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cul committee to order the committee would like to welcome the audience viewers may watch live board committee meetings online at tcaps.net board recorded meetings may be viewed on demand at the same address the committee has set aside this
time for public comment Kelly do we have any public comments I have not received any cards okay then that we will move on uh to procedural items and we're at the draft meeting minutes portion of the agenda are there any changes to the
draft meeting minutes no no okay um I will just note this doesn't have to necessarily be corrected in the in the notes but um the when we talked about input on meaningful student achievement outcomes last time I I did suggest that maybe the board wants to review average
nwaa scores I'm not sure that I advocated for mstep scores because I'm not personally a huge fan of the lag and time of those scores but you know that that that may be something that the administration wants to consider since that is a state required exam um okay so
hearing no changes minutes will remain as posted and I will defer to miss hotton about the tcaps district course catalog yes uh we have three new courses and I apologize that the the ACL letters
were placed in front of the other two but all three of these are through the acelis platform they are Middle School courses um we are Dr van Wagner And I have talked a lot about the that we've seen a lot of need in the area for um a
comprehensive Middle School online to our students and so we are actually piloting we've got a couple students right now at the middle school who were currently in face Toof face and then their conditions changed wide variety of reasons we have two of them in particular who have now moved all online and we have chosen to put them all onto
the selis platform giving us an opportunity to work with them get some feedback from those students their families and our teachers who are overseeing the program um with the thought that next year we'll probably expand even more of that based on the the need from students outside of teaps
um who are calling us and asking us about online for Middle School um so we've chosen to sort of continue to expand our salus offerings to those students Jesse are those partly in response to um first taking uh in uh
class classes not having a hard time with them no the the two students who Moved online it was with unique situations where the students were unable to maintain face Toof face it didn't have to do with the rigor of the face tof face but they still wanted to
be TCAP students um they didn't want to leave us entirely and so by switching them to a fully virtual through the program that we're already using they're able to maintain they're both planning to reenroll face to face um in the fall um so and then the need that we've seen
we've just had an increase of calls to The Compass Learning Center asking specifically about Middle School virtual programming and those calls are coming in from kids who are not currently enrolled in teaps um but live in the area um and either are seeing the the
virtual schooling that they're in is sunsetting um or they're looking at hey we know that you guys have launched this compass learning at the high school we've got a middle school student who is currently virtual and we're wanting to switch them into teac caps with like
that as being the trajectory you know do you have anything available and so um I've talked a lot with Ryan Ranger the principal at East Middle School and he is pretty excited and and willing to take on the challenge of what could it look like to have 30 to 50 middle school
students fully virtual and how would he and his team support middle school students um in that educational setting and it's nice because if he contains it they're already Middle School staff they Middle School counselors like they they sort of know that age range and what that not only academic needs are but
also the social emotional and it would allow those kids to connect to middle school activities you know our kids that are online through Compass Learning they get TCAP student IDs they can attend our events they can they can engage in all those things that our Traditional High School students can and this would
potentially be something we could expand for that I guess in a very awkward way what I meant to ask was would this be the equivalent of summer school for kids who are having difficulty in some of the classes currently they're not passing their classes and they
really are not going to be held back is this an equivalent to summer school um I I don't see that as that no um but I will tell you uh Kristen studman the principal at West Middle School and and Ryan we are I've worked
with them and Britney K our curriculum director we will have a fully tier 2 support in both math and reading for our current sixth graders next year so we know a lot about our kids who are actually transitioning to middle school we have a really robust intervention in
elementary um we really don't have anything besides tier three which is considered special at at Middle School Tiffany I've talked a lot about this and so next year we are going to use some of our atrisk funding to ensure we have reading and math support for those kids who who are don't quite have the skills
yet um Middle School is is a unique because they're sort of transitioning into the adolesence maor transition yeah and and they don't they don't want to be removed from their peers that's really important and it's really important that they still are engaged and have those social you know um but also we know they're lacking some of the academic
skills right and so how do we maintain both sides of that and so we're going to we're going to run that for reading and math next year so I can do more about that at future board curriculum talk to you guys about bring Britney about what programs we're going to use what the setup will look like for those kids so that they don't
feel there is some kids don't want to feel special and unique and like they want to feel not singled out but they want to feel like they belong right depends on what you're singling them out for right right right understand yeah so um no I I don't necessarily think it'll be used for that however I will say the
acelis um does have some nice uh uh curriculum in it that would allow us to remediate um not down to standards below Middle School though at this point okay thank you um just so regarding these three virtual classes
since we're now mid semester is are these going to be students who are joining the these classes this semester yes two months in okay so because they're virtual courses they're able to catch up more easily yep um and I I
heard you say potentially 30 to 50 students virtual students at EMS um would they would that be I know there's space in that building to accommodate would how about serving the west side yeah our our thinking is right now um is that keeping it Consolidated at
one site will actually allow us to do a better job providing Services um and so and East does have the space there as well they do have a lower student count as a building than West Middle School but yet they have the same counselor support Social Work support and
administration support um and so we think that they can handle that increase of 30 to to 50 students um students who would need transportation we would help them just like we are helping the compass learning students who maybe don't live near TC High um we do a lot
with some beta passes and some other things we do have the Vans now and some approved drivers and so we have the ability um with some you know setup here too thinking about things ahead to to transport if needed um for that but we are thinking we'd have a permanent Lab at East Middle School where students and
families could come with a certified teacher in there to provide support similar to what we're doing with those high school students yes we just at this point we feel like we'd rather keep it a little bit smaller to do it right and and to really make sure what we're want to do is keep these kids on track and
ensure that they can at any point transition to face- tof face learning um within teap so it wouldn't preclude us in the future though from thinking about a Westside you know a Westside program we kind of want to see like Jesse came to me and was like Hey I really want to do this and I'm like I don't know we're
just we're really kind of just still learning a lot at at our Compass Learning Center with our high school kids but there's just so many phone calls so many things that Jen's getting over at compass learning and Mike to a point where like man we know that there's a group of kids not being served
take it a little slow see where that goes but in the future could that possibly happen it could yeah so I mean could you do you have kind of a aggregate summary of where these kids are coming from are they mean homeschooled right now they go into a
different Virtual Academy or in-person school it's a mix um but I would tell you that Jen and Mike Mike living good is the teacher who's running the compass learning for us over there they've received well over 20 phone calls from non teaps families who are looking for a
fully virtual middle school program that still has like an actual physical brick and mortar support that is close to them right some of these kids who are involved in these virtual programming are not schools that are in this area at all and so they what they some of these families have realized is that when they
have a struggle or they need some additional support it's offered and it's in Kazo or it's in you know what I mean like not a place in which they could easily access but it's a mix of all those things you just mentioned yeah okay all right well we will stay tuned and it
sounds like the you're going to Pilot this for next school year more fully right for Middle School it I mean no it's a full it's not a pilot I mean we're going full for with that next so right now but this is just a few classes with a few of our kids right right but right
now then EMS is already using the space for this purpose and kind of ramping up to they not until the fall okay not until the fall we just have a few middle school students right now online through the sellis we're just getting some feedback from them and their families and seeing how that program in
particular is working and the plan is on the fall to have that so as I as more details are put together I'll bring all of that and I'll probably bring Ryan and potentially someone on his team who's helping oversee that to you guys and sort of go through okay hey here's what this is going to look like yeah I'll just say down the road whenever
presentation happens I would just like to hear about the criteria for having kids enter that program and what the district is looking for in terms of evaluating on an ongoing basis for every child like should they stay in that environment or should they come in person because to me it just feels like
virtual learning for middle schoolers is is long is you know it is different from than high school kids there are some pros and cons but want to reach more kids but also want to make sure that they're engaged with other students and so forth yeah there there's a couple things with that you know
unfortunately the one is if you don't that there's somebody else pick them right back up right but the second part is is we do have some State guidance on that so um under the state law right now students can actually take up to two online courses regardless of grade level
um can request it from the district and so there is language that gives us parameters on when we should consider or not consider um if they're a special education student is that a part of their IEP so we do have some State parameters that give us some guidance on
what that looks like for kids that take two that really is a good start a good a good component for us to look at as we create this program from that standpoint so when it comes to that we'll share we'll share that section you know so you can kind of see that and and that's
that's a a really strong basis a lot of times if kids are not being successful there's the exit ramp you know that's in that language all those kind of things and I I think to the middle school counselors administrators teachers and things think that like sometimes kids get in a situation where they need this
sort of like pause and they but they also don't want to lose these kids totally right and so having the ability to move those kids into a virtual programming that we still oversee and we're still able to stay connected to that kid and that family with the ultimate goal and Josie you're to bring
them back in with their peers and back into the face tof face learning um so I can see a variety of reasons to go into it some kids in fifth grade may want a more accelerated thing and perhaps go into it early kids that are kind of
struggling that need to have it without all the distraction I could see you getting both ways and you've got discipline issues that are in that you have everything from kids that are you know traveling with parents you know for with jobs that happen there's lots of
unique situations and again this is another option but you know Jo's point I think it's important is a quality option and that we're trying to make sure that you know we don't have kids set up for failure right I understand that great
thank you um so with that we can move on to our field tip trip requests and again yeah so uh we have uh a robotics teams this is their request to go to Worlds they don't know yet if they've qualified um I know they're both both
teams are really um ramping up for the state meet here in a couple this weekend this weekend Oh not a couple weeks this weekend um not just four right just lots of things going on yeah yeah yeah so uh but that's in here for both the teams
again that's pending on them qualifying for that um and then the other thing in here is our academic world quest team um this year the team from West Senior High qualified I would like to point out that we have a great relationship with our International Affairs um it's phenomenal
Alex Tink and his kind of group through nmc runs that they pay for all of the expenses uh last year it was Central High School's team qualified the kids have to qualify and if you haven't seen one of those competitions they're these kids are incredible the studying and preparation they do um but our local
International uh Worlds Fair helps pay for all of that for our kids and keeps our kids engaged in that process so those there's four students from West traveling with uh a teacher Dan Rosenberg from West Senior High who's the adviser for that team too so pretty cool I think that you might know someone
traveling those boys all four boys yeah um I was just going to ask for the memo when we refer to International Affairs Forum could we insert Northwestern Michigan colleges you know just to make it very clear
that's nmc's program a teaps program I think that would be helpful absolutely we can make an adjustment to that Momo too okay great any questions coms okay all right um yeah and then I
think the uh Main Attraction for today's meeting the learning series on student attendance I think just to back up really quick I think we want to move those to the full board but all good or I don't think we need a motion but just uh yeah and I think it might go through
um executive to finance but usually we put them on consent we missed a slide for the cancellation of the field trip sorry for the first informational item well it's on information actually okay okay in the
agenda but I don't think there's a slide right right Erica is right um let's move unless there are any objections or concerns from my colleagues I'll move the district course catalog and selection guide and the field trip requests to the consent
calendar for the next board meeting we do you're right we do have a cancellation the trip yep okay all right they just didn't have enough students interested lack of yeah that's a shame excent okay then moving on to our
second informational item again uh the uh Main Attraction today on student yes so I want to start by there's two different ways that we talk about student attendance um through the state
so I I just want to do a little definition and then I've got a mock sample just to because they're very confusing and people feel like they should add up to 100% And they do not add up to 100% so I just want to go through it really quick so there's two ways we can talk about student attendance we can talk about the attendance rate which is the percentage
of time students are present in school so like hey at this school building what percentage of my students are present or we can talk about chronically absent students so those are individual students who have missed and this is defined by the state they have missed
more than 10 percentage of school days so attendance rate is set by the school and by the district like as in like we could look at the attendance rate and I'm going to show you some from the whole district and from um different schools but chronically absent is
individual students Okay so here's a sample of a school this is like one week for you and I made it a school that has 10 students just for easy numbers but you can think about it scaled over multiple weeks or multiple students so on Monday you've
got two of your students absent the Shaded students are absent on Tuesday you've got two students absent again Wednesday and Thursday you've got everybody in attendance so you got 100% attendance on those two days and on Friday student 3 is absent again 90% attendance so the bottom numbers are
your attendance rates of your your schools right and so for the whole week you could just you literally average all of those numbers and your school attendance rate for that week was 90% okay but when you talk about chronically absent students you're doing
an individual count of students and by the definition that the state sense which is 10% you have three students student two student three and student five who would be labeled as chronically absent students because they missed more than 10% of instruction
so out of the 10 students total 30% of your students are considered chronically absent and that's where things get confusing how can the attendance rate be 90% but yet 30% of the kids be chronically absent those two numbers they never add up to 100% And and
sometimes people feel like they should but they're not compliment of each other so I just kind of wanted to outline that and then I'm going to talk about um some School attendance rates and teaps and then I'll talk a little bit about chronically absence students as well does that kind of give you a simplistic
view of the actually this slide was great when I looked at this in advance it it made total sense to me um yeah like if you take that 10% of of on a given day of absences whether
they're excused or unexcused you're G to have that sub within that subpopulation you're going to have some frequent flyers if you will and you're have some other kids who are oneoff so it's the ones were really frequently absent so thank you for
this good because it was confusing to me as I was going through some of the research with it too and reading and I was like why don't these add up to 100 and then I was like oh this is why and then I was like okay I got to figure out how how to mark it out okay cool and it explains how like Bridge magazine and M live have been reporting you know that
tcaps has chronic absenteeism and the 20% or you know 30 and so people think that 30% of our kids are ABS right every but they're not yes and you've got two days we're like hey you had everybody there I mean that doesn't really happen at our schools our sizes but you know
you know so right nonetheless it's it's still important to look at that 20 and 30% you know chronically absent so and and the absence it doesn't matter if it's excused or not excused yeah I'm going to talk about that here in a second too as to how and that's set by
mde and that's how we and I checked with Sophie who does all of our Data Systems that's how all of data runs to the state is our account codes that's even if a kid if a parent calls in and the kid's legitimately sick it still counts as an absent for us y it does not count as a present
code so if a kid gets hospitalized still there you go exactly yep but I would consider that an excuse absence but that's not if they have missed the learning for the day they are considered absent state does not care on
the reason why there's one exception I'll talk about that a second um all right cool I'm glad that helped so attendance rates so these are really high level rates here and I went back two school years for you obviously this school year we're in it right now so I gave you two years here I
gave you the state percentages and then teaps percentages right so for all of our buildings that's kind of where we are so we actually saw a slight that's like we're talking point 2 percentage I don't know if that's significant or not I didn't run a test and see if that
changes a trend over time um I only went back two because really you go back too many you get go back too far and you start hitting Co years and I was like I I think we could I think we got some good base data here for us to maybe track it moving forward if the board wants us to um and then I broke it down
for you guys here um instead of by individual schools we do look at that and we work with some principles on that but here I just kind of thought about K5 our middle schools our high schools TC high is a very unique subpopulation of students we've talked a lot about that so I did pull them out of the high
school data because they really would have kind of skewed and affected our that data together that sample size isn't very big but yeah so that's there um middle schools are interesting both uh Miss staman and Mr Ranger thought they've seen this and they thought they
were like wow middle schools have the best attendance and there's some thinking that we did behind it on that why but so how do you improve your attendance rates this really is about school culture right how do you get get kids to go to school every day um it is
about having meaningful relationships with our kids it's about our kids feeling like learning is engaging and relevant um to them and that they value being there right so it's all those
types of things that you see our schools do that sometimes are labeled as like oh it's a fun activity yeah sure it is but it's okay to create community and have that type of school culture it does help with your attendance rates it helps with um students belonging and feeling like
they're part of their school culture yeah um we have another slide right on the overall District chronic absenteeism rates coming up I'm going to do chronic next y I thought I'd just do attendance rates first because those are pretty easy I will tell you all the research says for what you want these
numbers to be is 90% you know you're really you're you're they considered you in the in the gold standard if you're above 90% as a as a district and as an individual building or as a great level so um actually when I broke these down I was like oh that's yeah pretty good
about that you know and normally I really advocate for a national comparison but we've I think all read that nationally this The Chronic absenteeism is big and on par with h the state um yeah 30 nationally 30% of 15
million students are chronically absent I know you're not there yet I would just uh say for future reference for the board when we revisit this um if we could get National and also I would be interested in going back to 2019 for
comparison I know things got they they got worse during covid and now we're on the upswing I think but I think that would be good Trend um try to follow over time I think I looked at that and that wasn't that bad it's on uh the data that
the state provides both Statewide as well as for individual schools uh and I I didn't think we were off yeah my guesses were back up to 2019 levels 1920 is is super hard because 20 that's obviously that was that spring
where we went out and attendance wasn't necessarily you actually see some of the attendance go up in that spring because we weren't taking attendance it it's almost like we can disregard 2020 and 2021 but looking back at you know 18 19 and how we back up and on where we were
yeah thank you okay so chronically absent rate so again these are the counts of the kids who have missed uh more than 10% of their days so here's the percentage State percentages for those two years
and then teaps percentages for those two years and then I again I broke that down for you guys um by grade level bands for the percentage of students who are labeled as chronically absent so the Middle School principles
um saw this and they were like of course all of our kids come to school all the time they were like they're not the younger kids who get sick and are right and they're not the kids who are in high school age who have more of the ability to choose to not go to school right that
you think about it these are the age range of kids that primarily they parents put them on the bus or drop them off and they're there they're there all day and so they kind of chuckled when they saw this and they um it made sense to them just sort of with their experience and background
um so let's talk about attendance codes really quick as you guys already mentioned this so just so you're aware if a student misses more than half a day that's considered a full absence for the state right so if you think about a student going to West Senior High they miss one class period they're not
considered absent by the state they have to have missed more three class periods or more for our secondaries anytime a student misses because of a school activity this is the only exception to the attendance
um code because we put in what what appears on the students power schools it looks like the word act um it stands for activity that is a present code for us that means that student is not missing school that educational or opportunity for that day
is being provided by whatever programming they're doing through us on that day now they're not in class receiving the traditional instruction but they could be gone for a wide variety of reasons it could be Sports it could be music it could be robotics it could be any of those those are not
counted um I just did a dump out of power school and just counted all of our attendance codes and just kind of told you right now this is sort of what the breakdown was I did this right before spring break I just I took all the schools and just dumped them into like a sheet and did account for you guys to
show you sort of what are account attendance codes look like what I thought was U most interesting about this is those that 11% that are not excused right that means that either the parents called in or the guardian called in and that um School deemed that is not
an excusable absence right we do have a criteria where our schools use that or there was no call at all for that student yes small question do we keep track of kids that cut classes we do actually it shows up as uh in the secondaries you actually see the word
cut um on on that like if they intentionally that's hard the what happens first is the student gets marked on verified right the teacher takes attendance they Mark all the kids who aren't here um and then that code will get changed by usually the wing office or the principal if they can say that
that student chose to intentionally cut Class A lot of times they can show that because the student maybe attended one class and then left the building and then came back again during the day right sometimes kids try to do that um usually it will stay as unverified though to be honest yeah and I know
obviously Elementary it's not a code that's used but I know my middle school experience that if we see a cut I mean that's an immediate because unlike High School where they have the ability to drive and leave campus come back middle school if they're not there that's a problem like we have everyone looking for the kid we're making sure they're
they're usually kind of housed up in a bathroom from somewhere that's what they do in Middle School um and then we get them back into class but cut I think is a lot as far as definitely a 912 thing as far as trying to figure out where the kid is and and getting them back in well
high school was feris bu bu's day off I mean one of the best different thing understand we're not promoting it right double checking our purpose today very T by today's yes nobody's
putting a Porche up on blocks or anything just making sure no they wouldn't put it on block SE right I would also say that we also have students who do um have extending circumstances in terms of health relations and so they do have homebound
services so that is not included and excused or not excused we have currently 10 students across the district who are not attending school because of health related issues and that's uh deemed by a a physician and those students would yeah
Tiffany said are not counted on our absentee ASM no but that's different than um a student who maybe uh breaks their leg or you know spends you know it is hospitalized for a short term they would be an excused absence and they
would probably hit the chronically absent to be honest depending on how many days when you look at what the state criteria is um on that so I mean two days a month yeah like it's not much it's not much when you're talking about what you are to be labeled chronically absent now I
will say and I'll get to this later that there's different buckets of how much chronically like how much time do they say you can miss before it really dramatically impacts the learning and where we are so and if somebody if a student misses just you know say one or two less than that half day but one or
two hours or classes a day is the is the absence count like pro-rated uh according one sixth of a day in your data no not in my data I I counted it just like the state does where if the student was had missed half or more of
the day absent if not they're present um but I will say that all four of our large secondaries so their weighing AA is one of their biggest jobs is to take attendance and verify it and they do it multiple times throughout the day um they send text messages in the morning
at a certain time if a student has flagged un verified they send them again in the afternoon um and then at the end of the day they they set share with their assistant principal the attendance um grid for that whole day here are the kids who are unverified here's what I've done to try to contact them and that
assistant principal then we'll pick it up from there and they're looking for individual student patterns right and they're looking for kids who are present not present not present present again right like what's the story there so and that's only at the high school level that's only at the high school and middle school level studman shared me
her tracking sheet she has tracking sheets for all of her Wing offices very similar um that's like that's the primary job and I like nod to Emily a little bit as she was at Central with me for years and knew she helped organize our wing assistance that's what their primary job every day was to feeli those
calls and make sure kids are where they're supposed to be because that's our job so so our flow um I talked a little bit about that daily so at the elementary they take attendance twice during the day and I will say being an element it's just different you don't tend to have if
you've got someone chronically absent and I've got Don who's going to talk to us a little bit and I'll introduce her at that age it's a different sort of set of parameters and barriers that as the student gets older you run more into that apathy and self- selection of not coming to class um but we run those every day in each of our
wing offices at all four of our large secondaries um they send them to their administrator at the end of each day they're looking for patterns they're looking for things that don't make sense um and then we do have a flow track flowchart that I Linked In Here hear about so when do we start um really
implementing some more treny uh practices and and um procedures with students so at five in a month is when we start to actually get a phone call and a conversation to ensure that the families understand how important it is for us to have these kids here we start sending these uh more formal letters at
10 absences at 15 absences we're looking at having a meeting to set a plan our goal is not to be punitive but to really engage these kids and get them to come to school school um and then as we really continue to ramp up then we get our North head T SE Ley and officer Don
Mormon who's here today too with us to talk a little bit about when she gets engaged what does that role look like too and another just um piece to supporting student attendance is um you know if a parent forgets to call in a student or something we get a call
immediately that day that says you know your student has an unverified absence or your student missed third hour or whatever it is so it's a great way I mean parents are always notified and I mean both sometimes my husband and I are phones beep at the same time because we're getting you know the same message
um for an unverified absence or something so yep and our buildings know too like how much time can a student Miss before they're considered absent versus tardy both of our that that's more again a high school thing um and so sometimes I will get that call too as a
High School parent and find out that my daughter just took a too long of a lunch and came back 10 minutes late to her fourth hour and I will be like oh now time for us to have a conversation about come on John I know you I wanted to ask too about so the
after five absences in a month the the TCAP staff calls um I've gotten the robo calls but and remember they haven't been surprises um but are there also personal calls is the that's a personal call so
noticing five unverified there's been no call in or or when there is a call in it's not an excusable reason um it's time for like this is typically typically it's the wing principal at the high schools um sometimes it might be a counselor sometimes it might be
um the AA if they have a good uh communication with the family but it is like hey we we're we have concerns right we want your kid here this is starting to be a pattern what can we do to support what more do we need to know um about what going on with with your kid and your family is that a requirement
under state law no it's just what our Pro practices I'm just wondering given the definition of you know chronic absenteeism being 10% of school days which is 18 in a year or two per month if maybe our threshold should be lower
like three absences in a month or two absences in a month I know it would create more work but you know just to try to intervene sooner than later has the district evaluated that I don't believe I don't think we've gone down to two or three in a month just for its capacity what we have in the offices
if we have consecutive so if we do three in a row of consecutive with no contact at home then we do a safety check yes so that it's we can't get a hold of anybody on the contact list we have no call in we haven't heard from the family if we have three in a row then we do involve a
liaison and they go and check the house and make sure everything go good and really here we're really looking at we know the students been hospitalized we've already had that kind we wouldn't make that call right that's already we know the story there we're looking for yeah and Dan's exactly right I should have mentioned that those multiple
unverified in a row it usually by the end of that second day sometimes and we've already tried to make calls the a like has told their you know administrator hey I've called a couple times I got no answer I tried to text this number we tried this we asked so and so who's friends with that kid like
K you know um and we you know sometimes during that third day we'll start something about what's going on okay so a big part of supporting our students um is the role of our social worker and our counselors right again like um a lot of
times treny is the symptom and it's not the root reason why there's other things going on here so um I did invite Misty Warner our director of whole child here to talk a little bit about what does this look like um in teaps from sort of
a tier two intervention and support system yeah and so like as Jesse mentioned a lot of times we are brought in um to make those calls and to try to build those relationships with students and families um we can kind of serve as that link and increase communication so
that um students and families feel connected and supported we also look to identify an address barrier so we're looking at any underlying issues or circumstances that are getting in the way of that student getting to school regularly and then we work with the
family um and the students to try to find Solutions um and provide Pro supports and services to help meet those needs um oftentimes we work directly with the students we create individualized plans like Jesse had mentioned to help increase attendance
whether that's regular check-ins with a trusted adult um or a soft start to the day whatever May um that student might need to help get them to school um another thing that our our team has done um a great job of is really staying up to- dat and familiar with Community
Resources what each or organization an agency has to offer so that we can then connect and collaborate with those agencies and get our families the resources that they need um and we kind of take it one step further and we help
to um those families to navigate those support systems that can be a challenge so helping them navigate so they so that we can assure that they are accessing and getting the resources that they need and then our tier three level of support for attend is Don Mormon um
she's here so that's who's sitting down over here and she works for North ad and she is our regional treny liaison and so I I brought her here to I asked her to talk a little bit about um what does it look like when she gets engaged what's the goal of that and and how does she
support teaps in her role so welcome Don hi thank you thanks for having me um yeah so typically around that chronic absenteeism uh number around that uh 18 to 20 absences um often times the uh
School staff will ask me to um get involved uh what that typically looks like um is a letter um it's a pretty strongly worded letter um that does let them know that hey we are really
concerned um it it mandates a meeting with school staff and myself um and uh it gets the attention of the parent so it it meant to get their attention um but again we don't want it to be a punitive process so that letter does
have to go out in case we get to I kind of call it the tier three is that Court intervention piece um if we have to go there this letter needs to be delivered to the family once that happens um it's very much a it takes a village approach
um so I will connect with the parent then um they will either call me as soon as they get that letter um or if I don't hear from them I will reach out um typically at the school level um there has been a lot of effort um put into
addressing that situation before it comes to me um but then we take that a step further I still I come in but I still have that whole team there so the principal will be there oftentimes the school social worker will be there if there's um a special aded teacher or a
particular teacher who's connected to that student we'll have them come um the uh family can bring in sometimes they want to bring Grandma or they want to bring an aunt somebody who's you know part of part of their uh family support group there and um TR truly it's another
opportunity for us to um build trust with the family A lot of times when I reach out to the family they will um they will tell me a lot of things that maybe they didn't even share um with the school um so it gives me um more of an
idea of what's going on a lot of times they're sort of relieved actually um I knew this was coming I was waiting for it thank you for calling um I also will do home visits if the school says hey you know we've really tried to connect with this family we're not getting a lot
of response from Mom we will I will actually even have parents call me directly and ask me to come out um so that's another thing that I will do I will go out and talk to families um so we will have that meeting we will have an attendance support meeting and it is
is conveyed in that way to the parent look we're concerned your students missing a lot of school attendance is the number one indicator um of Student Success um believe it or not even if they're not attending school in those really kindergarten first grade second
grade that's where those habits are being formed this is where they're learning to show up on time um to show up regularly they're learning to um interact with uh other adults they're learning to build those connections with which keep them tied to school they're
learning to navigate peer relationships so we talk through all of that with the parent you know this is why this is important um and then we set some we set some goals um we talk about you know we're not going to get somebody who's missed 60 days this year um probably
down to missing one day a month um but I've had families go from 80 to 40 and I'm cheering them on like hey we cut this in half 50% let's you know let's let's try to do it you know 50% more for next year um so we work on that and when
families um make progress we do we do do an attendance contract um we set some measurable goals um a lot of times that looks like 80% for the next four weeks um so it's it's not quite where we want them to be but we want it to be
doable and then we will tend to follow up in four weeks um see where the progress is I will call parents and say hey great job you know we just want to want you to continue uh continue the efforts um if they are still um not on
track then we do Circle back um we try to see if another meeting would be beneficial how can we help um it's always about like Misty said identifying barriers and how can we help the family um as just one example I can give um
it's not uncommon for families um divorced families where one is living in say Central grade schools area and one is living in Long Lakes um area and one of those parents is truly struggling to
get that kiddo to school I call I feel that out and you know Mom just says hey look you know if I've got a if I've got an appointment I've got to pull her out of school because I don't have the money to get her there or you know we'll see that right week on with dad they're at
school every day week off with Mom they're not getting there at all um and I would work closely with like the student support network that teac caps has um we're able um there's one example in particularly that this little girl was not going to school on the week she was with Mom and it was impacting her it
was impacting her ability to learn and it was impacting um her ability to connect with her peers um so the student support network was able to help me with gas cards and what's great here is she Ties That to attendance so initially she
will give a gas card for mileage for 5 days with the understanding that every day your child goes to school then next time we'll reload that card for that many days so it's tied to um you know a positive uh uh positive attendance um
goal so um there's a situation I I will be talking God willing with you guys shortly after this meeting but my question is you can miss um a significant amount of time and most
classes build and move forward absolutely and that kind of goes back to how do you make up when you are that lost and you're already feeling anxious you're feeling detached how do you ever
get to the point that you're actually Blended back in as a a important part of that classroom right right um and if it were just like going to work and every day is the
same I understand that approach but if you're going to work and every day you're learning a skill that's going to have to translate that's a lot more difficult that's a totally different animal um and so that concerns me as
much as all the social supports as getting a kid to the point point that they're viable in the classroom yes and I can speak to that a bit um we do work really actively with the principes the counselors um what they will do um and
it depends on every situation is different but we do address that because yes it does impact a student self-confidence right and they it's kind of that vicious cycle once they fall behind they don't want to go and the more they don't go the more they F fall behind so um what they will often do is
pick some elective classes like maybe it's a gym class maybe it's an art class um maybe it's over the lunch hour where those kids will um be given additional time to complete work um they will also um work with teachers on critical skills
like which assignments are really important for us to get this this student um back up to speed on those critical skills and which things can we put to the side for now so I think that discussion
happened um however I think in this particular case they're failing so many classes and they feel that there's no way that they can ever get out of the failure and yet they're going to be moved on to the next great you know
there's like a disconnect y um so it it's just um something uh I'd like to talk to you about yeah it definitely is something that and I because I worked with Don when I was back at the school um more closely we we do we have to prioritize
and and that's a super important part of bringing the student back we also work really closely with all of our classroom teachers at the secondary that like the student we were talking about a student the other day I think it was at Central who had missed a a lot of days right and it was important that their first day
back it wasn't hey you owe us all these assignments right um it was really important that the teachers welcome the kid back tell them we're super super excited and glad you're here don't worry we'll work on a plan to get you caught up for right now let's figure out you know where you sit and and let me make
sure you've got what you need for today right like because having that type of an entry will get the kid to then show up the next day to try to start working through what a plan looks like but again like our whole goal is to do as much as we can on the front end to prevent a student and a family from getting into
that situation yeah and and then just I will speak briefly about that that next tier of intervention um sometimes all of our efforts just aren't enough um and sometimes that Court Referral um is
necessary I will say it is a very very very small select um number of instances where we do that um I will say also that I always consider that sort of a personal failure um if I had to make that referral um over time I've I've
learned that sometimes it's just we have to look at it as another level of support another level of accountability um and often times there are more resources um or that just that intense overview some families really do um need
that to sort of break the cycle and sometimes that year of supervision um that they get that helps them form some strong habits so that when they're released from that supervision um they're in those they've got the those strong strong habits and
and they stay um successful and they continue to attend school so but that is always a last resort great that would be so you get involved when once a student hits 20
absences what at what point then does the um Court Referral K in so that's it is different for every family um every situation is unique um and we do work closely a as a team uh teaps has some
amazing people in their out in their buildings um and we work we work closely together to determine when have we just sort of hit that wall where our efforts aren't um they're not fruitful um
anymore um it can look like like I said I I mean I have a student who maybe misses a 100 days and progress for that family looks like I came here for 60 this year um if we're seeing steady Improvement um we're seeing the parents
work um towards improved attendance we continue to work with them um there's not a set if you hit this number you go to court um because every situation is it just really is different um you have parent you have kiddos who are you know
we have a family for instance where you know Dad's incarcerated mom's incarcerated in and out you know living with a relative School can't reach the parents I can't reach the parents could you do a home visit could you try to reach the student you know we go out and
um do a visit with family student wasn't there but a relative that they were living with said uh he's at school and I said no he's not he gets up and leaves every morning for school we had a really good
conversation um and you know at the end of that visit the relative said you know I can tell that you're not here because you want to make a Court Referral I can tell that you're here because you care and you want him to do well and that truly is why I do this job um I'm a huge
I I think that education breaks the cycle um uh of poverty it break can break the cycle of um you know a lot of the families that come in that the parents haven't graduated um and getting that GED later is really difficult so um
that student short story is he showed up at school the next day yes very behind um hadn't been to school in some time but was welcom back into the building and then ultimately it was decided that that student would transition to that alternative
environment um at TR Trevor City High School and he's continuing to show up so that's you know that's a win so there isn't a hard line um and that that student hasn't been to school in three months you know but we got them back in the building and that's where we have to
start yeah and some of these kids are really in a very difficult situation absolutely because the parents [Music] um are representing one thing with the best intentions and the school represents
something else and the disconnect the kid is right in the middle and it's very difficult yeah thank you this is really helpful I just have to acknowledge for first of all you're serving five counties right right now so I would like to at least take a second this is Debbie
schaer so I have been covering all of Grand Travers including like green spire and GTA um and we haven't been able to serve the outlying counties um so we had a little bit of push back there right why heap's getting all the attention um so
we did hire um another uh my co- cohort here um she's going to be um working with me she's to expand those efforts um and we both split our time between pupil accounting auditing and insury so um we
it's a split role so it's a lot but it's really rewarding work especially when you see one of the kids cross that stage and you see them graduate and there was no way that was going to happen on the course they were on I'll also mention that and correct me if I'm wrong Don but
I know when I came to the district the ISD did not have Insurgency officer at all that is true and so one of my previous experiences I knew it's required by law for the to do it so I kind of threw that out there so don was the first one in that position um you
know coming just four years probably four years now yeah yeah four years so to have her you know in this role is huge of a of a resource we didn't have so just again Kudos and thanks to the ISD for that support and awesome to see
there's even more um because it's something we need but I ALS so you know pupil counting is a big part big job by itself as well so they also have that on their plate um so it's just really thankful to have some support with this that we didn't have before well and
thanks for all you do I mean I can just tell your passion for like you said even if it's one kid walking across the stage um so thank you yeah and it's a fine line you're walking right compassion and this is the law and we need you in
school right so that's right and I will just say having worked with Don firsthand on a couple of different cases throughout the years she works tirelessly and I know be the TR and C piece plus all the people accounting
stuff it's a huge job so you do it well so I know our mental health team is super thankful for you and your coordination efforts and collaboration with all of us too so thank you like I said she in the background of all the buildings too when I was talking to Don
about this she was like oh yeah and then I was talking to Brian K about this student and then I was talking to Christen student about this student then I was I was like who like she is very connected to and supporting like when you guys if you wonder like how does that work that do only a few of our buildings Reach Out nope all 16 know her
and and access her Services when we get to that point when we feel like it is important that we start at the school team right at our at our counselors and our social workers and um to support that because a lot of times we can we can do that but then when we need her we know how to access her and get her to
come in with her expertise so can I ask a quick question the majority of your students would you say they're Elementary Middle School or High School historically so um I would say I spend the most time in the middle schools um I
think East and West Middle School use me pretty heavily um I spend less time in the elementaries but I will say more time at like Blair um Trevor Heights um but they are they all do use me um
except for TC high TC high doesn't it's kind of a different um situation and once we get kids there we really want to keep them there um and and do whatever we can to help them be successful um I would say I spend most time in the
middle schools I would love to spend more time in the elementaries because if I'm honest the the the kids that you can catch at that grade have the best opport opportunity for success in middle school and high school and that's where we can
hold parents most responsible as soon as parents um as soon as those kids start to hit the those teen years um it it it gets hard to um to reel them in let's say you know when if they've already not
been going to school consistant for a couple of years it's really difficult so the younger we can catch them um the better um and sometimes it's really a multi-year approach there you know sometimes there's a family in particular
um that um a migrant family and mom didn't speak English and so we're working through an interpreter and that first year this was one of those who went from 100 to 80 to 60 and that young man is in um Middle School this year for
the first time and I just looked and he's missed four days you know and so it was a big you know a lot of followup a lot of meetings a lot of calling a lot of visiting um and all of that so sometimes that it takes a
long time so I guess I work across the board I would say I spend the most time in the middle schools and I will say that we have been meeting Don and I and the coordinator of the school Success lean program um and they are in four of our um Elementary
buildings and I know Donna had talked about being in some some of those Elementary buildings like bar where and Travers Heights more so we're really working with the school Success Liaisons to be another layer of support in those buildings to help kind of combat truy and to help with what that is so with
nmcaa we have a partnership where we pay half and they pay half of a person that works as a school Success leads on working with those atrisk students in for the buildings give me idea in my previous District we had one out every building High School Middle School that
element that we had State funding for we didn't have it at all so we managed we managed to get four here and put them in four of our more buildings that have at risk students but it is an awesome strategy to do but you need the at risk funds to be able to match the half that they get to be able to try and expand
that and we've barely been able to do what we've been able to do with the atris funds was that the federal Title One or was that the no state that's a state 31a MH which we know where we're at with that right now but you know you know this it's an awesome program of that's exactly what these people do is
help with that intervention with the families with that work so in elementary schools it's that majority of that family connection right because the kid can't I see that morphing right when I was at Westwoods and work with elementaries and working a lot with families with truy and then as that
moved as I you know went to East Middle and was in meetings with Dawn then that that focus and turns more to the student and them choosing as far as coming to school or not Elementary there is there's a choice there but as a parenting goes that they focus and that's what the nmcaa that wraparound
service where they create that relationship with the family helps a ton yeah and we do try to um include those students in those meetings as well um we do have the student and of course when they're little we're talking to them at a you know in a different way but um
also uh having them take part in signing off on that contract and understanding what the goals are and that they're they have a a role in that um and just one other thing that is a preventive um uh program that I I do I do work all year
in the summer is the lighter time so I will ask all of the schools for um names of families where they're not on my case load yet but they're concerned about them and I do use that summer we kind of we send out a letter a soft letter that
just says hey we noticed you struggled with attendance this year we're going to be reaching out to see how we can support you um and and be ready to go uh at the beginning of the school year um so that I do do that and if I can't reach families I will kind of make a
list and I'll go do a road show and I'll knock on doors and you know just see what we can do what we can do to help and like I said sometimes parents just they just need that support they just need somebody to sort of talk to and encourage them um a lot of times they're
I hate to say this but a lot of times it's basic parenting skills and and just helping with routines and and things like that well thanks this has really been helpful and I know it's not the the end of the conversation for us um as a
Administration and board but um just a couple things I wanted to ask one is the do you have data to track you know the causes of absenteeism for given families and then like what approaches you're employing and then the effectiveness to
see improvements for which I understand are variable from student to student but just so you can do an evaluation maybe in the summer time of what's working well what's not working so well what what other things could we do I guess my second related question would be if there's one thing that you want or two
or three whatever you choose things that you feel like would really move the ball forward given existing resources we always hope for more but just given what we have um fiscally you know what would those one or two or three items be for you
know even for boosting the reducing chronic absenteeism yeah um so I would not say I have um specific that I track specific reasons um and I would say that that's because it's rarely one reason um usually it's a
whole bundle of of of things um and we work on on on those things individually um I would if if you want to know some of the the bigger things I I do think it's just um parents uh there's a lot of electronic use parents are really
struggling with taking that away from kids at night um that's a huge one uh some of the transportation I do find that um I've worked with the student support network and they can help uh in that regard it's not something I would
say I I can't track I certainly um I certainly can um we have sort of of a little list and what I find is most of the time you're checking most of the boxes um it's not just uh it's usually not really a cut and dry one one reason
um and as far as what some things I think would help it would be awesome to have um I have zero budget so when you're talk FTE and um so the and I can get um I can
get help um so for teaps often times um the student support network and I have to plug Katie she is the best um I work with her um a lot and um I'm able to get some things from her but one of the things that would be really helpful particularly for
some of those middle school kids are incentives um which if I want to do I have to do that out of my pocket which we're not allowed to do so um you know just little things yeah you know like Starbucks cards or things like that that
motivates a kid and I'll have principal say if you come to school every day I will you know buy you lunch or so and but all of that comes right out of us just wanting to do that um this the um Grand Trevor Sheriff's Department though
also helps me a lot um so for some of the schools where I can't tap into the student support network and we need bus passes or gas cards or things like that um I also work with them and they're really good um if I find that somebody has a need that we can't help with I'll
go to them and they'll help me um but I think just some of those incentives like some rewards that kind of [Music] thing helpful thank you yeah okay and then just the last slide
because then I started wondering how do our kids do who are qu chronically absent which by the way is a really hard question for me to figure out how I could put hard data to that um so here's what I could do is I just dumped um both all three of our high schools um
semester one grades into a spreadsheet with their attendance um and then I just sort of categorized them um that First Column the 100 to 90% uh that is that's the majority of our high school students right 65 is um 60 to 65% of our high
school students fall into that category they actually are not chronically absent they attended lots of schools there's their GPA and there's the average number of courses that that group of students fell or sorry that they that they failed um the next bucket and the reason why I
chose 70% to cut it off is when you look at the research about students who are chronically absent um they put them in categories the state does two dods probably like it it is to how many days they miss I know they say it's defined at 10% but you actually don't really see
a significant drop off we still don't we want kids there um until you get to those later categories which means you've missed over 30% or more of the school um so that red line right there is like okay how about like what if I use that kind of as the cut the next
category um what does that look like so you can see the average GPA if I miss um if I'm I'm still chronically absent right but I haven't missed more than 30% of my schooling the GPA is lower and I've probably failed more classes right
um but then look at what happens in that next category right so that next category I I have missed um a significant amount of my school not half of them but a pretty significant amount um I will tell you there are not very many kids I wish I would have put how many students there were in these
categories for you there are it's less than 10% who are past that 70% in teaps from first semester um and then when you go past half of the days and it was small number very small number of students who missed more than 50% of the school weren't already maybe on um a
homebound plan or something like that there's their GPS and not surprisingly that's the average number of courses they filled now there are a few kids there's not very many in that category there are a few that have extenuating circumstances that passed all their classes and I knew they were working through something or they were oh they
miss that much because they're on a travel hockey team and this is the arrangement that and that those are kind of outliers in the other direction right with like um that so I was actually surprised that the average wasn't closer to six right six classes is what a high school student takes but there because there were a few of those kids and
there's such a small number of students in that category um but I don't know then this red sentence or orange sentence I mean makes sense to all of us and I think is sort of what we've all talked about so and Jesse you said that um the
30% uh or the 30 uh there's only about 10% of our kids that fall in that fall past that red line past that red line okay from first semester at the high schools this last year I just if I could grab that data really easily um and so I was like okay um it's it's harder and I
I could dig into if the board really wanted us to to figure out how is absenteeism related to um you know the external metrics right but that's just not something that is super easy for us to pull apart and look at doable but would require
more yeah I'm impr you you were able to do this analysis this level shout out to Sophie cuz I kind of brainstormed with her one night about like I kind of want to look at this um and it came from the high school principal saying to me gosh I wonder how many of my kids because both of them were like I can think of
this kid and this kid are totally chronically absent but it's because of these Sports reasons or hospitalization but the kid actually passed all their classes and still was able because they set up a plan and it was um and so they were like how do our kids do and I was like uh let's see if I can figure out
how to answer that so I think the trick is not getting too far behind it's when you get behind the rock gets huge yeah I don't disagree with that yeah so this so the kids who are missing school
because of a school activity though like sports was not necessarily a school activity yeah it could be travel Compu Weare in Detroit go you know like that was why you see a lot of from Olympics prepar training for
olypic okay so um but I just want to say like you know even 10% of our high school you know of our high school students I mean we've got two large primary high school so that's 2600 students and so 10% of that still 260
kids that's still a lot a sizable number to to try to tackle um yeah and and I just I guess I want to make a comment but maybe you know a question is because our secondary students all have laptops you know teaps issued Chromebooks they
they have the ability to access classwork and homework that's the comment but I gu the question would be you know you know like to best point obviously there might still be something
missing like a kid can the most diligent student could be absent a lot and access all that try to keep up but they're they're still missing the instruction right that's probably where they they get buried behind the gaps and their learning yeah and the gaps in the
learning add up right that cumulative effect and and I would say that kids are there's a lot out there right so kids who really want to do it I'm sure all of us have seen it like they'll go out there and they'll find it and they'll figure out how to watch a video or um a KH Academy or do some practice um but
kids as they feel more overwhelmed and farther behind they they don't even know where to start they don't even know how to prioritize right and so having an adult a counselor someone to sit with them and say how do we dig start to dig ourselves out of this hole and make a plan and maybe it looks like going from
missing 60 kit days down to 30 is where we start right um and our counselors are they are really good at working with these kids and coming up with a plan that is manageable and putting things in
bite-sized pieces yes it's going to be hard but they can do hard things um but they've got to show up and they've they they've got to do that work so um but our the counselors and the principles they are really good at that at putting that
it it's never a situation where come back tomorrow and we want these hundred assignments and we expect you to get from zero to 100 in this week um that that's not what it looks like at all we we set you know we set reasonable goals
and like I said the school team um really works hard to to come up with a plan that that student feels comfortable with and they're involved in those conversations they they are the student is there um they're given you know some op would this help would this help um
and they're part of that yes this would work for me um and that's what what this will staff will then work with so there's there's not just one way and like Ryan Ranger says what's the best way out of the hole stop
[Laughter] digging it's one of the best ways out thanks so much everybody this has been a really good conversation um and I would just encourage the you know the board when going into strategic
planning that we keep this information in mind you know maybe you know thinking of our strategic goals and and more fine-tuned objectives and so forth I think this is a subpopulation that we could really go after to you know really
help Bo student outcomes more resources too I mean in terms of people resources it's very labor intensive right and I'm not saying that to to mitigate the situation at all but it is it isn't as simple as like
that kid needs a person and a plan and it is constant followup it is constant support it it's not just we yeah we got you back on Monday everything's good it is a it is a very labor intensive and individualized support system you have to have for a student and then you're
working with all those different teachers and and what all those plans look like um it's very important but it's it's very personel intensive yeah I agree do you use the Big Brothers Big Sisters abely
yep absolutely I would think that that would be a very important bridge and one thing the trust is built yeah and one thing that's really nice about Big Brothers Big Sisters as well is once that student is participating there's free tutoring available which is a great
resource so we do encourage um families to to take advant AG of that um for the obvious reasons I'm a big sister um too but from from that perspective but also um having that tutoring available that's
hard a lot of families know they need it and they can't afford it and and sometimes there's some push back I think uh couched in very um interesting ways that says I'm not
sure my child can succeed because I did not succeed great and there's some subtle breaking yep breaking some of those Cycles yeah and something that's really sobering that I share with high school students is um eight out of 10
incarcerated men in Michigan didn't graduate high school um and so I I remind them that you're not going to have the earning potential that you want you're not going to be able to afford the things you want to do um and when you when you can't afford
the the expenses of daily living what do you do you turn to criminal activity you've got to support yourself in some way it's so just that education is just so important to make sure that these kids have the opportunity um all the doors open right
because the education once you start missing too much school you don't graduate high school those doors start closing so ation is important for the students as well as the parents and that's why we're trying to get some parenting programs running at different schools and bring
in some some stuff to help education and awareness around this as well yeah well just to wrap this up um I'll mention I've shared this with Dr Van Wagner and Jesse hotton and heworth that um last fall I went to the Michigan
Association of school boards annual leadership conference and kamuzu public schools did a presentation with their superintendent the president of their board um they have been really aggressive at trying to tackle attendance and um they have seen
improvements but I mean they've invested a lot and I'm I'm looking at you Don not not like you're the singular person to do this for teaps it's it's all of us together but I just wanted to mention that um I you know what they've done could be you know helpful to teaps and
and what we might think of doing down the road a couple of things I haven't heard mentioned were they not only the parent education but the um mandatory summer school so that's that sounds more like a stick than a carrot they admitted
that families were not big fans of that from the outset but by proactively saying look if your kid is falling behind you're going to have to go to summer school it will be free but it's going to be mandatory and grade retention which you know families just they no kid
wants to be held back families don't want that the school does school doesn't want it um but that was another thing that they they used in addition to all the things you've talked about so um I'm not a fan of moving kids forward who aren't ready academically ready
academically but it sounds like um from a mental health perspective um that I've heard it's more harmful to hold them back then move them forward but I I do think that in a way we're setting them up for failure um if we continue to move
them through the system when they're when they haven't met the uh academic standards of the year before but I'm I'm kind of in the minority on that on that thinking so anyway just want to share that resource yeah no that's yeah okay well
thanks everybody great discussion um moving on then we we uh want to talk about celebrations and successes yeah so we're kicking things off uh tcaps monor students uh participated National History Michigan History Day District 3 competition uh
had a great showing I know the uh other middle schools also participate in in a History Day celebration so good to see our kids and a focus on social studies yeah like it little change up we're going to show a little video here um of
me um I got to go to uh Trevor Heights um and award the spirit sticks so uh see does an awesome job out there here I am it was a hard decision that's Brian K in the wig if you haven't been out there
for Moon boo there they are yeah that was Eerie so cool but that's an example of that of school culture Community Building celebrating um being a part of
school and coming to school every day um while I was there there were some um instructional coaches and teacher leaders from some of our other elementary schools who have been been you know watching sort of what are different ways we can breed some life into that and do some different things
so super fun um and then this is uh a slide of some of our sixth graders um uh we had a chance to meet with a Lego rep a couple months ago and um they brought in some different kits for our kids and just kind of changing up some of our our stem stuff um and it's pretty cool the
kids absolutely love it and then they build these and then they race them and and do sort of those they there's a computer programming um piece to it as well so is that an example of a sixth grade teacher who sought a a grant or something special because it wasn't just required right it was just I don't think
so I know that Dan has been there's a rep that contacted us and we were looking so just my experience at East Middle looking at we have stem classes and Robotics and I was looking for ways to maybe bring some structure to those stem classes but also looking at
long-term goal uh is how to kind of centralize and build a an elementary program right that's not oneoff based on PTO but an actual stem K5 and this was just kind of the first step is to kind of introduce these to see where it could
possibly fit in our program and kind of have that relationship with Lego so yeah and both both schools uh both principles came to that Lego meeting that we had with the rap they heard all the information we all got to kind of build some things and play with different Legos ourselves and then they both brought it back to their buildings too
so yeah yeah that's perfect age right they're still into the Legos at six grade so your point the next thing is we need to figure out some grants and fundraising mechanism to get some of that so yeah cool so this is over at uh Blair where a
lot of different elementary schools um celebrated March's reading month of pit spitters specifically have a program that keeps track of how many uh books kids read and they get a ticket free ticket to go to the game so then they come in and they they brought the mascots in and celebrated with the kids
at the at Blair it's a good example of an incentive um in a community organization that can give us that it's not something that we're able to provide you um just to kind of I know this is kind of we've had months in here before but we continue to work with them as far
as how can we bring that career college readiness right into the classroom um and so they did lessons in both of our middle schools um they worked with our science teachers that's where we found a really nice natural connection um for some of their experts to come in and
talk to the kids about how would you use this in context to our job and what that looks like um they're doing them in all the grade level six seven and eight throughout these next few months and then um they are doing that as in addition with the high school students as well I know they hosted some visits
here recently for us on internships and some of those things too so continuing that partnership it's sort of operating now I don't want to say in the background but it's up and running and so that's what great for our kids and here's our high school orchestra performing at Eastern
Elementary this time of year our music groups get out to elementary schools as we start that registration process for Middle School our sixth graders uh all sixth graders take music next year so this is a good idea as far as different music groups get out to school to kind
of expose them to different instruments and and kind of get an idea of what direction they want to take in sixth grade we had to throw in a photo from Central High School they hosted the robotics competition in March uh for the district so next year it'll be back over
at West um but really cool competition I know a lot of the board was able to come by that um but great event and kudos to their whole team over there John failer Marla Gerber Eric Smith uh Jeremiah all of those uh adults that helped rally all the volunteers needed and all the pieces
that come into making this event um successful so and then these are more celebrations of March's reading month so like I said many of our schools participate and these are are some uh incentives and contests and different guest readers
that different schools had over the last month who's that on the upper left the adult Jason alen oh okay that's what I thought moose oh no it's John de moose all right I see represent from here it looked like it does look
like I see you got to be a thank you yeah and then interesting they they have to choose a book it's like the NCA was cute it was interesting you know if you tell them to vote they all vote for both so you really have to say wait a minute now you only get to vote for
one then you revote so it it was it was really cute in the library yeah and then this last one is just again another of our phenomenal co-curricular opportunities for our students um model un both of our high
schoolers uh brought a nice uh group down they represent the countries this is a picture of of the West Senior High uh Award winners but just a really cool opportunity for all of our high school students to participate in that and um a great experience
so exciting great um any other items okay then I think uh our announcement is that the next curriculum committee meeting will be Tuesday April
29th here at this location Glenn Lumis Administration Building at 8:15 a.m. um and with that we are adjourned thank you Part: 2
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curriculum committee to order the committee would like to welcome the audience members may watch live board committee meetings online at tcaps.net/board recorded meetings may be viewed on demand at the same address the committee has set aside this
time for public comment kelly do we have any public comments i have not received any cards okay then that we will move on uh to procedural items and we're at the draft meeting minutes portion of the agenda are there any changes to the draft
meeting minutes no no okay um I will just note this doesn't have to necessarily be corrected in the in the notes but um the when we talked about input on meaningful student achievement outcomes last time I I did suggest that maybe the board wants to review average
NWA scores i'm not sure that I advocated for MSTEP scores because I'm not personally a huge fan of the lag in time of those scores but you know that that may be something that the administration wants to consider since that is a state required exam um okay so hearing no
changes minutes will remain as posted and I will defer to Miss H hot hotton about the TCAPS district course catalog yes uh we have three new courses and I apologize that uh the ACL letters weren't placed in front of the other two
but all three of these are through the Aselis platform they are middle school courses um we are Dr van Wagner and I have talked a lot about that that we've seen a lot of need in the area for um comprehensive middle school online to
our students and so we are actually piloting we've got a couple students right now at the middle school who were currently in face toface and then their conditions changed a wide variety of reasons we have two of them in particular who have now moved all online and we have chosen to put them all onto the Aselis platform giving us an
opportunity to work with them get some feedback from those students and their families and our teachers who are overseeing the program um with the thought that next year we'll probably expand even more of that based on the the need from students outside of TCAPS um who are calling us and asking us
about online for middle school um so we've chosen to sort of continue to expand our offerings to those students jesse are those partly in response to um first taking uh in uh class classes and
not having a hard time with them no the the two students who moved online it was with unique situations where the students were unable to maintain face to face it didn't have to do with the rigor of the face toface but they still wanted to be TCAP students um they didn't want
to leave us entirely and so by switching them to a fully virtual through the program that we're already using they're able to maintain they're both planning to reenroll face to face um in the fall um so and then the need that we've seen we've just had an increase of calls to
the Compass Learning Center asking specifically about middle school virtual programming and those calls are coming in from kids who are not currently enrolled in TECAPS um but live in the area um and either are seeing the the virtual schooling that they're in is
suns setting um or they're looking at hey we know that you guys have launched this compass learning at the high school we've got a middle school student who is currently virtual and we're wanting to switch them into TECAPS with like that as being the trajectory you know do you
have anything available and so um I've talked a lot with Ryan Ranger the principal at East Middle School and he is pretty excited and and willing to take on the challenge of what could it look like to have 30 to 50 middle school students fully virtual and how would he
and his team support middle school students um in that educational setting and it's nice because if he contains it they're already middle school staff they're middle school counselors like they they sort of know that age range and what that not only academic needs are but also the social emotional and it
would allow those kids to connect to middle school activities you know our kids that are online through Compass Learning they get TCAP student IDs they can attend our events they can they can engage in all those things that our traditional high school students can and this would potentially be something we
could expand for that i guess in a very awkward way what I meant to ask was would this be the equivalent of summer school for kids that are having difficulty in some of the classes currently they're not passing their classes and they really are not going to
be held back is this an equivalent to summer school um I I don't see that as that no um but I will tell you uh Kristen Studman the principal at West Middle School and and Ryan we are I've worked with them and
Britney K our curriculum director we will have a fully tier 2 support in both math and reading for our current sixth graders next year so we know a lot about our kids who are actually transitioning to middle school we have a really robust intervention in elementary um we really
don't have anything besides tier three which is considered special ed at middle school tiffany I've talked a lot about this and so next year we are going to use some of our atrisisk funding to ensure we have reading and math support for those kids who who are don't quite have the skills yet um middle school is
is unique because they're sort of transitioning into adolescence transition yeah and and they don't they don't want to be removed from their peers that's really important and it's really important that they still are engaged and have those social you know um but also we know they're lacking some of the academic skills right and so how
do we maintain both sides of that and so we're going to we're going to run that for reading and math next year so I can do more about that in future board curriculum talk to you guys about bring Britney about what programs we're going to use what the setup will look like for those kids so that they don't
feel there is some they kids don't want to feel special and unique and like they want to feel not singled out but they want to feel like they belong right depends on what you're singling them out for right right right understand that yeah so um no I I don't necessarily think it'll be used for that however I
will say the Aselis um does have some nice uh uh curriculum in it that would allow us to remediate um not down to standards below middle school though at this point okay thank you um just so
regarding these three virtual classes since we're now mid semester is are these going to be students who are joining the these classes this semester yes two months in okay so because they're virtual courses they're able to
catch up more easily yep um and I I heard you say potentially 30 to 50 students virtual students at EMS um would they would that be I know there's space in that building to accommodate would how about serving the west side yeah our our thinking is right now um is
that keeping it consolidated at one site will actually allow us to do a better job providing services um and so and East does have the space there as well they do have a lower student count as a building than West Middle School but yet they have the same counselor support
social work support and administration support um and so we think that they can handle that increase of 30 to to 50 students um students who would need transportation we would help them just like we are helping the Compass Learning students who maybe don't live near TC
High um we do a lot with some beta passes and some other things we do have the vans now and some approved drivers and so we have the ability um with some you know setup here too thinking about things ahead to to transport if needed um for that but we are thinking we'd have a permanent lab at East Middle
School where students and families could come with a certified teacher in there to provide support similar to what we're doing with those high school students we just at this point we we feel like we'd rather keep it a little bit smaller to do it right and and to really make sure
what we want to do is keep these kids on track and ensure that they can at any point transition to face toface learning um within TCAP so it wouldn't preclude us in the future though from thinking about a westside you know a westside program we kind of want to see like
Jesse came to me and was like "Hey I really want to do this." And I'm like "I don't know." We're just we're really kind of just still learning a lot at at our Compass Learning Center with our high school kids but there's just so many phone calls so many things that Jen's getting over at Compass Learning and Mike to a point where like man we
know that there's a group of kids not being served take it a little slow see where that goes but in the future could that possibly happen it could yeah so I mean could you do you have kind of a aggregate summary of where these kids
are coming from are they being homeschooled right now are they going to different virtual academy or in-person school it's a mix um but I would tell you that Jed and Mike Mike Living Good is the teacher who's running the Compass Learning for us over there they've
received well over 20 phone calls from non-Taps families who are looking for a fully virtual middle school program that still has like an actual physical brickandmortar support that is close to them right some of these kids who are involved in these virtual programmings
are not schools that are in this area at all and so they what they some of these families have realized is that when they have a struggle or they need some additional support it's offered and it's in Kazoo or it's in you know what I mean like not a place in which they could easily access but it's a mix of all those
things you just mentioned yeah okay all right well we will stay tuned and it sounds like the you're going to pilot this for next school year more fully right for middle school it I mean no it's a full it's not a pilot i mean we're going full force with that
so right now but this is just a few classes with a few of our kids right right but right now then EMS is already using the space for this purpose and kind of ramping up to they will not until the fall okay not to the fall we
just have a few middle school students right now online through the Aselis we're just getting some feedback from them and their families and seeing how that program in particular is working and the plan is in the fall to have that so as I as more details are put together I'll bring all of that and I'll probably bring Ryan and potentially someone on
his team who's helping oversee that to you guys and sort of go through okay hey here's what this is going to look like so yeah I'll just say down the road whenever that presentation happens I would just like to hear about the criteria for having kids enter that program and what the district's looking
for in terms of evaluating on an ongoing basis for every child like should they stay in that environment or should they come in person because to me it just feels like virtual learning for middle schoolers is is long is you know it is different from than high school kids
there are some pros and cons but want to reach more kids but also want to make sure that they're engaged with other students and so forth yeah there there's a couple things that you know unfortunately the one is if you don't that there's somebody else pick them right back up right but the second part is is we do have some state guidance on
that so um under the state law right now students can actually take up to two online courses regardless of grade level um can request it from the district and so there is language that gives us parameters on when we should consider or
not consider um if they're a special education student is it a part of their IEP so we do have some state parameters that give us some guidance on what that looks like for kids that take two that really is a good start a good a good component for us to look at as we create
this program from that standpoint so when it comes to that we'll share we'll share that section you know so you can kind of see that and and that's that's a a really strong basis a lot of times if kids are not being successful there's the exit ramp you know that's in that language all those kind of things and I
I think too the middle school counselors administrators teachers and things think that like sometimes kids get in a situation where they need this sort of like pause and they but they also don't want to lose these kids totally right and so having the ability to move those kids into a virtual programming that we
still oversee and we're still able to stay connected to that kid and that family with the ultimate goal and Josie you're you're to bring them back in with their peers and back into the face toface learning um so I can see a
variety of reasons to go into it some kids in fifth grade may want a more accelerated thing and perhaps go into it early kids that are kind of struggling that need to have it without all the distraction i could see you getting it
both ways and you've got discipline issues that are in that you have everything from kids that are you know traveling with parents you know all of a sudden with jobs that happen there's lots of unique situations and again this is another option but you know Jose's point I think it's important is a
quality option and that we're trying to make sure that you know we don't have kids set up for failure either right I understand great thank you um so with that we can move on to a field trip request and
again so yeah so uh we have uh a robotics teams this is their request to go to worlds they don't know yet if they've qualified um I know they're both both teams are really um ramping up for the state meet here in a couple this weekend this weekend a couple weeks this
weekend um not just four right just lots of things going on yeah yeah yeah so uh but that's in here for both the teams again that's dependent on them qualifying for that um and then the other thing in here is our academic world quest team um this year
the team from West Senior High qualified i would like to point out that we have a great relationship with our international affairs um it's a phenomenal alex Tink and his kind of group through NMC runs that they pay for all of the expenses uh last year it was Central High School's team qualified the
kids have to qualify and if you haven't seen one of those competitions they're these kids are incredible the studying and preparation they do um but our local international uh world's fair helps pay for all of that for our kids and keeps our kids engaged in that process so those there's four students from West
traveling with uh a teacher Dan Rosenberg from West Senior High who's the adviser for that team too so pretty cool i think that you might know someone traveling boys all four boys yeah um I was just going
to ask for the memo when we refer to international affairs forum could we insert Northwestern Michigan Colleges you know just to make it very clear that's NMC's program's program that would be helpful absolutely we can make an adjustment to
that memo too okay great any questions comments okay all righty um yeah and then I think the uh main attraction for today's meeting the learning series on student attendance i think just to back up really quick I think we want to move
those to the full board oh yeah but all good or I don't think we need a motion but just uh Yeah and I think it might go through um executive to the finance but usually we put them on we missed a slide
for the cancellation of the field trip sorry for the firstformational item well it's on information actually okay okay in the agenda I don't think there's a slide the new course you're right right erica is right um let's move unless there are any
objections or concerns from my colleagues I'll move the district course catalog and selection guide and the field trip request to the consent calendar for the next board meeting we do you're right we do have a cancellation that's right the Peru trip yep okay all right they just didn't have
enough students interested lack of Yeah that's a shame excellent okay then moving on to our secondformational item again uh the uh main attraction today are on students
yes so I want to start by there's two different ways that we talk about student attendance um through the state so I I just want to do a little definition and then I've got a mock sample just to because they're very confusing and people feel like they should add up to 100% and they do not add up to 100% so I just want to go
through it really quick so there's two ways we can talk about student attendance we can talk about the attendance rate which is the percentage of time students are present in school so like a hey at this school building what percentage of my students are present or we can talk about chronically
absent students so those are individual students who have missed and this is defined by the state they have missed more than 10 percentage of school days so attendance rate is set by the school and by the district like as in like we
could look at the attendance rate and I'm going to show you some from the whole district and from um different schools but chronically absent is individual students okay so here's a sample of a school this is like one week for you and I made it a school that has 10 students
just for easy numbers but you can think about it scaled over multiple weeks or multiple students so on Monday you've got two of your students absent the shaded students are absent on Tuesday you've got two students absent again wednesday and Thursday you've got everybody in attendance you got 100%
attendance on those two days and on Friday student three is absent again 90% attendance so the bottom numbers are your attendance rates of your schools right and so for the whole week you could just you literally average all of those numbers and your school attendance
rate for that week was 90% okay but when you talk about chronically absent students you're doing an individual count of students and by the definition that the state sense which is 10% you have three students student two student three and student
five who would be labeled as chronically absent students because they missed more than 10% of instruction so out of the 10 students total 30% of your students are considered chronically absent and that's where things get confusing how can the
attendance rate be 90% but yet 30% of the kids be chronically absent those two numbers they never add up to 100% and and sometimes people feel like they should but they're not complements of each other so I just kind of wanted to outline that and then I'm going to talk about um some school attendance rates
and TCAPS and then I'll talk a little bit about chronically absent students as well does that kind of give you a simplistic view of the Act actually this slide was great when I looked at this in advance it it made total sense to me
um yeah like if you take that 10% of of on a given day of absences whether they're excused or unexcused you're going to have that sub within that sub population you're going to have some frequent flyers if you will and you're going to have some other kids who are
one-off so it's the ones who are really frequently absent so thank you for this very good because it was confusing to me as I was going through some of the research with it too and reading and I was like "Why don't these add up to 100?" And then I was like "Oh this is why." And then I was like "Okay I got to
figure out how how to mock it out." Okay cool and it explains how like Bridge magazine and Mive have been reporting you know that TCAP has chronic absenteeism in the 20% or you know 30 and so people think that 30% of our kids are absent right every day but they're
not yes and you've got two days we're like "Hey you had everybody there." I mean that doesn't really happen at our schools our sizes but you know you know so right nonetheless it's it's still important to look at that 20 and 30% you know chronically absent so and and the
absence it doesn't matter if it's excused or not excused yeah I'm going to talk about that here in a second too as to how and that's set by MDE and that's how we and I checked with Sophie who does all of our data systems that's how all of our data runs to the state is our
account codes that's even if a kid if a parent calls in and the kids's legitimately sick it still counts as an absent for us yep it does not count as a present code so if a kid gets hospitalized still there you go exactly yep but I
would consider that an excused absence but that's not it if they have missed the learning for the day they are considered absent state does not care on the reason why there's one exception i'll talk about that a second um all right cool i'm glad that helped so
attendance rates so these are really high level rates here and I went back two school years for you obviously this school year we're in it right now so I gave you two years here i gave you the state percentages and then TCAPS percentages right so for all of our
buildings that's kind of where we are so we actually saw a slight that's like we're talking point 2 percentage i don't know if that's significant or not i didn't run a test and see if that changes a trend over time um I only went back two because really you go to back too many you get go back too far and you
start hitting COVID years and I was like I think we could I think we got some good base data here for us to maybe track it moving forward if the board wants us to um and then I broke it down for you guys here um instead of by individual schools we do look at that and we work with some principles on that but here I just kind of thought about K5
our middle schools our high schools tc High is a very unique subop of students we've talked a lot about that so I did pull them out of the high school data because they really would have kind of skewed and affected our that data together that sample size isn't very big but yeah so that's there
um middle schools are interesting both uh Miss Studman and Mr ranger thought they've seen this and they thought they were like "Wow middle schools have the best attendance." And there's some thinking that we did behind it on that why but so how do you improve your attendance rates this really is about
school culture right how do you get kids to go to school every day um it is about having meaningful relationships with our kids it's about our kids feeling like learning is engaging and relevant
um to them and that they value being there right so it's all those types of things that you see our schools do that sometimes are labeled as like oh it's a fun activity yeah sure it is but it it's okay to create community and have that type of school culture it does help with
your attendance rates it helps with um students belonging and feeling like they're part of their school culture yeah um we have another slide right on the overall district chronic absenteeism rates coming up i'm going to do chronic next yep i thought I'd just do attendance rates first because those are
pretty easy i will tell you all the research says for what you want these numbers to be is 90% you know you're really you're you're they considered you in the in the gold standard if you're above 90% as a as a district and as an individual building or as a grade level
so um actually when I broke these down I was like "Oh that's pretty good about that you know and normally I really advocate for a national comparison but we've I think all read that nationally this the chronic absenteeism is big and
on par with uh the state." Um yeah 30 nationally 30% of 15 million students are chronically absent i know you're not there yet i would just uh say for future reference for the board when we revisit this um if we could get
national and also I would be interested in going back to 2019 for comparison i know things got they they got worse during COVID and now we're on the upswing I think but I think that would be a good trend try to follow over time
i think I looked at that and that wasn't that bad it's on uh the data that the state provides both statewide as well as for individual schools uh and I I don't think we were off yeah my guess is we're
back up to 2019 levels 1920 is is super hard because 20 that's obviously that was that spring where we went out and attendance wasn't necessarily you actually see some of the attendance go up in that spring because we were taking attendance it It's almost like we can
disregard 2020 and 2021 but looking back at you know 8 and then we back up and beyond where we were thank you okay so chronically absent rates so again these are the counts of the kids who have missed uh more than 10% of
their days so here's the percentage state percentages for those two years and then TCAPS percentages for those two years and then I again I broke that down for you guys um by grade level bands for the percentage of students who are
labeled as chronically absent so the middle school principles um saw this and they were like of course all of our kids come to school all the time and they were like they're not the younger kids who get sick and are are right and they're not the kids who are in high school age who have more of the
ability to choose to not go to school right that you think about it these are the age range of kids that primarily they parents put them on the bus or drop them off and they're there they're there all day and so they kind of chuckled when they saw this and they um it made sense to them just sort of with their
experience and background um mhm so let's talk about attendance codes really quick as you guys already mentioned this so just so you're aware if a student misses more than half a day that's considered a full absence for the state right so if you think about a student going to West Senior High they
miss one class period they're not considered absent by the state they have to have missed three class periods or more for our secondaries anytime a student misses because of a school activity this is the
only exception to the attendance um code because we put in what what appears on the students power schools it looks like the word ACT um it stands for activity that is a present code for us that means that student is not missing school that
educational or opportunity for that day is being provided by whatever programming they're doing through us on that day now they're not in class receiving the traditional instruction but they could be gone for a wide variety of reasons it could be sports it could be music it could be robotics it
could be any of those those are not counted um I just did a dump out of Power School and just counted all of our attendance codes and just kind of told you right now this is sort of what the breakdown was i did this right before spring break i just I took all the schools and just dumped them into like a
sheet and did a count for you guys to show you sort of what our attend attendance codes look like what I thought was uh most interesting about this is those that 11% that are not excused right that means that either the parents called in or the guardian called
in and that um school deemed that is not an excusable absence right we do have a criteria where our schools use that or there was no call at all for that student yes small question do we keep track of kids that cut
classes we do actually it shows up as uh in the secondaries you actually see the word cut um on on that like they intentionally that's hard the what happens first is the student gets marked unverified right the teacher takes attendance they mark all the kids who aren't here um and then that code will
get changed by usually the wing office or the principal if they can say that that student chose to intentionally cut class a lot of times they can show that because the student maybe attended one class and then left the building and then came back again during the day right sometimes kids try to do that um
usually it will stay as unverified though to be honest yeah and I know in obviously elementary it's not a code that's used but I know my middle school experience that if we see a cut I mean that's an immediate because unlike high school where they have the ability to drive and leave campus come back middle
school if they're not there that's a problem like we have everyone's looking for the kid we're making sure they're they're usually kind of housed up in a bathroom somewhere that's what they do at middle school um and then we get them back into class but cut I think is a lot
as far as definitely a 912 thing as far as trying to figure out where the kid is and getting them back in well high school was Ferris Bureau Ber's day off i mean one of the best attended a different thing
we're not promoting it right double checking our purpose today very today's standards yes nobody's putting a Porsche up on blocks or anything just making sure no they wouldn't put it out in the back seat right i would also say that we also have
students who do um have extenduating circumstances in terms of health relations and so they do have homebound services so that is not included in excused or not excused we have currently 10 students across the district who are
not attending school because of health related issues and that's uh deemed by a physician and those students would yeah as Tiffany said are not counted on or absenteeism no but that's different than um a
student who maybe uh breaks their leg or you know spends you know is hospitalized for a short term they would be an excused absence and they would probably hit the chronically absent to be honest depending on how many days when you look at what the state criteria is um on that
so I mean two days a month it's not much it's not much when you're talking about what you are to be labeled chronically absent now I will say and I'll get to this later there's different buckets of how much chronically like how much time do they say you can miss before it really dramatically impacts
the learning and where we are so and if somebody if if a student misses just you know say one or two less than that half day but one or two hours or classes a day is the is the absence count like prorated uh accordingly one sixth of a
day in your data no not in my data i I counted it just like the state does where if the student was had missed half or more of the day absent if not they're present um but I will say that all four of our large secondaries so their weighing AA is one of their biggest jobs
is to take attendance and verify it and they do it multiple times throughout the day um they send text messages in the morning at a certain time if a student has flagged unverified they send them again in the afternoon um and then at the end of the day they they set share with their assistant principal the
attendance um grid for that whole day here are the kids who are unverified here's what I've done to try to contact them and that assistant principal then will pick it up from there and they're looking for individual student patterns right and they're looking for kids who were present not present not present present again right like what's the
story there so and that's only at the high school level that's only at the high school and middle school level studman shared me her tracking sheets she has tracking sheets for all of her wing offices very similar um that's like that's the primary job and I like nod to Emily a little bit as she was at Central with me for years and knew she helped
organize our wing assistants that's what their primary job every day was to field those calls and make sure kids are where they're supposed to be because that's our job so so our flow um I talked a little bit about that daily so at the elementary they take attendance twice during the
day and I will say being at element it's just different you don't tend to have if you've got someone chronically absent and I've got Don Mormon who's going to talk to us a little bit and I'll introduce her at that age it's a different sort of set of parameters and barriers that as the student gets older you run more into that apathy and self-
selection of not coming to class um but we run those every day in each of our wing offices at all four of our large secondaries um they send them to their administrator at the end of each day they're looking for patterns they're looking for things that don't make sense um and then we do have a flow track
flowchart that I linked in here about so when do we start um really implementing some more truency uh pro practices and and um procedures with students so at 5 in a month is when we start to actually get a phone call and a conversation to
ensure that the families understand how important it is for us to have these kids here we start sending these uh more formal letters at 10 absences at 15 absences we're looking at having a meeting to set a plan our goal is not to be punitive but to really engage these kids and get them to come to school um
and then as we really continue to ramp up then we get our northhead lesson officer Don Mormon who's here today too with us to talk a little bit about when she gets engaged what does that role look like too and another just um piece to support in student attendance is um
you know if a parent forgets to call in a student or something we get a call immediately that day that says you know your student has an unverified absence or your student missed third hour or whatever it is so it's a great way I mean parents are always notified and I
mean both sometimes my husband and I our phones beep at the same time because we're getting you know the same message um for an unverified absence or something so yep and our buildings know too like how much time can a student miss before they're considered absent
versus tardy both of our that that's more again a high school thing um and so sometimes I will get that call too as a high school parent and find out that my daughter just took a too long of a lunch and came back 10 minutes late to her fourth hour and I will be like "Oh now
time for us to have a conversation about Come on D i know you." Um I wanted to ask too about so the after five absences in a month the the TCAP staff calls um I've gotten the rooc
calls but and they haven't been surprises um but are there also personal calls is the That's a personal call so you're noticing five unverified there's been no call in or or when there is a
call in it's not an excusable reason um it's time for like this is typically typically it's the wing principal at the high schools um sometimes it might be a counselor sometimes it might be um the AA if they have a good uh communication with the family but it is
like hey we we're we have concerns right we want your kid here this is starting to be a pattern what can we do to support what more do we need to know um about what's going on with with your kid and your family is that a requirement under state law no it's just what our
pro um practices are i'm just wondering that given the definition of you know chronic absenteeism being 10% of school days which is 18 in a year or two per month if maybe our threshold should be lower like three absences in a month or
two absences in a month i know it would create more work but you know just to try to intervene sooner than later has the district evaluated that i I don't believe I don't think we've gone down to two or three in a month just for it capacity what we have in the offices if we have consecutive so if we
do three in a row of consecutive with no contact at home then we do a safety check yes so that it's we can't get a hold of anybody on the contact list we have no call in we haven't heard from the family if we have three in a row then we do involve a liaison and they go and check the house to make sure
everything's okay and really here we're really looking at if we know the student's been hospitalized we've already had that contact we wouldn't make that call right that's already we know the story there we're looking for Yeah and Dan's exactly right i should have mentioned that those multiple unverified in a row it usually by the
end of that second day sometimes and we've already tried to make calls the ace like has told their you know administrator hey I've called a couple times i got no answer i tried to text this number we tried this we asked so and so who's friends with that kid like hey you know um and we you know sometimes during that third day we'll
start something about what's going on okay so a big part of supporting our students um is the role of our social worker and our counselors right again like um a lot of times truency is the symptom and it's not the root reason why
there's other things going on here so um I did invite Misty Warner our director of whole child here to talk a little bit about what does this look like um in TECAPS from sort of a tier 2 intervention and support system yeah and so like as Jesse mentioned a lot of
times we are brought in um to make those calls and to try to build those relationships with students and families um we can kind of serve as that link and increase communication so that um students and families feel connected and supported we also look to identify and
address barriers so we're looking at any underlying issues or circumstances that are getting in the way of that student getting to school regularly and then we work with the family um and the students to try to find solutions um and provide supports and services to help meet those
needs um oftentimes we work directly with the students we create individualized plans like Jesse had mentioned to help increase attendance whether that's regular check-ins with a trusted adult um or a soft start to the day whatever may um that student might
need to help get them to school um another thing that our our team has done um a great job of is really staying up to-date and familiar with community resources what each or organization and agency has to offer so that we can then connect and collaborate with those
agencies and get our families the resources that they need um and we kind of take it one step further and we help to um those families to navigate those support systems that can be a challenge so helping them navigate so they so that we can assure that they are accessing
and getting the resources that they need and then our tier three level of support for attendance is Don Mormon um she's here so that's who's sitting down over here and she works for North Ed and she is our regional truency liaison and so I I brought her here too i asked her
to talk a little bit about um what does it look like when she gets engaged what's the goal of that and and how does she support TCAPS in her role so welcome Don hi thank you thanks for having me um yeah so typically around that chronic
absenteeism uh number around that uh 18 to 20 absences um oftentimes the uh school staff will ask me to um get involved uh what that typically looks like um is a letter
um it's a pretty strongly worded letter um that does let them know that hey we are really concerned um it it mandates a meeting with school staff and myself um and uh it gets the attention of the
parent so it it's meant to get their attention um but again we don't want it to be a punitive process so that letter does have to co go out in case we get to I kind of call it the tier three is that court intervention piece um if we have
to go there this letter needs to be delivered to the family once that happens um it's very much a it takes a village approach um so I will connect with the parent then um they will either call me as soon as they get that letter um or if I don't hear from them I will
reach out um typically at the school level um there has been a lot of effort um put into addressing that situation before it comes to me um but then we take that a step further i still I come in but I still have that whole team
there so the principal will be there oftentimes the school social worker will be there if there's um a special ed teacher or a particular teacher who's connected to that student we'll have them come um the uh family can bring in
sometimes they want to bring grandma or they want to bring an aunt somebody who's you know part of part of their uh family support group there and um tr truly it's another opportunity for us to um build trust with the family a lot of
times when I reach out to the family they will um they will tell me a lot of things that maybe they didn't even share um with the school um so it gives me um more of an idea of what's going on a lot of times they're sort of relieved
actually um I knew this was coming i was waiting for it thank you for calling um I also will do home visits if the school says "Hey you know we've really tried to connect with this family we're not getting a lot of response from mom." We will I will actually even have parents
call me directly and ask me to come out um so that's another thing that I will do i will go out and talk to families um so we will have that meeting we will have an attendance support meeting and it is conveyed in that way to the parent look we're concerned your students
missing a lot of school attendance is the number one indicator um of student success um believe it or not even if they're not attending school in those really kindergarten first grade second grade that's where those habits are being formed this is where they're
learning to show up on time um to show up regularly they're learning to um interact with uh other adults they're learning to build those connections with which keep them tied to school they're learning to navigate peer relationships so we talk through all of that with the
parent you know this is why this is important um and then we set some we set some goals um we talk about you know we're not going to get somebody who's missed 60 days this year um probably down to missing one day a month um but
I've had families go from 80 to 40 and I'm cheering them on like hey we cut this in half 50% let's you know let's let's try to do it you know 50% more for next year um so we work on that and when families um make progress we do we do do
an attendance contract um we set some measurable goals um a lot of times that looks like 80% for the next four weeks um so it's it's not quite where we want them to be but we want it to be doable and then we will tend to follow up in
four weeks um see where the progress is I will call parents and say "Hey great job you know we just want to want you to continue uh continue the efforts." Um if they are still um not on track then we do circle back um we try to see if
another meeting would be beneficial how can we help um it's always about like Misty said identifying barriers and how can we help the family um a as just one example I can give um it's not uncommon
for families um divorced families where one is living in say central grade schools area and one is living in Long Lakes um area and one of those parents is truly struggling to get that kiddo to
school i call I fi feel that out and you know mom just says hey look you know if I've got a if I've got an appointment I've got to pull her out of school because I don't have the money to get her there or you know we'll see that right week on with dad they're at school every day week off with mom they're not
getting there at all um and I would work closely with like the student support network that TCAPS has um were able um there's one example in particularly that this little girl was not going to school on the weeks she was with mom and it was impacting her it was impacting her
ability to learn and it was impacting um her ability to connect with her peers um so the student support network was able to help me with gas cards and what's great here is she ties that to attendance so initially she will give a gas card for mileage for five days with
the understanding that every day your child goes to school then next time we'll reload that card for that many days so it's tied to um you know a positive uh positive attendance um goal
so um there's a situation I will be talking God willing with you guys shortly after this meeting but my question is you can miss um a significant amount of time and
most classes build and move forward absolutely and that kind of goes back to how do you make up when you are that lost and you're already feeling anxious you're feeling detached how do you ever
get to the point that you're actually blended back in as a a important part of that classroom right right um and if it were just like going to work and every day is the
same I understand that approach but if you're going to work and every day you're learning a skill that's going to have to translate that's a lot more difficult that's a totally different animal um and so that concerns me as
much as all the social supports as getting the kid to the point that they're viable in the classroom yes and I can speak to that a bit um we do work really actively with the principles the counselors um what they will do um and
it depends on every situation is different but we do address that because yes it does impact a student's self-confidence right and they it's kind of that vicious cycle once they fall behind they don't want to go and the more they don't go the more they fall behind so um what they will often do is
pick some elective classes like maybe it's a gym class maybe it's an art class um maybe it's over the lunch hour where those kids will um be given additional time to complete work um they will also um work with teachers on critical skills
like which assignments are really important for us to get this this student um back up to speed on those critical skills and which things can we put to the side for now so I I think that discussions happened um however I
think in this particular case they're failing so many classes and they feel that there's no way that they can ever get out of the failure and yet they're going to be moved on to the next grade you know there's like a disconnect y um
so it it's just um something uh I'd like to talk to you about yeah it definitely is something that and I because I worked with Don when I was back at the school um more closely we we do we have to prioritize and and that's a super important part of bringing the
student back we also work really closely with all of our classroom teachers at the secondary that like the student we were talking about a student the other day I think it was at Central who had missed a a lot of days right and it was important that their first day back it wasn't hey you owe us all these
assignments right um it was really important that the teachers welcome the kid back tell them we're super excited and glad you're here don't worry we'll work on a plan to get you caught up for right now let's figure out you know where you sit and and let me make sure you've got what you need for today right
like because having that type of an entry will get the kid to then show up the next day to try to start working through what a plan looks like but again like our whole goal is to do as much as we can on the front end to prevent a student and a family from getting into
that situation yeah and and then just I will speak briefly about that that next tier of intervention um sometimes all of our efforts just aren't enough um and sometimes that court referral um is
necessary i will say it is a very very very small select um number of instances where we do that um I will say also that I always consider that sort of a personal failure um if I had to make that referral um over time I've I've
learned that sometimes it's just we have to look at it as another level of support another level of accountability um and oftentimes there are more resources um or that just that intense overview some families really do um need that to
sort of break the cycle and sometimes that year of supervision um that they get that helps them form some strong habits so that when they're released from that supervision um they're in those they've got those strong strong habits and and they stay
um successful and they continue to attend school so but that is always a last resort great that would be so you get involved when once a student hits 20 absences what at what point then does
the um court referral kick in so that's it is different for every family um every situation is unique um and we do work closely as a team uh TCAPS has some amazing people in their out in their
buildings um and we work we work closely together to determine when have we just sort of hit that wall where our efforts aren't um they're not fruitful um anymore um it can look like like I said
I I mean I have a student who maybe misses a 100 days and progress for that family looks like I came here for 60 this year um if we're seeing steady improvement um we're seeing the parents work um
towards improved attendance we continue to work with them um there's not a set if you hit this number you go to court um because every situation is it just really is different um you have parents you have kiddos who are you know we have
a family for instance where you know dad's incarcerated mom's incarcerated in and out you know living with a relative school can't reach the parents I can't reach the parents could you do a home visit could you try to reach the student
you know we go out and um do a visit with family student wasn't there but a relative that they were living with said uh he's at school and And I said "M no he's not he gets up and leaves every morning for school." We had a really
good conversation um and you know at the end of that visit the relative said "You know I can tell that you're not here because you want to make a court referral i can tell that you're here because you care and you want him to do well." And that truly is why I do this job um I'm a huge I I think that
education breaks the cycle um uh of poverty it break can break the cycle of um you know a lot of the families that come in that the parents haven't graduated um and getting that GED later is really difficult so um that student
short story is he showed up at school the next day yes very behind um hadn't been to school in some time but was welcomed back into the building and then ultimately it was decided that that student would transition to that alternative
environment um at Trev Trevor City High School and he's continuing to show up so that's you know that's a win so there isn't a hard line um and that that student hasn't been to school in three months you know but we got him back in the building and that's where we have to
start yeah and some of these kids are really in a very difficult situation absolutely because the parents [Music] um are representing one thing with the best intentions and the school
represents something else and the disconnect the kid is right in the middle and it's very difficult thank you this is really helpful i just have to acknowledge first of all you're serving five counties right right now so I would like to at least take a second
this is Debbie Schaefer so I have been covering all of Grand Traverse including like Greenspire and GTA um and we haven't been able to serve the outlying counties um so we get a little bit of push back there right why is TCAP's getting all the attention um so we did
hire um another uh my co-cohort here um she's going to be um working with me she's going to expand those efforts um and we both split our time between pupil accounting auditing and truency so um we
it's a split role so it's a lot but it's really rewarding work especially when you see one of the kids cross that stage and you see them graduate and there was no way that was going to happen on the course they were on i'll also mention that and correct me if I'm wrong Don but
I know when I came to the district the ISD did not have a truency officer at all that is true and so one of my previous experiences I knew it's required by law but they just need to do it so I kind of threw that out there so Don was the first one in that position
um you know coming just four years probably four years now yeah yeah yeah four years so to have her you know in this role is huge of a of a resource we didn't have so just again kudos and thanks to the ISD for that support and awesome to see there's even more um
because it's something we need but I also you know pupil counting is a big part big job by itself as well so they also have that on their plate um so it's just really thankful to have some support with this that we didn't have before well and thanks for all you do i
mean I can just tell your passion for like you said even if it's one kid walking across the stage um so thank you yeah and it's a fine line you're walking right compassion and this is the law and we need you in school that's right so
that's right and I will just say having worked with Dawn firsthand on a couple of different cases throughout the years she works tirelessly and I know be the truency piece plus the all the pupil accounting stuff it's a huge job so you
do it well so I know our mental health team is super thankful for you and your coordination efforts and collaboration with all of us too so thank you like I said she in the background of all the buildings too when I was talking to Don about this she was like "Oh yeah." And then I was talking to Brian K about this
student and then I was talking to Kristen Studman about this student and then I was I was like "Whoa." Like she is very connected to and supporting like when you guys if you wonder like how does that work but do only a few of our buildings reach out nope all 16 know her and and access her services when we get
to that point when we feel like it is important that we start at the school team right at our at our counselors and our social workers and um to support that because a lot of times we can we can do that but then when we need her we know how to access her and get her to come in with her expertise so can I ask
a quick question the majority of your students would you say they're elementary middle school or high school historically so um I would say I spend the most time in the middle schools um I think East and West Middle School use me pretty
heavily um I spend less time in the elementaryaries but I will say more time at like Blair um Trevor's Heights um but they all they all do use me um except for TC High at TC High Dozen it's kind
of a different um situation and once we get kids there we really want to keep them there um and and do whatever we can to help them be successful um I would say I spend most time in the middle schools i would love to spend more time
in the elementaryaries because if I'm honest the the the kids that you can catch at that grade have the best opportunity for success in middle school and high school and that's where we can hold parents most responsible as soon as
parents um as soon as those kids start to hit the those teen years um it it's it gets hard to um to reel them in let's say you know when if they've already not been going to school consistently for a
couple of years it's really difficult so the younger we can catch them um the better um and sometimes it's really a multi-year approach there you know sometimes there's a family in particular um that um a a migrant family and mom
didn't speak English and so we're working through an interpreter and that first year this was one of those who went from 100 to 80 to 60 and that young man is in um middle school this year for the first time and I just looked and
he's missed four days you know and so it was a big you know a lot of followup a lot of meetings a lot of calling a lot of visiting um and all of that so sometimes that it takes a long time so I guess I work across the
board i would say I spend the most time in the middle schools and I will say that we have been meeting Don and I and the coordinator of the school success leaison program um and they are in four of our um elementary buildings and I know Donna had talked about being in some some of
those elementary buildings like Baron Blair and Traverse Heights more so we're really working with the school success liaison to be another layer of support in those buildings to help kind of combat it and to help with what that is so with NMCAA we have a partnership where we pay
half and they pay half of a person that works as a school success leads on working with those atrisisk students in for the buildings give you idea my previous district we had one in every building high school middle school that element that we had state funding for we
didn't have it at all so we managed we managed to get four here and put them in four of our more buildings that have at risk students but it is an awesome strategy to do but you need the at risk funds to be able to match the half that they get to be able to try and expand that and we've barely been able to do
what we've been able to do with the atrisisk funds was that the federal title one or was that the no Hey that's a state 31A which we know where we're at with that right now but you know this it's an awesome program of that's exactly what these people do is help with that
intervention with the families with that work so elementary schools it's that majority of that family connection right because the kid can't I see that morphing right when I was at Westwoods and worked with elementaryaries and working a lot with families with truency and then as that moved as I you know
went to East Middle and was in meetings with Dawn then that that focus then turns more to the student and them choosing as far as coming to school or not elementary there is a choice there but as a parenting goes that's our focus and that's what the NMCAA that wraparound service where they create
that relationship with the family helps a ton yeah and we do try to um include those students in those meetings as well um we do have the student and of course when they're little we're talking to them at a you know in a different way
but um also uh having them take part in signing off on that contract and understanding what the goals are and that they're they have a a role in that um and just one other thing that is a preventative um uh program that I I do I
do work all year in the summer is the lighter time so I will ask all of the schools for um names of families where they're not on my case load yet but they're concerned about them and I do use that summer we kind of we send out a
letter a soft letter that just says "Hey we noticed you struggled with attendance this year where we're going to be reaching out to see how we can support you um and and be ready to go uh at the beginning of the school year um so that I do do that and if I can't reach families I will kind of make a list and
I'll go do a road show and I'll knock on doors and you know just see what we can do what we can do to help and like I said sometimes parents just they just need that support they just need somebody to sort of talk to and encourage them um a lot of times they're
I hate to say this but a lot of times it's basic parenting skills and and just helping with routines and and things like that well thanks this has really been helpful and I know it's not the the end of the conversation for us um as a
administration and board but um just a couple things I wanted to ask one is the do you have data to track you know the causes of absenteeism for given families and then like what approaches you're employing and then the effectiveness to
see improvements for which I understand are variable from student to student but just so you can do an evaluation maybe in the summertime of what's working well what's not working so well what what other things could we do I guess my second related question would be if there's one thing that you one or two or
three whatever you choose things that you feel like would really move the ball forward given existing resources we always hope for more but just given what we have um fiscally you know what would those one or two or three items be for you know
even for boosting the reducing chronic absenteeism yeah um so I would not say I have um specific that I track specific reasons um and I would say that that's because it's rarely one reason um usually it's a
whole bundle of of of things um and we work on on those things individually um I would if you want to know some of the the bigger things I I do think it's just um parents uh there's a lot of electronic use parents are really
struggling with taking that away from kids at night um that's a huge one uh some of the transportation i do find that um I've worked with the student support network and they can help uh in that regard it's not something I would
say I I can't track i certainly um I certainly can um we have sort of a little list and what I find is most of the time you're checking most of the boxes um it's not just uh it's usually not really a cut and dry one one reason
um and as far as what I some things I think would help it would be awesome to have um I have zero budget so when you're talk FTE and um so the and I can get um I can get
help um so for TCAPS oftentimes um the student support network and I have to plug Katie she is the best um I work with her um a lot and um I'm able to get some things from her but one of the things that would be really helpful particularly for some of those
middle school kids are incentives um which if I want to do I have to do that out of my pocket which we're not allowed to do so um you know just little things yeah you know like Starbucks cards or things like that that motivates
a kid and I'll have principal say "If you come to school every day I will you know buy you lunch or so." And but all of that comes right out of us just wanting to do that um this the um Grand Tar Sheriff's Department though also
helps me a lot um so for some of the schools where I can't tap into the student support network and we need bus passes or gas cards or things like that um I also work with them and they're really good um if I find that somebody has a need that we can't help with I'll
go to them and they'll help me um but I think just some of those incentives like some rewards that kind of thing cool thank you okay and then just the last slide because then I started wondering how do our kids do who are chron chronically
absent which by the way is a really hard question for me to figure out how I could put hard data to that um so here's what I could do is I just dumped u both all three of our high schools um semester 1 grades into a spreadsheet with their attendance um and then I just
sort of categorized them um that first column the 100 to 90% uh that is that's the majority of our high school students right 65ish um 60 to 65% of our high school students fall into that category they actually are not chronically absent they attended
lots of schools there's their GPA and there's the average number of courses that that group of students fell or sorry that they that they failed um the next bucket and the reason why I chose third 70% to cut it off is when you look at the research about students who are chronically absent um they put them in
categories the state does too probably like it it is to how many days they miss i know they say it's defined at 10% but you actually don't really see a significant drop off we still don't we want kids there um until you get to those later categories which means
you've missed over 30% or more of the school um so that red line right there is like okay how about like if I use that kind of as the cut the next category um what does that look like so you can see the average GPA if I miss um
if I I'm still chronically absent right but I haven't missed more than 30% of my schooling the GPA is lower and I've probably failed more classes right um but then look at what happens in that next category right so that next
category I have missed um a significant amount of my school not half of them but a pretty significant amount um I will tell you there are not very many kids i wish I would have put how many students there were in these categories for you there are it's less than 10% who are past that 70% in TECAPS from first
semester um and then when you go past half of the days and it was small number very small number of students who missed more than 50% of the school weren't already maybe on um a homebound plan or something like that there's their GPA and not surprisingly that's the average number of courses they failed now there
are a few kids there's not very many in that category there are a few that have extenduating circumstances that passed all their classes and I knew they were working through something or they were oh they missed that much because they're on a travel hockey team and this is the arrangement that and that those are kind
of outliers in the other direction right with like um that so I was actually surprised that the average wasn't closer to six right because six classes is what a high school student takes but there because there were a few of those kids and there's such a small number of students in that category um but I don't
then this red sentence or orange sentence I mean makes sense to all of us and I think is sort of what we've all talked about so and Jesse you said that um the 30% uh or the 30 uh there's only about 10%
of our kids that fall in that fall past that red line past that red line okay from first semester at the high schools this last year i just I could grab that data really easily um and so I was like uh um it's it's harder and I I could dig into it if the board really wanted us to
to figure out how is absenteeism related to um you know external metrics right but that's just not something that is super easy for us to pull apart and look at doable but would require more yeah i'm you were able to do this analysis at
this level shout out to Sophie cuz I kind of brainstormed with her one night about like I kind of want to look at this um and it came from the high school principal saying to me gosh I wonder how many of my kids cuz both of them were like I can think of this kid and this kid who are totally chronically absent but it's because of these sports reasons
or hospitalization but the kid actually passed all their classes and still was able because they set up a plan and it was um and so they were like "How do our kids do?" And I was like "Uh let's see if I can figure out how to answer that." So I think the trick is not getting too
far behind it's when you get behind the rock gets huge yeah i don't disagree with that yeah so this so the kids who are missing school because of a school activity though like sports was not necessarily a school
activity yeah these could be travel camp in in Detroit got you know like that was what you see a lot of from that stand training for Olympic yeah okay so um but I just want to say like you know even 10% of our high school you know of
our high school students I mean we've got two large primary high schools so that's 2600 students and so 10% of that still 260 kids that's still a lot a sizable number to to try to tackle um yeah and and I just I guess I want to
make a comment but maybe you know a question is you because our secondary students all have laptops you know TCAPS issued Chromebooks they they have the ability to access classwork and homework that's the comment but I guess the
question would be you know you know like to best point obviously there might still be something missing like a kid can the most diligent student could be absent a lot and access all that try to keep up but they're
they're still missing the instruction right and that's probably where they they get buried behind the gaps in their learning and the gaps in the learning add up right that cumulative effect and and I would say that kids are there's a lot out there right so kids who really
want to do it I I'm sure all of us have seen it like they'll go out there and they'll find it and they'll figure out how to watch a video or um a Khan Academy or do some practice um but kids as they feel more overwhelmed and farther behind they they don't even know where to start they don't even know how to prioritize right and so having an
adult a counselor someone to sit with them and say "How do we d start to dig ourselves out of this hole and make a plan?" And maybe it looks like going from missing 60 days down to 30 is where we start right um
and our counselors are they are really good at working with these kids and coming up with a plan that is manageable and putting things in bite-sized pieces yes it's going to be hard but they can do hard things um but they've got to
show up and they've they've got to do that work so um but our the counselors and the principles they are really good at that at putting that it it's never a situation where come back tomorrow and we want these 100 assignments and we
expect you to get from zero to 100 this week um that that's not what it looks like at all we we set you know we set reasonable goals and like I said the school team um really works hard to to come up with a plan that that student
feels comfortable with and they're involved in those conversations they they are the student is there um they're given you know some options would this help would this help um and and they're part of that yes this would work for me um and that's what what the the school
staff will then work with so there's there's not just one way and like Ryan Ranger says what's the best way out of the hole stop digging it's one of the best ways out there thanks so much everybody this has been a
really good conversation um and I would just encourage the you know the board and when going into strategic planning that we keep this information in mind you know maybe you know thinking of our strategic goals and and more fine-tuned
objectives and so forth i think this is a subop that we could really go after to you know really help those student outcomes more resources too for women in terms of people resources it's very labor
intensive right and I'm not saying that to to mitigate the situation at all but it is it it isn't as simple as like that kid needs a person and a plan and it is constant followup it is constant support it it's not just we yay we got you back
on Monday everything's good it is a it is a very labor intensive and individualized support system you have to have for a student and then you're working with all those different teachers and and what all those plans look like um it's very important but it's it's very personnel intensive yeah
I agree do you use the big brothers big sisters absolutely yep absolutely i would think that that would be a very important bridge and one thing the trust is built yep and one thing that's really nice about Big Brothers Big Sisters as well
is once that student is participating there's free tutoring available which is a great resource so we do encourage um families to to take advantage of that um for the obvious reasons i'm a big sister um too but from from that perspective
but also um having that tutoring available that's hard a lot of families know they need it and they can't afford it um and and sometimes there's some push back I think uh couched in very
um interesting ways that says I'm not sure that really my child can succeed because I did not succeed right there's some subtleties breaking Yep breaking some of those cycles yeah and something that's really sobering
that I share with high school students is um eight out of 10 incarcerated men in Michigan didn't graduate high school um and so I I remind them that you're not going to have the earning potential that you want you're not going to be able to afford the things you want to do
um and when you when you can't afford the the expenses of daily living what do you do you turn to criminal activity you've got to support yourself in some way it's so just that education is just so important to make sure that these
kids have the opportunity um all the doors open right because the education once you start missing too much school you don't graduate high school those doors start closing so I think education is important for the students as well as
the parents and that's why we're trying to get some parenting programs running at different schools and bring in some some stuff to help education and awareness around this as well yeah well just to wrap this up um I'll mention I've shared this with Dr gran
Wagner and Jesse H andorth that um last fall I went to Michigan Association of School Boards annual leadership conference and Kalamuzu public schools did a presentation with their superintendent the president of their board um they
have been really aggressive at trying to tackle attendance and um they have seen improvements but I mean they've invested a lot and I'm I'm looking at you Don not not like you're the singular person to do this for TCAPS it's it's all of us together but I Just wanted to mention
that um I you know what they've done could be you know helpful to TCAPS and and what we might think of doing down the road a couple of things I haven't heard mentioned where they not only the
parent education but the um mandatory summer school so that's that sounds more like a stick than a carrot they admitted that families were not big fans of that from the outset but by proactively saying "Look if your kid is falling
behind you're going to have to go to summer school it will be free but it's going to be mandatory." And grade retention which you know families just they no kid wants to be held back families don't want that the school does school doesn't want it um but that was
another thing that they they used in addition to all the things you've talked about so um I'm not a fan of moving kids forward who aren't ready academically ready academically but it sounds like um
from a mental health perspective um that I've heard it's more harmful to hold them back than move them forward but I I do think that in a way we're setting them up for failure um if we continue to move them through the system when they're when they haven't met the uh
academic standards of the year before but I'm I'm kind of in the minority on that on that thinking so anyway I just want to share that resource yeah no that's Yeah okay well thanks everybody great discussion um
moving on then we we uh want to talk about celebrations and successes yeah so we're kicking things off uh TCAPS's Monastery students uh participated National History Michigan History Day District 3 competition uh had a great
showing i know the uh other middle schools also participate in in a history day celebration so good to see our kids in a focus on social studies yeah like it a little change up we're gonna show a little video here um of me um
I got to go to uh Traverse Heights um and award the spirit stick so uh see does an awesome job out there here I am it was a hard decision that's Brian K in the wig if you haven't been
out there for it moon there they are yeah that's eerie so cool but that's an example of that idea of school culture community building celebrating um being a part of
school and coming to school every day um while I was there there were some um instructional coaches and teacher leaders from some of our other elementary schools who have there been you know watching sort of what are different ways we can breathe some life into that and do some different things
so super fun um and then this is uh a slide of some of our sixth graders um uh we had a chance to meet with a Lego rep a couple months ago and um they brought in some different kits for our kids and just kind of changing up some of our our STEM stuff um and it's pretty cool the
kids absolutely love it and then they build these and then they race them and and do sort of those they there's a computer programming um piece to it as well so is there an example of a sixth grade teacher who saw a grant or something special because it wasn't Right it was just I don't think so i
know that Dan has been there the rep that contacted us and we were looking so just my experience at East Middle looking at we have STEM classes and robotics and I was looking for ways to maybe bring some structure to those STEM classes but also looking at long-term
goal uh is how to kind of centralize and build an elementary program right that's not oneoff based on PTO but an actual STEM K5 and this was just kind of the first step is to kind of introduce these to see where it could possibly fit in our program and kind of have that
relationship with Lego so yeah and both both schools uh both principles came to that Lego meeting that we had with the rep they heard all the information we all got to kind of build some things and play with different Legos ourselves and then they both brought them back to their buildings too so yeah that's
perfect age they're still into the Legos in sixth grade so to your point the next thing is is we need to figure out some grants and fundraising mechanism to get some of that uh-huh so yeah cool so this is over at uh Blair where a lot of different elementary schools um
celebrated March is reading month the Pit Spitters specifically have a program that keeps track of how many uh books kids read and they get a ticket free ticket to go to the game so then they come in and they they brought the mascots in and celebrated with the kids at the at Blair it's a good example of
an incentive um in a community organization that can give us that it's not something that we're able to provide you know right um just to kind of I know this is kind of we've had months in here before but we continue to work with them as far as how can we bring that career college
readiness right into the classroom um and so they did lessons in both of our middle schools um they worked with our science teachers that's where we found a really nice natural connection um for some of their experts to come in and talk to the kids about how would you use this in context to our job and what that
looks like um they're doing them in all the grade levels six seven and eight throughout these next few months and then um they are doing that as in addition with the high school students as well i know they hosted some visits here recently for us on internships and some of those things too so continuing that partnership it's sort of operating
now i don't want to say in the background but it's up and running and so that's what's great for our kids and here's our high school orchestra performing at Eastern Elementary this time of year our music groups get out to elementary schools as we start that
registration process for middle school our sixth graders uh all sixth graders take music next year so this is a good idea as far as different music groups get out to schools to kind of expose them to different instruments and and kind of get an idea of what direction
they want to take in sixth grade had to throw in a photo from Central High School they hosted the robotics competition in March uh for the district so next year it'll be back over at West um but really cool competition i know a lot of the board was able to come by that um but great event and kudos to
their whole team over there john Faylor Mara Gerber Eric Smith uh Jeremiah all of those uh adults that helped rally all the volunteers needed and all the pieces that come into making this event um successful so And then these are more celebrations of
March's reading month so like I said many of our schools participate and these are are some uh incentives and contests and different guest readers that different schools had over the last month who's that on the upper left the adult
Jason Alen okay that's what I thought de Moose oh no it's John Deuce john Moose all right I see Representative from here it looked like it does look like I see you got to be a little guest thank you for Yeah
interesting they they have to choose a book it's like the NCA tournament book so that was cute it was interesting you know if you tell them to vote they all vote for both so you really have to say "Wait a minute now you only get to vote for one then you revote." So it it was it was really cute
in the library and then this last one is just again another of our phenomenal co-curricular opportunities for our students u model UN both of our high schoolers uh brought a nice uh group down they represent the countries this is a picture of of the
West Senior High uh award winners but just a really cool opportunity for all of our high school students to participate in that and um a great experience so exciting great um any other
items okay then I think uh our announcement is that the next curriculum committee meeting will be Tuesday April 29th here at this location Glen Lumis administration building at 8:15 a.m um
and with that we are adjourned thank you