposal went in front of cabinet. Superintendent myself. And also our superintendent's policy. Curriculum committee. And tonight I'm going to introduce. Our history teacher at west and middle school curriculum consultant. Jenny Holloway. And she has a guest with her as well. But they're gonna go deeper into. All the work they did to come up with this.
Proposal. Thank you. Right. Okay. I'd like to introduce Jennifer French. She is also an eighth grade us history teacher at west, and she also teaches language arts. So let's put it. We're gonna go through the review process, our findings and recommendations. I'm really excited about the new textbook and new resource. And we're excited to share it with you. So when we started this journey, I'm gonna call it. We this, we had to come up with our objectives. There's a lot of resources out there and we wanted to make sure that we were focusing on the key objectives of our curriculum and our department. So the first
thing is we wanted to make sure our resource a aligned with the new 2019 Michigan. Social studies standards. Standards. We also wanted to make sure that it aligned with C3 framework, which is our essential practices in social studies. Each discipline has its own essential practices. And it basically. Are the practices of a social scientist, a historian. I'm a geographer. So forth and so on. And then we wanted to make sure that it promoted disciplinary literacy so that students saw themselves as historians and social scientists. Scientists and then last but not least, we wanted to make sure to align with the 2000, excuse me, the
2023. NCSS new definition of social studies. So with that in mind, we met with our department last August and we did a needs assessment. And it just so happened that all of the. Brainstorming. We did infinity mapping and brainstorming, and we were able to determine that those objectives were going to meet our needs assessment. So so when the when we called after we did our needs assessment. We called the group together and had volunteers. Everybody was welcome to join the review committee. And we, we had 10 members. Approximately 44% of our department. We had representation from all four middle schools. And we also had representation from all three grade levels.
Several is a teachers taught multiple grades. Like six and seven. After that we looked at what we were using. We wrote a grant and we were using discovery education to supplement. Our textbook and it was determined that discovery education would not be adequate. Because of the fact that it was not aligned with her curriculum. And also some of the accessibility features. Features were, I'm gonna say archaic. There was no translation. The voice was not very. Welcoming for students. Students. And there was just some other details that were limiting. So because it was limiting, we. Automatically decided that that would not be the resource that we would do a deeper dive in.
But then we looked at Savas learning company and we also looked at teachers curriculum Institute, which I'm gonna refer to as TCI. So in as far, the first part of the year, what we did was we wanted to focus on one resource. So it was a little bit easier to have discussions and make comparisons. So we looked at T TCI to, to start with and spent. October, November and December. I'm part of December sampling is what I'm gonna call it. Sampling different lessons. And then meeting together and talking about what was a pro, what was a con other things to explore? And then in December, we brought in the, saw this representative. Let me back
up. We had the TCI representative come in and talk to us about the different features. And then in December mid-December we had the SaaS representative come in and we followed the exact same product where the introduced, introduced us to the resource. And then we. Sampled practice compared. Explored a little bit more at that time in each time, excuse me. We used a district rubric. And we assessed as we went along and looked at accessibility. Inclusion alignment. Access for teachers. Teachers. And with that, we were able to determine. Whether I'm gonna go ahead and go ahead. Sorry.
Whether or not, it was gonna meet our needs. So we took a look at the brew brick and we kind of. Took the total number, the points assigned and what was possible and came up with percentages. And as you'll see, as far as organization, TCI outweighed Savas and we felt that was really, really important because of teachers can't find resources. They're not gonna be able to use the them. And that was the one common that our committee said was that they had. A really difficult time finding a resource and then finding it again. And we were worried that it would be off putting to the teachers when using. As far as alignment, TCI.
Aligned with what we wanted. As far as our Michigan state standards, that's very challenging for geography. And to have geography text at a sixth grade level is also challenging. And DC did both of these very, very well. And then as far as inclusion, and assessment right now, we don't really have an assessment tool. To use. And we were really excited about the assessment features of TCI. Let's see. So we we met in March and our group. 100%, all 10 members. Said that they would like to make the recommendation that we adopt the resource from the teacher's curriculum Institute. Geography alive history alive the world through 17.
50. And then history alive, the United States through industrialization. All right. I get to do some of the fun part. I get to introduce you or kind of give you a little tour of the TCI pro product. Once we had determined that that was the direction that we wanted to go in. So looking at engaging all learners. What we were really looking for is a system that was based in inquiry. That's been a focus for our middle school, social studies programs. And. When we took a look at the way TCI was. Laid out, they lay out. Their units and, and their lessons. With problem-based and inquiry-based lessons. So that was something that
was really important to us. We also liked the flexibility of the way that they had their curriculum lined up. And I'll go into that a little bit more in a moment. One thing that set TCI apart from some of the other programs that we looked at is their classroom activities. That something that really isn't even available in the other. In service and, and really in any other program that we looked at. So again, I'll, I'll kind of when we get into how their units are laid out, I'll talk about those classroom activities. And some of the opportunities that they're there are for students.
Students. And then there are a variety of different formats in which that students can access the curriculum, whether it be through the hands-on activities. Through the text or even through video. Assignments. Accessibility, as Jenny mentioned is one of our, one of, one of the big things that we were looking for. When we look at accessibility, TCI offered the, the. Most options for our students, for instance, as far as. Offering language or text. It had over 80 languages. Languages that the text could be translated in. Whereas when you were looking at some of the other.
Companies a lot of times it was only Spanish. And we realized that with the diversity in our community, having 80 languages available for our students was something that was really a positive for our teachers. Teachers also the ability to have audio. With our text was something that was important to us as well. When we take a look at the way the lessons and the activities are laid out, we also have the ability to differentiate. The materials, the assessments really all the way through the entire program, you have the ability to level. Even in the text, when you look at the text,
this is something that Savis did not provide. You had the opportunity to level the text by reading level. Which was a really big, important piece for our teachers. As we were looking at it, to be able to meet the me needs in our social studies classrooms as our so social studies classrooms have all students, I have all the levels. In our social studies classrooms, it was important that we have the ability to level the text. For their ability. Yes, please. In addition to leveling the text, we also found that they provide. Accommodated and modified worksheets. So you can click on the
worksheet and have it on level. You can click on it, it'll provide accommodations. And so that's something that. Some that we struggle with because it's a time. And it's really nice that it's created there and then you can edit it as well. If you need to tweak it. Mm-hmm . And then the final category there is assessment. So we know that in the classroom, we want to have formative assessment as well as summative assessment and the TCI program. Offers a variety of opportunities for both. So it offers some game and, and actually some pretty good. Good games sometimes, you know, you different programs offer a
game and, and it's really not all that engaging to our students, but they've done a nice job with some of their formative games that they have available. But then when we are looking at their summative assessments, they have, again, a good level, you know, differing levels as far as summative assessments with. Question banks of all variety. That teachers can pull from. Which when we look at some of our new teachers, teachers or, you know, teachers who are new to the subject area. It's a great tool for them to have those. Banks that they can pull from when they're making their assessments. Yep. So if you take a look where we gave
an example of ancient Greece, which is from our sixth grade curriculum, and so when we are looking at. The way that TCI lays out their program. Or their units, if you wanna think of it that way, you'll notice that they always start with a compelling question. And that gets back to the inquiry. That is so important to our social studies. Work that we do. And then they have a video overview, something that can be an option for student or for teachers to use. That just kind of gives an overview of where the students learning is going throughout that unit.
Then you are going to see when we talked about flexible. Lesson options. This is where teachers really have like the ability to kind of like make their, the unit their own. So depending on their you know, like I said, if they're a new teacher, or if they're new to the, to the curriculum, you know, they can take more or if teachers have been teaching it and have, you know, more experience and, and more resources than they might kind of do a pick and choose from this. But you'll see that. Every unit has the reading. That's what you really think of as your text, your
textbook. If, if we think of, you know, traditional resources. Resources. So that's the text that we talked about has the ability to be leveled. It has the ability to be, to translate it. It has the ability to be read. In audio to students. Students, and I think more than anything else that it's just a great foundation. So for background knowledge, for both teachers and students, so that we have that text, that information. As kind of the jumping off point for our students and for our teachers. Teachers. And then what we have next is our classroom activity. Slideshow. This is really the, the, the activities that we were
talking about, the hands-on activities. And this is something that is unique to TCI. I have to say that we did not see that in any other program that we, we piloted the are the kinds of activities that students get excited about that. Really engage them. And these are the activities that are sometimes hard for especially new teachers to just develop a along on their own. They are all about engagement. They are also about having students. Students act as historians act as geographers. Doing the real work of a social scientist or a
historian. Which is the goal of our, of our department, of, of social studies. You know, we don't want them just reading text and answering questions at the end of the text. We want them doing the real work. When we think about career readiness or being an active member. Of our community, the classroom activities, get them ready to do that. So thinking about civic discourse. There are activities that get them involved in discourse. There are activities that have them looking critically at resources at primary. Documents, like I said, doing the real. Work of a historian. And I think that's what we are most excited about is the opportunity that TCI provides
for our teachers to do these kind of activities. And then they also do offer video activities. Which are up to date. Good videos. Videos, not long they're short clips. Clips that do a nice job of introducing topics to students in a modern. Engaging way. These are great resources that a, that a teacher could. Use in different points. If let's say a teacher has to be out of the classroom. To continue the learning. And it's, it's just another tool in their, in their toolbox to have. So each each unit for six, seventh and grade eighth grade. All have those different options as they're building out their
units. On top of that, if you want to. Dive deeper. You can. You have the opportunity for more resources, as far as reading. Goes. So I know a lot of times I will use them to kind of, if, if I wanna do an extension for maybe students. Students who can take that next step. These are great resources to pull from for those students who need an extension. So it offers in every single unit. Maybe it be primary sources or extra readings that kind of go take the topic and take it that one
step farther. Laid out very nicely, both by topic and by unit. So they're easy for teachers. I know that sometimes I will, you know, think, oh, I, I want a little extension. What can I pull out here? And it's very easy to access for teachers. Teachers the primary sources mm-hmm it provides a catalog of primary sources, which is invaluable because we can spend a lot of time looking for relevant primary sources. And they're all tagged with the units and we'll encourage that, that higher level thinking. Teaching students the skills and process of annotation critical thinking. And encourage students to use that, to have discussions mm-hmm
. And then also with every unit, we also have. A few other things that are included. Included, there are toolkits that are available. So they call them citizen. Citizenship toolkits, which to give you a couple examples, I wrote down a couple. For instance, teaching students registering and preparing to vote. So. Very valuable everyday kinds of things that they will experience and are part of that social studies curriculum. Even engaging in in political discussion, things like that, that. Engaging in the potential of being involved in a political
campaign. So there's all these different. Opportunities that, you know, for citizenship and being an active member of our community, which is something that is important for our students. And then they also have current event toolkits. So to give an example, analyzing a photograph or identifying points of view. So these are all separate lessons that can be incorporated. Into your unit. Teaching them skills that are important to social studies. And then they also, as I said, have all of the resources, as far as our assessment. They have processing activity activities that are usually creative ways
for students to show what they have learned. And then the assessments, as we've mentioned for. Formative and summative. Assessments. Great. Mm-hmm so the estimated cost for TCI over six years. Is $350,000. We are recommending that we get the digital resource. Primarily because they update it. As updates happen right now, we're in a current situation where our textbook isn't updated. Updated. And so 2010, 16 years ago. You can think of a lot of history as happened. And as you can also see TCI leans really heavily into the activities.
And the process. And so we feel that the digital. The digital format will provide students with the text, but also make it accessible. And also the text can be printed along with the worksheets. So if, if a teacher needed that option, we can do that. We are also recommending class sets for each building so that we can meet the needs of students. Students that have IEPs that have to have a printed copy. Let's see. As far as the alignment with the strategic plan, TCI aligns with plan three. Exploring academic opportunities for high achieving and high ability students. I think Jen, Jennifer went over that as well, but
with the extension activities, in the, the activities where they could to put on the hat of a historian or social scientist. Scientists, it aligns with plan number five, establishing consistent data collection analysis and response protocols. As I mentioned earlier, we, we don't really have a robust way of assessing and TCI provides that tool for us, both formative and summative assessment. Let's see. It also aligns with plan 13. Implementing and assessing differentiated instructional practices. Practices TCI resource will help students. Students will help and support teachers to meet every student. At their level. And I mentioned this earlier.
Not only are the assessments accommodated. And you can differentiate within the assessment, but also the worksheets and other materials that we would use. TCI will help us support. Readiness for the P S a T. T as far as the critical thinking skills. That is one thing that we're talking about right now, presently, as we just took the PS a T last week, and we're getting ready for our state assessments. We're constantly talking about in social studies. It's a it's, it's difficult to know everything, every single detail, but what's most important is the critical thinking and being able to attack any problem that's in front of
you and having those historical thinking skills and the skill with the discipline. We think that T C I helps with the C three frame. Framework, which is the career readiness. College readiness and civic engagement, which is all part of the goals for the PS, a T. T. And then as far as the analysis of evidence and resource, we, we suggest we touched on it, but we have primary sources and secondary sources, and this will allow students to use those skills and practice.
Annotating and reading and processing. And comparing and making their own decisions based on the evidence they see. Which is the evidence-based reasoning. And then last but not least readiness, as far as complex informational text, which is your primary and your secondary sources, sources. Excuse me. It has scaffolded protocols to support vocabulary and context. And identifying main ideas and arguments. Arguments again, part of that process. And then again, there's the thinking skills. Analyzing data and evidence evaluating arguments and drawing logical conclusions that can be supported with reasoning. And that's. Yeah. Thank you both for that presentation. I know that.
Myself and trustee Blake, and as well as trustee Loza were in your initial presentation, Ginny to the S B C committee. And. I think you've taken a deeper dive, which is great to see for this particular presentation. At this time, I'll ask my colleagues who has questions, trustee, Lizanne. I'm gonna have, oh, no, I, we can hear you. What if I move over here, there we go. Okay. I think I'm connecting to those ones. Ones. Thank you so much for that. I do. I appreciate the extended presentation and what we originally received. My question is how much flexibility do the teachers have
in delivering the curriculum? And how can we ensure consistency across the different classes to make sure that they're, you know, if they are flexible, they can kind of pick and choose. As you were saying, it's kind of more interactive. How can we ensure that it's consistent across the different classes? So we have taken our curriculum, the Michigan standards, and we have. Outlined it within the year into pacing guides for every single level that was done as a department. So every teacher that teaches sixth grade. Sat down, worked on the pacing guide for sixth grade and, and for seventh grade and eighth grade. And then as far as the resources.
Resources, the pace and guide tells us what we're gonna teach. The resources are the, are the tools to help us teach. In one day, at least in my experience. And you can. Comment on this mm-hmm I could, I can teach differently in my third hour class than I do in my first hour class, depending on. The needs of the students and, and the interaction of the students and the makeup of the class. And what I like about TCI is that it gives me a tool, a toolkit where I can still teach the same curriculum and meet the standards, but then reach in for different tool that will help different students. Students enter that information at different levels.
You wanna add? No. I, I think that kind of gives the autonomy a little bit still with the, with the teacher. But with us all, having the same tools. And the pacing guide. I think it gives. Consistent experience for all of our students. Students Dr. Win Perdue. Yes. I'd like to reiterate, then I appreciate all the information you gave about the pilot. I see that you shared this on a district learning day with other teachers and you got student feedback. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got the student feedback? Was it just the teachers who helped make the decisions shared some of the less with their
students? Students. So the, the 10 teachers that sampled and used it afterwards, they asked their, their own students with a Google survey. On, how did it help you learn? What, what did you like about the book? What do you need that might be different? Mm-hmm just kind of their overall. Experience with the activities, especially. They did have, there were some teachers who had their students look at both textbooks and do kind of a comparison. So several different things were done in, in the different classrooms to, to get their feedback. Trustee Patel. I just wanted to ask a question.
In case someone at home is sitting there. Because we talked about the new 2019. State standards, but we're in 2026. I think I heard you say that we were meeting those new standards by using this discovery. Education social studies. Tech book. Were we using that to, to kind of fill in to meet those standards? Or why did it take us seven years to review them? I guess maybe you could give us an update on that, just to understand. What we were doing to. In the meantime. So the 2019 standards were worked on, I believe, 2014 through 2018.
As you can imagine. There was a lot of conversation at the state level and they had to rewrite them when they finally released him in 2019. The person that was in this position prior to me, had everybody come together and they started working on realigning, the standards and pacing guides. And then. The hope to look at new resources and then COVID came along and then it was, we were kind of on pause. And trying to, trying to figure out how to make things accessible through. Hybrid learning or virtual learning. And so once everyone was back and, and things were kind of back, I'm gonna
say back to normal. All we started the process again in the first part of the process was again, realigning our standards to make sure our pace and guides. Guides were flushed out for the year. We wanted to teach this the pacing guide for one year and then make adjustments. And then once we made the adjustments, we started talking about the need to have a new resource. The one, the one reason that we had the, the discovery ad tech book was to provide some sort of support for our students. Students that need audio and that it did give audio. So that was our, our goal. And then it did have some limited videos on it.
And just are pacing guides have been in place for several years. Mm-hmm so we've been working off our new pacing guides. Guides for several years, which met the state standards? Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Mm-hmm . Any anyone else with questions? Questions trustee or sorry, trustee. LA kuey. Well, you mentioned about how some of the lessons, I, I, I gotta say I, I do appreciate some of the things that you're mentioning about the curriculum in terms of flexibility and accessibility and. The ability to differentiate and some of those things. You also talked about how students would be acting as historians and geographers and doing the real work.
And I was curious. Do lessons in here. I didn't get a chance to actually view the sample lessons I'd asked about it. Ahead of time. I could view the scope and sequence, but not the lessons. And I was curious if they pushed toward students. Mainly towards a more historical understanding. Or if they towards judging history through a modern lens. Or a little of both. How do you see that? Well, the fact that it's, it's designed through inquiry, you're asking a big compelling question, and then you're bringing different resources where students work within the resources, and then they discuss what they find. So I would say there is a modern lens, but then there's also that historical context in there. We're looking
at primary source documents. What does this mean? How does this apply to today? As far as activities, when we say wearing the hat of a historian, one activity that I did was. A constitutional convention. Activity where all the students represented different states. And we talked about the different issues that we're facing. The framers that were writing the constitution. And then they, they, I wouldn't say debated, but they discussed. The different issues and how they might compromise them. The one that we focused on was the great compromise, which makes. Our a legislative branch with the Senate and the house
of representatives. Representatives. And so by doing it that they're constructing the information or they're constructing their knowledge and there's a better understanding as opposed to me. Having them read something and just memorize it. Does that help answer that? That can help answer. I mean, the activity that you mentioned sounds valuable, like in some ways, I guess yes and no is what I would say about that. I guess I'm also wondering. Okay, so are mul I'm. I'm wondering in my head about multiple perspectives and. Balance of different kinds of perspectives. Perspectives or if the curriculum tends to cue students towards particular. Perspectives over others. Okay.
Thinking of perspective is a big piece of our classrooms is looking at perspective. So for instance, when we take a look at a primary document, we're breaking down, you know, who wrote it? Who was the audience. So in those conversations, we're looking at what, w what is the perspective. And then we also talk about what are other perspectives, what, what voices are left out of this particular document? So that we understand that this is the perspective perhaps of this document. But then we have the conversations of. What other documents would they wanna see? And we'll ask
students that, you know, to get a fuller picture, to get the complete picture, what resources would you wanna see? And then we, and then we take that next step. Okay. Here's this second resource. The let's take a look at what is the perspective of this resource? And then we always draw back to our inquiry question and say, okay, you have, let's say 4, 5, 6 different resources, perhaps from different perspectives. Perspectives perhaps meant for different audiences. And then what is their understanding? Of the, of the question of the inquiry. Based on all of the different resources that they've been
given. And we also welcome and encourage new questions. Mm-hmm that they may come up with that they didn't have answered within the primary or secondary sources. Mm-hmm I like to ask my students. Students. Okay. What questions do you have? What, what do you wanna see next? What, what would you like? And a lot of times they'll say, you know, I would wanna, he, I would wanna see a journal. From this time period, or I would want to see maybe a map of. Of this event. And so a lot of times they can tell me what they wanna see in our, in order to. Complete their understanding of a topic or a question.
Thank you. And any other questions from the side of the table? I, I have trust her. You tell, I just wondered on this one. If there was any. Urgency in approving this, or if we waited until like at the may meeting. If it makes a difference on ordering. The, you know, approving it. Now or whatever our first may meeting is. I can answer that question, Mr. Guzman, if you have anything to add, I don't believe that pushing this, pushing an approval yes or no, a vote till May 4th would impact our ability to. If approved at the May 4th meeting. Get our resources in our hand before the beginning of the school year. Mr. Guzman. Yeah, it is the, the only thing I'm thinking of
is budget process. Right now, we're going through budgets for next year. And so this would go on next year's budget. So July 1st. So, you know, we have an earmark of 300 and whatever thousand, but if that doesn't get passed, obviously we don't want to put it there and then say, oh, we're not using it there. And we have to reallocate it. But. We can work around that. I think. As long as we have an ASAP. The sooner, the better when we. Solidify budgets in our teaching learning department. So that's kind of why it's. It's now for next year's budget. I guess my question to you, trustee Viel is do you feel like you don't have enough information right now
to make it informed vote? I think it's similar to a. What I have mentioned. At least individually to people that I prefer to have. A presentation with some time before we vote on it, just so we have an opportunity to hear from. The community for anything else that comes up. So that was my. Rationale for that. Okay. I guess my follow up question would be, do you have any concerns about what's been presented at this time? Okay. Trustee. I would be interested in delaying the vote. And I could explain why if you'd like, and this has nothing to do actually with the presenters here who are clearly enthusiastic about the curriculum, but.
It it's honestly kind of difficult. For me to voice this, but I feel that that's. That's that's the thing to do. If I wanna have integrity, like was mentioned earlier. I had asked to, to look at certain specific lessons because I was able to view the scope and sequence of this curriculum. And I could see things like unit topics and lesson, lesson titles, and some guiding questions. Questions. And when I looked at that, I saw enough that raised potential concerns in my mind. And that doesn't mean that I'm sitting here saying that. I know for sure I would be against this curriculum because I'm not, but the point is I wasn't given
enough access to feel comfortable. Telling families that it would seem. Balanced to me. So for example, I noticed repeated framing around topics like colonization, inequities, rights, and religion. And those are all real topics and they should be taught. But in social studies framing. Matters a lot. Unlike something that's objective like math. History can be subject to revisionist bias. And what gets emphasized matters. And what gets softened matters. And what gets left out matters and how those questions are presented matters. And that's why transparency is so important. So when I was looking through the lessons and questions, questions. I was concerned because I noticed certain perspectives being
given more visible emphasis. Than others. And again, there might be more balance in the full lessons, but that's exactly the problem is that right now, as a board member and I'm sure for the community. We just, haven't been given enough visibility into the lessons to know that. And the other problem is that I know that we've had issues like this before in our district. I know that we used work. From Abram Kendi, who's a political activist, not a historian with fourth graders. Graders. We've also been told before that a certain high school gender class was fair and balanced. Balanced, but when people ask to see the class content, they couldn't get it.
And then the class disappeared and the public couldn't see what had been taught. And that doesn't look good and that can affect trust. So this board really does need to find a way to change how stuff is handled. If we wanna build trust. And do more than rubber stamp decisions at the end of the process. So for me, it just feels pretty simple. I'm not ready for a vote. Right now, when we're talking about middle schoolers, I just need enough visibility to be confident that it's. It's that it's academically sound fair. And it's framing. Inappropriate for the full range of families. In our community. Thank you for those comments. Comments, trustee, Alba. So I have, I really appreciate the information. I love
that. Try your move. I love that. You're talking about primary sources. As a history teacher, I, I just, that's where, that's where I really love when they're hearing those first words. You know, to address trustee. Lui's concerns. Can you talk to us about. How these issues are framed. And do you feel they're framed in a unbiased way in a way that. You know, cuz you guys are, you guys are the experts and I'm, I'm sure you've done some of this, you know, looking at this and if it's biased or not biased. So could you speak to that and kind of. Speak to it. So one of the reasons why we really like TCI is because it leads with inquiry. And inquiry asks what you think. I mean, there is
a compelling question, but we're not, we're asking. What you think not how to think. And so part of the inquiry process is providing. Multiple resources, primary sources, secondary sources. Multiple texts and texts can be a map. It can be a graph. We are asking students to. Construct knowledge. We're not telling them what the knowledge is. Obviously there are some staples like George Washington is our first president. On the capital of Michigan is Lansing, but really it's designed for inquiry where students are building their knowledge and they can. Explore. And they oftentimes they'll say to a student, you
may have a totally different answer than I have, but you need to back it up with evidence and reasoning. And we get, we provide lots of different perspectives, lots of different evidence. They're welcome to get their own evidence. There's some pretty. I don't know, creative and amazing things going on. I learned something new every week from a student. And so that is the, that is the beauty of inquiry. It's we lead as scholars. Scholars and not read something and answer questions at the end. So you want to add to that? Or no, I think that mm-hmm . We truly are leaning into the discipline and again, the
whole career ready. College ready and civil. Our civic engagement is really the foundation. The the curriculum itself is what allows us to do. And practice those skills, but the, but we are, we are truly trying to. Create individuals who can think critically and express their opinions and use evidence and reasoning while doing so. And that's what TCI kind of the framework works. I guess I would a, just add to that a little bit is the, the critical consumer of information. Mm-hmm, , that's really what our students need to be able to do. Is they themselves have to be the critical consumer.
So they should be the ones looking for bias. We need to be. Teaching students, what is the perspective? What is, what is the bias? And, and those are the questions that make them critical thinkers and make them not just when we're looking at our social studies. Information, but when they're out there in the world, that's what, that's the skills that we want them to learn is how do you be a critical consumer of information? That's really. And I think that kind of. Goes into that. I really appreciate the inquiry based, not the slanting them towards one answer or not. Mm-hmm . So thank you for addressing that. President Dennis. Oh,
okay next. Could I response no comments, Dr. W I just wanted to say that I'm trained as a historian. I did a master's in a PhD program in American studies, which is history. And what I like about this is that it does focus on the engagement factor. I mean, I would love to see it too, but. I think this notion that they're gonna be critical consumers, not just passive. Taking in cuz what I know about history. More than I know of all the social studies. Is that students often get turned off because they don't see the relevance for today. So what I think I
hear you, I mean, what I hear you saying. Is that this encourages students to see history as living the past is the present. And I'm also thinking, you're saying that the goal is not to indoctrinate the students by using the sources that are available, but to get them to think about every, his historical moment is framed with how the people who create it. Lived with their biases. Good and bad because they, you know, we got 'em are called these. The, our prejudgments, right? We all have them.
But I think one thing I think all of us are just, you know, with any, with any textbook, with anything that is updated all the time is just to know that. Students are gonna be encouraged. To discuss their differences. And to bring their own perspectives to it. And it sounds like you're saying from what you've, what you've done with the pilot that you guys feel confident that this is. Encouraging students to develop their own sense of how they fit in a community. And how they, how the historical documents frame. Are present and I'll
trustee Blake, did you have a comment? I did I, well, it's loud. So I'm looking at this and we're talking about geography in sixth grade. We're talking about. History the world history through 1750. And then in eighth grade, the unit us through industrial. Industrialization, especially the first two. It's hard for me to. Figure out, like what is the indoctrination? There could be about geography. Or, you know about maybe world history through 1750, but how. Is that playing out currently. So I, I had not heard these critiques before that you thought that potentially this could be biased. I'd be curious to know how.
Because, I mean, the topics don't, if we're talking like, you know, modern history or the civil rights era, things like that, I could see there being some debate, but these are things that are pretty. You know, pretty set at this point. Trustee LA kuey. Okay, well, first of all, I wanna just clarify, I'm not trying to accuse anybody of indoctrinating, anybody. So let's just put that out on the table. My point when I was making my comment earlier is that I just don't have as much information as I'd like, like for instance, in the geography section, I saw a section about extreme weather and hurricanes and what causes extreme weather. And I thought to myself, this seems more
like science class and his history I would be, or not history than geography. I'm sorry. I'd be curious to see how that lesson is framed. You know, like to look at specific lessons, there was also. Another lesson and I'll, I'll delve into this example because the other thing I agree with you on, and that I really appreciate about what you guys are doing is the. Inquiry-based critical thinking, viewing different perspectives, trying to understand how people got there. I'm all about that. I love that. It's one of the reasons I really enjoyed debate actually, because I think it's one of the best ways to fully explore an issue. If you can honestly assess what's
going on on both sides of the equation, you can learn a lot. And so. Sometimes even shift your perspective. Okay. But here was something that just raised a question and I was like, I wish I could look at this lesson and see what it's like. I noticed in the lesson titles in that history was through 1750. There was a, there was a decent amount of positive emphasis on Islam and not as much on other religions. For instance, they talked about, there was a whole lesson that was called Muslim innovations and adaptations during mid medieval times. And I get that. That is worth focusing on for sure. But I also noticed, I didn't see a similar lesson on the monastic
movement. Which also would've been very relevant during that time. And I had noticed a lesson on the crusades. Crusades. I didn't notice a similar lesson about Islamic conquests on that time. So it's possible. All of this was addressed. And that it was all completely balanced, but the lesson framing and the titles. Titles don't suggest that on its face. And if students are presented. Information and they're presented true historical facts, but in a selective way. It can cause you to jump to false conclusions and to ask. Very different types of questions than you might have. Otherwise, if you were presented. A balanced perspective. So tho those were some of the things running through my mind.
And that's why it would be, I would just be curious to see what the content looks like. So if we go back to the pacing guide and the curriculum. The TCI is the resource that supports. Supports the curriculum. It is not the curriculum. So. So when we go through our pacing guide, if the one example you gave about Islam. In our pacing guided in our curriculum. Excuse me. We do cover all religions. Religions. And we, we do go through the framework. That compelling question. When you dig deeper, that's when teachers would bring in other resources to make sure other perspectives were there. As far as geography, geography's taught a little bit different
than when, like when I was in school, we used to make maps and we'd memorize where all the, where all the countries were and all the capitals. And now it's really more of a global. Experience where you're looking at the global economy. And how maybe us, maybe a bad crop and how that would affect everyone. Or how a pencil is created and where all the resources come from all over the world. More from a consumer producer type of. Lens that the one that you cited with the weather. I'm sure that it was probably, how do we. How do we change our global landscape to be able to. Prepare for erosion.
And other other events natural events that would impact the geography. And then obviously, impact on the, the economy. And the different different communities around the world. So I B geography looks a little bit different now and we call it more thematic than we do the more traditional way. So, do we have any other, any additional questions? Questions? No, we currently president Ann is, is anyone, are there any other board members that would be interested in delaying this? Perhaps until the next board meeting for a vote. I'm not interested in delaying it. No, I feel like I have enough information to make an informed vote.
Anyone else wanna chime in? All right. I moved to, well, excuse me. We currently have a motion on the floor. To approve this. This curriculum, right? I, I believe I can move to postpone. That's a, like a secondary motion, right? Actually, no, you have to make a secondary motion to table. So that, or postpone, I believe it's postponed. Postpone that no postpone means postpone discussion for a certain time. And if that's the case, then we can. Table it to postpone it till the. March, or I'm sorry, the may. I don't wanna go back in time. The may the May 4th meeting. So we moved to postpone
it until May 4th. So we will have to. Amend this motion that's on the floor. Currently, which is to approve. This, this curriculum is presented. And here's a piece of paper. You can write down what your motion is. What what you're. Yeah. A question. Yes, trustee, are we moving to postpone this or are we amending the current motion? To vote on it. May 4th. There's. There's a difference? Well, I don't think if you amend the motion now, the motion's on the table to vote on it today. So I think in order to take it up again,
at the May 4th meeting, we'll have to. Make a motion to table it, which is essentially postponing any further discussion so that we can have a vote. That's my interpretation. Trustee Luk you could move to postpone the motion. Sorry, what while moving to postpone the motion indefinitely. Discards this motion. And then you could produce, you could provide an additional motion. Which states that you want to revisit this on May 4th for a vote of approval. Is that what your preferring that I do? I don't, I don't really care. I'm. I'm I think, you know what I'm asking? I, I
understand what you're saying. I'm just trying to, we can do it however you'd like, I'll just say a point of I'm pretty sure we just need to say post pulling the discussion until a certain time. In the middle of a motion, but the motion's on the table. Right. You have to address the motion. Right. And you're, you're saying you're moving to postpone. That motion until May 4th. If that passes, then that, okay, go ahead. Write that down. Great. That's fine. So it's can we give it to give it to the secretary? She has the rest of the motion written down. And then can I read this trustee president? Yes. Secretary of Vitel please. Okay. I move. To postpone the motion to approve the teacher's curriculum. Institute's
digital platform with teacher edition resources and classroom printed textbooks for all middle schools. Social studies classes in the amount of 350,000 for six years. Until the May 4th board meeting. Okay. So we have an additional. A new motion on the table. And so I'm going to, I wanna see a raise of hand. One second. I need a second, please. Trustee Loza is the second. And then what I'd like to do is. Have a voice vote, but also see a raise of hands. Those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. So I see four votes for yes. Those that are nays.
Nays nays. So that's three. It's a four, three and. Your amendment passes. So we will bring it up on May 4th. At our next meeting. For reconsideration and a vote to pass. Can I just, I'd like to thank Jenny Holloway and the entire middle school staff who was involved. Yes. That was a lot of work. A hundred percent. And then. Work with Mr. Russo on. You know, from then to May 4th. Yes. What needs to happen or. Thank you very much. I appreciate that Mr. Kuzma, and thank you very much, Jennifer. And Jenny for presenting the information. And being, being here to answer the questions.
Questions. I appreciate your professionalism. Thank you. We're moving on now to item 7.2. Oh, I'm sorry. I have people chirping at me to take a comfort break so we will take a comfort break for five minutes. Hello? Yeah. Okay. Let's continue on with our new business. Item 7.2 is the elementary literacy resource adoption, which falls under strategic plan one. And this is an action item and I will turn
it over to. Superintendent Russo. Thank you. Madam president. The recommendation tonight is folded into strategic plan one, which continued from last year based on the availability of a list of resources planned and planned to be delivered by the state of Michigan. The resource adoption recommendation is based on teacher experience with students and student growth as noted inside classrooms. Classrooms juxtaposed against other resources piloted across 45 other classrooms. Classrooms, this specific resource was piloted in 12 classrooms across the district is important to note that this is not a longitudinal study. As the timeline for adoption. By the state. And by the, by this board did not meet, did
not meet or intersect in terms of timelines. We are recommending one year ahead of the state's timeline. We know as educators, the impact of the student teacher relationship and ongoing professional learning is paramount to student success. And while we believe this product uses a resource meets the needs of reading science and of students. Students are students. I'm sorry, as, as you have just heard in my superintendent report. We are second on the count. Well, I didn't mention this one. We are second in the county on student growth percentile as measured by MSTEP the state's assessment tool. With that as a backdrop for our presentation today and consideration for approval of this resource, our literacy resource. I'll
turn it over to Mrs. Hampton. Thank you very much, Mr. Russo. Russo. We are pleased to have the opportunity to share this recommendation with the board of education this evening. We have a party of six here. That's going to be. Not all going one another for, for space here at this port podium. But before we all get started, I'd like to introduce the team. This, this is the elementary program consultant group that has. Supported and organized this effort across our 13, across our 13 elementary schools, 252 classrooms and almost 6,200 children. That encompass that group. And so I'll start with Mike Gidner. Amber grass, Kim Mork.
Mork Danielle Smith and Lori depu will be joining me here at the podium in various portions through the recommendation that we're about to share. We know there are a number of questions we hope you hope you'll jot them as we go. We'd appreciate the opportunity to answer them in contact with the full recommendation. Once we close the presentation here. All right. She's got a little lag. This Graham, can you go backwards by chance? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. As, as you've heard me discuss this review in, in past context, I think it's important to recognize that this review. Has been comprehensive, but at the heart of it was
designed to ensure skillful and confident literacy development for all of our students. That's really at the heart of what's on this slide here. Certainly it holds central the criterion of public act 1 46, as well as the multiple factors. That are important to us as an organization. When we think about meeting the needs. Of the young learners, those nearly 6,200 students that are in our care. Tonight, you'll hear about a series of interactions. Each of them really thoughtfully built with intentionality to elicit both educator and student voice. Their experience and the opportunities that these materials provided in our classrooms were extremely important for us to, to learn
about closely. We also worked with that notion of. How we've develop and grow professionally within our understanding, we've got a, an amazing group of educators with deep literacy expertise. They also understand each of the grade levels that they serve. Very closely. And we knew they were carrying that expertise in the door, in the room with them when they began this work. While also concurrently. Expanding our expertise and our shared understanding of what it means to have a structured literacy focus. It's no surprise. We've got a fabulous group of educators here in Rochester, community schools, but I think the board
would be really proud to hear how often at every work table. From the start of this process, at least my start in joining RCS. RCS all the way through our, one of our last meetings last week that any time educators were around were sitting around a table in this work. What you'd most often hear? Was how important it was to make meaningful. Contributions that our students were equipped with the skills and the confidence that they need to make meaningful contributions to the world around them. And that student-centered and student-focused dialogue permeated every aspect of this, this review. The timeline. That he is here next.
Is an important piece of context because in the spring of 2024, the district began a focus on foundational skills with an emphasis on both professional learning. As well as the study of possible new resources. Resources. And so during that same period during, during that period that I'm speaking of in the spring of 24, that is when you fly Orton-Gillingham arc and Whitten wisdom sort of got their start here. During this same period in October of 24, the Michigan legislature also enacted PA 1 46 and 1 47, which caused a bit of disruption to our timeline.
But also in calling for a comprehensive tier one evidence-based curricula to be established in elementary classrooms. Classrooms called us in to look more closely at what additional comprehensive programs the state may have up their sleeve, as they were thinking about approved lists. Lists and, and the board may recall us having that conversation about having a delay for what had first been requested for an implementation of fall. 2025 for a new literacy resource. And so each of this. Step along the way, these varied tools and timelines and experiences, Kim will help us look a little more closely
at how those products have been explored. And with which groups across Rochester, community schools. But this timeline all ties into the, to the varied complexities that have occurred across these past two years. This one's thank you. So as you can see. Based on the timeline that was in the previous slide. There were additional resources that we considered. Across the district and those showed up in a variety of ways in the classroom. They also showed up in ways for our teaching and learning department and connecting with districts around our county. So that we could actually see them in action in
classrooms. Classrooms. And also there were. Various meetings with the vendors so that we could understand the ins and outs of the resources you see. Beyond that though we narrowed it down. Even further to district-wide participation. And so I'll give you a moment to glance. Through those resources and where they showed up. Across our district and in what grades. From there. We narrowed it down even further. And this last. Zoom in moment is especially important to note. The reason why it was narrowed down to the three resources you see in front of you. These three are considered to be a comprehensive resource.
And so you'll know in your appendix slide and those of you that were with us in our SBC C meeting. We refer to Scarborough's reading rope quite often as a hallmark of really a visual metaphor. Of that systematic weaving. Of foundational skills and comprehension. So the resources you saw in previous slides. Might address one or the other, but the three that were important to show up in our classrooms. Classrooms were based on structured literacy practices and grounded in Scarborough's reading rope. From there, those resources. Resources. We had such an amazing opportunity to invite educators,
all educators. Educators K five to participate in a review. That review landed with 57 of our elementary teachers ranging from K through five. They also had a wealth of experience anywhere from it was their first year and they were willing to try it all the way through 20 plus years of experience in the classroom. It's also important to note that these. Classrooms varied between title one buildings. Buildings and non-Title buildings. Buildings, which meant that we had an impact of over 1,400 students. Students that had a V various ranges of different needs. So it's important that we have that participation, but also
to consider how is that supported for teachers and students in the classroom? As they're implementing a new resource. So that showed up in a few different ways. Various vendors would offer coaching as well as the teaching and learning department. We had afterschool collaborations. Collaborations many classroom visits. Grade level collaborations. Collaborations and learning labs and just to. Give you some common language for a learning lab. That's an experience where teachers get to visit other classrooms. Classrooms, they're viewing that through a certain focus and lens. They see it in action in real time. And then we debrief that afterwards. With a comprehensive literacy review underway, the timing felt appropriate.
To revisit our community literacy beliefs that were originally established. In 2017. We worked with staff to reshape our literacy goals, to reflect what our educators and community value. This work started with our literacy leadership team. And we ask them to reflect on the experience they want their students to have inside their classrooms. Classrooms as well as their fundamental beliefs about how children learn and the teacher role in that. We then met with teachers from across all of our schools to discuss their beliefs. So that educator voice. Was reflected in how we envision our literacy classrooms.
Classrooms, the beliefs reflect our commitment to teaching that builds both strong skills in a genuine love for reading. Alwa honoring each individual's student. Hope there was. Okay. Thank you. We used the RRCs curriculum, evaluation rubric as part of this process and this rubric. Assesses alignment between instructional resources. Resources, our core literacy beliefs. Beliefs and evidence-based research and tools. As cited by M D E such as the reading league guidelines in IES, rubrics. Rubrics drafts of the rubric were shared with our strategic plan one. Our literacy leadership team and our learning consultant team to
elicit feedback and revise before using with teachers. Teachers all three comprehensive resources underwent the same evaluation process where educators had the opportunity. To evaluate materials through a structured three phase inquiry. Phase one was the individual reflection. So teachers had the opportunity to use the one to four rating scale on the slide there. They engaged in independent review. And scoring based on the rubric criteria. We then had collaborative. Calibration where teachers met in grade level or cross grade level teams. To sort of share and discuss, examine evidence.
Identify trends with one another. The it's important to note that the goal of this phase was professional alignment in that group. Consensus. We then had phase three, which was the final submission and teachers then had the opportunity to reflect on those collaborative conversations and submitted their individual. Conclusions as we shared the results of the evaluation rubric, we'll explore the criteria in more detail. Thank you, Danielle. So as Danielle shared the literacy beliefs, define what we value. Most for students in Rochester. And then we turn those literacy beliefs into action by creating, guiding principles.
The guiding principles along with the MD recommended resources and tools. Served as the foundation of our evaluation rubric. The, the criteria we use measure to measure success aligns directly back to our core values. And existing evidence-based frameworks. Frameworks by putting the beliefs into action this way we can make sure that our evaluation is a true reflection of the goals we have for every student. So I'm gonna take us through each section of the evaluation rubric and the results that came from those sections. So evaluation section one is comprehensive instruction, knowledge building, and
mindset. And this se section evaluates the curriculum's alignment with the reading science. Specifically checking for a systematic. Scope and sequence of foundational skills and the use of knowledge, rich content. It also assesses whether instructional tasks prioritize student joy, encourage a growth mindset. Through productive struggle and promote critical inquiry, all parts of our beliefs and guiding principles. As we go through those. Results at the top. You'll see the criteria that was used. So for this slide, you'll see one, one foundational knowledge. And that is what the, the teachers were rating based
on. And we're looking for. Blue and green as the criteria. Being substantially match or adequately match. I'm gonna kind of go through these quickly. This slide has our deep knowledge and joyful development and appropriate practice. And I'm sure you're starting to see a trend in our. Data. And then we have growth mindset and productive struggle along with critical inquiry and context. In evaluation, section two, we were looking at access equity and relevance. This section focuses on equitable. Access evaluating how the curriculum provides differentiation.
And accommodations for special populations, such as multilingual and advanced learners. Learners. It also examines the cultural relevance of materials, ensuring that tech selections reflect diversity. And our students students as we go through those again, we're looking for that green and blue. So we have equitable access and differentiation. Culturally relevant and affirming. Prior knowledge and interest-based connection and meaningful and asset-based representation. Who I went fast. Sorry. Moving along. On, and then going on to section three. This was assessment and impact. So this section evaluates the effect effectiveness of the curriculum's assessment system, including how well it uses screening and formative
data to provide students with timely and actionable feedback. Additionally, it looks at the instructional design for small group practice and whether the curriculum supports system-wide collaboration. And evidence-based professional development. And here we have four criterion. So assessment for action. Feedback quality. Instructional design for success and system-wide collaboration and professional development. I'm gonna turn it over to Kimberly. Who's gonna talk a little bit more about other evaluation considerations. Oh, shoot. Thank you, Amber. Yeah. In addition to the rubrics that we've just reviewed and
the criterion as educators marked them from. Condition not met to criteria. Substantially met. We, we knew there were other factors. Beyond the content within the, the discipline of reading, writing language and foundational skills. As well as the educator experience or student experience, while those, I believe. Are are paramount to us. We, we know that we want our educators to feel very well served and engaged with the materials that we. Provide for them to deliver the highest quality instruction possible for the children in
Rochester Hills. Rochester community schools. Pardon me? We also know that there are other, other elements here that, that needed our attention. And while our practitioners were very generous in their, their classroom research, opening their doors and, and allowing us. From all corners of the organization, time with their children to hear about what's going well for them. How does this help you? What is the, how does this excite you? How does this help you read better? The we are grateful is an understatement for the amount of time we had in classrooms, understanding the, the lived experience of our children and our educators throughout this process.
But in addition, there were some additional criterion here. You see administrative support the way that our building principles and our central office administrators are able to not only engage with this work, but also. Logistically be able to support and, and be in confidence that we're caring forward. Quality materials into our classrooms, of course is important to all of us. That administrative support was an important element. The scalability and, and sustainability for us is really about the ways that we begin to consider. Inter integrity of implementation. What are the ways that we can. Grow with material while also recognizing that that coherence for
children in transitional kindergarten through fifth grade is really important component of how children. Acquire more complex skill. And become more confident along the way as the, as the, the things we're asking them to do are building upon one another year over year. Right. And so resources that allow us to scale well are important resources that allow us to have a professional learning model that sustainable, and that really reaches each of our educators is, is also important. And so come conversations are around how each of these tools would scale or that we would have a ability to.
Sustain them was a very important metric for us in terms of our ultimate recommendation. In addition. The way that we would have a budgetary impact is just a real conversation, right? Certainly fiscal year 27. Will have an impact regardless where this work is concerned, but some more significant than others. And I'll talk about that just in just a moment. In addition, we did bring this material to the superintendent's policy and curriculum committee. And of course tonight for the full board of education's consideration, the support of our recommendation. You saw the rubric graphs with, with the responses there.
And what wouldn't have been represented in those graphs. Graphs were elements that were related to. These notions of administrative support, scalability in the budget. And so when we think about each of these products, having particular strength, we recognize that there were also challenges that they would provide for Rochester community schools. C K L a had strengths in those rubric areas that Amber had just shared. However, in other key areas of consideration, challenges were noted anecdotally by staff, specifically with regard to the level of rigor, particularly in grades K three. There were noted progressions that were.
Anywhere from three to six months atypical for what we see in Rochester, community schools, classrooms. Classrooms. And that seemed to permeate multiple reviewers. In addition to that, I think there were observed. Need to incentivize children to engage. There were some amendments happening with materials or resources that. In order to engage children differently, began to have some flags for us about the way we would quickly ad hoc or fancy up or change particular portions of the curriculum that would. Diverge from that notion or need for coherence that I was speaking about when students sort of stack up across
the six year span with some cohesive curriculum resources. Resources. Moving on to the American reading company. I think the notes that would be helpful for you to hear there. Our initial concerns were related to the rubric that had been red flagged by the department of education. As the comprehension portion. Was highly noted for its. Its comprehension of content, but not. As much strategy, right? Comprehension is a strategy where. The knowledge building portions of our curriculum. Are really highlighting. Content at grade level tax that is. Expanding for children, that knowledge building portion, that is a
part of the five domains of reading. And the way that that comprehension was unfolding within that particular resource was more about the content than the strategy. That that readers were to employ. And that's coming from the rubric. Not our educators rubric, but from the department of education, in terms of why that particular. Body of work had been flagged. I think for us, we. Greatly appreciated the responsiveness of American reading company, the professional learning that our staff was able to engage in. Served us very well. And also pro promotes a bit of a challenge in terms of our ability to sustain
that over time across 13 campuses. The, the last element I would name here is the budgetary challenge with the product coming in at 2.9 million and an additional yearly cost of nearly 200,000 for consumables and continued access to the assessment platform. And so given that comparison, to, to what we're bringing forward tonight. The, the benefits to that work did not outweigh. The challenges that we saw in those areas. So this evening, the teaching and learning department recommends the adoption of magnetic literacy as an evidence-based tier one literacy resource for all K five classrooms. Classrooms as measured by our analysis of student and educator
experiences. Or the rubric ratings, scalability, sustainability budget, implication, and administrative support. We'd like to share some of the components of the program this evening as well. And Lori will lead us through multiple examples of the way that magnetic develops readers and nurtures thinking. Our students' real, our, our. Are equipped quite well and what we've observed with thus far, and certainly the anticipated cost that you see at the top, right there is coming in significantly under 2.9 million to get us started. So that's, that's a bit of good news from our lens. So when we think about
the 26 27 implementation cost for magnetic. Literacy. It's just over $690,000. And this includes all of the tools. That will this includes all the tools for both teachers and students to be successful. So we're thinking about. Teacher guides with both physical and digital. Access student work texts. Anchor charts. Tech sets. And then for our kindergarten through second grade classrooms, those foundational skills components are part of the resource. Classroom decodeable libraries.
We think about articulation cards, spelling cards. Cards vocabulary cards. And then lastly, professional development that will be supported by curriculum associates. Associates then when we think. Beyond 2027 into 27 28 school year. The annual recurring cost would be approximately $280,000. Which would include the student work tax and digital access for teachers. Teachers we'd like to highlight some of the features of magnetic literacy.
And rather than teaching skills in isolation, the curriculum. Weaves foundational decoding with rich. With rich content. This is aligned to reading science. And murals Scarborough's rope, which Kim refer to earlier. Where word recognition and language. Comprehension reinforce one another. Through deep knowledge building. Magnetic literacy is referred to as a think thinking curriculum, which is. Supported by rigorous text sets. That honor inquiry, curiosity. And while nurturing knowledge. The use of text sets, layer up layers opportunities for students to build foundational skills along with comprehension.
Strategies around a topic of study. Magnetic literacy is purposeful in inquiry-based. Every unit is anchored in an essential question. And this ensures students, aren't just scanning words, but are reading to extract and synthesize meaning. And lastly, we wanna highlight tonight that magnetic literacy has a robust assessment. System with a direct correlation to the iReady benchmark. Assessment. So using this diagnostic. Along with literacy tasks and the embedded unit as assessments. Allows for a responsive approach to students.
Students and the built-in support and extend time in magnetic literacy. Allows us to support both our striving. Learners and our advanced learners. Learners, our team has had the opportunity to see these features in action. And Mike is going to share some voices from the field. I'll do my best, Lori. Thanks for teeing that up. I'm sure when you've been in site visits, you kind of feel the buzz or each building, each classroom kind of has a different vibe to it. And when we were going around to visit C K L a classrooms art classrooms or magnetic literacy classrooms, you could definitely feel the buzz. When you went into a, a magnetic literacy classroom.
And thinking back to those five pillars where it had like the. Educator voice the educator and student feedback portion. Like the students were really the ones driving that like, you'd have a little kid first grader pulling on my pant leg or shoulder like Mr. Can we show you this thinking map back here, they were just excited to share whatever, whatever it was, they were learning. And that is kind of rare. And it's really cool to see that when that happens. Lori had mentioned this as a. Build itself as a thinking curriculum. And that's an important distinction. Do you hit this button? If you think back to, I don't know if you've read the book by Dr. Ron rich Harton and Dr. Mark Church, their principal researchers out
of Harvard's project zero. They've written a book called. Oh, next slide. I'm sorry. Oh, oh, stay there. Sorry. Hang on. I had myself there they built itself as a thinking curriculum. And what's really kind of nice about that is it has a consistent structure and format to it, and it has different, consistent routines. I should say. Where students are asked to build. Knowledge by using those rich techs that Lori was talking about. And kind of anchoring back those essential questions. Some examples. Examples are, it was a first grade classroom. Like how can maps help us understand our world? Or third grade classroom, like what can we learn by
seeing from different perspectives? Perspectives. So kids are anchoring back these essential questions, looking at texts, different text sets. To try and create knowledge that tie back to that essential question. They're synthesizing from multiple resources, not just one. And then what's really kind of a beautiful feature. Is it is explicit with what the end expectation is. In most cases, it's like some sort of presentation. To the class or some kind of written communication. But you don't have to take, if you think back to. Reading rainbow. You're old enough to remember reading rainbow. But don't take my word for it. You have a
video clip for you. They should, this is a second grade classroom where they were researching national parks. The essential question was why are national parks important? There is audio. I don't know how to change that. Girl is y'all things that Yosem national park trying to waterfall. Thank you to our presentation, national park. Park that one was an exciting one. When we were in there, we got pulled into the hallway and the classroom teachers, like where did Mrs. Moosa go? she
was, the kids were just excited to share on, just share their learning with Mrs. Moro and that regard. So when you cut the can go next line. When you couple these project based approach to the skill being taught in context. That's really where you're kind of, you're seeing the magic happen. It's not just like this theoretical thing anymore. Next slide there. So this is the. Oh, that's the right one. So, this is where I was getting at earlier with Dr. Mark Church and Dr. Ron rich Hart. They've written a book called cultures of thinking in action. And they did a meta-analysis of a lot of different. Learning traits dispositions. Dispositions about what students are and what they're becoming. And in their research, they determine that there's two.
Dispositions that showed up on all of these lists and those two. Were curiosity and metacognition, and those are important. Because curiosity, primes the brain for learning. And retaining information. It allows students to grapple with uncertainty and that's a, a skill that we're trying to encourage and foster in students. Students. And then when you think of metacognition, that's the ability for students to understand what they need to know. What they don't yet know and how they can kind of bridge the gap between those two spots. They're thinking about any misconceptions that they may have. How they can grow their own understanding. And they can be reflective about the learning process.
And if you think about the, how to implement this type of resource. Obviously, we're gonna be leaning into the curriculum associates team to kind of help us. You know, build staff, understanding about how the pieces fit together in a seamless, a seamlessly as possible. In buzzing. Sorry. And then obvi the homeschool partnerships are really valuable too. And we sent out a survey. To caregivers at home three questions and we had over 300 responses and it was really beautiful to kind of see what the community values.
And kind of lay that beside the RCS literacy beliefs, which was earlier in the presentation. And this is something that is UN questions. One and three. There was a lot of overlap in those Venn diagrams. And then looking at what is challenging to support reading at home. Like that's gonna be front of mind when we're kind of engaging with teachers. Teachers about how we can bridge that gap between home and school. Thank you very much. Thank you, of course, to this team. I think that it's it's clear that the work that we shared this evening stands on the shoulders of many elementary educators across
this organization. As I mentioned earlier, maybe a little prematurely, we're grateful for. Their time in their classrooms for researching. As practitioners in lifetime with a room full of children is, is no small ask. And so we were grateful for the way that they rose to the occasion. There was definitely a strong sense of we're in this together. And we're looking for you know, the next resource that, that not only fits Rochester community schools, but us as educators and the students we serve. I think within that, it's important to say that we know. That there is no one size perfect fits all curriculum. We recognize that that is simply a resource to enact
the larger body of standards that we're responsible for. Actually the number one impact is high re highly related to skilled efficacious educators that are guided by evidence-based instructional strategies. Their use of data and maybe most importantly, the relationships they form with the children in their classroom. And so what we struck a balance for in this endeavor was really to think about how our educators come alive with the resources we provide. How do we see ourselves in the beliefs that we hold as important values in education here? Alongside any of these, these resources. Resources. And certainly then there's PA 1 46 that we're all
ultimately responsible for. So before opening up for questions, I do want to clarify a few things about what's ahead, given this recommendation. Knowing what we have learned about the research base of magnetic literacy. Not just here in Rochester, but the way this program has been developed and the way that magnetic foundations have been fully approved. And aligned with all that the department is looking for. Given what we've learned about this expanded list that will. Add some new resources in both July. And then again in December of 2026, because remember their timeline is for fall of 27. That as those lists continue to expand, we are confident
that magnetic literacy would be included on that list. We recognize that the magnetic foundations, that K2 portion is what's embedded within magnetic literacy. So that's one hurdle that's already been managed. Managed are those found foundational skills components. Components, of course they've resubmitted for the July 1st. Issuance of the list expansion. And in meeting with the department of education, we do understand that there will be no rolling approvals, like thanks for turning in your homework early. We're gonna go ahead and let you know that that's a green light, all will be released at one time, which we anticipate to be the end of June or as they describe, you
know, start of July, which lines up very well with our fiscal year. 27, which is when we would enact these dollars. To get materials purchased for children. Should that not be the case. If, if this should go in a different direction than, than what we're expecting. We would certainly want to enact the feedback and input of our educators once they return from their summer. And revisit the tools that are on the approved list through that first semester. To be enacting a shared curriculum in the second half of next school year. So that would be how we'd pivot. In in July, should things not come to fruition in the way that we anticipate. But again, that, that strong research base and alignment with
several areas of interest to the district, as well as the five areas of reading and the elements outlined is required in PA 1 46 field to be, to be met by this particular resource. This is the end of our slides. Thank you very much team. What questions might you have for us? Before I ask my colleagues, if they have any questions, I do want to say, thank you. We three of us here in the SBCC committee were. Shown these, I know it's been shared in the cabinet notes, but I really appreciate you all coming. Speaking to it. It was very comprehensive. I sensed the energy. You talked about energy in classrooms.
I sensed the energy from all of you as prof presenters for this information, and I appreciate your professionalism and bringing it forward. With that said this and, and so I, but I will open it up to questions before we make any motions to proceed with anything. Trustee Blake. Well, sir, first of all, I wanna echo what she said and thank everyone who has been involved in this monumental. Undertaking. This is really the culmination of years. Of work and research and advocacy and. Board resolutions. And then the law changed and all that. I do think this is a generational decision here. This
is probably the most important thing that we've done since I've joined the board. And so I appreciate all the care that went into it. I know that we've been impatient. I've been impatient. We wanted this last year, but I'm glad that there was a good. Robust process. So I tried to get my questions down. I got 'em down to four, but I'm only gonna do one at a time and maybe the other ones will get answered. The first one you kind of touched on, but I wanted to, I wanted to make clear on the timeline. So when you started in fall of 2024, you, you had Orton-Gillingham. You fly wit wisdom and arc. And then in the winter of 2026, you added two more resources. I think
it's 26. 26, right? Yes, sir. Two, two resources. And so then. You did the rubric on three, you picked three and did the rubric, but I guess what. What happened along the way to make you think you needed to add additional. Resources or what were you. Seeing that said we gotta add a couple and then why. Did you evaluate those and not do an evaluation on the other ones? And then. Tied with that because you were. Doing the, the magnetic literacy for a shorter time. Does that affect your confidence? In any way that that's the right decision. Thank you, trustee Blake. We, we did evaluate you fly Norton Gillingham with the
RCS rubric. Because they're foundational skills. There's only portions that are able to be answered. And the rest of the rubric was not applicable because we were shifting into looking for a comprehensive resource. And so we did GA gather feedback from our educators. We know that they are really appreciating both of those resources and it's perhaps helpful for me to add here that we envision each of these coming into our tier two, two, and tier three work across our organation. There's, there's not anticipated to be a wagon gathering up and, and disposing of, or, or selling off material that will serve children in a variety, a variety of ways.
It's probably also worth noting that you fly. Is on the approved list as is magnetic foundations on the approved list. And they're each scored at the same degree of. Green with the state's rubric. And so we recognize that that systemic approach has been well received by our teachers. And, and we anticipate with the professional learning that we've been doing that shifting, you know, to the left or to the right, with a resources is not gonna come with without pain points. But I, I believe that once they're engaged with this work, will be as equally well received. I think that the, the thing to note about Witten wisdom at the time that it was in Rochester.
Community schools. Classrooms was not a comprehensive program. It was paired with another foundational skills resource. And that notion of toggling between was. Some feedback we had received from previous curricula as a challenge for our educators. So we really were looking for a one integrated. System the best that we could find it. But that being said, even had written wisdom at that time, Ben fully comprehensive. That was right upon my arrival in the organization. And after the principles that leading that work with their schools, gave it a, a really solid college try for a great deal of time there in the fall.
And it did not match what we were looking for in our classrooms in terms of our need to be responsiveness, responsive to children. Across the full continuum of learning in our classroom. So that was evaluated, not that we didn't have the rubric at that time. And was evaluated more anecdotally alongside the five areas of reading and from the feedback with the educators in those schools that in get grades K three that had engaged with wit and wisdom. Does that help understand how those were evaluated? Yeah, that that's helpful. Trustee Loza. Us on my questions. So good job. Let we go again. I gotta sit all the way over here. Thank you for all of that. I see in the
presentation that it was magnetic literacy was at five of the schools. How many of those classrooms in those schools, was it all of. The school or just certain classes. And then additionally, are we still going to. Assess the students with using iReady with this curriculum, because it's my understanding, it's the same creators of iReady that created this curriculum. Are there any other assessment tools that we're going to use? And is, is, are they all aligned with the state's recommendations as well? Thank you, trustee Loza. Ozon I'm going to tackle the assessment question first. Because this year has been. Full of resource review.
The need for us to. Analyze our assessment portfolio. Is upcoming right with a, a newly required screener and progress monitoring tool to be enacted by August of 2027. We recognize that that screener list is also in the process of expansion. At the moment, there are two that have been approved. There have been nine submissions for children in grade six through 12, and none of the nine have been approved. So we anticipate a, a, a bit of momentum and movement within the approved. Assessment list and we'll certainly do our due diligence across next school year to identify. What those screeners and progress monitoring tools will be across
the TK through 12 space. For the coming school year. Certainly we would be continuing. That work with iReady. Which is our benchmark assessment as required by the original PA 3 0 6. And so that's also still in play. In terms of the number of schools being five. Magnetic literacy was used at every grade level. K five, but not across K five at the school's named. If that's helpful as had been mentioned at the start, our resource. Team was completely voluntary. And you can imagine as we've moved into the start of year two with this work.
We are as a group of educators really eager to get into some shared learning and shared work. And, and hats off to folks raising their hands to volunteer, to try these programs on in their classrooms. But it is a bit of an undertaking at the mid-year mark to make a transition from where you've been teaching to what the children are in your room. Conceptually need to what's up next. All of those timelines and lesson and unit sequences are quite diverse across a range of material. And so we're, we're thrilled with those that, that jumped in and were willing to help us out in this research. We had originally
15 classrooms. Raising their hand for a, a magnetic literacy body of resources. And at the end of the review, we landed with. for a ver a variety of reasons. Reasons. Okay. 17 classrooms reviewing C K L a. So it would be the same. You said that teachers kind of changed directions. So. Those that were pilot piloting a program that. Wasn't working. Mm-hmm . Did they change to a different pilot or did they continue that pilot? I can say with confidence that anytime we had an educator with concern about the progress, children were able to make with a product. There was eager advocacy to need to discontinue.
where folks were able to well match material with, with their instruction and the students in their rooms. Things continued. So for example with wit and wisdom last school year. That was discontinued fairly early in the school year after I believe two units worth of time. And then. The teachers in those schools return to the, those coping sequence that they'd been previously using. Yeah. One of the things I think that's important. Given the school. Looking at American reading company. The work in 2024, started out in grades K three. In both wi in wisdom and American reading company. And then in this coming school year, knowing that our timeline
was. Going to involve some extended review. What was important for those educators was that they were able to continue meeting needs of children in a consistent way. And, and shout out to our fourth grade staff in those schools who said, Rolling up into their classrooms had had a year's worth of experience with that work. And that commitment to seeing something through on behalf of children is, is what was exemplified there. At those schools, each of our fifth grade teams took on. The opposite. Right? So one school taking up CCK, L a at the fifth grade level and the other taking magnetic at the, at the fifth grade level. So that those were also able to be.
You know, more informally observed and or partnered against, or next to, I should say, perhaps a better word, American reading company. Trustee Vik. First, just a, kind of a follow up question. You said there were. 12 teachers who did magnetic literacy, 17, who did the. Amplify CK, L a. And how many were doing the American reading? 24 classrooms in 24, 25 and 30 classrooms in 25, 26. That's the addition of those fourth grades. I mentioned. All right. And then sorry for just a couple of my questions were asked. Did any of the teachers. Teachers, because it did sound like some switch. Did any.
Experience more than one of. The three that you evaluated in the end. Yes, ma'am okay. When the. And wisdom. Work discontinued. And those teachers and those campuses returned to our original scope and sequence that was mid last school year. This school year, several of those teachers. Teachers were once again, willing to take a look at C K L a or magnetic literacy as well. And of course in multiple campuses, they're all also working with Youfly or Orton Gillingham. So that answer is yes. And then I was just
hoping you could kind of. Help me understand, because I don't really. I mean, I kinda looked at what the Michigan department of education had for the. Amplify CK, L a and I mean, it got Reve reviews, right? And it did not. Hear. So, can you help explain that a little bit? I, I heard you say something about it not being challenging enough, maybe. For our student population, but can you address some of that to help me better understand the discrepancy that we're seeing there? Sure. I can't help with understanding the department's ranking of
the cur of the criteria, the curriculum with their criteria. That's something that. The literacy, the committee for literacy achievement or literacy advancement. Forgive me. I'm not certain of their precise title given by the department. But that's a body of work that they've done a bit of training and consensus building upon. Together to establish those ratings. And I'm, I'm, we're less familiar with how those numbers are, are coming forward. But what I can share is that the. The educators across Rochester. Would would share with you that the. And I'll give an example at the midyear point. Around February.
We were noting that in our early. Literacy. Work. The units that had been shared. To be delivered at the mid-year point. Or concepts or, or bodies of teaching or, and learning that had occurred in a typical September. Let's say in kindergarten. And so the, the one letter at a time approach. The the staged way. That I'm sorry, the staged is the wrong word. The way that the learning was sequenced in, in lower grades in particular. Was not creating the same. Energy first of all in our classrooms, but also. The the level or the pace at which students were making progress.
Would not have been what we were used to seeing in our instructional resources, materials and practices. Practices. I think one of the things that was. Noted, particularly by our educators was related to. What for lack of a better term, I'd call the visual appeal of materials. Students were disengaging with the work text or disengaging with the writing that they needed to do in response because of the closed nature of the prompts and the way that students weren't. Able to expand into different connectedness either with the big ideas, the essential questions,
the things that came forward. Frankly much more strongly within magnetic literacy. For us, I think it's not necessarily about all of the areas of deficit. But rather each of the strengths that we see in CCK L a we see. Amplified plus a few benefits in magnetic literacy. So it isn't that the product. Itself, doesn't provide a, a rich literacy experience for children. I don't know that we would make that type of claim on any products that we've looked at. I think our task is to think about what best matches for this community. And those were some of the indicators that had been shared back with us.
Trustee Blake. So I, I wish there was, and I know there is nothing like this in the world, but I wish there were like some type of. Longitudinal studies, where they start kids here and measure their reading, and then they use this product and measure it at a certain point. And. And do that and you can compare, but I understand that that doesn't really exist, but what. What are we going to do? Or how are we going to know? I. In two years or in three years, that. Our product is working. Do we have. Goals as far as testing, or as far as. What, what are our goals so that we can reconvene in a year or two year and three and say, well, that was a good choice. We, we know it
was working. We know it because of this. What, what are is that mm-hmm . Is that? Thank you. Trusty Blake. I think the human endeavor is definitely complex, right? Each of our, our children have a different starting point. The way that our instruction unfolds in our classroom has different connection points with different learners at different times and different in different paces. And so I think our classroom assessments are one of the, the primary ways we would be begin to do dig into that. I think we would also expect to see. Same or better performance on the indicators that we use to monitor our progress. Whether those be things like iReady or things like MSTEP certainly.
The research would suggest that anytime you implement a new. Strategy or a new curricular there, there may be that sort of implementation dip is referred to. I also think we see a lot of gains when we have a cohesion together in shared practices, shared resources and a shared trajectory for children. I think also has a lot of benefit in the growth that children make. So I, I would not say after one year within particular new resource in a classroom, that we would make a causation to a. Particular achievement score, but certainly we will, through our implementation planning, want to be gathering all kinds of input and feedback
from, from our educators, from the ancillary staff that wrap around and support them. From our building principles. And then of course from more traditional achievement measures. Measures from our students themselves. We'd also love to hear more about their experiences and the way that they talk to us about how learning works and, or doesn't work for them. Right. Their voices in our classrooms are, are incredibly important. And something that we want to continue to turn up the volume on here. Do we have any members that haven't spoken yet? Yes, trustee . okay. Well, I'll be honest. I have a few. Hesitations about this curriculum. One is that it's not, it's not fully on the state's list yet. Mm-hmm . So that is a hesitation.
I also know we've only been piloting it since January, which is much shorter time span than the other curriculums we've been using. And I'm also still trying to understand why when we were narrowing the curriculums, I understand it sounds like wit and wisdom. Was not working well, but it made sense to discontinue that one. But it's hard for me to understand why we were focused on narrowing down to a. A comp one comprehensive. Resource because like you said, usually there's no one size fits all curriculum. And my understanding is that there are five pillars of literacy, right? Phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
And different curriculums generally have different strengths in those different areas. And I've heard from teachers that I've spoken with, that when you pair some of these curriculums together, like for instance, I think Orton Gillingham and you fly for instance, it can work really well. And you fly is practically free as a resource. So it doesn't add a lot of extra cost. So I was very surprised when I looked and saw that those weren't included. Included. And now I understand. That we were looking for one comprehensive resource. And I'm still just struggling with understanding that. There were a couple other questions I had about the
evaluation. Process in the rubric. I asked ahead of time. If I could see what was the evaluation rubric. And were there different areas that were weighted more heavily than other areas? Areas because, you know, I looked and I saw there was a category on there that had a whole bunch of stuff in it, like foundational reading criteria and, and alignment was structured, was structured literacy. And that seemed like a really important category to me. There is another category. That honestly. It, it, it talked about joy and developmental learning and the language reminded me a little bit of Lucy Calkins to be quite honest. And I just thought I wouldn't
weigh wait. These two areas equally necessarily if, if I were going up about the, this, so I was curious. Is it weighted the same way? And I have a couple more questions about the rubric, but let's just start with that one. Okay. The rubric was not weighted. That each of the three areas were evaluated. And, and I think one of the things important to mention is that when we worked with our educators to do range finding and to. Think about the way the criterion were addressed. The, the notion was not to be submitting a vote, but rather to take the independent criterion independent and against
the, the particular resource that was being evaluated at that time. So when you ask about the rubric. Each of the criterion are listed in slides. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but all of the slides that look like these are the criterion that our educators evaluated against. And then they used the, the scale of did not meet to at. Met in blue. Substantially met. And so each of the criteria that are educators looked at are at the top of those graphs. Graphs. And then the way that. We take under, under consideration.
Those elements of reading that are requirements of PA 1 46 are, are, are a given. Those are the non-negotiables within our decision making. And so we recognize that. Ideally the state decides to put magnetic literacy on the approved list. But at the same token, what was important for our process was that we were able to. Engage openly and transparently and comprehensively with our educators and then bring forward. Their most favorable recommendation to this board for your consideration. And so we knew full well going in that there would be question or, or concern perhaps about the status
of Michigan's approval process. And at the same time, what our educators really felt strongly about and what we noted both from the budgetary implications, as well as the scalability. Was that this product, regardless of how the department feels about it really feels very well matched to what our educators are, are ready to take on in the organization. And also the experiences our students have that being said, we know the, the logistics and the S of PA 1, 4, 6, and, and the implications there in. They're in the idea to have a comprehensive program or to parcel. Across the areas of reading certainly is, is a district's
purview. Dr. Oswell so I really appreciate the deep questions our trustees are asking. Most of the questions that I have, you know, asked trustee lives on a trustee Blake covered. And I, I was asking. Was interested a little bit about hearing about the rubric. But I really appreciate that you gave us a data rush presentation. For like, for me as a trustee, there's a balance between governance and oversight with respect, for professionals that we entrust to educate our students every day. I'm a practicing ELA teacher. I loved like observe those lessons and get in there and see those primary documents that we talked about.
In the social studies, but that's not my lane here. That's not my role here. So I'm excited that you guys are excited about this curriculum. But there's a balance between. Governance and micromanagement between respect for our educational professionals and second guessing them. So it's not that I forgive me. It's not that I have blind faith in you guys. I really do look at this at a critical lens. And, you know, you've been. Listening and talking to the Esper experts. This presentation included the, the focus on science of reading, which we, as a board have been asking for for a long time. I think it's one of the earliest things that trustee Luco and I agreed on.
It included measurable data. It included financial considerations. It included insight to classrooms and stakeholders, voices, including teachers and students and parents. So I think this really met the expectations. At least I, I hope that many of the trustees can, can reflect on this body of work. And it definitely met expectations of myself and, you know, looking at this with a critical lens. I, I, I appreciate the detail that you went to. And the proactiveness of getting those, those voices and giving us the insights into the classroom. So I really appreciate
the work that you did on this. Thank you trustee. OSPA Dr. Wynn Perdue. Do you have any questions before I let anybody else ask more? Okay. Trustee. Luk hooey. Okay. Well, another thing I was going to ask about the evaluation process is. I'm reflecting and you know, I've, I've been on this board. This is maybe my. Third what? My third year . But until very recently. Many of our educators were all in on the whole language approach and we were using balance literacy. And we're trying to, we're shifting over, we're getting into structured literacy. And evaluation tools can have their limitations and stuff too.
And that's why. The reading league has a, like, how to evaluate guideline. Type of a report that they put out the compass report. And it allows districts to. Evaluate curriculums using their tool. It's used to looking for red flags to make sure that you're truly aligning with science of reading. And for districts that don't have. Qualified personnel yet, perhaps they don't have the credentials and experience that would be needed. They put out lists of publishers on there that have met the criteria too, to help out. I know that. In 2024 magnetic literacy declined to have their program evaluated.
Similar thing happened with Lucy Calkins units of study and found us in Pinnell. I don't know if that could have potentially changed at this point. But I was curious about that. And I wondered. If magnetic literacy. Has been evaluated by them when they sought. When they sought that opportunity from the publisher. Or if we use that tool and if so, what kind of credentials and experience. Did the teachers have, who were. Evaluating it mm-hmm . Thank you very much for that question, because I think what is important to recognize when the team developed. The RCS rubric and used the standards from the department
of education. We very quickly recognize that to ask. A group of educators to. Usurp or, or work over on top of the work of the reading league. That wasn't really a good use of our time. So. During several leadership team meetings, both the work of reading league and I E S rubric were analyzed, closely conversations had around these red fat flag documents. As we were looking to establish those three layers that you see in a, our own rubric. I, I would need to do a little more digging into what you've described in 2024. And I'm assuming perhaps that's magnetic foundations, that, that we
were wondering if it were submitted. I'm not, I'm not certain. Magnetic literacy has a publication date of 20, 26. So they would not have had anything to submit. And that's one of the reasons that we recognize. Being out in front with this material is, is both exciting and, and brings question because the. Curriculum associates group were not able to meet the state's initial. Request for proposal or, or submissions. Earlier this fall because the material was not published. So I think that the question mark around what perhaps wasn't submitted, I wouldn't be the best person to speak to, but I could get that information for you so that we've got some accuracy around the timeline and what
the reading league requested. I think that is important. Yes, trustee. LASAN blazon I asked this during SPCC, but I just wanted to ask it again for everybody else. If the state does not approve this. What is plan B is it somebody on the list? Is it something else? Are we still gonna go with it? Because the foundation portion is already approved. Does that change anything? Or, or what is, what's the plan? Thank you. Trustee Lohan. We have had conversation with our intermediate school district, with the department of education, with as much information as we can gather. We recognize that the finer point of the law.
While using something that is approved, like magnetic foundations. Potentially does eliminate that. Fiscal challenge that may come. But at the same token. I think what we would look to do is see the expanded list on July 1st. And tool ourselves from that point to determine what's working in classrooms in the coming fall. I think that to embark on a, on a purchase of this scale without the input and involvement of our educators in that first half of the school year would be an error that we would. Continually be running after. Both support and alignment from our, from our classroom teams.
And so if this were to not be on the January list, that would be our plan of action. Trustee Blake. Yeah, I just, I also was curious and I think you touched on this, but. How, how many hours or time will it take for a teacher to be who, who was not part of. This pilot to be trained and up to speed on this. And. Is that something, you know, when did, when would that occur? I mean, we're ordering it over the summer. I remember when bridges started, that was my first year in the district. And the, the teacher literally had the boxes in her office and was unpacking them on the first day of school. And that's not ideal, but I
know they also don't generally work over the summer. So how do you train what's the plan for getting that done so that they can hit the ground running? Thank you. Certainly that is not ideal. And we know that the number of professional learning hours that we need to do things well, when we can stay focused on a singular topic, far exceed the amount of hours that we have available to us in public education. That's certainly a, a work of future advocacy for sure. Sure. The the spring timing is a challenge and where we had hoped to leverage our. Spring interactions with teachers. Teachers were around opening classroom doors.
Some observation work, some lab work, some study time with our. Up and coming resource. That being said, I, I fully believe that we don't. Don't outfit educators during non-con contractual time for the work that we expect them to enact with children. And so we are bound by that return date in August. And working diligently, not only with curriculum associates, implementation partners. Partners, but also with our team. Our learning consultants, our building principles are, are certainly all poised and ready for that challenge is, is difficult. As we know that it can be. I think there's great energy around.
The fact that we're stepping forward together. With a new resource and I'm confident that we'll be off and running to a great start. The, the family partners, the portion of the survey that Mr. Ginner spoke about. Was really strategic in, in its effort to. Hear from our families prior to fall. So that as new resources are coming forward. There's often less interested in, in the what and more about the how and how as a parent, can I be your, my child's teacher's partner. And so that input will be used as we frame things like curriculum night and possible little literacy nights at
the building level. Where we know that parents are really drawn to wanna engage with their classroom teachers, with their principals, with their school communities. That all makes a, a great, great deal of sense for families when it's connected to their school. As compared to a, a district's. District's sort of review night, if you will. So that's the future plan for that caregiver feedback into next school year? That's one component of how. We'll we'll enact that plan. Of course, directly with our teachers. We'll be through professional learning time. Access to materials as quickly as possible, including. Online components that can be reviewed. We have a Padlet right now that our staff are using and sharing and, and just watching that energy build
has been great. Are there any trustee detail. I was just curious. How much of the learning with magnetic literacy is done on a computer versus an actual. Book and workbooks. Workbooks. Thank you. Currently, we use. A component of iReady called personalized learning. And that is when a student takes the diagnostic. And, or the benchmark at the fall, winter or spring time period. And that benchmark information is used within the personalized learning module. To pair up standards that children. Are perhaps not yet demonstrating.
Grade level. Confidence with, and that portion. Is an online piece that we currently use. To certain degrees in classrooms. Classrooms, everything else with that is magnetic literacy related. Would be in the student work text and with the books that they're holding in their hands in their classrooms, there's not an online component to magnetic literacy. Other than its correlation with our current assessment. System. Trustee speaking of the current assessment. System, are we using something else in addition to iReady? iReady to test for, for fluency, for example. Currently our teachers use a core, well,
what I'll speak to that we all use universally, our phonus and Pinal. And iReady benchmark. Teachers in our lower grades would also be using a variety of tools that typically are one-on-one, whether that's a, an individualized running record or some core phonics tools. The the way that other classroom tools might fold out would be related to the instructional design within a classroom with a teacher that would not be something that we collect universally, those classroom assessment assessments, but are current benchmark assessment. In a addition to iReady is the funk and
Pinnell. Benchmark assessment system, which will no longer align with the types of information that we're looking to, to forward to teachers. So one of the things I was, I was referencing to trustee Lozan was that we would be using next school year to study the approved screeners and progress monitoring tools as indicated by PA 1 46. We anticipate the expansion of that list to also. Align with the evidence-based tier one classroom reading materials also on July one in December of 26. And make the decision from there so that in August of 27, we can enact.
An approved assessment tool. Okay. Yes. One more question. And then another one on one of these categories is growth mindset and productive struggle. And I was wondering what resour, what research. Supports the use of productive struggle. With struggling readers. Readers, because that doesn't appear to be a structured literacy concept. I would in, in thinking about productive struggle, what we would really be looking. Can you, well, I I'd rather have the topic in front of me. But I would not narrow that to struggling readers. I think I would think about that more globally in the classroom when we want children to grapple with ideas, when we want them to make intersection between the reading that
they're doing and the writing that they're doing, the way that vocabulary comes alive through an inquiry based approach, we would not ask us student, for example, in the. In the lane of decoding. To have a struggle. We, we would have tools and strategies that children were using to, to navigate those complexities within their reading development. But when we think about the broader term of literacy, beyond the code. There are areas that we would want to see that that type of indicator come forward. One example I might give in grades three, five could be when we think about an item that we need
to cite evidence for. Perhaps making a claim and then citing that supporting evidence, the way that they're having, what might we call a productive struggle to align evidence to a claim? In third and fourth grade is a pretty. Significant cognitive lift for them. And that might be an example where the productive struggle of how my evidence supports my thinking. Would would come forward. Okay. Are there any other questions from members? Members seeing none. I wanna remind us that this is supposed to be an action item. This was brought forward for approval. We have chosen not to approve the middle school, social
studies. Recommendation for adoption until the next meeting. I personally wanna see a motion. To approve. What's been presented to us tonight. For the reason that the board approves curriculum. However, our subject area program. Consultants as trustee. Dr. SSPA had mentioned, and the educators in the classroom are the ones that provide us. With the research, the screening and the expertise. And the recommendation on all the options piloted to help the board make an informed final decision. Personally, I feel confident in what they've brought forward. And I feel comfortable making that vote tonight. But I have to hear from my colleagues here at
the table. Trusty Blake. I think we've heard enough. I don't think there's anything I would know that would be. More than the 57. Educators that have been involved in this. And so I'm comfortable making it. I would make a motion to approve this curriculum. Okay, thank you. Trustee. Blake trustee. . SBA. I think there there's a slight difference between the social studies where we feel like we haven't had as much exposure to it, but this has been a very long conversation. So I would second your motion. Any other comments? Comments, sorry. Trustee Patel. I guess I would say like right now, I'm I'm willing to vote on this. As far as you know, I don't have concerns.
Concerns. However, I think to me, the issue is that this has been such a big issue. And we just received it, the presentation for the public. And I think we should wait until May 4th just to see if there's any response from the community. Similar to the science. I mean, that was the only thing, similar to what I said. I'd like to see us present in one meeting and vote in another. So that's, that's my. Okay. Only point anyway. Yeah. Trust you, Lizanne. I agree with what Michelle says. Dr win Perdue. I found the same, not cause it's deficit.
To use think presenting. Oh, sorry. And voting on it next time would be. The best course of action. Okay. Trustee Luk or Lak. I'm so sorry. you both start with the last name. Start with L I'm. I move that. We postpone the motion to approve the district's literacy curriculum until the May 4th board meeting. Okay. The motion has been made. Do I have a second trustee? Lozan. Lozan I'll see hands and a verbal eye of those who approve this motion. I I, okay. I see four trustees.
Trustees. Those who are nays. Nay. That would be three. So it's a four, three vote. We will postpone the approval of this literacy adoption. Until May 4th. I just wanna say thank you again, Mrs. Hempton the entire team. We appreciate your effort. And I look forward to coming back and approving this on May 4th. Thank you. Okay. Madam president. I do have a question. Yes. So we have now tabled. A significant amount of presentation, a significant amount of discussion. I'd like, I guess I'd like to hear from my Bo Bo colleagues, I understand wanting to table this.
For talking to constituents and letting it kind of stew and perk. But I, is it our intention to have another presentation in another discussion on May 4th? Because this has been, I mean, I think like an hour and a half. Yeah. Are we gonna, or is it our intention to do this again? On May 4th? So, so my recommendation would be that this. Action. Item becomes motion. For approval or refusal. And no other presentation is required. This presentation tonight. Has been recorded. Every trustee sitting here along with every community member can re-review the presentation.
It was thorough. It was in depth. And I would recommend to my colleagues sitting here at the table. If you have any additional questions that you bring it forward. Within the next day or two, so that the team has a chance to answer any additional questions anyone may have. Is that understood. Thank you. Great. All right. Thank you again. Thank you very much for the team. So moving on now to item 7.3, this is the reaffirmation of parental and family engagement policy. This is an action item and Karen Giraldi. Thank you for hanging out with us. You are up next. Thank you so much. Good evening members of the board
of education. I come in front of you tonight to just to ask for you to reaffirm reaffirm the parent and family engagement policy. This is necessary every year. Is a part of our acceptance of title one funds. So as you see, we have, and policy 3, 0, 0 2 is the parent and family engagement plan. And then further down is specifically mentions. Mentions is a key component of title one programs. And since we do take title one funding, it is a requirement that I get, we get it on our board agenda. And in minutes that the policy is reaffirmed each year. Any questions. Questions. Well, before I do that, I'm gonna ask if there's a motion to approve the reaffirmation of parental and
family engagement policy 3 0 0 2. As required to receive title one funding. Someone make a motion. Thank you, Dr. OSPA. And a second. Thank you, secretary Patel. Okay discussion please. Yes, trustee Loza. I just have a question cause I'm. I'm, this is new to me in a sense, if we do this every year, why don't we do it at the beginning of every school year? So we do usually in the spring. Because what is gonna happen is we will get the funding for next year in about in may. So we'll get the initial proposed allocations. We usually do it in April, may. So that's when the funds, cause we go fiscal year.
. Any other questions? Questions seeing none. Can I see a raise of hands and a voice vote in approval? I I, aye. All right. That is a seven oh, vote. Thank you so much, Karen. Appreciate you being here. The next few items are second readings, 7.1 is the second reading of policy. 20 0 3. That's an action item from Mr. David Murphy. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Again, this is a second reading for the educational records. Updated policy. Related to student surveys, which complies with new legislation, which requires transparent posting of any district-wide surveys.
Surveys recommended for approval this evening. Okay, thank you. Is there a motion to approve the addition to student surveys and policy 2 0 0 3 as presented. Moved by Dr. OSPA. Seconded by trustee Luanne. Discussion. Seeing none. I'll take a vote. Now, all those in favor, please raise your hand and say, aye. Aye. Aye. Great. That's a seven oh vote. All right now, we're gonna move on to. We have first readings in any discussions of item 7.33 7.5. Pardon me? Through 7.7, because this is a frustrating of these policies.
No formal motion is needed to introduce them. At their second reading, however, a motion. A second and a vote are required for final approval and adoption. Mr. Murphy, take it over. Yeah. So first up is. The wireless communication devices. Devices updated policy 2006. I'm gonna highlight a few areas of this one for you. It's a little lengthy, so I'm not going to read it to you. It's in the board packet. But this is in response to updated. Updated legislation M MCL 3 81. 1 3 0 3 a, which requires school district's board of boards of education to adopt a policy prohibiting students from using a
wireless communication device during instructional time for the 26th, 27th school year. The following language is from our policy. Consultant provider Miller Johnson. Which reflects the new legislation. In addition to a recommended addition. That came out of the discussion of the superintendent's policy and curriculum committee. So I'm gonna take you through this just. Summarizing the parts of the new policy. The first part is sort of defines. Defines wireless communication device. And provides examples that are listed. Such as cell phones. Laptops smartwatches smart glasses and it's defined as any electronic.
Device capable of, but not limited to text messaging, voice communication, entertainment, navigation. Accessing the internet sending or receiving photos or videos or producing email. The addition in blue. Was out of that S PCC discussion, the committee members. Wanted to add this example of earbuds or wireless headphones as well. So, or any I'm sorry, or any other Bluetooth connective devices. So all of the red is Miller Johnson recommendation. The blue was from. The board members here. The second section highlights the prohibition.
Of the wireless communication device per the legislation. And essentially Y the law mandates. Mandates a prohibition during instructional time or on school grounds during the instructional day. And then there are some exemptions again, related to the legislation that passed. I did want to highlight. There's an editing error in those exa exceptions. There's exemptions. Excuse me. There are six of them, but each line bulleted separately. So I will redo that for the second reading. It doesn't change the content, but it just changed the. The, the bulleting nature of those. And then finally,
the last section is about the prohibition of recording or broadcasting by students. Students using those devices. I've also added for your. Review, not for your eventual approval, but the. Poten the administrative regulation that will go along. With this updated policy. So again, this is the first reading. There are questions that need clarification. Either by our team or by legal counsel. We can hear those over the next few weeks. And then May 4th would be the second reading. Trustee just one thing that I noticed. It listed as 8 0 0 9 behavior versus 2 0, 0 6. So just a.
Mistype there. Could you, could you repeat that please? Yeah. At the very top of the policy, it says 8 0 0 9 behavior versus 2 0 0 6. Thank you. I will get that corrected as well. Okay. Oh, oh, sorry. I'm sorry, Dave. Yes, Tracy SBA. I have two questions on this policy. First of all. Our students allowed to use their devices in passing time in the middle school and the high schools. The way the policy reads is that the use of. These devices is prohibited during instructional time and on school grounds during the instructional day. So passing time is not considered instructional time.
It is considered on school grounds. Okay. And then the other question during the day, sorry. On the other, the other question I have is, you know, under exemptions, what if a teacher says you can take out your cell phones, you can use them after a test, or you can use them for this. Is it, did I miss where that was addressed? Yeah, it's addressed where it says devices used for lessons specific academic assignments in building staff's discretion. Okay. Any other questions? Yes, trustee Lizanne. I brought this up during SPCC, but I just wanted to bring it up again. Since the policy itself, doesn't explain disciplinary actions or. Violations. How will the district ensure consistent enforcement across the
district? And will the consequences be district wide or they differ at school level or individual building? How would we go about this? Well, I can't speak to. The specifics of what will become operational or how this policy will become operationalized through discussions with the principals. Principals and then staff meetings and so on, for instance, it, it lists also. Where students can request an exception of their own. Those documents aren't created yet because there's no policy yet. So yes, those are unanswered questions that will have to become. Operationalized with our work once the policy is in place.
And again, these, this won't take effect until. Fall of 26, 27. So that work will be done this spring and probably more formally communicated late summer, or when students are returning in the fall. But we'll have to also go into code of conduct. The parent handbook, things like that as well. Okay. And then I think you have one more. Two more or two more. Sorry. Next one is a record retention. Paragraph, a new language. Under the school and community relations. Area under 7,001. And a record retention is addressed throughout your policies and
our administrative regulations. This is again, putting it in a, in a policy area. Separate. From the title IX area. Or some of the other areas located. And again, just simply says we will follow. The retention schedule as it relates to all school records. And that any pending litigation hold or similar notice. Would prohibit the disposing of any of those records, regardless of their retention schedule. Trustee. You Patel. I'm just curious if you could tell us. Why we're implementing this. Because I thought historically, we had said that if it's law, we just follow it. I didn't ask that specific question. This came in the
bulk recommendations from Miller Johnson. The hazard of guess typically when they recommend a new. Bulk policy to their clients. It's because they're receiving a number of questions. Questions about it from their clients to be clear. I didn't ask that question. You didn't ask that question. We didn't. Didn't but they're recommending it, which to me means it's coming up in multiple areas and there is an administrative regulation. I don't. I think it's in the two thousands that essentially says the same. But it's not in the policy. So when I reviewed that, I thought it doesn't hurt to be redundant.
Redundant. And if someone's only looking at the policy for it to repeat itself there, so, but you're you're right. Essentially it says we will follow the law. Well, and I was just to follow up. I was. I tried to look up. What the retention schedule is. And over the last couple days, you couldn't click on it. It didn't seem to go anywhere. Do you know if they're doing work on that or do you mean in, within the policy? Or within a link? Well, I, I went and looked it up because the link there, wasn't a link there that worked for me. Okay. But when I went to the Michigan, I'm not sure if it was yeah. The Michigan department of technology for theirs. I, I couldn't access anything. So
I don't know. I couldn't look at it, I guess is what I'm saying. So I don't know if you know, are they updating it? I don't know that. Okay. We've got some large, hard copies in our office and. Refer to it in different areas, but I can double check on that for you. Trust Elizabeth. And then if corrected, I can make sure it's linked within our policy too. Trustee Lacoon . I caught myself. Along those lines. Actually, I was wondering, cuz I, I looked up the statute. Earlier, and I noticed that. The wording for this one that we're including is actually narrower than the wording that's in the statute. And I was wondering why we just didn't more closely follow the
statute. Happy to pass the question along. I don't know the answer to it. Any other questions on this one? Okay. Seeing them keep going. Okay, moving on to my final item. Evidence-based curriculum again, new state. School aid act M C L 3 88 0.1764 K provides additional requirements for school districts and ISDs. ISDs that when an evidence-based curriculum for grades K five is not used, it's recommended. That the following be adopted in order to communicate that to families. And again, the. The additional languages in red school district will notify parents.
If the district uses a curriculum, not on the state's evidence-based list. For grades K five by September 30. 2026, probably pretty clearly related to the earlier discussion this evening. Any questions on this? Any purpose here is because it's in state law to add policy to match that. Okay. Seeing none. Thank you, Dave. You're welcome. Appreciate being here. All right. We will go on to, yes. Yes. SK I'd like to put a motion on the floor. I know we have to get to the digital communications policy. However, it's almost 10 o'clock. So I'd like to move that we postpone this to May 4th.
With trustee LAI's. LA's consent. If you really wanna have this discussion right now, I'll withdraw my motion, but I'd like to put it on the agenda on May 4th instead. Okay. So there's a motion on the floor to postpone the discussion of item 7.8, the proposed policy. 8 0 0 9 digital communications, which was an action item from. Trustee LA kuey. Is there a second? Sure. I'll second. Okay. Trustee LA kuey has seconded this motion. So we will postpone this discussion. Oh, I'm sorry. We need to, we need to vote first in my head. Everybody said yes. So I've just keep going on. Can I see
every raise of hand and a yay. If you are interested in postponing, the discuss. Discussion until next May 4th. Yes, I. I know cause we postponing enough stuff, but. So that is a six. One vote. And so that will carry this, this action item will carry onto our May 4th agenda. Lord help us. If it's packed. Okay. What's that? Yeah, all right. So next is item eight remainder of public comment. It's not needed. We don't have any additional public comment. Number nine. Is additional comment from members of the administration.
And superintendent Russo. No, he's shaking his head. No. Okay. All right. Well moving right along to announcements. Just sharing that April 21st is no school. District-wide professional development day. Thank you for our educators for continuing their professional development. April 23rd is Adams high. School's. Honors convocation that is this Thursday at 7:00 PM at Adams high school. I believe that we're all going. Yeah. Seven o'clock. Well, I think. Probably like six 30. Yeah. Oh yeah. Uhhuh. . Right. Okay.
April 30th is the Rochester high school honors convocation also at 7:00 PM at Rochester high school. Again, I would assume all trustees should be there around six 30. May 4th is our board of education, regular meeting at 6:00 PM here in this room. And May 7th is the Stony Creek high school honors convocation at 7:00 PM at Stony Creek high school. Just one quick question to my colleague sitting here. How was, how was the audio today? Was, was it better? I, I will say better, but I got some feedback from the audience. Not so good with them. Not good with them. Okay. All right. I
would, I would say trust it. Trust Shelly and I have a unique problem with the feedback. So I think when there's, nobody's speaking. Okay, well, that's good feedback. Okay, thank you. All right. Well, it is, what time is it? It's 9 54. If I see no objections. I will adjourn this meeting at 9 54. Thank you.