The workshop on April 28th. Do we have any public today? Is that on? Okay. All right. I guess we can get ready. Mrs.. Christina. Stefano. Japanese. Sorry. Thank you. Please come on up here. You can come and speak. You have three minutes to address the board. Thank you. Thank you. So I can talk in front of 30 high schoolers, Mr.
Dodson. So my name is Christina Soprano. I'm a proud class of 99. Troy High. Love, a University of Michigan math major, appeared in the district, and a high school math teacher was 17 years of experience at Novi High School, where I taught classes from pre-algebra to AP Cup. I know at this point you guys are probably sick of hearing from me, but I feel so strongly about this that I felt the need to be here tonight to speak up about it. I'm here to reiterate my concerns about the I am math curriculum.
I won't go through all of the detailed talking points, as I hope you have read my emails and posts, but I'm always happy to discuss the issue. I've seen this problem from a unique perspective. This fall I worked as a long term sub at Bowling Middle School. Being in those classrooms, working directly with students using I am me first hand insight. Quite simply, it's not preparing kids for high school or higher level math. Students are lacking foundational skills. They need to be successful. The bottom line is they are missing out on the ABCs of math.
And that gap does not just close on its own. Many math teachers, both middle school and high school, are frustrated with the I am. They are seeing the same shoes, but they are hesitant to speak out, out of concern for repercussions or simply being ignored. Troy hires the best of the best teachers. These are experienced, highly qualified educators, many of whom mentor new teachers and have spent years refining what works for students. So I have to ask you, why are you forging them to follow such a rigid and scripted curriculum?
Let them do what they do best. And finally, this is becoming my opinion inequity issue. Not every family can afford outside tutors. After I shared my concerns publicly on Facebook, I had at least ten parents reach out privately asking if I could tutor their child because they don't understand what their kids are being taught. That should not be happening in a district like Troy, where classroom instruction should be more than enough. When teachers, students, and parents are all struggling with the curriculum, the problem isn't the people, it's the curriculum.
And that should really be revisited. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mrs. Shannon. I think I'm sorry if I spelled your first. Pronounced your last name. Thank you. I never been to a meeting like this before, and I didn't know I'd be asking the questions before everything got talked about. I'm not nearly as formal as the last person was. I'm to give you an idea. This is your chance to speak to the board. It's not a dialog. You can say what you would like us to hear,
and you have three minutes to do that. Okay. Thank you. I'll be right back. First of all, I am a parent. I have two seniors at Athens, and I have a freshman at Athens. My freshman has down syndrome, is in and is in the program. I'm also a Troy employee. I work at Martel Elementary and a level four program, and I've been there since it opened. It's now closing, but I will be hopefully somewhere in the district next year. I come here because I saw SDI was on the agenda for tonight and backing up. I had my daughter in our in Troy school district, and she was
four years old and had full trust that she was being taken good care of, and I felt like she was, for the most part, academically. I knew like being taken care of. Otherwise. She definitely was. But academically, I thought when we wrote it goals, things were being targeted and things were being met in a organized, systematic way. And when I came to work for the district, I found out there is no curriculum for special ed. Everything is expected to be adapted from the curriculum. And when you have a student who is multiple grade levels off
preschool level stuff, doing high school level stuff, you can't just adapt that stuff. You need a separate curriculum. And I was horrified to find out this is all on the teacher's shoulders, to do it for each one of their students, to figure it out. It's just a mess of a system, and it's failing big time. They're not getting the targeted interventions and specified curriculum they need for them to actually make academic improvements within our schools. Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it.
All right. Next on our agenda our business services. First item is pollen part building renovation project. Mr. Trudel, evening board. So we have our third and hopefully final bid pack here for the ball and park renovation project. These are a few straggler categories that just required a little bit more time through the post bid process, just to find some of the materials and validating through the the contractors that place bids. So there's three bid categories.
So overhead doors in the cafeteria and kitchen areas and trousers and flooring. And then we have some acoustic spray installation categories. So all three have been vetted fully. Now Bartonella felt confident in presenting those numbers to the board for formal approval. So the total with contingency for all three was $297,803, and then this would be paid for out of the 2023 and 2026 capital project funds. And then work, as we mentioned before, is set to begin essentially the day after school is out.
So we'll start moving things out of that building and getting ready to start demoing and then hopefully into all the different trade areas. And then the plan is to be complete by the beginning of August 2027 with all furniture moved in. So thank you. Any questions for. What are the overhead doors? What are we talking about with that. From where like the kitchen and cafeterias, the doors that come down. Oh that's the. And is this the last of the three of three? The three of three. This completes the whole construction stuff.
Yeah. They were waiting on travel for. Really? Because the delay to get the actual product in quality, make sure it was to our specs. Okay, now that we have all of them, how do we manage with our budget? It was within the last I checked, just under 400 grand out of a $27 million. Okay, that's pretty close to all things considered. That's a pretty good. Okay. Did we have to make any cuts or anything to stay under the budget? A long process through the design phase. I mean, we go through an initial estimate based on the initial design,
and then it was pretty, pretty involved to get down to 27 million. So the hope is obviously with contingency, you know, district wide, we have over $80 million of contingency. And we still have nearly 65% of it lost as we close in on the end of Smith. So the goal is to not use all of that. And then those savings are just free to lower that cost of that building. So are there any items in our product list that we haven't been able to take care of because of the increased path or anything?
And we know, I mean, I think just some of the scope, like the size of parts of the project, might have been adjusted down or compromised on that. Finishes making adjustments to finishes because finishes can get fairly expensive. So we made an adjustment to be more modest in some areas. You know, sometimes your designers might want the, the the nicest looking finishing. Then we needed to narrow that. And you know, more moderate in those areas
in some of those areas are where we were getting some savings. Okay. It might be nice to know that you have to reroute some of our students in attendance. So since we had that conversation, we began the year talking about middle school attendance areas or elementary tenant areas have started to move the enrollment schools. So we had when we began planning for the renovation of the park in Larson, there was consideration at that time that there might need to be an addition to the building in order to be able to support the program.
In the building we do not need, could not afford, or do we need that addition. So that was a good opportunity for us to reduce the cost, to be able to stay out of budget and and that we'll be able to move all of the square footage currently within that building. So that was a key decision for the board to make, which is allowing us to. Again, this is something that when we are looking at enrollment at the park next year, closer to 750 students, as we kind of work through, which is going to help us to see that happen in person over the next couple of years as well.
Wonderful. All right. Thank you. There are no comments or questions we can move on to the next topic. Okay. All right. Mr.. Next topic. So the next topic is relating to two vehicle purchases. So this is something that we don't typically do often in public schools. We typically in particular these delivery trucks that we have both for food service and for our operations department. In some districts that are smaller you can get away with one. A district is big. You need to split it between food service,
which is delivering food from certain buildings that receive larger deliveries. Every day. They're sending out the food to all the other smaller buildings, and then likewise, operation uses it to move things around the district. Material survives. The tricky part is, is when you purchase something with food service funds, you really only intended to use it for food service because federal funds were used to purchase it. So you want to be very diligent about making sure that you have a very clean split between those two. So our food service truck right now is it's been broken. They've actually been renting a vehicle for close to a year now.
But we do have some excess fund balance left in the food service fund that will pay for that vehicle. And then we do also need our operations delivery truck to be replaced. It's a 2007 right now, so it's just nearing its end of life. The repairs are getting pretty costly. So we do plan to pay for, as I mentioned, the food service vehicle out of our food service fund to help deplete further those excess fund balances that we have, and then the operation vehicle we plan to pay for out of our capital maintenance fund. So we've set aside about $650,000 dating back to 2015.
We felt like this would be a very appropriate use for that, considering we only do this every 15 to 20 years. That way, we can also avoid pulling it out of the general fund at this point in time. So both vehicles are just over $102,000. They're pretty big delivery vehicles. It's not a smaller van. You might see it on the front here periodically as you leave the building, but the total cost for this is $205,610 for both vehicles, and they are part of the middle state contract as well. So the state of Michigan works to predict these out with dealerships
all across the state. That just makes it easier for districts like us to go to kind of a pre bid catalog of vehicles. They do typically take anywhere from 6 to 8 months to get. So we're hoping we order it now. We'll get it sometime in the fall as the goal. So. Any questions or comments on this topic. So you're expecting 15 to 20 years. Yeah. So like right now the food service truck was 2003 and then 2007 for the operations truck. So try to stretch it out as long as you can go. But at some point some of these vehicles, you know, replacing tires
or doing brakes, it's it's thousands of dollars for each one. So it's just you're just sinking money into something that just isn't worth it at this point. But to stretch it out, as long as we're going on, what will you do with the old vehicles? John Boehner yeah, typically you'll you'll see if there's any residual value that you can get just by selling it. If not, then we would take it somewhere that would be able to recycle and dismantling it. How do we maintenance those to keep them running for 20 years? Our operations team, they just go to a local Chevy dealer and they're running,
you know, oil changes a couple of times a year on them rotating tires, getting brakes checks. So that's something that quite frequently they do. The food service truck been parked for quite a while because it's just beyond repair. So it was like $1,500 a week just to rent something. And just for the benefit of the launching two for the food service fund, there are monies that we have to draw down on, like we can't just keep saving. And yeah, we were at almost 1.6 million of excess fund balance. The Troy High Kitchen project was about 1.4. That drew it down quite a bit.
And then this will kind of get as close to that fully drawn down model now to where we're not going to have significant dollars in our excess funding. And then have we always purchased these vehicles instead of leaving them on a regular basis? The challenge with leasing is just part it's part of your general fund at that point. So if we're going to spend 20 or 30 grand a year on a lease. It just doesn't make it make sense. So if we can find alternative ways to pay for it, then we're going to do that. Okay. Wonderful. The questions. Okay. If not, it will be on the agenda the next meeting.
Thank you so much, Dan. All right. Our next agenda item is teaching and learning. And our first item in that agenda is archaic reading adoption plan. Is getting ready here at. Take a moment take a step back. We have over the course of last year. So even more than a year, we've been talking about 46. And the fact that there was there was a
timelines built in to being 146 and that as a system, we were going to put together a plan that is in line with the timeline of by to 146. We also identified the fact that there was an acknowledgment across the district that as as per the requirements of K 146, we were going to be choosing something. We'd be looking at a curriculum that is different, a curriculum that is different than we had, recognizing that the current curriculum is not on the state approved list,
so that we were going to be investigating others that are on that state approved list. The state came out with that list in January. And as indicated, doctor and his team have been digging in. And this presentation is reflective of all of the work that has been done prior to that. And then since, in an effort to to build out a plan that will take us through the next several years, keeping in mind that step one was identifying a tier one curriculum, which is what we're going to talk about today.
There are there are additional steps that are built into that timeline, assessments and screeners and all of those things that are that are to come. Those are still to come. And we'll be talking about more of those as we as we go. Tonight's conversation is really about that tier one. Resource that we want to get started with piloting next year. I'll talk a little bit about 35 and and our ability to utilize that that to leverage that grant, which is really exciting. I think for us we do forward.
Does that make some pressure off the general fund. And then if it's okay with you, it will let that director in the team get through the presentation and then we can save questions to the end. That's all right. All right. Thank you. Thank you all. Still take a long time to come in. It has been our big behind the scenes. Not really behind the scenes and promises now project for the last ten months. So we are excited to update you on what we've learned so far and where we are at with our pilot process with tier one materials, it has been
extremely exciting to think about reinvigorating our work and also to imagine what's possible for Troy kids. We've set some lofty goals for ourselves, so we've challenged some of our assumptions, and we've set new goals, all with trying to teach true to the parts of our mission that we're making. So tonight, we look forward to inviting you into that. I'm here with Lisa McDonald, our pre-K through five literacy instructional specialist, and Amanda Fisher, our six through 12 literacy curriculum and instruction specialist as well. So we wanted to start out with a common definition
of what we mean by two pretty dense or terms unpacked. The first being the science of reading and the second being structured literacy. Just to provide you with a little bit more vocabulary to think about it, although I know you've done your learning about as well too. So an important note about when we talk about being in alignment with the science of reading is we are not talking about the media version. There are a lot of headlines that simplify the science of reading as a finance only approach, or children only in Basil's. And so tonight we first wanted to provide you
what 146 defines the science of reading as. The science of reading means a cumulative and evolving body of evidence whose research studies follow a scientific process of inquiry and utilize scientific methods to help answer questions related to reading development and issues related to reading and writing. Derived from research from multiple fields of cognitive psychology, communication sciences, developmental psychology, education, special education, implementation science, linguistics, and neuroscience. So it's important for this team to know is that that is a body of research
that expands over 50 years and is continuing to evolve because we're a social science. And so we are always learning new things. And as soon as like two months ago, there were new pieces of research coming out about it and has defined it so that we can work within the parameters of it. Specifically, MDE is calling for districts to take a structured literacy approach to achieve the science of reading. So you can think of structured literacy, structured literacy as a pedagogical way to achieve the science of reading. So when we say the structure of the structured literacy,
we mean systematic, direct, explicit, cumulative and diagnostic instruction that integrates listening, speaking, reading and writing and emphasizes the structure of language across the speech sound system, the writing system, the structure of sentences and the meaningful parts of words. The meaning of words, phrases, sentences and text, and the processing of oral and written discourse. So structured literacy attends to the big five of literacy. It cares about vocabulary, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency,
oral language, all of those items in service of the ultimate goal to comprehend and understand what we read. So it is not just finance. So PA 146 as doctor said, calls for us to do a lot to hopefully do the best in literacy ever to. Here are some of the big buckets of it that Oakland Schools has defined for us. And they leave my group through part by part. The first is assessments and screeners. The second is multi-tiered systems of support. Or says the third will be a literacy coaching model
defined in broad terms by the state. The fourth, professional learning that should be provided to all those who instruct students in literacy. The next, there will be special considerations for English language learners that we're unpacking. But tonight is all about the suggested tier one elementary reading curriculum that the state has produced. But you know, in Troy that we also have our own internal calendar. And in order to have a vision, we are also talking about K through eight at this time. And it's our team's goal to have a common through line with K through eight literacy instruction
and also has a timeline. This graphic we keep going back to, because it helps settle us of what's now and what's later, because there's so much to unpack. There's been so many times at the end of an open schools meeting this year where I'll grab it into and say, but what about blankets? She's like, that's in May, that's in June, that's in July. So we're kind of taking it step by step. But some highlights for this is to means technical assistance. When the state tells you some steps for how you could achieve this or provide some guidance. PD and means when the state provides
some kind of guidance, some kind of direct learning on how to achieve the thing. Oftentimes that PD comes from Oakland schools. So Oakland schools and other ISD's meet with state representatives. They think about how to unpack and distribute this to their local school districts. And we go to open schools to run. The items in blue are things that are the state is responsible for. So you can see they have a lot of things that they're responsible for right now. And then the items in yellow are the district responsibilities. And to put it in context, the 2728 school year is when we really have to have all pieces.
In part, that does mean we have to start moving now, which we've been doing, but we still have time. So by 2728 we will have to select our assessment or screener for flagging characteristics of dyslexia. We will have to implement evidence, implement evidence based instructional methods. We'll have to provide a PD assurance that those who instruct in reading have been taught about structured literacy and the science of reading, as well as characteristics primary and secondary of dyslexia. And we will also have to make sure that we've also considered
the unique needs of new newcomers and an alternative learners. So Detroit process that we've been working through is the one that you all blessed for us a few months back. This is a process we developed in collaboration with Open Schools. So tonight we're going to be previewing what we've done so far regarding establishing a curriculum review committee to look at K-8 materials, developing, doing research, and also developing a vision statement that will guide our work and our selection process, exploring materials and then those materials. So we're kind of in between that phase right now to provide you an update.
And then a year from now, we would be coming back to you to provide a recommendation of what we believe is the best option for adoption at scale, and then what our plan would be to support implementation as it as it continues. That's one item we're continuing to stretch ourselves with as we've revamped, revamped. Our administrative regulation is not just adopting, but like, what's that continuous support look like over time in what we have the capacity to do? So the first thing we did when we got after we alerted all of our different parties about our change and started to collect
feedback, was established a curriculum review committee for literacy. We are lucky that we have a literacy leadership team made up of a diverse group of classroom teachers, literacy specialists, Eld specialists, special education teachers, principals and district administrators, and teaching and learning Sis. On most days we had approximately 60 people engaged in those meetings, some who could come in and not come depending on availability after school. 6060 16 yeah, we began our team actually as a K-8 literacy
leadership team, which was really cool to bring the whole group together to say, we want a through line in our work, and it's not something that we're going to do in isolation. And then as our work continued, we at times broke off into individual teams. If the work got level specific. So the team first engaged in research and vision. After we communicated the change and we looked, we did a lot of data review already as a district, but we immersed this team in some of that data that you are all already privy to. So we looked at our aggregate data of national,
state, county and district trends over time. Honestly, that was a very enlightening experience for a lot of our teachers there. So busy day to day with their classrooms that we don't always stop and take that big global view. We also looked at a current Snapchat snapshot of our subgroup data to create urgency around our subgroups to serve better, and we looked at perception data from staff families in middle school students. So you were all familiar with these charts, and I know you saw them ahead of time, but this is an example of one that we showed our team to wrestle with
and to help them understand the context of our literacy reform. And really, what this graph shows us is that in the United States and and also specifically in Michigan, there is a need for literacy enhancement. And Michigan specifically, unfortunately, is a state that is in the bottom portion of literacy. So reminding ourselves that this that there is global room for improvement. From there, we took a snapshot specifically on ourselves in relation to the county in relation to the state.
And what we wanted folks to understand was where we once were before Covid, and where our numbers now have gone in a downward trend similar to the county and the state. We are very proud of our relative performance, but we always ask ourselves to do better because we also know we have students who come with specific privileges as compared to other districts as well. So this year, we were excited to see elementary dip up in the correct direction. And we were also proud of our third graders, who were the highest cohort in the county. But essentially, we were both praising our staff and calling them that.
We have a chance to look inward of how to do even better. We also looked at middle school data as well to a lot of our data follows county and state trends. We're again proud to be above and in middle school, specifically to have had several years starting to rebound, but setting the goal that we want to be where we were pre-COVID and beyond, like we we want better literacy acquisition and the joy of reading for kids than ever. And really, this this law is a chance to make that happen and to lean into resources provided by us.
Eighth grade is a different test, if you all know, so that the percentage of are going to look different here and not to be compared. But you can see that the eighth grade performance rebounded somewhat quickly close to it, but then has been relatively flat the last two years. And then we showed our team because they don't often get to see this at a district scale too. Like what? How are subgroups caring? Because we know in a high performing district you can be distracted by the average. And so we looked at our economically disadvantaged students, our multilingual students, and our special education students and challenged ourselves to think,
how does this law provide us an opportunity to do better for all kids and specifically for our underserved groups, and give our staff that context? In addition, to achieve data, we also review perception data from staff and students to better understand experiences with our current literacy instruction and materials. So overall feedback reflected strong engagement and positive experiences, alongside a consistent desire for clearer
and more explicit foundational literacy instruction. Families also reported positive perceptions of reading, growth and confidence in their child's literacy skills. Their feedback aligned closely with staff, so emphasizing that greater focus on foundational skills, as well as asking for more materials and guidance to be sent home for families to be able to support their children with their literacy and skills. Taken together, staff and family perspectives revealed shared strengths
and common priorities, and this definitely helped directly inform our literacy, vision and evaluation of the curriculum that we reviewed and our pilot decisions. Similar for our six eight teachers and staff, as well as families, both staff and families really appreciated the student choice that we have in our current curriculum in units of study, but they also feel a desire for more class novels and some scaffolding and materials to help with that.
The staff did report that they feel like they have to create a lot of things in addition to families also want more instruction for grammar and spelling and vocabulary for those students. We had 1441 of our middle schoolers complete two questions to open ended questions in a survey. Basically, what do they enjoy and appreciate about their Ela classes, but then what they wish for. So can you see it up there?
Those flowers, they all caps like way less rushing to much. So a lot of the student feedback and what they were hoping for in the areas of growth was, you know, less writing, more projects, more time to read books. So that is actually something to celebrate. Students really liked the idea or enjoy their time in book clubs, and being able to have dialog with their peers in different genres of book clubs and six, seventh and eighth grade. They do report a little bit that reading logs and book talks make reading a little bit more stressful.
Yes, we would all agree. So the biggest thing that we have really leaned into this year is our professional learning to chat assumptions. So we've done some professional learning as a leadership group and then some that we trickle down to our leadership team to start and then some that will preview that. We also have just brought to like pre-K through 12. Start helping them understand this change. It will definitely be an ongoing journey though. So Oakland Schools has been such wonderful partners.
We have a monthly PA 146 leadership series. Honestly, now, lately it's been about twice a month because people have requested for more help. They usually unpack part of the law. They will often tell us to to accept non-disclosure, and they're not totally certain. Like they have to interpret the law and then teach us about it. But they are still remarkably helpful in navigating step by step. And they will also like problem go through individual problems your district is having and help provide guidance. In addition to that, monthly, I attend an instructional leadership
network that usually provides ideas of how to engage people in these topics. We have gone to sand. Sarah and I have gone to an Ms.. Handbook session to think about how to have a handbook that reflects the changes and work on that. Behind the scenes, we have sent a group of people to structured literacy and essential practices. The why and for whom? Because we're also thinking about how to to teach our teachers a lot of those practices and do it at scale. We've gone to the reading brain implications for all students with dyslexia.
And then the best part really is the ongoing support, not just with our curriculum adoption process, but to 146 in general with Oakland schools, we are this really is not an exhaustive list of our secondary team is going to call it slicks right? Yeah. So Slicks is new at Oakland Schools for secondary literacy specialists since it's a new role in many of our neighboring districts, obviously in Oakland County and here for us in Troy. So that is largely focused on PA 146 learning and understanding and dialog.
They also our members are engaged in the Literacy Leadership Network. So there have been a little bit tricky to get there consistently, but we have at least two of our specialists representing us at those meetings. And that's been especially powerful because PA 146 heavily focuses on K pre-K through five K through five, but it definitely has parts of the law that apply all the way to third fourth grade. So having a network of secondary support and interpreting the law and even the science
of reading from the secondary perspective has been very helpful. We've also sent some special educators to do flier trainings as well. The list is exhausted through open schools. They've done a phenomenal job as a team. We've also stretched ourselves of what learning do we need to start engaging in to lead this at scale too? So we have a leadership cohort that will be going to the administrative strand of letters training. We have our kickoff meeting in about a month. Lisa and I are both a part of that team of six individuals who will be going to it, and it's specifically about how to teach
from a systems lens related to the science of reading, which we're excited about with our group. That is a two year commitment. So it's not an immediate fix, but it is an ongoing commitment we have. The funny part has been the vendor visits because they've just been so many. We have visited with 14 different vendors. I started adding it up the other day and I was like, I think I've spent genuinely more than 24 hours with vendors. And then I stopped thinking about it because that was maybe didn't know how to interpret that, because some we've even met with multiple times, because our initial meetings have led to more questions,
or then we only wanted to focus in on elementary, and then we wanted to see it back at secondary because some of the items in the list we're going to talk about have like secondary curriculum that is somewhat related to their elementary curriculum as well. We have one of the best parts for me, and being new to my role has been the district visits. So we have really been breaking down silos with our districts, all of us across the county, to collaborate. And so we're very thankful to the districts listed on the slides. We have opened up our classrooms, sometimes within 24 hours, and we had follow up questions to let us see and to not do a dog
and pony show, but to let us really see it in action. So we got to go to Novi at to go see Arts and Letters in Action in the second grade classroom. We got to go see all levels at Birmingham Arts and Letters in Action, as well as for elementary at Pembroke as well as ABCs. We got to see middle school in action as well too, which is really nice of them. We were thrilled to get to go see South Lyon and their work with Collaborative Classroom, and you fly as people who are a few years ahead of us. Same thing with Birmingham as well and our implementation.
And West Bloomfield has done so much thoughtful work on election, and they are now adopting it up to their middle school as well to. So we have gotten to see them in action, and they were as great as to say, hey, after our spiel and our journey, we're going to just give you unbridled access to our teachers because we want you to hear everything out of so. So our district partners have been amazing to see it in action. And while we've tried not to overwhelm them with bringing all 60 literacy leadership teams at times brought like small cohorts who got to see both things with us,
really two as a team, we have pushed ourselves to read some primary and secondary research related to the science of reading and structured literacy. We feel like it's super important to read it directly ourselves and to be immersed in it. And so we've read a lot of work from you of M scholar and L Duke. So specifically, the science of reading progresses, communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. She and Cartwright out of North Carolina also are really doing a lot of research since 2023 about executive skills and the science of reading,
talking about how you can't just teach these things in isolation, but you still have to attend the motivation and executive functioning of these children, and our literacy leadership team that really spoke to like of of our teaching in the past four years, how important it is to consider neurodivergent learners within this context. We have also been reading Seidenberg. He does a good job of keeping a like a WordPress two as as he updates, it's getting ready to release a new book as well too. So he's helped us understand a lot about structured literacy.
Tyranny and Pearson have done a nice job of teasing out. Here's what the media might distract you with on the science of reading. But this is what the critical body of research says. And this is the complex view. So we've engaged our literacy leadership team and understanding that too. And to be honest, when we started, a lot of people said that some of these simplified media versions are what they had heard. And so digging deeply into the research was powerful for that team. We had to do a lot of learning around what does the science of reading mean in middle school? Because I will tell you, a pro and a kind of our process is we are one of
we are one of the earlier districts to think about tier one materials for middle school and to go through that, that, that connection. And, you know, we have staff asking us as soon as this began, like, will I be in my classroom as a middle school teacher, be teaching individual letter sound relationships? Like, you know, they had genuine questions related to that, and we did too. And so, to be honest, so we've done a lot of research, and we're very blessed to have a strong partnership with doctor sailors to at a University of Texas at San Antonio, I believe.
And she now works for West said. Two and she consults with us for a lot of our PD. And what we helped our secondary staff understand is we will need an system that handles children who come to us, do disrupted school history or background experience or learning disabilities, and are not yet breaking the code. That happens in middle school and high school sometimes, and we've been working really hard on that. But for the most part, Shanahan and other scholars say that you need a system that helps with that. Those those kiddos. But the science of reading at middle school
also includes more so like morphology. And you think about box. So finding meaningful parts of words think like prefixes and suffixes, those parts that help you unlock the meaning of lots of unknown words so that you can free up your cognitive abilities to do deep breathing. But that was really helpful for our secondary team because they're like, what is this going to mean? And we're like, let's learn about it. And then in while we've been doing a lot of specific work to the science of reading and structured literacy itself, we've also kept an eye on our judgment. We want to achieve these things and do foundational, explicit skills
better than ever, and we see a need for it. But we also want our kids to love reading and to read whole texts. And so Catherine Marsh, who writes for The Atlantic, had a nice article reminding people, too, of the importance of still reading whole books in hand. And not oversimplifying this, the science of reading is not about reading excerpts in a basic. Trying to think of anything else we've read a lot about, Will said. This is another interesting one that talks about the K-12 trend, the K-12 progression, and the science of reading. And Natalie Wechsler, who is a JD and also just like an education
historian, does a really good job of giving, like a synthesis of what the science of reading even means and what research is actionable and quality research. So for me, this is my spring break reading. My third grader was like, finally came up to me and was like, why are you always reading about the science? And I went to a coffee shop for the rest of the. So we've done a lot of shared reading and we have now started in learning. We've now started the process of bringing that learning to all teachers. This will be an ongoing process there.
It definitely has to be a manageable part for them. And what we've done so far is on our March PD day for all pre-K through five teachers and all sixth grade through 12 Ela teachers, we did a professional learning session that Doctor Sailors helped us with on the background to, and we went over various models that inform the science of reading. So we taught our staff about the simple view of reading. We taught our staff about the active view of reading.
We taught our staff about the Scarborough's rope and helped them like to frame all of the things we be talking about. We also had to help our staff begin to understand what about this change? Do they already do and like where they can see themselves in this work as the start of change? And what are some ways we previewed that things might become different in the future? So we did kind of like a cross comparison of how a balanced literacy and structured literacy, to help them see the overlaps and the nuances of change. We then viewed the pilot process with them
and did a lot of like, you know, teachers work so hard and have so many. Perhaps there was a lot of fear of like, how are we going to get this all done? So we did a lot of also like just unpacking what we're doing and when we'll be to you next to keep delivering some of that learning. They also then had a chance to indicate if they would be willing to participate in taillights. Once the literacy leadership team got through that stage of the process, we were also excited that we had Eld specialists and special dictators wanting to join us in that work. So all of that led us to a shared vision.
This is in your package that we provided you because it's a lot to read, but I will read it for you. And what was most powerful about this, working with Chris and Christine and Lisa and Amanda was having a vision. And so as a team, we we did our research, we collected their feedback. We brought it back to them. This is what you really meant. We wrestled with parts of it. This is what we write. We believe literacy learning is a complex, purposeful process that integrates reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Our vision is to develop joyful, engaged, and lifelong readers and writers through authentic learning experiences
that balance explicit instruction and student choice and voice. We are committed to a cohesive K-8 literacy framework that values high volume reading, strong foundational skills, and differentiated instruction. We recognize that our students are diverse learners, and we will ensure curriculum and practices reflect their identities, cultures, and language development needs. We will center our students in decision making on our teacher expertise and continuously improve through research, collaboration, and effective professional learning. By valuing authenticity, access, equity and rigor, we prepare students
with the literacy skills, stamina, and critical thinking needed for college, career and life. Above all, we're committed to doing what is best for every TSD student developing confident, competent, and empowered readers and writers. So you've read The Tall Order, and now we're ready to do the work, and we're going to talk to how we explore that long list of resources that we begin with. And we'll first talk about our K-5 exploration. Yeah. So in addition to the teams engaging in shared learning
and creating that K-8 vision, we studied a variety of rubrics that helped establish common expectations for high quality literacy curriculum that aligns both to our district pillars and to the PA 146 requirements. It's important to know that all of the curriculum on the MD recommended list already went through phases of rubric review, so phase one was the Reading League rubric, phase two was report rubric, and then phase three was Essa.
Every student succeeds act as a team. We reviewed these rubrics that went through that process so that we could have a better understanding of what was included on the rubrics. And was there anything missing that we felt was important for us to also have a lens when we were looking at, because this is a process that open schools took us through as well. So being a part of that PA 146 leadership series, they will have us look at the rubrics and do that same type of activity.
And then I brought that back to the elementary leadership team and secondary leadership team as well. And what we noticed is that the rubrics that were used for the MD recommended list did focus very heavily on foundational skills, which was important for us because it gave us a lens that we knew that we needed to really focus in on when we were looking at curriculum, but we did notice that there were parts that were missing that we value, as you saw in that vision. And you're going to see in the rubrics in front of you two.
And that was that culturally responsive piece. That, again, is really important to our literacy team. And in addition to making sure that we're leaning into all of our Michigan State standards beyond just those foundational skills. So in addition to those rubrics, we also brought in New York University Culturally Responsive Scorecard, as well as having the opportunity for our leadership team to really take a close look at our Michigan State standards in the area of Ela. So
the MDG rubrics that were used in addition to those other components, we synthesized all that information and utilize that to create our leadership rubric that you see in the folders in front of you that we use to evaluate each one of the curriculums. So I'm going to explain this document to you. I know there's a lot here, but it is nice to be able to see all of the curriculum that was on that tier one recommended list.
And I want to start off by just having you focus in on Scarborough's reading rope. So like doctor was sharing with you, we had the opportunity to look at different theoretical models of reading instruction. And Scarborough's reading rope is showing us that with increased strategic behaviors, in addition to increase automaticity in the areas of language comprehension. So the top part of the rope, as well as the bottom part, word recognition woven together, is
what helps us to have skilled reading with language comprehension. If you look at just that first component, it's thinking about building of that background knowledge for students, that explicit focus on vocabulary, as well as the understanding of language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge. Language comprehension is the term used for that part of the rope is knowledge building when we're looking at curriculum. So in all of the curriculum that we viewed, they had a knowledge
building component of your reading block, and that was teaching into those language comprehension parts of the rope. Then you see word recognition. So phonological awareness decoding and sight recognition, what we call phonics. And that is referred to as the foundational skills component of the reading block. So with the curriculum on the recommended list, you will see at the very top that there are some that fell under language comprehension, meaning that it's matching that part of the rope.
But it needs that additional curriculum of those foundational skills to, be working together to have that skilled reader. Then at the bottom in the purple, you see those MD foundational skills curriculum options. So that is just like your phonics part of the day and your word study part of the day for when our children are getting into the upper grades. And then there's comprehensive curriculum options. So that is within that curriculum that it is teaching into the knowledge building and the foundation piece.
So when we were reviewing and meeting with all of the vendors on the list and seeing the teaching and action and really having the opportunity to look at each one of these curriculum, we knew that we wanted to have a foundational piece that we would be moving forward with to pilot, whether it be a comprehension curriculum or a comprehensive curriculum. Arts and letters is up there as language comprehension. But really, we kind of took that as like
a main curriculum to look at as well with a comprehensive because it was for knowledge building, so in alignment with all of the other curriculum that was listed as comprehensive. So we reviewed that. Like I said, it's one of the main curriculums, as long as well as having a foundational piece to. So what you see here next is our overall average in scoring for all of our through fifth grade teachers. So when our leadership team was able to review
the curriculum, they broke up into grade level teams. So for example, third grade team would be together and each one of those teams had a literacy specialist and specialist, a special education teacher, teaching and learning and an admin join their group for the review process. And they were able to review curriculum with the lens of each one of our district pillars. So thinking about deep learning, equity and well-being, building capacity and early childhood to career.
So here you can see that clearly. Collaborative literacy collaborative classroom was the front runner with all of our K-5 teachers in every area of the rubric. At the end of the time, together, those grade levels were able to come back to reflect debris on their scoring, which was both the numbers for and anecdotally. And then each one of them, in addition to that, was able to individually vote on which curriculum they wanted to move forward to pilot next year.
And for the comprehensive curriculum, you can see that again, collaborative literacy was the front runner. It earned the highest and most consistent scores across every one of our grades for the valuation criteria and indicating a strong, coherent instructional design that would be suitable for our system wide pilot implementation. Again, all of these curriculums on the list are deemed by MDE to be in alignment with PA 146 and to be quality curriculum with collaborative literacy.
For our team, it was meeting all of those requirements, and in addition to bringing in those other pieces that we really valued within our vision and within our pillars, our rubric. So just some highlights of collaborative literacy. It's a comprehensive, evidence based K-5 program intentionally integrating the foundational skills, deep comprehension and rich knowledge, building literacy experiences with daily social skills instruction.
And that social skills piece really stuck, stuck out for our leadership team because there is that skill component that is embedded in every single lesson, for every single grade level that really builds on each other. K-5, in addition to all the alignments with the legislation. So again, alignment with evidence based practices. The Reading League indicates that collaborative literacy effectively incorporates those critical components of Scarborough's reading group assessment that informs action.
So we really thought about assessment within each one of these curriculum. What does it include, how is it used? And in collaborative? There are both formative assessments as well as and summative assessments where we can measure things like comprehension, vocabulary, word study, spelling. There's often an exit ticket. So like daily type of check ins that you can have for your students. And then there's placement and progress monitoring tools that are embedded
so that we can be really targeted and intentional with small group instruction as well. Differentiated instruction was an important lens for us as well. So that ability to be able to have real, explicit full class instruction as well as those targeted intentional small groups. So being able to have time and space to be responsive to each one of our students within the curriculum was of high importance to us, as well as the daily independent practice,
the opportunity to take everything that they're gaining from that knowledge building and those foundational skills and apply it into continuous texts and still have large volumes of throughout the day, as well as support for all of our students, including our multi-language learners, that's embedded within the curriculum, high quality fiction and nonfiction texts, again, having a range of texts that reflect the background identities of our students is so important to what we value.
And having those mirrors and windows for our students within the books, in the classroom and the variety of texts. So with collaborative, we have those interactive read aloud trade books, decodable rich IDR, custom libraries, kids still having the opportunity to engage in book clubs so that variety of types of texts and real books and kids hands. So here you're going to see the scoring for the foundational piece. Remember that really busy charts talking about how we wanted to focus on a comprehensive.
And we wanted to focus on a foundational when we're moving forward to a pilot. And here you can see that you fly was clearly the front runner with all K-5 teachers again, in each area within the pillar, when they individually were able to vote on which curriculum to move forward with, you can see that you fly again, is what the team felt strong as what they wanted to do. Pilot and learn more about. Some highlights of You Fly foundations.
It is an explicit and systematic program. And again, going back to what 146 is asking for and what we really need to lean into with those foundational skills is having a strong scope and sequence being very explicit in our instruction, allowing a lot of time for practice and feedback in the moment, mastery of skills for our students and targeting those follow, those foundational reading skills that we know are so important. So when we're thinking of both decoding, I can read the words and encoding.
I can also spell the words and making sure that they're mastering that along the way. We also we're looking at what other supplemental resources come along with those foundational programs. So being able to have deportable passages and optional homework practice. So again, going back to our families saying we want to hear more. We want to see more ways that we can help at home, both with you fly and collaborative. There is good communication about what's being learned and ways that you can be helping to support your child at home,
both in that knowledge building and those foundational pieces as well. With you fly. Another important factor is that we were thinking about materials for teachers and with you fly. It's low materials but high impact for our students. It wasn't another consumable like year to year cost workbook that are our students are working within. And we were thinking about tech. So how much technology is involved in any of the curriculum
and in the foundational curriculum, but also with the comprehensive as well. And so it's very low tech. So we didn't want to we were concerned about how much tech is used for insurrection or how much tech is used for practice. And is that practice in an embedded part of the lesson, like I have to, or is it an optional or an additional if you want more practice. So you fly being very low tech as well as collaborative too. And that you fly has embedded weekly progress monitoring.
And that is important to to be able to always keep our pulse on how our students doing and that opportunity for we have students who are needing that additional support. Then we have those tools and resources, and we have that progress monitoring data to show us exactly where we can target and where they are within that phonics progression. So next year, we intend to run two pilots at our elementary. The goal of these pilots is to inform implementation and figure out concerns
and things we need to get together as a group before piloting at scale. That was a new way of thinking for me. To be honest. I originally thought that this might be like an aversive B situation as I planned this process with the team, but as I visited other districts, a lot of them did tell me in Oakland, schools encouraged as well that if you have a product that meets your values and the team is all the way behind and there isn't a close second, lean into the the values of that product and pilot it to learn from it before you do it at scale. And our educators said in the survey afterwards that they did feel
that they were not interested in piloting a second thing. They really wanted to lean in and get good at collaborative literacy for the comprehensive pilot. And note that collaborative literacy is comprehensive, but our team agreed with others that we still wanted to add a foundational to it. So we will also be piloting You Fly. It is our intention that if those products work, as we hope that we would do them both together in the future, and that would be our recommendation of your. From now. We have a lot to unpack before we could make that recommendation to you,
but we would intend to pilot them separately because it is going to be a ton of learning for both. And we've got that feedback from our districts we visited as well to, with the intention of knowing how to unpack the well enough that the you're following teachers would do both so they will go together. So we're not suggesting one of the other long term, should we like these pilots? We would expect that this is the new phonics curriculum and that this could be the new comprehensive curriculum. So collaborative literacy, the team felt that the the foundations portion just wasn't like strong enough
with any with any of the comprehensive curriculum that we looked at. There is a foundational piece and comprehensive has a good foundational piece, as did the others. But we wanted to do our own due diligence to say, let's look at a foundational piece and see, is this something that we feel we need to have a resource in addition to also knowing that we have the potential to tap into that more for students who need additional support. Just. Yeah. Just here. One, two. We did think it could be enhanced. Okay.
And we got that feedback from South Line as well. They were loving it. And also by doubling down on the foundational component that they were really moving children. So I have the opposite question. Does the Youth League have the comprehensive peace to it. Just it's just you have the finance. And so when we pilot equally, how do we make sure that our kids are, you know, we're not just mechanics. Yeah. Great question. So the teams the classrooms that are piloting collaborative literacy,
they would not be doing the reading unit of study while they are piloting because collaborative literacy, being a reader would be the reading at that time of the pilot. So that's the only thing that would be adjusted in their room. But the teams that are piloting you fly would stop doing the units of study at that time and keep doing our current units of study for reading so that they have all elements of reading. Okay. But in the 2728 school year and beyond, we would be combining if if it goes as we think, we have a lot to learn to. Yeah, okay. One of the best parts about this is, you know, that at the start of the year,
we indicated our interest in 35 and funds. We did not at that time have the voices of our teachers at the table or have gone through the process to pick the right thing we did at that time. Also, look at what we were interested in. You fly. And we also looked at the cost of you flying you fly is very inexpensive, which is also great, but we received a very large, you know, more than $1 million allocation. We were not able to spend at all. We were we were spending closer to 10,000.
Yeah. And then we were, you know, really trying to and it didn't feel responsible. So we engaged our team in the process and feel that it is in our best interest. And I would be recommending that the board allow us to use our 35 to buy collaborative literacy. Being a reader, we would actually be able to buy it at scale and to use that full allocation. So by doing that, it would allow us to use the governor's funds to get high quality literacy materials and should in a year from now. We love it. We avoid that cost in our general expense.
Could we not love it and it not be what we want for our students? We would give it to another district that would be willing to put it in the hands of kids. Because I will tell you, in this journey, there are a lot of districts that don't have the same robust teams of like leadership or governance related to this, and there are going to be districts in that scenario as well too. So that would be our recommendation to really have a great financial win for our district. And should this be what we think it is, be able to have it without in a time of financial, you know, if I understand correctly,
you want to purchase the full set for the entire K-8. K-5. Yeah, K-5, while we are just doing a pilot just to use the funds. Is that right? Because if we then liked it and a year from now, we would not have to purchase it out of our job. Absolutely, absolutely. And that is the governor's intentions. You know, that we use this to to get literacy materials in cans of kids. These these grants are pretty prescriptive. You can only buy one thing with it. And we have a handout for you guys related to that.
Yeah. It's unknown what will be allocated the next year. And so this is like honestly I see it as a great opportunity. And I'm excited that the team got their voice at the table without me making it isolated recommendation. So we amended our grant application and it was approved Dan competitive language here. And so we have those funds available to us. That's great. We'd like to talk to you also, though, about what our team thought about our questions on the elementary piece. So. Oh yeah. Yeah,
yeah sure. There are so so so the purchase would cover the purchase for the entire K-5, but the entire K-5 would, would not be piloting or would not. Okay. All right. So you have your select people, but you'd have all the materials ready to go if it's a yes okay. All right. To like scale of that how many people anticipate piloting which and where's that going to happen. We're thinking of the slides. Yeah yeah. Later the slides we talk about how
approximately that was a slide we added actually. 70 teacher. We actually the album introduces a very excited to pilot this and the bill. And we have 70 teachers that we anticipate because we were also thinking about who we can support. Well too, because the point of learning about it as a small scale is to learn those lessons before it goes to large scale. So we would anticipate 70 teachers in K through five being involved between the youth Ly and the collaborative literacy pilots and making sure we have all buildings represented too. So we have piloting happening all across the district.
We would also like to have we are strongly encouraging teams to do this together because they have common plan, and that allows us to best support them versus work in isolation. And Lisa's doing a lot of and Amanda's doing a lot of thoughtful behind the scenes thinking of, okay, if it were these two schools and they're both early, we could get them after school the first time together with a vendor for a check in. And then we could, during job embedded PD, bring non pilots together with pilots. We could bring the two. You fly with collaborative and see how it overlaps. So we're doing a lot of logistics right now to figure that all out.
That's exciting. Yeah. Okay so just for for clarification with some of the language. So the the piloting will take place next school year. Yes. Part of what I, what I'm a little confused about is then piloting at a greater scale the following year, my understanding was that we would adopt it for the following year. You're so. I'm okay. So it is not like no. Next, the 2627 school year would be our pilots and we would be coming to in April of 27 with a recommendation at the start of the 2728 school year.
We need to ensure that we have high quality materials aligned to structured literacy and advocacy. Okay. And then, you know, and I'm trying to flip between the yeah, the girl was reading road chart because it has the different curriculum. And you know what they what it does. So you know and I did notice that Southwind has the collaborative plaster, which is I guess supposed to be comprehensive but maybe not comprehensive enough. And so you flight might also be necessary. But then you have you have West Bloomfield, who's doing only L, which is the comprehensive.
And then Birmingham and Novi are doing Arts and letters, which is not the comprehensive, which is the comprehension only do the. So neither Novi or Birmingham or was killed in addition like taking on a secondary or have they they had. Yes they have so and those different curriculum that are listed across the bottom, yes they have. And even because it wasn't in the, in the, it wasn't in the district.
So I'm just trying to understand why are we going, you know, why are we in South Lyon now. The only ones that don't know okay. And we're not. And we heard like, you know, arts and letters. Definitely. Because they have only that top part of the rope of variety. They're not all necessarily using the same foundational, but a lot of districts. We're also looking at a foundational piece because that's such an important factor in PA 146. Is that explicit? Just phonics. Only, you know, word study for students that they were looking at those
and we're looking at that as well to see, do we need that in addition to is it going to be enough of that foundational skills targeted within the comprehensive that maybe we wouldn't need you? Five but it was important for us and other districts that we've talked to to make sure, like to move forward and pilot both to see once you're living it. But the teachers who are doing the the teachers who are going to be doing the collaborative literacy pilot are not, in addition, going to be doing you Fly. It's the teachers who are doing the units of study for
right now going to continue doing that. They're going to be the ones. Okay. Yes. And then when and we will talk more about professional development. But like what I was saying is that's why we're being really intentional of when we have our job embedded professional development, to be bringing those teachers together and as well as teachers who aren't piloting at all to have the opportunity to see it in action, have conversation around like, what are we? Are we are we noticing that it is meeting? What are those requirements in the law?
Or do we feel that it does have that foundational skill part of the curriculum? But in addition, maybe we do need another little portion, like we have our final units of study. Now that's just explicitly teaching into that phonics progression for students. So again, it's being thoughtful about like making sure that even though you're just piloting one thing or maybe not piloting at all, that you are going to be part of the process along the way to hear how all those components are going to whether any questions for you. You mentioned, you said, should we not love it in reference
to the collaborative literacy, if you give away the stuff? Yeah. What would that scenario. Yeah, I've actually already had business with another district reach out to me. It's it's somewhat comments happened to me a few times this year where a business office will reach out and say, we're moving beyond this curriculum. We think it has one students. It's not for us, it is. Sometimes people sell it. In this case we would not because it's purchased with grant funds and so we would reach out. We work with Oakland schools to spread the word and we would give it to
who needs it. So then what would you do? I said, so if you're only piloting one thing and then maybe you don't like that thing, then what do you use instead? See, it's supposed to be one of the comprehensive or one from each top bottom half of the rope. So then what? The pilot? Yeah, the pilot process would have to determine that. So, you know, piloting anything else at this time. Yeah okay. Let's add the lists. Also have updates this summer to. So if we continue to review the lists and there's something else we want, this is our our update as of today.
It could change. Neighboring districts have gone through various pilots. We do feel confident that our team really sees their values in it, though that is not what I would anticipate. Okay, yes. I would not make this recommendation if that were not that were the case. Well, I mean, there's lots of choices, right? And our rubric is one of the five or so you said you looked at. Yeah, they're very excited, which is nice to see their commitment to learning something new and taking a risk. My comment was very similar to because we are truly
only piloting one in the comprehensive list. So it is not. You're not trying to choose between one or the other. We are trying to make sure that this fits everything that we want. If it doesn't, maybe add something to it. That's kind of what I'm reading through. Is that what you have in mind? I'm not sure what your question is, because we have no two different curriculums that we are piloting. We are only piloting one, which is the collaborative literacy pilots. We do have you fly for certain.
Yeah, for the foundational piece. But in fact collaborative is what do you guys think you're piloting all across the board. So the goal is potentially to use that. We've at this today. We think that our team will like collaborative literacy. And you fly and want to combine those two things. It would also be an option though to say we would just do collaborative literacy because it was considered comprehensive. So the goal of the pilot is to make sure that it fits our curriculum and our students, and maybe see what needs to be added
in places that it doesn't fit. Is that what the goal, the goal of the pilot, is to figure out how to work it at scale for all teachers. So we have determined that this fits our value system and has all the components that the state of Michigan outlined. But what we want to know is when we have a close group of teachers with our direct, very close support, roll it out. How does that inform considerations for the next year? I think maybe the bigger thing, the bigger question that the questions are trying to get to is.
When we are piloting this and into the future, is it necessary or is it required for us to pilot to things of similar or equal value or not? So I'm not I'm not saying what the you know, what the answer needs to be, but but maybe it's this assumption or, or idea that if we're going to pilot, we're going to pilot two things of equal value and to see which one works or does it. Yeah.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that that's how our process is laid out to be. So I think that's the I think that's the it's the misunderstanding or the or the question or the my interpretation. Because originally I kind of had your mindset like, you're going to have an A and a B and you're choosing between a B, but that's not really what's going on here because it's a very, very unique situation. Like rarely has the legislature kind of said, you think this was.
Yeah. So I think that was the point of saying, like, all of these have already been through. Yes. Multiple rubrics, like we're good with meeting those requirements. So then it comes down to kind of like, okay, all apples are the same there. So like what what do we want. Which is was the purpose of of the rubric that they worked with. And you see that overwhelmingly I guess favorable for one particular curriculum. So then it's like, well, we know it meets the 146 and we see this lopsided. Yes.
So then it comes down to like, do we really want to pilot a circuit when we've got people that are like, I really use that. We don't want to. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's just, you know, one off situation. So the pilot will help us determine how to implement it at scale. And that's our big focus because what we've learned is implementation really matters. Yeah. For keeping by in and for doing your best a curriculum and a hand alone is not enough.
And we're not unique in this. Just you know, there are other districts with your colleagues who have piloted to implement, which is what I, they kind of taught me about because I originally had thought. And you'll see, though, in just a second, we are going to recommend a different approach for middle school based off of the teachers voices. So I look at it as phased implementation. And this is the phase one where we are learning and maybe adapting and full scale implementation is the year later. Okay. Yeah. How much flexibility
in collaborative classroom talk about high quality fiction and nonfiction texts. How much flexibility is there for teacher and student choice texts? And that's a really good question. And that was, as you see, a part of our rubric, and that was a piece that was also reflected within this curriculum, is that we know the importance of students being exposed to grade level text. Yes. And being able to have rich IDR libraries where students are still given
the opportunity to have a voice and choice in books, to be a part of the text in a variety of others for that large volume of reading. So yes, this is something that we saw within this curriculum that maybe wasn't there as much in others. That was really important to our teachers is for our students to be able to have that that choice in text. Right. Thank you. Last thing you asked, am I bring this up later is how are you going to pull on your special Ed teams and your Eld teams? Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
I know you might address it later. Yeah. So our the the good thing is, is our special ed NLP teams have been with us from the start. They are also very excited about it, because all of the curriculum that we're talking about today makes specific recommendations for diverse learners, and it is a big part of the curriculum on this list to provide like suggested call outs like do this if you see that kind of like an if that. So they have helped with the review thus far. This is tier one material. So it probably it won't be what they're implementing, but they will continue to be involved
in the professional learning and the observations and the walkthroughs related to what we're seeing. And we have a lot to unpack still of what it means for all the other tiers. That's we're launching that work in May, opening tools. Their us, they call it a retreat. It's really a full day of work on what it is. Yeah. So we feel to something like it's not it's not. And so we're launching those questions. So like tiered support is going to become a topic or that in May what we were we were actually able
to self-select our topic based off of where we stand in pay. 146 that it felt great and we are feeling really good about the progress we're making toward our tier one pilots and see a need to turn our eye to that next. So that is what our our Troy team will be working on. But each district in May gets to pick their own like where they're at thing, and have all of the open space people there to help us. Very similar to how if this curriculum supports this, the learners who need support similarly, does it support learners who need the challenge?
That is, one of the things we're most excited about in this curriculum is that it does a far better job of teaching foundational skills, vocabulary, grammar, and because it does allow for some choice in it still. But like I would say, less choice, but still some choice. We can differentiate what our students do within that choice. So it allows teachers to ratchet up the rigor if needed to. Okay, one last thing assessment. Or is that. Yes. Are you do you mean assessment within this product or.
Yes. Both. Or with like, are you going to continue using the old assessment or are you going to start moving and be suggested by the state required soon or you use the product, or is it one the same? I don't know. So for assessments in general. So tonight I know we're just talking to you once and for assessments in general. We've started learning about that. We've met with some of the vendors. We have another vendor visit in May, so we are definitely thinking about it, but that our focus is on tier one. Gotcha. Thanks to make sure you keep thinking about it. Oh yeah,
I'm not sure for sure. I mean, do you want to talk? I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. So middle school, so of the list of curriculum that the state has approved, only five of those had included included six, eight. So what you see on this slide is the results of our scoring and use of rubric and arts and letters, and all education came out on the tab. You can see there is some neck and neck a little bit. And especially around building something I do want to point out is
And those products are in biology textbooks. So that was something our teachers, it's not that they didn't like them at all. They did spend a lot of time looking through them. They just were not comfortable going back to a textbook as sort of, you know. Yes. Yeah. So and a lot of excerpted text rather than novels that go along with those curriculums. So those were pretty much ruled out a little bit quicker because of, because of that. So what we ended up with on the
or I should say prior before I get to where we are here, but they had an opportunity at the end of our evening together and reviewing curriculum to complete a form to choose whether we were going to move 1 or 2 forward for piloting. So as you see in these percentage results, arts and letters and education, we're very close. Both of these, as you'll see on the next couple of slides, explaining, you have a lot of what we value in the middle school classroom that they don't want to let go of the nurturing, the cultivating of an inclusive environment.
A lot of those teacher opportunities for teacher responsiveness and feedback, both of those, both of these offer that, but they also bring in some of the rigor and the explicit teaching in areas that our teachers are designing. And so for context, the difference between 47 and 41% was one vote yes. So it seems like so much more. At one point when we checked the form, they were exactly the same as like exactly the same later one. So so arts and so Arts and letters is, as you see with the the three main areas with comprehension.
There are consistent models for collaboration in the daily lessons. There's an integrated approach to reading, writing and language development. So this is comprehensive where daily the teaching is going to touch on reading and writing, but also some explicit teaching and word study and morphology, something else that our teachers really are craving. There's high quality materials. They are very complex and rigorous texts that the students are exposed to in arts and letters, but with a lot of scaffolding to go along with that usability.
The lessons are 16 minutes, which obviously is ideal for a middle school classroom with clear instructions, customizable slides. There's organized notes. There's a lot of, you know, from what we observed in the the classrooms we visited in other districts, that is very dynamic. It is. And I mean, I don't want to say it's, you know, like chaos. It's not the right word, but it's very much that the high engagement the kids are really involved in, the conversation level is just it's really
especially if we saw in a one and a fourth and fifth grade classrooms really impressive. Also about with arts and letters. They do have assessments. The other thing that our teachers wanted to have was something more consistent along the lines of assessment. So there's formative summative, but they also have reading and fluency assessments that would help teachers to kind of trap students where they are throughout the year, which is something, again, that we are finding is is helpful to
to gather instruction at the middle school, teachers feel a little bit anxious about trying to say where they think a child is at a reading level, and this will really help them be able to determine that, but while also listening to them read. And then l'éducation is so what really teachers were drawn to with l'éducation is a strong character. Ed it's very Ibish if you if you look at some of the things that Gail Education offers, they have a crew curriculum,
which reminded me a bit of the IB learner profile that is built into their their lessons and the teaching and learning, but it also has more nonfiction so heavy around the nonfiction, which, again, is something your teachers feel is imperative for for students. As I mentioned, the character editor and high quality student work. So, you know, demonstrating the craft and really focusing on the quality of what students are producing. Not not necessarily always the quantity, like spending more time to make sure
that what they're doing is, you know, producing some real quality writing. Another thing for education, I mentioned the crew curriculum, but it also is very strong in UDL. So a lot of what our teachers have been learning the last couple of years, and what we've been trying to to really build into our tier two instruction is through UDL. So and that's heavily layered into the L offering. Can you just say what you. So that's under the universal design. So strategies that make learning tasks easy for children
who are striving learners to enter the task. But the ceiling high enough that those are more advanced also. I'm sorry I should we can get a little acronym. Does do IBM curriculum use this patient. No. So they're completely I just as as a former, you know, Ivy school teacher. And what was I called coordinated. Thank you. That was you know, that was very much. Yeah. So so I was very much built into student inquiry, you know, driving their learning.
And that's very similar for L education. And it also had the learner profile parts and pieces to that as well for the character editor that drove those units. So that just what he authors just really reminds me of that. So so the data for our middle school pilots is different. We basically have a tie and of what the literacy leadership team thinks. So for middle school, we'll be moving forward with two pilots to inform the selection between a speaking. So arts and letters versus L education.
We do believe with time and wanting to not disrupt the continuum of our kids learning that unfortunately these won't be the same teachers doing both products and also is double the costs when you do that too. So we will have a group of teachers doing arts and letters and a group of teachers doing L education. Just like with elementary, we'll be working hard with job embedded PD subs to get those groups together at times to creating a tool that allows them to objectively monitor for the things we said we value to and like. Look for qualitative signs of it.
We know both of these products have strong research for academic outcomes according to the state setting, and we also want to continue to monitor them for our values as well in that process. That's something that we're just beginning, getting ready to begin with Oakland schools, too, because they've done a lot of work with other districts of how do you support like a an objective monitoring between those two things? Because we recognize that people will like what they invest themselves in. And so we've been very clear with our pilot that you will be piloting for the sake of providing feedback of what is going well and for a lot to be
very open to people coming into your room to see and to be in, like a test between the two rooms, we'll be pulling kids to hear about their experience, and that data will be what drives the decision. It that's kind of a hard thing, but we've been clear about that upfront. How do you select your which classrooms are going to be piloting, which yeah, great question mix in each school. We haven't done that yet. But what our intention is, is that we want each school to have both products
so that they have ease of access to get into each other, and we want the same grade level of teachers to do the same product so that the same experience and then they can help as well to. But we think it's important to try to get each product into each school for ease of getting groups of teachers together. And then the support of your teammate into that literacy coach can support as well. Together. Now, David, if you look at these two, the arts and letters are is in the comprehension section of this. Scarborough was that L is in
the comprehensive which contains both the foundational and the comprehension. By picking these two I mean you're kind of comparing two different things. Oh, is that okay? Because middle schoolers already have the foundational piece. You think so? Yeah. So the graphic we showed you that listed all the different ways you could be qualified or explain that is for the K-5 list and the K-5 list suggests needing that foundational and that language building. It is a different game in middle school because they assume an SS system should handle children who don't have basic facts satisfied.
So all of the middle school products we looked at that were from companies that had approved elementary products, and that's a lot to follow. They are aligned to the science of reading. So things that they do that the decisions that these curriculum make that align them to the science of reading. So really that designation doesn't matter for school. So they both heavily teach morphology. They explicitly teach vocabulary both in the beginning and then embedded and assess for it to.
So they have a scope and sequence of skills as well to. I'm just to come back to the oh I'm sorry. Yeah. I was just going to come back to the piloting question. We did seek out interest in piloting and who would want to do that. And it was really an awesome outcome because we have 20 teachers right now that are interested. I know we're getting to it too. But of those 20 and just to kind of put it in perspective for middle school at the four buildings, we're about 50 teachers total in L.A.
That sometimes include that will also include our special Eld. So 20 teachers is a great number but also representative of all grade levels. So you don't have to like pull certain grades. We did, but we still might never know what might happen. So some other details about the pilots, even though we are just beginning this part. So we just got to the point of being comfortable with what is the thing, what are the pilots and how will we fund them and who's interested. Up next, we're going to work to make sure we have representation of both pilots
with both products for middle and then with both options and elementary, we're also going to be making sure that people pilot in teams. As we said a few times, we're looking for meaningful ways to include our our our special education and Eld staff as well. Thankfully, they have asked to be included to. So, you know, they have such complex roles, but they have been a part of this team and they have put their names in. They said, I know this is tier one, but I want to like plan alongside. I want to like, you know, if I'm co-teaching next year in my assignment, I want to be involved. So we're working through those logistics district supports.
We've been telling our team that in August, there will be a vendor day where you learn what the thing is, learn more about science of reading and how it aligns to it. And then we've been saying you'll get some time to digest. And then in October at the end of October, believe that is when you will leave that time a district PD day feeling like you're ready to teach the first unit some of the products taught. The first module is a lot of new language to learn, because we want them to walk away feeling like I'm ready to actually teach this, and to do that in a carefully supportive way. With us, there will be an immense amount
of ongoing vendor support and support from us. All of these vendors have super impressive rollouts. They've had to do that because Michigan is in a frenzy to make these changes. So they like once you passed the the initial person, they're like, I'm now moving into the implementation team. Like there are teams that support us and they're upfront about their needs as well too, because it is of a mutual interest that their products work well and they have the children. So they. Want to meet with our student teachers after school.
So that's something we're budgeting for internally. They want to be involved during walkthroughs. They want to be involved with collaborative problem solving planning. It will definitely be a collaborative process. Trying to think what else here. So we've talked to our teachers about how a lot of the feedback will require being open to lots of visitors to gather that data, their own evaluations as pilot and staff, like what is their experience? Are the values we saw in print happening in theory once you do it? That's a huge question, and getting student and community feedback of those who are in those pilots.
What do you actually feel in the sense? Is that doing well? Do you wish it did? Is there anything that has changed? So there's a lot going on. Katie, we've only talked about tier one parents right now, and there are so many other parts of PA 146, but what we wanted to kind of end with is that the exciting part is that we're working toward cohesion, toward a very important change, and in many ways, in golf in the middle school at the same time is an exciting opportunity and will make us just a great opportunity for alignment.
And our educators who have been in the literacy leadership team are excited. They're open and they're ready to see how this works. I know how busy their lives are and that there are so many other complexities of PA 146 that will also have to work with them through, so to have such willing teachers with their voice at the table really excites us. We're excited that all of these, all of these pilots connect to our vision and values to, and that the state has done the due diligence of looking at the foundational parts for us, that they all teach the Michigan standards and that they align
to PA 146 and the science of reading, if we it's been a lot of work, but we feel there's a lot of opportunity here to to do best for our kids. Some timelines that are coming up to just for you all to know is that on May 11th, we're excited to host a community Unite here in the services building, will be updating our our community on our pilot process, on our process so far leading up to pilots. And we'll be here to answer questions. We do have some samples of the materials that they're going to be free to see, and we'll be there to take questions as needed to and be back.
And then we preview those August and October collaborations with vendors. We think generally November and March are when the pilots will be happening. We will be working with those vendors to determine when that exactly is what unit it replaces. In the next two weeks, we'll be working through who people are when it is, what are the units, and then thinking about the PD from that. And then we hope to be back in a year from here to tell you what we're excited to, to do at scale. And I still had some six, eight questions. I thought, yeah, sorry. Okay. So,
you know, we were talking about Kate and Five and the collaborative classroom. You know, that kind of seemed to hit all the things that were really important to us as a district. And, you know, it's quite possible that for 6 to 8. Arts and letters, Neal, education don't necessarily. So maybe in terms of, you know, and as a board, we you know, we did get an email and some, some feedback and I you know, I can't I haven't reviewed the material. So I can't, you know, speak to it personally, but, you know, some feedback
that, you know, some of the units, for example, and arts and letters might be very heavily skewed to, you know, going back to 14th century Europe and where all of the reading is through that lens. And that is not our, you know, that is not our community or the time that we live in. So, I don't need an answer now, but I have said from now on, I will ask when anything is presented to us as a board, what are we gaining?
What are we losing? And the part if we are losing something, how we're going to rectify that ahead of time. So if you know, you know, I don't know, you know, with the of the two which, which the, the team will recommend. But if there are things in there, that are missing in terms of what we as a district need and value for our community. How are we going to how do we, you know, how do we define that going forward
so that we were not in a situation 2 or 3 years from now where we're having to, fix some things, right? Because even with something and I know we're going to get to the math after this, but some of the, some of the, the issues we've identified with the math were known even three years ago that we were going to have this issue of fluency with the new curriculum, and it was not done. You know, the rectification of that missing piece was not was not taking care of from the get go.
So I want to know, you know, especially when you guys come back next April would be gaining. What are we losing the part that we're losing. How how that is going to be taken care of? Yeah, we'll be happy I can we talked a lot about that internally as a team. What does this allow us to gain? And if there is a value that we don't think is a strong, what decisions do we make as a team. So we'll be working through it. My question is very similar to that is do you have what kind of assessments or what kind of data
are you trying to gather to determine which one's better. So you probably should identify those as well to know to be more data driven I guess. Yeah. So in a pilot of several months, it is pretty hard to get a statistically significant hard number of difference. And we will likely be piloting units that have different objectives, different standards, different end products. So what we're working on with Oakland schools is like a rubric tool for identifying whether we say where our values,
what will be the look force for it, and helping us collect qualitative feedback for that so that we can have some. Okay, we've had some initial discussions. That's all work we are ready to begin and have not done yet because we have been so busy with this. We are also excited to work with them because they said they have some experience working with districts to have creating external tools that are creating tools that are curriculum agnostic. To that, just unpack how well is the standard achieved that this unit was meant to do? Two and like looking at that
objective way versus just the way that the vendor provides to. So those are some next steps we have with the open schools okay. So Oakland Schools is actually working with you for even 6 to 8 as well. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah I just have one point of advocacy and just something to sort of plant a seed since we've identified one of our biggest achievement gaps is in our students with learning disabilities, our special education students in our else. Right. So I heard you mentioned earlier, you want to create a meaningful opportunity for the L folks and the special ed folks to participate.
I would stress that that needs to be more than meaningful, like robust, because that is the gap that is proven most persistently difficult to close across the board. And that's where I think we would expect a higher return on investment, if you will. So in an effort to do that, I think you have to find the advocate, advocate that you deeply engage your special ed folks so that you're even, as you said, like people are out of woodworks. Want to pilot? Well, fabulous. Make sure you find the people that are co-teaching.
They get it and then they get the materials to so that it's like useful for them to do so that we can start to look at that paired with, let's say, like you mentioned, data to say like, is this action moving the needle for these students, knowing that that is a group that we are both of those really we're very focused on the big, frankly and ugly gaps that we persistently have with them for achievement. So just yeah. So appreciate any question and one comment with the data sheet chart that you have
where you showed the different distribution. I think it was like English language learners and economically disadvantaged or between six. And I think you had one thing I always hear is even though you see the gap increasing between the two, you also notice the English the percentage of yellow kids reduces. So even though the gap increases, because if there are, let's say 15% of our elementary kids who are in L.
But by the time they come to middle school, you may you may only have 6 or 7% of our kids. I'm just giving an example. So showing that percentage in that chart may help. Also explain that the gap is higher because now they are become general students and not in El anymore. So we we don't have as many similar with special needs as well. So I think that at that point, doctor and I were talking about just last week that our when you look at our formerly limited English population plus current, it's about 39.1%.
It is 39.1% of Troy kids as of last year. And sometimes we forget to include those who have exited the program as a symptom of success to yeah, yeah, exiting the program is a symptom of success. And now they are in the general, and all of a sudden our El number looks bad because as a percentage of those. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Five minute break. know you can go ahead and address the board now, but for the future, for everybody. We only usually have one public comment time and especially at the workshop. And that happens at the beginning. So it's so I don't want to make it as an exception. But we are making an exception for you. Hello. My name is Anusha. I'm here representing medical services for justice, and
I'm here speaking on middle school math. So. About board in class. Not really challenged, but I'd also just like to mention a personal anecdote of mine. So in my free time through the Economic Club, I'm also a career readiness academy event at Ieast, and I am. I have the privilege of being able to tutor many bright students that have a great feature ahead of them. And as you know, Audra and the towel, you know, the calendar, the students there.
And when I asked them, like, how did they get prepared to come to Iveagh? What prepared them for the exam? A lot of them will say the curriculum of their middle schools. What made the difference? If you want, the students can be competitive and you would have to ensure that they have individual attention according to their skills. And kids should not be punished for getting ahead and according to whatever skills they are at Tori's McLain district. And unfortunately, 4% of families have left already to go to another district,
and this is a chance to restore my status and glory to what it originally was. So thank you, thank you, thank you. All right. We will return back to our regular agenda with us right now. Hold on. Give me a second. Okay. Middle school. I need to separate you. All right. Yeah, we need to say. Word of education. Great to see you all.
I do. I thought maybe what I could start with before we jump into middle school math is Mr. Griffin. Just because we were just talking about Mr. Griffin just recently shared with us that the incoming freshman class for IA that has taken the math assessment is the highest scoring Troy School District acreage class in Memphis for placement. There was an increase of 53% of our kids qualifying to be put into the math class. So it's the highest testing class going in.
So he wanted to share that, and I kind of shared it back with us when he was thinking about our eighth graders as they're coming up and wanted to just share with us, like their status and what they're looking at it that's I thought it would be an interesting piece for you, but I'm going to pick up where we left off. The lesson. We were here just three weeks ago. We we had a conversation where we had collected some survey feedback that had come right out of spring break, and we had not had an opportunity to jump directly into that data, because it was really just a few days after spring break.
So we committed to coming back with some additional information on the parent survey, the student survey, and then we had some teacher listening sessions. So I'll just jump into a few slides. Again, I apologize. I know this wasn't sent out to you. I had a time, so I won't race through them. I'll take a little time and then these will all be shared with you. Following our parent survey response, we had 408 total parents respond. So we actually had about ten parents respond in the interim. Between the time we talked to you and the time we closed out the survey. Of those 408 responses, we only had open ended feedback
in 214, parents responded to feedback on the curriculum, and and 152 parents gave some feedback on the map progression. All the rest of those were blank. So I just wanted you to know when you look at the end, some parents just went in and took the multiple choice and didn't provide any feedback on the open ended response, but that is what percent? That's the 1,414% of the middle school parents, right? So not a very no. So 86% of our parents at the middle level did not respond to the survey.
One of the parents teams that came forward with 93 responses was a desire for more practice problems, more homework, and more parent friendly resources to use at home. I think this is this is consistent with conversations that we've been having up until now, and you can see just a few quotes picked there that speak to that. Another parent theme that came forward was a desire for physical textbooks or more people, more paper and pencil work, less technology and screen time. That's something that we've had conversations about. And all of our in math classes
do have workbooks, but not all of those workbooks are actually transitioning home. And that's something that David and I learned a little bit more about during our focus groups. Another parent theme was a desire for more rigor, earlier honors tracks, and an optional opportunity for acceleration. So those were really kind of the three areas for parents from the themes in the open ended responses. As we shared last time, we had about 2000 students who responded and what they enjoy about math class. Many of them stated the peer collaboration and those social interactions.
They enjoy the challenging and learning challenging, they enjoy being challenged and the new learning concepts, and they enjoy their supportive and engaging teachers. I really like that last one. The way my teacher explains how kind of cool she is. That's right, that's right. So what changes would you recommend the the top choice or feedback was none nothing or idk. And then you can see pacing. So we had students who certainly spoke up about pacing with the curriculum,
which we did hear some from our teachers as well, and then clear materials, explanations and instructions. I thought what was really interesting is there's some feedback in there that talks about how the workbook and then the teacher notes do not line up. And so when they're going back to reference, it seems like there's some confusion there. So we need to dig into a little bit. And then over the course of the last two weeks, David and I have had an opportunity to go to each one of our core middle schools to engage in conversation with our middle school staff. One of the things that we talked about on the seventh was the the teacher feedback that we got.
We had 21 teachers respond, and we had quite a mixed bag of feedback from our teachers. So we wanted to dig in and understand a little bit more about how they felt. We had 27 of our 28 math teachers participate in the those those sessions, those listening sessions with us and the one that didn't participate wasn't there because he was coaching baseball. So they all were very happy to come to that table to have a conversation. David and I were there, as well as Kate Rainey and then Jordan, Dennis Jordan took doctor. Dennis took all of our notes so that he could really be listening.
Well, we were focused on facilitating the conversation. The the majority of those conversations went over an hour and a half and into two hours. So there was a lot, a lot for us to unpack. We structured the conversation around three particular areas. First, we focused on curriculum, specifically I am. Then we transitioned to talk about our math course progression. And then the third thing that we asked them to think about was the timeline for implementation of the work to come. So the next four slides are dense slides, and we'll spend a little time on each one of them. What we did was we thought it would be helpful for you to understand
the tone and tenor of feedback at each one of our four buildings before we summarize them so they are listed as middle schools A, B, C, and D, they're not listed by name. We have very small math departments of 4 to 5 teachers. I think one of the things that's really important is that we continue to provide safe spaces for our teachers to share their thoughts, so we coded them just by letter. So at middle school, A, our teachers expressed that there is no perfect curriculum, as we were talking about. I am, but that they need additional time as a staff to work together
and collaborate to ensure the curriculum meets the needs of our TSC students. The teachers expressed the desire to continue Im, but they stated that it needs additional practice problems and assessments that either come from the publisher or directly aligned with the curriculum itself. Our sixth grade teachers expressed that there was room for more rigor in sixth grade curriculum, and that some of the material may be review with elementary five and could be cut. Teachers expressed that there is too much content in eighth grade math, and that students are skimming over important
pre-algebra content in the current Honors Algebra one course. So actually, that statement should probably read there's too much content in the combined eighth grade math honors Algebra one course regarding math progression, the majority of the teachers expressed that the current progression model is not working well. Specifically, the eighth grade Math Honors Algebra one combination. However, teachers also express strong concerns about the idea of sorting students at the sixth grade level. Teachers wondered if a condensed I am math
67 could be an appropriate tier one curriculum for all. Incoming sixth graders and teachers expressed a strong desire for vertical alignment between elementary and middle and high school math to ensure a smooth progression for its students. At Middle School. B when talking about the curriculum, our teachers felt that I am did a good job building conceptual knowledge. The activities were engaging and connected to real life, but that their insufficient materials they wanted to maintain Im, but with more support. Teachers felt that parents were struggling.
Since workbooks do not go home and parents do not know how to support their students without clear directions or more at home materials, teachers expressed that the pacing of the course is intense at times, and that the amount of reading comprehension needed to access the content could be a barrier to some students. Our eighth grade teachers stated that math eight and algebra one content within a single course is a major challenge. The pacing is too fast, and some and some students in algebra one need more time with the content. When reflecting on the math progression, they shared that the majority of teachers
expressed that the current progression model needs some change. There is interest in exploring the math six seven and math seven eight curriculum. Some teachers expressed that the current skill gap between students enrolled in math six, where students enrolled in math seven is too large to bridge in the current structure, and it's impacting their instruction. Some teachers expressed hesitancy to go to the old system of selecting fifth graders. Forerunners. At our third middle school, when thinking about the curriculum, teacher shared some eighth grade
and Honors Algebra one teachers expressed that current system that the current system of Im was not the right selection for the district's math curriculum, and felt that students were missing essential content that was previously covered with big ideas. Math teachers felt that Honors Algebra one course was a completely different experience than the high school Algebra one course, due to the eighth grade math content within it. Some teachers wanted to try. I am one without eith grade content in it. Some wanted to transition back to the big ideas.
Algebra one sixth and seventh grade teachers at this building expressed a more positive view of the I am curriculum, but were concerned about the math curriculum being scripted for teachers and word heavy for students. When thinking about the math progression, the majority of teachers expressed that the algebra one course needed to be adjusted as soon as possible, and that a math six seven and math seven eight course should be offered again. Eighth grade honors math teachers felt that an immediate change was necessary. Some teachers were hesitant to change everything
and did not want to rush through decisions. Some teachers shared that parents have expressed positive experiences for their students in mass seven because there is not sorting. Our fourth middle school related to curriculum and resources, teachers felt that the IAM curriculum was a good choice, but not perfect. I see students thriving and problem based approach. Math eight sometimes needs a lot of supplemental support, because engaging with the content can sometimes be out of their reach. Students reach sixth and seventh grade. Teachers felt that many of the units were an improvement from big ideas,
but it can be difficult to differentiate with within. In math, reading level was noted as a potential barrier to access. Teachers reported that parents mentioned not having enough at home practice and would like concrete resources, like a textbook related to math regression. Teachers expressed that having math six and math six seven again may allow them to build confidence of struggling math students and provide them with more individualized attention. Teachers expressed a need to separate out the eighth grade content from algebra one via A67 and seven eight track.
We're trying to teach students all the best parts of math eight and keep all the best parts of algebra one. Many of the students currently in the course cannot keep up, so I'm sure you can hear there were some commonalities. There were also some outliers. So we tried to gather for you the through lines in that teacher feedback. So we felt that one of the three lines was affirmation of IAM as our tier one curriculum. We heard often that I am is not perfect and that it needs additional resources, but we also heard from our teachers that they feel it's too soon to walk away from this curriculum.
We felt that another through line was vertical alignment from fifth grade to eighth grade, that our teachers really want to be able to explore the alignment and potential repetition of learning targets. For students in grades five and six. Many of our sixth grade teachers did share with us that since the elementary is transitioned to bridges, that the bridges five is a rigorous program, and they believe that for many of our students in six, it's a repetition. The beginning of the year in particular, there's quite a bit of repetition. So they want to really look at what that looks like between the two.
Our teachers spoke about a wide range of skills and abilities in our sticks, in our seven courses, which lead us to think about exploring the impact of an accelerated pathway, potentially beginning in grade six. Our Honors Algebra one structure, which currently includes math eight, is clearly challenging for all of our teachers. We need to explore different ways to provide instruction for math. Eight content Prior to algebra one, we need to work on aligning our middle school algebra one court of high school course. On that we know that another through line, which has been consistent not only from our teachers but from feedback from all,
is that resources for at home practice and parent support needs to be developed. We need to find a suitable resource for math practice aligned to the units, and to create parent resources for at home support. And then finally, our teachers were very clear on their continued desire to collaborate more on the I am curriculum across grade level in particular. So I do want to remind this board, when we went through the implementation in adoption in 2023, we had some pretty specific goals in why we made the changes that we made. We wanted to improve our tier one instruction for all students.
We knew in 2023, we were not serving all students in the district at middle school. Math at the optimal in an optimal way. We wanted to align our math instruction with the district vision, which was crafted based on feedback from best practices in the field to create students as doers of math, to explore task based mathematics, and to build fluency through conceptual understanding. We also have a goal to increase access to high levels of math and honors level math. As we reflected on the program that existed before 2023,
we knew we had to build transparency and openness and opportunities for all students. Our system of math prior to 2023 was not transparent for advancement in supporting all students. We knew that, and that's something that we have to remember as we continue to move forward. What we've learned along the way is that some of our families do not feel heard and valued right now with the system that we have in place. We've also learned that the shift to task based instruction is a substantial change that requires ongoing support and opportunities for teachers to collaborate.
We know that families need more concrete materials at home, and we know that our students need more practice in skills and fluency outside of the story. Problems that are really make up enough. Over the last two, almost three years, we've had some pretty significant celebrations. We have a higher percentage of students enrolled in honors and accelerated math in eighth and ninth grade today than before 2024, I would say, than maybe ever before in the school district. But I don't have the data for all of time. But we know that it has increased.
We know that our middle school students have shown consistent improvements in Step over the last three years. Specifically, we have seen increases in the advanced performance band, and we've seen reductions in the not proficient performance band. As our students transition from six to seventh grade, and 93% of our middle school students self-report that they feel they can be good at math. And if nothing else, when you have 93% of middle school kids telling you something, that's pretty incredible. So what are our recommendations for next steps? So taking all of our survey data, everything that we've
all of our listening sessions, what might we put in place. We're recommending that we create an Honors Algebra one work group to address concerns about content overload and Honors Algebra one and math eight. The combination. Beginning this summer, we'd like to explore summer learning modules, design some fall assessments for student feedback, communicate clearly with our families, and continue the work group through the 2627 school year. We believe there are ways for us to be able to provide instruction and support around some key concepts of eighth grade math that don't require us taking up so much time in Honors Algebra one.
We know we cannot fix it for the fall, but we can certainly make some progress to be able to alleviate some of that burden. Currently, our Honors Algebra one class spends about a quarter on math eight standards, so then they're using three quarters to teach honors to teach algebra one. So if we can reduce the amount of time that they have to spend on those eighth grade standards, it'll be a win and we can continue to work at that. We'd like to recommend that we create or purchase resources for at home learning and support this summer by identifying resources for additional at home practice
and assessments that align with IAM units and are implemented across the building. We'd also like to create a parent resource bank that is housed in a common location. The last time we were together, we talked a little bit about Delta math. We're not 100% certain that Delta math is the right six eight tool, but we're going to explore that and other tools we don't. It doesn't have to be Delta math. So we want to bring a group of middle school teachers together to look at them. We're recommending that we begin vertical alignment this summer, establishing a workgroup to explore alignment, specifically between fifth grade learning targets and sixth grade learning targets.
We're recommending that we pilot Accelerated Math six seven for the fall of 2026. In order to do this, we would be establishing a cohort of math six in math six seven teachers to begin training over the summer, we would develop materials to share with parents beginning next week. We have not yet had our fifth grade incoming sixth grade parent nights. Those are next week, so we would be able to communicate with our families that this is something that would be available to them. We would maintain our test out structure for mass six. So for students who are currently in fifth grade
who are right now, we have prepared and are planning to try to test out of math six, they would still have that opportunity and they could go into math seven and we would identify an opt in structure for accelerated six seven. So it would be a family choice for students as they are thinking about their sixth grade experience. For math six seven. It's important to know that. And and I hope that you saw over the four slides that there is quite a bit of there's in our teacher feedback. There are a lot of concerns about the idea of sorting sixth graders
and what that can look like, because the system that we had before did not serve our kids well. And so there are a lot of pieces that we need to work through as an organization and commit to in order to uphold what we believe deeply in. And then the last was my last slide. The last recommended steps are ongoing work for 2627. We'd like to spend time exploring and identifying on ramps and off ramps for all students. So by on ramps and off ramps, I mean the opportunity for students to be able to move between levels of classes
if and when they're ready, if it's if they're ready to go on and try something new, or if they need some support and they want to come back. One of the challenges of our former system was it was very rigid, with not a lot of opportunity for students. We'd like to establish grade level cohorts for collaboration and learning with regular meetings throughout next school year. And then our work throughout the 2627 school year would be to affirm our pilot implementation, criticize and affirm it, and then to look at our next steps for grade seven and eight.
That would then put us to a formal board recommendation in the spring of 27 on whether we would move forward, affirming our pilot, and then what that would mean for seven and eight at that time. I'm sure you have some questions. I'd be happy to answer them. Do my best. Would your plan B to try to pilot the. Man for all middle schools, or just the one that had the. Feedback? It's a great question. So David and I actually
had that conversation. Every every room of teachers asked that question because we asked them directly. We asked them we asked them a little bit about progression. Yes, yes, them about curriculum. Then we ask them about progression in general. Then we ask them specifically about six seven. Okay. We just said, which would you be interested in taking on this challenge went like this up like and. We made it really clear that this is a district wide pilot. If we pilot it, it happens at all of our buildings, and it's available to all six grade children who are interested in pursuing this in our schools,
depending on the school. Historically we have historically we had between 60 and 40% of students in honors math depending on the school. So we anticipate 60% ish with an open with an open option for our students to be in a that we would have that many students. So even though we have teachers who are hesitant in the process, and there is a especially in our sixth inside of great teachers, there is a lot of head because this is very fast and they have asked about time to work through it.
What might it look like? How might we get there? But I do believe that in every one of our buildings, we would have teachers willing to take on that challenge because they want opportunities for their kids, but they also want to be able to support where the district is going. So no one's going to tell us no. I think that it's just how we go through that implementation together. So all of our schools and how do you make decisions based on the number of teachers and the number of students who gets in and who doesn't? I think one of the things that came from the conversations that we had was
there's a very clear sense of team and collaboration in those buildings. And so for many of our teachers, I would imagine there would be two in each of our buildings who would probably teach both six and six, seven if possible, and we would work with teachers, you know, we would knowing our principles, they would ask who's interested? And then if there's then they would go and knock on doors and say, hey, we need one more. Be willing to do that.
There will be, I mean, in just to lay all of it out for the board. A pilot that we start at this point in the year will require an investment on behalf of the district. Over the course of the summer. We have five weeks of school, and so we need to be able to bring teachers in so that they have time over the summer to collaborate and learn and go through the tools and resources. So we'll have to work through that. And that's all something we can work through. It's just going to take some time for us to get there. I just want to say I, I support the recommendation.
I think it meets our kids where they're at. One of the just reading through the the feedback with the raw feedback. And. There was a sense of like, it's really challenging to meet such a wide range of learners within one classroom. I think this will will not just meet the advanced learners, but I think it's also going to help our kids that are having more challenges, because you have a teacher that is now able to focus and have more time to work with those particular students.
With a pilot, I I'm glad to hear how you're proposing to set that up, that it's district wide and that it's access to all. I think that limiting it would be, in my opinion, I could not support that. I also think it's important to take a look at because it is up in our fifth grade to have some input, because sometimes it can be issues with, you know, language barriers or other issues that a parent might not advocate for that.
So I think we need to make sure that our teachers and elementary principals work together to identify kids that really could benefit from from that challenge. You know, obviously there's there's a lot of kind of work to be done on the top end as well. I think doing a pilot starting this fall, while it's fast, I think it helps inform the upper eighth grade honors algebra teachers kind of where we're going and what's coming.
So because they need to know that to help set up structures and land in the future. So while I acknowledge it's a quick timeline, I think that it's going to help with the overall planning process for for that kind of conundrum that seems to be, you know, consistent borne right now across buildings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. She wants to go last. So
so first, I want to applaud you for hearing hard feedback. I know the decisions that I wasn't on the in 2023 when the decisions were made, and that it takes guts to hear open back. And it takes real bravery on the part of our teachers to look their administrators in the face and be like, this isn't working for us and for kids. We heard from parents and teachers. We heard it from kids. I'd be careful saying that. That's a very strong brush because it is working for some people.
It's not working for others. So I would just be careful not to throw the baby out with the math. I appreciate that I'll freeze my statement to say it's not working for everyone. Fair. Okay. And I appreciate you respectfully approaching that with me, because I think that it's honestly really hard for me to sit here and talk about this because I wasn't there when the decision was made. And I know that most of the people in this room that were voted for it to be made, I get it. I know where I'm sitting and I that we can have respectful discourse, and I hope that we can continue to do that.
As I was saying, either way, it's brave and I'm proud of that work that you've been doing and that reflective piece. As a parent of an incoming middle school kid who may want that challenge and who wouldn't have obviously had it before. I appreciate the opportunity to get started, because when you start, you have to start sometime. You can wait a year or 2 or 5 or never, but starting it kind of prompts you along, and I agree with you that it will hopefully help to inform because you're going to get sort of stuck in the middle. I think what I suspect is going to happen, not my role at all, but you're going to
work on the six seven thing and then this and the eighth grade and algebra thing. Then you're gonna go, wait. Something's going on here. I assume you mean the six seven options going to be an I am? Yeah. Purchase as well. Okay. All right I thought so it would be accelerated six I am I am has their own structure and it's called accelerated six seven. So that's what it'll be that it's not like it's a. That's right. Other thing I can certainly also speak from the parent angle of really hoping based on what I've heard like that. Yes. There is some more robust supports at home for that.
And I also appreciate the teachers feedback around the need for continued collaboration. I think that that is a huge piece of, you know, sort of new frontier and secondary, right, is not just we go in our classrooms and we teach our preps and forget the rest. And it's really great to see our teachers saying that they want it. Usually they're like, oh, another meeting. No thanks. So it's a really powerful and positive thing. So I'm glad we're doing it. The recommendation is to do it sooner rather than later, to hear the needs of all groups and all kids.
My only lingering question would be around assessment, but I don't know that you've got that yet. It's okay. Yeah, that's hot off the press to say like, all right, so we're going to do all this. Can we look at it from a database standpoint to be like, did it move the needle. Does it does it say what you think is that it might help our kids that are struggling more I don't know. Right. And we don't know. We won't know with autopsy data. Right. Steph is not going to tell us till too late. Probably if it didn't or did help, but like whatever, whatever
that might look like in the during the school year assessment will be key. So I know it's probably not a well developed concept, but bravo, let's go there too. Thank you. Anything else? Definitely. Good. Yeah. Okay, Miss Potts. Oh, I'm very, very happy to hear that. The teachers weren't just saying, like, crash it all down and start over again, because that would have been alarming. It's good to see that features are supportive. And I really commend you on doing all this hard work because I know this was not easy. You know, I think in order
to support our kids and to meet our goals as a district and as a board, we have to have our teachers on board because they're the boots on the ground. They're the ones that are sitting shoulder, shoulder with our kids. So they when we say kids first, it means kids first, but it also means that we have to support the teachers who are implementing all of these things for our kids to keep our kids first. So hearing their feedback is very. I'm very happy that they were as honest as they were. You know that it is working, but they're not just, this is wonderful, everything is great.
And they were willing to share some hard feedback, kind of hard to hear to her. But I'm glad there's a plan. That sounds like a great plan. I think we're going to I think we're fulfilling our promise to always move our kids forward. So I think this is this is a good plan. I think this is good. Do you want to start you. Oh, sorry. Well, no, you guys go. I didn't make comments. I just asked questions. Oh, okay. Do you want to go ahead and do that?
You know I support you know again kudos to you and the teachers. I do think two things. One is we need to be very careful on those on and off ramps. Again, if there's one thing we may have not fine tuned this, but the whole objective was equity opportunity in math. And so it looks like we may have achieved that on one end
and maybe not done it right on the higher end. And so we have to make sure we're getting that balance. Because if we which is why I don't support just let's go back to sixth grade honors. Let's let's go back to sorting kids at fifth grade, because I don't think that serves kids well. But to have an accelerated path, you know, for kids that need that path and then just straighten out, you know, the cadence of what's taught in eighth grade, those are those are high priorities.
One thing I would be interested in, only because I'm very cognizant of the fact that we have an $11 million deficit, is what do we think this will cost us? And then when we get in the room as a board and start moving trade offs, figure out what we're going to trade off, you know, in order to do this. But, you know, I do think that, you know, I support if our teachers are willing to do this than it is the right thing to move forward.
You know, so I would I would support this, but I would I don't know if we have to vote on this or not, but I would like to see the dollars associated with us as well, because we do have to make some more trade offs. Okay. So just to be back on what the answer with that on offer, you just like, you know, the equity. He's like, if a kid wants to take what the kid takes it like and also trying to work hard to identify maybe kids that that should be in it that that haven't been identified, that on and off ramp
like what we did before didn't work either in trying to provide on an offering like it can't cost money, it can't be in the summer. We have to design ways that are accessible to all kids for that. So that's going to take some creative thinking. And then also, like with our master schedules at the middle school, being able to schedule appropriately so you can have movement within the year without blowing up the kids schedule. So yeah. Yeah, because that costs money to money point.
Right. But you said you wanted to go next. Do you want me to go first or would you like to finish up? Oh, no. Yeah. I'm fine with the with the proposed schedule. I think what I would worry about long term is that we will just return to the old system. And what I saw from most of the teachers is one, they were leery about going back to the sorting after fifth grade.
And there had, you know, there had been some suggestion and I think it was a B conference last year at the casino. There are districts that, instead of opting in heaven, knocked out. And so every kid gets put into the math six seven. And it's really only those that are not because I don't see how we don't go back to the fifth grade teacher making recommendations. Lots of parents,
may not feel comfortable. If they have to make that choice. They may hold their kid back. You know, it's anecdotal data, but I talked to lots of moms and, you know, years back, lots of kids didn't get recommended for accelerated math. And so their parents didn't put them in accelerated back. And every once in a while, you get a stubborn parent like, no, I actually think my kid can do this. I don't know why the fifth grade teacher does it. And so. I think that is my concern because
we have made gains. The sub data shows that we have. I'm so interested to see the PSA, you know, that that's going to that, you know, we'll get in the fall. The fact that you have the principal saying that this cohort of hits had the highest math results, it's probably because you had the highest number of kids taking algebra one in eighth grade. And so. I am not
for or against having an accelerated path, but I think it's it's it is not going to be easy to go back to that accelerated path and not fall back into the old patterns, because somebody in fifth grade at the end of fifth grade is going to have to make a recommendation and make a decision. And yeah, you can have those on and off ramps. But if you then again, in algebra one honors had kids who have already done math aids and kids who have not,
then those. Then again, you're going to have a bunch of kids in a classroom where some have had the experience and some not, and the teachers are still going to have to deal with. So, I don't know how you do it, but if four years from now or five years from now go back to what we had and the number of kids taking algebra one has dipped back down, then that is not okay. So I don't you know, I'm sure there is a way to to do this, but I think a lot of the teachers
expressed concern with sorting kids after fifth grade or starting in sixth grade. And how do you how do you address that? And is it possible to have an opt out system as opposed to an opt in system? Because I think it's easier to be in an accelerated class in a month and say, you know what, this is just not for me. But once you've started taking a lower level class, nobody's going to bump you up. Even if you're getting all A's on test. It is just not how, you know, I don't think
it's the reality. So, so that's it. I mean, it's not an easy solution or easy ask, but I just to people fall into old patterns. Like I think that I think that naturally happens. And so it will be an uphill battle to not fall into those. We need to create a whole new system so that that doesn't happen. I will share with you. The opt out component was kicked around for a while before we recommended Acton, and so we had some really good conversations
with some specifically with some sixth grade teachers to really understand that that was that was our our original go at it was it was an opt out system. And some of the concerns that came immediately were just about the amount of lessons in sixth grade that still relate to numeracy and some key skill building components. And I think here's what I wonder. So in summary, there was a concern that students would get placed into a class without enough information to understand
that they actually really need to be in that class to build some of that fluency and numeracy. And I think because of the timeline that we are currently in, there's a different fear perhaps, than maybe a year from now, what we recommend. So I guess what I would say is, I don't know that opt in will always be how we live. It might be that we think through next year's system of what we need to get in front of kids and maybe make it an opt out. The biggest fear of the the sixth grade teachers who we spoke with, who I spoke with, was that
there's not enough time to get families and teachers to really understand, like why some of our students need to have that math six numeracy component in order to be successful. And they were worried that kids are going to be jammed into a class where they weren't, which would be a disservice to them because their progression would naturally fit them in another direction. And they think that it's less of a risk to go the other way for some students. I don't know that I fully agree, but there were some really. They had some really strong feelings on what that would look like.
I do think we could study that next year. In the conversation David and I have already talked about, we need to start to create some mechanisms where we can identify how we're reaching out to kids who should who would naturally be successful in an accelerated pathway. And we have two years worth of data that show us the rough percentage of kids who should be at that level, right? It went from 350 on average of our eighth graders to 500.
So it went up to that 50% across our district. Right. And so that's what we should be expecting when we are looking at our enrollment in the sixth grade. So it's my non-answer, but just to let you know, like that, I think that that idea of opting out versus opting in is something we need to continue to think about. Because I agree with you, I, I do personally believe that it is a better default for us to scoop all those students in, and then if we need to find support for them, we can also, because the majority of our kids are going to be in six seven anyway.
So finding space for some kiddos who might need to find an alternate path to be easier than the other. So if you increase virtual collaboration like you talked about too, I think you might start to see some of those gaps that would make opt out better, like more viable, right? To be like, okay, if we shift a little bit of what's going on in fifth to make sure. Well, we even talked about like what kind of things might we have between 5 and 6 for families who feel like they have a bubble kid. Yeah, right. Like if you're not sure what to do as a family,
you have three months ahead of you and you want to do some of this stuff because you're you're worried. Here's some great resources that you might be able to. I mean, our goal different than perhaps a system that existed before our goal is to have more kids experiences. Accelerated pathway. It's not to prevent students from getting into an accelerated. Yeah, it's not to make it exclusive. It's in a good example. Yeah I knew it as. Like we we made changes and while they they weren't perfect like we're having struggle kind of on the top end, we did increase
the number of kids that are accessing honors plans, like having the ability to still have that choice at a top point, but adding a choice at the at the beginning to, I think has the potential to to increase our overall participation, participation and honors. You know, we do have like that 93% statistic is is amazing because the research shows that typically when kids are in middle school there, you know, thoughts about how they are as mathematicians just like plummets.
So that's really great. But it also shows that in elementary school it's the absolute highest. So there's the potential that we could be capturing some kids that maybe after a couple of years in middle school, like I don't know about that. So I see it as like a, like a and not one or the other like it's an addition to. I agree with almost everything that everybody said. I don't think I want to is repeat anything. Thank you for all the hard work, really appreciate and building from my openness to listen to.
It's it's hard to listen to things that are talking about things that we have done and that that are not working well. So appreciate it. Thanks a lot. I agree with the recommendation, and I do also agree that we cannot fall back to the concerns that we've had, and we need to approach that. We need to make sure the on ramps need to exist at all places, and it's too late to decide how to get to the on ramps without having all of that.
And so I guess it'll take time for us to determine how this will work. The one thing I do not want to lose is from our teachers, that they need a lot of support staff. That's something that is resounding more than this. So we absolutely need to work on that as well. And I don't know how that will be addressed. I know, I'm sure you're going to work on that and try and address that and appreciate that. Thank you. Just one last. Just some sort of kind of almost like a check in feedback next fall.
Like, you know, maybe a semester like kind of how are things going like based on what you said here, you know, with changes that are coming at the top end and, you know, this different course at the bottom end, like, what are teachers seeing? Like, are they experiencing like kind of like what a talked about. Like what have we gained, what have we lost. And so that we can kind of, I hope would be that anything that's an inkling of a, of a problem in the making could be,
could be moved in the bud by asking early. And that should be far from typically right that that we can kind of start soon. So that's pretty. So because we're proposing a pilot I don't believe we need a board vote. Oh, you don't need a vote. It's just recommending that we're piloting this. Moving forward. You need a formal I'll be a good word formal, but it just says,
depending upon the cost of materials, if the cost of those materials is. Beyond the threshold, like, we'll bring that as well as a request for purchase at the meeting. Okay. Do you think it's important that we just recognize that our data is going to be very difficult to have any causal connection to for a long time? So, you know, this springs data will be based on our first cohort of
I am students going through three years this eighth grade. And then we're going to introduce new elements. Right. So we just need to recognize that. And I think I just wanted to say that out loud, because I think it's going to be quite a while before we can causally state that one thing is attributing to something else, because we're going to have pilots going on. We're going to have a former system going on. We're going to have other adjustments that are happening. That doesn't mean we won't be looking at the data.
We will certainly be looking at that data and looking at how our students continue to perform will also be. Obviously, we've been on a wonderful trajectory of improvement. We want to continue to see that regardless of what's happening, and that will be something that you'll see at the board table when we look at that high level information. But I just want to just kind of name that. I think it's really important that we recognize that we are disrupting the system again, which is not a bad thing. It's just kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Shifting. Shifting. Yes. Any other comments.
So potentially this will come in our what is that called the consent agenda for them. No no no no. So for the purchase. For the purchase that's what I meant. That won't be for a little. We have to figure. Yeah. Okay. So to be sometimes you maybe probably said maybe okay. But you could have been communicating. You'll kind of price up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We could get it just to let teachers. Okay. And then once we have them, we've kind of worked out
in the summer plan all planned and the cost. So let's see with that. Well would that also include additional health material that the teachers are asking for? Probably. Right. It's a combination of celebrated patch as well as the health of the teachers. Would I have to put that in a proposal and help goes to everybody, not just the correct materials. Anticipating pushback from any of the teachers to the majority of the teachers on board with this,
I think that there will be so in clearness that I have not communicated with them since I met with them, since since David and I met with my plan is to communicate with them. Tonight I have David and I drafted a letter to send to them based on, you know, pending how our conversation went today. I think that they will all be responsive, because I believe that there is an interest in some way in all of our buildings to explore this. I think it's just the timeline.
And so we're just going to work through that with them and be as supportive as we can be and to move those things forward. If, if I didn't, if I felt like they would were going to be angry, I would be telling you that I don't think that's the case. Thank you. I think we're going to be, you know, it's the timeline. I think some of them would have preferred more time, but I think they will be able to adapt. Hopefully for us to move through our principles. Are everyone's aware of having this conversation tonight. So we'll send out that communication. We're going to send that communication out to our principles and our teachers this evening, and then also our elementary principals
and our I'm going to ask them to forward it to our fifth grade teachers. We won't have communication for parents for a couple of days. We need to kind of get our feet underneath us, and then we want to be able to provide resources that are principals can then share at the fifth grade parent nights, and then we will open our selection window through that. We can give flexibility in that through the end of May, first week of June, school's over so that parents have enough time to have a conversation if they want to have it. Sit down. Ask questions. The good news is our principles are familiar with historically
what A67 structure looks like. And so I think it won't be uncomfortable for them at a school principals to have that conversation and be able to be supportive. Any other comments? We can move on to the next topic. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay, I'll get to the next one. I don't have a presentation for us to discuss, especially designed instruction. I know that Rich sent out a communication specifically to talk about implementation of that as, as related to the communication
and specific to the topic that is on the agenda. The intention was for us to communicate with you about specially designed instruction as related to supplanted secondary classes. So that's in middle school and high school for our diploma bound students. So this is for students who may have taken a non tier one math or English class specific to math and English that had historically been taught by a special education teacher. The state of Michigan has changed the requirements for teachers
of core content classes that all teachers of core content classes need to be content certified in order to be able to teach that class. The vast majority of our special education teachers are not content certified, their special education certified. We have a handful of teachers who are most of the teachers who are not currently teaching those supplanted classes. So we have been working with our we've been working at our middle schools. We've been working on this for three years. So in most of our middle schools, we're in pretty good shape. Our middle schools have changed
that structure over the course of the last three years. We used to have language exclamation point as a program that was taught. That's been phased out over the last three years, and our students have gone into tier one instruction. We had a variety of different math classes that were offered at the middle school. Most of those have been phased out over the last three years, and those students have been supported in tier one instruction in our high schools. We've been growing these kiddos up right, because once they're in, we kind of got to finish them through. So we have fewer students who are coming in in ninth grade who required those services. But we have students who are currently in our ninth and our 10th
and our 11th grade classes who are receiving supplanted instruction. So the course of this year, beginning in September, Sarah and myself and David and a leadership team have come together with the special education teachers at the table to talk about how do we make these transitions and what we'll look like for our students. Our math teams have had multiple meetings now to look specifically at each individual child, what classes they're in and then where they could transition. That would make sense. So for instance, we have students who are in the high school
who may be taking integrated one, which is a special education specific supplanted math class. That's followed by integrated math two. We've been looking at how do those two courses align with our our newer course, which is the intensified algebra class. So Intensified algebra is a double block algebra class that teaches algebra content as well as pre-algebra content and executive functioning skills. It's all built into the curriculum. The vast majority of our students who are in supplanted math will be able to transition into that pre-algebra that intensified algebra class.
So we're working through okay, which students might not fit if they don't fit. How are we going to service them when they are service? They have to have a content certified math teacher teaching a class if we have to create one of those classes. So that's what we're working on in math. In English, we believe that all of our high school students will be able to be served in our tier one classes for English, so they maybe were in linguistics class. That's what we are supplanted. Classes were called, they'll transition into one of our sections of either
English nine, English ten, 11 or 12. We are working with our special educators to schedule those students in small cohorts, so that they're able to be supported efficiently in those classrooms. The piece that we wanted to make sure that you were aware of as a board is this is a pretty big change that will impact many of our general education teachers. And so as we work with our Gen Z teachers, a part of that work is focusing on accommodations, modifications and universal supports,
and how those three things can work together to ensure that all of our students are being successful. This May, that development day, we're going to really in earnest, start having some direct conversations about what do accommodations and modifications look like in the general education program. We are studying two texts that we may be using. We're trying to decide which text we're going to be using to help guide our work. At the secondary one is a text that came out, I think, in 2017 or 18. It's called your students, my students, our students or something
along those lines. What's the sounds just like about like that? And it really talks about inclusion in the classroom. And then there's a new book that just came out and it's called All Means All, and it's published by Solution Tree. And those both focus on how do we create inclusive classrooms to ensure that all students are being supported. A key piece and change. This is probably knowledge you don't need to have, but it's good to know. Back in like 2010 and 2011, previous to 2020 ten, 2010 and 2011, modifications were more common in our schools and they were identified
through modified grades that students were given on their transcripts. And it was a way, a lever that could that was used in order to have more students in our tier one classrooms. And then there was some legislation that passed around how what could or couldn't be put on transcripts. When that happened, a lot of students were pulled out of tier one. Then this happened across the state. This wasn't something this happened in Troy. It happened. I was in Bloomfield at the time. We are now back at it and talking about what modifications look like
in order for us to have students with successful in the classroom. So there are not many modifications currently happening, meaning the difference between an accommodation and a modification is an accommodation is a tool that we might put in place or an adaptation to be able to support you. Accessing the full curriculum as it is a modification, is the removal of parts of the curriculum in order for you to be able to move forward. So very different in their approach in our schools right now, we do not have many modifications happening.
I believe that for some of our students with some specific IEP goals, modification may be more appropriate than them having been previously placed in a supplanted a separate and a separate track of classes. So that's what we're working through. We wanted to be really transparent because people may ask you questions. Those conversations are happening one on one with every child who's involved. So any child who was in a supplanted class, who's class might be changing for next year, that's a conversation that's happening with the caseload provider
and the families so that they have an understanding of what that can look like. The good news in Troy is that it is a small number of students. So when we're looking at that number, it's a small number of students. And I think that makes it manageable when it comes to those one on one conversations. It gives us that flexibility to have them. That's the right thing to do. It also may impact how IEPs are written, right, because those support services look a little bit different. They may be push in, they may be teen taught. We are currently working with our special ed team
to explore what that support looks like in the classroom. That's not defined currently, so we won't be able to define that until we know where those kids are landing and then how we can best support that. So just to understand the volume, how many kids are really talking about. So like for instance, at Athens, we're talking about five 10th graders, okay. Going five current ninth graders going into 10th grade, I think we have nine incoming ninth graders at Athens. The numbers are very, very in L.A. That's in silicon less than ten per grade, approximately around ten per grade.
I would say give or take. And it's different in school, in each school, in each in each content, English and math. Some of our students are in both. Some are not in both. Okay. So is this just nine through 12? No, it's six through 12. Six through 12. And. I guess the other question is, so is this change in approach? Is this research based? I mean, has this been found to be more advantageous to kids in my life? So it's a required change by the state as I was doing it,
I understand it, but it also very much it very much aligns to the conversations we were having a couple of years ago when we were thinking about our MSC 12 work with Nate Levinson. So we've really talked a lot about is the best place for students to be is in tier one instruction when possible. And so our students should be in tier one instruction with supports. And those supports could be universal supports, accommodations, modifications. Those should be exhausted before you're looking to sort of supplanted inspection.
And I remember my other question is it just in math and English or Ela? It is. Yes, of course those are the only areas where Troy it could be in other districts, it could be everywhere. But in Troy, those are the only two key areas where we have students who are in supplanted classes. Okay. So currently, like a student who's in a supplanted reading last, let's say whatever that's called is in like bio, bio, regular bio. And how are they being supported in regular bio. So that's that is exactly the conversation we've been having
because they're in regular bio. They're also in regular world history because we could just be giving them a is in that like support. Right. And so it goes into that conversations that we have. Right. So we're having conversations about are they being successful in bio or world history. If so, what is happening in those classrooms. Because if whatever's happening in those classrooms to make them successful and we can do that in L.A. and math along once as long as what we know that they're doing, is it something that we would believe is what's good for kids? So it's helping us to dig into looking at those pieces. So those are the conversations that we're having
with each one of their caseload workers to identify. How are those kids pushing out into other classes? Are they being modified? And we're just not tracking that modification. What are those what's happening? So those are the conversations with them. Because typically a student who's receiving a reading support, let's say, is getting into hopefully an intensive, focused reading intervention. And I'm trying to figure out if like if my kid can't read. Well, yes, I think he could do it. Bio. Right. What are you doing in bio? First of all sixth grade. We're going into six, let's say. And they can't read well. And they've been getting an intense intervention in elementary for that.
Is someone going to like push in and like pull them to the back of the room? Right. So great question about the internet. That is like do we have one point? I feel like our special ed folks are probably running so hard their heads are spinning, but I think our folks are going to hit this hardest and it's going to be I think it's important that it's like a it's a yes and component. So I'm a student who was in supplanted reading and I have like significant reading goals. I may have previously I may have had my reading goals met
in my linguistics class with a specialized instruction provided for me to meet me at my reading level, and how many progress I was getting those supports. And I was. Getting English credit at the same time. Right. That's how. That's how the former structure is currently going on in the list that counted. That's right. Got it. Right. Well, we were counting that right. As a district, we were making that decision. And so now what will happen is I will be in that same and 10th grade, I'm going into 10th grade English next year.
I'll be in 10th grade English with some form of support. It might be pushing. I might have a teacher. Depends on that cohort of kids who are with those students and those students needs. And then in addition to that, I'm receiving my support, my my supports to meet my reading goals in my integrated studies class. If that. Okay. So I have a second. Don't I actually have I have the support for me to access the curriculum. And then I have the support to build upon my goals. Some of our students won't need both. Right, right. Some will just need the support and push in and that will meet their goals.
But others will need both of those things. And then some of our kiddos, as you know, need both and and math. Right. And we're working with that. That would be dicey. And when we do that when you double them up what do they what do they lose the electives. Is that what they would lose? So many of our students have integrated studies right now on their schedules, and that is one of their electives. That is one of the correct. So that is okay. Yeah. That won't be new. That's something that for for as a matter of fact, you've actually made gains in having fewer kids have integrated studies
there as an elective because we're providing supports in different ways. Now how does this impact our special ed staff? You know, I mean, we have these teachers that are teaching now. So now we are pushing them in. What's the plan? Yeah. So I think it's well, so our special ed staff is determined by our caseload. Right. So the state gives us a number right. In secondary it's 23 as our caseload max. And then for resource room and 25 is our caseload max for teacher consultants.
And that is how we determine the FTE that we have allocated across our buildings. And that's how we will continue to determine our FTE across the building. So if I'm a teacher and I have 20 kids on my caseload, I'm a 1.0 special education teacher at the high school. I service those 20 students and I'm there all day long. Okay. However, I spend my day during that time. I'm still a 1.0. I see so. So there's no impact. It can be neutralized. Right. But that's that's how we will be scheduling them.
So they're there's not a causal link between the change in this structure and. Right. Okay. So any change in our FTE is based on our caseload and our scheduling based on budget. So it'll be like a resource from teacher might kind of, for lack of a nicer turn around during their day. Another class they might be teaching two hours of. Denigrates and then the other for three hours a day because they get a prep, right?
Yeah. Which is what they do, what they do that. So it's team teaching in an hour. Right. Yeah. Collaboration depending on when. Not not separate from their five. They have five and a breath. I mean, just to like, if they're going to be pushing into English nine and they're not like you want it to be effective. Yes we do. Right. So they to have to talk at some point, our goal would be to put them all in the same type of we can. But again that's a that's a schedule piece of all of it. So I guess a different question would be right.
And this is not an area that I'm so familiar with. If the special education teachers are not content certified. Does that have any effect going forward? No, because they're special education certified. So they still provide those integrated studies support components. And we have also in our work with NSK 12, we. Identify part of that part of our work over the last three years on advancing EMTs and secondary has been to identify areas of specialty
for special education folks. So we've asked them at the buildings, do you prefer to support literacy? Do you prefer to support mathematics? And then we've trained them as we've gone through math recovery, as we've gone through RAR for all, we're going to continue to do that. So they build specialty skills. The effect is it's going to increase the student count for our tier one instructors by like 10 or 8 or whatever. That's that's the main impact for us. It's really important to remember that for a diploma bound student, they're a tier one student first.
Yeah. And they're not so nice to student first. Tier one first. I provide the support second. Yeah, well, that's not a ten for teacher. It's. Yeah, it's ten a year across the board. And that's not always been the case where where it's in some cases it's instead of being a tier one student first you're the you're the especially teachers first. No this data said no. Tier one. First all your content needs to be delivered at tier one at grade
level with potential modifications or accommodations. And then your support is provided outside of tier one with that specialized instruction. Right. Whatever. That might be a big tier one learning curve for some folks. It could be. It will be for some. Yeah. And that's where the training and the professional learning that comes in and is that this is something that is launching in May and then continues as we go into next year. Like this is just an ongoing conversation that we need to have.
And contextualizing it is incredibly important. Right. We have one next year. We have 106 students at Troy High School who will have an IEP, period. That's the end of that sentence. 106 students out of 2120. So 25 kids. Great. So we we when we're thinking about the adaptation and modification that are at the extreme end, there's a small number who will who will require that level of of a modification. But we also know there's a lot of steps that our teachers can take in all of our classrooms to benefit all students.
And that's that piece that we start with. Right? And then we start to talk about what does it look like next? But it's really just there's you know, again, the reason we shared it with you is because there may be concerns that are brought forward. There may be concerns that parents share in the community that say, my child, we thought my child was going to have these classes, and now we're being told they're not offered anymore. They're not, you know, they're not meeting the needs of my child. It's important for you to understand. Yes. That's true. Those classes aren't offered, but this is the structure that we're working to implement, and we'll work with every family to make sure that each child
has a separate program that needs what they need. Yeah. Now, I have a very generic questions. I'm not very knowledgeable with the whole state regulations and requirements. And this came about because we were not compliant with certain state regulation. And is that the case a fourth day? Yeah. This is. I know it's a change that happened recently. Absolutely. Okay. It's in line with federal id. ID law that supposed to educate kids and the least restrictive.
But over time we've kind of gotten away from that. And so with these data saying like, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of get this back in, okay. Because every student, regardless of their disability, is supposed to have exposure to grade level content. Yes, yes, yes. So I mean, we're we're basically following what the state is telling us and and federal law okay. The federal law okay. Thank you. How do we make a decision
who's diploma bound and who isn't doing. Those are IEP conversations that are had like by the team throughout their time. And mostly that starts really in secondary. And that's a conversation that we have. And I think a lot of those key drivers are based on being able to access the program cognitive impairment. And we have students. We have students who I think one of the wonderful things to celebrate here, and I'm sure you know this, we have students who are in who are non diploma brown students who are in some of our programs at our high schools,
who are in some of our core content classes, and they're, you know, so like there's a great give and take around like where some skills are and how we can encourage our students to continue to grow. So I think that's a celebration. I appreciate the update. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. So that your agenda and the fact that it is 9:05. Do we want to move our strategic plan discussion because it's no it's the point is we have to start.
What do you want to do another day. Or do we want to. Are we just pushed about which vendor which was given the questions that I need from you all? Just kind of a thumbs up is the first is do we want to we want to engage a facilitator. And if so, what I provided you was were two options. One was a, one was a more MSP, more local Michigan centric. The prices reflective of that.
The other education elements is a is a is a nationwide firm. They work with districts across the United States and their their approach would be more, more national, broader perspective. I think they do have some some proprietary surveying and things along those lines that they use, that they utilize the cost significantly more effectively, quite a bit insignificant.
And it's I would also say they were actually just purchased so by another company I don't anticipate anymore. Just service any different. But so that's really I mean if we want to go and so there would be nothing wrong either. They both essentially provide the same level of service. If you looked at the kind of the the deliverables in terms of the amount of meetings, focus groups, there will be a survey. I would say the education element survey will probably be a little more robust,
but simply because I think they do it on a more on a more national scale. MSP has been doing this work locally and then they will certainly tailor either will tailor their offerings to our needs. So if we want a little more. Let me put it this way. I think B would probably be a little bit more flexible in terms of how much we want from them versus how much we, you know, how much could we do internally and want to do internally versus what we would want them to do?
Education elements would likely be more of a turnkey, you know, of option. There is the third option. I want to bring it up. I think last time we did it, I was just new on the board at the time. We did it all and that was the question I had given. What we have available, do we have internal? Do you feel we have internal staff capacity? Oh, I think we certainly have to do the work. The what we will force them to prioritize. We're talking about we're talking about a survey,
focus groups, listening sessions and so forth that those are all those are certainly all doable internally. I'm I don't think either Kendra or I are opposed to having someone come in and help facilitate at all. In fact, probably would welcome some facilitation services to take that off of our plate given, you know, given where we're going to be in the fall. But but what? We certainly could do it. I like the idea of having a facilitator, somebody who is
who doesn't have a vested interest in any particular outcome, you know, not insinuating any type of, you know, bad faith or anything. But I think having somebody who. Who is, who is neutral, who doesn't have any. You know, I think there's I think there's a benefit to I tend to agree, I think you are likely to be maybe more open or free to respond if it's if it's coming
from a third party. And the last, the last time we did a strategic plan was when we did the last one in, we rolled it out. And what was right was during 2020 and 20 had started. It had started in the fall of 2020. And then we went into the pandemic whole rebuild. Or was it just like it was a it was a pretty fresh. So I'm not really interested in doing a whole I don't want to crash everything down and start over. I'm more interested in like a refresh.
That's my perspective. I think that was I was kind of like I was going to be a part of that. Yeah, I don't think it's at the what education elements. They have two options to refresh of the current plan or build a new strategic plan. I want to be expensive. I know it's I think if generally speaking you are all are comfortable with with a third party, my recommendation is be because it's cheaper and given where we're headed with the budget, we don't need to spend more. If we can get a but we can get a good product out of someone who's local.
No, no problem at all with that. It's like that. It's Michigan. It's comfortable. Let me ask each one of you. What do you think? So I just had a couple I mean, I'm not opposed to a facilitator, but I had kind of thought in my mind, I guess if we think we need. And so I was thinking people would be in the room. That's, you know, folks, because I'm always a little hesitant to, you lose some of the richness
of what's being talked about when it's summarized. But I hadn't really thought that people would. There was a thinking people might be more forthright if there wasn't, if there was a neutral third party in the room, I wasn't thinking along those lines at all. My only thought was, is that you could hire a facilitator to facilitate meetings and so on without doing the kind of the full package I see. Okay, if in fact it was just wanting something to facilitate
so that if people were in the meeting, they could be listening, you know, because it's always easier to pay attention and you don't have to facilitate. Okay. So a third aspect, I like the idea of having a like a knowledgeable facilitator may be fine. I don't need to spend more. Kind of walk us through the process just for our own learning. And, I mean, I just look at what we listened
to tonight, and I feel like our people are are pretty maxed out. So having someone else kind of take us through this, I think, would be helpful in more than one way. And and again, since we're like, in my opinion, it's kind of like the refresh, like we're not reinventing the wheel. But, you know, we do we do need to to look and you know, where, you know, what do we add. What do we take away? What do we gain? What do we lose? And I think someone having someone from the outside could give us,
you know, just having that neutral perspective, I think would be. Okay. I like that idea. Yeah. So a full package, maybe from an outsider like I may be instead of just a facilitator, is what you're saying. Yeah. That's okay. So I'm with you. Yes. Okay. You know, no, I think the whole package actually makes. Okay. Just because I was going to say at the same point where this region has enough on their plate right now, and I think if you're going to do it appropriately and actually do a true refresh,
I think you should have somebody that's a third party in there that just make sure we're doing that accurately. If we're going to spend money and time, you might as well do it right. So yeah, I guess I started off with saying that you wanted that. Yeah. I just think it's, we have lots of big items happening next year especially. But I think with the newness of the board, relatively speaking. Yeah, I think it would be good to just have somebody inside. Yeah. And totally. I don't think we need to do anything down and start over again.
I like the idea of a just because, you know, it's kind of specific to as opposed to national. So yeah, I like that you have a facilitator. I've never sat through a street strategic plan. Most of us have not. Yeah. We just I was on the board when we started it, so I think sorry. Okay. Am I asking you facilitated refresh? Okay okay okay. For all the reasons already. Direction I think I think we're pretty much the be
stared be the person I can request for. Not sure. So my only caution because we've used we used map for the superintendent search. And I mean it's really good people but they always say oh I also have some. So yeah, Debbie on the 100 you had taken, she did it. Yeah. Yeah yeah she's right. She's people that were so. Yeah. So we need to get full string. Yeah. Need to make sure. Right.
I will see you. Yeah. She's good. And just from just show you all for one perspective a refresh about six months. We would likely start in October. We would get we would finish in April. That we give Kendra for team. Plenty of time to get all of the materials together for a fall. Okay. So follow that pick up. Okay. All right. That brings us to the other. We don't have a lot of things kicking off in the fall. Okay. That brings up to the other any other other
I just was going to ask so what is remind me again the timeline for voting for Oakland. So sending messages May 1st is the candidate filing deadline. And they have a meeting, I believe, on May 5th. And the what needs to happen by May 20th or a little earlier than that. So I think our main meeting is the only one that we can do it,
but we do not have the candidate list yet because May was May 1st is the deadline. And this meeting happened before our May 1st. So and as of when I went to the the Government Relations Committee meeting, Gary had been the only one that had filed. Yes, that's what I've seen at that point and I don't we haven't seen any other updates. So as of as of three weeks or 2 or 3, two, I don't know. But as of a couple weeks ago, there was only the one candidate. Did you was this the one where we had to go in person? Yes.
So we all nominate a person. Last time it was Matt. The our representative will go in person to Oakland schools and vote for us to vote anonymously after we is a ballot box and we put our vote in the balance sheet. We say, Troy, and we clearly say the least of all of it. Are you a time frame you can just like pull into the do it. It's very nice. So the reason they want us in person, I believe, is if there were ties
or if there were some things like that, that you need to be there in person to choose or something like that. I think we'll find out more about this, but I don't know if it's going to be that competitive, but I'm just letting you know depending on. So we will have to decide. I will send out a note once we get all the candidates, as soon as the Oakland schools or CcpA will stand at Oakland schools and Oakland schools will send out the candidates, and they usually send out a little blurb for each candidate.
And then all you have to do is send me an email saying you prefer this person because I can't ask you, right? Yeah, you just send me only an email and that's all it is. Okay? Okay. All right. Any other for time sake, I'm impressed. Okay. I have one other, we haven't talked about a book read for a while, and I know there's been. I mean, I know I've been looking at it for years, but there's been lots of coverage in the
in the press over the last couple of months about generally technology in classrooms, iPads, computers and everything else. So and I think it might be, you know, a nice tie in with the anxious generation and the we did around site phones. So I would suggest that maybe especially since we haven't done one in a while, that might be a timely topic. And even the, you know, the Ela curriculum recommendations,
part of part of that was how tech intensive is it, right. Because we've gotten rid of the 1 to 1 iPads and K through to so I think I think there's a there is an even at the the relations committee meeting, there is a school up north that is completely gotten rid of their computers. And I mean, there's an international, international push, I think starting. So I think we should start having. Do you do you have a book in mind? I haven't there was a book in in one of the articles that I read.
I don't remember the name of it right now. I don't mind doing like a, you know, a first read of it. So I will get the book, I will email the name of it, and I'll probably ask Judy if she could order. Sure. I and I can either read it first and, you know, see what I, what I think of it, or if you if people just want to go and see. But there was a book that was that was recommended. I don't think it has to be the best or the ideal or the perfect. I think, you know, the goal is for us to start having this
type of I have a slightly different yeah, I like the idea of book read, and I was actually thinking about it and I told you that we could do a book read in summer for us. But the last two books we had were technology related, Anxious Generation and all of that. So I was wondering if we should read a book relating to the, you know, all the books. One of the things that, yeah, David has been saying. So maybe if we could pick one of those books, that is my suggestion, but I'm open to anybody and everybody.
So so I'm open to any book. But it would be nice to have a summer booklet I'm not opposed to, because we haven't really done in a in a while. And I don't know that we have to go back to reading as many as we did previously, but, I and I think I worked on one of the books that. David. David. Yeah. I can't see it right now. So, I don't think I don't think one will just be kind of for our understanding.
So that's a different type of discussion because the laws pass. We're going forward with the L.A.. So one is more for just our understanding. And I think that's useful to yeah, one about the media versus the reality that I would be very interested in, because then we can be educated when we talk to. And that was the one that I, that the one fact checking the signs of reading Robert Tierney and David Pearson. There's beyond the science of reading what I think was the one that I've written. But we can I think that's I think
we should do both because one is is one is just for our understanding as we're going through the process. The other one is for us to start having some policy discussions. So I think there are two very different book reads what order we do them in. I don't we can all just that whichever order we want to do them or we could do one at least, and if that's okay with you. So another idea to along those lines, just to muddy the waters further, is one of the things that students do is sometimes book tasting.
So like everybody brings a book talks about the book. So we need to read a different book and talk about it. And you have articles to if you're trying to decide where to go next for a book like all right, we want to read a book because I love the policy of the tech piece, because that's our lane, right policy. And to talk through that and that could be tech in science, tech in math, tech in whatever behavior or whatever, you know. But so there's another thought about how to decide
which book or how to or article to decide which and when. However, I'll read anything, but yeah, okay, I'm good with anything. I assess any other other. I'm sorry. No. Stephanie. Never to. I just want to say thank you. I appreciate it tonight for your respectful comments because it's the topics we talk about are super passionate on big levels. And I just I really appreciate being a part of this body that's able to have respectful discourse where all of our opinions are valued.
And I felt that tonight. So thanks to all of you. And I appreciate particularly you, Madam President, for making sure you heard from each of us. I really liked a little bit being put on the spot to make sure that we talk, because sometimes I'm honestly not sure still when I should be like that should be this or I shouldn't say that. So thank you. Let there's you got invites to a lot of things going on and I know that you're busy. So any of those that you are able to stop by great TV and teacher of the year reception tomorrow at Fort High at 430.
Is it Kendra? Yeah. Yes. Or 30 kids is tomorrow. Stephanie I think when you sign up for that. Did you see it? Okay, okay. At 630, 630. Yeah. 630, 430 and 630. Yeah. Right. Yes. And then we've got eighth grade interviews starting this week at bowling starts on Thursday. I'll be there Thursday morning. So. Tomorrow? Tomorrow? Tomorrow? Yeah. Great. Spring. Spring updates are going really well
where this week we have very many because it's end of the month. But first we can make it really here again. So we're. I have only one topic. We've combined our community conversation as a board and the superintendent conversation with the community, because there's so much happening and none of us have the time to do separate things. So what is a Kendra shot, at least the 21st, May 21st, I believe, and it's in the evening. Okay.
So it's a combined so. Okay. So anyone who can join a welcome to join. It's made when it first at 5 p.m. at Athens I think. Oh here okay. The new. Oh we're going to show off the new center. Okay. Yes. Okay. So five five. And on May 21st. Yes. 5 p.m. central office. Rich. And any of us who can join. Cool. And to that to that point. So.
A lot of folks in this building will be working remotely on Friday because they're moving everything back to to central. So and then Monday they will be back open for business. And the central office. Okay. Thank you. Stop it please, and see it. It looks great. They get a great job. And we have a break for two weeks. Our meeting is on May 1719, 1919. Yes, I mean 19 Tuesday. Yeah, that's that's three, three weeks. Exactly. That's what I was going to say.
Two weeks is a regular cadence. Yeah. We had this meeting early. Yep. Enjoy your break. I think you're going to be going somewhere and in London. That's why we had to move this. Well, meeting at 935. Thank you. Thank