At 06:03PM. If you would please join with me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This Board of Education regular meeting is a meeting of the Board in public for the purpose of conducting the school district business and is not a public community meeting. However, we value community input and public comment will be heard under Agenda Item six.
If you wish to speak tonight and have not already filled out a yellow card, they're located on a table near the entrance to the cafeteria. Once you've completed the card, please put it in the box on the same table. Please note that cards must be completed prior to speaking, and I'll call the names of those who I have a card for. I call on my Board colleagues to abide by the norms that we've agreed to. These include keeping comments germane to the agenda item that we don't surprise each other at the Board table that we have one speaker at a time that's recognized by the Chair before speaking to be honest,
to refrain from attacking others' motives, to uphold the chain of command and to truly listen to each other. On behalf of my Board colleagues, we are grateful to be able to serve this community and appreciate your support. Before we continue, I would just like to remind everyone who's sitting at this table and anyone who speaks tonight to please make sure you're speaking into your microphones. I guess we've had some issues where people turn their heads and it's not being picked up. So please try to speak into the microphone when you are speaking. For roll call this evening,
all Board members are present. And at this time, I'm moving on to the approval of the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as presented? So moved. Moved by Trustee Annas with support from Trustee Gupta. Is there any discussion of this item? Madam President. Trustee Lacoue? I'd like to request adding discussion about a digital communications policy to be added to Policy 8,009. Okay. So you would like to add an agenda item regarding a communication policy? My my phone on?
I'm not hello? Is this working? No? Oh, okay. Thanks. Alright. So digital communications policy. Did I get a second? No. So I'm just confirming. The motion is to amend the agenda to include, a communication policy discussion. So that was moved by Trustee Lacoue. Is there support? I support. That was Trustee Lausanne. Alright. And, you had a quick update for why this should be added? Yeah. I'll explain what this is and why we should add this. No. It is really just a quick update on why. Floor.
No. Trustee Lacoue? Madam president, Robert's rules of order says once you've assigned a person the floor, they may speak. No. If I've breached a rule, you may cut me off, but you can cut me off. Madam president? Trustee Lacoue? Have reached a rule. Trustee Licuy, I just wanna be clear that you can discuss, why this needs to be added, but not the specifics of the item you want to add. I'm going to go ahead what this is so that you know whether you want to vote on it or not and why we should add it today. So here's what this is. First, it was written because we've seen real issues. Point of order. Trustee Gupta,
what's your point of order? You just directed trustee Locuey not to explain what it is because we're not at that point in the agenda. We're just talking about why to add it to the agenda, and she's gone on to do it anyway. I agree with what she has stated. So, Trustee Lukuee, please keep to why this needs to be added at this point. If you don't know what it is, how are you going to know if you want to add it? I believe all of the trustees received your email on it. The public is allowed to know what I'm adding to the agenda also so that they can see what you might be turning down. No. Right now, this meeting is a meeting of the board and not a meeting of the community.
So you can discuss it in your if it doesn't get on the agenda if it does not get on the agenda, you may discuss it in your comments. This is the communities district. I'm asking for a digital communications policy because we've seen real issues this year with personal emails being used, FOIA requests Trustee Cooley, I'm going to tell you again that you are discussing the actual item. The reason I'm adding this to the agenda is simply to ensure that we're using district issued email accounts instead of personal email accounts and district channels to communicate district
information. It makes a lot of sense and I want to add it today because I sent a draft of this to the board on Friday, but I haven't received any feedback yet. And I'm not sure if the policy and curriculum committee is willing to review it. And I also ask because I've sent another policy before. Back on February 2, I sent a When will you want to inform me the president? And I've still been Trustee Lacombe, please stop. There's a point of order. Trustee Annis, what's your point of order? The, the individual is not keeping on topic. No. This is why I'm adding it today is because when I don't hear feedback on
it for almost a year, this is why it's good to have the discussion. If I can't get feedback in other ways, that I need to add items to our agenda so that we can discuss move things forward. I'm not interested in stalling or hiding discussion. I just want to cut to the chase. Point of order. We are not at a point where we're discussing whether or not someone should get feedback from somebody else. We are adding or not to the agenda. We're approving an agenda. We need to stay on topic. Thank you, Trustee Gupta. I agree. We do need to stay on topic.
So at this point, are there any other comments regarding adding or not adding the communication policy to this agenda? Madam President. Trustee Annas. The board has received the information that this particular trustee wants to put on the agenda this evening. It is being considered, and it has been forwarded to the superintendent policy and curriculum committee meeting for consideration, and it will be discussed. So therefore, it does not come to this board table until that has happened. So her request is out of order and against our norms. Okay. Which is why I will be voting against this motion.
All right. So we have a motion to amend the agenda to include the communication policy discussion. Can we vote on this? I I have a question. Okay. What is your question? My question is when can I expect to receive feedback on this given that the policy and curriculum committee has never responded since February 2 for the other Okay, I'm sorry that is you're that is out of line at this time? Let's vote on this. You are welcome to email later or if this gets on we can discuss it
at that point. All of those in favor of amending the agenda to include a communication policy discussion, please say aye. Aye. I believe I saw two. Those opposed, please say no. No. No. I believe that's five. That is two a two five vote and the amendment does not pass. We are back to, the motion to approve the agenda as presented. All of those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. That's a seven-zero vote and the agenda is approved. At this time, we are moving on to our spotlight on success.
I'm gonna be turning it over to our high school principals, but I'd like to ask, my board colleagues to come stand in front of these tables so that we can congratulate, each of those being recognized tonight. Good evening, and thank you, for having us here tonight. Thank you to the board and to, mister Russo for having us here, inviting all of our kids. What we're here tonight for is to introduce our National Merit Scholars from each of our high schools. It is with immense pride that we share the twenty twenty five Rochester Community Schools Merit Scholars to you, the board, tonight. This remarkable accomplishment is a testament to the hard work,
dedication, and intellectual curiosity of these students. The National Merit designation is one of the highest honors an RCS students can receive. The National Merit Scholarship program is one of the most prestigious academic competitions in The United States. The journey to becoming a National Merit Scholar begins with the preliminary SAT National Merit Scholarship qualifying test, the PSAT and the NMSQT, which students take in their junior year. Of the 1,300,000 students who take the test, approximately 34,000
nationwide are named commended and 16,000 named semifinalists. So the journey doesn't stop here for our semifinalists. They go on to a more comprehensive evaluation looking at their SAT scores and an application that they complete to see if they earn finalist status, which obviously comes with significant recognition but also some scholarship money. So I'm sure they're all interested in that. So with that, I want to start off with, recognizing our outstanding National Merit students from Rochester High School. You guys are all very, very smart individuals,
so I'm gonna walk you through this. We're gonna call you up. We're gonna have you grab your, certificate from, Mrs. Pasquale or mister Bukema on the left hand of the stage. We're We're gonna have you cross the stage and shake the hands of our amazing board of education and mister Russo. And then we're gonna have you come back down, the right side of the stage, and then we're gonna stand in the front for yet another photo, students. Sorry. They've already taken plenty of photos tonight, but one more is not too bad. So with that, the Rochester High School semifinalists are, and if we could hold our applause until the end of the semifinalists,
Samuel Edwards, Ananya Kumar, Greta Lyons, and Elizabeth Phillips. We give one big round of applause for the semifinalists. And the Rochester High School commended students are Arisha Berger, Elijah Chang, Aria Diwali, Haley Gruenstaedt, Isaac Hacker, Ryan Jam, Jaden Joseph, Sahiba Mann, Shivan Maneni, William Newport, Kaden Phan, Bassam Rother, Jacob Scott, and Kai Yin Chin. Yes, one big round of applause for these falcons.
Give them a second to catch up. I was going kind of fast. I apologize. So, Falcons, let's tighten up here. Scoot in a little bit. Hold your certificate up, and I'm sure Mrs. Grant is going to come around for another photo here. Or Mr. Creasy. Got it. Alright. Falcons, I love you and I'm proud of you. Have a nice or have a nice rest of your evening. Give them a round of applause. And I'm gonna turn it over to mister Welsh from Adams. Alright. I have the pleasure tonight to honor our Highlanders, for the semifinalist award. We'll start with Britta Anderson, Aidan Arthurs, Choi On Kim,
Ida Win, Ryan Nee, Anthony Cia, and Aiden Zhang. For our commended students, we have Kendall Barnes, Aiden Chen, Michael Cho, Mackenzie Doyle, Santiago Escaudo, Aiden Hassan, Anu Iyer, Jacob Martinich, Peter Milne, and Anthony Travis. And we have Judy Chang as well. I apologize, Judy. Right. We're gonna have to we have to have some people hop up on the stage. It's a lot of you guys. Yeah. That would be great.
I'm a tall guy. Tight. Tight. Tight. Yeah. Get it tight. Yeah. That's helpful, actually. Soon to know? Go ahead. All right. One more time for our Highlanders. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Alright. And last but certainly not least, my favorite group of Stony Creek Cougars, starting with our solo semifinalist, Sid Seth. Big hand for Sid. For our commended, Spencer Sun, Charlotte Stringer, Eric Seo, David Ahn, Leslie Bach, Catherine Lick, Victoria Sotomayor Lasoya, and Alec Wiesenstein. Another big hand for our national mayors from Stony Creek.
Nice and close together, everyone. Close, close, But closer together, everyone. Here we go. Congratulations. Can we get one more big round of applause for our National Merit students here? National Merit folks, I got this question from the back from a couple of you and and, board, I hope you understand. You do not have to stay for the full meeting. So if you'd like to depart at this time, you are able to do so. Thank you. You're certainly welcome to stay, but you do not need to stay. Yes. Congratulations to everyone. All right. Agenda item five is communications.
This is where we reference various communications that have been received. Item 5.1 is communications received by the Board. Secretary Blake, will you please give us an update? Sure. We received four communications and all of which are in the packet. Thank you. Agenda item 5.2 is the section where members of the Board of Education share communications that were shared directly with them and were not sent to the full board. Did any board member receive communications from the public? Trustee Annas? I received an email from Tanya Whitehead, the Michigan PTA president, regarding the invest in my kids ballot initiative.
Anyone else? Trustee Lecui? On October 18, I received an email from Andrew Reaver regarding concerns that his FOIA request for emails from the policy and curriculum committee members was incomplete and lacked a cover letter. He requested follow-up. I checked with the board received for that same request and found that while mister Weaver received 10 attachments, the board received 23, some of which were blank showing only senders, recipients, and subject lines, which is puzzling. I also forgot to mention last meeting that on October 1, I received an email from Tara Donnelly explaining that her earlier FOIA request for a
letter from former superintendent Shaner to former president Beers about former trustee Joe Patel was denied as no records found, even though we know now that the letter did and does exist based on the arbitration files. So we clearly have some unanswered questions about completeness and consistency with our FOIA process, another good reason for a digital communications policy. Anyone else? All right. Next, we have an update from the PTA Council from Jamie Sapp. Thank you. My name is Jamie Sapp. And I'm the Vice President of the I'm not sure it's working.
Can you speak a little closer to the mic? Testing. Keep speaking because they can adjust it as you're going. Hello. Testing, testing, testing, testing. Okay. Laurie is going to share hers with you. All right. This sounds better. PTA Council is hosting a STEM plus Families event on November 8 from ten a. M. To one p. M. At the Stoney Creek High School gym and cafeteria. This is a free event geared towards K-eight students and their families. There are opportunities for our high school students to volunteer at the event, look for information shared from your school PTA.
The theme of this year's Reflections program is I Belong. The categories for the program include visual arts, literature, photography, dance choreography, film production, music composition, and accessible arts. Entries for the program are due November 10. The planning for this year's Founders' Day is underway. The event will be on Wednesday, February 18, with a snow date of Monday, March 2. This year's theme is Impacting Futures Together. The logo design contest is currently open and accepting entries through December 4.
We are also looking for submittals for our Founders' Day special honorees, which are due November 13. As the new school year has begun, the RCS PTA Council is proud to continue our annual commitment to the Meals on Wheels program through the Older Person Older Persons Commission, OPC, Social and Activity Center. This rewarding experience supports five through five to 11 homebound seniors in our community every Wednesday, year round, including holidays and summer. All 20 of our schools have representatives that cover two to three shifts annually,
delivering hot and cold meals to the seniors participating in the program. Thank you. Thank you. And now, Jackie Markert will provide us an update from PAC. Can you hear me? There we go. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jackie Markert, Chair of the Rochester Community Schools Parent Advisory Committee or PAC. We kicked off our first PAC meeting of the year on September 23 at North Hill Elementary. Superintendent Russo was our special guest and updated a full house on key topics, including staffing and resources, district priorities for the year, and updates on the state budget.
We also introduced our theme for the year, inclusion in action, with a rich and engaging discussion where parents shared example examples of how inclusivity is being put into practice in our schools. A heartfelt thank you to Superintendent Russo for joining us and to Principal Jackson and the North Hill staff who so thoughtfully presented the Pack Board with flowers. It was truly touching. Our second Pack meeting was held on October 14 at Meadowbrook Elementary, where we were warmly welcomed by Principal Seth Berg. He opened the evening by sharing an inspirational children's story about embracing differences and even
gave away a copy to one of our members. As always, our special education administrators provided important district updates, including details on the upcoming ECSE move up informational night on November 3 at the RCS Administration Building. This event is a great opportunity for ECSE families to learn about placement options following their child's time in ECSE. We also have some exciting pack events coming up. The in person session of our two part workshop from understanding to advocacy, a caregiver's guide to the IEP will take place on October 29 at six p.
M. At Mawson Elementary. The first session is available on demand and the link can be found on our website at rcspac.com. Our annual sensory friendly Santa event at the Rochester Firehouse will be held on November 22. This popular event is limited to 75 families and fills quickly, so we encourage families to RSVP on our website. It's a wonderful way to kick off the holiday season, and we're always looking for volunteers to help make the day special. Finally, our next PAC meeting will be on November 11 at Hart Middle School. In lieu of our regular meeting format,
we'll be hosting a special education community forum with the RCS superintendent's cabinet. Attendees will be seated at tables while cabinet members rotate through every few minutes, giving everyone the opportunity to ask questions, share ideas and hear directly from district leadership in a relaxed conversational setting. It's a fun fast paced way to build bridges and strengthen partnerships between families and administration. As we head into Halloween next week, I'd like to offer a small reminder that the holiday can look a little different for our Special Ed families. Some children may not say trick or treat, may skip a costume altogether,
use a communication device or find loud sounds and bright lights overwhelming. They're still participating in their own way and they deserve the same welcome, patience and respect at every door. Let's lead with kindness, model with inclusion for our students and make this Halloween joyful for every child in Rochester Community Schools. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate those updates. We're now moving on to agenda item six, which is public comment. This provides an opportunity for Board members to hear from community members. If you wish to speak tonight but have not already filled out a yellow card,
please do so now. When your name is called, please move to the microphone and address the board. When addressing the board, you'll have three minutes to speak. We'll try to let you know when you have thirty seconds remaining. Please be mindful of this time limit. When addressing the Board, please state your name and your relationship to the District. To protect student privacy, we ask that no one identify a specific student without their permission, even if the student's name is not being used. Also, we ask that you address your comments to the entire board and not to individual board members, school district employees, or to members of the audience. The board will not be responding to comments or questions during the meeting.
However, someone will follow-up if needed. At this time, I have, two people who have asked to speak. First, I have Megan Barnes. Hi. My name is Megan Barnes. I am parent to Kendall, who is here tonight for the National Merit recognition. I'm speaking tonight as a frustrated Adams swim parent on behalf of our hardworking swimmers who deserve better. We have a group of talented swimmers, two of whom are were here tonight for national merit recognition. We have girls who have qualified for Adams at the state competition.
And we have dedicated parents who put in hours every week to set up, tear down, and run the swim meets as well as organize meals, team spirit wear, social events, and other events for the swimmers. I invite you to come to seniors night at Adams on Thursday, October 30 to see what it takes to put on a swim meet, which will perhaps give you a better understanding of what I'm about to explain. Before I get into specifics, my ultimate goal in bringing this to your attention is so that when it comes time for you to approve capital expenditures to upgrade the pool facilities, that you not only invest in that but also invest in engaging meat management experts
and facility staff that can properly advise you on what is needed and how to use it. Starting in June, I reached out to the athletic director and swim coaches at Adams, to start planning for the girls' fall season. We wanted to address fundraising needs because we had had many equipment issues that had been failing. When I reached out, I learned that the district had approved for all three high schools brand new swim timing equipment. For that, I thank you. It was very much needed and very much appreciated.
However, we still have not been able to use any of that equipment. The equipment requires two laptops to run it. We did not get two laptops. It needed upgraded software. The old software would not talk to the new system, so it needed to be replaced. The new system required an additional laptop with a second set of software to run it. We did not get that. I reached out to the athletic director, the talk to me button, Luke Swanson, facilities, the coach, trying to find out exactly what equipment was purchased.
I was just told CTS timing equipment. I wanted specifics, what the actual equipment was because we need to know if we still needed to fundraise for additional equipment. We also needed to learn how to use the new equipment, which is very timely, and we were not given that opportunity. When I finally got to go to the school in the summer and see the equipment for myself, I noted the lack of laptops. I also assumed the touchpads were on the pool deck because they wouldn't fit in the office. They were not.
It took multiple attempts and finally our parents I'm sorry. Your time is up. But I would encourage you to send us an email with all of the information as well. And someone will reach out to you. Yeah. They were sitting on the loading dock for months. At this at this point, Stephanie Van Dale. My name is Stephanie Vandell. I am a parent of multiple alumni and of one current student. Thank you, Michelle, for the cookie cutter repetitive reminder of how you plan to silence my voice as a parent in this district. You might as well bang your gavel now because I will call out any trustee
I want to. Now earlier, Gupta and Boomer Barb, Anas, decided to cut off Trustee Lucui about the communications policy that is so desperately needed multiple times. You are both disgusting. Gupta and Anas are toxic individuals who make this Board more dysfunctional than I've ever seen just at this meeting tonight. Now both of these trustees choose to interact on the Facebook platform with the anonymous page called RCS Connections. RCS Connections is a mean spirited anonymous profile run by a group of individuals with
questionable intentions. This profile does nothing but sow confusion, division and hostility in the RCS community. I've seen both trustees and multiple RCS staff react to mis misinformation lies and distortions. I call on every single one of you on this stage to denounce that profile and to stop interacting with them. They are disgusting, they lie And they are horrible. And they do nothing but sew division in this community.
If you cannot denounce them, you are a weak spined individual with no heart who is hostile towards parents and children. Thank you. All right. And I think I don't think we have any other public comment at this time. So we are moving on to the consent agenda. All matters listed under the consent agenda are considered routine in nature by the Board of Education and will be acted upon by one motion. There's no separate discussion of these items. If any member of the Board requests discussion of an item, that item will be removed.
Please note that the items removed will now be discussed separately under the consent agenda and will retain the same number. For instance, if item 7.1 was asked to be removed, we would vote on item 7.2 and then come back to 7.1 for a motion discussion and vote. You may still request just one item on a report to be removed from the consent agenda. If this is the case, we would approve everything else, and the item removed from the report would receive a new number. In this case, it would be 7.3, but still under the consent agenda. Our consent agenda consists of item 7.1,
current bills payable for 09/01/2025 through 09/30/2025 in the amount of $17,704,181.97 Item 7.2, reimbursement of Superintendent Russo in the amount of $302.4 Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved. Moved by Trustee Annas, support from Trustee Gupta. Does any Board member wish to remove an item? Trustee Liqui? Item 7.1. All right.
So at this point, we have those in favor of approving item 7.2, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. Okay. Item 7.2 passes. Is there a motion to approve item 7.1? So moved. Moved by Trustee Annas with support again from Trustee Gupta. Any discussion or can we move to a vote here? Trustee Lecui? I want to mention something for transparency's sake. I was looking through some of the district's legal invoices, and the legal invoice shows that our board president billed our district lawyers for advice
on an email response that she described as writing on behalf of herself, not the board. So I asked about this, and, she can correct me if I'm wrong, but she said she did this as board president to protect the district from risk. And I understand she may have had good intentions, but it's sidestepping the issue. The important distinction is that this wasn't on the ballot. Trustee Lacui, I guess I'm asking you Now president, point of order. I have the floor. I'm explaining my position, and and and Trustee Lacoue, I'm asking you, are you are you indicating that you wish not to pay that invoice?
Is that what your point is here? Please allow me to finish my comment, which is about our bills payable, which is about an item that we just paid for. And I would like to talk to the public about whether or not we should pay for items like this. We're talking about bills payable. It's a financial action. I am within bounds. I have not breached any rules. So are are you asking about this? Interrupt me. So this is about the current bills payable, which I understand you have an issue with. Now, President, if you have a question, you can ask when I'm finished with my statement. That's how that works according to Robert's rules. So anyway, I would ask that you stick to the agenda item,
which is specifically these items. Okay. Point of order. So anyways, we paid for this. We paid to We paid for the board president to use district lawyers to help her with something she was writing on behalf of herself, not on behalf of the board. She said she thought she was protecting the district from risk. Now I understand she may have had good intentions, but it's sidestepping the issue. Point of order? The important distinction is that Trustee, let me just one second. There's a point of order. Trustee Alsma? We've been listening for quite a bit, and we are talking about bills payable,
and I have not heard anything about Point of order. It's out it's in it's out of order to interrupt. Our audience members that are screaming at us a warning. Oh, my gosh. Alright. Okay. I I would ask that the audience please contain themselves. There is no outburst. I I will just say that we we are running this meeting up here. It is not being run from the audience. So if you are unable to control yourself, you will be asked to leave. Alright. Trust me. Point of order. We've just heard obscenities from the audience. These aren't point of order. No. Mad Mad of president,
you can't stop someone from speaking just because you don't like what they say you can stop if they're breaching a rule and I'm not breaching a rule well I'm explaining I'm I'm indicating that you are not being germane to the topic I'm talking about something we paid for in these bills payable. And I'm allowed to talk about things that we've paid for so that we know if we wanna pay for these things in the future. Now district council is supposed to represent the board as a whole, not individual trustees. So if a trustee makes a statement in her own capacity, she shouldn't be using district lawyers because it creates both a financial and an ethical
concern. We've seen similar issues before with former administrators. And it's important that the same accountability standard applies to all of us, including the board president. Trustee Lacoue, please wait just a second. There's a point of order. This trustee is not addressing specifically the item. She's using this as a bully pulpit and a reason to pontificate. She is not on topic. I would also like to add that, she is attacking the board president. And per our handbook, it's item 1.43, a board president does have the authority to contact legal counsel.
So this particular member may not agree with that, but it is not the reason for her to bring this on. Just interrupt you. Just just one second. So first I will say First I will say that, you do need to stick while while you believe that you are appropriate under the accounts payable, I would indicate that you are using that. We we can't have a discussion on every single invoice that is on here. That would be opening up for an agenda item. Point of order.
Trustee Lacui, what is your point of order? Do you think it's appropriate to interrupt a trustee who's talking about an item we paid for in bills payable while we're in the bills payable section? In some ways, yes. And in other ways, no. No. Where do you So I don't believe that I do not believe that your ongoing about it is appropriate. Point of order of I believe one mention about it would be appropriate. Point of order. Trustee Gupta, what's your point of order? My point of order is that Trustee Locuie continues to talk over the board president and is not honoring Robert's rule, which say that the chair of the the meeting Here,
here, the chair of the meeting gets to decide and interpret how how how the chair decides and interprets a point of order. That is correct. Trustee Lecui. All right. So Do you have something specific here to add? Because instead of pontificating, is there something specific on here that you have not already stated? You're calling this pontificating, but the point was we can't be using lawyers for consulting with district emails or for individual trustees. The other point is Trustee Lekhoe also paid for. This would be separate payment. This would be another discussion. No. I'm sorry. I'm gonna stop.
This would be an agenda item discussion. Texas and this is the lawyer's on your personal cell phone. So at this point I called the question, Madam President. Just one second. Trustee Blake, did you have a comment? If she's done, I have a response. I was not done. Well, I I don't know how long it will take to be done. That's because I keep getting directed. If you would if you would Well, here's my response. I don't even have the discussion. Here's my response. I just want one thing to be clear for the public because Madam President, did you recognize Trustee Blake? She did. Okay. So we cut you off and we're gonna recognize that. The implication from what you're hearing is that our board president was using our legal
counsel for her own personal legal needs. That is incorrect. What is being discussed here is, and I'll just talk about it, there was after the arbitration, came in, there was an Okay. I want to make a decision. Okay. I I want to bring a hand to we we have a point of information, Madam President. What is your point of information? Trustee Blake, can you cite exactly what you're talking about that was rabid? Because you're you're characterizing the with the issue. We we are off subject. Right now, we are approving the accounts payable.
So all of those in favor of approving the accounts payable Got it. Please say I. I'm entitled to be right. And no. Those opposed, please say no. I'm entitled to be recognized. We're in discussion. You can't just move to a vote before I have a question. You have already spoken multiple times. I called the question. I called in favor of a person who says that I am entitled to ask a question. I you are supposed to recognize me. I am rightly requesting the floor. You can't just move to a vote. That's Robert's Rules. I can send you an email after this to show you the exact citation.
Please stop breaching Robert's Rules. And and I would ask you to do the same, trustee Lecuey. I have a brief question. Please do that. What is your brief question? Alright. To prove my point. No. A question. I know. To prove my point, here's my question. Can you think of any acceptable situation in which I, as an individual trustee, would be allowed to use district lawyers to help me with an email I'm writing to a resident within my individual capacity as a trustee? Point of order. I call the question. Because you specified I'm writing on behalf of myself,
not on behalf of the board. That is the distinction is that you're not on behalf of the board. It's on behalf of yourself. So would I be able to do the same thing? Any situation, think of one. Trustee Gupta. Okay. You know what? I'm sorry. We are so far which our, board handbook specifically gives that authority to the board president who's elected by her board colleagues. False. That would be the one. Here here here for an opinion that's gonna be presented to the full board. Trustee Ann has sent us an email and she is correct. Yes. Guys, we are off subject. Accounts payable. That is what we are voting on right now.
So all of those in favor of approving the accounts payable, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. I abstain. So it's a six zero one. All right. Tonight, we have, just one report, the academic data presentation. And Mr. Russo, are you leading that? Yes. I just thank you, Madam President. Is this on? Thank you. A couple just updates before we get to our main report today. Just a report out from our SPCC meeting, we had a new course option presented for AP Precalc and Honors Precalc that'll be
coming to the board for on November 10. Athletic eligibility for home based or dual enrollment students was discussed by the group at SBCC. High school principals were invited as well to provide feedback. After discussion, no recommendation to changes to policy were verbalized by any board members. Personal device policy was discussed and information was provided. We looked at other districts and other policies and kind of what our needs are and what our current state is and our and our buildings across the district. Additional information including input from community and buildings as well as legislative updates will be
gathered and brought back to a future SPCC meeting. Added to handbook section 1.5 was discussed. Legal You received and evaluated topics to be revisited next month at SPCC. Following items were on the agenda, but we'll move to the next meeting due to time constraints. It was five zero zero three. Discussion follow-up for purchasing, three zero zero six, parental, discussion and legal review of parental objections, and SEAB potential policy. Report from SBOC, We discussed an opportunity to refund the 2,016 bonds, looked at the draft audit report and discussed its presentation at the November 10 board
of ed meeting, and let the committee know that we did not pursue a line of credit. If you remember, we had you had approved that line of credit in the event that we wouldn't have a state budget, and so, thank you for being forward thinking. We did not need to engage in that process. We also they we also discussed future meeting dates at SBOC. And with that, I will turn it over to miss Hempton and mister Cusimano for the data the academic data presentation. As you know, I know that they are going to say a few say this, I'm sure a few times tonight, But,
a very large, packet as an appendix was provided for board members, late last week or in the middle of last week for your review. And, what is being presented tonight is a condensed version of what that represents. Miss Hampton? Thank you very much, Mr. Russo. Volume okay? Test, test. Hello? Keep touching. Good evening. Bring it right on up here, WKRP. All right. Thank you, Mr. Russo and Board of Education. We're eager this evening to share I think you have to be even closer to that. Closer? Yeah. Good evening. So much better. Thank you so much. I appreciate the share.
We're eager tonight to highlight some of the great work happening across the organization and some of the puzzles that we're digging into. And as Mr. Russo referenced, the Board packet provided data appendix with multiple data points for our benchmark assessment, I Ready, as well as for our annual achievement data in the areas of M STEP, ESAT and SAT. These annual achievement trends that were shared for the past three to five years depending on the assessment metric as well as some cohort trend within those data points, were provided so that we could use this time to highlight some of the areas
of challenge we're experiencing and some of the areas of success and how we're tooling our action plans to respond as such. We've got some great things to keep momentum going with and some areas, again, that are puzzles that we'd like to share with you this evening. In addition to those data, also the board on October 6 reviewed a list of high performing districts as well as districts identified as like size, and you'll find those comparison data in the appendix as well, I believe, in the last two pages for your review. So some of the data you'll see this evening will be slices or snapshots of
what might also be referenced more in full within the appendix itself. As we get going here, we know that many of the areas of focus that we have often tend to intersect with various assessment points. So there may not be an action plan that is as clear cut as only addressing something within I Ready or only addressing something within M STEP, for example. And so we'd ask that as you generate questions in your mind as we move that you jot those down for us so that when we conclude the presentation, we're able to address anything that may not have been presentation, we're able to address anything that may not have been covered that you're thinking about this evening. Sound good?
Can we instead ask questions about like after we cover I ReadyK reading or something like that rather than going all the way through the end just so we cover it topic by topic? I'm sorry, can you repeat the question, please? Wouldn't you say to hold off and ask the questions all the way at the end and I'm asking if we can cover it based on the sections that we're covering, so it's more relevant to the presentation? Mr. Rufe, I'd refer to your preference. Madam President, can you hear me? I think I would, if you don't mind, if we want, we can take a break between it for writing it down.
But I think if we continue down that path, I think the purpose of this was to create a twenty minute, fifteen to thirty minute presentation. I I fear that that would be against what the goals of the board asked me to do as we continue to go through it. It will be it can continue and continue and questions will continue to build based on information that's still coming. So if we can take a break, if people have are still writing down, but I would ask ask that question as well to the end. Thanks. Okay. Well, we're going to get started with, actually some responsive actions upfront because as I mentioned earlier, much of our strategy when we think about early literacy and early mathematicians really canvas
multiple data points that you have in the packet. So I want to highlight some broad strokes as a way of getting started, some areas that are both established and ongoing. Some of these that you'll hear about are not necessarily sort of one and done check the box types of work, but rather continue to strengthen or deepen when one set of goals may be established in the area of professional learning, for example. So when we think about resource alignment, we know there's a strong research correlation to the direct instruction that educators are equipped
within their classroom when our our resources have strong alignment. And so in the areas of math, we're entering the fourth school year with an aligned math curricula in the K-five space and we recognize the strength that brings in an articulated sequence to our students and we're on year one or two depending on your school site of stronger alignment with foundational skills resources and so those, those resources have really allowed us to begin to, systemic approaches to those skill sets, but now also thinking about how those skill sets build and translate into something like
a high stakes assessment or a classroom activity that might also reflect a demonstration of the students' ability to represent a conceptual understanding. So the capacity within professional learning is a point of pride. We're continuing to make sure that we're on target with feedback from our educators as well as looking at data sets so that we're responding to the students in our classroom and then to larger annual data sets that are a little less instructionally dialed in at the classroom level but certainly inform our programming and curriculum resource
decisions at the district level. In addition to that, the leadership capacity around a data informed culture, you'll hear quite a bit about this evening with our building leadership K-twelve as well as in that classroom grade level team when they're thinking about the ways that they respond to timely information from the classroom, whether that's the benchmark assessment or the classroom level assessment such as a checkpoint in math, for example, or a unit assessment. Our teams are using those things regularly to guide decision making for instruction.
In addition to that, we also are always seeking ways we can continue to connect with families, whether that's leveraging some of the grant sources that are available or supplemental programs for before, after school or in the summer. When we think about the elementary experience, we know that one cohort success is built on the shoulders of many. And so what you look at, for example, with third grade is work that got launched in the kindergarten experience. So, off we go into taking a look at I Ready. Reading is first up. And in this particular, slide you'll see a three year trend in,
the k three span there that demonstrates in a visual format historically, since 2023 school year, students in those grade bands have been performing at 76% at or above grade level as measured by that benchmark assessment. It's a point that we're proud of. We're looking again at those foundational skills and how those translate into the broader work of reading and writing. And as we look ahead, we know that an area of focus for us is to consider how the instructional
emphasis from these data in our classroom around foundational skills can build that complexity toward strengthening our use of academic vocabulary, strengthening our comprehension work within informational text. These are challenge areas for us in a variety of arena, whether that's a classroom assessment, an I Ready or an M STEP or the SAT. We know this is lifelong work for our students. And so we're taking a smile and a point of pride with the progress that our students are making, but this is not an organization that rests on that success very long,
but rather is always asking what's next. And so when we look at those I Ready data points, our work in vocabulary and informational comprehension is certainly on our mind. Moving into I Ready math, we have cohorts that have, as I mentioned earlier, experienced four years now with Co Heasive Resources. And we see some proficiency changes within those grade bands, that would suggest that, that coherence is supporting conceptual understanding and learning progressions in a positive assessments,
we, of course, benchmark three times annually. But in addition to that, you can imagine by early November, let's say, some of those data points are a bit more stale the younger you are. And so the classroom assessments that we use, whether those are called the checkpoint in the Bridges resource or whether a unit assessment or also group work at a small group table with a teacher and a young reader or writer are also definitely guiding the instructional decisions that our educators are making in their classrooms. Our focus to be more responsive is a thread that you're going to hear throughout
each of these areas, this evening. But you can see the class of 2,036 there, has a progression that looks a bit more flat. But as you work backwards, you'll see that there are some gains there that have us very interested in how that seven percentage point over a two year period is expanding for us. One of the things that we're also thinking about when it comes to a focus on I Ready proficiency is how that translates for what the learner can demonstrate that
they know and understand. So in kindergarten, many of these assessments that are not I Ready related are a teacher and a young person at a table one on one next to one another. And that data is incredibly useful for for a teacher and may or may not reflect what they were able to have the hand eye coordination for let's say in I Ready. So the way that we think about those assessment types and what comes forward in a variety of formats whether auditorily, paper, pencil, computer based assessment, is something that I hear our colleagues grappling with SAT talk about and we're talking
about that as early as kindergarten as well. Some of the cognitive load within these assessment types and the tasks asked for, Certainly, students have varied comfort level in how they're demonstrating those understanding, and that's not anything that we use to excuse or overly celebrate certain areas of performance. It just is, and it's an area that we need to continue to dig into so that we're best informed about what our students know and what's next for their development. All right. M STEP ELA. Let me make sure I'm looking at the right thing here. Okay. Overall,
the M STEP English Language Arts Assessment for Rochester has been trending stable. I think that one of the bold headlines across the state has been related to what has been coined a decline for third grade students in this particular cohort, 38.9% proficient across the State of Michigan. In RCS, we have 61.6% of our students proficient. We're certainly not satisfied with that. We understand the trends at the state level, and we recognize that while those percentages here for Rochester are down from previous third
grade, counterparts that that, phenomena is, not unique to our district. And knowing that this is a grade level for whom we do not have previous standardized assessment data, It's a cohort certainly that we're leaning into continuing to monitor and using all of those other forms that I've described earlier as a way of keeping close to what may be an area of concern, maybe a test challenge. We're not sure yet as that was their first go around, of course. I think the other thing that I would point out has been said to some degree related to our ELA proficiencies.
We spent a lot of time in Rochester around heavy literacy focus and we feel our scores reflect that. Our work now is to make sure that students are able to apply again those discrete skills in novel situations and we want them to do that in their classrooms just as much as we want them to do that in April and May around M STEP time. That's not necessarily a standardized test skill. It's a life skill, and we know that they're facing all kinds of not only novel situations, but high stakes situations along the road. So supporting our educators in developing year long strategies that understand those assessments as a
genre, that understand the cognitive load within them, that give balance to when we compose paper pencil, for example, and when we compose on a computer. I think universally, our three, four, five staff would note some of their most prolific and voluminous writers may have just a small 0.5 inches slice of that when it comes to a blank box on an M STEP screen, right? And so the ways that we manage that both through our curriculum supports, our technology and resource supports is what's on the table of conversation right now to
strategize through. There's so much I could point out. I want to make sure I'm not missing anything for you here. Ultimately, those our goal is that we're able to respond. And certainly, information from last spring is less pertinent at that students' table right now. One point of pride that I would mention since we were gathering some cross district comparison of both size and high performers, we were very pleased to see that in those districts of like size, Rochester schools were performing at that number two spot in E. L. A. And the number two spot in math.
And while we often compare to Oakland County and the state of Michigan, it's helpful to see what's happening around Tri County area and how Rochester Thanks. M STEP math, we're going to take a look into what is an area in transition that is certainly a highlight for us. But I also want to reference here those county and state trends that we see within RCS comparables. Certainly, we exceed those averages in all grade levels. But continuing to increase proficiency regardless of that status
is certainly important to us. The math scores within certain cohorts don't all reflect the same amount of proficiency climb we'd like to see. While we do see areas of diminished we see numbers shrinking and you'll see a bit of this in a moment, of students who are not proficient, that's a gap we're closing. It has not looked at the same trend in that advanced proficient category, and so that's something we're digging into as well. It's calling us into some needs analysis, a comprehensive needs analysis and thinking about our programming both for intervention and enrichment.
How are we creating opportunities for the span of learning across all grade levels so that that MTSS structure is not only robust in areas of literacy but also attending to the mathematics work that students are engaging in and making sure that as an organization we are leveraging any available dollars in the categorical areas that might help to support continued work specifically in the area of mathematics whether that's a study of what's going well and what's next or
intervention that may or enrichment that may benefit both our educators as well as our students. We the point of pride that you see here, I'll share a bit of with Pasquale because it's a nice effort that bridges fifth and sixth grade. In Oakland County, if you've been following trends for a while now, you'll note that in fifth to sixth grade, there's been a bit of a puzzle for more than a decade. I feel we've been having this conversation. We know that adolescents navigate a lot in their young lives and there's a big
shift between what it means to be a fifth grader and the way you receive instruction and what it means to be a sixth grader. And so those transition years have been a point of focus in terms of building coherence with instructors that are often not shared staff, right, our elementary folks and our middle school folks. And here in Rochester, for the past three years, there's been a nice cohort built to address that transition. And we've beat the odds in a number of categories here. So, Pasquale, would you like to elaborate on how that's moving? Thank you. You've been doing a lot of talking,
so thanks for passing that. Drink some water. This is great because now we're transitioning into middle school. So and and we we get very excited about the k 12 collaboration because we know that reading, writing, math has to start in the younger ages to then kids do well on on the other assessments. So this is a great transition. But just a little bit more about our team is so excited about this transition, study, which started in 2022, the year 2022. So it impacts the class of 2029, 2030, and 2031. And that's the if you look at the class of 2031,
we've we've seen our we witnessed our first positive gain in in in in this in this level. So we are very excited about that, and we hope that we're gonna continue that work and continue to do that. All three, our teachers were engaged in PD together as a large group where they all were clustered with feeder schools because we the feeder school work for us is so important where, the elementaries that feed into the middle school, that feed into the high school are working together, looking at the data together, and seeing what they need to do to get these kids prepped, the best possible. So, they these teachers participate in learning labs. They visited the middle school.
The elementary teachers, fifth grade teachers visited the sixth grade teachers, and vice versa. And they they work together on what those what are we ending off teaching and what are we going to continue teaching in those grades. So very great things that we're going to continue to do. And then the pit professional development. The job embedded professional development that we mentioned, that started in 2022, the year 2022. And it impacts those classes of 29, thirty, and thirty one. And those cohorts of teachers are engaged with math coaches and district colleagues on professional learning, reflection of implementation. They worked on the accelerated,
math six class and what was being taught in that class. So, we just updated that accelerated six math course format, forwarding it to seventh grade standards and backfilling as necessary. So, those are exciting things that we're seeing that are doing great things for these kids, moving into sixth grade. Okay. Now it's my turn to talk a lot. So, starting with the middle school, I'm gonna start with just some stuff, just like, miss Hampton did with respond what are we doing? What are the things that we're we're really focusing on? And there's three things I wanna highlight. It's the comprehensive focus on inquiry learning.
So, teachers implementing inquiry based lessons, sharing their experiences, and receiving peer feedback. So this has been something that the middle level has worked really hard on with disciplinary literacy. They're working on the, 10 essential practices. And they're they specifically gave their teachers time to get out and go visit other buildings, middle school teachers, to see disciplinary literacy in action. And all the professional development has been geared around that, to talk about best instructional practices. They're calling them learning labs, and the staff is truly enjoying that experience.
Connecting with families. We hosted a math webinar for the fifth grade families to help them understand what their placement options would be, for sixth grade, either accelerated pathway or, the regular pathway. That was a gap where we didn't feel like parents knew, what they were getting themselves into with their students, where they were gonna be placed for success, how they were gonna be challenged. So those were a few things that we really honed in on, and we're seeing some, great, rewards with that. Okay. So Jose, Pascuale? Yeah. Can you can you define for me disciplinary literacy?
Yes. I mean, because to me, that sounds quite punitive, but It's a great thing. Disciplinary literacy is something we're engaged with. A lot of schools in Oakland schools are engaged in this, and they're providing a lot of professional development. It's what literacy looks like in each discipline. So in math, what does literacy look like? In social studies, in science, in ELA. It's really cool. And these 10 essential practices, give us an instructional framework to talk about. But it's we did a instructional visit, and we were as a cabinet team who doesn't know much about disciplinary literacy, we learned about, like, six of the essential practices,
and we were able to tie what we what we witnessed in the classrooms to these essential practices. So they're essencesly doing the same thing. So based on subject area? Yes. Okay. What does literacy look like in math? Okay. What does it look like in in social studies? I read that and I'm like, so is that punitive? I don't exactly understand that. You're going to learn more about this learning literacy. Trust me. I'll be honest. I appreciate the question, but I know we all have questions. So I just want to remind everyone that we're supposed to hold them. Yeah. And you'll learn more about it. Yeah. Okay. So moving on to the, this next slide looks at the p,
PSAT eight. And just a reminder before we dive into the PSAT and the SAT, the PSAT eight is the first assessment in this SAT suite of assessments, and that established a baseline measure for college and career readiness. First time the kids are taking something like this is that PSAT eight. The content is a little less complex and has a lower score range. So the highest you can get is a fourteen forty versus the PSAT 10 and the PSAT 11. And, when they take it, 1,600 is the highest score. So, that's their first first shot at it.
As you can see on this on this chart, very excited. Point of pride. Our students, performed at eighty eight point three percent, in evidence based reading and writing based on this first time they took took this test. I always give kudos to the elementary and the middle the elementary team because they're doing that well on a test that they've just, for the first time, seen their their reading and writing skills are pretty good. So, very proud proud there. As you can see, it compares us with Oakland County and state. We do pretty well, and we're just really excited about the growth. The growth, the growth is great,
but if you look, there's not much red on that left bar on RCS. You see the red is not proficient. A point of pride is closing the gap and reducing the number of students who are not proficient. And if you look in the appendix, you'll see there's a data sheet in there that shows PSAT, on ELA and math. And we decreased in the past five years, for example, in, in ELA, we went from 9.1% in 2018, 'nineteen of not proficient is down to 3.3% in in 2425. So for us, that's a point of pride that we're we're preparing these students for what it takes
to be college and career ready on their first time taking this assessment. In ELA, we have a a group of staff members, curriculum consultants, teachers, staff in the teaching and learning department, continue to collaborate with the county and state to keep up with the literacy legislation coming with, dyslexia and all those type of things to make sure we're in a good position to support our students. Alright. Moved. Alright. So PSAT eight math. That's the other assessment that the students get measured in math, any evidence based reading and writing. Another point of pride, here, as you can see, we're comparing ourselves to the county and states. You can see the percentages there.
We significantly outperformed in those areas. We incorporated PSAT practice for the first time last year, so the students had a practice to the practice. So we dedicated a day, where those students got to take the adaptive, you know, the the digital test, with some prep. And, we feel like that's important because we do that with our high school kids. We practice, practice, get on Khan Academy, take the practice. And the more familiar they are with that those type of questions, the better, they're gonna do. But, the another key component here is you look at the red, the not proficient, closing that gap and reducing the number.
And you and and if you look at the appendix and that data, this one's staggering to me. In the past five years, we had 14.7% not proficient students in '21 2021, and in '24, '25, we're down to 6.3 student 6.3% of students not proficient. So in growing the proficient and and decreasing not proficient, those are things we're looking at and and making sure we're continuing that good work. Looking ahead, we're working with Oakland County like always. We work with our colleagues in Oakland County, districts across the state state on looking at the correlations between seventh grade m STEP and the eighth grade
PSAT because they're they take I Ready, m STEP, and then it's the first time they take the PSAT, which is college to career readiness standards, which is a little different. So we're always working on how how can we correlate those a little bit better to make sure kids are prepared. Okay. So that's p s that's PSAT. Now we're gonna talk about SAT a little bit. And, before we get into some data, there's a few things I wanna highlight on responsive action. So proud of our secondary team. PSAT prep has been around forever. Doctor Deluca and I, when we were assistant principals, nine, ten years ago, we were doing PSAT prep, SAT prep.
Before that, it was happening. Right? It was high stakes, getting kids prepared, getting them and, but I'm proud of the the team that they came together and they created modules and they created a PSAT SAT prep system that all kids could benefit from. It was last year we kind of implemented those modules. We provided time throughout the day. We we provided after school sessions. Our teachers embedded things into the classroom, so students were really feeling like it was part of their everyday thing, not just the one SAT prep session they gotta go pay for by tutor or whatever the case may be.
So very excited about that, and they're gonna continue that work because they they've seen the rewards of those. Professional development is happening with SAT with our curriculum consultants, making sure that every department knows how to incorporate those SAT style writing, reading, math skills into their daily lessons, not just on an SAT prep day. So very excited about that work. Building leadership capacity. We are very excited. This year, we started with our building administrators looking at day district data as a whole by feeder school,
and then they take it back and dig deeper with their school and their students and where their where their students are proficient, who who isn't proficient, who's partially proficient, and making sure those students are supported. So, using data informed leadership is something that we're excited about with our admin team and to continue that work. And then making sure we connect our families to why SAT is important, why this career and college readiness is important, and what it can provide their their kids and their families, by doing as good as they can on that on that assessment and utilizing the resources we have.
We have workshops for students and their families that our building administrators offered, to make sure they understood what it meant. And they know what it means, and they know what the scores mean, and they know how to prepare, all those type of things. Okay. So this is looking at this slide is looking at just our school day SAT data, from 2425 school year. And you see it's trend data from all the way back to February, 1516. And this is combined math and evidence based reading and writing. So this is our total score, those two areas, for our eleventh graders who take it in the spring.
This is the just a reminder, the SAT is the fourth and final assessment that our that our juniors take in the spring of the SAT suite. So they took it in ninth, tenth, the, PSAT 11 that just happened October 15, and then they take the SAT in the spring. So this is the final one. And this one, like I told you, there's math and evidence based reading and writing. There it ranges from 200 to 800 total score. So a total of 1,600 points you could possibly get if you got a perfect score, which I learned that that Stony Creek student got a perfect 1,600,
which I was like, oh, wow. Okay. You don't see that very often, but that's awesome. A reminder that the SAT suite is now fully digital. We talked about this last year. It was the last year. It was the first year. It offers a shorter, adaptive format, that started last year. And so we're our kids are getting a little more familiar with that. We're giving more online testing. We're we're giving them access to more online testing tools. So it's not like, wow. What is this? So they're feeling more comfortable as well. And very excited that you see in the slide that we increased our overall percentage to 55.6%.
So that's 7% increase of college readiness. We increased our total average score to 11 o nine, which was a 34 increase that we were very excited about. And when I talk about all that SAT work that we kinda brought together, I think those things really put an emphasis on, hey. Let's let's put this back on. This is important to kids. Not everybody not not as important to everybody, but it is important to to all kids on, on a lot of different areas. So that's the overall. Just wanted to share that. You're gonna see some more data here. On this slide,
you see this is our total overall math and e English, evidence based reading and writing combined. And you see the the the county there, and you see the state. So the the really, the point of pride here is that everybody increased. You saw we everybody's, witnessed an increase at the state and county and and and RCS. We just we we increased 7% where the county, was 1.8% and the state was 1.5. So, feeling that we significantly, increased our our our overall score and our students are doing amazing and our staff
is doing a great job. Okay. This next slide is looking at just evidence based reading and writing and the trend data back to from 02/1516 all the way to 2425. That's okay. I got mine. You guys good? You guys got yours? Is that one on? Yeah. It is? Okay. That one's off. That's okay. I can go without. So this this the celebration here for us being at eighty one point eight percent of our eleventh graders being, career and college ready and evidence based reading and writing, it's a 5.9 increase. It's something to celebrate. It's a if you look at the at the top performing districts and the large
the large district comparisons, we're at the top. We're at towards the top one, two, or three, which is something to be proud of. And if you look at the the the county and the state are not on here, but the county was 63.5% and the state was 55.4%. So they they also witnessed an increase of proficiency. We just we increased 5.9%. They increased three point nine and four point one. So outpacing the increase, I think, is important to us, to make sure we're do we're doing everything we can for our students to compete and get into whatever college they wanna get into or do whatever they wanna do
in career. So very excited about that. Okay. This one looks at math, and 6.9% increase from last year of students, college and career readiness percentage. It is a big celebration for our math department. I know last year we were scrounging like, oh my god. What's happening with math? What's happening with math? And we're we it wasn't like we were panicking about it, but we were we were concerned as everybody else. We want our students to be to do well. So this one, again, we we we witnessed a 6.9% increase from last year, whereas the county increased by 1.5%
and Michigan increased by 1.2%. So, the work that we're doing, the work that our math teachers are doing in their classrooms with with, you'll see in a minute with the Desmos tools and making sure kids can be problem solvers and and know how to do that on a digital adaptive test for math is something that we're we're thriving to get better at. But we're we're we're doing a lot there. I'm very proud of our game from last year, and we're gonna continue that, all that work that we're doing in the classroom, in the building, looking at data and our SAT prep,
that we're doing with all students. Okay. So this is just some things looking ahead. As you know, because we presented this to the board, we are adding back our SAT scholar distinction qualifier starting with the class of 2027. So my son, Dario. I told him, sorry, Dario, but it's it's getting added back. But, juniors this year, so when they take the, SAT in the spring, their SAT score will count for seeing if they make one of our scholars a distinction, along with the GPA and the how many AP courses you take, and then we're just adding back the, SAT,
component back. So we think that that will be a motivator, and and and really award students for that good work on that on that SAT. In ELA, our ELA department is on fire right now with this common lit curriculum and assessment because in a high school, we don't have a lot we don't have I Ready, and so we struggle to how do we monitor the kids' growth in in reading and writing? So the common lit provides that. They're they're they're just implementing this year, but it's reading comprehensive that's tailored to norms in the Michigan content standards, and they're loving it because they're they're getting to see that where the kids are
and how they can make them grow, and and hopefully see those results they were hoping for, even though they're achieving at pretty high levels at the 80 some percent. But, in math, our secondary math teachers are engaging in Desmos training. Desmos is that calculator that they have to use on they have to use the Desmos calculator on the math SAT, which was new to kids. So that's something that they're embedding into the classroom. And and we had Desmos come and provide the the PD for our teachers. But they are also reviewing materials that best align with math readiness development. For example, we're gonna be proposing AP precalculus,
gifted and talented to do enrollment options coming up, sustained support for intervention systems, 25 math teachers currently integrating some resources in their classroom lessons to make sure our resources are aligned with the state standards as well as the SAT, college and career readiness standards. So that's all in review right now. We're very excited to to see what that what that comes to at the end of this year. So you'll be hearing more about math. They'll be bringing some course proposals. They'll be bringing some material, adoption proposals towards the end of this end of this school year. So okay.
I'll turn Yeah. So as you heard this evening, our team is responding to the data, both the I Ready data, the PSAT, and the SAT data. Our response to this data is essential to our Michigan Continuous Improvement Plan or MICIP. Currently, an overarching goal we are focusing on is the implementation of curriculum, instruction and supports aligned to essential elements and assessments. Building and district leadership came together in early August to review our summit of data and strategic plan priorities specifically under the teaching and learning subsections.
You heard that this evening by Peter Path digging into the data protocols, looking at the high school data, the middle school data, and the elementary data in all content areas. We reviewed our strategies and specific activities listed under each strategy and identified areas where we need to add additional strategies or activities. We've also reformed our my KIPP team to include a steering committee that will be working in collaboration with Oakland Schools to reestablish benchmark targets for the next few years
based on our data. So based on our current data, we will be establishing benchmark goals. Overall, a my KIPP goal is three to five years, but your benchmark targets are yearly. So So each year you can set for the '27 school year, the twenty eight to twenty nine to get to your overarching goal. This will provide a framework to prioritize initiatives and allocate resources accordingly. Both core resources and then once we have opportunities for supplemental resources through grant funding. Presentation. Thank you. I think that surely there were areas, both that we would want to continue to focus on the success and what is creating that mechanism for success,
but also areas of challenge that may not have been brought to the forefront this evening. And the reason to connect this continuous improvement process is because that strong intersection is what brings that work to life at the systems level. During our data reviews or monitoring for implementation of strategies, fresh data sets are coming into that conversation as we think about root cause analysis, as we think about the way, let's say, the state budget may inform current activities or strategies and how, as new information comes into the organization,
how do we take that in and couple that with our progress monitoring? How does the current state of our students growth continue to inform areas that either we need to professional learning. How do we have the pulse of our educators and our building leaders and what they would tell us, is best matched to meet the needs of the students in their care at any given point in the school year. And so that integrated continuous improvement process is really the engine that we're hooking these buckets and bodies of workup into.
And so we close with that because we're confident that while our process is evolving, certainly there are always things moving and shifting in terms of the needs for students. And that continuous improvement process is established so that districts, buildings, grade level teams are able to respond with the resources and the focus areas that they have, not only written within the plan but also, as Mr. Gilardi mentioned, that can continue to evolve within the plan. All right. Well, you guys are okay.
I am sure that my colleagues have many questions because I know I do. Would you prefer to take them starting at the beginning and going through? How would you like the questions? All right. Well, then does anyone have questions on the first page? I had one, which was just you talked about leveraging grants funds to offer supplemental programs. Are those programs within the school day outside school day? And can you give us some examples of what those are? So that is both, during the school day and supplement outside the school day. And during the school day, that would be our interventionists. So at k twelve level,
we have interventions that are supporting students in literacy and math. And then also, this could expand to our summer program offerings that we offer in the summer. So our elementary programs, our middle school programs, even our high school with 31 a funds, to give you an example, those can be used for literacy, math. It can supplement for students who may be a cost barrier. So it helps remove some of those barriers. But so the grant funds do leverage throughout the entire school year. Okay. Did anyone else have a question on that page? Going on to the I Ready K-eight reading.
Did anyone have a question there? I know I was curious. Do we have a goal of where we want each grade level to be this year and in the future. I know we talked about on the MYCAP of reestablishing some goals, but I'm not sure what benchmarks we're looking at for that. I mean, how detailed we're going. So, just looking at this right now, do we have any goals, anything we're measuring against? Our goal, in short, would be to have all students as proficient as possible. But in practical terms, when we engage with this data,
where we're really looking toward is the percentage of students that are meeting stretch growth. I already gives us reporting back in multiple ways. And once the second benchmark has occurred, we're able to look at that trajectory toward growth both within proficiency and standards alignment, but then also within a stretch growth and what that means to close gaps for students who may not currently be operating at a particular grade level benchmark. And so if you're asking what percentage, our goal will always be for all of them to be performing within a grade
level standard. We did not receive any information on growth though, right, in the packet. I don't remember did we have it on growth. We didn't get any detail on that, right? When you mentioned growth goal What you're talking about weren't you talking about growth that was what you were primarily interested in was like the stretch growth goal? Is that what you just said? Yes. But we didn't get any detail on that? No. What we reported out was spring over spring for the last three years of students within various proficiency bands. So if you were to look in the appendix,
you would see where the relative placement changes are for students from mid and above grade level through three plus years below grade level. Yes, I guess in terms of placement distribution, what we're looking to do, as Mr. Cusmano mentioned, is shrink the red, expand the green. I think an important note I would want you to make when you look at I Ready charts such as these is that and let's give an example, when a student exits kindergarten after that third administration and they're operating at grade level, Then they move into first grade and that first benchmark administration may show up in
our chart as yellow, which is below grade level or to the light green early on grade level that is measuring against end of grade level standards. So for a child who, is just rising into first grade, hence not been working through any first grade content, they would be below the first grade grade level within that first administration because they haven't yet experienced first grade. So it's always monitoring those students against the end in mind. In terms of I think what you might be referring to is a proficiency goal that says we would like seventy percent of students to be proficient
early on mid to above grade level by X mark in time. And so one of the ways that, that goal is coming through the organization at the moment is related to the goal you see on this last page here. The metrics that would be used within that are PSAT, SAT and I Ready. So our educators are looking at their current classrooms proficiencies or their cohorts proficiencies or their school levels proficiencies under the leadership of the building principal and thinking about how the needs of students within that particular site are dialed into the shared district goal
of increased proficiency in these areas. Madam President? Just let me ask one follow-up question. So are you saying that the individual schools already have goals set? I think to answer that question, it depends when you say that they have goals set, which types of goals are you Measurable goals. I think the way I would answer that is that at the start of the school year, early August and within our my kit process update, as Ms. Shalardi shared, there's a building team,
district team of leaders coming together to wade through all of this information. That's how we launched August as a team. And in looking at that information, we established some areas of focus within SAT, PSAT, M STEP and iReady, knowing that each has an area of growth to attend to, knowing that there also is a responsibility under legislation with the state of Michigan to have an educator growth goal that supports teacher, principal, central admin development. And so those two things really are requiring us to attend to a single data
source within that particular educator growth goal and then our larger work of supporting an entire system worth of growth. So I think there when we talk about goals, we're really needing to attend to each of those factors. The benchmark markers, if you will, that Karen was speaking to are where we'll move into this school year in naming what those in a SMART goal format might be within particular areas as an organization. But at the moment, educator growth goals are as I've described.
Okay. And the benchmark goals, when do we think we'll have those? And those would not be until the following year? So we'd established the benchmark goals in the spring looking at all of our data. So we're looking at them. You did last year. No, we're looking at our data now along with the I Ready data now. And we establish those benchmark goals. We have formalizing those goals. And then from there, we'll say in 'twenty seven, this is where we expect our students 28, 29 and then we write like SMART goals. Okay. Trustee Lecui? I had a follow-up question about growth because I remember at our MASB training that
we had with Jay Bennett, he was talking about student growth and student proficiency as different categories. And he was talking about districts being required to select a growth model. And we had talked about discussing what growth model RCS was using and how it works. So I guess I'm wondering when we're planning to do that because I think our next meeting is the superintendent evaluation and growth is a a part of that. I agree. I will turn that over to Mr. Russo to answer that. So you're asking just to be clear, Trustee de Coulee, I want to make sure I answer your question directly.
Are you asking what you say are we looking for proficiency or growth? No. I said there's profi there you can measure student proficiency, which is what we're talking about here, or you can measure student growth. Like, for instance, one thing I've brought up before with the I Ready stuff is it groups, you know, if you're mid or above grade level all in one strand, a green. And I've often wondered what happens to a student that's in that strand. Like, how are we measuring their growth over the course of the year, for instance? And so Jay Bennett was talking about how districts are required to select a growth
model. Our district will be able to explain our growth model to us and how it works and how it measures student growth, not simply if they're meeting the benchmarks. Right. Okay. Thank you. I literally was just asking the question. So, I'm going to take a walk us back to give you a direct answer. So right now, we have the myKIP, which is required by state law. Right? We have to we're we're doing myKIP, which is continuous improvement on on our system. In order to feed into what, what myKIP requires, right, we want to align our goals of student growth.
Right? So we have right now, we have PSAT, SAT, and iReady as measurement sticks for k-twelve. That's that's going to feed into what the myKIP benchmarks will be for the next three years. Karen? Thank you. For the three to five years. And next year, we'll have trajectory points for this. Now those trajectory points will be proficiency levels. They won't be student growth levels. But we don't want to ignore that as classroom teachers and principals to say this will be a proficiency level because there could be,
and I'll use random examples so that school A might have hit the proficiency level in a certain category, right? In fifth grade, they might be 81% proficient in math. But as a district, we were looked we I'm giving you this is not real. I'm giving you an example. There might be 75% with the trajectory being 3% higher for the next year. Are you following me? So, like, if they're already at 81 Well, I I just wanna get back to the growth model, though, because I'm not suggesting we ignore proficiency. I think it's good to measure both student proficiency and student growth.
Right. And I'm not talking about our district's growth improvement plan. I'm just talking about the students. How are we measuring student growth? At the elementary, we're measuring student growth by fall, winter, and end of year iReady. What is the model that we're using, the growth model that we were required to select by the state? Yes. So we have a chart that we can share with you that what all educators are let me back that up all teachers are measured against. Is that what you're asking? I'm asking about student growth. What is the student growth model that our district has selected?
Because we just want to understand how that works. So I I think I might be confused because if you're asking what the student growth model is, we want to take individual student data. And so so if I'm if I'm 30% proficient in the beginning of the year and my trajectory says I might be I should be at 70%, but I wanna stretch my I wanna do the stretch goal of 75%, we want if I'm the student and and the president's the teacher, we want me to to grow to my potential, but it might look different for someone else.
So the growth model would be to take their percentage to take all percentages at the beginning of the year, assess what they are, have a have a goal that's set for middle of the year, assess that whether we met it, what's the next trajectory moving forward, and then as and then evaluate the teacher on what that is. Evaluate the entire building, the teacher, the principal, the the administrators, the cabinet, myself, and if we're meeting those goals. And how are you setting those goals? So as I started to say, Right now, this is this is a growth model for the district. We want our assessment data to feed into at all buildings to our principals,
principals to, Doctor. DeLuca, to that to me to try to align them so we're all moving the ship in the right way. So we're all focused on ELA at the elementary level. How are you setting the goals for the students? Yes. I think the question is I'm just going to throw out numbers here, right? If a student starts at 62% proficient in something and by the end of the year, they're at 70% proficient, like did they hit their growth? Like how do you determine whether they achieved what they needed to achieve or not?
For benchmarks, there would be And this rolls into the teacher's evaluation, right? Like the students have to hit a certain level in order to be considered effective, if they hit a certain lower level than they would be, right? I mean, so I think that's am I asking the question correctly? Right. Exactly. Like if you are if you start at 70% and then you get to 7172%, are we pleased with that? Is that really the growth goal? Or are we looking for more than that? How are you measuring which percentages you want to get to?
So I can speak to the way we're currently set up, which is to expect that teachers I'm sorry, that students are meeting or exceeding their I Ready typical growth targets in reading. And the measurement system creates a bit of a challenge in terms of time line. What we work towards growth is from the time school starts until the time school ends. Our evaluation time lines infuse a different element in there in which that second benchmarking is the data collection point. And so that way the way that goal moves in the organization needs to reflect
that element. So when you ask what we're driving toward, we're thinking about the proficiency and the stretch growth for all students until the close of school business at the end of an academic year. When you look at the language of a goal and the way that it's written toward an evaluation, it has a different set of calendaring, to be met. And one of the challenges, that not only RCS has, but statewide, we continue to have the notion of actionable data sets that allow us to respond to a student's instructional needs when taken into the context of evaluation have,
a very changed dynamic. And so our goal is to use, that language very specifically in terms of expected growth so that when we're looking around instructional planning and we're thinking about a student stretch growth, that conversation is able to be very safe and very related to students' next steps of learning rather than as has has been referenced. Well, you know, Kimberly's already at 71. So I guess we're all set with her, and now we'll move on to this pocket over here that's at less than 70. That would never be our goal as educators.
We're striving for the the highest quality and rigor for every student in the room and that data point of where their starting point was to what's next is what Mr. Russo was describing in response to that because I think that at the heart, that would be what our educators would find the most most important as what our principles. And when we put that accountability measure and metric with a calendar that doesn't align to that, that's when things get a little tricky. And so that may be what you're getting in our response. I guess I think maybe we do need another time to discuss this. I think for specifically for the superintendent's evaluation that it would be a roll up
of the staff, what they've received. But I think going forward, we need to better understand how that growth portion is done. Trustee Alspar? So in my experience in I Ready, we have kind of three benchmarks. We have our proficiency benchmark, which we've talked about. Most of our kids are in that green. And like that's where you we don't want to get to where Kimberly was doing, oh, she's proficient. She's good. And then there is the typical yearly growth that we want all students to make no matter where they are. But then you're also talking about that stretch growth.
So are we focused on the yearly growth? Or are we focused on the stretch growth? Because I know in situations where we're focused on stretch growth, we're really usually looking at students who are, you know, in that one or two years behind grade levels. So giving them one grade level every year is going to keep them consistently at a standard deviation below. I know also when we talk about, like, M STEP and PSAT data, that tends to be, autopsy data because it comes in so late. So that's where you talk about that calendar where our I Ready is more,
examination and temperature and, you know, like lab tests when you went to the doctor. You get it back then versus M STEP, you get back six months later and gotten who knows if that kid is really still in your district. So getting back to my question, are we focused on our annual growth or like typical growth or are we focused on stretch growth? For educator evaluation, at the moment, typical growth. This one's for Mrs. Gilardi. So we had talked about the KIP and the annual goals. And you had said based on our current sets of data, we would create those benchmark goals going forward.
We'll create the goals for next year and this spring. My question are last spring, we must have created goals. What are our current KIP goal my KIP goals? So with my KIP, it's system wide that the recommendation from the state and from our county was to have one overarching goal So you would not have multiple goals. So that's why we currently have one overarching goal. However, the state, I'm talking to the county with us, that's not enough. So we will be breaking the so we'll have we can have multiple goals. So probably have, like, two goals and under those goals will be those benchmarks,
like benchmark targets. Right now, that overarching goal is aligning our systems, our curriculum and our assessment. That is the overarching goal. It's more of a systems goal because we need to see it aligned k 12 system, our assessments, everything. So that was our focus to do that. There have been other goals that become, I would say, like, historical or archive goals. You are still working on those goals even though they're not present and fully centered in your mic kit plan. You're still looking at student achievement data. You're still doing those pieces. An example would be,
we had to put a goal in for twenty three g, a grant that we had. That grant is expired. That goal was sunset. So now kind of and Michigan Department of Education, I'm trying not to use education acronyms, is asking us, you can still have that one goal, it can be a systems goal, but maybe developing overarching goal, which is aligning those essential I think you said essential elements. And in the past, it's been practice and funding requirement that we had benchmarks. Although it's still best practices to look at those benchmarks, we really don't have benchmark goals for this year. We did based on funding and we will next year.
But this year, we're kind of our overarching system goal is to work in alignment. Correct. So we're in the getting ready phase is the best way to describe it. If you look in the myCAP phases, let's say that you're getting ready, you're investigating, you're just looking at your data, but you wanna be mindful of writing a benchmark goal that is smart, that's sustainable, measurable. So that's what we are working as we brought the team back together as the district administrators to really look at that goal and understand the feeder path Instead of having, in a sense, 23 goals, we're gonna have system go system benchmarks so that we are all working towards that
same benchmark. And so one for this building, one for this building, one for this building. I guess I just wanna I guess I'm a little concerned about that if we're gonna have one benchmark that all schools will be trying to reach because I can't imagine that all of our schools are performing identically. Within. So overall, from the district, we're gonna be looking overall as a district, how are we performing? Buildings will have their own like set goals. They can do like internal goals. Okay. So that's my question is that each individual school will set have specific benchmarks as well. Yes. But it may not you're not you may not see it in the overall plan
because in the overall plan, we're going to have benchmarks. There will be embedded in. So it will be tagged specifically because you have to have in the MICIP plan, it is the district plan. It's not a school plan. Right. But as a Board, we are concerned about every single school. So I want to ensure that every school has goals that make sense for them. Yes, they will. Okay. So then we will see that information come the spring? Yes. Okay. All right. Moving oh, you have a question on?
Okay. So just first of all, is this working? Okay. Thank you. So what would be like an example of how we're going to improve alignment between assessment and curriculum? Looking at our standards. So looking at the standards, how are those are we assessing the standards that we're teaching and the same vice versa? Looking at the grade level standards like M STEP SAT, are we hitting those standards in our curricular resources and our lessons? It goes hand in hand. To follow-up on that,
so what's informing that goal? Like what data do we have that says we need to work on this? Or why are we doing it? So for example, if we look at since we've done iReady, it's just kind of looking at numbers and operations or geometries. So you're going to dig into it. We see that's a need. Like, we see students not excelling as where we'd like them to be. I met with a teacher today. We dug into the data. I'm like, where are the specifics, like, general topics? But then let's kinda look at the curricular resource. What's going on? Like, maybe it's where we're teaching it or some of the background knowledge. We could talk about academic vocabulary.
You heard disciplinary literacy tonight. So even the conversation that you have that conversation in a science class on tables and data looks a little bit different than you're having in a literacy class on a table or data, but doing those things. So those are like one of the activities and strategies that would go towards our goal. Thank you. All right. I have on Slide four, which is the I Ready math. I guess I am just not sure I'm reading this correctly. It says the Class of 02/1936, which I believe is current second graders. So in the '5,
they would have been first graders. But in the '3, they wouldn't even have been in kindergarten yet. So what am I missing here? I'd need to go backtrack through the class of first with New York. That's what I did. That would be my first curiosity. But what I know was to highlight here was related to that gain over time within these two years. And so in thinking about, the at or above, as was mentioned earlier, as compared to stretch, which is what which is the way we would instructionally program into those goals,
the the students that are currently experiencing from the start of kindergarten through third grade as compared to students who started a resource in fourth grade, for example, have multiple data points that are trending in a positive direction, whether that's already math, classroom assessments, M STEP. One of the ways that those common classroom assessments come forward to the question around alignment between curriculum and assessment, and it's not the data point you're asking for, President Bucell, but in relation to M STEP MATH seven or M STEP ELA seven,
we notice a shift that does not reflect student performance when we to PSAT eight, for example, in either math or ELA. And so that's when we're looking across multiple assessment types and saying, is this a student performance issue? Is it a testing issue? What other assessment tools do we have in results from those tools that we can either assure ourselves that students are on a positive trajectory or halt? We've got to address something either in resources and professional learning or in the student
experience that would elicit a stronger result within these assessment types. And so with this particular chart, we're thinking about that relationship to the resource. And so I will get back to you on your question in terms of grade levels and class of. We are trying to remain consistent K-twelve because when we say, was it this year's second grade, was it three years ago second grade and that cohort data we know can get confusing across multiple charts and assessment types. And then there's also certainly the possibility of human error in all of it as well. So I'll double check those details and get that answered to you following the meeting.
Did anyone have anything on five? Going to Page six. Could you just talk about the first year of updated accelerated six math course format? It sounded like it just happened, so I don't know what year was that. Did it go into effect last year? Did it To my recollection, maybe I'm trying to find the slide. Hold on a second here. What slide are you there? Slide six. First year update on this. While Mr. Cuzma is looking in terms of additional detail, the part that I would want to highlight whether it started this year as the first or last year as the first,
is contributes to a larger conversation that we're having, particularly around the teacher induction project that talks about acceleration compared to remediation. And when we think about not looking for all of the areas of challenge students have, but rather how do we turn up the volume, so to speak, and amplify the instructional practices so that we're accelerating out of the gate. That's a conversation we're having. And so this point of detail here is really related to the fact that Accelerated six, rather than trying to move through all of sixth grade and all of seventh grade
in the course, started with the grade seven standards and then backfilled for grade six where necessary. And that approach is one of the contributing factors that they are attributing to the gains they're seeing within that cohort group. The updated Accelerated six math course started in 2024, 2025 school year, so impacting the Class of 02/1931. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Anyone have a question on Slide seven or eight? Nine or 10? So I'll go ahead. So I'll go ahead. So I'll go ahead. Slide nine. Well, just first of all,
I was just going to make an overall general comment and then ask a couple of things. And thank you so much for this report and for laying out the academic data. I am with you. I'm so encouraged to see some gains after several years of decline. It's great to see. Of course, one data point doesn't make a trend. So I hope to just continue to see this focus there, especially in secondary math, so that we can get back up to our pre pandemic high levels. I was going to say I noticed there were a couple drops that stood out to me because I know like we had one superintendent goal that was focused on
the PSAT eighth grade math and that it just so happens that one happened to drop. And then I also noticed between tenth and eleventh grade, there was that 20 drop in math going from the PSAT to SAT. And I was just curious with those couple little spots where there were drops, do we have ideas for speaking of root cause analysis, what might have been causing that and what sorts of interventions we might be putting at those levels? I'd like to address the I had it down to maybe say and you beat me to it.
But we went from 64% to 60%. Is that what you're talking about? PSAT math. So different group of kids, but from last year to or is it the '23, 20 '4 to 24, 20 '5? Right. Although although it declined and then I'm not gonna get into specifics, but two two of our middle schools made gains while two others experienced declines. So when we look at date when we look at building data, right, when we when our buildings start looking at their own data, two of our middle schools increased and two declined. So that's the conversation going on right now with the math department of why.
Right. What happened? But when reviewing the domain level data, I have it right here because it was something that I knew was something that we we noticed as well, is geometry is an area that, we need to fix. Because there's some geometry stuff in there, but the kids don't wanna expose the geometry. So our math department is looking at that because it's something that they noticed in the data that they're not doing well in the geometry concepts. Okay. So that's what I have for that. That's great. It's good to hear that kind of feedback so we know like what areas are being addressed and stuff. I wonder if that ties to the math curriculum review that we're talking that,
gets mentioned in the presentation too. I was curious about that, like what the time line is for that and what sorts of information we'll find out from you. Yes. They're currently in the review process. So, as you'll see, I think you you you heard about you were at SBCC. I think I heard about the AP precalc class. That's well, it's gonna be coming to the board here in November. But it's yeah. You were there. Yeah. But, also looking at possibly calculus for dual enrollment but inside of RCS because we have students who, are there for our more gifted students who need more.
They're looking at all our resources. So they're piloting resources in math, which you'll learn more about. I'll I'll put stuff in the cabinet notes here coming up shortly. But the math department will come and present this year to get your approval on what math, materials they're using, what they're piloting, and what what their staff thinks is going to be the best moving forward. So we're excited about that work. So it will happen. It's happening this year. It will happen throughout the year. But towards the end of this year, you guys will be asked to adopt some new resources for math. Okay. Great. That sounds great. So, you mentioned the geometry with the eighth grade part. What about the that other spot, the 20 drop between the I think it was six and eleven? Tell me just like this you can find on Page 55 of the data file
appendix. It was between grades nine and ten. It the proficiency drops from around 75% to just above 50%. Sorry, run SAT or PSAT? PSAT? Are you looking at the class of 2026? Slide 50. It's on slide 55. Yes. I don't have the number on this. It's this one. Okay. Yes. This is this is showing the, just the class of 2026. So, our current no, sorry. It's the group who's going to graduate this year. Yeah. So our current seniors. And you're saying oh, yes. Perfect.
I did write something down. Trustee Lacoue, I did write it down because I knew this was going to be a question. So, you're saying from PSAT nine math to PSAT 10 math? Yes. Yes. Thank you so much. So that's when they dug into that, our students in ninth grade are taking algebra one. Most of them are taking algebra one. And the PSAT the PSAT 10 tests algebra two, and they don't get that till eleventh grade. The students who are on standard math track, students who are advanced obviously might have access to that.
But that's something that we noticed that that algebra two aspect is heavy on the PSAT 10, And our students are not exposed most of our students are not exposed to that. So that's something that we have to try to figure out. Gotcha. All right. Thank you. Yes. All right. Going forward, anything on Slides ten and eleven? I know on Slide 12, I would just have liked to have seen the peer groups that we identified being listed here as well as a comparison so we could see the trends with those. That's something that in the future I don't think is going to be a problem.
But with the time that we adopted those two groups, which was a week before the presentation was due, it did not give us time to run those reports and my school data. But in the future, I don't see a problem possibly with that, is running those groups and labeling district size, like size and high performing. Trustee Blake? Yes. I guess this is probably a good time to make my comments. They're not really questions. But I, first of all, I do want to thank everybody for putting this together. It was a lot of work, you can tell. And I am really pleased because you can see the growth in here.
You can see it spouting up at various places, and it's obvious. And so I know that every point that we increase, that's teachers and other educators and parents and kids that are working hard. So we need to acknowledge when we have these things and not just blow past them. I do like also hearing the fact that we're not totally satisfied. We want to we want to keep going. We want to get higher and higher because that's what we do. I found you can take this data and you can slice it and look at it in 100 different ways, and I tend to do that. I'm a little I like that.
And I found a source online who hopefully is accurate, who took two dozen schools that were in, like, the area in the region, not just the top ones, but including those and some other ones, and did all kinds of different data comparison with them. And I was I'm not going to lay out everything. And I know we don't like to go building by building, that we don't like to pit buildings against each other. But I just there are a couple of things that stepped out at me. Most of the most of these two dozen schools did have some growth this year, in this region, but the school that had the highest number of increased points according to this data
of the entire region, including Troy, Novi, all those, was Rochester Adams. So that's really that was 42 additional points. And then second was Avondale. And then third was Rochester High with 39 additional points. So I thought that was good for me to compare to how much are we improving compared to other schools. We're doing quite well. The other thing that I did, though, then after I looked at that is you could go back ten years. They had a chart for ten years ago and compare what are our most recent scores compared to ten years ago. And,
of course, those were scarier for most of the schools. Some of these schools had 88 points less, 84 points, 69. You know, really significant drops. And only three schools on this list had an increase from ten years ago according to this data. And the largest increase from ten years ago to now was one of our schools, Rochester High. And that one included that one went up 13 points from ten years ago. So I just thought they're doing something right over there, by the way. So I just thought that this was,
for me, valuable data, so I would share it with others. Trustee, no? Okay. I guess, as everyone else said, I appreciate receiving this information. For me, the question is really where do we go from here? I know we have the MYCAP, which will we're working on establishing benchmarks. But I just think we need to be very clear with what our goals are because if you don't have goals, you don't really know where you want to go. And so I'm not sure do we have goals established for this year even though we're working on these
benchmark things? Do we have anything that is set for this year that we're specifically looking to accomplish? I was going to say, of course, we have goals. We have evaluations. We're talking about evaluation goals. All of our building principles use our overarching myCIP goal, which we shared. And And that their building goal has to fall within that and tie the strategic plan. There's a growth goal that everybody has to have. The building principals, every teacher, us at central office. The growth goal for secondary, middle schools are using PSAT eight,
although it's autopsy data, but they look at the PSAT. In ninth grade, they look at their eighth graders, how they did it because that's when they get the results. Right? And for for our high schools, they look at the PSAT, 11, which they take in the fall because then they won't go get that data and time to look to see if those students hit their mark. So those are those those are for us, that's that's the measure, is PSAT and SAT because obviously that's our state assessment and we're tied to that in some in some manner. So those are our growth goals currently. Are we gonna refine them and try to get more specific?
Yes. But at the building level, it gets more specific because they look at their data. And like you said, Adam's Adam's goal is gonna be a little bit different than Rochester's and Stoney's based on where they are and what group of kids they're getting and how they're doing their PSAT eight, nine, 10. And it's gonna it's gonna look a little different. But the expectation is that we're all working towards better proficiency on the PSAT, SAT and then I Ready, M STEP as a District. So that's our current status for goals. We do have them. It's just Not that,
that needs to be a presentation, but I think that would be great information to share with the board so that we could see what is actually be where we are currently and what kind of goals we've set. All right. Does anyone have any other questions right now? This is something. Ms. Boutel, thank you. I want to return the board's attention to the I Ready K-eight math slide, where we had a question around graduation year, first with the class of 2036 noted there for the '5 to the '3, and I indicated that I would circle back to those proficiency.
I just want to create some clarity for that particular slide. You are correct, President Boutel, the class of 2036 were in our current second graders. And so you see in spring, they were taking that test as first graders, and then the prior administration would not have encompassed the full kindergarten cohort. But when you move down from second to third, fourth to fifth, that is reflected there. And so I think we have an extra cohort in that roster than would otherwise
be indicated for that growth. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Well, thank you very much for that. I appreciate it. I think we all appreciate seeing the information and some of the growth that we've had. And hopefully, that will continue and looking forward to hearing more about our MYKIP and what we do with that. All right. We are now moving on to new business. We just have one item this evening. Item 9.1 is a request to approve the replacement of the folding partition at MacGregor. The information was in your packet.
Is there a motion to approve the replacement of the folding partition at MacGregor in the amount of $197,000 as presented? Moved by Trustee Gupta. Is there support for this? I see lots of hands, Trustee Alsbaugh. And I think we've received some e mails that the petition at MacGregor has been inoperable for some time. And so does Mr. McDaniel is not here tonight, but did anyone have any questions? Trustee Alsba? So I understand this is the partition wall between what we call a cafatura nazium,
which is kind of this thing where you have a stage and you have a cafeteria, only they have the addition of a gym in there. And I was wondering, when we make that partition and wall operable again, or it not having it operable, what's scheduling does this limit gym time? Did this what were the inconveniences that come that make it necessary to make sure that we have that wall operational? Yes. Operational? Yeah. I think there's a few things there just so that the board knows. The the wall can still be moved by hand, but it doesn't seal at the bottom of the motor. And so having events at night where you could split that off and change it
or having two separate events during the day, really wasn't available. So having I'm sorry. Having this would, then again increase or I guess decrease the probability of canceling events or moving events out of there, because of an inoperable wall. Trustee Blank. I guess maybe I just don't know, but I was shocked that it's $200,000 for a folding wall, and this one's not even mechanical like the prior one. I do notice it said in here that this is like the third or fourth one that we've replaced at different schools over the last number of years. And I don't know if anybody knows,
is that the price that it has consistently been or is because we only got one bid. So I don't know if this was like way higher than the previous ones or what. I can answer a portion of that. What I will say is that as the buildings age and these motors go down for with these movable walls, that re repairing them almost becomes, not cost worthy. So the cost to replace the motor instead of repair, access is also an issue in terms of what's wrong with it sometimes. And that's just from having discussions about this specific one,
but my experience in the past with doing the same types of things about lunches. All right. Then all in favor of approving the replacement of the folding partition, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. That's a seven-zero vote. And the motion to is approved to purchase the folding partitions. We are now we have no remaining public comment. We are going to additional comments. Item 11.1 is additional comments by members of the Board. Individual board members may use this time to share information about school visits, updates from committees or organizations they're assigned to or express their personal opinion.
Each trustee has three minutes, and there's a timer on the Smart Board for your reference. If you run over that time, I'm happy to ask the board if they are willing to extend it. Trustee Lozano. Yes. Thank you. I want to address an issue in our community. It's kind of like the elephant in the room in a sense. An anonymous Facebook page that falsely presents itself as a source of RCS information. This is a page that's not official, it's not transparent, and it cannot be trusted. Worse than that, this page is being used to bully and attack people. It targets people, such as school board members, parents,
and other members of our community. This behavior is harassment, and it's not okay. What's even worse is that some staff and board members have been seen liking comments or commenting on these posts. When people in this district engage in this page, it makes the whole district look bad, and it goes against what we stand for. Normally, when someone sends false information or damages a person's reputation, there are consequences. But because this page is anonymous, nobody is held accountable, and this makes this kind of bullying worse. Just recently, a community member actually reached out to me and said that she Googled her own name, and she was upset because the first thing that came up about her was a
hit piece from this page. This is not just online drama. It's harmful, and it's unacceptable. Ultimately, I know exact or, unfortunately, I know exactly how this feels as I was a victim during campaign season, and I'm still I still experience it now as a sitting board member. I understand that we can't control what people do on social media, but as leaders, we need to set the tone. I challenge everyone here to hold themselves to a higher professional standard. We have the ability to call out this toxic behavior, and if we don't, we are quietly allowing it to continue. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Liqui?
Alright. I wanna take a moment to talk about the new health framework being pushed by the Michigan Department of Education and the state board. Parents need to understand what's happening here. Under Michigan law, parents have the right to opt their children out of sex education. But health class is a required course, and this new framework moves topics like gender identity and even community activism into that required class. State officials keep saying parents can still opt out, But that's not true when the line is blurred like this. You can opt out of sex ed, not out of health class,
and that's a big deal. And the problem goes deeper than politics. It's about the constitutional right of parents to direct their children's moral and religious upbringing. It's not just my opinion. That's Michigan law MCL three eighty ten. And it was reaffirmed by the Michigan Supreme Court in Mahmood versus Taylor earlier this year. Health class is meant to teach objective science, not belief systems. Biology recognizes that sex is determined at conception and reflected in DNA. Gender ideology, on the other hand, treats gender as something that can be chosen or redefined,
and that's a belief. It's not science. People deserve kindness and respect, but confusing the categories of reality doesn't really help anyone, and it certainly doesn't erase anyone. People can believe what they wish, but demanding affirmation of those beliefs from others crosses a constitutional line. No government agency has the right to impose a belief system on other people's children. And, yes, I've seen that an anonymous RCS social media page, a page that routinely targets and defames people in our community,
has tried to label me a Christian nationalist for speaking out about this issue. That term is meant to be derogatory and to pick on me for my religion. But let's be clear. I'm not the one trying to impose my beliefs on anyone's children or to override parental rights. I believe in every parent's rights, regardless of faith or background, to raise their own children according to their own values. So I want to encourage parents, don't let this kind of bullying or intimidation silence you. Standing up for your children's education is not something to apologize for.
It's something to be proud of, and that's what true freedom means. So the point is this, belief based systems from any side don't belong in the public school curriculum, in the required public school curriculum no less. Here in Rochester, we're not required to adopt these new standards even if they pass at the state board level in November. And I hope that our board keeps its focus where it belongs, on academic excellence, on truth, on respecting every family's rights. Because if we lose sight of that, we're losing far more than another huge enrollment drop. We risk losing the trust of the community we serve.
Thank you. Trustee Yanis? Thank you, madam president. I wanted to speak to the recently passed, state budget and its impact on the school aid fund. This budget feels like another shell game that ends up hitting K-twelve public schools the hardest. The school aid fund gets about 73% of its money from state sales tax. Legislators are now exempting fuel from this sales tax, so the state lose around $680,000,000 a year at the pump based on current federal prices. That's one shell shift. Yes. The school aid fund was technically held harmless from the revenue loss through legislation tied
to the budget deal. But road funding should have happened back in 2022 when there was a $2,500,000,000 general fund surplus for roads. Lawmakers had a chance to act then without creating these downstream impacts on public education. The other shell game in this, or budget, I should say, shifts $400,000,000 from K-twelve schools to higher education because of longstanding disinvestment or underinvestment in that area. So the School Aid Fund isn't losing revenue directly, but the amount of funding that actually is available to K-twelve classrooms still drops by
400,000,000 through this shift. This is why it's called a shell gain. And this isn't just rhetoric. It's a reflection of how the budget moves money around without truly addressing the root cause of the issue. And unfortunately, public schools end up carrying the weight of those choices. This budget's uncertainty is also why I'm endorsing the Invest in My Kids ballot initiative that, if passed by Michigan voters, would amend Michigan's Constitution to ensure a funding source for K-twelve public education that can't be moved based on the political whims of Lansing politicians.
You can learn more at investmyinmykids.org. Lastly, regarding Michigan's health standards for public education, much has changed since these standards were last updated in 02/2007. We cannot shirk our our responsibility as a public school district in providing accurate and inclusive health and sex education. I personally provided feedback on these standards, just as another school board member at this table has done too. However, I fully support the proposed updates because accurate health and sex education standards are essential
to every RCS student's social, emotional, physical, and civic development, and they serve as guidance at the local level. Parental rights, local control, and transparency all remain firmly in place with each Michigan school district. Our districts should be teaching biological facts clearly and accurately this is true and addressing sex and gender without assigning value judgments. We should promote respect and empathy for all students and create a space for honest questions, rather than forcing a single perspective. And finally,
claims that these standards would remove parental opt out, especially when spread by an elected school board member, are simply not true. Our job as a school board is to ensure every student receives the education and information they need to live healthy, informed and respectful lives. Thank you. Trustee Blake? Sure. I'll just pick up where she left off because I do think it's important as board members that we give accurate and truthful information to the public. The truth is that in Michigan, sex ed is completely voluntary on several levels.
First of all, any parent can opt out of some or all of the instruction. And the district chooses the curriculum, not the state. So the state makes recommendations and the last time they did that was in 02/2007. And they make recommendations, but that's all they do. And they're in the process of updating those recommendations now. They're taking two comments into account. They've had two of our board members have made public comments and the state will eventually have their recommendations. And then the way it works is the only thing we're required to teach is HIV or AIDS education. Other than that, it's entirely up to us and it's entirely again up to parents if they want
their kid to participate or not. So we're back on the people who want to control what participate or not. So we're back on the people who want to control what your kids learn, not just their own. Every parent has a right to review all the materials, every bit of it. Rochester will have a community I'm sorry, committee made of 50% parents and they will work on the recommendations and they will bring those to the board. And then we will have the opportunity to discuss them and we will have the opportunity to vote on them. Now I'm not gonna prejudge that process. I'm not gonna decide right now that we should have this or we should have that or we shouldn't do this before I've heard from our community, before we've let our community do their work.
And I don't think it's responsible to throw suspicion about the committee before it has even done anything yet. Now there is a lot in the news lately and Michigan Department of Education issued a press release, parent opt out local control and transparency would remain under updated sex ed standards. Just reiterating that state education leaders address misinformation. Health ed health ed but but that's incorrect too. It's not. But where is your proof of that? Anyways, no, but that's not incorrect. All right. So Bridge Michigan,
which is a nonpartisan nonprofit news news came out with an article about this called Michigan Sex Education Overhaul Plan Sparks Debate Inclusivity or Indoctrination. And they say in there some conservative news outlets have falsely claimed the state is pushing to make the curriculum mandatory, eliminating the option for parents to opt out their students. That's misinformation. Politicians, media and advocacy groups have spread falsehoods to scare parents into thinking that schools would teach sex education to their children without giving parents a chance to opt out from the instruction. Parent rights, local control and transparency are and would remain important parts of health education and sex
education. The opt out provision allows parents to choose for themselves whether or not their children should take part in sex education classes. Now I looked when I saw Trustee Lacoue's post, I looked to see what is that based on the fact that she says they're moving this into the health education. I read Caitlin Buss's article. She just simply announces her position. There's no evidence for it. There's no support for it. It's not in any of the news. So it's important to give honest information from the table, and that's what I've just Thank you. Trustee Alspar? So I excuse me. I'm sorry. Could we please not talk at the table?
Trustee Alspar? I want to go back to something Trustee Lawson said. And I agree with you that harassment is not okay. And it's not okay to have a hit piece out there. I think one of the first things we have to do and Trustee Lawson, I'm not referring to you about this. I think the first thing we have to do is look at ourselves. And there are those of us at this table that cry wolf every time something is said that we don't like, but yet we get out there on social media and we create the same toxic environment. We get out there in e mails and we create the same toxic environment in
our e mails. So for those of you who want to live in a glass house and throw stones, maybe you need to look at yourself first. But turning back to like the more important things that we do in our District. I was lucky enough to attend the PAC meeting and get some really good information. One of the best things that happened is that in that PAC meeting where we have our parents is that our administration engages with the parents in an open and individual basis. And our parents, we had a lot of new parents there. And they were just kind of getting to know the community, and we had parents sharing resources with them.
As a special ed educator, I know that there are particular challenges when you're parenting students that have special needs or that are neurodiverse. And it's wonderful to see that we have that strong level of community. And it's a really positive thing in our community. I really wanted to lift that up. I did also want to thank the administration for all of the assessment data that was well put together. I want to acknowledge that you brought it to us and you were responsive to our feedback that we've given you in past. But I also want to acknowledge more than just the people at the table. It is our entire community that has created these schools of excellence.
It is our parents. It is our students. It is our teachers. And it's also our administrative team. So I wanted to celebrate that. And of course, we are always looking to get better. We are always looking at that GAAP analysis, seeing where we can get better and continuing to strive for greater excellence. But I did want to thank all of the people that had a part in the gains that we did make. Thank you. Thank you. Trustee Gupta? Yes. So I would also like to piggyback on my colleagues' gratitude for the presentation this evening and the information that was provided in the packet.
I also would like to respond, to the comments I'm calling for, I would call it greater civility, maybe, you know, talking about social media. I I guess I would just like to say on that that it's a little bit rich, coming from somebody who, has praised and shown great gratitude to a community member who keeps himself relevant at the expense of demonizing most of us at this table with, with derogatory statements, false claims, and, by misleading our public.
So, I would say that it's clear that the next school board campaign is in full force already. Unfortunately, it's getting ugly. We can predict what the talking points will be. They'll be just as misleading as they have been. The pattern continues. So it's the barrage of incessant emails harassing our administrative team, implying wrongdoing and looking under every rock for something to exploit as something for a gotcha moment for the campaign.
So, we can, anticipate Madam, point of order. We can anticipate Stop for just one second. Trustee Lacoue, what's your point of order? She's attacking members motives. Just calling out facts. What? Reclaiming my time. I will just remind all board members to please not attack other motives. I'm not attacking motives. I have no idea why anybody would do these things. All I know is that they're wrong and they're happening. So we can expect more talking points about lies, about, demonizing everyone you don't agree with, about being a grievance magnet to any a magnet to any grievance that shows up
in the community and running with it, and on and on. However, I suspect and I expect that our community, once again, will be more discerning and do their homework and watch the meetings and learn more about what's going on and make good choices for our kids. Thank you. Over the last two weeks, I've had the opportunity to attend several meetings and events across our district and community. I joined the Musson PTA meeting where there was incredible enthusiasm and commitment to programs that make a positive difference for students.
I was also able to fill in for trustee Gupta at the PTA Council meeting, which was full of valuable information and collaboration across schools. And I also attended the, North Hill trunk or treat, which was a lot of fun. And I think all of those kids who were there slept well the next day. I attended a Rochester area youth assistance family enrichment committee meeting where the group discussed upcoming family support programs, including a presentation titled, Meet Me Where I'm At Addressing the Impact of Trauma Across the Lifespan. This will be presented by Laura Azzoni,
which will explore how trauma can impact a child throughout their life and how we can support them in the different life stages. This will be, at the Rochester Hills Public Library on November 13 at 7PM. And this Friday, October 24 at 8AM, Rya will host its annual meeting at Chief Financial, where they'll share their mission and provide a recap of the past year's work. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend as I'll be at the MASB annual leadership conference that day. But I hope some of my fellow board members might be able to attend as
well. I also attended the Oakland County School Board Association meeting where the keynote speaker focused on the important role of boards and supporting student achievement, a message that aligned nicely with our academic data presentation tonight. It's been a busy and inspiring couple of weeks, and I'm looking forward to connecting with other school leaders at the MASB conference later this week. I hope everyone enjoys the next couple weeks and takes some time to enjoy the beautiful fall weather, hopefully, more like we had today and Halloween festivities. Now, we'll move on to, Agenda Item 11.2,
which is additional comments by members of the administration. These also are limited to three minutes, but additional time may be requested. These comments allow members of the administration to share information that they believe is valuable to the board and or community. And these are comments and not discussion items. Mr. Russo? Thank you, Madam President. Ms. Crane? Thank you, Mr. Russo. I'd like to remind the community that the community engagement discussion sessions are happening this week, Wednesday, October 22, 7PM, at Van Hoozen, Middle School Media Center and Thursday,
October 23, at 10:30AM at the Rochester Hills Public Library. Thank you so much. Good evening, everyone. It is a continued honor to oversee special education programs and services in RCS. Tonight, I wanna share with the board and the community that in recent days, national education organizations have raised significant concerns regarding staffing reductions within the US Department of Education, specifically the Office of Special Education Programs or OSEPs. OSEP plays a vital role in ensuring that nearly eight million children with disabilities across
our nation receive the supports and services guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or IDEA. The reduction in force of staff members leaves the OSEP office with only a small fraction of its original team, which will create serious challenges for timely guidance, monitoring, and technical assistance to states and local districts. So why the full impact is still unfolding with this? We know that this may result in delays or reduced federal support for special education
nationwide. Here in Rochester Community Schools, we do remain steadfast in our commitment to uphold the intent and the promise of IDEA. Our strong local and state partnerships, combined with the dedication of our special education department, our board of education, our families, and community will ensure that students continue to receive the high quality, legally compliant services that they deserve and are entitled to. For anyone seeking additional information or wishing to contact their legislators regarding this important issue,
resources are available through the action center on the Council of Administrators of Special Education website. Equally important, very recently, the Michigan Department of Education has released new guidance on several key individualized education program or IEP topics, including specially designed instruction, supplementary aids and services, prior written notice, and least restrictive environment in preschools. So this information is available on the MDE website on the special education page. Thank you for your time and attention.
Thank you, Ms. Gauthier. Doctor. Luca? Thank you, Mr. Russo. I wanna say, thank you to all our PTAs out there at the elementary level, the PE teachers at elementary schools and admin. For successful fun runs that we had and raised a lot of money for elementary schools to enhance education and supports for elementary students. Also I wanted to say thank you to our high school, admin teams for throwing tonight's National Merit Scholar dinner on. What a great event. For our Board members who don't understand the National Merit Scholar, Rochester doesn't have to give that test for National Merit.
We choose to, in the instruction lane, to give the National Merit Scholar Test, exam to have more qualifiers. And so that's why you do see some school districts don't have any. But we invest in our students to take that exam, because we could push it to the spring if we wanted to and have a spring test without the National Merit qualifying. I know there's some discussion up here about SAT. I just want to kind of give my 2¢ with regards to the District and in the secondary lane. I mean, our schools are number eight, I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.
We're eight or nine in the state of Michigan ranking for SAT. I know we wanna go higher. I know we keep on going. I get it. But weire doing well, and I applaud Mr. Cuzimano and Mrs. Hempton for the work that youive done for the presentation today. And I think our message to our students, our staff out there, our administrative team is keep it. And I know we want to go up, but we want to keep that standard relevant and keep pushing those standards that we have within our classrooms every day. We're in good hands in the Curriculum Department as well,
to keep that standard growing. So thank you so much for the presentation tonight. I know staff are watching. I'll watch tomorrow too to see what questions that you have from the Board that they can increase or improve their instruction moving forward. Thank you, Doctor. DeLuca. Mr. Cosmano? Sorry. Neil, I was yelling because we want to go down in the rankings. We want to be number one. Thank you to our teaching and learning department team, too many to mention, for helping with this achievement data presentation. It was definitely not a two person show. We have a team that just came together and did our best, with the resources we had to provide what we provided to you.
So hopefully that was helpful and we will always get better and continue to give as best we can. Congrats to the National Merit Scholars, not easy. I was not a National Merit Scholar, definitely not easy to do. And they're amongst a few in the in the in the they're just that's amazing to me as a high school principal when I had those National Merit Scholars, how they do it. And all those kids are involved in extracurriculars, which I don't know where they get the time. But, and but I really wanna say congrats to our administrators, teachers, staff, especially our students of all our schools for the hard work and dedication to the to provide that achievement that we see.
It's not perfect. We can always strive for better. But darn, they're doing really good. And our teachers are a big part of that. And our administrators are a big part of that. Our board of education is a part of that. Everybody's a part of it. So I'm very proud. I was very proud tonight to present the data. And I also think it's important to remember that when we look at data, data represents kids. Right? My daughter graduated last year and didn't do so hot on the SAT. But guess what? She's in college and doing great. And I'm very proud of her. So, just remembering that we wanna thrive we thrive to make all kids be their best
when they graduate. Whatever that is, it's different for every kid. What is their best? What is their highest achievement? But that's our goal. That's our mission to make sure they're the best versions of themselves when they leave us. And if you walk into any of our buildings, the culture is amazing. It's not about test prep. It's not you won't even know that they're doing it. They're about kids' culture, caring, and making the best making sure that they're the best they can be. So I just want to say those couple of things. Kudos to our administrative team and our staff, our teachers, everybody for pulling off October 15, which was the eleventh grade,
PSAT for the National Merit State Qualifying Test. You'll see the kids next year at this this little celebration based on October results. So, but they said the second year of digital administration went wonderful and kids were knowing what to do, staff was knowing what to do, so it was awesome. And then we are very busy and excited to we're planning November 3 asynchronous PD as a department, where staff will have a choice of picking professional learning that meets their needs in all different areas. Artificial intelligence, I could go on and on, but we're in the middle of planning that and,
we're excited about that. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Cosmano. Ms. Simpson? Thank you, Mr. Russo. I appreciate you bringing forward, Mr. Cosmano, the notion that does seem to continue to permeate most conversations in the teaching and learning department, and that's around the idea that data are people. Thinking about that three sixty view is really important to us as an organization. We hope that came through this evening as well. I would echo a note of gratitude, for our teaching and learning department as well as all RCS educators. I thank you for your dedication, for your data driven expertise,
for your unwavering focus on what really matters most, and that's ensuring that our colleagues as a community as well as our students have all the support that they need to fully thrive both in school, out of school and in their life beyond Rochester Community Schools. Your efforts make a world of difference. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Hampton. I want to thank I shouldn't say thank. I want to congratulate the National Merit students that we saw tonight. It's nights like tonight where you think, wow, this is incredible. Right? You look at how many people how many students were standing here in comparison to other school districts in Southeast Michigan or across the state,
given the number of students we have and our percentages. I mean, I don't have the data in front of me, but it's gotta be in the top two or three. It's it's it was incredible. During this the data presentation and looking at the National Merit Scholars or National Merit Students and I look at, and I had had an opportunity to go to, a conference last week. And it's it's important to note that we get we we have good discussions and robust discussions here at the table and with our staff about how we're going to improve student achievement and really specifically the goal of student growth. We don't take our eyes off of that in terms of our teaching and learning
department and the staff that serve service our students, all our teachers, our paras, etcetera. When you look at holistically what we've done in the district over the course of the last year and a half, I had the opportunity this week to be with, I think it was 42 different superintendents across the country. And, when we talked about safety and security, when we talked about AI and where we are, when we talked about when we talked about how many points we rose as a district in SAT, I I was pretty proud because everyone was like, can I can I have that? Can I have the the task force, all your results from the AI? And I and I emailed mister Kusumana.
I was like, we should I should I I need this so I can share this. And it was all locked down on purpose because this is our work. Right? And so there's facets throughout. There's through lines throughout this district that are in such a positive direction. And I understand that at the board table and during the presentation, we we get caught up in in some of the questions that are really specific about which are good, right? We wanna say, well, why is this not happening here? Or what is the when we do a comprehensive needs analysis, what does that mean? Right? What are we going to do with that information?
Those are great questions and they're great answers that are coming from that. But I want I always want us to keep our eye on the ball that we're in a really good trajectory for what we're doing for students and families in this district as well. Thank you. Thank you. I've got a couple of announcements. On October 31, there is a half day of school. November 3 and November 4, there is no school for our students. On November 3, though, we will have a Board of Education special meeting with a closed session for superintendent evaluation at six p. M. At Hart Middle School in the Media Center.
And on November 10, we'll have our next Board of Education regular meeting also at six P. M. At Hart Middle School in the Media Center. And with that, if there's no objection, we will adjourn at 08:48. Seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone, for attending, and have a good night.