I'm Gerald Truhart, second board president, Trenton Board of Education. Like my fellow board members, if they would please stand right now. I see Denise Johnson. I see Yolanda. I see Jeannie Wiklam. I don't see any other board members. Of course, our
superintendent, Mr. James Royal and his administrative team are here tonight. We welcome you here. All of our TPS families, our staff, our administrators are here. Members of our community, we welcome you here to our first session of our strategic plan. As you recall, we
finished we're finishing up our first five-year plan, which we started five years ago, and time has gone by so fast. Uh but we're here at the stage again as a foundation of our future plans. That will be our foundation, our our previous
five-year plan. As we launch into the deep into a new plan the next five years, we would love to have your input, your participation in our planning meetings uh today, April 21st. Our next one May 19th, our next one after that, June 30th, all that 6
p.m. all right here at the Trenton Central High School uh here in the cafeteria. So again, welcome to the strategic session. I want to thank New Jersey School Board Association. Maryannne Freeman is here. Hey, Maryanne. Here's Maryanne. Give her She's great great asset and a great
partner from the Jersey School Board Association. All the members of her team who are here this evening. I want to turn this over to our superintendent Austin Austin Edwards. That makes five. Okay. I have to opening opening opening
meeting as a don't no okay Austin Edwards our other board member is here great great to see you Austin I will now be turning this over am I am I decent in order am I in order okay I will now be turning it over to
our superintendent Mr. James Earl. >> Good afternoon. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Trenton Central High School. Um tonight we're going to spend some time with you. We have a series of three meetings counting this one to talk about the three to five year strategic
plan. most of you know and I will be sharing that information uh here tonight uh about the previous five-year plan and so when I walked in the door the board had the plan and we started to synthesize that information create goals
around it objectives and we worked for five years of implementation in different areas and we've moved some really good things but as Maryanne teaches me always talk about the challenges we still have the challenges. So, tonight my goal is to spend a little
bit of time with you uh going through some of our strengths and some of the challenges that we still face. Now, imagine trying to put five years in 20 minutes, right? So, what I'm going to do is just do some general highlights
during the academic uh section. I am going to ask Miss Sun to join and just share a little bit about progress. And so you'll have some samples of how we see data and you'll see some of the growth we're making. We're excited about areas where we're growing and we
understand there's still areas of just more growth to do. So I'll have her do that part and then I'll come back on and finish. So uh I want to welcome you. Uh thank you to the board and my colleagues who sit in the room listening to me go
on all day. The administrative team, thank you for joining. All of you who have been colleagues and partners and friends in our meetings out in public and the team members in every office that do this work, your input is so valuable in this process. From this, we
want to come away with what we believe is essential in the next 3 to 5 years for us to execute to really move. We've moved, but where do we go from here? When we look at where we started in 2021, I know we moved because that was a
difficult time. We're in a place now where we should be able to make that progress that we can see, we can feel, we understand it, and you'll see through this that there's great progress, too. So, uh I'll just get us started. So, this is the state of school um uh
address and Tuesday, April 21st. So, first we always want to start with the district mission uh statement because that's important. We often will ask ourselves and it's been asked in many circles who can recite it. Right? So I wouldn't make you do that tonight, but I
want to I want you to take a look at it and really absorb that. Right? We think it's a formality to put that up there because we do it all the time. We read it walking by. We know it's in some document somewhere outlined and we read it and say, "Yeah, that's what we work
for." Right? But I want you to absorb it. All students will graduate with a vision for their future. What I want us to start thinking about is how do you realize that? What does that look like in practice every day in a school
district, in a school building, in all the spaces that we occupy? Motivated to learn continually. What does that look like? If we're teaching that and we're making sure that our learners and our students leave with that attribute and
prepare to succeed in their choice of college and career, we talk about those things, but I beg you to just think what does that actually look like? Because at some point today, we want you to say, tell us what that looks like. What does it look like when we say that? when we
put it in a mission, if you're a principal in a building or you're a supervisor of CST, supervisor of curriculum, a teacher, a board member, what does it actually look like when we execute it? So, I wanted to make sure that we put that there and that we
actually break that up and talk about like what practically and I say that a lot. So, what does that look like? So you take a moment to say all three parts of it, how are we going to execute that?
So uh I wanted to share this because I think this is really critical. This team that I work with, we've been involved in uh professional training for about two years now, a little under two years, four disciplines of execution through
Frank Franklin CVY. Many of our other uh partners are involved. And one of the things that we're charged to do is to identify the breakthrough result. What do we want to happen in Trenton, right?
What do we want to see every day when we're here? When we finish fighting, pushing, pulling with each other, what is it we want to see? And we have identified that the breakthrough result is simple highlevel teaching and
learning that engages students using relevant curriculum resources and resources including technology and other tools. So it's simple. We go right back to students and the people in front of them
all the time. So every building that we renovate, every space that we renovate should lead to this and every question that you have to answer as a staff member in this district should be answered by this is our goal. Every
foundation we build to deal with trauma is about getting to this place, high level teaching and learning, engaging students to then cascade back to that. We never leave it. But that's the breakthrough result. We're going to
start talking about that, what that looks like in our spaces. Um so the past strategic goals or the 21 through 26 if you don't know I wanted to put those up there just to share about. So this is
what we walked into and it's broad and there's lots of information under this. If you go on the website type this in you'll find it you can read it. It has lots of information. But our our role was to break that up by year. So what do you do in 202122?
Then what do you do in 2022 23? So we've been on that mission to break this up slowly go through it slowly and sometimes painfully when you don't see movement or results. What do you do when you do this? So what does this actually
look like? Right? You see it and it's broad and you're thinking, okay, that makes sense. We want student achievement. We want high level student achievement. We certainly want parents to be engaged. We want community partners to be engaged. We want to develop the whole child. We certainly
want high level staff development. And we want people to be well. And we want great facilities and infrastructure. I would always say, tell me what it looks like. How much money does it cost? Jane says that all the time or Mrs. Howard says that all the time. What is it going
to cost us? So, I wanted to share with you what it actually looks like. All right. So, we have this. This is the board. We put board goals because the board and I meet for hours prior to the school year and this is the
last edition 2021-22 looks very different than this. So it is detailed. It has how many pages? 13 pages but go through it. Go up and go through it. So I wanted to give you just a quick look at what we decided to do this year. And
I'll talk about this district goals. One of the things we felt like is we were not moving as a team the instructional practice testing uh professional development. So we wrote goals around this is actionable. Each assistant
superintendent including me has a portfolio where we put the evidence in the portfolio. the things we've done to actually move this and it was to support principles and buildings to build capacity around instruction focused
monthly look fors with evidence of highquality project-based learning and activities when you look at it. So this is the kind of stuff we've been doing. We meet on this this when we get pushed we say so this is what we do all right and this is just a tip of the goals.
This is the beginning. So, I want you to move forward. Testing conditions. We don't know how well our students can do because we're starting to discover the conditions might not be the best in district. So, we put emphasis on that. We're going to see it. We're checking
with principles, with testing coordinators. We're asking a lot of questions. We're making sure the technology works. We're making sure students have a fighting chance so we can actually know how well they're doing. Keep going. um professional development, making sure
we attend the professional development in the schools or at the district, the PD that impacts teaching and learning, and then data analysis, assistant superintendent. This is all about assistant superintendents before we get to the goals. And we keep evidence. We
have to write. I've asked them to write what did you do on that day when you went. So, we're in schools, but it's directed. You can move. Um, and then you see some of the other. So, student achievement. I'm going to go through these very quick. You can see this is
led by Mrs. Sun. And you can see this is developed by our team, discussed with the board, and approved. So, all of this stuff happens. It happens every day, all day. It's the source of many fights in our spaces because we want to move
teaching and learning. Uh, and as you go through, you can see how the And I just wanted to show you what this document turns into when the board and I and this team get together with instructional leaders, talking to principles, making sure we all understand where we're
headed. This is goal one, teaching and learning. No, this is the technology part. We even make sure that we have technology goals in there because we're implementing technology. We we implemented Apple edu and we want to know. So what what do we have the iPads
for or what do we have the Chromebooks for? This helps us to know this. Do we have a secure network? Do we have the bandwidth to do the things we need to do instructionally in district? So we have Mr. Samuel who works to um uh implement
this and some of the progress we made because we have to report to the board how we're doing. So I I show you this to show you that these things are happening. When people when many of our community members will say, "I don't know what they do here." We say, "Yeah,
we do because it's here." And then you all the people who work with me know this is what we do. This is how we activate learning, professional development, and all those things. Community engagement. This is led by Mr. Clark. You can see some of the things we do here. We're doing some really cool
things. If you want to see me on the the soulful soup chat, we just launched it a couple of months ago. We're going to add more content just to talk to the public and put some information out there. People watch videos. They don't want to read long dissertations. Family and
community engagement, communication. This is Mrs. Glennon who takes care of making sure our district we rebranded this year. We felt like we needed some new blood around the logo. You see the t-shirts and people are wearing the information. people are proud when they
have something to represent uh in the district uh even in Trenton because sometimes you think yeah we sell the same number of t-shirts so u anyway go ahead uh to let's go oh developing the whole child this is led by Dr. Conway
and you can see some of the things here. We want to reduce negative behavior. So we have the New Jerseys school climate inventory that we work through with Ruters just to determine our schools take that inventory early. We implement some strategies come back to see are we
moving? Are the percentages going down of violent incidents? better communication with each other. Some of the traumatic events that we're seeing and we've seen lots of good re results because we actually focused in these areas. Go ahead.
Uh staff development well-being. This is led by Mrs. Grant. Some of our care team work. This is all about attendance and I have information about attendance that I'll share in just a few minutes. But this is really about increasing the well-being of our staff, but really
making sure we collaborate often about what we want, how we want to train, and what we need. We're talking with union leaders. We're talking with uh staff members in every walk of life. We're trying to make sure that we have
training for everyone in the district. Go ahead. Uh and then go five facilities and infrastructure. This is about everything infrastructure from the budget to facilities to technology. All of the good things that we do. We're
doing amazing work there. We're updating and upgrading old buildings. It's challenging because each year there is a big project in an old building. If anyone has a this old house, you know what I'm talking about. We do that in this old buildings, big buildings, and
we have to do a lot of that work. So uh facilities and infrastructure around financial management. We are one of the few districts proud to say who are in good financial standing. We've been smart about the way and how we uh manage the funding. So we're not one of those
districts looking at deficits, but not only that, we're able to look ahead a little bit to see what we can do to support teaching and learning and all of the five goals that we had that I shared with you. So you'll see some good things in my presentation. Uh but this is led
by Mrs. Howard. By the way, I want to make sure I give credit to the people who put this in action. This means they have to report back to me and we report to the board. So there is a reporting structure. So we're not sitting. So as you're thinking about the things that
you want to see in a new three and fiveyear plan, I'll always say, tell me what that looks like. What does James Earl the superintendent what will my actions be to implement that? What will yours be? Include yourself in that. So
we show you what our actions are through this process. You can go ahead. All right. And then human resources. We put every single area in there that's le led by Mr. role, but we go through lots of different ways to improve human
resources, communication, recruiting, retention, certification, all of that for 3,000 almost 3,000 staff members and all the students that we support. It's a big job and so James does a good job. We've done better, but we have to get
better. So, wanted to show you how that looks. Now, I'm going to go through this very quickly, so Maryanne won't get on my case about taking up too much time, but I wanted to make sure. All right. Okay. So, I already discussed this. This
is just those goals, instructional goals. This is really important because we wanted a way to capture how do we do this, right? This was our first year doing it and next year we'll be so much better. The goal is to never have to write this. Why? because it should be
done at the school level. We just should go with oversight. But now we want to be the leaders in building that capacity, supporting our principles in the building. So this is strengths. I want to talk about strengths and challenges as we go
through this. This will be quick. You're going to see a lot of information just like when I present to the board. It's difficult to get all of this information in. This is compressed. But uh you see project-based learning, we've been focused on that. You saw that in the
writing early on, but this is what it's really about. Goal, role, audience, situation, and product. We want our kids connected to a realworld experience. We all know we learn best by doing right. So we get connected. So every you can
see every classroom we has to have at least one am I correct? One PBL per year. Some do it as a regular operation of the classroom because kids stay busy. You don't have to tell them to be quiet, don't move, because they get to move and
get to talk, get to present. They have student agency in this process. We have a partnership with Apple Education. I talked a few minutes ago about it. It's not about Apple because everybody thought we were just getting iPads. It's about instruction. How do we engage
students, those that aren't learning the way the traditional way? So how do we do that? And we believe Apple education using the native apps have helped us to do that. Professional development opportunities that engage teachers and collaboration to project future ready
instructional content. Um some of the strengths consistent curriculum districtwide. I won't read this to you, but we we're going to put this on. But these are things that we've said we do. And we have that battle sometime because as a principal or as a supervisor or as
someone you tend to drift. We don't believe in drifting. We're on a journey and you have to stay on. Sometimes when you get bored in success, keep doing it because it benefits the people who are been who are learning in this structure. So consistent
curriculum. We've tried to do that. We pilot first, we research first, pilot then implement. And that's been the way that we've done it. So we don't like outside products coming in the middle of an implementation. It's critical that we have full implementation with fidelity.
Accessible student progress data monitoring plans. We assess three times a year in most grades. Some don't. And then professional learning communities protocols. We're working to streamline all of that so that you get information often that people are in spaces to have
conversations around instruction and that it's led in a way that it's collaborative from the school to the supervisor to our office and we can talk about the needs. So that's what that's about. And then I just wanted Mrs. Sun
if you can just talk through these slides quickly. You have less than that much time. So go ahead. >> Okay. I am going to Can you all hear me? Is this working? Okay, I can't hear. Hello, I'm Joanne Song, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning here in Trenton Public Schools. For many
of you who've seen my face, um I think oftentimes with the presentations that resemble this image, right? So, I'm going to talk a little bit about the progress that we have made. And this is just a sample of what we can um provide
to you for the purpose of illustrating the power of consistency, power of commitment, and um power of togetherness. And I think that u when you kind of look at this data, you're going to look at a whole bunch of p um colors. You're going to see a lot of graphs. Um I'm going to tr try my best
to concisely walk you through what you're looking at. So we've extracted examples for middle schools specifically. A because with the diagnostic tools that we have piloted and instituted in the last two years, we have the most consistent data output in
the middle grades. B because the middle schools and the three campuses are the grades that we can assure that they're having an absolute consistency lock in step in terms of the program design implementation the delivery of instruction professional development
prof um PLC professional learning community protocols datadriven instruction and intervention. So what happens when you have at least two three years of this consistency? Well, you start seeing the reds go down and the greens go up. And the greens mean that
our students are growing towards proficiency. Reds going down means that they're decreasing in the areas of not meeting. Right? Are we there yet? Not yet, but we're on our way. And that's result of the five years of commitment that we made as a district, as a
collective group. Right? And coincidentally, as I was re um reviewing the data with Mr. Oh, I just realized that in 2021 22 school year, 5 years ago, your eighth grade students would have been second,
third graders, right? And strategic one, strategic group um goal number one, academic achievement talks a lot about second and third grade student reading levels, right? So, there's some correlation there in terms of how we have aligned the districtwide program.
Looking at this, looking at the 24, 25, 25, 26 school year, you can already see that students are decreasing in the areas of two or more grade levels below in the diagnostic tool um assessment and the green where students are early or on
grade level. Okay, the bottom line on the table over here projects winter, fall, and winter student growth. So, what you're seeing is students are making steady growth. Many of our students are starting two, three grade levels below.
That means that they may be growing and surpassing the expected growth, but they may not yet catch up to the grade level. And that's the progress that we need to continue to strive for. And the togetherness and commitment is that much more important as a result.
Next slide. Okay. So, this is just another um another um presentation of where our students are. So in grades seven and 8 prior year and we have monitored their progress this year right. So students who are in seventh
grade 24 25, 8th grade 25 26, how much have they grown? And I just want to take a look at the darkened green colors. Those are the 5% or above. So it's beyond the projected growth that the diagnostic tool has normalized
nationwide and our students are surpassing that by the time they get to 8th grade, which is phenomenal, right? Um the bottom chart talks about our students who are multilingual specifically students who are taking Spanish specific assessments. Well,
diagnostic tool that we use have done a normalization in the national nationalwide nationwide data how well students did comparative to our district or vice versa. If you look at it, our students are not very far off. In fact,
they're pretty consistent with the with the rest of the country of students who are participating in the Spanish specific language assessment or I ready diagnostic assessment. Right? So this is a conversation about our students are coming to us with the ability, the
readiness, the potential. So we together collectively have the responsibility to bring them up. Right. Last slide. Okay. The last slide really talks about it just reiterate and reinforces what we've been talking about. Right? So when you
look at where our students are and I believe the the the left chart is about the student it's inclusive of students who participated in the diagnostic and that is beyond the seventh and eighth graders. There are some students who are in K3 there are some students in
intermediate grade level not all but it paints a picture and it gives us an image. Our students are still in the orange and red, but there are a lot of students who are in the yellow, the light green, and the dark green. That tells us that our students are moving and they're progressing, right? And you
can see the comparative data that is year-todate in national norm and New Jersey. Okay? And here is another illustration of where students are in terms of how they're progressing. Okay. And you can
see in projections of 117 percentile of growth in a year or two right 75 92 78 percentile so many of our students in case of middle school and the exemplars that I have presented to you
who have received a consistency in the protocols the conversations the approach the delivery the reflection they're growing actually many of them beyond 150th percentile 23 31 percentile in a year, right? So, if our students are
showing us that they can benefit from these consistencies, then we have the obligation to make sure that the next five years we're all making a collective commitment and decision to be consistent and collaborative with each other.
>> All right. So in each area we go we just highlight some of the challenges ongoing collaboration with v various partners to promote instructional goals. That's really about every partner that joins us. Anyone sitting in here and those who've heard me, you have to actually
understand us, know what we're doing, and be willing to use some of the resources and strategies that we use as you enter the space. fidelity with districtwide core. That's about consistency, making sure we implement with fidelity without breaking that
chain by adding something new along the way, but that we complete this process. Uh and so this is all about some of those challenges will always exist because we have so many partners, so many opportunities to interject and
we're saying let's stay consistent, let's stay focused because we can get there. We see growth and we see it in all the right places. We're talking about median students, the largest number of students that we see movement with. Uh core uh goal two strengths. We
had the mural project. That's about bringing the community. And I highlighted this because I could highlight a many of things. We were painting and someone said, "So we're painting?" And I said, "Yes, but we weren't. We were actually, if you ever had a chance to go into our schools, for those of you that go, check out the
murals. They're actually paintings of bodeas, playgrounds in Trenton, people in Trenton. We wanted to bring the spirit of Trenton into the school. The district logo and rebranding. I'll share some of that and I have images of those partnership with nonprofit
organizations. We have regular meetings. I see some of the partners here. We want to continue to grow that partnership to see benefit for students and district partnerships at the four C's, Smith Family Foundation, Princeton Area Community Foundation with law
enforcement, the fire department, and the list goes on and on. We're open to the support, especially in the summer with many of these programs. We want students to have a place to land. So, this is the new logo. If you haven't seen it, this was a process. It was
collaborative. It involved the community. People were able to give input. And I remember someone saying, "Yeah, the colors can't be anything but red and black." Right? We did add the dome, the gold dome here, but that was
clear from some of our board members, our principles, teachers who had been here, lived here, that red and black would be the colors that we use. So, this was an ongoing probably a six-month process, maybe even longer than that. It
took a while to get here, but we rebranded. So, you can see some of the things we've had a couple of, we have one coming up in May on the right, but we are uh committed to a parent connect conference, two every year. Parents can come out. This year, we're going to add
some uh PBL opportunities from students potentially that parents can come out and see. And then we can have some other opportunities for them to get some parent support while they're here. We had one in October. We had a great group of people to come out. Small but mighty.
I see people who were here at that. We're doing it again in May. We're committed to make sure we make those connections. Uh and then these are some of the murals in our schools. Uh you can see what I'm talking about. The Trenton Makes Bridge. This is at um uh
Jefferson. Uh gosh knows I think that's at Jefferson. Some of them are really cool uh for what they did. That's at Robson. So if you go in and see we wanted and we engaged everyone, custodians, you name it. Every single
position had people who normally don't participate engaged in this process. It was different in the summer and we were able to get Trenton into our schools. So I don't see the playgrounds but these are the row homes. This is at Mcnite. Some of the coolest work being done. If
you've never seen it, it's really exciting to know how we were building community through this process. Um some of the other accomplishments you can see we established community schools. We're part of a tri district community coalition, community school coalition
with Euing and Hamilton. We work often figuring out how we can make the community school models work in all of our districts and potentially get funding from large sources that are not district. So you can see some of the other things that we talked about food
pantries in four of those areas, four of the school, three of the schools and then in one area the new one at CAD Waller. The cool stuff. Uh really trying to improve everything. Remember I talked about does this help the breakthrough result? Right? That's how you have to
think. Does feeding people, making sure they're not hungry, does connecting with their parents help the breakthrough or get us to the breakthrough result? Well, you bet it does. It's about building the foundation. Every small thing that we do, challenges, accurate and updated
contact information from families. We face that. And there are many more challenges. I didn't want to go down a long list. And then family parent engagement strategies. We are talking about new ways. How do we reach parents? We'll have events and we get low numbers. That's okay. We understand that
people have priorities. But can we see you a different way? Can we use a virtual setting? Can we have something that's out there that all of you smart people do better than I am that we can get parents engaged? Goal three, some of the strengths and
this is cross. Goal four and goal three cross a lot because um attendance is really the work of Mrs. grant that I fit in here because it's about building the whole child trauma-informed care. All of our teams have all of our schools have
trauma-informed care teams. The New Jersey Sky talked about that's school climate survey. We want to make sure we know and we're hearing from parents, students, and staff about what's happening in your school. We get that data at the beginning and we're going to give it at the end. Matter of fact, I
think we are waiting right now right now waiting on the results so we can see did we make gains in the critical areas where we were not doing well the last few years. We want to see have the kindness campaign and some of the other leadership activities that we do in our
schools. Did it change the reality for students? disproportionality work that takes a while. But we're making sure our black and brown kids don't end up in special education unless they have to be there, right? Cuz we saw uh unattractive
numbers in that area. And we've been serious and I can tell this team has been amazing to make sure we change that reality. We're already seeing some of the results. Some new SOPs, leader and me, grades K through six, attendance. The care team is amazing. The work we've
done around attendance, we probably have the best. I would put it against anyone in in the state. It's amazing because we knock on doors, we bring parents in, we try to go through the care team process, which is a meeting. What's happening with you? Why are you not getting here?
What what do we see in the family? We have the real results. When you think it's when maybe you hear in the public it's about, well, it's unsafe coming here. That's not what they're telling us, right? They live here and so they're used to walking around here. We want to make sure that we can get the real uh
information and adverse childhood experiences. Uh there is so much more that I couldn't put in here in the 20 minutes that I've used already. Uh tier one interventions. These are some of the things we use in attendance to get kids here. I thought
this was important because this is robust. We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can when children don't come to school cuz clearly if you're not at school you can't learn. So we have to get that right. So you can see some of those things some of the
tier 2 things power school letters hope team outreach personal calls attendance officer home visit care team meetings again and parent meetings and then the tier three interventions. Unfortunately some of these things have to happen.
court involvement, DCPMP involvement, but we need to get you to school and Mrs. Grant and the whole school teams. All of our teams have care teams and they have uh attendance corrective action plans because we are we exceed the 10% that the state allows. So, we
have to do something about it. Uh chronically absence response engagement teams, that's care team. Just wanted to share what that is. And then go three, challenges, engaging families and challenging work. uh around attendance. Sometimes the family says I can't just
can't do it. I can't get him or her there. And we have to figure out what strategy can we use to help them. Transfer strategies once we learn it. Like we train often is that actually transferring to some type of practice. That's what we're asking. Why train if
it doesn't result in anything? Uh student attendance and staff attendance. That is the critical. It's the holy grail of failure. If you're not here, the students not here, and the staff members not here, there's nothing
happening. So, we have to go on a journey in the new year. So, I'm hoping that smart people in here say, "Here's some strategies you can use." We have a lot. How do we change that? How do we change that other than the disciplinary
route that we're taking? We're doing those things, but we need people here in district every day. And we need the students. That's the only way we affect this. Uh goal four strengths. You can see some of the amazing work. Staff development's
been fun because it's been collaborative. We've been able to meet with unions, meet with different people. We've engaged uh Mrs. Grant's been good about getting teacher-led staffled professional development. It's cool, right? Staff can do wood burning.
We do yoga. We had the book uh author's fair this past year and coming up soon we're having a vendor showcase means if you have a business you can actually showcase you can't sell but we want our staff members
to be a part of the showcase when we do that in May that parent conference day that we have that's what we're planning to do so some really cool stuff our October event is amazing uh we do a lot of good stuff hard stuff, heavy stuff,
and then some light stuff and some fun. It's been good getting trying to get 3,00 I guess 11,500 teachers and everybody in here. And we try to accommodate every sing every bus driver, every custodian, everyone eats. We say
everyone comes here. You're all a part of this. So when we train, we're thinking about everyone. And we have to get better at that. Some days you can't get them all because you have to close school because 30 has to clean. We can't do the PD on the same day as PD. So we
have to think about that and the challenges identify trainings for all positions as I talked about and then transfer strategies when you train then what and there are many other challenges but then what after the training is done then what uh and then
strengths in the the uh goal five area strong financial standing our budgets completed on time we've been giving high giving high marks for years about how we budget how we set priorities around the budget so we're really proud of that.
Air conditioning in all buildings. We have aging buildings. So, sometimes we run into issues with air conditioning when it's hot. Of course, when you turn it on, it doesn't work. That's the house. I talked about this old house. Go on YouTube, you can find out about that.
Lighting upgrades, renovating media center spaces or maker spaces. If you haven't been able to see those, this is what they look like. We have about 10 to 12 of them in our schools. They're amazing. maker space is exactly what it says and it's our intent to outfit every
school. So if we haven't been to your school yet, it's coming because we want students to take what they learn and make with it. PBL project, present, engage, own it. And maker spaces allow you to do that. It allows you to take
content and grow it. Okay. Um go five challenges. We don't know when I put budget allocations here. Just a quick note, we don't know from year to year going forward what we'll get. So, we're trying to be smarter about recurring cost. What do we keep? What do we not
keep if it goes away? We're always smart about that. We want to keep people in their jobs. So, this year we had a great year in terms of trying to be smart about cash flow, what we can generate on the end of what we get from the state. We'll continue to do that, but that's
going to be a moving target every year, we think, until we get settled from other areas in politics. Aging buildings, it's almost impossible to do anything with aging buildings. But I tell you what, when you go in them, they're clean. We are working diligently
to make sure every part, the outside and the inside. So, when you see something at a building, send a text and say, "Hey, I don't know if cuz I'm a grass man, right? I do my own lawn, my own trees and everything. I have my own business at my house. Nobody pays me
though, right? So, and when I go by it just it's painstaking to see a school that looks closed, right? But we have a team that's getting around. Sometimes they may be on the back end of that. So, always let us know and we can maybe uh
dispatch a few other supports out to support them. So, thank you for your partnership, Maryanne. I know I went longer than that. I thought I would, but thank you for listening. But I just wanted to share some information about where we've been the last three years and looking forward to your support uh
generating ideas for where we go and goals like actionable things. These are things that we will implement and develop just like you saw earlier. It will be a come on up. It will be a long winding document with lots of information from people just like you,
new members and other members too. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Maryanne Freriedman. I work with New Jersey School Boards Association and the work that we do is with boards of education across the state in training them, providing them with support and
resources. If you didn't sign in or register when you got here, please take a picture of this with your um smartphone and you can do it right that way. But we want to have all of your names at the end of this program, at the end of the process, so that we can include it in the final plan and
everybody gets thanked for the participation that they've had. So, thank you for coming. So, thankfully I did get to use one of your new logos and um we thank Tim for doing that too on the the signins. And we want to
welcome you to our strategic planning process. This is a groundup process. So, nobody's voice is more important or less important tonight than anybody else's. Okay? If the board president is sitting at your table, that voice is not more important than a teacher's voice or a
parent's voice or a community member's voice. If you are there any students here tonight, okay, we need to get some students here next time. Okay? Um because we need their voice. But what strategic planning is, it creates an organizationalwide
vision and mission for the district that because it's developed by the stakeholder groups. It's a groundup process will lead you all to support and encourage other people to support the educational process in Trenton, okay, to advance student achievement. So that's
really important. The advantages are, and I'm not going to be talking for more than a couple of minutes, and then you're going to get to work. Uh, but the advantages of strategic planning are it's proactive, it's creative, and flexible. For a number of years now, boards have had to be really reactive to
things as things come down from Trenton, and I mean not Trenton School District, but the Trenton um Department of Education for the state. It also provides for you a community in um participation in a way that you typically don't have. If you're a parent
or a community member, you probably come to the school for your your child's parent teacher conferences. You may come to events and things like that. If you're a community member, maybe you come to events and things. If you're a teacher, you're coming to school every day hopefully to participate and to
teach your students. But this allows you to work with other people across those different levels that you typically wouldn't have the opportunity to do. Okay? And that's why my fault we gave you all different numbers when you came in tonight because we wanted you to be
able to sit with people that you may not know and hear what their values are while you share what your values are and what your expectations for your students are because that's when you can see what the true flavor of the Trenton community is like. When you sit with people that
you know and that you like and that you're friends with, you're all pretty much thinking the same way. your values are pretty much the same and you all have the same kind of expectations. But when you sit with people who you don't know and you learn what they're thinking and what their values are, that's when
you get the true flavor of your community and it provides an ongoing cycle of planning because not everything unfortunately can happen in year one in a strategic plan. So things will resources will have to be gathered over the course of time to do some of the
things that you may ultimately want to see happen in the district over the next three to five years. But make no mistake, those resources are being acquired and they're being built up so that in that third, fourth or fifth year, some of the things that you would like to see happen that seem monumental
at this point may be able to happen. So this is our waterfall effective strategic planning. once the strategic plan is in place and you know you had a strategic plan that is finishing up this year. So it has really driven that strategic plan that you had from five
years ago has really driven everything that the board and the district has worked towards over these past five years. This strategic plan will do the same thing. So it will now inform your district goals. District goals are set annually by the board and the superintendent. Then board goals, those
are set annually by the board and the superintendent. the administrator's goals, the building goals, the department goals, teacher and classroom goals that all filter down to student goals which ultimately flow into improving student achievement for all of the students in the district. And you
can see that you have improvements from the numbers and from the things that Mr. Earl showed you on those charts before and on those slides before. So this does work to transform a community and a school district.
This is our strategic planning pyramid. So we have the commitment of the board that goes up along the side of the the pyramid. And that means that the board was not only committed to inviting you in and committed to inviting you to participate, but that they are going to listen to what you have to say. Okay,
that's really important because this is a groundup process. And I remember saying to the board last year, if you don't want to listen to your community, don't invite them in because the only thing worse than not inviting them in is inviting them in and not listening to what they have to say. So they are
committed to that. So we had the information of the state of the schools for Mr. Earl and we're going to do an activity for strengths and challenges and this is going to cause you to reflect on the district and what you think are the strengths and the challenges of the district. You heard Mr. Earl talk about those some of what
he feels or and the administrative team feels are strengths and challenges. So tonight it's going to be strengths and challenges. Our next meeting will be portrait of a learner. We're going to talk to you about what your vision is, what you feel are essential skills for
all of your students as they're walking across the stage to um pick up their diploma on graduation night. What are the essential things they need to know? Okay. And then at the end of that night, we'll also come up with um three to five goal areas, just very broad goal areas.
And then those will be um further developed at the third meeting. We'll develop those goal areas. We'll confirm them and validate them with the group. And then we'll ask you to come up with objectives and goal statements. After that, the administrative team and Mr.
Earl will take all of the information from all three of the meetings and they'll put together the action plans which are basically what you saw before when you saw those charts of different objectives and different activities. Those are action plans. That's what they'll put together again and they'll
be over the course of three to five years. Okay. So, your Trenton Public Schools mission statement all stu and I love this because this has been your this has been your mission statement for years and that shows that it proves the test of
time. It it withstands the test of time. All students will graduate with a vision for their future, motivated to learn continually and prepared to succeed in their choice for college or career. So, that's important to keep that in mind. The strategic planning process is not
majority rule. So, at your tables, some of you have more people than other tables. Um, and that's okay. But we're going to ask you to brainstorm about strengths and challenges. You can do that together. On the back of your agenda is a brainstorming sheet. So, you
can start brainstorming on that. And then we're going to ask you to share those brainstorming ideas with the rest of the table. Ask questions if you need further clarification. Hopefully, then everybody will come to accept and come to consensus on those. Keep in mind consensus doesn't mean that
it's your first choice, but it should mean that you can support and also um live with that choice. Okay? So that's what consensus is. So tonight's activity, we're going to ask you to introduce
yourselves to every everybody at your table if you don't know each other. Then we're going to ask you to select a recorder. That's somebody who's going to write on these large post-it notes and they're throughout the room with the number of your tables on them. Okay? Then we're going to ask you to select a
spokesperson for your group. That's the person who's going to come up here with that large post-it sheet and report out to the larger group at the end of of this activity. Going to ask you to brainstorm on the strengths and challenges. Everybody remember David Letterman? Anybody not know David
Letterman? Thank you. Okay. Otherwise, I feel very very old. Um, so we're going to ask you to come up with a top 10 list of strengths and a top 10 list of challenges. Put those your consensus points up on those large post-it sheets and then each group will report out to
the larger group. And then as a larger group, we're going to ask you to come up with identify what the common themes were. So we have 10 tables tonight. Yes, we have 10 tables tonight. So, we'll ask what you saw more than three or four times on somebody's post-it notes. Okay?
And what you came up with as well. And let me see what time it is. And okay, because there aren't 10 of you at a table, we are going to um give you until about 7:20,
okay, to come up with your to do your brainstorming and consensus points. I'll tell you when you have five minutes left and then you I'll give you the two-minute football warning, okay? And we'll ask you to really make sure that you get those up on your pages. The pages are three and six are up here. The
rest of them are around the back of the room. Okay. There's a large um Sharpie on the table that you'll use for those consensus points on the yellow sheets. And thank you very Any questions so far? Okay. Did you want to say something? Oh,
hold on. >> Yeah, just quickly every all of my lovely people at the back, we join tables. So, just join a table. try to fill up those that are kind of empty. And from there, all right, ready, set,
and go. You can take off. >> Okay. Is everybody ready to to talk about their outcomes, their consensus points? Okay. Who wants to go first? Don't fight. Everybody gets a chance to go.
Okay. Don't fight over it. You guys want to go first? Okay. Come on down. Table number six. >> Woohoo. Okay. I'm going to ask you to put it right up here and then share your
outcomes. Okay. >> It's not like I speak for a living or anything. All right. So, we started off with our strengths. Uh number one, we love and Trenton that there is so much community engagement, right? Whether that be our nonprofits who are pouring into the
district, whether that be uh people who are just so dedicated uh to making our district that much better. Uh everybody seems dedicated to making sure our youth have everything they need to succeed. Uh number two, we went to our dedicated staff and didn't put it up here, but
also our teachers. uh everybody who's in district has the same goal just like our community to make sure our kids uh are really succeeding, right? And you see it every single day that they show up. Uh the number three, we talked about uh the
Apple investments, right? The tech investments. I know uh as a board member, I love the fact that uh we set it up where it's not just going to be in one school. It's more of a train the trainer where this is a investment, right? in one school where it's going to
be districtwide. Uh I think that that's absolutely in uh amazing that uh we have uh tech that you know a lot of other districts can't say that they do, right? So that's uh going to be spectacular for our children. Uh extracurricular investments is number four. Our arts and
athletics uh shout outs to our boys basketball team that made it to the state last year. All right. and we were uh highlighting the band that uh if y'all haven't heard them perform, listen, those kids should be at Howard. All right, I'm a Howard grad and
they were they were blowing. All right, they definitely were blowing. Uh focus on uh restorative practices and one more time. >> Thank you. Thank you. I don't have all the acronyms. I'm sorry. All right. Uh
which is uh definitely needed in our environment. Um, so, you know, kudos to us for pouring into our kids that way. Uh, staff development. I get emails all the time about professional development classes that I do not qualify for and I
have no idea why I'm getting them as a board member, but you know what? I love the fact that they are constantly available for everybody. And, uh, the superintendent says all the time that they're not a day off. They're not time away from the classroom. They're time to make you better at your job. So that's
absolutely imperative. Uh HR outreach, we do an amazing job of reaching out to the community to make sure that they can be involved in the school district as well. U uh with highpaying jobs that we have here. Uh slow steady
academic growth. Uh little by little we're building that up year by year. Uh and I know that we're going to achieve it because we have uh consistency in the district. That actually leads to number nine. We have consistent leadership uh with our district uh with our um
superintendent with the staff that we have here. Um and we have resources that are coming into the district uh which we believe are our strengths, our challenges uh staff and student attendance. Uh we know chronic
absenteeism is an ongoing issue for a variety of reasons. Uh so we wanted to highlight that but also uh highlighting the fact that staff attendance we want to make sure that we're solving that problem as well. Transportation remains an ongoing issue uh between our students
you know making it into schools or not making into schools for a variety of reasons. You know internal pressures external pressures family issues that are going on. Um and you know we live in Trenton right? We all know about the pressures that we're facing here. So, making sure that there's reliable uh
private and public transportation for them, equitable resources. Um, in some schools, uh, uh, there are certain resources that other schools don't have, right? And we need to make sure that's even and consistent across the board that each school has everything that
they need. Uh, parking at buildings, uh, I think everybody knows that that can be a challenge, right? The amount of times people yelled at me about Capitol City High School. All right. They still yell at me about Capitol City High School and I thought we solved
that, but still uh that can be an issue. uh climate control and making sure that all of our buildings have um you know AC and heat so our staff and our students can learn without any challenges quality
sub uh coverage right so substitute teachers uh not that that we just have bodies in the classroom but that they're ready that they know what they're talking about and that they're fully educating our kids parental involvement
um we know our parents are working two, three jobs sometimes and just to put food on the table, right? But we still have to make sure that they're involved and engaged however we can. Uh learning loss is a huge issue from year to year, right? From break to break. Um I know
that we have like we said the technology investment that we're bringing in, but uh making sure that everybody regardless of whatever learning environment that you're in has the ability to uh deal with this learning loss issue. uh transient population
because we have a lot of people who are immigrants in the community. A lot of people who um have different cultural uh uh backgrounds and views on education. Um a lot of people who are here frankly, you know, for one semester and not the next, right? And that affects a lot of
our um a lot of our uh what is it? Um results that we have in the classroom. And finally, the external pressures including poverty, crime, and just general issues uh just being in the city. Right? So, those are some of the strengths uh challenges that we have uh
just being here in Trenton. >> Okay, who's up next? Oh, look at all the hands. >> Okay, table at I'm sorry, table at the back, purple. and then we'll go to the the next one. Okay, I promise everybody gets a shot.
>> Remember, you're listening for common themes. Okay, >> I'm Susan from Harrison School. Um, so strengths, access to school and community resources, staff PD opportunities,
mentorships for teachers, student opportunities to access technology, fiscal accounts, minimal budget cuts for staff, parent engagement opportunities,
not to correlate that with parent uh lack of parent involvement, But okay, so it's kind of on both sides. Um, standard assessments and benchmarks.
Um, restorative practices and consistent leadership. So those are the strengths and then challenges changing curriculum materials every few years. That's a problem. uh parent and family engagement,
utilization of ESL supports, not taking those support staff and putting them in subbing positions or whatever. And I understand that that is um sometimes the
priority that they have to attend to the the administrators, but it's it does take away from um student support, student attendance, staff attendance, hierarchy of financial spending.
I won't give any examples, but there are rising health care costs. um INRS process um it's not always um
quick enough to help the student that year. Um it needs to be a little more efficient so that these students can get the support that they need. Evaluation of staff effective effectiveness.
um not just evaluating that uh teachers um when they come in and they observe you but if there's a real problem then that needs to be addressed because some teachers are phenomenal a lot of teachers I I don't mean to say some many
teachers are phenomenal and experienced knowledgeable um and some teachers are just I don't know not being effective for the kids. Um, and then assessment and testing quantity, how many times kids
are tested throughout the year, informal, uh, if a teacher is doing their job and they're following the curriculum and they're, you know, diligent in their teaching. Um, we need
that time. And that time is really important not just to have um assessments, assessments, assessments, you know, testing, testing, testing. It really, you know, it's a big chunk of time that's being taken away from the from their learning. So, you know, not
we don't need more school days. We just need to be able to teach the days that we are there. So, and that's it. Thank you. >> Okay. Yes. I'm going to try and put these where you can kind of see them so that you can
think about those common themes that we want you to be thinking about. Our list is focused and targeted. Boom. Our strengths. We could not say enough about the face department and how it
connects and supports our parents um our administrators and teachers. We have we don't have a large turnover rate when people come to serve our students and family. They are here for the long run and we appreciate that. Um attendance
work has actually started. So we've started to kind of peel back some of the layers on what some of the barriers are. And we believe one of our major strengths is our parents want the best for their children and that should be one of the things that kind of anchors
everything that we do. They are sending us our very best and they actually want the very best for their children. Our weakness is the literacy. We talked about the need uh for children to be on reading level by the time they exit out
of elementary school by third grade. We need to focus on that. Um, we talked about student attendance. If we could have the best curriculum out there, if the students are not in the seat, they're not going to learn. So, we really need to focus and figure out how
we can put a citywide lens and a citywide importance on making sure students get to school every day. Parent and community involvement. Um, we need to work with our families and to get parents and the community together so
that they can work for the betterment of their school and the parents perception of the school. We need to be the Nordstrom of the schools. the Nordstrom, you know, they have a whole policy about uh customer service and we need to make
sure that we are rolling out the red carpet for our parents um because they are our consumers. Their children are our consumers and so we need to make sure we are rolling out the red carpet so they are feeling welcome, they are feeling seen and they are feeling heard. Did I do good?
>> Yes. >> Good job. Thank you. Okay, who's next? Um, number six. Nine. Nine. You're nine. >> It's upside down. That's why I thought it was six. >> Thank you.
>> All right. So, I'm not going into Midnight Train to Georgia as Glattus Knight and my pips. >> We got >> Right. They got a little step. So if you see them start to move, just just cheer them on. So we talked about um there
being really a double-edged sword for some of what we looked at. So for culture, culture was a big one. The school district c the school culture, building based, and then also the district culture. So that the strength
is in our culture that we're moving that we're ready to start moving. We're ready to start making progress and we're doing that and some buildings are really on their way. The other side of that though the challenge for culture is sometimes it keeps us stuck and that was that's
something that we really talked about that complacency that this is how we've always done it and so there's no reason to do it differently. So we talked about that. We also talked about um the continuity of leadership. We have a very
strong board and leadership and we really want to that really is a strength for our district because now it know we know that we have a direction and we know that we have people in place who can take us in the direction that we're trying to go and set a vision that
continuity of the leadership and I think that's something that other groups talked about is the only way you can start to make progress is if you have people who know where you are and are ready to go somewhere else. So that continuity has and the stability of what
we needed as a district and just having personnel in place to say, "Okay, I'm not reinventing the wheel. I was here when we did the wheel. Now, let's keep going." We also talked about building grit and perseverance and that that's something
that we're building within us as a team, but then also that cascading effect that was shown earlier with the waterfall, which is it starts with us. It starts with the leadership and then it trickles all the way down through administration, through our students, through into our
parents. So that building grit and that perseverance is is definitely a strength that we have as a district and that we're moving towards innovation. We talked about innovation being what springboards us into making change. and when we get to talking about the
deficit, but that we've you we've been able to use innovation as a strength and to use it to kind of springboard us into or out of where we were, right? We know our students were have been struggling and we kind of needed something to help us kind of motivate us to get out of
that and what we talked about was not always not always accepting that deficit that we have to get out of this. We had to get uncomfortable with just being where we were and accepting that this is just what it is. So that innovation has
been very helpful. But then the other challenge of that is how do we springboard after we've gotten out of the deficit? How do we keep going? So we talked about that. We talked about uh a strength being staff development for instruction. And that's been really big.
It's been really supportive for the teachers and it's helped them to move in their practices and really start um standardizing the progress and how they're approaching instruction. So we thought that was a strength and that staff development was important for
that. And then we talked about our efforts as a district in connecting with parents. So the connection we really make an effort to get our parents in to meet them where they are to figure out like just reach out to them and then try
to give them the resources and supports that they need. So we know as a district that we are making those efforts but for our challenges that we know we still need to work on. We know we need to work on again that culture that it's easy to kind of get comfortable and we kind of
always have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. So that was also a challenge that we talked about not opting out when it gets tough and sometimes that concept of just not opting out. Sometimes we opt out by just standing there and we just let the group
say what they're going to say. So it's really continuing to put ourselves out there to have that voice. So that's a challenge for us is accepting and handling that space and then making space for us to be a safe space to be uncomfortable and to have tough
conversations. We talked about a lack of a reason to innovate. People only change when they have a reason and we talked about that and that reason and that innovation we have to have our reason. We have to have that power and that ownership and that's a challenge that we
as a district are working through and are starting to change but it's still a challenge for us. We talked about low-level SOPs and really looking at our standard operating procedures in different departments and it's well this is the way it's always been done or this
is the person you call to do it but it's not documented. It's not in writing anywhere. So while they might agree that that's what needs to be done, he and I don't know it and so it's not in writing anywhere. So really just codifying some of those expectations across the
district, across department so that new people coming in and we can build upon that continuity. We talked about explaining away the deficit and this was big and really resonated with us because we get so comfortable with hearing the
kids are not performing and then we find reasons to explain why the kids are not performing. But what that means is we've accepted it. So we've accepted it and we've explained away the deficit. Oh, it's a food desert. Oh, you know their parents are struggling at home. Their
parents don't work with them at home. We've continued to explain away the deficit. So now we're comfortable with it and now we don't find a reason to change. So we talked a lot about that. Um and that and really acknowledging that that's something that needs to be changed and is a real challenge for us.
Parent engagement. We make strong efforts to engage parents. Excuse me. But how effective are those strategies? So really looking at different kinds of strategies, strategies that actually continue to meet the needs of the parents. We have
different kinds of kids now and those kids have different kinds of parents. So we need to be a little handle it a little differently in how we approach them and how we strategize to engage them. One of the other challenges we talked about was staff development for
non-instruction and for those operations. So that was the a dual double side of that with the staff development and then again just really talk creating those safe spaces for difficult conversations is a challenge
for the district but it's happening and it's progress but we definitely have room to grow. Okay, who's next? Table seven, come on down. Okay, remember you're thinking about
common themes. >> All right. So, table seven, let's start with the strength is the writing of this poster which I did not write. This move was on. All right. So, some of our strengths that we identified was data collection. We do a good job of uh collecting data. Um planning strong. Um
planning is strong. Think tanks on ways and structures within the system. Our facilities are strength. Opportunities for student engagement beyond academics. A lot of community partnerships. Um contin continuity of staff. So like everyone's saying, our staff comes and
they stay here. Um filling vacancies during a shortage that is also a strength, we continue to fill um our positions within the system. Some of the challenges that we're seeing is while we do have a great uh way of data data
collection, the follow through and the implementation to support that, it's sometimes a challenge for us as a system being a large district. um are informed pivots. So opportunities to kind of switch or move differently is sometimes off of a challenge as some of us have
already stated like it's the way we've done it and so that pivot is sometimes difficult for us as a system. Consistency and level of engagement through implementation. So how everyone is engaged in the process is sometimes a little bit different. And so just really norming what engagement looks like for
us is something that we saw as a challenge. Attendance is a challenge on all levels. Um, everyone is not always present in the same way. That kind of goes back to that. And really another challenge is the growing population of our MLS and and really all of our stakeholders understanding who our
students are and the supports that they need as for for us from us as a system. >> Thank you. Who's next? Oh, yes. Yes. What table number are you? I'm so I'm really sorry. They were
jumping like crazy people back there. I couldn't disregard them. You guys will go next. Thank you. >> Okay. Our group uh I'll start with challenges. Our group wrote like everyone else student attendance increase in MLS. Um we also wrote
growing enrollment. So same kind of situation. Um better date selection. So tonight our group, one of our parents mentioned that today was a back to school night for uh parent conference. So that they were struggling to get here. Um lack of
engagement. Same with our parents as well. Lack of funding for some departments. For example, our group was talking about security uh in buildings. wide range of student needs meaning there's different levels of student
academics different level of SEAL needs uh discipline issues coming from students uh another challenge is technology growing uh chat groups and cyber bullying parent involvement and we
talked about that strengths uh we talked about climate and culture I think that was mentioned before uh strength is also safety facility improvements, technology improvements, wraparound services. So, uh the community services,
transportation was mentioned, uh progress on student behavior, uh like physical altercations among students has gotten better. teacher retention has is a strength and bringing back extracurricular activities
for intermediate schools very specific is going to take that table eight please come forward and thank you to all of the pen everybody has great penmanship so thank you some of the comments we discussed
earlier. So, we may be repetitive. Um, but we're going to I'm going to pull some of the ones that we had. Um, table eight, starting off with a strength. Uh, we had new brand and logo to restore our district. That was a strength. The
challenge is for us to brand our district and brand our students, our alumni, veteran and young. Making sure it's not just staff that work in Trenton Public School District. Ensuring we're capturing the full audience. Although
our students um may have um shortcomings academically, our students go on to do wonderful things. And so we need to let our children who are in the district know that they too can be successful as well. The next item, hiring varied
background teachers throughout our district program was a strength. However, the challenge is when we speak of instruction um early childhood background person. I challenged the district to take a look at our teacher population of how many teachers we have
in K to3 that are alternative route teachers. Not to say someone who's not an alternative route teacher can't teach, but if our children are struggling academically in reading and in literacy, we need to take a look at who those individuals are that are there and ensure we know the data of who they
are to ensure we're giving them what they need to teach our children academically. So, that is one data point we need to look at. We also talked about tuition reimbursement being a strength. Okay. Okay. We have that as a contractual item. That is a plus. We
have that. But unfortunately, our challenge is when many of our staff members do use that tuition reimbursement, sometimes we lose them. We've developed them. We've cultivated them and then they we lose them to go to another district. So, some of the things we talked about was making sure that
survey data can possibly get into the hands of administrators so that we can know why are people leaving when they leave. What can we do better to try to keep those that we motivate and send back to school and cultivate? The next one, we have the staff members of course
with varying knowledge. The challenges empowering district stakeholders to lead. We have a lot of individuals that are very talented. What keeps them from sharing best practices? Why are people staying in the jar and not sharing what they know? when we have
individuals who have good knowledge base. The next one is focusing on the attendance of students that is a strength. We have been doing that and we will continue even though it's a challenge getting more families to understand that we need our students to be present. We need them physically here
every day and to be attentive in order for them to learn in order for us to move. The next one we have a high quality preschool program. That is our strength. The challenge is how do we move that in our upper grade levels? Although we're moving it, we need to move that a
little bit further because if we don't, we're going to lose our families. We're going to lose them and they're going to go to the new charter schools and they're going to exit our district will then affect us in the long run. The next one, we have a small interconnected
city, the city of Trenton. But because we are small and interconnected, sometimes situations that happen at schools amongst our families, things can be a bit petty. Things can be disconnected. And
unfortunately, when that happens, gossip becomes spoken word. >> It may only be one situation, but that situation grows and it looks like it is a mountain. And unfortunately that hurts our district when it comes to our
families because people believe the gossip. And so that's tied back to that branding. How do we change that? The next one down here we have that we have a diverse and powerful group of individ individuals in the city who are resilient regardless of what background
they come from. We know we have parents who are coming in as involunt as voluntary immigrants into the city. But as a result of that, for varying reasons, we have a lack of trust. Do they truly want me to be a part of
the conversation? Um, unfortunately, even today, if we have someone here who needs translation support, do we have that here for them tonight? So, the last thing just going to share from our group is a quote.
When there's an elephant in the room, you can't pretend it isn't there and just discuss the ants. You have to discuss everything. Thank you. Great job. Okay, who's up next? Up.
Table number five. All right. So, as people were talking, we kind of made tallies of how many times people said the same thing. So, and I'm going to spare everybody's time and kind of go over just a couple of things that we thought we wanted to reiterate. Um, on the strength side, it looks like the most tallies for us was a
comfortable learning environment and a a committed staff. Um, we have a resilient student body, which we thought was very unique. Um, and the rest were repetitive. On the challenges side, I see the trend tends to be absenteeism.
um h the capacity and the will of staff. So getting out of the old Trenton mindset and then teaching students in the native language. That's from group five. Okay. Three or 10. Come on down.
Table number three. Oh, here we go. Thank you. Okay. All right. So, we didn't do tallies, but um starting out with our strengths, we talked about the community pride that we all have. So, everyone, all of our stakeholders are truly
invested in our students and working towards that common mission of ensuring that every single one of our students can have success within our schools. We have engaging staff PD and a wide variety of PD. Communication with staff and families is one of our strengths as
well. Our beautiful spaces, the renovations that have happened to our spac spaces that allow for opportunities for our students to innovate and to be able to innovate in creative ways with our Apple native products, our maker spaces. All of these are great strengths
that we have. We have strong consistent leadership. um streamline curriculum materials as well as again our commiti our commitment to our students and ensuring that we have student voice throughout the whole process of everything we do.
>> Um some of the challenges that we mentioned were uh we similar to to others that we've seen tonight. Um attendance of course not just our students but um parents for events. We'd like to see that go up. Student achievement on assessments. uh staffing
for specialized programs like our special education or bilingual programs, community conflict that is brought into school at times, adverse childhood experiences impacting our students, and we'd like to see more opportunities for work-based learning experiences for all
of our students. That's it. >> Thank you. And last but not least, table number 10. >> Okay. Hi everyone. Good evening. We kind of copied table I think it was five. and we're going to focus on anything that
hasn't really been said very much tonight for strengths. Um we talked about availability of resources. Um a lot of resources um available to us and also a lot of partners that want to work with
our district. We talked about a responsiveness to progress and kind of like a district that is like really ready to achieve, ready to um put the work in and use
feedback to move forward, ready to move. We spoke about kindness among students. Um I mean really simple things like students hold doors for me um in elementary schools and make conversation
um say hi how are you um in the secondary buildings. So, those small pieces of kindness that go a long way. We spoke about um actually I'm going to jump over to challenges because a lot of
the the strengths that we had um written down and discussed were said previously. Um same with challenges. We spoke about the number of transitions our students make. how they have a K to3 building,
they transition to a 4 to6 building and then in secondary they transition a lot. They transition for 7 to 8 um a building for 9th um and then 10 to 12. That that um is a lot and how can we um kind of
mitigate the effect of that the negative effects of that transition and keep it positive. said that one. We spoke about while there are a lot of resources in the district, we spoke about a challenge
being um kind of a inconsistency of resources in all cases and that leading to some variability in student experience. Uh we spoke about um compliance and
moving past compliance that we need compliance but we need to move beyond compliance and really finding a balance um in teaching and learning of teaching grade level standards while also um meeting students where they are and
having that balance. I want to say um I don't want to repeat anything that's been said um this evening. So, thank you very much everyone. >> Nice. >> Okay. So, talk to me about what you found to
be common themes. Tell me whether it's a strength or whether it's a challenge. Okay. You can just call out engagement >> as a positive. >> Yes. >> Community engagement. >> What was the what was the next one? >> Okay. What else? >> Okay.
What else? Okay. What else? >> PD opportunity. >> PD >> PD opportunity. I was I was trying to figure out what the first thing you said was PD opportunities. Okay. What else?
>> Facilities. Thank you. >> Okay. As a as a strength. >> Yes. >> Want to move to challenges? How about challenges? Student attendance. engagement. >> What else?
>> Literacy rates. INRS. We got that. >> Are there common challenge? >> I'm hearing people but not exactly what you're saying. >> When I look at the board, >> can you talk about culture?
Consistency on culture. consistency on culture and culture >> that provides for >> okay >> resources across schools. >> Okay. Okay. Perception of schools.
>> Okay. So we have for strengths we have community engagement, staff development, staff and leadership consistency, technology, PD, professional development opportunities, program and facilities and funding management. For challenges we have student attendance, staff
attendance, parent engagement, literacy rates, INRS process not expedient culture, the opt- out culture, resources across the schools and perception of schools. Multilingual >> multilingual. >> MLL. Yep.
>> Trans. >> Yeah, it did. Okay. We good? Yeah. Okay. I did something very bad at the beginning of this strategic plan. I failed to introduce some of the people
that are here with me tonight. So, I'm very sorry. Tim Tian is my partner in crime tonight. I don't know where he is right now, but Tim Tian was the one who is helping you all get registered. In the back also, we have Paul, Dr. Paul Panero. He is a new field
service rep. Sort well, not about five months in about yeah, newish, like less than a year. And then in the back we have the very tall mine quided who is our um our oh my gosh it just went out of my head quality control. Thank you.
And then we have Dr. Nicholas Diaz who is our exe our deputy executive director. So please thank them for being here tonight with me as well. We have a lot of people at the association and sometimes they don't get to see what we do in field services. So,
it's always nice when they ask if they could come out and see what strategic planning is all about. So, thank them. I thank them for coming. So, we did the common threads. So, after tonight, what we're going to do is Tim has been typing up some of this stuff and I'm going to type up the rest along with the
attendance list and send that off to the superintendent and the board president either tomorrow, tomorrow's Wednesday, or Thursday. You'll have that. Once they review it, they'll put it up on the district website. We want it on the district website so that anybody who wanted to come tonight, some of the
folks that couldn't get here because they had parent teacher conferences, they can review what you all have done tonight and see what the process looks like and hopefully come the next time and not feel like fish out of water. So, our next meeting is going to be on Tuesday, May 19th, right here, Trenton
Central High School. And signing begins at about 5:45. It'll be from 6:00 to 7:30. Between 7:30 and 8, I would say we'd be done. Okay. And what we're doing at the next meeting is we're going to have all of the outcomes from tonight's meeting on your tables for you to
review. You'll be at different tables next time because you'll come in in different ways. And then we're going to ask you looking at those strengths and those challenges, what would you what do you feel are the essentials that your students need to have those essential
skills when they walk across the stage at graduation? what are those essential skills? And then we're going to talk about how we're going to get there. Okay. So, that's going to be next next month, May 19th. It's um basically considered portrait of a learner. Okay.
So, I thank you for being here tonight. I know there's a hundred other things you probably could have been doing. I know the Yankees are on and we're finally on a roll. Excuse me. But we're finally doing well again. And I don't know if Mr. True Hart wants to say
anything or if Mr. Earl wants to say anything to to end up the evening, but thank you so much for being here. What you're doing is really helping your students, your staff, and your community overall over the next three to five years. So, thank you so much for being part of this.
>> Thank you all for being here. Have a good night, safe night. We'll see you on May 19th. Thank you.