One year is up to start talking about that. So we've got a good six weeks lead time to have good conversation and see where we can He had no superintendent experience. He was coming from an HR role in a different district. He received a major promotion when he took this job. Quite a matter of president. There's no question. Thank you. Trustee Gupta, your, point of order is, upheld. All of those in favor, please say aye. Things before people and are planning for around a $6,000,000 cut to our budget based on our projections of costs compared to our projected revenue.
All the while realizing these things can change in very short order based on the two pieces of information we have now which are the governor's budget and the proposed senate budget. Funding advocacy. Last week I traveled to Washington, D. C. With a host of state superintendents and special education administrators to advocate for IDEA and Medicaid funding. Congressmen and congresswomen were and their staffers heard our pleas to either maintain or optimally increase funding for students with IEPs. This is in the face of a goal of a $6,000,000,000,000
cut within the federal government. I continue to share our story and the need for funding in order to be able to meet student and family needs in Rochester Community Schools. And lastly, instructional visits. Today our cabinet team concluded our instructional visits to every building and to nearly every classroom in the district. The purpose of our instructional visits was to peer into the realm of teaching and learning and the culture and climate across all grades, content areas and schools. We will continue to do these every year in order to progress monitor our focus, align with our goals and the strategic plan and myCIP goals moving forward.
Today, our last was Meadowbrook, and it was a great way to finish the year on instructional visits. The the the students were were very excited to see, especially the elementary world, are always excited to see new faces, especially in the suits and and, and very nice shoes walk in. I got that compliment twice today. So, thank you, Madam President. Thank you. Next we have an informational item from the Sex Education Advisory Board. And I think is this Ms. Dominick? First of all, I want to thank everybody for having me. And I would also like to thank and recognize two members of our SACHS Education
Advisory Board that are here with me this evening. And sitting behind me is Tanya Regmont and Deb Branham. And they have also been partners in the work that I will be presenting to you this evening. I do have a PowerPoint. We will go through that briefly. Our purpose in being here tonight is to bring forth a document that has been worked on for quite some time. And it is not a summary of what we do, but it is a recommendation of what we need to do moving forward. So reproductive health and human sexuality, we have worked with a guideline that has been created from the Michigan Department of
Education. And it is its intent was really to provide school districts with best practice. So school districts across the state have continued to revise their guidelines as we have in Rochester as well. The guide that we used was called an exemplary sexual health education guideline for sex education. And they had put a generic name in it called Great Lakes School District. And basically, it was a summary of legal obligations with suggestions for best practice regarding sexually transmitted infections and HIV.
Rochester Community Schools follows the recommendation of Michigan Department of Education with best practice and we do follow what is then guided to us by state law. We have community partnerships as an integral part of our process and those community partnerships are also recognized on our SACHS Education Advisory Board. And the updated guidelines really have been created utilizing the Michigan Department of Education recommendations and attached for you at the time was a copy of the most recent guidelines. So each of you received a copy of the guidelines as recommended by the sex
education advisory board along with appendices that coordinated with those guidelines. And I'm happy to answer what questions you have for me. Trustee Lecui? Alright, I'll just I'll ask this. I saw that in your mission, the mission was to provide medically accurate sex education. The curriculum is also designed to be include inclusive of lots of different gender identities And so I'm wondering how the curriculum addresses gender identity. Sure. Thank you for asking. Our district, utilizes an organization called Share with Sexual Health and Reproductive Education for Students.
It is an organization that we have used for I don't even know how many years, but it has been a very, very long time. They come in to all schools at the secondary level, middle school and high school with presentations. The information presented is all then board approved. They update statistics yearly and they will also they might slightly change the delivery, but the content of what the subject matter is has been approved by the board and that has been a constant. I guess I still don't understand how it addresses gender identity. Well, that would come in the presentation by,
the SHARE program when they talk about, safe practice and choice. They refer to partners. They don't refer to any specific type of relationship. So they're not putting anyone who has any type of questioning, of their own identity on the spot or singling it out. It's mainly just referring to safe practice, which always goes back to body fluids, medical accurate information, which has also made sure that it is age appropriate. Okay. So it sounds like it's not actually addressing gender identity.
It's just using the word partners so as not to make anyone feel excluded in that way? Well, I think we would probably have to dive into what the specifics are to see if it specifically answers the questions that you're asking regarding gender identity. But the information used is to be respective of all people and all choice. And so it's based on medical information. Okay. Alright. I have more questions too if you want. Let's, we'll go around and see. Trustee Alspa? I have two questions. You said the content has been approved by the board. Is that the content that was
the content of the shared program? Michigan model for health is the health curriculum that's used across the board for health and it is covered in elementary school, middle school, and high school. And those are the guidelines that are covered, regarding the health curriculum. When we refer to reproductive health specifically, that is when the share program comes in, and they do the reproductive health segment for all health teachers, providing a very consistent information, I don't want to use the word packet, but information to all students so that it's consistent and not differentiated by different teachers
in different buildings. By using the share program, all information has been created through that organization to be consistent, accurate, and current. And you said the board approved that content. Is that content included are included in the packet we got? No. Because the what the guidelines that are coming forward are not revising curriculum. The guidelines that you have before you are guidelines that we would use moving forward on protocols and practices, not content, but making sure when we have a speaker what is the process for a speaker to come in.
What is the law that says what the board would be made of? Those are the protocols that are in that guideline. And just for clarification, then you're saying that, when it comes to the reproductive health, it's really not our health teachers that are teaching it. It's the SHARE SHARE program that is presenting it? For the reproductive components, correct. Thank you. You're very welcome. Trustee Gupta? So when did when did the board last approve the SHARE program at the delivery? I looked back earlier today to see if I could find a date and I really couldn't find one. I can remember specifically a board member that was with me when we presented to
the community. So it's gonna have been over ten years ago. And what they did was they approved content so the content is consistent. What gets changed yearly are statistics. Just as a follow-up, isn't the SHARE program out of the, Crossroads organization, which is a Christian based organization in our community? I'm not exactly sure of its affiliation. What I can tell you is the content that is delivered to the students is not a Christian or religious based, set of information. It is a is this information that is abstinence based,
and it is general. It it does not have a religious affiliation to it. The program does share the same mailing address, and I know it previously was part of the crisis, Crossroads program, and then it it it branched off under its own name. I I I would just suggest to the my board colleagues that we need to be looking at this curriculum sometime soon if we haven't looked at it in more than a decade. I have a question for you. In the appendix, I think it's from the Michigan Department of Education on page five, it talks about that the board will determine,
like the terms of service for the advisory board, the number of members and, the selection process. I can't locate that anywhere. Can you point me to, you know, where the board has, either made those decisions or where the board has, identified, like, the superintendent or someone else to make those decisions in their place? Right. I can tell that so remember, these are guidelines going forward. So we may, as a district, once these are approved, if these are approved, have to go back and make some revisions on what are some of the practices
that we do in the district. As far as what has been approved, I was approved several years ago from the superintendent and the board at that time to be the supervisor and the cochair. And so we've been following practices that were established according to our previous guidelines. Those are the ones that we've used, and we've, added members and followed practices based on that. We've not changed our protocols, which is why we're in the process of doing those now, so so they're updated. Alright. And I can't find it right now, but earlier, it looked like there was a difference between what was in the appendix that said
it was the board's responsibility and what was in the handbook. Is that what it's called, the handbook? We call it a guideline. I think I think the words are what we are looking for. In the guidelines. And so it seemed like it was a disconnect between the two. Can you tell us right now how many, you know, how many board members there are, how long they serve for, and how they're selected? I can tell you we currently have 10 board members on their sex education advisory board. Five of them are parents. Five of them are not. And per the law, 50% of your board must be parents,
and we follow that protocol consistently. This year, we did not have a student or clergy member on our board. However, we have in the past. And, again, those, rosters for years past are all available to any of you that would like to look at them, which denotes what their role was on the board. We find it hard to keep clergy on our board. So we also find it hard sometimes to keep parents. They may come once or twice, and then they may not come after that. So we do our best to keep our numbers as balanced as we can.
And then you asked a question about the number of people, their roles Right. Like their term. Like what? Their term. So our current board was not operating under term limits. That was a question that we had brought up amongst all of us as to how long somebody would be on the board. And those were things that we were addressing as we were creating these guidelines because we said we would have somebody that would come once or twice and then not come again, or they would come a year and then not really come the next year. And so those were things that we were discussing in creating these guidelines moving forward
to put a better standard in place for how long somebody would be there. It has not been decided on the board as long as I've been on the sex education advisory board. We've not had mandates from the board of education as to how long terms were. But we do have Barb working with us on creating this document, and what we're trying to do is put things in a place to move forward. And just a follow-up, you said there were five parents. How many of those that have parents are also staff members? Three parents are not staff members. Two parents are.
And then, just from a is there a like, is there a call that goes out asking people to apply and how do you do that selection? I'm sorry, Michelle. I knew there was another question, and that was the other question that was in it. The practice that had been in place prior to me joining the board was that when our membership had a need to add members to it, what we did was we sent an invitation to every principal in the district. Every principal in the district. Every in the district received a letter to say, if you have a parent that you would like to recommend to join the sex education advisory board,
please give them this packet of information and then you do not have to follow-up with them. Once they've been invited, they would then contact me, send me the information, and contact me, send me the information. At one point, we had even utilized Lori Grine as a partner to help us with that. And whatever parents wanted to join the board, we put before a review. And there were always two to three people on the review panel. I can tell you that we've always accepted every parent that has gone through that process. They've all been accepted to the board and none have been declined. Alright. Hold on just a second. Has anyone who has Michelle, excuse me. If I could just quantify, while I was in the process of increasing members,
I can add that. I need to add that part. Okay. Anyone who has not spoken yet, who wishes to ask any question? Okay. Then, did you had already spoken once, right? No. Okay. Trustee Annas? I just want to thank, Susan for her leadership on this committee as well as the two members who are here with me. And I know when I started on this committee, back in 2017, we had no digital document, to or any kind of forward facing document to, show our community, you know, what we have in place. So this was,
a lot of work by the committee, and the committee members and I just want to thank those who, were a part of it. Certainly I know, I share, a lot of the sentiment of Trustee Gupta in terms of looking at what we currently have as far as curriculum, regarding reproductive education and, its appropriateness for, where we are now. And, that is something that I think, that is the charge of this committee to review what we currently have in place and continue to strive to make sure that we have best practices, that are, in place for our students as,
they move forward and navigate the world. Trustee Lecui? Okay. I wondered which teachers are responsible for teaching sex ed? Can you clarify the question because I'm not sure exactly what you're asking me. Well like, I thought it used to it used to I'm just wondering in some places they have like gym teachers used to teach the sex ed or maybe the the elementary classroom teachers teach sex ed, like, which ones teach? So at the elementary level, teachers, teach reproductive health in grades four and five and it's part of their general certification as a teacher at the elementary level.
When you get to the middle school and the high school, there are specific certifications that teachers have that allow them to teach health. It's a health certification. And those are the teachers that would actually teach the health curriculum itself. But then, like I said, when it comes to the reproductive health, our district has employed the SHARE program to deliver that particular piece of the curriculum, and they have done that for several years. Okay. Great. I had more questions too. Trustee Gupta? Yeah. So I just I wanna go on the record saying I think it's, not great at all that we have, an external
religious organization coming in to provide our health education to our students. We're a public school. Cross it's a it's a program of Crossroads whose mission statement, which I'm reading right from their website right now, is we are a Christian nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting abortion vulnerable women and men who may be involved in an unexpected pregnancy to choose life for their unborn children. We are committed to supporting all those we serve by showing God's love, witnessing for Jesus Christ,
and encouraging godly sexual attitudes and practices to make every service that is available through Crossroads an opportunity to witness for Christ either through our actions, words, or examples. So I take zero issue with any individual having their own religious beliefs. But we are a public school. And, you know, we're not bringing in the local mosque to provide drug prevention education. We have certified qualified health teachers in our district.
Why are they not delivering the full curriculum? Respectfully, the curriculum that is delivered to our students in Rochester has been approved by the school board several years ago. It is also, able or it's viewable, every year at the beginning of the school year for anyone that wants to come in and see that is, advertised with notice. So all parents are welcome to come in and see what the curriculum looks like. It also is on those screening nights. Those pieces of information are shared by the lead instructor that oversees the teachers who
do teach our students. So that is available to anybody to see that wants to see it. And it's been what is covered, I can assure you, has is what has been covered by the school board. And our teachers know they don't go outside the lanes. They make sure that what has been approved is what is taught. Well, I'll I'll just say that right now, I what we're looking at and what we'll approve in May does not have to do with the curriculum at this point. It has to do with the handbook. So I think that, your point may be well taken in that,
you know, it may be time just if it's been over ten years for administration to look at, the curriculum and the programs as a normal review piece, but that's not what we're talking about here if I understand correctly. Mister Russo? Thank you, madam president. I think it was just timely to to say a couple of things in this regard. So I've already asked mister Cusimano to kind of look at what our curriculum is at the secondary level and what resources are available outside of what we currently do. And that's only because, when you haven't addressed something for what appears to be a decade,
it's just time. And so, we were we're not ahead of the game by any means. But as we adopt new guidelines, I thought it was, prudent and timely to take a look more comprehensively with this committee as as trustee Yannis has mentioned, to take it a step further and see review what our resources are and what they could be. I've asked mister Cruzimano to look at other districts, other resources, etcetera. So I won't say that's underway, but these are the beginning stages should these be adopted. I'm I'll just make two comments. One is, you know, as we talked about the, what the Michigan Department of Education is saying the board's responsibilities are,
I I kinda think that we may need to look at policy to identify, you know, what needs to be in there so we understand who is making these decisions or approving them or, if we're giving that to the superintendent, that type of thing. And then I did have a question. Who is the other current, co chair that's a parent? We invited one parent to be our co chair, and she did not get back with us. So we're using Brenda Carlson as our co chair who's also a parent in the district. She's also staff as well. And I I can't remember from looking that that, because I know there was,
like, so many had to be parents that were not staff, but the a co chair can be both staff and parent. I do not remember reading any part in the law where it says that a co chair cannot, be a staff member. But because we did have to have a parent and the other parents were not coming to meetings, we utilized a member who was a parent and was being present and assisting with the development of the guidelines. Thank you. You're very welcome. Trustee I'm sorry, trustee Blake? I just when I saw this on the agenda, I thought before I clicked on the the other things,
I thought it would be a presentation that would be like telling me what we teach. Like in fourth grade, we cover puberty or whatever. In fifth grade, we talk about, you know, how a baby is made or what whatever you do. And that's not in here and maybe that was never supposed to be part of this but, is it will there be at some point? I'm just very curious because I don't I haven't had a child go up through those grades. Like what and I'm reading the mission statements and it's got, you know, stuff in here about effective age appropriate sexuality education that teaches respect,
safety, healthy lifestyle choices, etcetera. So I'm wondering if it obviously goes beyond biology then. So there's are there other lessons at the time? At the secondary level, it does. There are, activities that the students do that, and I've not been in the classroom the last couple of years. That's not really my role to supervise teachers. However, that said, there are different activities that student use. So to speak to your question, this is not curriculum. We are not presenting curriculum to the board. We are not asking for a change in curriculum. That is not our intent. Our intent this evening is to take a guideline that was created by the Michigan
Department of Health as a template that was disseminated across the state of Michigan, given to all school districts as a tool to help them become current in best practice in following the law. So that is what we did as a sex education advisory board. We have spent countless hours, a number of years, many, many meetings, many, many members on our committee, including students, parents, clergy, community, all having voices in this document so that we as a district could move forward in best practice and follow the guidelines set forth before us by the Michigan Department
of Education. The curriculum is a totally separate issue. However, there is an appendix in the packet that you have that does identify Michigan Model for Health curriculum. And that is there so that you can at least see a scope and sequence of what health covers. But we are not in any way recommending curriculum, deciding on curriculum, critiquing curriculum. This is basically giving us a guideline to move forward in best practice. Trustee Lecui? Alright, I also noticed when I was reading through the packet that,
it said there are some sex education topics that might be addressed during non instruction times and those are topics that would not be approved like, like things like, what might exist in libraries or in classroom libraries or associated with grant programs or programs during lunch or after school. I was curious about, some of these grant programs or programs during lunch or after school. Do you know what some of that sort of thing would look like? I can tell you that what we are focusing on here is basically reproductive health through the sex education advisory board.
We do not supervise other clubs. We do not supervise other programs. If somebody were to bring in a a speaker that they wanted to talk to students at lunchtime on a topic of whatever it was, that is a whole different process. That is not something that comes through us. We have a very fine lane that we stay in and we do our best to stay in that lane. And that is what these guidelines are meant to do is to clarify the lane, what our role is, our partnership with the school board along with the community, and making sure that our students are getting an age appropriate education on reproductive health
and health, following the law. And one of the appendices that you do have in your packet is a copy of the law. Sounds like that's a question for somebody else, really. Right. Because it's not right. It's not something that we cover. And they do identify that in the guidelines that that the scope of practice is we we don't cover that scope of practice. Or just like we don't cover the scope of practice in a debate class or in an English class where they're writing a paper on something, that that is not within our scope of practice either. Okay. I have one more question. On, on page 12 of the guidelines, it talks about the SEAB seeks student input through surveys or focus groups.
And my question is, when was the last time that was conducted, and how often are they done? Okay. So remember, this is a guideline moving forward. So it it has not done that yet. We have not conducted student surveys per se of just surveying students. However, that said, our district does participate in the MiFi survey every other year, which on some years has been grant funded, And those statistics have been given to principals and health education teachers over the years so that they have current statistics on what changes are happening within our own community.
Is there any type of expectation of how often going forward surveys or focus groups would be conducted? To be a % honest with all of you and in transparency, our goal was to get a set of guidelines to you that was structured that we felt we could build from. And at this point, we wanted to just cover what really are the basics that we need to put in a set of guidelines that we can move forward with reproductive health. There are many other pieces that could be attached to this, many appendices that are within the Michigan Department of Education that we chose not to
put in here, we are putting in here what we need to do to keep our focus our focus. And then whatever the sex education advisory board along with curriculum and along with the board of decides we need to move forward, then those are things that would be discussed and planned on a later date. There are no surveys that are currently under construction. Trustee Blake? Again, this all this is new to me, so I've tried to see so maybe these are questions that people have already asked. But I'm looking at your appendices under the required it says required content, including emphasis on abstinence.
And under the bullet points it talks about, how the discussion must be age appropriate, must not be medically accurate, but it has to discuss the benefits of abstaining from sex until marriage, the benefits of ceasing sex if a people if people sexually active, the emotional and economic legal consequences of sex, unplanned pregnancy, STIs, the laws their responsibility of parents to children born out of wedlock, things like that. But is there I don't see it. I haven't gotten all the way through. Do is there is contraception any part of this for we all hope that kids
will wait until they're out of school, but for the ones that don't? So there is con there is conversation about contraception. The topic that is not discussed is abortion. That is not discussed. Safe practice, guidelines that are out there. And the verbiage is very careful so that there's no shaming involved in the conversations. It's not a matter of shaming students based on what their decisions are. It's really about giving students as much information as they can get to make the best and the most accurate decisions based on what could be consequences based on the
decision you make. So I'm not sure if that answers some of the words in this document is required by law. So the words that are required by law, we could not change. The words that were, focused differently, we had to change. So remember at the beginning, there was that Great Lakes School District. I said that was a temp, but we had to change that to customize it for Rochester. And then there were words in between that we could've wordsmith a little bit if we wanted to. But there were sections in here that were law that we could not change. I'm gonna have you wait just one second. Actually, go go ahead, trustee Blake.
So I don't if I heard you right, there is there is a portion of it that deals with contraception. Is that part presented by the share program as well? It would be. And I'm and I'm our health teacher was supposed to be here, and she can give us a more accurate she wasn't able to make it. She can give you a more accurate description of what's in the classroom because she is a health teacher. She is in the classroom when Cher presents. So I'm gonna say to you my understanding is that there has been some lessons on contraception. I cannot give you 100% what is covered, how it's covered, or what the specifics are of those lessons because I'm not in the classroom when
it's done. Our teachers do stay in the classroom when these presenters are there. They don't leave as when you have a guest teacher, teachers have to stay in the classroom, and our health teachers do that. I can also tell you that our health teachers, at least I'm a % certain at the secondary level, are very much in support of this program. They the kids enjoy it. The kids learn from it, and our staff is definitely in support of it. Not sure if someone else had a question. Trustee Lacoue? I was just gonna ask, do you know about how much time or how many days beforehand parents are notified
about it and how material is shared with parents? So to my knowledge, and things do change because I'm not always looped in on all the little pieces that that happen throughout the school year. There's a letter that goes out at the beginning of the school year to all students that will have health during the school year. It goes out at the beginning because there's one evening where the videos are shown and the curriculum is reviewed, and any parent of any child who has health throughout the school year comes to see that at that point. There's also a separate one for elementary schools where elementary parents can come.
They can then view the videos so that they can see what is being taught to their children. That happens at the beginning of the school year. But as we know, in secondary, there's semester one and there's semester two. So what our health teachers will usually do, and most of them have told me that that is their best practice, they remind families that this is coming out again, because it's not all done at the same time. When the share program comes in, they cannot be at every building at the exact same time because they don't have the people power. So they might be in this building this month and that building the next month. So that part is inconsistent because of just the number of people available.
But all families are notified at the beginning of the school year. Thank you. Trustee Locuie, in the law, the parental rights, that's a great little resource there because it says they have to have the content of instruction, the right to review materials, the right to observe instruction, the right to excuse their child without penalty. So we make I I know that we in our letter, we follow that, to make sure they have that that information. Yes. Thank you for pointing that out. I I did notice that too. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Trustee Gupta? So I guess I'm wondering if anything has changed in the last eight years because,
I did sit and observe the share programs, curriculum when our son was in middle school. I did have enough sense to go to a different middle school and not totally, humiliate him. But, I was, very interested to know because actually the letter that came home very vaguely referenced a community organization coming in. It didn't say which one. And when I went in to view the materials in the in in the videos, it was just materials and videos, not the share program. So I had to set up an additional time to go observe at a different school with another parent.
And I I have to say it I I'm hoping it's because it's changed in its content delivery, since then. But, both as a parent and as a mental health professional professional who works with adolescents, I was appalled by the program. I did find it to be extremely shaming. I also, felt the the information about contraception was, purposefully packaged in a way that highlighted, failure rates from the CDC without appropriate context and sent, in my view, an irresponsible message about the value of contraception should a young person decide to engage
in sexual activity. There were things that were said that if I were a student in that class and I had been either adopted, had been sexually violated, didn't have a traditional, you know, two parent family, that I cannot imagine how else you could internalize the information other than to feel ashamed. And so that is I know we're not voting or or or, making decisions today about curriculum and I certainly appreciate that. But since it has come up in the conversation, I just feel like it's extremely important to put that on the record and I
strongly encourage my board colleagues that we need and administration that we need to look at this curriculum. I don't think it's good for kids. Were you able to see the, share program in the fall when it was delivered? When I observed it, it was about eight years ago when my son was in it. Alright. Are there any other questions at this time? Because this is not an action item tonight. We will approve it at our May 19 meeting. Okay. Alright. Well, thank you very much to you and to the committee for for working on this and getting this updated. So we actually have digital copies.
Right? Thank you. You're very welcome. Alright. Well, now we are gonna move on to our work session topics. And first up is a my kit review. And miss Hampton, are you kicking this off? Or Certainly. Joining us this evening is miss Karen Gelardi, executive director. The Michigan Integrated Continuous Improvement Plan, has some overview slides related to goals that the district has been working on and then setting the table for work we anticipate in the twenty five-twenty six school year. But I would,
like to start with just a refresh of what this process is all about in quick order, if I may. The MIPIP plan or in its full, title, Michigan Integrated Continuous Improvement Plan. That integrated portion is pretty important because what it's looking to align are the instructional practices, the assessment practices, guiding district and school level improvement. And so, to recalibrate the way that school level improvement and district level improvement under previous accreditation goals, requires sort of while the plane is in the air,
adjusting some of the ways that the educators and leaders come together around data and, improvements planning. And so this particular, framework has been continued to be expanded upon by the Department of Ed, I would say, over the past three school years, and most recently has become quite integrated within many of our, funding and revenue sources from the state and federal government as well. So, it's gotten a little trickier as we move along and some of the data portals and things have, been a challenge to work through, I guess, is the way I would say that in short.
But its goal and intention is strong in terms of assessing the whole child and really having a focus on plans that are guiding professional learning, that are guiding long range systems planning and vision work, and that it's built on that notion of, research, review, enact, and redo. And so, the platform, while it has, been morphing along the way since its inception, is providing us a morphing along the way since its inception, is providing us a means for planning, implementing, monitoring and adjusting, based on district wide need. So, one of the ways that we have been,
thinking about systems level goals in the 2324 school year, so this would have been about a year ago at this point, thinking about as a as an organization system wide, what is a goal or process or implementation that may be broad enough for each one of our sites at elementary, middle school, and secondary to tuck into? What's what's something that is comprehensive, and not at the necessary student the student level or the classroom level? So those systems goals are intended to support instruction and the overall student experience.
There's been a strong, body of support around what we call whole child education, thinking about the ways that students, have their social emotional needs met at school and direct funding and goal requirements that fall within that categorical language. The goals that you'll see tonight were written broadly, to provide a district level data view and some target end measures. And, as anyone who's had some time in school improvement will, recognize, the drop down menu of language that is required really does sometimes inhibit what we
might describe something as that would feel less jargony, or more, accessible either for students or staff or boards of education. But the MyStrategy Bank really does guide the types of, strategies that we're able to note and or the ways we're gonna measure the success of those strategies. So that's just something to be mindful of if you're curious for how, things are compiled together either in the goal or in the measurable. If you're looking at the My Kit plan itself. In this presentation, we've adjusted that a little bit for usability. So, the activities, again, as I said, are more of a plan, do,
act. We don't anticipate that when we're reaching, in a robust manner for achievement gains, that that is something that is, you know, ticked as done in four to six months of time, but rather thinking, you know, two to three years ahead, three to five years ahead. And within our mykit platform, progress notes are entered each time. That goal area, has a monitoring tool or, in increment of time that is locally developed. So there is not, for example, you know, a buzzer ringing in January data set or a reflection or a summary. It's really meant to be a living process that guides the organization in the cadence
that, matches teaching and learning and assessment cycles here locally. So we're gonna walk through, each of our three goals. Some of the strategies we've had in place and the way we've measured some of that impact. And, then as I said, we'll we'll close with looking forward to next school year. So, goal one. Thank you. So goal one is identification, placement, and exit for multilingual students. And what's interesting about this goal is this goal is to create a partnership and a pilot with Michigan Department of Education. They asked Rochester Community Schools if we would partner with them in using the platform
for our multilingual students. And as Ms. Hampton referenced earlier, with grant funds, we receive several grants directly related to our multilingual students. So in order to obtain those grant funds and monitor and evaluate, the best way to do that is through the MyCAP plan. So that's how this goal was created. And the first piece of it is about the audit the placement identification of students. There are 39 indicators the state of Michigan asks each school district to go through and do of their bilingual or multilingual program,
whether you're doing a bilingual program or English as a second language program. The first section was just even on your identification placement and exit categories. And so last year, MD said, we'd like you to kind of cover this for two years. So the strategies we implemented were the survey of stakeholders. This included parents, not so much students per se but staff and some community members, collaboration with the ISD, Oakland Schools in particular, and the Michigan Department of Education and our PLCs. To measure this, we used fall and spring survey results, which I'll show you in a moment,
and interviews with stakeholders. Before you go on, can we just back up just because I'm not sure I fully understand what we're trying to get out of this goal. Yeah. Is it that we identify a % of our students who are, English language learners and then that we have the right placement for them so they're getting the services they need, and then measuring how they're doing On the there's a test they take every year for Mhmm. Exiting Mhmm. The program.
So I'm just trying to understand, like, what it is that we're trying like, what the school is trying to do. So there's two couple pieces to that. So, yes, the first piece is identification. So which kind of at least if we go to the next slide, identification. So which kind of leads if we go to the next slide, it may help a little bit. So we have a handbook. And part of the handbook is that we must ask students state mandated questions, a home language survey. And those questions, to be honest, have just changed. So we're implementing the new questions. In non education, it basically asks what is the primary language spoken in the home and what is
the primary language spoken by the parent. Parents would fill this in when they enroll their child into our district. If either one of those questions has another language listed other than English, we are required to provide to give an assessment. And so MD is concerned with were we doing that? Were there districts are there districts who are ignoring the state home language survey questions that are required, federally and state. So that's part of this piece. So yes, we have to do the identification. Then the next piece after we identify, we need to inform parents of their rights to services.
Parents have the right to decline services but we will still monitor their students' academic progress. And at any point, they can ask to restart those services. If they don't thank you, so that's kind of that piece of it. And then the exit is yes, the students just completed the WIDA assessment. Those results will not be in until July. So when we get those results, the state has identified the exit criteria. So the state will identify the exit criteria. If our students meet that exit criteria, we exit them out. What the state was finding,
in some cases, students were being exited too soon. Districts were having their own exit criteria and were exiting much earlier than students should have been exited from the program. So by putting this in, it also ties to our funds. So our Section 41 funds are directly tied to this. In order to receive those funding that funding source, we have to show that we're doing the placement, identification, exit, and we're following the protocol of MDE. Our Title III funds, we have two funds of Title III, regular Title III and immigrant Title III. Both of those rely on those two questions.
Is there another language spoken in the home? And then the third one is we're looking to see if a student was born outside of The US. And if they were, they do qualify for immigrant funding for up to three years. So it's that data collection holding us accountable. Are we doing this so that we can receive the funds and use them appropriately? Madam President? Thank you. Trustee Annas? So following up on that, you mentioned that, once you identify a child who has a second language, either spoken in the home by another parent by their parent or what have you,
caregiver, what's do you know off the top of your head, like, what's the percentage of, students whose families, accept those additional services versus don't? I'm just curious. Yeah. So 99% accept services. And honestly, when they're not accepting services, it's generally the student doesn't feel a lot of value in taking assessment with the screener because then it could be off by, like, a tenth of a point. It could be one question that is saying that you qualify. And the student has been sometimes they're coming from a pre another school district in Michigan as an AP classes.
There is no sense of putting that student in an ELD sheltered class when they can regular curriculum. So we go case by case. Then literally, it's a handful of students who deny services. Well, I was gonna say that from my understanding that weed attest is pretty difficult to pass. And I'm not sure if English regular, like I don't wanna say regular. Someone who's who English is their native language would pass out of it. Correct. Yeah. It's high stakes because it's it is content area based. Yeah. You said there are new questions and I know it's always been a challenge with
this because it's is another language spoken in the home, not are you fluent in English? You know, my sister-in-law, her primary language is Chinese, she's fluent in English and Chinese. You know, a child my niece didn't qualify didn't need ELL because she was bilingual, you know, from the first time she could talk. So I'm curious, about if the two questions have changed to respect fluency in English and, is and it sounds like there is is there still the same challenge where even students that are fluent still can't pass the WIDA exit criteria?
So we'll see these new questions just came out. So we're our incoming kindergarteners and new families are filling them out. So we will screen come August, September. But the questions do ask like on a daily basis that this is the primary language communication wise. Because to your point, yes, we have had families and I've families have called in a panic saying, I marked this because I didn't understand my child is learning this language because we do speak it at home. But they've never been instructed. Like, we don't use it every day. Honestly, the MD questions had not been changed in over thirty years. So it had been a long time coming to update the questions.
So we are definitely looking at them. And we always send a letter to parents saying, We will be screening your child. So we do have that out for parents to say, Wait a minute. I misunderstood the questions. Let's have a conversation before we put the screener in front of your child. And they used to qualify for head start if they said yes to those questions. So, I mean, I was given free free preschool. Yeah. But then when they get into elementary school, their fluency is there, so then they have to do the exit. How what is the exit criteria on the WIDA? Is it proficient over so many years? It is you must score a 4.8
out of five, like, like five, six, six. So it's pretty rigorous. And you need to score that in all domains. So that's speaking, listening, reading, and writing. So it's quite a bit. So we did the program evaluation, and we did a self evaluation. And so we agreed. And then, MDE also looks at our 39 indicators as well. And they will also evaluate. And if there's some discrepancy, then we were on a Zoom call with them last year to discuss and come to consensus on that, whether it was something in an area we needed to work on or we needed to provide more data because we link all of our data and they look through
our data to determine how we were doing. So we do those 39 indicators. They focus in on them. And we'll do it again next year. We do it like every two years for this one. We also did staff surveys. So if you go to the next slide, you see this. We just did this survey again in April of twenty twenty five at part of our professional learning. We looked at some of our data and we went back to the entrance and exit protocol component of the whole evaluation. And we're looking to have things minimally in full implementation or green or purple in the escape for ongoing. And we have two you see we have like a red and an orange,
which is really about three staff members instead of 19. And as we dove into this a little bit more to discuss why. And what we led to was that we have a new home learning survey, so teachers aren't quite sure what going to happen, like how is it was it filled out accurately. And we have two new staff members this year. So they're still learning the process. So having those discussions, this helps us. This is an improvement for where we were last year when we gave this. Like, fiftyfifty. We have more reds than oranges. And that was with staff that had been with us. So we use this every time we have professional learning.
We reevaluate and we look at our monitoring indicators. How are we making progress? And we do that informally. And then I enter those notes into the myKIP plan under the notes that Ms. Hampton referenced. I can go in there and say updates like, We've met this. Here's where we are. I can include a snapshot of this and our under this goal. Can you just what staff is completing this? So this time right now is our ELD staff. We kind of talk we talk our English language development staff, our EL teachers primarily. Our paraeducators will ask them because sometimes they do support families and completing.
We've talked to our enrollment staff. Occasionally, we are online enrollment. There is still a small percentage that will come in and we with an interpreter or translator to help complete the survey. But this survey was staff? This one was just staff because this is just looking at So this was ELDs, PEARAs, and enrollment staff? This was just ELD at this time, ELD staff. So we did not Just ELD. Okay. Have the enrollment staff. We just can talk to them informally. There's small group so it's just Okay. Thank you. Moving on to goal two. This is another grant funded specific goal.
So this goal is aligned with 23 gs. So 23 gs was some funds that were available to us that we could utilize to work to support students due to the pandemic, the short term funds. And there were specific criteria with this one. Number one, it needed to be into your MyKIP plan. So you had to create a goal with this. And MD needed to approve the goal. So the strategy we had were small group support, some after school tutoring, and summer program greeted with ESSER funds. The key with this goal was that your support must align to a benchmark data.
So you had to have a pre and post standardized assessment. Students must receive the intervention multiple days a week, minimally three days a week, and it'd be skill based. So it could not be something where you're dropping in once a week, and had to be six to eight weeks in duration. I say this because I show some data. You'll see some things like so students may have done six weeks. Fine. And then we may have pulled another group a building may have pulled another group of students to work with them. And then, these same students were part of our summer programming. For measure of impact, we did some surveying. Administrators completed walkthroughs and the small group instruction.
We looked at benchmark data. In this case, it was the I Ready data because that was an MDE approved tool And some parent surveys. So we go to the next slide. This is the demographic data. And this is what MDE is pulling. So it's students benefiting from this goal in particular. We've had to tag in a sense. So this MDE is monitoring students' data over longitudinally. So they complete this is the initial that we sent up to say, Here are the number of students. You see the grades. You do not see grade two because they were less than 10 students. That's too small of a population to pull up.
So they looked at this. We had the number of students who are English learners, number of students IEPs. That could be the same students. So the student go across categories, and then by the demographics. So this is just the demographic data. Question. What is FR in the last column? Sure. Free and reduced lunch. So they were just kind of looking to see some data collection. On the next slide shows the number of students participating. So taking from that broader sense, so in first grade, you see 102 students participated and 23 funded intervention. Of those, forty seven percent met the spring twenty twenty four benchmark.
Fifty three percent of the students showed growth. They didn't make the benchmark, but they made growth. And they may have been just like one point shy or two points shy of meeting benchmark. And the number of students showing no growth. Some of these students have been in this intervention from March to June. Some students entered the intervention in May. May to June. So as students exited, additional students came out. And this is by teacher recommendation using classroom assessments, observations. So that's where the so you see that. Can I just ask, was did this program only run March through June?
June? Or is that did it also run other times during the year? March through June and then into the summer and simply because the funds did not become available to us until late February. Because MD had we had to apply for the grant and then MD had to approve our goal. And so it came in that way. The next slide you'll see is just a sample of a parent survey. Yep, I'm sorry. So before we go on, can you go back to slide? So let's just look at first grade and you have 53% showed some growth. Is that 47 included in the 53? Yep. It's two separate things. Okay. Thank you.
And then, so we have the parent survey. So we just, like, how like, just kind of getting that how did, you know, based on the parents and what they heard talk to their child, how they feel about Summer Academy as one of our programs. Because these students who were in the 23 gs, the intervention during the school day, we offered that same continuous through the summer. Because our summer programs were not six to eight weeks in length in elementary, we had to just extend. So we just kind of extended for these students. Just for clarification, the data the data we looked at then, this is March through June of twenty four.
Correct. And then this is summer of twenty four. Yes. Okay. Thank you. So just kinda continue. So we just have just some parent survey. And these students will be followed. So we are looking at MD will June. We'll pull their data and kind of look to see. So it's kind of longitudinally seen the impact of some grant funds. But there was not a there is not a current March '25. Correct. Okay. So goal three Yep. Trustee Olsba. Before we move off of this goal, you said this was a program that you did and it was after school tutoring.
What program did you guys use? What curriculum? Was it Hideo's tutoring? So for the after school, we used our bench our Bridges intervention, our kits. So we used our data ours. We could use that, and we use our iReady. So we did we chose not to go with a company, a third party company and they're simply in all transparency because we were not willing to give them our like, they would then have to go into, like, our sys. Yep. Understandable. Very understandable. Thank you. Yep. So goal three is system alignment. And as Ms. Hampton said earlier that generally for the my kid,
you're looking at one to two goals. And really it is moving towards more system goals. So we have a broad system goal. So this goal was created last year with the support and Oakland Schools kind of helping them just kind of guide what it could look like. So the district will implement curriculum instruction and support systems with specific criteria aligned to essential element assessments. So that's the goal. Under the goal then you can have strategies to get a little bit more specific. So we have strategies for the Gelman essential practices and disciplinary literacy. This is for K-twelve in the area of literacy. Student engagement for the whole child perspective.
And then our K-twelve math cycles for our math. If you think back to the old way of school improvement of a literacy goal and a math goal, this kind of takes that umbrella. This year was the year of getting ready. This is the implementation. So the measure of impact is looking at professional development. We've been focusing on disciplinary literacy. It's been embedded to district PD. Two seventeen teachers have participated in math coaching cycles K through 12 this year. And administrators have been completing walk throughs looking at the essential practices. They've received some professional learning on this. I know secondary and middle school has been a big focus and disciplinary literacy.
The administrators are attending those PDs as well. So this has been the focus. As we move forward to next year, because the beauty of the myCAP plan, there is no set date, we can add additional strategies, add additional activities. So we're getting the next phase, we add more. And that's where your progress notes and monitoring come in. Mhmm. So goal three will continue for next year. Mhmm. But then will we identify some specific goals that we want to like underneath that, like measurable items that we want to accomplish?
So the measurable goals will kinda be at the building level. So the building level may say we want one, we're gonna increase literacy or SAT, if you want to use, you know, SAT by 2%. As a district, we're the system. We're the vehicle to kinda help support the schools towards their goals. So we're not gonna write a specific goal, like, by this state, 5% of students will grow. So just using this one Mhmm. When do those when do the buildings identify their specific measurable goals for meeting this one?
So they will be they're constantly working on that. So they will review their data that comes in at Benchmark. So they'll look at the spring data when that comes in. Summer sometimes leadership teams will get together or August. They will look at their data. And by mid September, late sometime at the latest, they generally have that goal developed. They know where they're going. They've got I Ready data immediately. So they can kind of quickly look at that. But our SAT, our PSAT, our M STEP data, they have to wait for that data to come in. Unfortunately, that data doesn't come in sometimes to June. Last year was even later. So once they have that data, they look at that and they can then say,
okay, we've got multiple points of data, not just one piece. So they can look at classroom assessments, benchmark data, state assessment data. And then they will develop a goal. As a district, we take a look at those and how can we support buildings at a system level across the system to meet that goal. So it's not, Oh, we're going to have this individual for this building, this individual thing for this building. It's how is can the system support the buildings to reach their goals. So do we have an idea, like, for their goals this year, how they did? They're looking at their data right now.
So they're seeing that that MSIPs, like, for example, elementary MSIPs being given right now. So again, in, like, September when we're kind of going over the I Ready and the PSATSAT and talking about the my KIPP for the following year, we'd have some of that information to identify how the buildings did in meeting their MICIP. Yes. We would have that in September, October. I just for for a to for miss Delarity, like, a a point then that she's making, Our third window for iWriting, like, starts Wednesday. Right? So Yeah.
We don't so so by the time, students take these assessments and which is nice about iWriting is that you have real time data. Right? You can get it to the next day, the next minute. But then compiling that as your as your team is really difficult in this in this in the spring. So we put it all together. And then in August, as as mister Tardy had had already mentioned, we'll not only talk about data protocols and how to look at data and bringing in all sorts of, you know, what day data are we going to triangulate? And then builders will realize, here's the here's the most specific need. Here's my strengths, my areas for consideration,
etcetera. And then as a system, we try to build, how we we build how to help them. Right. So I understand that my kit is the data levels the district level systems that are gonna support it. I think what we also wanna see, or where we're wondering is at the building level, is this talk to me about, like, how this system operates down to a building level. Is it in their school improvement plan? Is there reporting out and done about that? Because that's what I think because at a district level, you have your metrics are is the system there? And at a building level,
your metrics are did the data points move. Correct? Yes. So the building will have, like, put their data points. It actually won't be in this in the my kit. We can tag activities and strategies and I can print out a report to say, here's Hart Middle School, here's Luther Middle School's plan. And they may have some specific strategies or activities based on what their goals are at their building level that we would be supporting. But do they have a school improvement plan that those are in? Not formal. Not to what it used to be. So if you're thinking that you owe the plan Sorry. Yeah. No longer is it that way where you have 23 plans or,
you know Can I can I jump in a bit here? Just I think that's that's a really good question, Trustee Alspaz, because we think of school improvement in the sense that school improvement we did for years and years and years. This process of continuous improvement really is about looking at data over time. And then it really what what goals it informs are principal goals, which doctor Delugo oversees all the principals. And those goals will you know, the the vision that we have, but that would then inform the teacher goals. Sorry.
I'm turning my head. So that we're we're we're on the ship aligned and all roaming in the same direction. So that's the integrated piece of it is this is all integrated in and when your grant fundings are all tied into these my KIPP statements. Okay. So it just kinda leads us perfectly into the next steps of my KIPP. Yes. And this mine kind of answers a lot of these questions that President Butel was saying is, this is not something we created. This comes from MDE. This is you'll see this we access needs, we plan and we implement,
monitor and evaluate constantly. You can see it says implement, monitor and adjust, implement, monitor and adjust because you look based on the data you're looking at that. So on the next slide, this is looking ahead. So what we we're excited because we had this conversation as a team, district leadership team of working with our building administrators and our curriculum team to review multiple sources of information and guide our goals going forward. So we are excited to look at our spring this year's spring twenty twenty five and
then the fall twenty twenty five benchmark once it gets embargoed or once it comes out to public, as well as state trend data for the I Ready, the M STEP, the PSAT, SAT as with our building leaders to look at that data in August, September, August when everyone comes back, have that data discussion, find trends, look at things that what can we as a system, what do we see as a system from the elementary to the middle school to the high school is we use the example all the time was the academic vocabulary coming up and how do then we look at the data on each building create
a goal, how we're going to address that with I Ready, M STEP, PSAT, SCS, we can actually measure it. So we're excited about that conversation. We're going to do a lot of summer planning for that to get that ready for our administrators to come back. And then we're going to adjust strategies activities based on the data, and then our professional development will align with that. What do our buildings need to address those measurable goals based on these things? So we're excited about that. And then as our goals get completed as some of the most of these goals are going to go on the shelf as monitoring status as you saw from the
ELD one. Most of those are going to go up into we've met those goals, we're going to monitor them and keep going and then we're going to create these new measurable goals. So in September, we hope to be ready to give you an update on where we are with our new goals or our data review. And then in October, when we do our data presentation and my key presentation, give an update on what did we decide as our measurable goals, what are building goals, what are district goals and how does that all align. So that's how we plan on moving forward in this process, taking what we've done and kind of moving forward with using the data to kind
of tell us a story on where are the areas we need to improve on and what areas we need or we can continue to do well in and continue to build upon. Go ahead. So, I'm wondering, and looking back, because Goal two was part of a 23 gs grant requirement. And then also, too, at the secondary level, it was reliant on ESSER funding. So, you know, I'm wondering moving forward, are those, grants in perpetuity from MDE? Or are we talking about a finite amount of time?
Because I know for sure the ESSER funds, you know, they're not going to be around for forever. So my concern is, you know, in moving forward, you know, we've identified students who, you know, obviously based on the data, you know, had growth, which was great. A couple that, had no growth and, you know, they still need support. So how are we as a district gonna move forward if goal two is, you know, so heavily dependent on grant funding? So we will move forward through, like, our MTSS process. With the with the 23 gs funds,
yes, are sunsetting for us come June, Esther funds have sunset. But those funds gave us an opportunity to do some professional learning with teachers as well. Because then we could then spend time with teachers, trying how to do these intervention supports in the classroom. They get to practice in a sense practice, but like we find the tools after school. The coaches were available after school to kind of help model, demonstrate. They had that then the coaches could go during the school day, support the teachers again. So it gave us it almost like a jump start a train the trainer model.
So now they're prepared and they're using those strategies in their classroom this year. For secondary, honestly, those ESSER funds for the after school tutoring, if we when we look back at our data on it, a lot was drop in. It was kids might come once or twice because they need to get caught up on something. They were out ill for a week. It was an opportunity to kind of catch up. And our secondary teachers still offer that. They're still offering after school tutoring, before school tutoring. You go to the high school and on some of the teachers' doors, they'll say, These are the days and times I'm available before school.
And this teacher might be after school. So it doesn't matter who in the math department is your math teacher. Sure. You can go to somebody for support. So even though the funds are not there, we're still supporting our students. Okay. Thank you. Could you just give a rough idea of, how much our grant funds were that we had for, like, the goal one and the goal two? So for '23 gs was around 98,000. ESSER was in the millions when you combine all the ESSERs. But but I guess I mean specifically For goal one, it depends. So it's going to Goal one, we will still be funded.
So that funding is not going away. Section 41 funds. And the way Section 41 funding is is based on WIDA. So depending what the student scores equates to how much dollar per student. It's interesting how they do that one. Title III is right now under the governor's budget, kind of seeing where some things, you know, federally where things fall. When, I know that the governor had a budget when the senate came out. Was that included? Yeah. There's that 3%. There's an increase. An increase over the the governor's? So right now, it's about 3% increase is proposing for Title III. So we'll see.
Okay. I see. It's about the same as the governor. So they're about the same. Okay. Okay. Alright. Yeah. So for goal one, we know those funds, our state funds are stable there at this point. Federal funds are our Title III. We don't know. So that kind of funds goal one. Goal two, it says that 90% is just short term, some funding. And goal three, at this point, does not have grant funds attached to it. Any other questions at this point? Just one minute. I just wanted to make the comment that I know, I know, President Butel and myself, I know that we've been wondering a while about my current data and and just
the plan and what the goals are, so I really appreciate having an opportunity to dive into this and I appreciate, Kimberly, the work that your team has done, you as well, Pasquale, and thank you, Karen, for being here to present it. And I'd be I'd be, you know, remiss in saying I would love to see, make this, you know, a twice a year update if if it's appropriate in the fall or in the spring right like, right now when we're getting it. Whatever makes sense, but I would love to see more of this come to our board. Thank you.
Thanks. Alright. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. We're gonna, move on to agenda item 7.2, which is a curriculum update. And who is leading this? Get set up here. All right. The item on the agenda this evening to discuss is related to a curriculum update or overview of a purchase that's, on coming on board here in the next couple of months. But I think it's appropriate to situate this within the early literacy timeline and the conversation that has been surrounding,
Public Act one hundred and forty six and one hundred and forty seven, which are asking for, implementation at the district level aligned with resources approved by the state of Michigan. And so, a year ago, this board passed a, literacy resolution to guide some systemic, support to foundational skills and that, launched several material being, reviewed in each of our schools. And so as a part of the professional learning associated with structured literacy, the literacy essentials and the pilot resources within, we've found out,
along the way we've been, pleased with many of the, responses we've been getting from both students and educators about progress being made within this particular area. It's important to note that our foundational skills resources or phonics and phonemic awareness work is one component of those five areas of literacy. And so I think that when we talk about a resource purchase, that will be funded by thirty five j, by the way, we have the responsibility to spend down those dollars by September of twenty twenty five. And those, funds have been earmarked for this particular purchase that I'm,
talking us through this evening. So this is sitting within that larger context of reading resources and the K-twelve literacy and dyslexia laws, but we do feel that we're able to make some good momentum with, a targeted and sequential phonics curriculum specifically, for many Rochester K3 classrooms in this coming fall year. And so that's what I'm, gonna walk through and propose and recommend to the Board of Education here this evening. So, in an overview sense, we've been using the University of Florida Literacy Institute, or UFLI program, as well as Orton Gillingham Plus.
The University of Florida Literacy Institute work is, currently being utilized in four elementary schools. And then the Orton Gillingham Plus is sitting within two elementary schools. And, we've, again, heard a lot of great, feedback from our staff related to, some of the ease of implementation and the way that they're able to see this work and its alignment with an explicit and structured and well sequenced approach. The overview references K-three teachers and some of that depends on the building that you're in. UFLY is specific to K-two or in Gillingham it's being used across K-three.
We know that in our intermediate grades we have teachers responding to the students in front of them with the data that they have and using the resources that are available across the school to dig in and provide children support regardless of what grade level they're in. We know that these resources are being put to good use. We've seen an instructional shift with that daily systemic, and targeted approach. And we're going to request that we expand the UFLI program specifically, to five additional schools for this coming fall, which would bring our sorry, losing track of my clicker here which would,
bring our total implementation, with UFLY to nine schools utilizing that particular resource. Two schools continuing with Orton Gillingham as we don't really see the need to, redirect their trajectory while we wait for finalized products from the state of Michigan. We'd like to keep kids moving forward, with, successful reading, progress. And for that same reason, two of our schools that are using American Reading Company, which does encompass a direct phonics, body of work, anything like UFLI or Orton Gillingham would, sit on top with a varied sequence and perhaps cause some trickiness within the classroom.
And so, we have Orton Gillingham trained teachers in both of those schools. And so when there is, another approach needed, our staff have the resources to enact some of those, practices, as student need indicates. But at this time they would, I'm sorry. I That's okay. I just missed something. So you said two schools have the are using ARC right now. That's right. And those are the two that would not be getting the U FLY or the Orton Gillingham or they are one of the ones getting either of those two? So within ARC,
the two schools using ARC, which are Hamlin and MacGregor, they have a phonics curriculum embedded within that particular resource and we won't be double dipping on phonics resources with those two schools. Okay. So then that and that accounts for all 13 of our elementary schools. Okay. Thank you. Yes. So the conversation, that might typically come with a curriculum purchase update and or recommendation at a regular meeting, may be aligned to a certain set of standards and a review of material processes therein and then a request to the board for an approval for a district,
curriculum adoption and or financial support for said curriculum. This is a little unique in the way that the finances are already accounted for and were distributed to the district about a year ago and, it's really about an update to bring you, along with the conversations being had around Phonics Resource and how we are looking to, not lose any time if there's the sense that because we don't have an approved list that we may not be, making good momentum in the area of phonics instruction. We've gotten a lot of great feedback, as I said, from the practitioners and I think they're eager to,
dig into this particular resource at Longmeadow, University Hills, Baldwin, Brewster and Meadowbrook, which would, include six hours of professional learning and then the resource or teacher's manual that goes along with this. The E Y, work has been, demonstrated by many of our staff as, pretty easy to follow and easily implemented, whereas, Orton Gillingham, also highly well received by our staff, includes approximately thirty to sixty more hours, to engage in that learning. And we anticipate that each of these tools will have a place in our instructional
model, certainly through next school year, but may also have utility, at small group tables with professionals, with ELD, students where appropriate, or even in Tier two and three supports, as needed. So we anticipate that it's a good investment, that will provide, some consistency as ABLE for the coming school year but then also, be put to good use in years to come. What questions might you have? Trustee Blake? So if we go on with this, starting this fall, we'll have nine schools using the UFLI and two with the Orton Gillingham and two
with the ARC. Is the idea though that when the list comes out from the state that they're all going to end up using the same thing? Are we going to Absolutely. Absolutely. So it is important Donna to recognize that once that list is finalized in January of twenty twenty six, the board will also be brought into quick conversation about how any new tools that are not the three that we're talking about here, may come into classrooms across the organization for some good close looks by our educators and also thinking about how we might be able to
rapid cycle some of this process so that in the fall of twenty twenty six, we're able to be more closely aligned as a team of 13 schools. Trustee Lecui? Alright, well, first of all, it's really great to see, you know, these terms like YouFLY and Orton Gillingham Plus. I'm familiar with some of this, and I've heard really good things about YouFLY, so that's really good. You're putting these two next to each other though, and it's my understanding that YouFLY is more like a packaged curriculum that you can use, whereas Orton Gillingham is a method and not necessarily a packaged curriculum in and of
itself. I was wondering is there a curriculum that we're using that is using that Orton Gillingham method or what is the Orton Gillingham comprehensive plus? So teachers are using, resources and a set of instructional routines within a lesson plan, that's occurring twenty to thirty minutes a day per classroom within the Orton Gillingham Plus. There is excuse me an instructional sequence that's guided and followed by MC. Does it? By what by what's the The Institute for Multisensory Education is the backing or the publisher or the research base for Orton Gillingham.
Okay. Alright. I have some other questions too. And I know that, we had originally said, right, we were gonna hold off because we were concerned about having teachers learn use, so that if we go with something other than You Fly in fall of twenty twenty six, it won't be like this was a lot of effort into this year and they won't use it again. Am I hearing that right? Or I think it's important to clarify that the phonics component of reading instruction is about 20% of what we ask our students to clarify that the phonics component of reading instruction is about 20% of what we ask our educators to do in terms of fully growing a student who's literate.
So yes, the phonics portion may sort of have an inner, what would you call it, like an interchangeable block that could come in or out of the day when the comprehensive reading instruction, is able to be reviewed and implemented. There may be, a condition where what is reviewed or approved for reading instruction has a secondary resource component that is phonics related. That may also occur. So I wouldn't, I guess I wouldn't make the connection that we're asking our teachers to, adopt or get up to speed with two different reading curriculums in two years. The phonics instruction is pretty,
specific, to the development and the sequence that students are, exploring to continue to make connection with the letter sound relationship and how that forms their development as reader. And and for what that's worth, we have been engaging in phonics instruction within RCS with a different tool. But I think that one of the things in the last five years that I would say has has changed drastically is the way that we are not, responding necessarily from a, a needs base in the classroom, but rather a comprehensive first round of instruction approach.
So while those skill sets and methodologies have been alive and well in our classrooms, I think the approach to them in what is centered first in a very teacher directed way is a change in that approach. Thank you. Trustee Lecui? I also I had heard that there might be a list of resources available in June that would be grant funded. You're nodding your head so I was wondering if you could tell me more about that and if that's something that RCS might be applying for or how that's gonna work. I can't speak to to our interest in the summer grants and the list they're
they're by associated but 35 ms and N, both have two different funding structures. This webinar and and some associated resources within it, I believe, have been in a in a recent cabinet update. I'll be happy to grab them and drop them again because I think what is, really important, to understand gs and or ESSER funds, are positioning districts to seek funds for resources that may be used in certain contexts but that may not be approved for implementation from MDE's direction in January of twenty twenty six. So we have sort of two competing and conflicting,
bodies happening with here's a list of things you can purchase and apply for a grant with summer work and no we are not guaranteeing nor are we yet certain that any of these items will be available for you to select from in January of twenty six. And so there was quite a bit of stir, within the Q and A on the webinar to that topic. But there is a list related to those grant sources, that in the FAQ they've been clear to make us aware that that's not a precursor nor is it something that we would, have confidence we'll carry forward.
Now within all of this, we know that, every one of the, players in the field with with curriculum material right now are feverishly working to adapt, amend, redesign, revise, very often based on feedback from educators, right? Practitioners who are utilizing things like we are using American Reading Company. There are many iterations of some of the pieces of this that are in, you know, version two point o, version four point o because each of these groups are working feverishly to make sure that they're landing with that literacy committee, to meet all of the portions of the the rubric or ticking the box that
that committee, will, I hope, publish and make visible to us, in terms of how these criteria are coming forward. But we know that, there's been a lot of work underway in terms of how folks are ramping up their readiness. I anticipate that some of those same vendors that are approved for the, the summer work, are actively seeking more participants with those materials to then have sample size and data sets to bring forward, to have a final approval or a recommendation from the that committee with MDE. So with that grant then,
are they offering to fully pay for those materials, which may or may not be on the approved list? Or is it just a partial? I don't have that information. With with the majority of grants, it's related either to an enrollment count, or, it's a competitive grant and often then, some of the indicators or demographics of a particular district are used in concert with the application process to determine who may be eligible. But in terms of the summer work specifically, the web grants. Okay. Could you I know you had said that we had 35 j funding that needed
to be used. Can you tell us a little bit about 35 j and what it can be used for and how much we have in that category? I do not have the updated budget information for you, related to that category, but the grant was provided to Michigan districts specifically to support, professional learning, pre k through fifth grade, related to structured literacy, and reading science. And so there were a number of caveats, that needed to be attended to within that grant application. 100% of professional,
we needed to guarantee as a district that we were providing professional learning to 100% of our staff, that serve in elementary settings, around structured literacy. And so that is, a goal we've accomplished this school year. We launched August in auditorium format, which is not necessarily our first choice for adult learning, but it is the way to get information as required by law to the greatest number of staff members in the greatest, you know, consistent and expeditious way possible. And then we continued that work again, with another round in December.
And, in addition to that sort of PD guarantee, there were also funds available for review of curricular materials, which is how, ARC and the original UFLI purchase as well as the Martin Gillingham training, were provided. We were also able to provide, stipends within that work for teachers that were completing LETRS training. And, unfortunately, while we have a large number of Rochester Teachers completing LETRS training, we were not able to retroactively, compensate anyone who had done that on their own time prior to the implementation of the grant.
So we had 31 teachers were eligible for that, or had taken up, that learning, more recently. We currently have 75 teachers trained in Norton Gillingham. We have all of our staff, first with the Literacy Essentials in GELM, which is our commitment within that 100% PD portion. And then the 59 teachers associated with UFLI. That's a May 24 data point. So that'll continue to grow in these next months here. What else might need to be known? The notion that, 35 j was eligible for staff compensation in addition to professional learning,
did not yet hold the elements around the dyslexia screener or dyslexia instruction, which also will be requirements of, local education, associations. And the way that we begin to, unpack the way to identify, pupils with characteristics of dyslexia and our responsible responsibilities therein to, instructionally managing those challenges, but then also, making sure that our assessment tools are also, falling within what is approved. Another list. And, all of that came to, pass in October of twenty twenty four,
whereas 35 35j was issued, I believe, in the spring of twenty four. So about six to eight months prior, that allocation was spread over two different disbursements, two different school years, and needs to be expended by September of twenty twenty five. So each of these funding sources, 35 j, 35 m, and 35 n, have all been sort of treated as separate projects or funding sources from the department, and in some cases are conflicting with one another. So locals are are navigating that and figuring that the best we can. I don't know if, if, mister McDaniel,
if you'd have any update around any outstanding, balances we have or what our initial allocation was, but I'm not able to answer that question this evening. Yeah. 35, totals about $2,000,000 for the district. It was over the course of two years, and it looks like we have about 1,400,000 left to spend. And do we have plans to spend that remaining $1,400,000 by September of twenty five? Yes. And and we may, also be needing to, update accounts in terms of what has been expended either for staff stipend or where we may,
have had purchase this year for professional learning that may not be reflected to actual at this time. Yeah. Trustee Lecui? I was also wondering, I understand that UFLY is intended for kindergarten through second grade. So I was wondering, do we have plans to use anything for the upper grades, for upper elementary? We certainly do. We don't have any plans to detail with you this evening, but we think of our elementary, space as one unit. And it's important that when we're in transition kindergarten all the way through the exit of fifth grade that we have an articulated and comprehensive approach to growing literate readers
and writers. I think that the way that the state has, sort of carved the group in two is challenging at best. The law, the law, directs for us resources for K-two only. And I suppose as a district, you may just decide to leave your third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms as is, and you'll be in perfectly, good alignment with what the Department of Education is requiring of us right now. But we'll we'll be making our best attempt to tool third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms with work, directed to morphology and vocabulary. And then also,
looking for their inputs as resources come forward in January, in the full, arena of of reading instruction and certainly writing instruction as well. Can you just, remind us, with the new dyslexia laws, when do those come into play that the screening is required? Is that the fall of this year or the fall of twenty six? By no later than January of twenty six, the department will provide the list, of approved reading assessments for selection. But oh, for for the dyslexia screener, so that's all at the same time? They're gonna do all the research and present it all at one time for dyslexia
as well as for curriculum? That's my understanding. I don't believe they're the same groups, but they are sitting under two different public acts and, two different committees as I understand it. Trustee Lacoue? Well first I'll say I hope that we can purchase something too for the grades three through five, even if it's not funded by a grant. We don't want to leave those grades behind either because I know a lot of times by the time you get to the fourth grade testing that's when you can see some issues if students don't have the foundation that they need with some of the phonics and decoding and phonemic awareness.
But also along those same lines, UFLI, I it was also my understanding that the focus areas of UFLI is phonemic awareness, phonics decoding, fluency, but it doesn't do as much in terms of reading comprehension, and writing comprehension or having, like, full length decodable texts and stuff like that. So I was wondering what curriculums we might be using to supplement UFLI because I've heard that when it comes to these structured literacy curriculums, there's no one perfect curriculum. One curriculum can't do it all. You always have to do some kind of a combination so that they can complement
each other. Absolutely. We're looking forward to fall of twenty twenty five or I'm sorry, 2026, when we'd be able to answer that question more thoroughly. At this time, the phonics resources that will, be in those 11 of 13 classrooms, we recognize are only going to touch on those very areas that you've just described. What classrooms will continue to utilize, is their understanding of the Gallon Literacy Essentials, their understanding of, target and systemic, support to reading instruction and continuing with ARC at Hamlin and MacGregor and then continuing
with the units of study for teaching reading and writing, in all of the remaining classrooms. Okay. Trustee Alsbaugh? Is it the case that when we're doing, literacy and reading instruction that your phonemic awareness and your phonics is needed more at the lower grades. And if you're on grade level, then as you get into, like, fourth and fifth grade, you're not actually doing that much of the phonemic awareness. You're doing more, like you said, of the morphology and getting into the word construction. So we wouldn't need that many resources, let's say, in kindergarten to decode a full sentence because that's not age appropriate in kindergarten.
And we wouldn't necessarily need as many phonics resources in fifth grade because most kids that are outside of our MTSS tier two and above are really more working on word meaning and reading comprehension. So we don't necessarily put even percentages on every. It's more of a continuum, right? I would agree. Trustee Lecui? I was also wondering, when we were going through and selecting YouFly and Ornette Gillihan and, the American Reading Company, I'm not as familiar with the American Reading Company, but what tool did we use to evaluate those ahead of
Time that caused us to make those selections? I can't speak to that detail I know that Orton Gillingham, has had a place in our schools and in every district I've served in for thirty years. It's it's well it's a well developed and well established resource that, as I was mentioning earlier has usually, in the majority of cases that I've seen it, been applied, for students where, another go, at an approach to, as, Ms. Alspa described, sort of drawing that pathway from the letter to the sound to the word application.
That Institute for Multisensory Education has has a deep history in how those pathways can be supported very early on and I think we've seen at both Delta Kelly and Hampton a lot of, excitement and success in explicitly coming out of the gate with that particular approach. So in terms of, UFLY, I believe that Oakland Schools, had had some work as they were supporting teachers with GELM and some of the Literacy Essentials. That's a product that comes up regularly I think because there's so much within, an elementary school teacher's day,
we know that teaching reading and teaching math are our gateway content for for our students, right? They're the most important things that we're engaging in all day. That That being said, we're also thinking about how to read like a historian or how to navigate a phenomena within science and how these things also help kids, you know, bring their literacy lives, forward. And so, in terms of the success of UFLI or the, easy utility of UFLI, I think that when teachers have something that is very sequential to follow, in a way that is not also drawing forward,
hours of planning in the evening. We know that that's something that, is well received by teachers because they are, certainly putting a great deal of complexity into many areas of planning across their day, teaching reading specifically. And, we know that they're able to when they're able to take something that, has had an easy on ramp for them, I would say, it's appreciated. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. So I think at this point, we're going to move on to additional comments. Agenda item 9.1
is additional comments by members of the board of education. Individual board members may use this time to share information about school visits, updates from committees or organizations they're assigned to, or to express their personal opinion. Please note that each trustee is limited to three minutes. If you run over that time, I'm happy to ask the board if they're willing to extend it. At this time, Trustee Liqui, do you have any comments? All right. Well, just prior to this meeting that we had here, we had a closed meeting regarding an attorney client privilege letter. And contrary to the Open Meetings Act best practices, the subject pertaining to that letter was not disclosed to the public.
There also wasn't even an attorney present in that meeting so we couldn't really get legal questions asked anyways. But following the closed meeting but before this recorded meeting, the board president and her colleagues brought forward a motion to move forward with renegotiating superintendent Russo's contract. And this came as a shock to me because it's all happening so fast. Superintendent Russo began his term less than a year ago. He was assistant superintendent of HR in Walled Lake and he received a large promotion when he came to our district. He didn't have superintendent experience yet but,
he came to our district, received the promotion, received a $50,000 raise about when he signed his current contract which was intended to be for two years. So I was asking the board when I found out about this, April 11 was when the president first sent us a letter saying, maybe should we renegotiate this contract? And I asked, why? And when I listen to everybody talk, I'm hearing he requested it. And we want to make sure that we're competitive. Point of order, madam president. I'm sharing information from a closed session.
It's not an open session. We talked about it right during that open session of that meeting when we when we went forward with this. And we also talked about it. Trustee Lecui, some of the comments you made were not included. Time back? No. At this point, though, just please be careful about what you're saying. Why. And this is what I heard. Requested it. We wanna be competitive. The thing is Point of order. That's the first time. We did that already last year when he agreed and signed his current contract that he's in. So the words that I'm not hearing are merit,
earned, deserved. I'm just not hearing that from my board colleagues as we're discussing this. And so I was asking some questions and I asked, well, what key performance metrics improved that Point of order that will change the policy? I am asking this question right now. What point of order, madam president? We are not evaluating the superintendent. I'm not evaluating the superintendent. I'm not evaluating the executive. I'm not evaluating the executive. I'm not evaluating. I'm not evaluating. I'm doing just that. Everyone right now, a reminder, kindly, you may not disclose what was discussed during closed session. I'm not. I wrote a letter to you. You have already.
I've also said this, you know, during this meeting, which I say, well and here's what I'll say right now. What key performance metrics have improved? Because that's something that would cross my mind if we're gonna be making a change. And it's not that I would expect that to happen, it's simply too soon because he's only been with us for ten months so why would we be expecting to see that? So far, we have declining scores and a budget in the red, but we don't have a plan to address these things yet. It's too soon. What's the rush? Next month, we'll get a, we'll get this cleared up. So Alright. That's your three minutes. Thank you very much.
Trustee Madam President, may I have some extra time to talk about what happens with other RCS administrators? I'd be happy to ask at this point if, the board is willing to allow Trustee Lecui to extend her three minute time. All those in favor, please say aye. Extend her three minute time. All those in favor, please say aye. Those opposed, please say no. No. Alright. At this time, you have used your three minutes, and we're gonna move on to Trustee Annas. Thank you, Madam President. I will share that, and I believe I said this in the open meeting, the last, ending the last meeting we had prior to this one,
that I agree with opening up our superintendent's contract because, I believe that he's done a great job. I believe that he has provided over the past ten months the stability that our district needs. I'm not here to evaluate him, but, you know, I think he's deserving. So there you go. I just want to point out, I had the honor of attending the recent Adams High School honors, convocation. We're getting into, graduation season, so that's exciting. I also attended a PTA meeting at Meadowbrook PTA.
And on Thursday this week, I'll be attending their Annie Junior, student, production, which I'm looking forward to that as well. On Wednesday, along with, Doctor. Alspaugh next to me, she and I will be in Lansing attending the Michigan Association of School Boards, behind the scenes at the capitol, program, and advocating, for RCS with our elected officials in Lansing. And that same evening, I'll also be attending an Oakland County School Board, Association's government relations committee, and, on Thursday, also another, honors convocation with Stoney Creek High School.
And, I would just like to thank Superintendent Russo for, the proactive advocacy on his part as our superintendent, for, publishing and sending out to our parents and our school community, the email which, talked about, the district passing or the board passing an IDEA resolution in support of full funding for IDEA and the importance of our community being aware of what's happening at the federal level regarding, Medicaid funding specifically that could impact our district as far as,
the Medicaid funding that our special education students receive. So I appreciate his advocacy and putting that on the radar of our community members. I've also I've had two two parents reach out to me thanking, him for that communication, so I just wanted to pass on those kudos to you. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Blake? Sure. So I also attended the Honors Convocation in Rochester Adams All seven of us did. It was nice, that You didn't? Okay. Well, all six of us did and Trustee Gupta was not there.
In any event, it was a really nice, ceremony. We have two more coming at the other, at the other, schools. And it just blows me away, to hear about these students and the things that they've accomplished, how many, you know the grade point average is impressive, but things that are like National Merit Scholars or the, AP Capstone students. And it's just hard for me to square what I see and what I hear and all the accomplishments that these students, have and all of the things that are involved with what I sometimes hear this narrative that, you know, it's terrible and we're declining and our students are not over half of our students
are not ready for college but yet 90 plus percent of them are going. So, I found it to be impressive, that night. As far as the contract, I will comment on that. And I'll say similar to what I said at our last meeting, we're approaching one year with our superintendent. That is a normal time to assess compensation when somebody's anniversary date comes up. The contract that we have in place contemplates that changes could be made. There's a specific provision in this that the board can consider, annual raises and it's normal for a person to at least be assessed at their
for a compensation change at their anniversary date. What we have voted for is not to give a raise but to authorize a conversation. We have set forth two members that will be able to have that conversation, with our superintendent or his representative and we'll see. I mean, we want to have competitive compensation for our employees. Anybody who has any employee anywhere wants to incentivize that employee to, do their best and put forth the most that they can. And we will be guided by data. There is data that speaks to this that we can use and by the industry
standards. And there are certain standards, certain types of compensation that go to a person at this type of level. And so we will consider that and we have set parameters for our two people and I'll call them conservative, and we'll see. If any changes, are decided, they'll come forth to the board. We'll consider them. We'll have a public vote. Every one of us will get to say what we want and people who don't support them will get to make their case. And so that's what's going on here. There's nothing, you know, conspiratorial or anything else.
And I will also say this: We can't evaluate our superintendent in public and I don't think it's respectful, or effective negotiating to do that. So I'm gonna not comment on his performance for those reasons. But in any case, we'll see what happens. That's all that that's all that's going on. We're gonna have a conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Allspa? So I'd like to use my comments to focus on our students and my gratitude to the administration. This, since our last board meeting, I attended the honors convocation at Adams High School with everyone but Trustee Gupta and we'll all be attending,
these honors conversations going forward in the future. It's wonderful to see the celebration of our students And that proves that we are a successful system with good administration and successful leadership. Also, I when I was a little kid, I always dreamed of being a writer so I'm all into when the authors in April come in and I think this is just a powerful experience that we give our kids. The banquet, it was wonderful to see our staff there. It was great to hear all the authors speak. And I also, with everyone's permission, snuck into Jennifer Nielsen's presentation at Stony Creek where she talked about,
careers in writing. And she talked a lot about industry stuff that you might not necessarily know and it was really valuable. And to see these kids be excited and interested was just really impressive. I do wanna thank administration for their presentations tonight. This was a lot of information and a couple of questions, you know, that were kind of out aside that the administration fielded very well. I appreciate the information and the data and your expertise in answering our questions. So thank you. Trustee Gupta? So, I was able to, meet this week at,
McGregor with which is one of the schools I'm the liaison to with Diana Morey And I'll learn all about the many great activities they have going on there, get a little tour and, talk about, kinda his experience as an interim there. And, obviously, I as as it's been stated many times, I did regrettably miss the Adams honors convocation. I'm very sorry. I had a prior, commitment, and usually try to make as many of those as I can. I also want to, thank our superintendent for advocating for full funding of ID IDEA and also with members
of congress on, educating related to the risks associated with charter school funding. And then finally, I will just say, that there's no reason anyone here should have been felt surprised or shocked by the conversation we had in closed session today. It was well communicated ahead of time. We are not to and also we are not to evaluate our superintendent in an open meeting. And I'll just leave it at that. Thank you. Since our last meeting, I attended the district art show at the Administration Building, and whether the art was from a transitional kindergartner or a senior,
it was all amazing. I'm so impressed by the variety of art our students are exposed to and the skill they've developed thanks to our inspiring art teachers. I also tuned in to the PTA Council's webinar on career paths to public service. There were a variety of careers presented, and the teachers and students who ran the webinar did a great job. If you or your child missed it, I encourage you hopefully, the link will be coming out, with a recording of this event so that you can learn more about it. I attended the Rochester High School's Anne of Green Gables play along with Trustee Alspa
and Gupta. It was a talented cast and crew, and I appreciate all the hours that staff and volunteers put in to make this these productions possible. Most of us attended the Adams Honors Convocation, where our seniors were celebrated. It was an honor to be invited it was also an honor to be invited to the promise ceremony at Stoney Creek High School. Students who complete the education careers class are promised an interview after they complete their degree and teacher certification. These students are working in elementary classrooms, getting great hands on experience, and providing additional resources to classrooms.
It was exciting to see students who are passionate about working with students. I also attended the forty second Annual Authors in April banquet and escorted Deborah Friedman to her presentations last Friday. We are lucky to have such an incredible program that is supported by the Authors in April organization, the PTAs at our schools, and our staff. A lot of time goes into this program, but the students gain so much from the exposure to the authors and their books. And finally, I attended the PTA Council Health Fair at Rochester High School this past Saturday that
was supported by the district's wellness committee. There were a host of fun and informative activities, as well as Corwell's heart check for teen athletes. It's been a busy two weeks. There are so many amazing things going on in the district, and it's a joy to be able to see some of them in person. With that, we're going to move on to members of the administration, and this is an opportunity, for the administration to share information they believe is valuable to the board and or community, and these are comments and not discussion items. Mr. Russo? Thank you, Madam President. Mr. McDaniel? Ms. Scott here?
Doctor. DeLuca. Thank you, Mr. Russo. I just wanted to update the Board on our Syntegix platform that we're implementing tomorrow. All of our staff members will be, issued a badge, with the Syntegix platform, which will then make the whole system go live starting tomorrow afternoon. And then we'll be issuing badges to bus drivers, food service, custodial. I mean, we have 3,000 badges that we're ready to deploy tomorrow. So we're excited to kind of wrap it up and also have the Board's commitment to a security initiative that we brought to you back in November, December. In the spirit of demonstration, Mr. Russo, I'm you're like, what is he doing?
The security team knows this is going to happen. In in the spirit of demonstration, mister Russo, could you hit your badge three times? Before you hit it, I wanna explain. This is what a a teacher would use if they were calling for help, for their administrative team. So mister Russo's gonna hit his badge three times. In this in the board, I want you to see the system in action today. Just three. So what's gonna happen right now is all of our team is getting a notification, now let's get on the computer, that Mr. Russo is in the media center and he's requested assistance here. So that's one of the features one of many features that we have with the system, and this will go live with our entire District starting tomorrow.
I wanted to share that with you tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor. Luca. Mr. Cuzmano? Yes. Couple of updates. First of all, good luck to our AP testers. Our Advanced Placement testers start today and go through May 16. Talk about college ready and career ready. A lot of kids are taking AP tests, and good luck to them. Art show, just a thank you to our art department K-twelve for the wonderful display of talent. If you got a chance to go see that, it was awesome having that at the Admin Building, Building. It brought life to the building. It was cool. And then the last thing I want to update you is on our artificial intelligence steering committee. It has made some great gains,
and you guys will be seeing some things coming forward to you guys soon. We finalized a draft of our AI guidelines, so we'll be sharing that with the Board and with, Cabinet. Once we're going to meet with Michigan virtual AI experts, Rachel Monero is leading that crew with me, and we're going to meet with them to kind of go over our guidelines and make sure they what they're seeing across the county and the state and kind of go through there before we bring it forward to you for approval. We're actively exploring AI tools. We've reached out to three companies for piloting opportunities for next year,
Magic Schools, School AI and Brisk, to see what our K-twelve educators might be interested in for our students and for them in the classroom. And Rachel and her crew are also working on ongoing tools to share with families, for students, for staff once we do get this rolled out. So when we for professional development next year, everyone's kind of on the same page of what this looks like. So a lot of fun stuff, exciting things. And once we get all that settled, we'll look at updating our code of conduct to have some language with AI as well as our acceptable use of technology and all those things that kind of align
with it. So more to come. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Guzmano. Ms. Hinton? I would echo the gratitude, for all that had part in the effort to carrying, the authors in April forward. It was a wonderful, experience to have with the community there in a full house. I also, have been really, charged by the work happening across the organization in relation to our strategic plan. We met with, many leads today who are thinking about the implication of their work as it moves, through the spring and into next school year. And I think there's a great deal of energy about the intersection with that work
alongside, both, the the my KIPP work and and building level, instructional practices as we talked about this evening. So, energizing work ahead. Thank you. Just a few things, just to kind of recap a couple of things I heard today during the work session that we want to take a look at our secondary curriculum portion, in the sec sex ed, arena. And we also wanna look at policy as related to that to see if there is a necessary policy to move forward. Trustee Annas, you asked a question about section I think it was section 41, which which governs, some monies that come in for our,
ELD students. And the governor, after looking it up and just making sure the governor's, proposal incorporates about a 4% increase, where the senate incorporates about a 25% increase. So it's significantly different. And and so we'll be watching that, obviously. And and much like as I said at the the onset of this meeting, it can it can change drastically. It's very fluid. I'd like to thank both mister Cusumano and miss Hempton for their work, and and blame the groundwork in a lot of things this year that people don't see from behind the scenes what has to happen when we talk about the the
literacy initiative that's kinda moving through the state and the science of reading and structured literacy and what people like to name but not understand. And I don't mean that from people here at the table. I'm saying at the state level. And the inter the the what happens at the school's set at the school level where teachers are asked to pivot. And then when you have pilots where there's, companies that want to really want to be responsive to districts like ours because we're large in size, and that then that creates another pivot and then another pivot and then we get
the from the state, no. We're gonna wait on the we're gonna wait on the list. So, as much as there might be a thirst, at the building level, at the administrative level, at the board level to get rolling, I think the steps we're taking moving forward are large in nature but will serve students will continue to serve students in terms of the arena of phonics specifically, and phonemic awareness, all all of the all of the elements in k two. And then lastly, I just wanna say I did I did not make Art authors in April because I was advocating for us in DC, for our students in DC,
but I was able to go to, Anne of Green Gables, Rochester High, and, Pierre I'm gonna lose the name if we're right now. You have Stony Creek's, the Great Comet of eighteen twelve, Pierre, and I can't remember the woman's name. Both were so incredible that I was moved. I remember the first, thing I went to here was Beauty and the Beast in the summer theater program, and I think I've told this story before. Doctor. DeLuca said, You're gonna be blown away. There's just no way about it. And I was. And the same thing at Rochester again and the same thing at Stony. I I actually it was a night I went to Stony and then I'm sorry. I went to Rochester then Stony the same day,
and I literally didn't want it to end. It was, like, 09:30 at night and I didn't want it to end. Incredible talent we have in this district. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just a couple of announcements. May 8 is Stoney Creek High School's honors convocation in the Stoney Creek High School auditorium at 7PM. On May, we have Rochester High School honors convocation, and that's in their auditorium at 7PM. And then on May 19 is our Board of Education regular meeting right back here at 6PM. And at this point, if there's no objection,
we will adjourn at 08:09PM. Seeing none, we're adjourned. Thank you everyone for coming. Have a good night.