All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Board of Education special board meeting. For April 7th Tuesday. We have seven of all seven of our, trustees present so we can start the meeting. We'll start the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance. To the I believe I speak for. The nation under God, indivisible, with liberty. And. Yes. Thank you. We do not have any public communication today.
So our next items on our agenda, business services that today let me know if there record and such. So the first item we have is the easement. So as we work with our, over at the Smith Middle School project, we've been working with the Royal Commission on getting the new transit signal installed. And through that process, the Royal Commission is basically asking for easements that basically run from the street to the sidewalk.
So some of the homeowners along that path just north of, Martel fitting into where the new signal is going to be. Some already have sidewalk concerns in place, some do not. So we've been working with two homeowners, primarily south of the road that will be added for the new signal. So we have two homeowners, that we reached out to. So we do have drove here from Park Hill to go over here on item four B for you. But for, for a what this relates to primarily is the district property that was acquired a couple years ago. Where the new roadway will be. And,
and then the light subsequently on the, the liver and the road there, we have to issue essentially a sidewalk and a highway easement to the road commission. So we're basically giving them the right to do whatever they want from the road to the sidewalk, any type of maintenance that will need to perform just to make sure that those sidewalks and roadways are, compliant and in good functional order. So, it's not a full sale of property by any means, but it is kind of giving up rights to a certain portion of the property to the road Commission. So through that, we just need a board approval in order for us to actually,
execute those easements for the road commission to have. So that's item for a so it's just a sidewalk easement. Sidewalks will be added as part of that project. And then from the sidewalk to the road, it also provides them adequate access, without any restrictions on our end, for them to be able to do the maintenance that they need. So, both easements I did include in the board packet. It's pretty traditional language. We have to review that as well. They work with rotation all the time. I mean, so, it's pretty standard boilerplate language. The road commission doesn't allow too many changes to it.
We tried a couple that, they didn't want to do that, so, so those are those. Any questions on what those two are in item four? B is is the larger item for tonight for this board. So these all go through as part of this meeting because this is a special meeting here. I do have a. The resolution was also updated. So yeah we are the consideration. And then the recommended action would be to accept the resolution, and its entirety that was attached. And board docs.
Right. Yeah. We just one question so that it looked like when I was reading board docs that part of the easement was somebody else's. Right. So that's for B. So okay. So we get to that. Yes. Okay. Well that's because these are only district owned properties that you're addressing. And for a for it will be then that okay. We were asked to approve that we have a resolution resolution now therefore be it resolved, the board authorizes the sidewalk easement a highway easement. The superintendent of the school district, or designee, is hereby authorized to execute the sidewalk easily
and highway easement, as well as any and all documents necessary and incidental, all behalf of the school district for named for Mr.. Leash supported by Mr.. And any questions or comments. Okay seeing none all those in favor please say yes. Yes. Anyone oppose this? Please say no. Okay. The recognition passes a seven. Oh. All right. Resolution three B so or be. So go up and join me on this one. So
yeah we're going on okay. It's 303 now. Yeah. District. So what I like we know what you meant. Even numbers are bad. So for B. Oh okay. Thank you. So for b relates to the other two properties that we have been working with those homeowners on. So under the two properties south of the new roadway that's to be installed for the new Smith Middle School. One of the homeowners, essentially what we have to do is we have to approach the homeowners and we have to provide them with a good faith offer.
So we offer them essentially, that comes out to about a dollar per square foot for that easement. So one of the homeowners, two houses down from this new roadway, we did have luck with she was willing to sign over the easement. The district did pay, a dollar per square foot for that easement. So it was about 3400 or so dollars that we paid. But we signed it right over from her to the road commission. So it didn't it didn't go into our hand. So we don't need any approval there. We just simply paid the homeowner for the acquisition of that easement.
The other homeowner, we sent a certified letter to them. It was delivered with a good faith offer explaining everything, just like we did with the other homeowner. And we have not heard back by the deadline that we set. So it it pushes us into this next, phase of the process to where we have to essentially go through, the county court system to have them grant an easement, to us or to the royal commission, I should say. So that's where we reached out to Park Hill. I'm sorry, I'm Joe Harris from Park Hill who helped facilitate this process. So, that's where we're looking at the condemnation authorization
from this board, to basically let us go through the court system and have the court grant the royal commission those easements. But we need this board to deem it as a necessity, as part of this project. So the it did anyone have a knife? And I'm going to ask. There are lots. So we tell the certified letter to the homeowner that owns those lots. Okay. So it was a little yeah I do see it. It's we tracked it through the Postal Service. That individual signed for they received it and all that.
So, we just had not heard anything actually. So. So it's not the it's not the family room, so. Okay. It's there's a lot to go to the court system. They get notified I guess frankly, I'm 70. So so I don't know if you want I'm sure I'm going to explain it. So in this case, ordinarily, This is the, the easements that we're having to condemn, essentially, the deceleration lane and it's, a long lived noise as well as a small portion that's going to be where the, controls are for the road, for the sidewalk crossing and traffic.
We were not able to meet with the homeowner or property on. They should say. So the next step is really moving in conformance with the Michigan kind of, Uniform Condemnation Procedures Act, which has strict procedures as to how you go about condemning for an easement. But that's what we're doing here. So before you, as a resolution, this this is sort of the first step, that there were some changes made several years ago. Don't go into those. But not only do we have to,
notify you, the property owner, we also have to notify every property interest that, property interests within that property. So when I say that property interests such as in this case, the, a homeowner has a mortgage on that property, so we have to notify their mortgage company, which is in this case, the Huntington Bank. And then there are two other interest holders, including the city of Troy, which is going to end up with the sidewalk easement. But, good thing. Right. And then there's also, Oakland County, which has a, water supply system easement across property.
So in both those instances, I just need to, make you aware, our firm represents the Huntington Bank School District as well as Oakland County. So, we will work with that, deal with that. I don't believe it should be an issue. Ordinarily, when this, I represent a lot of municipalities and we run into this happen, banks can be a little bit difficult. But in this kind of circumstance, as long as that what we're seeking, in terms of, the value of the property and not, in terms of condemnation, it's really the portion up front. It shouldn't affect the overall property overall.
So, banks should waive that question. And, so if it wasn't us and let's say the city of Troy or the city or the county wanted to expand the road and needed the same, similar type of, easement, from homeowners, would they do about the same thing? They would do the same thing. Exactly. Which is which brings me to the other point. When we acquire the easements for the neighbor next door, we did it by because it was under the name of the, Road Commission, because that's what the Road Commission, Bastard Road Commission is requesting to say.
But in this case, because the Troy School District is the condemning authority, we have to acquire the easement in the name of the, this district with the ability to assign it to the road commission once we obtain that's kind of the process. So there's a number of steps that we have to take. They're kind of listed in the in the resolution, if you happen to be. I'm sure you all went through it. But this is the first step, is, it requires a resolution declaring then successively, in this case, we understand
there's a necessity for deceleration, it's public safety, it's the road, etc.. Same thing with where disciples were in. I don't believe that. A real quick anyone. Is anyone familiar with how condemnation works? There's really a two step process. And so the first step is, who, is declaring there's a necessity in filing a complaint. The property owner gets a has the right to contest the necessity. They can actually, say that. Well, you don't really need it, okay? And and they have to justify why we would need it.
So that's the first step. So normally in the first step in this circumstance, it's very difficult for the property owner to, to challenge it. And we should be able to obtain the easement quite, quite fast and very quickly. We should be able to get it within the next 60 days. If we proceed the way we need to proceed. The the just compensation portion of the project is the second step in condemnation. And that could be months and it could be it's subject to a jury trial. And so but we'll have the easement. We can move forward the project. That's the most important thing for the school. Yeah.
So we're trying to just stick to the timeline, making sure we can get that signal prior to the the new building opening in the fall. So, what time do you think the to begin? I think so the easement could be granted by the courts within within 60 days, but we would deal out the the financial component to it with the homeowner. So approximately that dollar square foot that way most of these cases never go to trial. It really becomes, more of an appetite, more of an up, negotiation.
Once we are in court. Unfortunately, you have to. But if we've been able to negotiate without it, we would need to be doing this. So did I read somewhere that if it does go to court early, owner might have to pay the legal fees or did I in this. And it's actually, in the, condemnation. I say Michigan Constitution and the condemnation statute after it allows for the homeowner to, receive his attorney's fees and defend, in challenging.
Okay. But there's different limits on that. That's reasonable attorney's fees. And that's related typically to the property. So we we have to pay for those. Then we would you as part of the cost. Yes we would. And even if they do unsuccessful. If they challenge some of the and they're not successful, they're not entitled to their attorney's fees for the portion of the, the property, part of the condemnation process. It's the determination of, the just compensation where it essentially. Yes, but if it's if they were successful in the international society,
they would be right. Yes. And the fact that we've already paid just compensation to one other problem at a particular rate is that favorable? Because it's it's just compensation. No, no, not necessarily. It we can get a number of factors, that go into determining just compensation. Which brings me to another point. Part of this process will require, because we're following the Uniform Kind of Nation Procedures Act, which is required. We will need to hire an appraiser for this. I have looked into hiring an appraiser.
And I've got a pretty good, reasonable price, which I've been discussing here. Or we can discuss outside that, you know. Yeah. Okay. So in the, so in the motion that talks about a price and that you mentioned earlier, the other property was a $28,000. And then this motion it's fixed is $600. So it's twice as big. So the the other homeowners already had a sidewalk easement. She only needed a highway easement okay. Or the roadway easement. Yeah. So this one would actually be both.
So the sidewalk doesn't go through without touching open. So it's almost double line. That's okay. And then you mentioned that like I'm just sensitive to the fact that like somebody bought this property was paying for it. Like if it does, like you've mentioned, it doesn't ruin their property by school, but. Right. Some people might not. Based on what I've observed, this should be fairly straightforward. But if defense attorneys or property owner attorneys can do a lot of different things and we worked with the other homeowner on, like showing the specific designs, and we actually, tailored it a little bit.
There was a well that wasn't marked on the survey. So we adjusted it a little bit. We let them know that, part of the process is essentially from the sidewalk to the roadway. They're getting a new driver at the bottom, because right now it's dirt. And so those are improvements that the district has already factored in as part of the entire project. So they're actually getting some improvements. But we've committed to them that we would communicate at any timeline if we have to come in and do that work, we'll work with them. And that way it doesn't sound too much. And by doing this, their property
is not going to be reduced to the point that they're nonverbal or whatever. You said it's a lock, right? So yes, that's that's true. The current, property is how many acres between them? Oh, so acreage, say acreage at this point, one three acres points. So it's point. It's very small. I mean, it's a deceleration. It's literally the length of the light, which is maybe 150ft by 20 to 30ft typically sound okay. So the homeowner still owns the entire lot.
They're just granting essentially unrestricted access to that portion of the lot. That's which just means they can't build. Correct? Yeah. That's your house. Yeah. Yeah. But the rest of the law is still correct. Yeah. We're not we're not like that. Really. Isn't that right person and what. Yeah. But any other questions. All right. We are asked to consider a resolution declaring the necessity to require a highway sidewalk easement and to authorize Clark Hill, Pllc,
to institute the condemnation proceedings to acquire the easements. You have a resolution, please, that will appear now, therefore, be it resolved, negotiations with the owner to acquire the easements have not been successful. The district has power to acquire interests in real property by condemnation, pursuant to the uniform condemnation procedures that the board declares it finds, it is necessary to acquire permanent highway easements and sidewalk business along with annoying road and for some support. It.
Let's see. Moved by doctor for the part supported by Mr. Leash. All those in favor? Oh, you have any questions or comments on this resolution? One final two is, Joe spotted. We'll update this to, say, a special meeting instead of a regular meeting. So I've received it. We'll have that uploaded. But that was the only adjustment to what you've already got that. Okay, okay. That's good. Thank you. All those in favor of the resolution, please say yes. Yes, yes, those are against it. Please say no.
Okay. Resolution passes. No. We have our resolution for proceeding. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Joe. All right. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. All right. For for for that. Yes. To meet the meeting. Okay, okay. All right, all right. We have full consideration to reschedule the May 5th Board of Education workshop to April 28th.
We have some scheduling issues with our board. So a couple of our board members are we're going to move it. Our, April 20th 8th May have a resolution for the but is then therefore resolved with the Board of Education takes action to reschedule the May 2026 Board of Education workshop to the preceding week, April 28th, 2026 at 6 p.m.. Support who moved by messenger, supported by Miss Potts. All those in favor of the resolution, please say yes. Yes,
those who are against it can say no resolution seven. No. All right. That pretty much completes the agenda items for our special board meeting. Meeting of the June 6th. That is right. The 622. Inch that right now. We're going to start our workshop. First on an agenda is public communication. We don't have,
the next agenda items is business services. Boland Park renovation. So as you may recall, at the last meeting, we approved a pretty large chunk of the Boland Park renovation project. So we had about 20, $21 million or so at the last meeting. The rest of these categories just required a little bit more time to go through full speed interviews and really dive into the specifics, making sure that all of the scope was addressed. So, this is the remaining about $6.6 million worth of categories.
And then we have our contingency, obviously, on top of that. So the total is just over $7.2 million, combined. And I believe we have one category remaining. I need to remember that the last year I was going to work for bowling. That remains the spread room. So. Yeah. So that one should be, I think it's about $300,000, but that one of them, as soon as they. What is that? Right. If it's up flooring Warrington's Grand. Okay.
So that that's the only remaining category after this. So. Okay, Randy, any questions or comment, any questions regarding that? No. All right. Good. The next agenda is Troy High School. Barnard. Bemis. Baker renovation project. This one is kind of an all encompassing project. All of. So you may have recalled, back in the fall. We did was in Hamilton operable walls.
So we're looking to do, two more operable walls that are just nearing end of life. So Barnard and Bemis are the other two of the four sister schools. Their walls are nearing end of life, so the units itself are just not functioning like they should. So, we were waiting for the right time to to make those placements, just not to interrupt the the use of those spaces between the gym and the cafeteria. So, that's what Barnard and Bemis says as part of this project. So low bidders again on those. And then Troy High School, we have some classroom renovations
and then Baker Middle School, we have, secure vestibule. So when you walk into Baker, currently, there's really no dedicated secure vestibule. So, there's going to be some added walls to create essentially a vestibule after you enter through the vestibule. That'll kind of give it a nice loft space that way. Visitors. But from the moment they get into the vestibule to the office, they're essentially going to be locked in a secure vestibule. And I'm currently is pretty open. So when you walk through there, you can kind of see enter into different directions. So.
So that hallway will be blocked off with a wall and they are both out. There's one on the other side right on the left. When you walk in this will be on the right. Yeah. When you walk into the other left. On the left. Okay. Yeah. To prevent going into the classroom. Into the classroom. Yeah. But on the right there is some open space. And then there's that wall to go into that, which is correct. Yeah. Okay. Yes. So that area will be staying open. Okay. So that was our baker. And then the last piece
I think we added earlier. And it's going very slow. The 20 classrooms. You know what two those were. Yep. So that's why we have the wall. And then we have categorical programs. And right on the we relocated. I can't go put rooms directly outside of the main office area. And we also relocated our yeah lounge, the training school and in a classroom space to the upper. The walls of others get a loft and meaning space going out at the same time. And then with in our categorical spaces, if we to create some sort of quiet
bathroom space, that's sort of like the passenger. So that's the area after you enter and you go left from the admin area, back rooms, at training school, the classrooms are located in the small hallway that has all the windows on it, that we're going to be the back of the theater area, so. Oh, yeah. You're looking at the big office. It's to the left, down that more narrow part of normal. Okay, Catholic Way and the resource officer is not right into. And then around the corner that was in the hallway.
That's where his dad marches. So right in that area is where. So, Dan, this is more for the benefit because we do have Cap students here today. Who are in the legislative program. So where, where does the funding come from for the Boland Park renovations? And then this, this is to me that we've been talking about to be is that Mary Jane was not living here, is that the tour has tried to live on
other than the government. Yeah. So the one we're currently talking about, Troy High renovations and, staff lounge areas, the classrooms and, the operable walls at Barnard Bemis. And then we have a secure vestibule at Baker. Those are because of the nature of the work, are all being lumped together to get better pricing from the contractor since the scope of the work overlaps. But those projects specifically are funded through our sinking fund. So that's a separate fund that we collect locally, from our residents, that does fund these types of projects. So construction, and HVA equipment upgrades, things like that.
So and then bowling park. Yeah. And then bowling Park is as a larger project. So when we typically have these much larger projects where we're talking 20 or $30 million, that's funded through our bond program. So again, that's something that our local residents pay, a separate tax just for those bond dollars. So as we generate those dollars, it typically pays for a larger scale project. Like for, for instance, you have $190 million of bond funds in this series versus annually. We collect about $5 million of sinking funds.
So it generally goes with the scope of the project. And those monies are for very specific purposes, those that be used, for example, for paying teachers and things like that. Yeah, yeah. This is typically construction things that are more permanent. That is not a staffing related cost. Any questions regarding the the two business services items okay. All right. We can move on to our next agenda item. Thank you then. All right. Next is our teaching and learning. We have dual languages curriculum
recommendation with deep learning and dojo reference. And there are we going to have a yeah can be present. Yeah. Yeah okay. You're not going to put them in one right there. Okay. We'll do and go back and repeat. Yes. That's what I'm looking. For give us. Yes. No. Comment.
Right. Good evening everybody. Back today to talk about world languages levels one through four. I know the team previously got to present to the AP about AP, but then my kids took me down with the stomach flu, and I think I'm going to make it another call that I just heard the great. And they're busy using those resources already tonight. We're here to talk to you about levels one through four. I'm here with Tyler Henson from Athens, French and department head, Paulino, both in Spanish.
That's for Harvey. Sabrina Lynch. Spanish extra high as well. And it's. Been. All right, so first you wanted to, start out with, a reminder of what the vision statement is that this group is working for. So this is essentially the same vision statement that we presented to you back in. I believe it's January. So we are just really focusing on the whole students. So we really want to emphasize communication discovery. We want to really make them risk takers with the language. Want them to try, want them to succeed, want them to fail.
We want them to do everything in order to improve their language skills. And it's kind of just like our journey in the classroom. So, we also want to obviously enhance their college applications, because studies show that language definitely improves their, application status for certain colleges and universities. And then obviously and it was learning in language if you're not traveling. So traveling is also a big, big, proponent of our language programs. And, Sabrina's going to talk us through our guiding principles. So these are the actual principles, which are the standards that we have to follow, in world language.
You'll notice that the standards that I just talked about are very similar to the standards that we have as, world language, probably in the United States. So when we were looking for books, these were important things for the to look for, for example, authentic text we want to text that were actually things they could find in real life, not things made just for kids, using the language in a target view. So they're practicing a lot of authentic language, authentic feedback. Also, talks tells them the benefits of learning, world language because there's so many benefits
to your cognitive learning when you can speak another language. So this kind of helped us figure out which text we wanted to select by using these. So the current state, when I, got to know the group better, I can't believe I search her high because it's like all of each other. Such I think so a lot of time together this year, as part of the seven year adoption cycle. And also the team had a sense of urgency, too, because last year, the team found out from, that I've been saying most, which was what the Spanish teachers were using would be discontinued. A lot of the big publishers,
are struggling to produce foreign language materials, and it's becoming like a niche game with supply and demand. So we were also under that timeline together as a team. So, the current materials, we were using prior to this versus having the same rules, but, this was the level one through four textbook, but we were alerted that it would become, no longer in use and that we needed to look elsewhere. They gave us for this year a one year caveat, that they would extend our access while we figured out what was next. And, the French teachers for levels one through four have been pulling from paper.
I'm saying, the 2014 version. And while they, enjoyed the resource since 2014, some of the content and cultural readings had become outdated. Additionally, they hoped for a lot of organizational improvements of when teams or thought were taught in levels one through four. Mosaic is a product from Vista Higher Learning. Vista is like Carnegie, which is two branches, is continuing to produce materials. However, since 2018, some of these resources also had become slightly outdated.
So we were considering that as we looked for items that were culturally relevant and up to kids, we have put her, picture on her before we left, joking with her that somebody on another board meeting, was amazing. She is the Oakland school's heritage and world language consultant, and she has helped us in this process this year. So the team had already started exploring last year as a group. And then this August, Jen House sat down with Tyler, myself, Julie, Tucker, Jen, Meg and I believe Jen Henry, that we all started putting our heads together.
What a year exploration would look like. From there, on the August 20th date, we did a departmental kickoff and a reminder of our vision and what steps would be taking as a as a curriculum adoption team. In early October, we met to clarify how our vision would look in an actual rubric and aligned with the district's pillars. And we underwent vendor presentations to together as a team. And then on the 20th, we got together at that district date plan, what we would actually pilot and what the pilot would look like on going the our vendors provided us with, some in-person check ins
and some office hours during our PLC times to troubleshoot questions of, are these implementation things we're working through, or do you have a better solution for us? And then we came back together in March twice to synthesize our feedback, to look at what our community said about our pilot and to unpack what our recommendation would be. All right. We, started the planning. Even, I mean, this this year and last year with, with Wayside and Platt and, we consider, wayside, for the Spanish.
But although, it's had some a variety of empty desk, text and, it was, it we had a lot of, cultural but cultural content, but it was very relevant to the students. We found that, so the themes and the units, were to a specific and the grammar that they had, but it was tied in context, but, in context, but, it kind of was disconnected with the unit. And, the kids were asked were not able to find so much
they wanted to look for something specific to the kids. And us were not able to find, those specifics about the letters and themes. And the resource also didn't, give too many activities for the kids or there were not very extensive, that they were very short. So we found that we had to pull from somewhere else because we didn't have enough, or the activities, the audio. So the, readings for the, well, authentic. There were, really good, content. But the activities tied to those,
readings or audios were not static enough. And that showed that there for the students, for the program for French. We did not select that text for us because, it is a newer company producing more materials. And it seems as if they really, really decided to provide many opportunities for our Spanish programs. But their French program was really lacking. It didn't have a lot of activities, and so it was going to be put back on to us teachers to create a lot more resources. And we just didn't feel like that was a fair
bet for purchasing a resource and then requiring our staff to just, you know, create an abundance of activities. But we did enjoy some aspects of class, but there was a major resource lacking there for the French department. So we, previewed wayside for French and Spanish, and we viewed that, for French as well. We also, preview Carnegie for, French, and that is the resource that we'd like to exploit much. So it was a surprise to us to see the significant advancement in ten years that Carnegie did to their platform. So a lot of the issues that we had with the original,
platform that they used in the past had been massively updated. So they have a larger sequence and tons of new, updated vocabulary. They have an insane amount of culture, which we'll be able to show you here shortly. And like a plethora of activities like I will never run out of activities to provide the students. And it was at all different levels. So that's for levels one through four. Had a massive overdrive. I do know during the process of our last contract, they were purchased by the Carnegie Learning. Like this text was. So I think Carnegie Learning really like put in the work in mastering what this was going to look like for their program.
I really, really liked the online research bank. So we were able to assign a plethora of activities for students, for multiple kinds of students. So we can do scaffolded activities and we can do advanced activities, which was really, really nice. And so that was something that was a major highlight for us in choosing Carnegie Learning for another cycle, like I should say. And German was similar in that Vista Higher Learning's product mosaic, the newer version was, the far preferred experience as well too. Just the updated version, but sticking with the same resource.
Klepto is a newer company to the scene, and we actually first found out about it one through ten. How through this team's research, but also because the international academies reported that they switched to it and that they were really happy. So, as Tyler mentioned, clipped hasn't yet invested the same amount of time at all of the languages, but they've started first, really going deeply into Spanish. So, yeah, we're going to talk about what we went to. Yeah. We found that again. The the resources were real authentic. And, what we really like, there were a variety
of, of resources for the students to, and all four skills. And, also we found activities that there were a lot of for differentiation. So for different types of, learners and so it was, inclusivity there. So we really, appreciate that. The authentic culture that we found, we found that, we, each unit had, specific areas, in Spanish speaking country and, the Spanish speakers to that students can relate to, with the accent
from that country and it takes them through, the unit. And we also like the, the, the grammars and context, but as well and then we found that also there were specific things that, the students and the US teachers could find to, explain more about the, the grammar. And there was, a good amount of vocabulary. And, also the found the, the platform was very easy to maneuver, for us and for the students and,
and there again, the, the best thing was the, the variety of activities that we felt. So we wanted to show you a quick preview of some of the features of the text that we're recommending. And the first one is quite, so like Paulina said, client had a lack of things to do. Here's just some examples. I ended up piloting this past month, a chapter about Argentine. I teach Spanish to one of my, units, and what I really like about that is it started where you can see the girl in the corner.
She's doing a video blog, and it's almost like a Tic tac. And she's telling you about her life in Argentina. The unit was about travel, and first of all, is so cool because I have an Argentinian student in my level two class, and I, I taught or I learned my Spanish in Mexico and I lived in Mexico. And he always was saying, Senora, you pronounce the words wrong. And, you got to see the Argentina accent, which is different than the Mexican accent. He was so excited it related to him. The kids learned how to pronounce words a different way, which was really cool.
And then we got to explore different places and things. We found that they've really gone in. For example, we learned with our person that came the other day. Not only do they have readings of Argentina videos about Argentina, they even have a Spotify playlist for the kids to learn. Argentinian music like, you have everything you can think that, influencers, they can follow everything you can think of. So it really does relate to the kids. The vocabulary is in context. And the right is see, Paulina, taught us about going above a level four, right?
Yeah, it was for, art and the learn about Carnival. And they had a, similar conversation with to talk about that, learn to learn about it and then talk about what they learned about, that. So if you want to click, you can listen to finding a student pretending to talk to the, people. Given all that I could do, like it would not be a first point for those was not environmentally friendly. You guys are inviting. Yeah, we are. And yeah.
And you know, I believe they're not. They're not presented presentation them. So they're starting to practice. They can do recordings. There's so many things that they can do to practice in the level. And just because of the abundance of resources that related to kids, that really stuck out to us compared to the other resources. Carnegie. Okay. So for Carnegie, some of the features that I talked about that I was highlighting in my, I used for Carnegie, I guess I could say is we're showcasing here, it's really hard to see, but in the bottom right corner, there are, that's
kind of like what the online platform looks like in the back of the picture. And it just says a plethora of activities. If we would scroll, we would see there is just tons and tons of activities at different levels for the students, which we thought were just a phenomenal way to showcase learning, especially if students need to use the devices at home. It's something that can be done really easily. The major picture on the page on the left is, emphasizing culture. And so we really enjoyed how they also like Plex resource for Spanish, the Carnegie learning for French, ends up showcasing lots of different
French speaking countries around the world. So this article is talking about housing in, Algeria. And so the students get to learn about many different countries around the world in the process of learning French, which we just think is awesome. And the top right corner, they are speaking just like in class resource for Spanish, the Carnegie Learning for French, Carnegie resource for French, has students talking to someone from a different French speaking country with there's different simulated accents. So we really, really liked that emphasis on showcasing the world of French speakers instead of just traditionally the French thinkers from France.
So those are just a few little glimpses of things that were really important to us. Mosaic is similar for German in that it is filled with tons of activities and diverse pictures, art, readings from all types of German speaking people. It also follows four different speakers throughout the texts and like a narrative as they experience different parts of Germany and, experience different accents with the kids as well too, that like the other resources too, there is a video, a virtual chat tube. So the teacher did one two at home. They could assign, like you listening to a virtual conversation
and responding to it. So we also then, got input from our kids who experienced, the pilot. And Sabrina is going to quickly just synthesize some things that stuck out with what the kids want to try. And so, in my class, for example, we did pilot both books. We did one unit with Claire and then the next unit, Alexa, when you know, like we said, you know, with Claire. And we wanted to make sure what they liked because obviously as we go forward, we want to make sure it's something that, they feel as
much as it matches with what they need. One of the biggest things that I kind of found a little surprising, they really did love the online textbook. They like the ease of it. They like that they could find everything well. But a lot of our kids also liked the reading, the actual textbook. They liked the pencil and paper. And I think a lot of classes now, they're online, they're online. So one thing that said on the survey, if you love, 80 kids that online, 50 kids said printed materials and 173 of our kids said, but they want access to both.
Right now we do have an AI classroom. We have the online survey, online, and then we have a textbook set, which is nice for kids who need to take something home, kids who have problems with screens that are not allowed to be on screens that have issues with things being online is wonderful because it does have the option to like, read the text to you, but sometimes kids just learn about it from the book. So that was the biggest thing we got from the survey. Also, they didn't just really like the interactive activities, they liked the culture. They really liked the videos
of actually seeing the places and what they looked like in Spanish. It really gives the, we also got feedback from the caretakers of students who were within the pilots as well too. And Paulina was going to have like if you haven't seen that. So, was another service to the, to the caretakers. And we found that we wanted to see what the what the were, what was important to them when not getting a textbook. And we found that with their results. And, that says in real world communication there was communication was is a big thing.
That's what they want. And we found that the book has a lot of this, of course, offer a lot of development of those skills also that, fosters an understanding of language, conditions and grammar and those two main things that they wanted. And we consider those two things will be key in the book as well. And, the same as the students, we'll be talking about the online, versus the, or hard copy. They also have, because 46% of their that they,
wanted both the online and the, The textbook. So these surveys and our process, have informed our financial request for you tonight. As the team said, honestly, the kids honestly didn't stretch our opinion of what we thought going into it as well as the caretakers. There was a push for more actual in-person physical materials, but also having access to electronic things. So in the Spanish quote, there are far more students who take Spanish and it being higher, and we based the numbers up on this year's numbers and we would slightly adjust based on reading goals for next year.
So for world languages, the number is 400, roughly $420,000. That does include seven years of physical and electronic resources. It includes class stacks of textbooks, the teacher physical textbooks as well, too, every child having virtual textbook as well, and every child for the next seven years having a workbook. Our team found the workbook to be extremely high quality and something they would actually use. So when we did the, the math there really, it wasn't compelling to just print it all every day.
We thought the ad organization for our children was never texts. The French quote for Carnegie Learning, it does also include the last sets of physical textbooks and teacher manuals. It does include seven years of electronic access to the text for students as well, too. The French quote does not include a workbook because we didn't find it quite as high quality. And to be honest, we thought we would only use small portions of it, and we wanted to be fiscally responsible and thought that we would rather print the pages that we would use and organize into a binder, if that would be useful to our students.
But it wasn't for purchasing the whole textbook. We found levels one and two to be, impressive and we can tell that part of you spent the most amount of time there, as there as they're reinvesting this product. And ultimately, we didn't think we did that. Fidelity. German, the quote includes, class sets of textbooks, physically, teacher text, electronic access for kids. One thing I should mention, too, is that these products also include, like the virtual simulated talk as part of the electronic and part of the electronic is also access to e-readers,
which are novels in these languages, which is really cool to like. Leave. David, all these numbers. We've put in some additional purchases of textbooks that can be kept in our media center and our resource room classroom, so that if we have a student who needs to check out or prefers to check out a text for the full year rather than just a classroom set, you know, for every once in a while that they can do so as well. So we do want to make sure that as we purchase new materials, as we think about our alignment to more students and more families craving those texts in hand, that we continue to provide those wherever possible.
So this is a great opportunity for us to do that with this resource. So yeah, so this is for seven years. Over the course of that seven years does the digital textbook and the physical test will start to become out of line. Do they continuously update the online. And so by the end of seven years you got a textbook that is in print that well aligned with it. I just don't have a feel for how much they change on minimal basis. So from what I understand from our meeting
with class, so I you can speak to French Tyler, the book itself stays the same, but there's so many supplemental resources. For example, they put like monthly video and other things. So I don't think that the book itself will change, but they have online other resources that are work for it because it's the same way if you haven't even to a supplemental second. Oh no. And the at the bulk out of the seven years. But the culture will change with them. Yeah okay. Thank you. So our timeline for moving forward, I'm sure we have your approval in July.
We'll be placing the order in early August. We did a course inventorying and distributing and late August we have tentatively booked dates pending approval with, to have the the vendors come back in and person at our district. Welcome back days and continue to unpack. So the resources have so much to them that even at the end of the pilots, we were discovering things on the pilot that was I should also note, too, that our team, in March ended up spending a good deal time already starting to like, plan common units based off the new materials like, that helped create this presentation and then just started actually planning ahead.
For the 26, 27 school year, we would really like to work as a team now that we have like a common resource and the excitement going, we'd like to really focus on system levels one and two across middle schools, high schools, now that we have a kind of resource. So some of that work is start small. So we, welcome, as you guys have any questions at this time? I have a quick, you were talking about soccer for French. There is the textbook, but we're not buying the workbook. Is that okay? So then the question and then the other question that I had,
because we did it for the Spanish and the French AP are they the same resources or different resources? They are different resource. Okay. And actually, AP is thankfully, the companies that we, Vista we went with the, the AP resource. They are really like the leader of it all. The, the AP world Language Exams are getting ready to undergo some significant changes. So thankfully we had talked with Vista in the background too about when those changes happened. We we would like the new resources associated with them. So we will have new versions of those resources.
You already approved next year, and Vista is putting on a whole bunch of like learning related to the new exam expectations. We do feel pretty confident, though, that, the prior experience is level four one through four vertically align to what kids are asked to do at 18, but they are technically different for kids. Okay. I mean, I guess my question. So this didn't have I mean, I know you guys want to be there, but, so it was just that good. Alignment one, two four in AP. Yeah. So I thought the same thing too. Would be nice to have like one vendor all the way through.
Actually went back and researched as far back as, Jennifer got Lupe's, world language purchasing and it looked like it was a similar deal that I'm not sure of the context. Yeah, but we found the Vista levels one through four materials to be, so rigorous that they were hard to find entry points for. So we think that they have done a really nice job of the AP, like college level materials, but we did not find all their materials as accessible or as relevant at levels one through two. So we ultimately thought it wouldn't keep kids engaged. And did these
materials contain assessment components to India? Use this last year. We plan to next year. But I would like to know yeah they have a the French program was really nice because they did different forms of assessments. So they have communicative assessments, but they also have like their approach like traditional assessments too, that we see in like older literal language classrooms as well. So it was nice to have like a variety of assessment options, which was, I think a very big positive, at least for most of us to go with something forward with our agenda. And our teams have worked hard to have internal assessments to their specific buildings, I would say,
but we are looking forward to having more of a common assessment approach. Our world language teachers are under, like so many as contract demands, you know, teaching levels one, two, three and four in AP throughout the day. They're constantly moving. So that was like the excitement part exciting part of this is truly having a resource. And now we can focus on the collaboration and the team side of it, the common expectations, because they're kind of all in like hustling nonstop in their own rooms, in and out, building their own teams. Thank you.
And the question I have a couple of questions, actually. First one was, especially with French and Spanish, you mentioned about it to, that different countries or different regions speak different dialects and different ownership. How do you, go about teaching that? And when it comes to resources, then you have multiple types of just, one with French, which is an African, not an African country. And then both, Spanish with Argentina.
So how do you do you concentrate on a particular region or a particular kind of Spanish or French, or how do you go back to most of the text like resources? We'll focus on the French in France as the traditional like vocabulary set, however, across different units and across across the different books, they will throw in different series of vocabulary words that are specific to, culture. So, for example, in that unit it was focusing on Algeria. And so within that vocabulary set they will have a set of vocabulary words that are more current to Algeria.
And so across all levels of the textbook, it kind of includes that throughout, which is really nice. Okay. And also exposing the students to different, but I'm from Ecuador, so my accent is different from other countries. So just, all the different activities, the audios and then the exposing to those different accents to the students so they can get used to listening to and. Okay, when they get to the upper levels to the local language bank. Yeah. Go ahead.
It's one thing I liked when I was looking at the level one book. Like Pauline says, we're all thinking and accents that we're from or where we learn. But, the very first page, the Spanish one, book. I don't teach Spanish one, but I thought it was really interesting that, it normally in most books it just teaches how are you best. And this book showed how to say, how are you in every single Spanish speaking country on page one, so that they could find a country that they thought was interesting and say, oh, I found to, that way, then I could find out how to say it here.
So this book that, is already focusing on page one 711, every different country and slang in that country. So one thing I really liked. Well, okay, but then you have limited resources and limited time. You can teach all of it, you know. Exactly. So you just wondering how do you reconcile with that? Just exposing like everyday fun in different areas, diverse from different cuts from different countries. And that way they can just get exposed to what is going to be the grammar. Yeah. That was you know, the pronunciation is separate from the grammar itself.
And also looking at the last question I have is, in your initial part, you talked about, creating a rubric and then looked at each of the material, curriculum from those rubrics. My question is, have any of them not meet a certain part of the rubric, any of these? We haven't seen that. Yeah, I would say, one item we did have was under the gold pillar and building capacity. We talked about, like, teacher, ease of use,
but specifically we drill down into, like Schoology integration. We did experience substantial Schoology integration. And that was something we had to work with with the vendors. We feel good about it now, but we have to be honest, during implementation, we had lots of, moments where we had to problem solve. Okay, so but now those are results. You feel good about it moving forward? Yeah. During. Yeah, during. And you it's not perfect because during that we were frustrated at times where, like you said, this would work falling into a flashback,
and the textbooks that we're purchasing, will they be 1 to 1 for the students that will take the classes? Or will they be just whoever wants them and borrow them quite a bit? So we're purchasing a class set, and I think we anticipated like 30 in a class. Although the numbers can go up to the top of in 2028. Okay. And then a few extra for students whose, plans require them to bring one home, or if a child would like to check them out. Okay. Not one, not two, not 1 to 1 to keep. So like a 30 or 40 class set in the classroom and that's it. Yes.
But working. Okay. That's what with that. Okay. I'm assuming it would be possible. You know, after a year, you figure out most students want books. We get a couple, but we aren't sure. Yeah. Look at the right. I do not have any other questions. You thank you so much. Thank you for the. Okay. All right, I see it. We thank you all. Thank you for waiting. All right, all right. So the next item tonight that I wanted to provide you an update on number
of requests regarding is a resource for the eighth Grade Growing Up program. Fifth grade is the first year that we teach reproductive health in our school system. So it follows from research. If it was gifted. So it surprises. It follows. I'm sorry. The, all the rules set out in Michigan related to reproductive health. So I've learned through this new role this year that we have an existing sex education advisory board. We spent our first meeting this year, reviewing the past work of the board
and then also reviewing applications that people were able to submit in like a blind fashion with all data removed, and then going through them with a rubric to select new members. Christy Hall and Mary Woodman have, really helped lead that process. After that first meeting, we identified a work plan, updating the fifth grade growing up resource, something that was very, near and dear to me as being the only male Hamilton. I'm very familiar with teaching methods. Resource to the boys of Hamilton.
And often when we would have the parent review night ahead of time so that parents could decide whether to participate in this program with their children or not, as required by the law. Parents would say to me, as soon as they heard the song and saw the cartoon hands go up. This is what I watched, you know? And they were like, like, you're you're joking, right? But still with me, we've leaned into it, just embracing it. But the honest reality that the C talked about is the cartoon nature of the film, as well as the, the somewhat, antiquated song, and references.
There's one point of the film that says, and the Game Boy is now out and the, okay, it makes the kids feel a decent bit of discomfort and awkwardness in a moment that's already hard to lower their emotions. And so we saw this in some easy work, for the committee and a very impressive me. We also learned in our process with Murray, Christy and Missy, it's feedback that this is also a very nice thing to get, a research. So we started working with Christina Harvey at Oakland Schools, who is the health consultant there. And Christina told us, yeah, a lot of districts
do currently use what you do because not much else is more correct. She helped us look at what other districts were doing. Some it created internal things that may not be quite better, but at least looked for current. But Christina helped us learn from Marsh media, but they do have a somewhat newer version from 2013. It is covers largely the same facts, but it is slightly more modern looking. It doesn't include cartoons or pixelation, and the references are more modern, and the children represented in the film are more diverse as well, too.
We reviewed that with the CD and saw those as positive enough that it would be worth, updating the film for $1,439 for our fifth grade students. So that would be our recommendations made on behalf of the city that we purchase what's called Meet the New for girls, and then also meet the new for boys for $1,439, to be used as the fifth grade growing up resource is. There are some notes. The orchestra there is just around the corner song. I will tell you. There is still like interludes after each chapter
of content chapter, each scene of contents, where there is a song of some nature and there's just a little bit of dance. So we were like to do that. It is the most people, other parents on the team have watched this video as a parent before, and they thought, I wish they wouldn't have done that. However, this is still much better. So it is from 2013, so it is still not the most current resource. However, it won't be the resource that our, students parents experienced in the 1990s. That should be there's an entrepreneurial opportunity here, right?
There's something that we have kids and scholars. We might have talked about that a lot as a team to their, a health teacher in Troy, that they were looking for their next steps, should they choose retired for the next few years. There's a real opportunity here. But, you know, I'm a student. There's no resource. So there's a lot of districts. I actually was going to ask you, I mean, these are videos that you buy. I mean, there's so much material online need to you look at online material that we could use. We looked at it all. Yeah. Yes. That was one of the first conversations I have with Christina Harvey in August.
And I learned that this is an Oakland school feel. And you must have the answer for us. So, like, what's a better option? Because I've been going through this five years now. And, she said, it's not an easy answer, but I'll help guide you guys through what your options are. And she also would come to C meetings as well. There is online, to be honest, there are a lot of illegal copies of the current resource that people like to share with each other. There is not a better option. I was just curious, though. There's it's still on DVD. It is still a DVD. Why?
Why DVD this time? So why not just an online V? Sort of so that it could be. The media itself is not the most modern company, which is the corner of puberty videos that you watch. Surely if you go to their website, you will see maybe the high school kids should have stayed? Yeah. When we would try to get a hold of. I would like your column a few times in a row to get a man. Oh, really? No emails because they don't want to patronize their, like, the updated resource for list. No.
That's also kind of change. So each school, each elementary school needs to keep a DVD player that they would keep a DVD player. What they end up doing with it, I will let them decide. But they will have, no longer have to listen to this kind of stuff. So you go, if you could take that DVD converter. Yeah, I know, are we allowed to do that? Is that does the copyright allow it? Yeah. This is not something I've looked into just for the time, but I that.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Dave. And thank you for that answer. Proving that's just the order that you want to share, right. For elementary principals. And really, I'm curious, why didn't we watch. Kind of just had a movie. Know, some of those minivans we can arrange so that if you had, I'd encourage you not to be like, well, you know. File here and. Oh, okay. And middle school that. That's okay.
Since they didn't get her tape, it's going to be here for both of those, right? That they built it up. All right. So we are excited to be here to talk about, geometry and and our tree. Kate and David have worked very hard with our high school teachers to examine, different opportunities as we continue our progression through mathematics resource adoption. So, as you know, in 23, we started with middle. We've moved our way of, high school.
We've adopted algebra as it impacts high school as well. And now we're talking about geometry. So, Kate and David, I'm going to take away from here to tell you all the details of the last a little over a year, but even more so. Yeah. And really, with our geometry team, this is our second year piloting and honest geometry piece and working with them for this prior year. So our current resource that we're, we're using or have been using prior to this pilot, is about 15 years old. And in that time we've, engaged in a lot of learning around
secondary math instruction and teaching practices, and, math pathways in that secondary that tie to, opportunities in both secondary. So really the guiding document for us of course, is our standards. In addition to our math standards, we also have they don't get a whole lot of, of attention. But our standards for math, math, the practice, that really are these are the ways of thinking that we want kids to engage in when they are working through math content. So we have like our content standards, and then we have all of these ways
that we want students to engage in mathematics, because we can't teach kids every single piece of content. But what we can teach them are the practices that they can use that will always work in whatever kinds of unique problems they encounter. So in thinking about those, the teachers have a big job because they have to tie together the content and like the, the ways that students, think about like, use mathematics and, and use engage in those mathematics, the standards for mathematical practice. So this is a a guide there.
So the eight effective math teaching practices also it's kind of confusing. But these are developed by the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics. And this is the way that teachers engage in intertwining that content with, with the use of these habits of mind and ways of thinking. Well, I just want to go back. So one quick thing that they point out, which is like this idea of to have kids engage in mathematics deeply, we need them to have tasks that promote, reasoning and problem solving,
procedural fluency that's built through conceptual understanding. And then that whole big box is all things that have to happen through mathematical discourse. So when we're thinking about looking for a resource, we're looking for something that was task based, that built procedural fluency through conceptual understanding and really emphasized opportunities for our students to talk about mathematics with their teacher and with each other. So in that process, if you've seen this before, this we developed this vision for mathematics, with our middle school team,
and also with our high school team, this is our Troy vision for mathematics. So we want kids to develop a deep understanding and to, experience wonder, joy and beauty of mathematics. No quick question. Why don't we have, like, build fluency in any of these? I think the fluency comes with that deep mathematical understanding. If you understand mathematics deeply, then you're able to, think about it through the problem solving lens, but you're also able to do those computations that are able to work with the numbers.
You're able to, manipulate the equations. That's all really part of a deep understanding. We want both. I agree in one both. We want both deep understanding and fluency. Yeah, we want both. So, I've learned a lot from Kate and all our hard work this year about our current status in mathematics and specifically geometry. What we've learned about geometry is that we've been using our current resource for approximately 15 years, and we're not alone. I've also learned going around to different county, colleagues to try to learn from the sphere.
Geometry is a tricky subject, to find something that is meaningful and doesn't just reduce it to learning about a series of shapes. If you're thinking back to your geometry experience on off years having PTSD too, but really enjoy. We have been using a modified version of Big Ideas, for the past 15 years, and our teachers have been working hard at the building level to make the meaningful curriculum meaningful for their children. But as a result, there is a decent amount of misalignment among buildings. Because everyone has been trying to make that work for them. Currently, that resource teaches topics in sequence
rather than building a storyline of conceptual understanding over time. Our teachers also reported about this tool that it did not provide the tools or strategies to support them in making geometry accessible for all students. We have also been doing in our current status a lot of learning. So, prior to my time, I know that Christine and Kate have learned from Doctor Ted Co and doctor Mike Steele. They've also been doing, visits with Ann Arbor Public schools like Oregon and Farmington, and more specifically, in recent future, we've had some districts visiting us to learn about our experience, too, as they go
get ready or going through math adoptions from Rochester, Clarkson, Finola. So lots of collaboration across that across the county as well too. So to let you know about how the pilot actually functioned in 2425, the team began by piloting Open Up Mathematics. 70% of teachers participated in that pilot. They piloted open up Mathematics for 41, but they ended up discontinuing discontinuing their pilot due to time constraints. Open up. Mathematics is built for a block schedule, and they could not find,
an easy, systematic way to make it work within our schedule. That still keeps the same story line. So in quarters two, three, and four, the team began piloting AI and mathematics and began to develop a positive orientation to it. However, the team still felt like they wanted to see an entire year from beginning to end to make a, a professional, informed decision. So this school year, and then, of course, they also had monthly cohort meetings and job embedded PD last year. So this year we continued the pilot to give them all the opportunity to
to see the beginning of the of the units all the way to the end. 88% of honors geometry teachers have been piloting, and this is their first year of piloting. Then 100% of geometry teachers have been piloting for most of them. For many of them, this is their second year. We've also had some turnover in which teachers teach their kids. So they started it from day one to see the beginning parts of it. They've had monthly cohort meetings with job embedded PD, and we've also partnered with Michigan Math and Science Leaders Network to make this specifically work with track, because something that we'll preview for you later on in this is we're very happy
with this resource and our implementation also taught us the things that we think it can do better to. And so Ms.. Allen has helped us with that process both. So our mission Math and Science Learning Leadership Network, they like David said, they've come in to help us facilitate our monthly meetings. They've really they've, led us through a series of professional development tailored to instructing with, illustrative math, helping teachers understand the tools and resources that are in that curriculum.
It is a different way of teaching geometry than they have been accustomed to. And talking to folks all around the county, something that we're learning is that our way of teaching high school geometry has largely been a repeat of middle school geometry. And so what our standards are actually asking us to do is to take on a transformation based approach to geometry. And that's a new ask for our teachers. And that's not uncommon. That's what all of the other folks that I've been talking to around the county say that they are learning as well. And so it is, it is a lift for our teachers,
because if there's a level of rigor that they hadn't necessarily been, using before. So throughout this whole process, what we have found is that I am does align with our TSD vision for mathematics. It also aligns with other, in core, aspects of our organization, such as the portrait of a learner, a commitment to deep learning, our commitment to equity and inclusion and access for students.
As you this might be a little bit of a repeat, but the I am philosophy, when we really think about what this curriculum does really well, and we will talk later about some of the things that we are going to adjust is that it is really a problem based, student centered approach to teaching and learning. And so I really love that graphic of like that with the little squiggly people. And we like squiggly people. I know we do, but this one really illustrates like the difference that in approach, in an I am classroom.
So the teacher poses a question to the students, making using all sorts of tools to make sure that they understand the question. The kids have time to work alone and think about this question. The kids interact with each other and then a direct instruction moment happens. And this is kind of a flip of what we've done in the past. So in the past we would direct, instruct and then react to what the students got or did not get from my lecture. In this model, what happens is that I, as a teacher, get to walk around the classroom and see what my students are able to do
and where they are struggling. And then I tailor my direct instruction to the students in the room in that moment. So it is the best type of direct instruction that you can have, because it's not based on what I thought kids knew when we walked in the room. It's based on all that formative assessment data that I'm gathering by seeing what kids are doing individually on their papers, by listening to their conversations. And then I'm direct instructing at the at the end of the, at the end of really each activity, and then also at the end of the lesson.
And that repeats at the unit level. And also at that. And like throughout the entire course. So know in addition to that, we've also found alignment with this curriculum in these other, future indicators of success such as the S.A.T. and the AP, AP exams. So we look at these kinds of when we look at these released questions from both the AP and the SAT, we see we see problems. Right. This is not rote questions. These are not like plug in shove. These are word problems where students have to reason about mathematics
and when they are really competent with their standards for math, math practice, they have habits of decoding and thinking through problems like they're prepared for these kinds of assessments as well. So what's the difference between these two classes? Because we've now been talking about both of these courses with you. So what's the difference. So in our geometry course we're really focusing on a conceptual understanding of proof conceptual understanding and application of geometry. In the honors course we're doing conceptual understanding along with an application of bridge.
We're digging more into algebraic applications. Application of geometry. We're going into additional and more advanced trigonometry concepts. We're offering more extensions. And also moving at a quicker pace than our geometry course. So, we have surveyed our teachers who have been helping us in this pilot, see what we need to think about at school and some positives and celebrations that we'd like to point out is one asked in 10 or 15 of the piloting teachers feel confident using I am and three felt somewhat confident using IAM
13 and 15 felt confident navigating the actual resources and platform. There is a lot on the platform, so we saw that as a win that they knew where to go and and felt comfortable navigating it. 13 and 15 teachers who experienced the curriculum also felt that it moved us closer toward our goal of implementing a problem based, student centered math curriculum. And, we have a few quotes here that highlight, that they enjoy, that students understand the why behind math, that they can approach problems in multiple ways that they're up in discussing at the whiteboards. They also appreciate that they can see a storyline
throughout the unit that skills told us throughout the year that skills don't just end unit by unit, and that students are always expected to explain their thinking versus just get to answer. Our teachers also, though, told us about additional challenges that, provided robust feedback and that we have been working in tandem with them to respond to so 13 of our 15 teachers felt like they needed more support with communicating with parents about what their children are learning in in geometry. And so we have talked with our teachers actually, literally today.
And then also on March 20th, we spent a lot of time with our teachers, having really candid conversations about what adjustments should be made, should this be the right resource. And our team felt confident in the resource, but also felt that things that would be supportive would be a printed workbook, again, of actual resources that go home. They felt that extra practice is needed for fluency and that we could provide that with a common tool called Delta math. Some of our teachers are already doing for that doing that because they identified it. But we wanted to have like a system wide discussion of what to all get.
And we are very proud of, like the conceptual understanding kids get. But we also know that after they've learned through conceptual thinking that they do need to practice this out for fluency, we also need to spend a little bit more time as a team just digging into what the resource offers. Because I am does provide a daily lesson summary of what's learned, as well as family resources for units that can be posted. So the team we've talked about needing to systematically agree what gets posted and where within Schoology and when. So that were all communicating the same thing. A lot of these problems though,
they are for sure not only our adults who've been working hard to implement it. It's just like year one challenge, just getting through something so new and honestly, that requires so much thinking and willing to play involved. 12 or 15 teachers also felt that they needed more tools, to support struggling learners. This is something that we are challenged by as a team, because the resources do call out a lot of items for what we can make for struggling learners, and we do think that our teams need more support from us on how to utilize those. So, for example, I was just looking at this. Okay.
Today on page 61, lesson four, it says on the side access for students. On the note on the side, there will be a note on many of the pages of what you do if you observe something. This is specifically a support. If you have students who need visual spatial support. And it talks about how you should highlight the graphic in order to help orient them. A few pages later, a few pages later, it talks about if you have a child with means, memory, or organizational support in mathematics, what type of anchor chart you should provide so that they can have examples of subtracting negative numbers, to recognize as they're working.
So they are there, the teacher moves, but we need more time to unpack them as a team to do it. Well, additionally, though, we do think that extra practice with Delta math, which allows you to create more problems for practice and show more clear examples, would be useful for all students who are continuing to lean into tier two work and Udall supports. I am is built on a UDL framework, but it's just it's a lot of work to teach in that really, positive. But what is for UDL stands for Universal Design for learning.
And it's essentially a set of practices that make the floor of entering a task easy for all students. But as a facilitator of learning, you can continue to stretch those who understand it. So like access, meaning and Delta math is an additional basis so it doesn't feel like I am. UDL is like, a framework, like a way of thinking and doing for kids. Adult math is an actual like resource that we would be purchasing and that we'll be talking a little bit more later. I would allow our instructors to say we covered this concept.
I do think my students need more practice than I am. Provides. I'm going to go on this resource how I'm what I need, and it creates the practice for the students. And it's not a new you. New resource teachers used it when we had big ideas. Teachers also use things called like Cuda software. Teachers use this. It's a we've always had these kinds of tools, that help us create additional practice. We're just trying to like David said earlier, systematize like this is what it's practice for. So when you talked about like we've been using this for 15 years, and part of the problem is kind of like this inconsistency across the district.
And this is kind of part of what you're talking about. Like some might be using this for extra and some might be using that. Yeah. So you're trying to say were of any use of this and one cannot explain the journey to me. Step one was trying to get everybody into the same resource. It didn't work well with the first resource. It didn't fit. It didn't work as intended with the vision we had set. This was the second resource tried. We did encourage the group start from that. Like, we have to implement this so that we see how it works for children. And then the team has identified this at these additional areas. So what we're going to propose ultimately at the end is that we do,
as a system, agree that we also do some active literacy practice. Our our teachers also felt challenged, though, by the students who get things quickly and that they need more extension. There is extension built within them. But we believe that what we talked about with our team of how do we solve that thought? Ultimately some of that, but really what they wanted was more time as a team to get together in their cohort and make a lot of those activities. So that was a request that came from them. And something would be suggest and help me understand that. So when you have, a classroom and you have a set of students
and you're working on this workshop based model that you're doing, and you mentioned that there's a set of students that get it, kind of not bored and twiddling with something else, so disrupting. And then there's a set of kids that need additional help. And you have shown in that picture how to go where do not how does the teacher go about helping all of them and yet trying to put all of them together, that that's where I get conceptually. How do we work with that? Yeah. So I think that's that is the, the age old question, right?
No matter what resource you use, no matter if you're teaching now or 100 years ago, how do you meet the needs of all of your students? And so what we have to do, what what this resource allows us to do, is that it gives us a learning target that's very specific for each lesson. And it gives us all our, a bank of resources that we can use to get students to that learning target. And it's not a checklist in the sense that every child has to do all of the same activities. It's, they're options for different kids to get to use
what they need to get where to that exact learning target. So in my classroom and in our teachers classrooms that use I am where some kids are working on task one and some kids are working on task two. But when we go to have a discussion about it, we're still working towards that same learning target. So we can still have a productive conversation, a productive direct instruction moment around that specific learning target. So is it easy to do? No, and I don't think anyone has ever said differentiation is easy to do.
But there are parts of this resource that guide us into how to make those instructional moves. We also and included to just a few of the qualitative comments by our instructors of what they were challenged by. And, really what these, comments talk about is continuing to want a few more challenging projects for those who might get things quickly, and then also a few more, practice examples for kids with clearly guided directions and how you achieve that. So that's something that came up again, though,
the plans we developed with teachers, the things we continually came back to, were making a workbook of the actual resources so that, there's that like a series of sheets that are left to be organized, to have things in a clear place with clear examples when you do get home, the Delta mark that we'll talk continue to talk about in a little bit. Co-teach II is the thing that we haven't talked about a ton. Cottage AI is the actual software provided by. I am it does some of the similar, things that Delta can do as far as creating more practice. However, in our
implementation of that tool, we noticed it doesn't do great with graphs. And so it's not quite as as usable as Delta. So we asked we also talked to 287 students via survey. So it's is the wrong word here. But one of the really exciting parts was that of our geometry students who completed this survey. 90% of students believed, based off their experience. And we know that can't be contributed attributed to just the curriculum, but their experience in geometry, that they've learned it's important to try rather than just get things on the first try, which we saw us to be positive.
Christine was teasing me about my decimals here, but I wanted it to round to 100%, because I wanted both up to 14%. They don't and equals 101. And I'm doing the math presentation. So 72% of students believe that the goals of the lesson were right for them. 13.6% of the students in the classroom believed that the work was too easy and 13% exact, but also believe that the work was too hard. This challenges us to continue to do better, but it is also, a good starting point for my from what I assume we might see
on the first year of a conceptual based curriculum, 93% of students in geometry also believe that they can be good at math. I was really proud of your guys's past work to see that translate to that, because I think I was in the 7% when I, the geometry student, our students did tell us, though, some feedback, of course, as well. And they also still asked for a little bit more practice, essentially, you saw that in their open ended questions. So all that to say, here's what our recommendation would be. Our recommendation would be to use, illustrative mathematics with geometry students,
but to also provide additional fluency practice via Delta math and through bound organized student works. So we believe that, that the UDL framework that I am is built on is powerful for children. It has embedded supports and things called out for teacher moves to make for both students with disabilities and our multilingual learners. It calls out a lot to, they're extensions for students who are ready for more. Although we believe there should be more extensions to. There are built in instructional routines that support teachers and students
their activities and lessons that follow a predictable and purposeful structure. For kids, there is practice problem sets built in with cumulative reviews. Again, although we believe there should be more based off of our teachers feedback. So what would we be adding to it? And it's honestly something that I'm proud of. The team of not just having a yes or a no, but a both. And we're the team was proud of this product, but does believe that we should, as a system, adopt additional fluency practice using Delta math. And so I've submitted a quote, in your packets for what that would cost for all secondary students to have Delta math and not just geometry.
And in addition, the printed student workbooks. So there's a quote in your documents as well for what printed workbooks would be for geometry and geometry students. So the Delta math would be like algebra one through like, things. Oh, starting in math. Okay. Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Doing some really quick with a continued support, we'd be offering teachers based on their feedback. Yeah. So, continued support for implementation.
We're going to, of course, have our back. Well, first, sorry, the last couple of centers we have offered, like a summer math summer institute. So it's three days of learning prior to the back to school days. We always have teachers that attend that. Not a huge amount. I think somewhere between like maybe ten tens or so folks, maybe 12. And I don't know, right on there. So we're going to continue to offer that, we will have, of course, our back to school professional learning days. We have our district PD days, and then, teachers have asked
this is like directly from them or what they have requested. Geometry. That's quarterly meetings with us. The fabrication job, embedded learning, and our honors geometry teachers want monthly meetings with us, and support for families. So we like David mentioned earlier, there are some resources that are included. I and through I am what we are committed to doing better is making sure that those end up on our all of our Schoology pages. You know, and easily accessible place for our families.
So that family support materials and the lesson summaries that come with every lesson will be posted, into Schoology and along with those, some of those we've also committed to a digital copy to. Yeah. And we we've also committed to serving we will be serving our families of students who were in the geometry pilot and directly asking them, is there anything else you think you need to support, in geometry? So that we can double check that we've heard from that with our. Course materials team? We've really covered a lot of us.
The things that are asking for help. And then, of course, though, as part of our continued work to refine our curriculum adoption process, we're leaning into, like, our our commitment to monitoring changes and implementation. Although we've done a lot of that this year with the geometry group already. Not just what resource, but how what works. Well and what it means adjusted. So, with you all, we're committed to continuing to examine our how our students perform on the standardized measures of the PSAT and SAT. Our teams also have, an internal common assessment to that.
We be continuing to track to see if kids respond as expected. In summary, we believe that in mathematics is a much improved version of geometry that aligns with our district vision, and that our team has made an important recommendation to still lean harder into fluency for students with the Delta Mac component. We've also been communicating that with other stakeholders who have visited us and are going through similar journey. So that would be our our recommendation for questions might not have does the
and have its own assessments, like are there child learning checks and tests and things like that. Yeah. Do you intend to use them? We we have been using them and we would continue to use them. We make tweaks and those we have questions, but the teams in those and a collaboration meetings have been making those decisions together, which is really great. Do the students get back their assessments with corrections? Yeah, I believe that they get back there. They get to see their, tests. And that's my understanding. Can you confirm that? Because I've heard that students don't get back
their chance with their corrections. I cannot know I have I don't think I've had that, like specific conversations with each every teacher. I, I've, I've. Yeah, I've been bringing it up since the beginning of the year. And I mean, my, my data set is I think every school may be a little bit different, but, I think it is fair, as we talk about even implementing this, you know, any new curriculum is is do the students have meaningful access to their test.
So five minute reviewing a test you've taken? No, that's not enough. Yeah. It's more common practice than you might think. Yeah. At the high school level. So I think that's a question I had to put that in as a bigger. Yeah. Yeah, I've gotten similar feedback. The students don't have access to the interactive test material so that they will see those mistakes and learn from it. And, the workbooks are those I am prepared workbooks or those workbooks that are teaching other items in multiple times.
So the the team has we had that conversation with the geometry teachers and what they have, the questions that we have a bound workbook that they have created that's like, I have some modifications based on decisions that were made as a cohort. Okay. And then the, the extra practice, with Delta math, you guys had mentioned that the students would have access to that, but would those be practice sets created by the teachers or would those. Yeah. So it's like a it's,
it's an online platform where I can go in as an instructor and I can and I can create like a, it's like a bank of questions and I can go through and say, I need practice with solving. I'm going to use a math seven example possessed class and I'm in right now. I need to, practice solving, you know, a single variable equation with the distributive property. Okay. I want five levels, and now I want ones that look like this, and I can pick those and I will compile a worksheet for me. I can assign that digitally to students. Or I can print out of paper, paper.
And then I can give it to kids and we can work on it. So like we are all doing this already, we're all using either co-teach II or some resource to make some extra practice for our kids. No matter the any resource I've ever used or anyone has ever used, we're always creating some extra responsive practice for kids or some some activity something. So it allows you to do that in a really easy way that's a little bit less, picky with graphs and tables like David mentioned than the co-teach. I
and will that will you may not know the answer to this now, and that's okay. But, in any case, my suggestion would be that this would be created for every single topic. So that way, yeah, you can save like banks, like I can create a bank of resources to and I can share it with like, say mentor teachers, geometry as well. And I created a bank and I want to share this or I can share it with her. So yeah. And we can we can collaborate around those fluency practice. So that's the teacher's responsibility to create these banks.
Or is teaching and learning going to create for each topic and provide or, or group of teachers going to create a different topic. And yeah, so the the Bank of questions already exist. It's like just picking them by standard basically about what I want. And so Delta math provides the oh oh. And then from Delta math, they can pull from the bank of questions to create the resource that they would then share with the students. As to be able to take and Delta maths I'm assuming I guess that questions. So how you solve them is still the I am method and different way.
And it's really about like yes, that procedural like the just fluency right. Procedural form for that. Once that's been developed kids can sell them any which way that as a kind of I guess that's to me that's the this this was something I brought up three years ago. I appreciate that we're going towards the deeper learning of math. I know that feedback and services come back for the middle school math that there's just, you know, and as a parent, I can attest to it. There are just not enough resources.
And yeah, my kid may understand something, but understanding doesn't necessarily lead to procedural fluency. And, you know, one is the states in retention position. He can do things, but it takes him way longer than it really should. If he both understood it and had enough practice where he could repeat it. So I'm glad to see that with this geometry, we're thinking about that up front. And I would just, encourage the team that this,
you know, Delta math is not just there, but that it is expected that the teachers actually provide that value. Yeah, yeah, but that that extra resource is provided on a regular on a regular basis because, not enough of, of those proficiency practices are necessarily coming. Yeah. They're coming. And it's in addition to they want it and they use it. It's actually should be part of the requirement that each class or each section should have this many repetitions to be done, because
that is one of the biggest feedback we get is that students may be understanding the concepts, but they're not able to quickly do those things, which allows them go to go to the next level easily. Our team is challenged by the same feedback, and this adoption has driven a lot of those conversations, those conversations we had with all secondary math teachers in March, based software. So that is largely the work of next year, is how do you continue to learn into a problem based concept
version of mathematics and provide enough practice that students are fluent enough to do problems that we agree, and then go ahead, go ahead. Does Delta Map help you with your differentiation problem? So you can give students that might be struggling with, you know, certain concepts for our practice and those that are ready from ready to more so you can use them in everything is really a tool for helping differentiation for sure. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. It's a huge time saver for the teachers
to be able to do that because they all want to do that. But the reality of teaching, you know, multiple preps and learning a rigorous curriculum and, you know, supplementing for the ways in which you think it doesn't quite do well enough for your students, we think built in that makes it possible to do that. Yeah, it's good. I was just, a comment. David, you talked a little bit about communication with parents, and I think that's going to be really important just because I think feedback that people have heard it back, that people have seen on social media, a lot of it revolves kind of around some,
concerns that you've expressed. And, you know, I think Teachers Express too, and so you're addressing this here and you're going to be moving forward. So how are we? And again, this is up to you guys. But like, how are we going to make sure that our parents have an understanding of like we've listened and we've heard we've made these adjustments. This is what you should be looking for, that sort of thing. And I think, I think that will go a long way.
And parents so, you know. Yeah, yeah, they, they get it. Because we, we want to make sure that our parents and community knows that we're being responsive to their concerns. So that was just and it's, really valuable feedback. We'll have to think about teaching our team, about our principles, about how I agree with you, because we do want them to know that we are monitoring implementation, we are listening, and we do make adjustments. Along the lines of the what? I read in a lot to the feedback given
in our first on the guidance for providers, the challenges that people stated in terms of and, you know, being able to differentiate, how much training have the secondary math teachers had to do specifically? One, 205 for the last, the last the past year during our but like our back to school day and also while actually this entire every district really full-day release we've had UDL training. We had, seven steps coming.
Carousel currently. Doctor carousel that came in. She taught that it's that through a UDL framework. That's how to get kids talking, discussing total participation, using sentence stands. Actually really focusing on discussions with the how do you like facilitate a robust discussion with students? That is a full day and it was a full day. So every content area has had that full day. But next step we've been taking in is when Carol returns back, having me be actually job embedded on the spot and showing in our classrooms.
So we have a tentative plan for late October the next year for Carol to do that with our mathematics teachers, for them to see a lab of like what it looks like, and they want us to just call it and see that they're asking for the data that that there's there's a gap there. I was curious, like, are they just like they're like a little overlooked? Yeah, they've they've had a good amount. But now the next step is seeing it in practice. It's been a lot of like, you know, learning in a whole day workshop versus getting to actually like, see it, respond to practice it. I would say that we've also identified as a team here, too, that,
differentiation accommodations versus modifications is a big part of the secondary work in general next year. And we're talking a lot as a team about how we plan for that to match, not just master plan time. And, and you're thinking next. And one more question. As from the board, will we look at like making sure that students have a similar same not even similar same experience? They should be sitting in a geometry class in one school or another get the same. Can you talk a little bit about like how that you envision that like,
because I think at the beginning you said we want to kind of oh, the how are we working to corral that, ensure that the feedback we hear to, you know, and our data suggest that there's some depth here in their particular subgroups of kids too. What's what's your thinking about that. Yeah, I think that a work in progress still it's a it's definitely a work in progress. But one common professional learning through the district days and the job amendments. Yeah. And those like the, the days, the cohort dates that we outlined, like the quarterly days, the monthly days, the that is when the whole, you know,
at one point we did like cat teams or there's only three people from each course that were there like, this is the our whole team, our whole geometry team is there. The whole honors geometry team is there. And they're sitting around the table talking about, you know, adjusting instruction making and assessments, all of those things. So that is really that ongoing support is where a lot of that is going to happen. From the instructional leaders lens to, one thing we started this year is providing the secondary principals of Christine's help as well, like what our look for, as you should see in each content area, because leading a comprehensive
high school is so challenging that we wanted to make it easier. Like, we are five things that we hope you see when you enter the algebra one classroom. And we also included, if not, if you see this, maybe you should consider this coaching. If you see this, a common response could be that it you see this talking will help from there. So we've been trying to help not just our teacher level staff but also our administrative staff know like what it's looking like as amount of words. I mean, I guess what I'm trying to say generally is like, if we're going to buy a resource that's expensive and comprehensive,
we expect our people to use it the same way. Yeah, like so the one building gets the same experience, another building, and then if you don't, there's a lack of scaffolded. Yeah. That was our I think that one of the things that we've seen is we've seen a systemic growth in areas where we have had an opportunity to adapt new resources. So I think about middle school science. The middle school science adopted a new resource in 2019. They coalesced around that, those that resource throughout. And they are a fairly cohesive group.
We look at what's going on across the organization. As we look at ninth grade and 10th grade, Ela right at when we have those opportunities to invest and have a new support, it gives us that boost because our organization 20 years ago did not exist under one school. And right, especially at high school, it was that was just that was not a philosophy that existed nationally around high school. And so we've had an opportunity to do some reset in some areas. And I think every time that we adopt a new curriculum, it is an absolute opportunity for that.
I think one thing that wasn't mentioned that is important to note is we do have professional learning time at the beginning of each day at our high schools and at the end of each day at our high schools, and at the beginning of the day at our middle schools. And that's an opportunity when we have an aligned resource for our math specialists also to be able to push in and work with groups, even within the building. So to pull, even though it's not district wide for algebra one, it's you could pull those 4 or 5 algebra one teachers to meet on a Tuesday morning or Wednesday morning or Wednesday afternoon and talk about, have we committed to unit one housing unit one gone backwards?
So we're trying to find a way in which we can do those big professional learning days across the district. But also how do we have the day? How do you keep the ball moving every day? So it's not just those few times in between. And I think that is a work in progress. And I think will be for a very long time, but that those are levers that we can pull, along that line. And one of my particular concerns is, you know, the teachers feeling that they have what they need, which sounds like there's some good information there.
But I'm concerned because when we were looking at the budget, having to cut half $1 million from PD while we're rolling out, you know, like middle school, still fairly new to this. And now we're adding another grade level. And then and now we've got, you know, we also have a big roll out this K five Ela. So I'm I'm concerned that our like our our resources going to meet the demands because we all know that how teachers are able to implement this is going to directly affect our student success.
So not the I don't expect any answer or anything, but just you know that budget pieces concern. Yeah. Yeah that and that that particular reduction from teaching and learning is with that in mind is is keeping is keeping is prioritizing what we know are coming in terms of the Ela implementation, our continued focus on math at the middle school up on particular, and then leaning into the work that's being done at the high school. So it's prioritizing those and making reductions around, okay,
those areas like social status, for instance, take it pausing some work over here or shifting some work. Yeah. To the highest, for instance. And and leaning on the ISD for help, at no cost to the district while prioritizing those others. I think that's an important point. Yeah. Okay. I have to come. We have a. Yeah. By Sean or a comment. So even with the middle school math and the changes that we're making with, you know, algebra one,
and then geometry now, the way that math this will be taught is different than before. And so and it's not just, you know, within our district, but, you know, some feedback from other districts, you know, at Bloomfield Hills is that if you need a long term sub, you could even get somebody who's a retired math professor from one of our local universities and now does not know how to teach the math for three months. So, I know that those things
are not always within our control, but, considering that, you know, even teachers who piloted it last year had access to it for all of this year so far, still feel like they need additional support. You know, were there had there been any discussions or just keep that in mind that we are going to be situation we're going to need to have somebody step in in this for a week or a month. And if they don't know how to work with the resource, then that's, that's a problem. Yeah, yeah.
Is it the resource or the teaching method. It would be both with the curriculum in the county. But I was going to say, maybe someone at the universities are moving to the workshop model as well. So it isn't like people don't, know how to use a workshop. No, no, but they may not know how to, you know, if you've been teaching geometry the standard way that it's been taught for the last 50 years, and all of a sudden now you have, a new way of teaching it, and you don't know how to teach it.
That's right. That's. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just I'm talking about, it could be content, but I'm just saying, you know, be careful of assuming that others aren't using the workshop as they are, that this year Bloomfield Hills had a long term geometry sub who's a former O.u math professor and so we have them in. Well, we had an internal one where we, you know, recently had somebody. But, but I'm but I guess I'm just saying be careful about generalizing because other people are using the workshop.
So some people don't know how to use it, but some people do. So hey, it's not the body. No, but I think the way of that math is not taught. So I don't know if the word is explicitly anymore or whatever it is. It's, this is how you, you know, this is your format. Plug it in. I think we we probably, you know, it is possible that we are going to one into those issues from time to time. And if you need to have somebody in there for a month or a week or two months. Yeah. And we have like, like our math specialists are available to help support in that role.
Whether those people decide to take advantage of that support, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. You know that the long term subs says, no, thank you, I'm good. Then the math specialists can't always help. Tell them, like how the curriculum should be taught and helped guide them through using the resource. But like, we are fortunate to have, you know, math specialists in the building, available as well. Like, there we have people that are always happy to help long term subs or folks,
learn how to use the resource if they're willing to do it. What are their language skills that they're not? What is that mean for the kids in that class? And that teacher's like, I'm not interested in like, I didn't teach it that way then, but and I know it's not foolproof, but to your point, you're right. There's we have to we have to think broadly. Yes, sure. Worst case scenario. Right. Worst case scenarios. We have someone in there that isn't doesn't want help and needs it. And I'm sure hoping for an answer.
And I take it to heart. We say about one data point, but we're also talking about 15 teachers. And so one out of 15 is is a significant percentage. And so if if in a high school I have 5 or 6 geometry teachers and I have one that comes in, there is a long term subs. And they're not familiar with teaching this new math. One out of six is not an insignificant percentage for an extended period of time. I would like to believe that, you know,
in the confessionals in our district, if that, that we would have some who is totally not capable of if somebody is refusing support and insisting on teaching your way, I would like to think that we have enough in kind of leadership when to say this, so that there are some. It's hard to point because I know that that based on, two comments. And you don't have to answer this, just more comments.
One is who we're talking to, our, cap kids. One of the things that they mentioned is service and that, they're worried that the surveys are not anonymous, and the student feedback is kind of like, yeah, we will only give you we want to kind of give you a positive because we are worried that we may have repercussions, possibly, or some things like that, because they're all tied to, Schoology and Hives and stuff like that. Whatever survey they take. So you don't have to, so these are examples of ones that are not when teaching and learning does our surveys, we do not tie them as other.
Our schools sometimes push out surveys that go into their school, which is that counts. But ours all go through just a straight on, form. Yeah. Microsoft form. Good partner acquisition for sure. Yeah. And any survey, we are all way too busy to be drilling down to, say, any student, whether it's a teacher or student who said, why, maybe they're able to do that automatically or that they shared. They're the ones that automatically collect through some kind of standard stuff. And so I think that part of that, because that's,
that doesn't work but doesn't alleviate their concern. Right. And that but the fact that you're not going to look into what, you know, 1500 students said is one thing, but the fact that you have a bunch of high school kids who are afraid for every single percentage point on an essay or an exam, that this is this speaks to a bigger problem. But yeah. So no, no, I think their point is that they're maybe more positive than being realistic, because their concern is that it's their perception. I hear you. Yeah. It's and that perception creates
maybe a survey results that potentially are skewed. Just keep that in mind and not saying anything else. We just try to figure out how how if any of that data is valid and so on. My other question is you've talked about, before school, before high school and after school for middle school, these job of embedded class, training or PBS's what happens to, let's say, geometry classes that are live at Boland Park and they are actually in a middle school and how are they getting the job?
And but and PD, do they go to a high school to do that, to collaborate with others? And do they have time to do that even so, the, middle school teachers that teach geometry are part of our geometry cohort. Okay. So they have to go to try to get this drop many discussions. And yeah, and we all travel right. So sometimes we go to Athens, sometimes get to try sometimes if you're at services so everybody is traveling to us. But that but the allotted time and then the contract is right before school. Right after school. Not done all day.
So, I mean, the full day, I think I was talking about during the week. Oh, yes. That's where we were the she's talking about the meetings are in the week where you might have. Yeah. Yeah. Before having meetings. Yeah. So those are really those are 20 minute professional learning community check in okay. In times. And so those would be times in which they would. So for some of our across our middle schools we often connect the teachers across the early starts and the late starts. And they zoom with your teams, with each other, and connect to that way
during their time in the morning, but oftentimes just in full transparency. Most of the most of the teachers who teach geometry at the middle schools are teaching one subject. Yeah, one. So they're teaching the variety of other things during that time. So it's not their whole schedule. So they're probably tending to the other four sections that they have during that time. So that's why we have to figure out how to, how to, to help them improve their learning as well, because they're missing out on that early morning session.
Well, whenever the group comes together, they're part of the group come together. And that's when that that's when the concentrated learning happens during that time. So we want to make sure that they're attached to that group okay. And you intend like a common pacing or no. Yeah they do connotation. So that would help too okay. Yeah I don't know what that means. So that means they're kind of all sort of theoretically connecting like I don't know, quarter one. They've gone through the doors together. I yeah, they've done a great job with that. Okay. Great point officials.
Are you going to talk. Yeah. Yeah. Yes we've asked and that that's a good point. That's all right. You don't need to go to the bathroom before we talk about okay. Yeah. They want to be comfy. Okay. Let's, get back here. 80788. So nine. Let's go back. Oh, right. Sorry. My birthday. I know, but all right. Our next item. Okay. Any more questions with the geometry? A real good. But anyone else we want to go first then.
Okay. All right. Middle school map. Okay. So, middle school math update. So, this harkens back to at the beginning of this year, this, calendar year. So in January and February, I had an opportunity to bring to the board additional data, specific to student achievement and enrollment, two key areas in middle school math. And during that time, as we were in February, we renewed our collective commitment, board and administration to wanting to continue to collect feedback, perception data from our families, our community.
And at that time, the board had input on some additional topics that they wanted to see and that sort of any, you'll remember that in early March, I shared a timeline with you, for the distribution of our survey that, that we were moving forward in March with that survey. That survey closed just the Friday before spring break, before y'all left. I do know that there was a lot of interest that if at all possible, could we possibly bring some data today? And so today we're going to be able to provide some of that data.
It is just fresh for us. As a team, we've only had a little bit of time to look at it. But I do think it will start to, continue that conversation. So and thank you, Christine. And it is, you know, all of us all in this group as well as, Jordan Davis, who's not here with us tonight, but he is, a really critical tool in the work that we continue to do. And, you know, we spent some time earlier with the board, and I know that, you know, that's because you were pivotal in ensuring that that position happened for us with bringing Doctor Dennis on board,
but using his expertise as we work through this process around data is exceptionally helpful. And I hope that we continue to commit to providing the space and time for that to be done well for our organization. In historical context, in the 2223 school year, just, parking is back a little even further. We went through the process of adopting a new middle school curriculum. We named at that time. We have outdated mathematical materials. We were formerly using big ideas. Big ideas did not align with the vision for math that we've talked a lot
about students being doers of math, about deeper understanding of math. And in May of 2023, the board adopted the new curriculum curriculum and the new progression. At that time, our administrative team made a commitment to the Board of Education, specifically to the things that are identified up on that slide that annually we would review our student achievement data through M-step and PSAT. Annually, we would review our student course enrollment data. We would collect feedback from students, family and staff that we would implement and WCA that we would invest in ongoing
teacher support, and that we would continue to build our MTS structures to support student growth. And that's focused primarily on mathematics and Ela. I am proud to share those are annual commitments that we have upheld throughout this process and continue to be those are really important pieces of the work that we do. The Board of Education at that time, talked about wanting to ensure that they were committed to reviewing annual data sets. And we also spent time at the board table talking about an understanding of the implementation timeline of a new curriculum that when we adopt a new curriculum and a new six year implementation
timeline, is really a 3 to 5 year window, that is really where you start to understand the impacts of an implementation of curriculum. There are studies done on implementation dips when we look at how things go. And so we did talk about that with the board. One of the things that was a a significant topic of the board at the time was, you know, historically we use a seven year cycle for curriculum. The board asked in 2023, do we have to wait seven years if this if this goes wrong, do we have to wait 17 so we shared the board then that no, this is we do not have to be in a seven year cycle.
If other concerns arise, you certainly can revisit where we are. So those were the commitments we talked about at that time. I just included this image because I think it's important to remember that we have a pretty significant process when we look at curriculum review, that right now, we would be we would be considered in the implementation phase. Right? So we are in the implementing phase of the I am middle school math curriculum. So the achievement data that we've looked at up until this point, just as a friendly reminder,
we've looked at annually, step data for sixth and seventh grade so far with this new curriculum and the new progression, we have two years of sixth grade math data. So we looked at sixth grade 24 and sixth grade 25. Those are the two years that we have had sixth grade math implemented. We are currently in our third year of sixth grade implementation, but we don't have those tests. Those tests don't take place until later. This month, seventh grade, we only have one year of seventh grade data. That was last year, seventh grade.
We don't yet have this year's seventh grade data, and our current eighth graders are our first eighth grade cohort to go through the curriculum. We have no eighth grade data yet. The performance of three years in this program. But even with the limited data we have, we have, shared with the board the progression of cohort. When you're looking at this slide, I'll just remind you what you're looking at. The class, you're looking at the, cohort growth between sixth and seventh grade of three years. So the blue, the blue, bar
that's there is our current 10th graders. So those are our 10th graders when they were in sixth and seventh grade, when they were in sixth and seventh grade, it was our old system. When we look at the class of 2029, those are our current ninth graders, those students, we had some students who were in and some students who were out. But you can see their progression. And then in the green bar that's there, that's the class of 2030, that's this year's eighth graders. That is our first cohort where all of our kiddos were in mathematics, and all of our students were in the seventh.
We've had lots of conversation at the board table and, away from the board table about what do these numbers really tell us? What are we gleaning out of them from the administrative lens? We've often talked about how m-step is our 30,000ft view of a program, and when we are watching it, we are monitoring for continued growth of a cohort over time. We do also know that there are the like across the cut, across the state. We see districts rebounding from Covid. So is it causal that it's the new curriculum
or our students getting back into their their swing? We don't know. But what we do know is that what we're doing, what we believe that we're doing right now in middle school, math is not causing any harm to our students that they are continuing to grow, and they are actually outperforming the cohorts. The years before that, we broke it down a little bit further. And one of the things, that we talked about, you know, Audra actually brought a lot of light to looking at things this way because one of the things that I believe she said at the board table was, it's really important that we don't just look at proficient and advanced, but that we also look at not proficient
and partially to see how kids are moving throughout the system. So one of the things that we see here, obviously, is we look at that cohort group is that we see fewer students who are, especially in that seventh grade, fewer students who are testing not proficient, and more students moving up to that proficient, or that advanced category. So those were the two of the key academic points that we talked about. This slide is also familiar to you. This is where we looked at enrollment trends in honors math courses on algebra one and above, where we saw our student, we saw our
our student count go up significantly in the 24 school year. So the 24 school year is the first year that our eighth graders got to choose, whether they wanted to go in Honors Algebra one or eighth grade math. We saw an increase of on this chart, 160 students. That's 160 students that year that had not been identified in sixth grade as eligible for honors, that were then able to make that choice for themselves in eighth grade. Of that, those 160 students, we know that
92% of them continued on to geometry the following year, so they were successful in their completion of the honors math. So that's our academic data and our enrollment data as a review, we did launch into our survey perception data, in order to be able to collect feedback from our parents, guardians, students and teachers, you can see here our participation count. So we had a little over 2000, 2000 that that would be a little over 2000 students participate.
We have a total, enrollment in our, middle schools. About a little right around 2800 students. So that's how we got to that. So the total end would be about 2800. So that's how we got to 72%. This survey was given not attached to their Schoology accounts or any other account. It was given to them as a a generic, a generic Microsoft Word. For that, they could just type in the address and then go to that and take it. For our parents, we had a little under 400 student, parents respond, representing only 14% of our parent body.
So a very small number, responding of our parent cohort, we had 21 out of 26 teachers were sent. So, one of the new questions that we asked that we thought was really important that got into the, the meat and the meat of the conversation. I think that a lot of us have been having is about how students feel about their experience in math. So we asked them to we asked both students and parents to select, one of the three choices. So I usually understand the goals of the lesson because the work is at the right level for me. I feel under challenged by lessons and would like
more opportunities for advanced work. I feel lost even after asking questions or reviewing material. So when we look at the parent on the left side, you see parent responses. So 56.5% of our parents, responded that they felt that the student, it was just at the just right level for their student, 16% of parents felt that their students were lost, and 27.4% of our students felt, parents felt that their students were under challenged and needed advanced work. I think it's important to contextualize when we're looking at those, it's 27.4% of the 14% of parents
who responded, which is about 4% of our parent population. Just to contextualize what that number represents for our students, you know, 2000 students, 63.7% felt that math was just right for them. 20% of our kiddos feel under challenged and would like some more advanced work, and about 16% feel lost. I actually, as a parent, thought it was really interesting that the same amount of kids and parents felt lost. I'm wondering if they're from the same homes or different. I think it's but I did think that that was interesting.
For our for our teachers, we had a little this is broken down a little bit differently. And I'll explain why our teachers were allowed to select more than one option. And so some of our teachers did select more than one option. And so we wanted you to understand how they made their selection. So the first the first row, most students understand the goals of the lesson because the work is at the just right level for them. Seven of our teachers selected that as their only choice. They felt that that was the right answer for them, and that's representing 33% of the teachers who responded.
Another seven teachers selected. Most of my students feel lost even after asking questions or reviewing material, and that represents another 30% of our teachers and then one teacher selected. Most of my students are under challenge and would like more opportunities for advanced work. And then the next six teachers picked multiple things. And I think just as a board for context, it's important to know that so well. Two teachers said my students feel both at at the right level, but they also feel under challenged and need advanced work.
Another two teachers said, I have children who are under challenged and need advanced work, and I have students who are lost. That was their two selections and then two more teachers picked all three. I have a mix of all three understood, understand, loss and need additional support. So this was kind of the breakdown from our teachers on their selection. We did have two open ended questions for our staff. This is specific to our staff survey where we asked them about the math progression, specifically 6 to 7 seven and a choice and eight
and what we could do better or different there. And so some of the themes that came from their open ended responses were, we have too much content in honors Algebra one combined with math eight. And we need to fix that. It needs to be addressed. They said they have difficulty with differentiation, like having our kids, in the progression where they are right now, six, seven, eight choice that there's too much difficulty with differentiation, pacing, learning gaps and student support. Five of our teacher stated,
our students are under challenged and need additional advanced work. That's a big issue for them. And four of our teachers said they have a fear that those students, when they finish algebra one, won't be prepared for high school, but those are kids who are currently in algebra and algebra, and we don't have that data yet. But that's a fear that they have. Some of the main themes that came out of the open ended response about the curriculum work, similar to above, when they said they felt that there were insufficient materials, specifically practice problems. And so this will take you back to when Audrey asked who gets dealt
the math we're going to be talking to you about. We want to ensure that we have that same resource for our sixth through eighth grade teachers. So 57% of our teachers said we need more materials, 38% of our teachers, the theme came out. There's not enough scaffolding and differentiation within the curriculum. I'm really struggling with differentiating 33% of our teachers that our curriculum is paced too fast. We need to revisit the pacing, 33% said. Again, we have concerns about algebra one content being combined with math eight, and that is lowering the rigor. There's too much content to cover.
19% of our teachers said there's too much focus on story problems. I'm laughing because I read their responses and some of the responses literally said, all we do is story problems. We need something different. And then four of our teachers, or 19% of them, said they have had negative experiences with the co-teach I tool that's embedded into IAM, which is another reason why we were interested in looking at, the Delta. Our teachers further, we further coded their responses, their same responses about the progression.
So where we got those themes and we coded them to identify what we see here. So 11 out of 21 of our responses really are asking us whether, directly or indirectly, that we need to revisit and revise the math progression of how are we progressing students through math? Eight of our teachers, 38% of them did not comment about our math progression, did not have feedback directly about an F progression. We had one person who talked favorably about it and one with mixed reviews. So that specific feedback is to our teachers, right?
And so we know these are the we've started there because these are the folks who are in the trenches everyday doing this work. These are the experts in guiding us through the work. So this is where we started. We stated here our plan is to dig into our parent and student survey, to code it and analyze it the same. What is that by the math progression? I'm sorry, what is meant by the math progression model? The the the the core sequence. Then math to math seven and then the choice of eight. So we did run the open ended, the open ended teacher feedback through copilot, which is our AI.
So we just asked it to provide a summary of the survey responses. So I know you can all read, but I read it. Overall, the survey reveals significant concerns among the math teachers about both the I am curriculum and the current course progression model, particularly around pacing, differentiation, foundational skill gaps, and algebra. One in eighth grade. Well, some teachers value the instructional philosophy and student discourse supported by I am. The prevailing tone is negative to mixed with why with widespread calls for more balance, clear pathways, and stronger supports.
The overall takeaways are that the I am philosophy has merit. I think it's supposed to say, but the this is I have for you. But the materials are insufficient on their own foundational skills and fluency require implementation one more than emphasis. Differentiation is difficult without structural change to course or curriculum algebra. One in eighth grade is a critical pain point affecting students, teachers, and outcomes, and teachers want clear learning targets,
flexible pacing and defined pathways, not scripted constraints. So we ran this after we had done our own kind of theme catching, and I was happy to see the alignment when you kind of go back and look at those pieces. But I think what we, what we see clearly and I'm kind of going to go away from IEA and back to this, this topic here, these last two slides is we see that there's work ahead. It is without question that the implementation of illustrative mathematics is a challenge for our teachers.
And they're asking for specific supports. Their feedback is is detailed and thorough, things that they would like to see and have to be able to support and do their work better. So what I'm asking of you as a Board of Education is for additional time to review the feedback, collaborate with the team, and to prepare a recommendation for the board at the 428 workshop. So which is what we had originally anticipated in, in our timeline for that survey,
we believe, I anticipate that topics included in our recommendation, and I believe that's based on what I've read through our teacher feedback, is that we would like to look at the adoption of supplemental resources to support student learning. So the Delta math component for six through eight, we would like to convene a curriculum review team inclusive of our middle school math teachers. And then with with that team, we would like to explore accelerated pathways for middle school students and the accompanying curriculum. This,
and this recommendation would, would include us then bringing forward, consideration to the board, a formal recommendation to the board in the winter slash early spring of 27 for implementation in the fall of 27. So this is the kind of sum total where we are right now with our middle school math and our hoped for next steps. Thank you. Thank you for bringing it forward and looking longer than we do in the membership. Any question?
We get so very. Do we typically get that percentage or is that so. We want more teams. Yeah. So we I don't know that we have a lot of good data on what the regular occurrence and feedback rate is for our parents. We used our, power of form to be able to use this, to be able to have this survey, because our previous surveys had been, we had we did not have confidence in who was responding to previous surveys because they were just links, live links that were sent out to multiple people.
Right. Or so. And because responses were identical and they were all come in at the same time, and there would be like a tab on the same response under this, the. So here any challenges for people find, you know, so we use the method that's very common for our families. It's where we house all of our forms in our school. So it's a very common if you're enrolled in the district and have a student, everything goes through that same. So we didn't use a new we didn't use a new method. We tried to find something that was familiar to us. It was so. And when you are looking.
Yeah. How did we get to such high number of student participation when we send them out? Because we gave kids time with us, you know, time to fast. Oh, well there you go. Okay. That's right. So that to them we're going to give time and we're going to do that. Yeah I think I do a survey. You know. Yeah. But my work network experience to finish that for you wouldn't be at that. Okay. So it seems like we have two pieces here. So there's the kind of the iron curriculum piece.
And then there's the sequencing piece. So I'm looking at next steps. What are the challenges with looking at course sequence for an implementation of ball 26. So if we were going to change of course sequence and have an accelerated pathway that was different, we would need to adopt a curriculum to deal with that accelerated ones we don't currently have. So there are different accelerated pathway curricula. So I am has a version. There's other ones that exist.
So we would have to go through that adoption process with our teachers to understand what that looks like. I think one of the other pieces is we've we've learned a lot since 2223. A big piece of learning is that we really need our teachers to be advocates in wherever we're moving in. And when I look at the feedback from our teachers, 57% of our teachers are asking for us to reconsider, a group are not. And so we need to have them in a room to really talk about what that means.
And one of the wonderings that we have when we look at their feedback is we've noticed that when we read their responses, most of our teachers who are teaching sixth grade and seventh grade are feeling more positive about their experience than our teachers who are teaching the algebra one eighth grade. Because of that mix that's going on in the mixed class and especially the grade playing there. Okay, so there's a lot of there's a lot of feedback around that. What do you mean next class. So like the the honors algebra one has eighth grade students
that it thinks it always did. No. So when big ideas kids would take six, seven, seven, eight and then just algebra one. Right. But but 80% of algebra one was already what was taught in that seven eight math. Yes. But now there's a perception or reality that we've pushed up these eighth grade additional students are saying, but those standards were always there. They were just taught. A lot of them were taught twice to the kids taking algebra one, as opposed to them seeing it for the first time in eighth grade.
So there are some eighth grade standards that are moved to that. Yeah. I mean, when you guys presented this to us in 2023, was that that algebra one was always 82% of algebra one was what were the eighth grade standards? It's just before the kids were taking the accelerated pathway would see it in math 78 seventh grade. And then through about January or the middle of January, it would be repeating all of those eighth grade standards again, and then February ish would get the new ones. So I think that's the so calling it makes these kind of so weird because it was all it was.
They were always there. That was but not like and in that formal algebra one class. So with the new sequence, like there are concepts that in math eight, you don't dig quite as deeply into as you do in algebra one. So like those repeated ideas that we kind of leveraged that fact to when we did our curriculum mapping, to say there's probably about four units or so of math, eight, a little bit less. And then the algebra one content. So
kind of repeated. But that really like in the algebra one class, they're digging deeper into some of those things. But yeah, the, the condensing in the other version just happened earlier. So in six, seven means all of six and half of seven, seven, eight means all of eight and and half of seven. So the condensing was happening in the lower grades. And now that condensing is happening, in eighth grade. And so the eighth grade teachers, it's interesting to like a lot of our eighth
grade teachers had never taught sixth grade or seventh grade. So they weren't the kids just came to them already ready, like, because they were competing. They were in some ways they were they were very old for the first 4 or 5 months of the school year, whereas now they're not. Or now these kids are seeing it for the first time in algebra. In algebra one honors. Yes. And they never were part of that condensing that happened in the lower grades. Yeah. And I think one of the pieces that we, we want, we have an open wondering about
is given the feedback, it's from our teachers who are teaching the honors algebra one with eighth grade standards on it because they feel like it's too much. And our sixth and seventh grade teachers are fairly positive. But when we have the conversation with them about do we explore a six, seven, seven, eight, those sixth and seventh grade teachers are not going to be the ones who have the condensed classes where all those things get pushed in. So are those going to be the upset teachers? Right? Yeah. And so we need to have them in a room to talk about those things.
We need them to really vet out. Like what are the pros and cons of this happening. Right. Well, yeah, here's what we know. What we know is that we have students and we have families who don't feel seen and heard by our current instruction. And we have to go through the process to look at how we can meet those needs. But we also know is that we are currently serving 150 ish kids annually, more at a higher level than we have before, like so.
There's a huge celebration, but there's also a missing element. So what? As we go through the process and those conversations, we have to figure out how can we continue to do that? Well, also, having all of our friends and our community feel seen and heard in a process that validates them. And so I don't think there's and we have to find a curriculum that allows us to do it. My hope would be, I mean, the Pollyanna in me would really want for it to be I, that we can do better. And an accelerated I, that relates to
what we're doing because that makes sense in our organization. But our teachers and our team need to be at the table with them to really dig, because we, we we can't have 60% of our teachers saying, this doesn't work, but we need teachers to be here at the table telling you this is the right choice because they're living it with them. I have a couple of comments of just like you differentiated and you kind of said your teachers, the at least the eighth grade teachers, are the ones that are raising their hands and saying, oh my God, this is too much. My anecdotal evidence for students also is when I talk
to a few students in my neighborhood, I kind of pull them around and ask, I get the same kind of thing. Sixth and seventh grade, they're coasting and they're like, it's so easy. I get no homework again. And then they go to eighth grade and they go, like, my teacher taught me a unit a week and I am not able to breathe kind of thing. Okay. And of course, it's anecdotal, but the point that I'm trying to get to see this, if you. Yeah, if you have if you're able to dissect the student feedback also similar to how you did the teachers. Yeah. You may see similar plots where the students may say
six seven is easy peasy, just right or too easy for me. Eight and algebra is I am drowning kind of thing. Yeah. That's right. And we have the student feedback does have grade attached to it. So I think that would be good if you can. Yeah. Just look at it that way. It doesn't have to be. Yeah. That is kind of what I brought up. If it was last month or the month before that. So, you know, I took an opportunity to talk about eighth grader, but he didn't really know why. I was asking why. And I think, you know, second is that we need more teachers. What do you mean by that? Well, it would be easier to transition
if there were less students in the class so we could get more support. We go from no homework to easy to to a lot. Yeah. So I think getting that qualitative data from the students to see if there are things that are relatively easy to implement, whether it's and, you know, towards the end of seventh grade or, you know, middle of seventh grade, even if it's two extra practice problems where they're learning to have more math and more things that are due while they're learning seventh grade math.
So when they get to eighth grade, it doesn't go from zero homework to an hour or homework. I don't really do that. It is. But but the students might have feedback where it doesn't require changing curriculum and all of these things to to wear some easy fix list can be made fast so that the kids who are taking algebra one next year can have some of those supports right away. When you're thinking and revisit the what it is that we have tried to do is it is possible some of these it might have been ended early.
What we do we said what should in terms that. Yeah. But I don't think anybody said my homework. That's cause they wouldn't say that. Yeah. Any kid wants more. But when you go that little too fast that. Yeah, we have to practice so that something like bigger than just the eighth grade that the teacher said it's 50 some percentage. Yeah. That that's not all that 50% teach that. No. Oh yeah. So it's like something bigger like perhaps it's the differentiation piece or.
It absolutely is. I think that's the commonality. Right. So with image. So right up your data. Right. And I think the commonality was that like that, that was one thing that came out that wasn't the only thing that came out. Like when we go and look at right, like they talked about a difficulty with differentiation, like right off the bat. Yeah. And I think that that's huge. Right. They then they I think just to name it, they talked not only about like pacing and kind of learning gaps, but they also talked about how language rich the curriculum is.
And so challenges for different groups of students. So whether that are students who, you know, are receiving supports through special education, or students who are receiving supports through, yeah. Like they really talked about and if you don't have a middle schooler or high schooler who's in in math like it is all story problems, everything is approached with at least 2 to 4 sentences and and it's embedded in there. It looks nothing like what we all had when we were in school. But the one thing to I think you guys at least need
to communicate with the teachers is that if we go to I am higher level math geometry, and so on, is that the kids will then, you know, if you go to a math that has less sentences in it, and then once they hit geometry and in ninth grade, they now go to and learn it there. So it's not, but it is because the, the, the goal for us has been from the time kids enter kindergarten and as they're going through the system
that they're kind of working with them, the similar type of. Yeah. Skipping down on this continues to challenge our underachieving subgroups as it is right after. If you look at our struggle with literacy and what subgroups they're in, but we did have seen an increase in our student groups in our Honors Algebra one. And so it was all like taking the class, taking the enrolling. Fabulous. And so if we still continue to see a, you know, 90, 95% success rate, that's wonderful.
Yeah, we're getting them and scaffolding. So we need to look at the success rate. Because if they look at six and seven and they're coasting it. And that's why they took algebra one. And then they're like, oh my God. What if they do that. Yeah. And that's why we looked at that rate. Well I had that number. We'll have that data that yeah, we'll have to see how they do this year. Yeah we did last year 92%. Right. Go out of geometry. So regardless of whether they took it because they thought it was easier. But kids are being stuck. That's right. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah that's it. Yeah that's good. That's
just I guess my fear would be overcorrecting right. Like can't that's not working. Well with what we have and seeing what, what fixes might be available to make the transition easier. We should definitely learn from what we may have done wrong is, and then not run the reverse direction at the same speed. Instead, actually be thoughtful and be careful of what we think
we should be doing. Yeah. Yeah, I know I for one think this, but, if you like comments on a plan, but I think this looks reasonable. Yeah, but I really, You know, support your next step of getting our teachers together. And we have done that to, you know, to really understand, and then because the Delta math is going to be universally available next year. So some of those things
have just yet my. Some concerns as well. And one of the things that we talked about is to share is that, you know, we believe one of our next steps for staff is focus groups, because there's so much in their responses to follow up. And that's well, yeah, we want to know we want to know more when we when we hear this, what does it actually mean. Know so that we can make. Making appropriate adjustments. Yeah yeah yeah. No I think that's that's really important not to have the input.
And when you come back in April with some more information, I think it'd be nice to see the, the students. Yeah. Separation. Yeah. In the parent. Yeah yeah yeah. Before we move on to the next topic, I wanted to ask quickly, what do you guys think of this plan? Any other suggestions? We don't have to make any decisions now. We'll get more data on April 28th. But I just want to get a feedback, you know, and make that recommended. I'm not super conscious about the timeline, but okay, we said we can only decide on April 28th.
Then with more data and more information that you could. Yeah, but then the. The timeline does not excitement. The plan excites me more and seeing the pulled up data I think just to to to talk about that timeline just for a minute is, you know, we. I think the curricular component is the key aspect to that. Right. So like in full transparency, if we're going to adopt, curriculum to be able to support our honors pathway
or an accelerated pathway, we, we, we know now what that looks looks like. Right. And so we would want to give that the full opportunity for those teachers to be able to see. And I think to me that's like the linchpin of making it successful. Based on how we stumbled in 2023. And so like for me, that's just an I think for our organization. We want we want teachers sitting up here just like those little language teachers.
They're sitting there saying to you, this is what we want, and here's what we want, right? It is also want to see the data, the spring results. And we don't see that. And and that's what we're so for for the, for the, the eighth grade. Thank you. So that so I think if and then I think more time is is is better is would a more palatable kind of comment on this. You know, for the two of you I mean, I mean I would expect because I hear that
you say about the curriculum, but is there other recommendations that can be, you know, made to the mentored and then I would, you know, that aren't a melting route for then I would expect that we would adapt what we can, you know, as we go forward. Because I hear that you guys are sending this, you know, I mean, if we could write something that makes. Yeah, that improves learning for our kids, you know, we should do that. Yes. We can, but the judgment would be
and the recommendations from you guys of what is possible on that. But address some of the issues. And you know, that makes sense. You know, to, to implement as part of, you know, the intent of learning what the teachers want to whatever came in. Yeah, right. And I think that's that idea of like getting teachers into a room. It's a person like it's and making that collective decision. And like Christine is saying, so that we all are in agreement. We all set that about what's happening next.
Like it's really tricky. And I would say there were said there are some very candid feedback from the teacher and it doesn't all match. Okay. I think they deserve an opportunity to sit together at a table like this and help one another understand their their perception of what they're seeing and their experience in in their classroom and how it may not be matching what someone else is even hearing. And why is that? And where are the commonalities that we can get behind in order
to make a reasoned, decision? That may well include an accelerated pathway, but what I would hate to see is if someone has some real strong feelings, and a decision is made that doesn't match that, or a decision is made in their voice. Hasn't been, you know, heard it could do significantly more damaging, really. Like some of this to be discussed at a level, at that level
so that we can make an informed decision moving forward and that those that that step is all with us as we move forward and make that recommendation. And I guess my only thing is we're either going to look at data or want to add, so we can't be I mean, this is my direct comment, right? So we're making a curriculum implementation. Where's the data. Where's the data. Where's the data. And now what. We should change things up faster. But that wait for more data. So I mean that's we're either going to wait for an additional year of data
before we make any significant changes or we're not. Well, we're either going to look at data or not, and we can't look at it when we want and when we don't want. So that that's my feedback, right. Like I don't think it's fair to say, well, if we're going to go back to accelerated, let's do it in the fall because we want to do it faster. I mean, wouldn't it be fair to have another year of PSAT eight data to see if in fact, kids that are, you know, if they're if they're doing better?
So is that is whatever you think might be, may those feelings may look different with what the data shows or it might be the same. And, I don't know. I don't know what it will be, but that's my like it's in your data and I. Yeah, I'm thinking of, like, kind of that kind of more what Nancy was saying of that immediacy piece. Yeah. In terms of the data that we saw, like, you know, 15% are saying they're lost and, you know, 20% are saying they're under challenge. So like some of that is the the, the,
the itself, like the data math and some of those things that. Yeah, because we haven't investigated or figured that out. You know, I asked might be part of the solution to. Yeah. Yeah. And part of the solution, my understanding those solutions are going to come back later than any official change in sequencing, am I correct? Yeah, we can then we can have it for next year. Yeah. But if your teachers are already struggling I mean, honestly, yeah. When this survey went, I figured you'd see more about progression in curriculum. I'm sad to see that the curriculum was up as well as progression.
Like both things are concerned. I'm like, oh, that's worse than I thought it would be. I thought it would just be progression, to be honest. So now we've already got teachers who are already like, what about it? And we're going to add I'm like, hey, you're already feeling good. Let's add on this other thing you need to do. I'm going to put myself in teacher brain like, but they're asking for work. Great. Yeah. So we're going to ask them to do it like that informally quickly. I decided to don't ask them not to. I didn't really know that. They didn't tell us I didn't either. I, I did, clearly, but I'm just saying is I wasn't, event sacred.
Is that my anticipation? When the survey went out was that we would mostly get feedback, progression, not curriculum concern. So I'm surprised about the curriculum concern, feedback. That's all. We're I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that this was multifaceted. Yes. Yeah, I hear you. I do, like Nancy said, maybe we will wait for a little more dissection of the data and to talk to the teachers and get a better understanding and come up with some recommendations of what can be done to help the students
now for whatever that they need to be, and whichever can be implemented almost immediately, and then take a deeper dive to understand what should be the next steps. I don't even know if it is the accelerated path. I don't even know if it is any other way. Let's talk to the teachers. And you guys are the experts. Let's move at it and figure that out for you guys. Okay with that? Yeah, I would I'd be interested. I know I'd asked about teacher feedback for the honors geometry. Could we look at teacher feedback?
Because I would like to see, you know, like, okay, but this 57% have concerns about sequencing. Like like what we're positive in that sequencing. So if if we could see that I think that would be helpful to be back. Because this is all weird because algebra one is both eighth grade and that grade. So. To me it would be interesting also what the because my math for algebra one is being taught both in eighth grade
and in. That's good. Correct. No. Oh yes yes yes. No. Straight eighth grade one has eight plus algebra one. Right. Is there a different for the honors algebra one in eighth grade has additional eighth grade. You wasn't the algebra one in high school does not have any of those eighth grade units in it. Because those students took math. Eight was a full year of math and before taking algebra one, which is the differentiator between algebras and honors pharmacy,
their definition of a different content. But it's the same curriculum I am. Yep. The other thing. Yeah. For textbook econ. So they had three solid years of middle school math. And then they went to those algebra one in the normal algebra seven eight. And then and one of them was A67. So algebra honors, I guess the question to the high school algebra one teachers would be about the curriculum and that about pace, the pacing.
Because what the I don't know, the issue that the eighth grade Honors Algebra one teachers might be having is that they're both having to implement a new curriculum and deal with new pacing, because they might have had an issue with the pacing, even if we'd stayed with the old curriculum. And now they're getting a bunch of eighth graders who have never taken math eight. And so in it might it would be an additional data point to see how the high school algebra one teachers are experiencing the curriculum,
and we did not. Absolutely not. You know, this is just the old school. Yeah. Yeah. Because you're you're for the for the middle school algebra one teacher. You're changing two things at the at the same time. That's what I am. And you added three chapters of an existing eighth grade along with the algebra when you said teach them all in one year. That that's what I've heard too, is that's probably the toughest area that's both from the teacher side and the student side. Okay. Anything else then? All right.
So this decision will wait for more information. And thank you for that. Honest and doing okay. Really worked on lots of data I know. And you did it in 2 to 3 days while you were at spring break. Still, thank you so much. So much appreciated. Both for. Your guys there. Yeah. The code of conduct we heard of. And, okay, before we go further, yeah, just a procedural question. It's 9:00 right now. We have code of conduct to go through and kind of three items in the other.
What are you guys feeling like? Is there any item that we potentially could move to the next meeting or next year? And so the strategic planning over, you have a folder in front of you. I put a kind of a summary document on top of it. I would encourage you in my recommendation at the youngest is that you read through all the information into potential proposals to look at. There's a little more detail than any other, but take a look at those and then we can discuss it at the next board. Commitment. And is that okay for him? Just yeah, just, you know, get a okay.
So okay with all of you to move the strategic planner review to the next meeting point in time of which we have talking. Okay. Yeah. All right. So that take for me one item off this list, first reading of the new board policy that when that student and the device goes by, the school, that should be not to long. Let's suggest we do that. Okay. All right. So these two items we can do, we did talk about happen, that we can do also the next meeting that happened feedback. What do you think. Yes. Should do the next meeting or you want to do our next meeting.
Why don't we see where we are? Time one okay. We'll decide at that point where we are time. Okay. All right. For now, just that strategic funding. All right. Thank you. Could have contact that. Sure. So you got a lot of documentation over break from from the. It's the code of conduct and the athletic handbook. They are two different documents that aren't together. Our code of conduct is, formally and a little book that looks like this for those of you. And this is very similar. Just a comment on here. And it was last updated in 2018.
It, was previously coupled with, a lot of language. So it's 70 pages long and it was what I would loosely call a student handbook, but really it talked about it was duplicative in nature and not aligned at all to our board policies. So, a somewhat dangerous document for us because it would there's conflicting information in it. So, we are proposing the one that was shared with you, that's about 15 or 16 pages long. It was created by Miller Johnson. Miller Johnson is who provides us with our board policy updates.
So it is an aligned document between the two of them. Miller Johnson drafted it, formatted it, and has provided it for us and all of the clients that they work with, our team here in at, here at TSD, we worked through it with building principals as the entire assistant principal cohort, our supervisor for wellness and community engagement, our central office leaders. And actually, back in 2020, 2021, I had a parent group that came together to talk about what areas of the code of conduct they had questions and concerns about.
Those primarily fell in. Just so you know, our dress code, our, cell phone policy, those were the things that came out of that parent group. Those are separate from the code of conduct that we wrote separately, and those have been embedded into the code of conduct. So when you read it, you would have seen our updated dress code, which had student feedback and surveyed with feedback on parent feedback, teacher feedback. Same thing with our cell phone policy. So those have been embedded into the code of conduct. It's more succinct. We've added some additional, areas of categories
for discipline, including discriminatory harassment. That one was particularly important because as an organization, we've been really focused on trying to identify, culturally insensitive language and how we are working with students on that. Currently, it is currently discriminatory harassment and culturally insensitive language hate speech is categorized either as bullying, harassment. So it's in this big nebulous bucket. And by naming it specifically, we're going to be able to track it better, get better and better data on it.
Our process would be if the board adopts the new code of conduct, that we would align our power school language with our code of conduct language, so that we're coding things the same way that currently doesn't exist either. Restorative language is also present throughout the entire code of conduct. That is something not only are we legally responsible for, but deeply committed to as an organization. Families will sign that document annually through their enrollment process. And because it is a digital document and not a tiny little book anymore, we can annually update to whatever we need to
and hopefully make it a much more fluent process that so what questions that we have about code of conduct, what we talk about. I have a very simple, stupid question for the dress code that clearly says you need to wear a shirt, a pant or a bottom and and shoes. What if you wear a dress? What if you have separate top and bottom? So it just is a covering of the top and a covering on the bottom. It does allude to skirts though. Skirt. It does a to but it doesn't say. I mean if you wear a dress, I mean specifically the shirt which is has a front and a back,
to to bed. But where does the breath come in? I think it's just the essence of it is that they're covered. Okay. So it is a shirt address is like a shirt then? I would say. So it's described as a top a, I mean it's a described as being okay with a front, a back sides and the stripes. Yes, yes. And that's what you said. It's a shirt described as opaque with the front, back and sides covered. So they're just a dress is just a connected top to the bottom. Yeah. But this band that it can't but but I was thinking of it and like
what if I were to dress. Am I in complete and not in comply? Okay. That's fine as long as it doesn't have a tube top. That's how both just. Yeah, yeah. What other questions right now in the student bullying section it talks about reporting annually to the board. Is there an administrative regulation for that. And I assume that means this body. When did that happen? But it was it, it passed. But it was a new fact. It's something that needs to happen. Okay. Yeah. What's the we'll put that there are. No. Yes. Got out.
That'll be put in there a question we have to read. There are certain components that we have to report to the state annually. But there is a provision that issues of bullying are reported to the board. Oh, so that has to start according to know that. Okay. And then under complaint procedures it had a thing like there's a there's a method but it didn't have others. It was just like basically tell somebody it didn't have like okay to say and like it said report bullying to like the appropriate person. Then we put in other places or I think that it's
what's written in there is like the legal that's required because we can't have it. We have we we can't allow them to bypass our regular accountability cycle, I think report to okay to say then the authorities reported I gotcha. So if it goes to okay to say. We get a call from state police, okay? And then we go through the process and then we would contact okay. Because in talking with like the chaplain, we had talked about like all the possible ways that the students could get the information to the right people, remember, that would be okay, okay, maybe we can do that.
I'm not sure if it's, you know, want to put more in there because it makes it legally less valid. But I it just came up in the 11. Yeah I know. And my other comment was, you know how you have discriminatory harassment as a prohibited act but somehow different from bullying and bullying had a huge section, and this one was all the way at the one in. What's your thought behind putting it? There? Was this right, right next to the line. I think it's just in alphabetical order.
No, not discriminatory. Harassment is in prohibited acts. Yes, but those are an alphabetical order. Oh, the prohibited acts are in alphabetical order. No criminal discriminatory disruption. Damage. They're not an athletic order, but they're all the DS. They're together. Yeah. I again, I didn't perform at that, but that's okay. I assume so they were. In other words, they're all together, and d all the A's, the B's and the C there together. Else that was. Yeah, I see that the. Yeah. That's okay. Yeah. So that's okay.
That's what it's meant to be I don't have any problem. Just. Yeah. It also said under the race and bullying thing that says reports and designated to reports to designated compliance officer like is that who is that like if I'm a parent reading that on my own that is who's the designated compliance. That is that for title nine. Do you where do you see that I wrote it, no, no, it's a document that's under bullying. Yeah. And then maybe. I can't look it up. My digital document was like the best.
So let me just look here to finish. Sorry I didn't mark in the document. There's two things. My own notes. Oh, it's under bullying in the compliance compliant procedure I think it's. Yeah. Some claim there's complete procedure. That's right. First of all, blah blah. Yeah. Who is that person? Compliance officer, compliance officer or coordinator? Pursuant to Board of Education Policy, 8007. So our compliance officer for title nine is John. People. Yeah. I would have to look at this Board of education policy
to see specifically what their well, it says were bullying activities alleged had been biased or based. I'm sorry a whole or part on the protected classification of race, color, sex, national origin disability building principal will notify the school district's designated compliance officer so you can tell John. Right. And the book. Yeah. Title nine. Yeah. And the board policy doesn't name. Yeah. It's the person. Right? Right. Just wasn't myself. Sure. The department area. So reading this and I'm sure went back to the tapping thing. Yeah. It's going to be involved
in the investigation because that was a clear question. Yeah. Group. So the compliance officer is John Pankow. Okay. It's our assistant superintendent for employee services, and that's the principal who contacts the compliance officer. Not not the parent. Okay. And then, John, well, if I'm a parent reading it, I mean. Yeah. No. Yeah. And then so John then assists. Yeah. So the principal would explain it to you. So as a parent. Yeah. The hope would be as a parent you say what does this mean. And that the building principal says our title nine compliance officer is Mr.
John Craig. All he is our assistant superintendent of human resources, he of employee services. He's going to be the person who's going to be leading this investigation, because we believe that it is within the protected class race, blah, blah. So so, Christine, how is this which is bullying based on race, color, sex, national origin, different from the very bottom, discriminatory harassment? They feel like they are the same. They do they do feel like they're the same. But there are times in which they're not the same. So for instance, like we may have a situation in which
it is a one time interaction that a child uses hate speech that would not be categorized as that is bullying based on race that comes under that that would not be considered bullying. It is a one time lash out interaction. That's not how it could. The next time, if it happens again with that child, then be a pattern that has been established. And now it's considered bullying. So bullying is more severe than discriminatory. It just because it it does not necessarily persevere. It's a repetitive component I guess.
Okay okay. Let's. Would it make sense at the beginning of like a school year when the it might not for like the high schools or the middle school principals say anything in that the first weekly newsletter that they send. You know if your child it's just like they say, you know, if your child has anxiety or whatever, this is the counselor's information that's in the weekly newsletters that go out to to the parents. If if we could even add a line in there, you know, if your child experiences
any of these things, this is who they're primary contact with within the school is for them to understand, like who become like, go to the how would you know who to contact and contact if they're being bullied or something? We mean that we just said like a, like a kind of like a trusted adult. Like any trusted adult. Yeah, yeah. Versus like you have to go across, you know, like, if you could publish our page, say there too. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how that would be. That would be something to work out with candor.
But there's already that section that comes, you know, in school every week has the section. One of the sections is always the counseling section. And it tells you if you're having these problems with your counselor. But, but at least to spell it out somewhere. So it's so, so yeah. So if a parent reads it again. Yeah, it's like my kid has come home 12 times and said this or that and never told us old school. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll it's I just wanted to point out to in the document itself it defines what bullying is.
Okay. And then it doesn't have to be habitual, but it has to have one of these impacts on each other. So if it doesn't have one of these impacts on a child, it can still happen. But it would be I we would categorize it under harassment or harassment or discriminatory. Right. Okay. I think for regular yeah. You know it it it's not necessarily covered here. And I think this is more students. But the tapping wanted to do more like training and reminders for our staff
to be like consistent and follow through and do all of that. Would that be a separate. Yeah. So this document, it has nothing to do with the professional for staff. And really very honestly, this document is mostly used with students and administrators and not staff. They aren't going into here and assigning these things right. But knowledge and awareness is super important. And so as we adopt a new document, and I shared with you a little bit of the work, but the first step is to align our Powerschool codes so that we have those things that are there.
But then the next step is to work on an internal range finding document. And so we come together. Our assistant principals come together monthly. And we work through problems of practice and oftentimes we're talking about when this happens what do we do. Because it can't be a diff. It shouldn't be a different set of I know comes in one high school or the other one middle school or the other. So doing that kind of range finding with our administrators, the goal would be to do that over the summer. And then in the fall, they should be able to present to their staffs.
We have a new code of conduct. Here's what our goals are from it. Here are the things you need to know, so that they just have kind of a state of the discipline understanding in their building, okay. And also fall into one of the things that they always said is you may have done something, but we have no idea, you know, never told me be kind of like that. They know that, it almost felt like it fell on deaf ears, kind of what they were saying. But we probably did a lot in our administration. So, I don't know, I think I think the nicest part of being one of the benefits of technology, that there's many drawbacks, is that
all of these things should be entered into our discipline. And, and, and a teacher should be able to see that their teacher should be able to see that or ask, hey, I sent Christine down. What happened? Okay, let's pull it up. We can show you. Right. Okay. So then it validates what we're telling parents. And tell your kid to tell it to us to do that. On if the trusted adult is the teacher, then the teacher has the information and knowledge or knowledge. Okay. Thank you. I had a question about in the code of conduct, talk about attendance procedures specifically, since I know we're working on chronic absenteeism. The elementary section particularly was like elementaries will develop.
It seems like that should be something that's in there, like solid like versus. So it's not it doesn't seem or feel different school to school like, you know, have the middle school high schools like this is how it is. And it's very clear for all the buildings. The elementary is real broad. I feel like that should be tighter because that's the foundation of teaching families about truancy, because that's when you catch up on their little one here. Okay, you've missed one of the school. That's something that we can definitely work on as we go into the summer and next year. And then we can put it on the ledger, since it's going to not be a pretty book.
That's right. You can go ahead and put it under due process. This is just a I didn't know what it meant. It says decision by superior administrator or the Board of Education. Can you tell us what that means? Since we haven't so far as I can tell, I've been involved in discipline before, so it might need to come out okay. Nancy, have you ever been involved in a student disciplinary action? No and no. And it really has been the practice of this board. You know, it's for as long as I've been on this
to basically say that, you know, we deferred that to room to spend. You and then appeal to the board. Yeah, you. But there is a process to appeal to the board. Yeah. It's never. Yeah. You're never okay. Never get that only for expulsion. I was I say it's only for permanent exposure. Is that should that be in the code. For permanent expulsion. It said superintendent is the highest level of appeal. Yes. And that was a question. And that is in alignment with our board policy. Yeah. So that's why I did that. And I only have our board policy.
But you you may hear as you meet with other board members like right back at the Berkeley guys, they meet for this. Yeah. They may they could tell you every student that had disciplinary action in their school district that they're a very small school district. And then I don't think we should be involved. I think it should be an administrative thing. But again, I'm quote at the end of the year, just to see how things are would be a good thing. Yes. So I updated that sentence. So it just ends with a decision by a superior administrator. And what it means is should when a student gets in trouble,
there are so many different kinds of trouble that there could be a kind of trouble that there could be a kind of trouble where you could come back to school pending the outcome of your discipline, because your trouble is not going to cause it's bottom. Well, it's not going to cause a problem in school. So it's basically saying just because you get to come back to school until it's determined doesn't mean that the next administrator can come along and pull you out. So don't think that are allowing you to come to school is us saying everything's okay? It's fine. You got it. But most that hardly ever happens.
The vast majority of the kinds of trouble that we have are, you're going to be dismissed. We're going to investigate, you know, certain time, like, yeah, I'm going to the student Heather, or something like that. They're great trouble. There's still a lot to be in school, but pending the outcome of that situation, you could be relieved to have them. I mean, you could happen to. All right. Anything else? And code of conduct, which, I think it's Chris. Like, it's it's much more. Yeah. Use it's like friendly.
Yes. I think for parents and for me readers. So, you go ahead. Right. Can you tell the general, I mean, a lot of this is like word policy. Yeah. So I'm really grateful that they have that and know it's so much better for all of us that it's all aligned. And so. Okay, so then next, can I transition to the yeah. Student or the athletic handbook. So we have that a handbook last updated in 2015 by Mike jolly.
So quite a while ago, we moved they renamed it from it used to say athletic code of conduct to athletic handbook. So there wasn't confusion between the two documents. It has since been aligned to the major C.r.a. rules and guidelines. It has been aligned to our board policies. It reflects our district vision and values. We have clarity of expectations. It's got some new sections in it, specifically the sections that it has that are new are the high school nil student athlete disciplinary framework and our seasons expectations.
Matt also worked with more than 50 folks, including some student athletes, coaches, parents, athletic coordinators and building admin to work through this document. Again, because it's going to be fluid and a posted document, we're hoping to annually be able to update it. So future anticipated work is updating the compact, which is the coach athlete parent act. That's next year's work and then development of additional guidelines specific to middle school sports. So we have high school sports. So this was a huge lift. This document and I think does a really nice job.
So I don't know what questions you have. You know I just want to give feedback. This is awesome. Great. Like yeah, as a parent of an athlete, many athletes in this would have been I mean, this is great. And you can tell our news team yes there wouldn't be any. Do they have to sign off on listening to me just so they sign off on this through final forms or when they're when they do it? That's right. There have been like even this school year as opposed to this school year and athletics and last school year.
And I thought it to have been a lot of really positive changes. And. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we've been working on that communication piece on setting some regular expectations around what seasons look like and communication of families. I think that's done a really excellent job in, you know, taking what Tim had started and continuing to move forward. I mean, I can tell you from the sports, my kid is now in a third season, and the level and clarity of communication is is on a whole other level, as opposed to last year.
Every kid has access to this a different nature as a person. So it's that's good. Yeah. So it should be. Yeah. Are we running into any of our athletes within a week? I was wondering that too. We have we do have a student who's got an an ongoing contract. She's a soccer player. So it really interesting just so you know, high school and I was nothing like college. So in high school no students can not have any affiliation with their schools in any of the images that are used.
So they can not be wearing any Troy anything. Their images cannot be captured well, their honor grounds in our stadiums or while they are competing, you know, in the context as a high school student. So it's really interesting. Like they just draw that really clear line. So the student is a soccer and they say they're totally different. I think they can't like they just they're yeah. Like, this one is about whether you care or not. It's a high school girls female soccer player. And she's, got a social media presence.
And so this organization is paying for her to promote some of their wear, some of their fit. And when she gets X number of followers, she gets an extra amount, and she has to post a certain number of times a week and she can pay them off. She does. And in her photos, it's just like it's just her in that, oh yeah, back here at her home or in some other park. That's that. I could not give the girl credit. That's her school district been great that for. Brought it to me to committee or whatever husband the average guy that it's about putting her in.
Any other questions about, I want to get the one I wanted to. So these are documents that we would. Then you will vote officially or at the next board meeting. And then we will use them for the 2627 school year. So they will start square. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much Christine. Proceed through those. But we do that that the classes also as one that this quick. And yeah down here
summary okay. The first one you guys want to read through or describe it and put together is still not over there is summaries that our athletic that small. Stuff during the. Sports concert runs right into following are just minor wording tweaks. So I mean I'll have Judy upload. It's pretty okay. So this one first is really just for the acceptable use policies.
So this is what was presented back in March. So around here to go over the Add policy. So this is strictly the policy section. So it's really just adding a brief section to the acceptable use policy that states that will develop, regulations or administrative regulations pertaining to artificial intelligence. So Ron had gone over the entire that will be tweaked. So that'll be inserted in conjunction with that. But from a policy perspective, this is the only language added
and this is Miller Johnson's recommendation. So just add it very briefly stating that we will develop something specific. So nothing major there. Facility dogs. We have not done anything with this one. This one came out in October. Miller Johnson did catch one small error. So you can see here. Facility dogs are school district on dogs. So they added school district. That's their recommendation in conjunction with most insurance providers. So set aside for us will say that if the district
does have a dog in the building, it should be a district on that because our insurance will cover it. If there is a dog that is not district owned, then that owner of the dogs should have liability coverage of some sort. If they don't, then that poses the largest to them. So, we wanted to clarify that piece. So like, what's the risk to us if at the end of the day was the risk to us if we allow a dog that's not a district owned dog into the our insurance, then wouldn't cover anything relating to that incident if it wasn't our ability,
so then that would be the case or amendment to it. That's the class. What? How? Yeah. Because what if the if that individual doesn't have insurance and something happens to a child, then that's where it opens us up to a lawsuit potentially that's to claim SAC. So like our insurance would cover it, but we could face a lawsuit, for allowing that owner in our buildings with a dog that they did not have proper coverage for. So basically, if there's not a check, if we allow a non district old dog into a building, we have to have proof of insurance, right?
Not to not just proof of insurance, sufficient insurance. Yeah. There's like insurance. Yeah like million dollar coverage that type of thing. So if there's no insurance to go after in the case of an incident, then that would pose us, legal risks about things to. But really, we can't let a dog. It's not a dog. So we don't have any in the district as of today. So there is no existing policy. So we thought, let's put in just a policy to have it. And then if we come across the need for an administrative regulation,
then we would adopt something at that point, and then institute it. And there's frameworks out there for us, if we need to. But lot of times nonprofits bring these to district and these therapy dogs and stuff like that, and they have proper coverage. So you rely on the nonprofit's coverage, too. Right. So we don't have any staff that is currently bringing their dog a licensed therapy dog with their own insurance. And the district. I'm not aware of any staff. I know we do have third party companies from time to time.
Like, I know our middle schoolers have had, so that's a good question. I can't I wouldn't be able to tell you on a daily basis that they're doing that somebody so that there's not somebody bringing a dog in. So what this policy will require us to do is develop that art that will then require an individual who has who wishes to bring a dog in, have to demonstrate the appropriate coverage. And it gives us, I think, a little bit more legal standing to say that we have a policy that says if there's a dog, what if in our buildings, if the district owned.
Yeah. So okay. Is it okay? So let me get back to the interesting discussion regarding services we were talking about. Did anybody want to get into the school down? No. Well, I guess I was just yeah I figure who takes it. All right, I thought I was asleep here. One thing to take the journal home. It's starting up. I think it's all the police officers take. The police got canceled like that. You know, an employee of the district is a handler, and, yeah, they would be responsible for taking the dog back and forth each day.
The police department owns the dog, and all the insurance associated with the officer takes. I think it's just these are not the only ones that are working. Yeah, but. I don't know for sure of that. That. Yeah they do. Oh maybe. But yeah, but do we have any. What if kids are afraid or invalid? They are being baker and I feel responsible because I do this and when I was a baker. But yeah, like, it was up to me to make sure that the insurance was in place. And, but we also talked about, like, those types of things.
So, I mean, kids, the dog would not go out into like, passing times at lunch, like where there are big groups of students. Yes. It would be in an area where a lot of the comes to no job. Yeah. So, those things are sort of thought out, but yeah, my my question is like there's probably if if we choose to continue that there should be some sort of system that it's not just reliant on the building principal to, to check and then deference. Okay. So that's a very simple just the policy at this point.
And then if we come across the need to have a district on our board developed in our development, right, because we do that. So those were more relating to things, right back in October that we've kind of sat on because we wanted to work through a little bit on this one is the March, 26 spring update that Miller Johnson put out. So, I went through here. So again, this will be uploaded for you guys. But essentially what that says is, in compliance with section 164. Okay. There's certain requirements that we have about from a transparency perspective.
So this one just addresses our student surveys policy and updates it to be compliant with the new state law. So just consistent with the applicable law there. And then they do just a little too, which all that does relate to. And just ensuring that we're posting the proper, surveys that are mandatory to post and that we will comply with anything like that to it. So pretty boilerplate language. But again, it just helps us make sure we read lines and have official board policy. And then this one relates to
nil particularly for Ms. AA. So really what it's doing is just making sure that regardless of any of those activities that the student is still abiding by board policy and student conduct. So it's just getting a little bit more legal standing, as that becomes more prevalent in our schools. And it doesn't matter. The NPL stuff isn't in the code of conduct because it's in the athletic building. Yeah. And then this I think, just really wants to make sure that they're not violating any of our other policies
based on what they may or may not be agreeing to. Got advertised. So student experience. That was one of the ones there. And then the bigger one is the new wireless communication device policy. So essentially what we put out at the beginning of the school year, mirrored more or less what the state had officially adopted. So all this is doing is essentially inserting the state law language into our actual policy, and then we will have a corresponding, which essentially will be mirrored with what was sent out, back in the fall.
So, all of what we sent out was compliant with what the state ultimately decided. So one thing that I thought we don't need, Pete, was state and federal laws in our policy and our policy are just in addition to those laws while. Because then we have to tell you all the time, I didn't have to, but I was going to say, when you see these policies that are really long and they have it structured, means this, but, you know, it's mandated by the state, or the state requires you to have a policy that states
then that only that one part of the design is written. Yes. Okay. I think yes. But we can't just say state law. This will follow. Okay. Yeah. And then this one I think because they wanted explicitly written. But then we can have an, administrative regulation that might expand upon in certain areas, like it's up to schools to ultimately decide if you want to allow it in between class periods in the hallways or at lunches, which we did in our original communication. So so the line again down here just gets into
some of the prohibited devices and when and certain exemptions, obviously, that we alluded to in our original email. So. No surprises on this one. And another wanted to clarify wireless communication devices instead of personal electronic devices because you don't need a cable to communicate with it anymore. Yeah. And then again, another 164 4K item. So this one just talks about the curriculum, whether or not it's, all the state evidence based list
by the end of September. So again, just making sure that our board policy is compliant with that. And then this one, purchasing, there's just a simple typo statutes and spelled out in the previous Miller Johnson, the, recommendation. So we'll correct that to check to see if ours was wrong. That. This one, I already went over it, but that was, amended from the original one back in October. So they thought that it should say school district.
Also will submit, the policy for that to include essentially that little paragraph. And then, record retention. So there's nothing in our current goal policy that talks about record retention. So I think, again, in an effort to be transparent across the state, Miller Johnson is recommending that districts insert this into basically say that we abide by the state, record retention policy. So every department in the district has their specific page of what do they have to keep, how long? And then we scan and shred and all that.
So let's just kind of filter the records that are electronegative. The state doesn't as part of this, the state doesn't dictate whether it's physical or electronic. They just state what you have to retain and how long. They don't actually state the format of retaining. So most districts now are starting to scan undergrad and then keep them backed up on servers. Yeah. And then advertising policy. This one's pretty straightforward. Just a slight modification to include, commercial advertisements. So if they didn't want to limited to just those types of advertisements.
So just just more clarification. Then this one, Kendra's team has been hard at work at, making sure our is up to Ada compliant. So there's some new regulations coming out at the federal level. So we've been working hard and working with some outside organizations to make sure our websites are up to fully compliant. And, you know, we just go back there to the state, with all of our websites being up to date now. So, this one is really just making sure that our policy, is reflecting
not just website, but any digital content, because everything we offer now and in digital format for the most part. So making sure all these various formats, or digital platforms, I should say, have fully Ada accessible options. So this is just updating the policy to reflect those new standards. And that is they are still online. So it's pretty straightforward. If the general changes desired and we'll post these up on board docs and then so this is our first reading. And then at the meeting or meeting we are second.
And adoption. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you. All right. That pretty much finishes the agenda topics. Any other other. One for needed. And the spring update start tomorrow morning. It's our first one. So we'll be on the environment by morning. And so we're off and running with those. I will I will make sure that the spring update is in the queue. So you have access to to that fall.
So I'll make sure that it's in there. But yeah, that is we have been running that we are rescheduling. We were going to do ribbon cutting for, the baseball softball field at Athens. That had to be rescheduled. So, I think it's going to be April 16th, so Kendra will send something out if anyone is interested in attending. Pretty sure will be April 16th at 330. That's required for many. Hopefully by the 83rd. So we like that.
Yeah. You know, ribbon. Oh, business. Baseball softball here. Okay. All right. I only have one. I don't, if there is an open schools opening, we were who was there with new schools? Okay, there's an opening for the Oakland Schools board elections. And the election time is very tight. Timeline. How many of you got an email from Mr. Geary up? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, that the emails, the timeline is probably, is very tight.
I believe they said something about April 1st week. The candidate announcements will go in on April 2nd or third week. They need to. It's a very tight timeline. I don't remember that. Great. So we need to vote so we can just. Do I need to do the for me? I may have to we may have to I will check the dates and get back to you. So they'll send something out to Judy. So, we. Well, we. Yeah. Depending on. Yeah, we can do that because we could.
Yeah. I mean, I have to do a special meeting before the workshop is there. If if we can't wait for the 24 hour. No, we have a minute. We have a meeting on the 16th. We have a meeting on the 16th. So I would find out the timing. I will find out when we need to vote by so that we can get the vote. And actually, I think we need to send a candidate to vote there as one of our board reps, I remember. Yeah, yeah, there's not much hands can go to this. The same day we had a meeting. Yeah. Our May. Oh okay. Gotcha. Yeah. So I will I will check and get all the information.
But we need to decide and then identify a board member to represent us and vote for us there at that. So is it like a roll call vote or. They are. No. You go and do it. Put your ballot in there in person. I just do it. Yeah. You did that or what are you talking about? Okay. We can't see that until we are decide. And we have we decide on a candidate and our representative will go in person and vote secret ballot.
Because otherwise if we vote by mail, we will be able to. Have a meeting, a secret ballot. We have to like formally vote in our media outlet for. That okay. All right I just bleep it out on the recording okay okay okay okay okay. It's probably something states statement scared okay. Anyway, so this is something that we may have to decide in our April meeting. I will find out the timings and we'll discuss at the end
of May have put on a hybrid meeting agenda. Are we okay then? Yes. Well, okay. Well, we can adjourn the meeting at 942. Computer. Appreciate. Thank you so much.