Hi everybody. I'm Christa Depalo. Nice to see everybody. Um I meeting to order. >> The first order of business is roll call. >> Yes. Okay. >> Yes. >> Okay. Um I don't know everybody in the room so say your name. >> That's fine. >> That's fine. Okay. We start with you Dr. Luc. >> Yes. Just the board members. >> Yeah. and >> next uh the approval of minutes. So we need to approve the minutes from the November 125 education student services committee meeting. >> Yes. Miss Queen, I was thinking this. Yes. >> Okay. >> And then we say all in favor to approve the minutes. >> Yeah. >> Motion passed. >> Yes. >> Yes. >> I noticed that. Um, next is the approval of the agenda. Be it resolved that the Education Student Services Committee approves the January 14th, 2026 Education Student Services Committee agenda as per the attached. Are there any corrections that need to be made that are allowed by second? Sorry. Next one. Uh, comm community comments on agenda items. Are there any community information items? Item 6.1, upcoming board meetings and topics. Dr. Zack. >> Thank you, Mr. Depalio. Thursday, January 15th, we have our finance committee meeting at 1 p.m. here. Friday, January 16th, operations committee meeting at 11:00 a.m. here. Tuesday, January 27th, committee of the whole, schoolboard meeting, 7 PM here. Other topics of discussion, rather not a topic, but I would like to just take a moment to um before we begin to to to uh publicly uh recognize and offer my condolences to Mrs. Lynch um as well as um recognize her 18 years of service and your service as well. And thank you both for being here, being present, and serving Centennial School District. Um that being said, I'd like to now hand the uh the mic over to uh Mrs. Mey and uh what will be our fabulous library team. >> Hello. Thank you for the work that you do and the service that you provide. I have with me here two of our faculty members. I have Hope Banshee who is the librarian at the high school and I have Pam McNei who is the librarian at McDonald Elementary. They are both serving in liaison positions and will help to answer any questions that you might have about the information we provide to you today. um really thinking back to summer reading and the summer book packs of the past. We would like to uh provide to you some information. So, am I steering this or is Chris doing that? So what you have received is an executive summary with really three options. Um one from the past, one that was recommended from the previous school board and one that we from the office of teaching and learning and district uh would really recommend on top of the others if if needed. So, I'm going to start by reading that statement at the top uh to just provide the context and the why, the purpose for this. Um, we do believe that summer reading is really important and we also believe that building home libraries is cr is critical for our students. So, the Centennial School District seeks to ensure that every child has access to highinterest, developmentally appropriate books during the summer, supporting literacy engagement with their families and helping to reduce summer learning loss. In response to prior schoolboard action and request for further exploration, this executive summary examines potential approaches for continuing a summer reading initiative considering student access, instructional impact, and fiscal responsibility. This work aligns with the district compass priorities of access and opportunity, united effort and excellence in teaching and emphasizes the role of family engagement in fostering a love of reading. So option one that is provided there and it kind of provides for you some pluses and deltas or pros and cons to what that looked like. And one of the biggest limitations of that which is why the option was removed from consideration by the school board was because of the the amount of money that it cost to provide students with those book packs. Um Mrs. Depalo, you are aware of it from the parent advisory council. Mrs. Crossson and Dr. Magguire, you're aware of the option one summer book pack program that pre previously existed um from being part of the school board for the past several years. Do you have questions or do you need me to recap what that looked like? Do you prefer I do go through that for any new schoolboard members or to refresh memories? >> I'm good with it, Mrs. Neely. And I know we use ESSER funds, right, to >> we did and we don't have >> with the exception of last year, we did find that money and the school board at the um spring meeting said they would not like to have that in the budget for this year. So that option was then removed. >> Thank you. Mrs. Crossen, are you okay? And Dr. McGuire hasn't joined us. Okay. She was on the education committee as well, so she I know is familiar with it. she was part of all of all of that. So, option two was requested by the school board um to re to potentially as a consideration to replace summer book packs, sending books home with students. And what that request was was to explore what it would be to open the district libraries during the summer. And so, we have our fabulous librarians here who worked as a team to put together what that might entail. And so in executive summary option two, we have provided for you logistics. I don't know what that says. >> Is that a yes or a don't switch? >> Don't do it. Don't do it. >> Thanks. Good call. always listen to Jeff >> Skynet. Okay. So, two open libraries. Um, we recognize the benefits that that would provide and it does align with our mission and our goals and our purpose behind. Uh, but there's a lot of challenges to that and it includes staffing. It's it's dependent upon and contingent upon the availability of our librarians to be able to staff all six libraries or to be able to staff any of the libraries during the summer. But it also involves transportation, student supervision, library accounts that are tied to students at specific schools. So they would need to attend only the library that their ID is connected to. book loss and damage, which is already a significant concern because of budget cuts for our librarians, uh, security needs, storage, logistics, many others. If you have questions about any of these, we're happy to answer those. When we really boiled it down, you can see the staffing costs as well as the materials and facilities cost. those ranges for what it might cost made that overall the potential to be significantly more money than option number one for the summer book packs. And so OTL is does not recommend that option because it's not necessarily going to >> eliminate any of the financial burden that we saw with option one. Do you have questions about any of the challenges that you'd like to explore further? >> Not at all, but that was my first thought. That would be really expensive to do option two. Thanks for sharing. >> Do you want to speak to that? The difficulty with limiting it to one library is that uh one of the things is when students check out books like we said that they're aligned with just that school. So if uh we had elementary school kids from McDonald's signing out books from Davis a returning those books but also being able to access the ranges into one central database would be difficult. Um, and so it kind of uh creates a well, are we only opening one school for this air, you know, for this set of kids? And the logistics of trying to get the books back to where they belong, as well as being able to check them out in a efficient manner that would get us the books back uh would be difficult. Am I missing something, Pam? >> Was there an option? >> Yes. So, >> okay. So, let's go back to look at option three. So option three would be the method that we would recommend and it's really a bit general right now because we just want to seek your input and your feedback on to into where we can start looking a little bit further and whether or not this is something that can be done for this school year or looking into the future. So, we would like to continue and kind of redesign a summer reading program. That could look something like providing only our K2 readers with a summer book pack. It could also look something like providing all K5 students fewer books. So, maybe three instead of five in those summer book packs because we do believe that building a home library and the access to that at home is a huge part. We would look to reduce costs by approximately 50% while maintaining those high impact outcomes, balancing equity, instructional value, and budgeting stu and budget stewardship. We would uh also look to tie in more of a family connection so that we have that unified effort where we have those books at home and we're we did provide activity sheets with the book packs. We would look to do maybe a little bit more with that. maybe create some videos that we can send out through the CSD weekly and e alerts that say, "Hey families, did you get a chance to read this book? Here's some questions. Here are some questions that you can ask a child who's reading any book." Um, so we will be looking to really strengthen that in those areas for that excellence in teaching, for that unified effort, and for that student centered focus. Um and so I will stop there and again see if even if I know we had uh been recommended also digital options that still cost money but that is something we could track. So I guess what we're looking to understand is is there an amount of money that the school board would be willing to contribute to this very important um initiative and program for summer reading? And if so, which direction? >> We would aim to get it to be below in some configuration to try to get it. Yes. To approximately 50%. >> This is me. >> Yes. >> How long have we been doing the >> So, this would be the fifth year that it went out from May of 2022 to May of 2025. So for four years >> we >> the first three years were the esser funded payment and then last year uh we found that money we not found we we made space for that the budget We do. And do you have feedback on what specifically more information on what the board would want to see in that? That would be really helpful. I think >> involved Perfect. actually library. that becomes more tangible than just survey results. >> Yes. >> Yes. So if if we if if it's the pleasure of the ED committee, then what we would do as OTL is we would start to dig deeper into option three and start to build that out. And I don't disagree with you that if we do some kind of tangible activity coming back from the summer reading, then that is a little bit more living than just the survey data. >> You mentioned it was received well. If you have any information that you can summarize, you know, maybe how you feel it benefits the children. I think just having some information about that, we can say yes, this is >> sure >> benefit and this is what we're seeing. Yes. >> And we we talked about this at a previous schoolboard meeting when Mr. Martin brought it up. uh the idea that, you know, correlation is not causation, but having students read and and and trying to push back and delay that summer learning loss, the summer slide has had an effect on our recent growth, academic growth. Um it's difficult to pinpoint that and say because of X Y happened, but it's been one of many factors um in school and out out of school putting, you know, building these home libraries has had an effect um on where we've been going and the in the data we've seen recently. >> Do we know do we know if we're one of the only districts in the area that does something like this? Most I I want to say most many districts uh in the county have a required summer reading uh program. One thing it's gone through several iterations and I know Miss Banshee and M. Mcnoldy probably have more historical knowledge on this than than I do. Um but coming out of the pandemic especially what we wanted to do it was the um goal of the of the the central office is to not make something required was to really lean into reading for pleasure reading for enjoyment. Um and then the the dual goal of building back learning loss coming out of the pandemic. So I think that now that we're four or five years on um pivoting a little bit to what our focus is and building this into something above and beyond even greater than just the book packs to your point um for when students come back K5 in from the summer reading do something with parents and families with the book packs could really help build this. >> Excellent. Anything to add? and we will continue to collaborate together because we know our librarians have the knowledge, right, to help build this as well. So, we appreciate your input and your feedback as well. Thank you so much. >> All right. Next, we have GPA update. Dr. Caracappa and Mr. Tomlinson, Mr. Wright. Thank you. And I'm actually going to kick it off as um as uh this was an incredible uh learning opportunity and experience for me as well. Um and that uh if you remember the the the uh reason rationale that we have this presentation and this this uh this uh brief report for you is that we had one of our um high school students so eloquently and articulately communicate questions and concerns related to how we calculate GPA at William Tennant High School. Um following that that those questions comments um charged uh Dr. Carac Kappa and I to uh we formed a uh an impromptu uh committee that was put out to all the um all all the staff at at William Tennant High School offering them to participate and um met met two times discussed um discussed uh all these agenda or these bullet bullet points up here what you see and what we're going to go through today and um and that that committee it's I think it's important to note that that committee besides as being open to everyone to participate. We had representation from and the the the advanced placement uh course teachers um uh veteran experienced teachers uh Mr. Tomlinson, our school counselor, who was able to speak um at a different level as a school counselor um and than than many people as GPA is something and I I don't want to steal any thunder, but GPA is something that is um is is a number that is used for various components and opportunities for our students internally and externally. And there is no better team and group, I think, to speak to GPA than than than our school counselor. So, I'm I'm grateful that you're here and can speak to that. So, thank you. Um, also that um just quickly that the just GPA I don't want to assume we all understand what GPA grade point average means and stands for. Um, and it is a very old system for ultimately comparing students and their academic performance. And um when I say old, I mean it is it dates back to the beginning of of K12 public education and was um institutionalized um by the uh by our by college board trying to level the playing field. There's two different types of GPA, gradepoint averages, the weighted GPA and unweighted GPA. And just very quickly, the weighted GPA is where we are recognizing students in rewarding them arguably for taking courses or classes that have a different level of rigor. Where the unweighted would be they the the the letter the letter represents the same letter value numerical value in a um in in in the same class. um some some some learnings if you will um that that and some historical context and evolution of to where we are. This is a system we've had in place since the I speak early 2000sish um as a result of a recognition that we weren't aligned with MBIT and and the PIAAA standards. So we they they love to level the playing field. The GPA has changed and and that we we found some historical data and some some uh some experienced teachers and veteran teachers who could speak to that. Also at one point the our our our cutoff score for passing was changed to reflect the state recommendations and guidelines from the from we had a 65 at one point to now to to now it's 60%. Um, and I'm sorry it's cut off at the bottom, but it does say that some other historical context into how we got to this point is the um, and the committee reflected this in more words that there is a recognition of a of a stability with it the way we calculate GPA that has proven to be um that is that has proven to be helpful for for various components and various opportunities which we'll speak to. and the idea that um that the changes to the GPA were made as a result of not only the PA PIAA, not only the MBIT, but also a reflection of what what I what I heard was the Centennial values, the the the values of that we um we recognize, we reward student learning and academic effort. And hence why and we'll talk about this we have such a precise GPA scale that is it is it is different than the other surrounding districts. It's different than many districts across the state in the country. And I would add that in in the research we did with the committee that the that we're all the schools are all a little bit different with the weighted and the unweighted. So there there's there's there's a lot of different components to this, but we're going to stick to GPA unweighted conversation right now. And then we'll talk about and where we'll get to is as a result of that question and and that that that student and as a result of the committee's work, our recommendations for next steps on how to how to make this even better for the students we serve. So that being said, if I could um ask Mr. Tomlinson, could you speak to a little bit of analysis of our GPA? Sure. Um, so our our system is a precision based system. So we give um we give quality points for every percent that a school that a student earns which is very different than a lot of schools who use that continuous or interval or bucket system where they give it for a range like if you get a 90 to a 93 you get this 94 to 97 you get something else. So again, it really ch it really challenges student to go for every percent, but it also rewards them for every percentage point that they get. And that's the opportunity that our GPA scale offers that not many do or not not any local ones do. Again, so if you were to get a 90%, you're going to be getting 3.5 quality points. You get a 91, you're getting 3.55. You get a 92, 3.6, 3.65. So you're getting adding to that quality point every percentage point that you get. So you don't have a student like me when I went to Lasal High School who said an A was a 93 and once I got a 93 I was like okay I'm done because I got my A and that's it. I don't have to worry about it as long as I stay there. But again our students are going to get rewarded for every single percentage point um that they get. And again that grade point average is something that we're looking at in almost internally first because you're comparing to other students. Where are the where's the challenge? Where's the rigor? And that's really where that calculation comes in and is extremely helpful. Um, and again, I know we're trying to stay towards the unweighted, but that weighted scale then increases when you take more challenging courses. And that's what colleges are going to look at when we get to the if I go to the next slide here. So again, colleges are going to be looking at although they will look at GPA and they like these numbers, they also know that those are internal. All right? And every school is different. And again, every state, every school coming from other states or students applying to schools from every state or if we have students applying to schools in other states, they don't all have the same calculations. They don't have the all the same GPA sets. So, we give every school what we call a school profile. So, that's going to have all of our honors, all of our AP courses listed, our uh GPA scale. It's going to have all that data in there for those colleges so that they can understand and represents represented to them. Um and again that's all schools do that. When we have students apply to colleges we utilize a platform called Naviance. We can't even send a transcript without sending a school profile. All right. So every school every time we send a transcript that profile goes out and that's that kind of um that game plan of what that means. What are the standards of the school? And then they can use that comparative GPA for students within that profile. Okay. So, you can't really compare a student from, you know, Central Bucks to Centennial to somebody in California. All right? They're going to be using that profile to see what your rigor is and where your definition of excellence is as well. All right? And then the colleges themselves, all right, they're going to be recalculating. They're going to be looking for content. They're going to look and then they're going to put our GPA in context. So, they're going to have stu um their own calculation of how they review um our grades. And again, by us not putting an A or a zone or a bucket, they can see the actual percent that the student earned, they can use that tool to to recalculate their own GPA, which majority of schools absolutely 100% do. And a lot of schools also use what's called uh the stars report where students are actually inputting their course, their grade, and placing that through that system uh for schools then to have the student do the work for them to create that. Uh Penn State is one of those, Temple's one of Pits one of those. I mean, there's a lot of schools. I can't go through them all. Um all the way down the coast, you can talk about any school that uses that as well. And again, that is something that helps the universities again create their own GPA calculations. So, any school is going to be utilizing that form of a of a profile in order for schools um to actually put our GPA in context. Okay. Mr. Tomlinson. >> Yes. >> That profile, is that the CSS profile? >> No. Um, so no, the CSS profile that is actually for financial aid. Um, so that is something that students will fill out as like a next tier towards the FAFSA. So schools will look at that for a deeper dive on that. The profile is actually ours. So Centennial will create we will create a document of our data. So we'll put on there our our um height, our honors courses, our AP courses, our GPA scale. We'll put in the percent of students that go to a four-year, two-year workforce, military. Um, we'll put in the population of our students, the graduating class, the size, all those pieces, brief history of William Tennant. Um, so it's a kind of a one-pager that all schools will get of your high school. And so all high schools will do a version of that. Um, and I will do a one more plug because I did say I go to Lasal or I went to Lasal. We have more opportunity with our GPA, with our profile, and our programs than Lasal does. and it's like north of $34,000 to go there. So, like that's one of the great things about our GPA scale, I think, and I have two kids that have gone through the system, one current, and that is you get rewarded for each each percentage point. There is a benefit to getting an 88 versus an 87. There is a benefit to get a 90 versus 89, and it's not visual. Um, so, so yeah, so that profile is is ours that we design and create to put out. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> Thank you, uh, Patty. Chris, thank you for the opportunity to come tonight. I do have to say this was our first opportunity we got to work with Dr. Dr. Zach on and um I want to thank him because I really do appreciate the way that he came to us with this question um and said, "Hey, have you looked at this?" And I was really part of our team and asking, I think, the important questions rather than saying, "Hey, are you doing this? Are you doing this?" And really took in a lot of information before we got to some of this. So, I want to thank you. Um they gave me the hard slides. They they they basically said this is where we are and now you get to talk about the good stuff. Um you know from my perspective as the principal I have to guard against it's a number you've heard about numbers you heard about what they do go after. There are other pieces to a gradepoint average I think that go maybe unheard of sometimes. I think there's some history here and Matt could probably speak more to it that a lot of times you see GPA systems get changed because they're in a system where too much pressure is put on children because they have to be at the top of the class or they're trying to be the valad Victorian. Um our system really rewards the people at the top. Um, you know, speaking from experience, my own children went to another, they go to another district and, you know, we'll go to a graduation and they'll be 14 valictorians because they're all at the top because they have a sliding scale. On ours, when you break it down, you you earn every point you get. And what I appreciate about the system we're currently in is that our job is to pair them to prepare them for their next step. And yes, in college you'll find colleges are all different too. We we kind of looked at that and um but I think they're in a better place to understand where they are as a student, right? So when you talk about like up to this point, we have conversations with course selection just coming up. Am I an honor student? Should I should I be looking at that? And then and our job is to prepare them for now I'm going on to college two year, four year, even if it's a trade to understand where they really are, right? And I think our system above all others we've looked at really gives that profile to a student, right? They know if I ask a student, are you an A student? They'll tell you like, well, there's an A student that's at a 92 and then there's an A student that's a 97. And that is very different. Like that is very different. And in some scales we looked at it, depending on where you were, it was the same. You would be treated the same. So I think that's part of it. Um the mental health piece is another part I think we really have to be careful with. I think this really does help and prevents us from getting into this every little, you know, tenth of a point counts and so forth. Um, when you talk about rewarding mastery, that's kind of what we're talking about. It's, you know, you got 100, you get 100. Um, that's what it says. You mastered it. It's not you got one wrong because if you did, you'd have a 98.6, right? So, our system really does reward that. And I, like I said, I think we talked to the pressure. The last one, um, the financial impact. And I'm gonna ask Matt to come up because we did want to be transparent with this. And one of the things we really wanted to look at was because I think when we received the information from the student, it was in comparison to maybe they weren't rewarded for something or they weren't able to participate in some cause of the GPA. So, one of the things I immediately I went to is are are our students being penalized because of our system if they were going out to, you know, so we we looked at at really these three if I'm not mistaken and it just happens to be in the state of Pennsylvania. These three schools, Bloomsburg, Mansville, Lock Haven, they're they're Matt, you might you're way more skilled to explain how this works, but essentially they get they're rewarded based on their GPA this way. So, we were kind of looking at is there anything that this GPA has negative, right? And I think it was in the middle of the second meeting when I dawned on me there was one thing that I could think of over all the years and it's and although Commonwealth is broken up at three universities, they they treat them all the same. So, when you apply to the Commonwealth University, that's what you're applying to. You you're selecting a campus. they actually award a scholarship based on an unweighted GPA that they do not and sorry if they're listening or if that gets them that they do not um kind of do their own calculation for and however word you want to use that is they just will take it from any school utilize that and they'll do a a bucket if you have a 30 to 35 you get this award if you have a 35 to 37 you get this award 38 to this you get this award not the greatest system however that is the only thing that I could truly think of that our students would be negatively impacted by. That's the only one that I could find. Now, there are other schools that are exactly the opposite. They award it, they look at it, they do the recalculations, they push it. But in all disclosure, that was one that I thought of mid meeting and I was like, "Oh, guys, this I do know this one." And frankly, the only reason I know it because a lot of schools won't share it. I'll talk to a lot of colleges. They'll share their GPA set. They'll share they'll share how they do this. I talked to Penn State consistently about how they view our GPA and that and it's very good and we'll go through those things but a lot of times they don't talk money. Um and so in this case I know for I know through factual information goes my own son was on one of those uh the weighted GPA got you in this bucket. The unweighted got you in the other bucket. Um and they explained it to me and I was very appreciative. Uh but that was a $1,000 difference. That's significant. So, it's an interesting piece. And again, that's a 1,000 per year. Now, they get a chunk of two or three,000 for this GPA, three or 4,000 for this. So, it's it's a $1,000 stepper, but again, that was the one that I could think of negative. And when we talked about it, there were other schools that it's the opposite. So, it's one of those things where that might be the only one that has a negative tweak to it for those specific channel. um as we try and look at other schools for scholarships, they don't work like that. They do the the work on the same way they evaluate uh the student for admission. Um and they look at that core strength and their own standards to recreate that that GPA set. Um, so we wanted to put that on there for disclosure because that was something that we recently uncovered and that's a conversation I'm definitely going to have with them personally, not in a negative fashion, but as a counselor of like, hey, you should really look at it through a different lens of how you're awarding that. Uh, because we do have those partnerships with some of these schools where our students are recognized and we have some of these schools as partnerships for uh, dual enrollment and things. So, we have students paying money to certain schools to take dual enrollment. So, it's it's going to be beneficial of both sides to have that conversation with them. Um, but Yep. And again, like personally, I I do think that's that is unfair. Uh, but we couldn't find that outside those three schools. So, um, again, it's very small pool, but I just thought we would be transparent because that's again, we don't want our kids to be penalized for the system that we're using. We just think this is a kind of weird anomaly with these three schools. And to be honest with you, I don't can't speak to that, but as a graduate of Bloomsburg, I'm a little disappointed. Um the final thing there is the risk aversion. We we we are constantly fighting the battle. Um as you know because I've stood up here before you is um challenging our kids to challenge themselves to take more rigorous coursework. Um I think the way you do that is to show them that you know you're you're not just being given something that you have to earn this. Um and that's a lifelong lesson. And you know, um, my approach to this was I wanted to be open and hear it if we were hurting our kids. And I think at the end, um, it's going to come down to a perspective. You know, I mean, from a board's point, from a student's point, from an administrative point, you know, what is it we want that we think what's best for our kid. I do not believe our kids. I do not believe that this current system we have right now is hurting anybody. Um, but again, it's open to someone's perspective. They could probably make the argument against it. We could make 18 more against why it isn't. Um, but the one thing that I keep coming back to over and over again is in this system, you earn what you get. Like nobody nobody's giving you something. Um, you know, and I think that opens up to other avenues where we can investigate how we can be better as a building and, you know, as a staff to help our kids in that system. So, I'm going to close it out and and and share that that at this point that we're not recommending or making any decisions about any type of change to our GPA for for a number of reasons. One, it wouldn't be fair to the students that are currently being served with this GPA. two, it would be a a bit of a a challenge with um with midstream doing this for the incoming freshman class and as well as the ramifications as it relates to um to other areas we h we haven't even discussed yet. So for instance, the ability of our technological systems to ensure we can make a change like that. what are the you know we had a committee met two times that that the implications of this internally externally are very different but large and there I'm sure we're we're missing some so it's our recommendation what we plan to do and assess and adjust accordingly and um Dr. Caracappa already has an academic council an academic council to make this part of the uh a standing agenda item. But not just to discuss this, but there's other questions that came up as a result of this question such as how do I know my A in my class is equivalent to the A in your class when you teach the same thing about teaching learning? Talking about assessment, are we using the same assessments? Are we are are we assessing the same way? There's a number of questions that came came out that um will lead us to strengthening ensuring that the GPA system we have right now is as precise as it needs to be and as well do we want to make a recommendation for a change and as we looked at and talked about I'm not going to rehash it but everybody's all over the board with how GPA are calculated a little bit and tweaked and there was a comment or there's a joke and there's some truth behind the joke that well then we could just then why don't we just go to a 6.0 scale and that when we send out our GPA, our students will be will be recognized as the best. And that's that's obviously not what we're going to do or recommend. But where is that balance and where's the where's the right thing? So So what we're what we're what we're proposing, what we're planning to do is having as a a standing agenda item to talk talk with um the uh the teachers that participate in the academic council at William Tennant High School. Yes, that was um we we met with her be we met with her immediately after we met with her today. Yesterday or today? >> Tomorrow. >> Tomorrow, excuse me, to follow up. The other part is um that I should share. Thank you for for bringing that up, Miss Crossson. Is that we need to assess our graduates. We need to assess our current students, our graduates, and what is their perspective of our GPA and our GPA system. Is that hindering or helping? And we have we have we talked about how we could do that through um through Naviance which Mr. Tomlinson recognized. >> Thank you so much. >> Welcome. >> I think the best piece of that I had no idea that colleges take all your information and then just recalculate. I think if we could tell that student that's what happens. Um I'm sure you will tell her um that that is what happens. So, one thing I I wanted to add too, um I think what's important here is that to that point, um we will I I wanted to wait until because if she's watching, hello. Um that way that way if she had any questions that if I already met with her, then I'd have to meet with her again. She had questions. So, I figured I would wait till after she saw this and if she didn't, I can explain it to her. Um but to your point, like I I think it's very important that we um to look at the scale of thing. Like I I feel it's very important that we do a better job of preparing our kids on what to do with the GPA. Like if I were going out to um for an example, if I were going out for an internship and I had to interview, if if maybe that was based on my GPA, the person I may be interview may have nothing to do with education may not understand that, right? Like a college admissions officer would. I think we have to do a better job of explaining to our kids what they need to do to be prepared to walk into that situation. Do I bring my school profile? Do I talk about that? Do I explain it if that's a piece of it? Um, we think we can embed some of those changes very easily so that our kids are stronger when when they're that information is needed by them. Um, I do believe that a lot of our students know there's a GPA, but I'm not sure they have it's calculated or why. Um, they if you ask them, I have a 92. I I have an 85, right? So, they don't really understand where that falls and how it works. So, uh, I do believe that's one thing that we can certainly talk about and I plan to with the academic council. >> Okay. I just really appreciate you taking her um that student's concern so seriously. I just I'm very impressed. >> Well, I will say this, things happen for a reason and it's some of those things that are just on your agenda sometimes you get and it was really helpful for us because I don't think we like I think we're going to be better for it. So, we really owe her a debt of gratitude for bringing it up. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> I just add one thing. Um, so I think one of the other areas uh that that this does come up for our students at least uh because like you said, you didn't know that the colleges do that. Um, so a lot of students don't either. We do what we call a college seminar for all of our juniors. >> Yes. >> Um, we do it right after course selection. So once we get done course selection, right, the next month, we'll move into like a college seminar. That's something we really try and explain to our students that yeah, you may see a certain GPA that these schools want. That doesn't necessarily translate the number. Okay. Okay. And so what we do is we counsel them of like there's zones, there are things that you're doing. What's your grade in your core areas? That's what colleges are going to look at first. So when they recalculate, they're looking at what's your grade in English, math, science, history each of those years. Not that the electives aren't important. They obviously are in terms of that holistic approach. But we really tell students, don't look at that number. And then if you do want to feel comfortable, look at our weighted versus their number. And that's going to be closer. But then we'll have conversations of what that means. So I'll give you one quick example and then I'll shut up. um is that Penn State is notorious for like oh everybody that got into engineering or Smeil College of Business had a 4.0. Okay. And so the first question I have for them is how how's that possible? How's every single person have a 4.0 when everybody has these convoluted scales? It's their system that they create that 4.0. So it doesn't necessarily mean that that student had the most rigor. It just means that according to their standard they had a 91 that equal a 4.0 to them and Johnny could have had a 98 and they're the same. And so that's what I we work with kids on as well when they're applying to colleges is don't rule out for, you know, those GPA sets. We're going to help you with that range and don't roll out for money, but we rule out for, you know, we'll get you in that zone. So, don't look at those numbers. And we do try and explain that to them in in those college seminars that we do with them. However, they have to be listening, they have to be attending. Um, and then when we work with them one-on-one, we still do that. I had I had these two girls in my office today. They're twins and they were applying all the same schools which we thought was funny and we were looking at those GPA sets and making sure that they felt comfortable about it too. So we do it individually as well but that is something in the in the group setting we do and then obviously when we introduce Nvian to them and and roll out these surveys we can do that as well. All right. So, item seven, presentations, the comprehensive plan overview. Mrs. Tomlinson, do the first part. >> Okay. All right. Hi everybody. Um so we are very excited to share with you an overview of our 2026 2029 comprehensive plan. And I just want to say moving forward um and what this is. Um the comp plan is something that's required through the state of Pennsylvania. It's something that we have to do every three years which comes up really quickly actually. um no sooner do you go through the process and then you start to implement and lo and behold you're planning for the next one that comes up. Um but it is really that like we've we've said and we put out there that strategic roadmap that helps us to identify the instructional priorities, the supports, the systems that we want in place to ensure outcome for students and future readiness. And I think it's really important to mention that the strategic planning and centennial for this iteration of the comprehensive plan started in the winter of 2025 and it is a very long process and so we wanted to make sure that we intentionally build upon what had been established. We didn't look at the work that was put in place with the previous administration. A lot of changes in our district and we didn't want to erase any of that work. It was very good work. There's been wonderful progress and we wanted to build on that and continue that work to make sure that we are serving the needs of our community and that consistency and continuity. One of the things that's not on the slide but I'm very proud of particularly is that in many districts and I've seen this firsthand the comp plan is a gigantic check in the box. People say we have to do the comp plan. It is laborious. It's tedious at times. There are a lot of things and I'll show you a slide that that speaks to a little bit of that, but many districts do it and they're like, "Glad that's out of the way." Not here. One of the things that we intentionally talked about as a team is that we want this comp plan to be a very organic, thriving, living document that really serves as the basis for all of the decisions that we make as a district and that we can align it and we can say to you as a board, we recommend this particular approach because it's aligned with the plan. It's articulated in the plan. There's a there's a vision. There's a a constancy with that. And so what I believe our committee put together absolutely achieves that objective. So I'm very proud of that and I think that it's really good work um that was done there. So now I mentioned the tedious laborious part. Exhibit A. I'm not going to go through every one of these circles but as you can see and we're going to break our presentation this afternoon into three segments. The ready segment, that's me. The set segment, that's Dr. Z. And then the go segment, and that is Mrs. Tomlinson. But you can see that each one of these ready, set, and then set A are the required reports that we have to weave in as part of our set component. And then finally, the go. There are s a significant number of steps that we have to take. And then also um inserting the plan into um and a digitized format for final approval. So, we will break it down first and we're going to begin with the ready piece and there are three primary components in the ready piece. I'm going to talk to you about how we formed a timeline in the committee, how we identified our educational values, and those values are interspersed and connected with every aspect of our plan, and then how we established a mission and a vision that drive the work and serve as an anchor point for all the decisions that we made relative to the plan and its contents. So, we'll start with our timeline, and you can see it's quite a timeline. beginning back in January 25. And all of the green check marks you'll notice are things that have been done to date. Now, just so you know, the plan itself is due March 31st. We have to have it submitted to the state. The committee very intentionally worked on this so that we are not up against that deadline. And so, here we are today, January 14th, sharing that draft with you. Yesterday we posted it to the public for the required 28 day review and we used the thought exchange which is an online survey uh component which also allows for qualitative feedback and for folks to comment on other people's thoughts. This way then we can bring it back to our committee to look at some of that feedback and review it. By then the 28 day period will close and then on February 10th we'd like to formally present it to you and then take your feedback from that evening and then on February 24th bring it back to the full board for final approval and that would be that second meeting in February and if there's any adjustments that we need to make in along that timeline we can do so and still be well within that that time frame to get it into the state. Uh, one of the things I do want to mention though is you see the different committee meetings that we did and I want to give credit to Mr. Chad Evans from the BCIU. Mr. Evans serves as a liaison for that work and he was really instrumental in helping the team and the committee move this forward gave a lot of great feedback along the way. I believe he'll be here at one of those meetings to answer any questions that the board may have relative to that process. But you can see the different for the committee meetings that we we took we had um and then the committees and how that committee work went how we went back to teams asked for their feedback based on what the committee did went back to the committee worked again went back to teams uh so it was really really important to do that and I'll speak a little bit about that committee so it was approximately a 40 member steering committee and a very diverse stakeholder group of students parents community members faculty staff administration board members folks nominated by their peers. We also took this work into subgroups as well. Uh we shared it with faculty, we shared it with administrative teams, we shared it with principles, we ran it past our parent advisory council one afternoon or one morning. Um we also assembled a group at William High School in the library and had our students go through the plan. They gave us feedback on the mission and the vision as well. And so this has been touched along the way by many, many people in our community, many people in our district. And so it's very important to do this work with people and not above people so that it's inclusive of what people want. And I'm going to speak to some of that feedback particularly because when I share with you the mission and vision, there are some things that were very specifically strongly recommended by our committees and by our students and our our our focus groups. And so that's how we put together our committees along the way. The second part I wanted to talk about was the stakeholder educational values. And we're excited about this in particular and it's something you're going to see and you're going to hear a lot about. Uh and this is the centennial compass. And um kind of like a little precursor, but you know, we're prepared to put this on posters and to have this all across our district. Um what do I need to do here? What do I not want to do, Mr. Ruts? Extend. >> Extend. Extend. >> All right. Extend. All right. Thank you. So, you didn't steer Mrs. Mey wrong. And I I'm going to rely on you. Thank you. The compass. Think of it this way. Think of the comprehensive plan as the district's big extensive road map. And think of it as a road map without a GPS. The compass is what allows us to navigate that road map and it gives us our touch points. These are our values and we're really proud of this work because it all starts at the top of the compass or that true north of student centered focus. And I'm just I don't like to read off of a PowerPoint, but this is the one where I'm going to indulge that tendency and do it anyhow. But we believe that every decision has to begin and end with what's best for our students. and we commit to so the statements you'll see two component you'll see two comp two components there's a we believe and a we commit to each one of them and so the first is we believe has to be in what's in the best interest of our students and we commit to examining every action through the lens of student growth and achievement. So when we say every action, not just instructional, every action that when we spend money, every action when we craft policy, every action when we think about our buildings and our operations and our community relations and our engagement, everything we do, is it helping student growth and achievement? And if so, it's a good decision. And then the four compass points and actually and thank you for this Mrs. million um is that is that we are framing our work using these compass point talks and so you saw Mrs. only talked a little bit about access and opportunity unified effort. All of that is going to be included every time we make decisions. And so that unified effort is we believe student success depends on purposeful engagement of our community and our schools. And so we commit to fostering a culture where collaboration, shared responsibility, and mutual accountability are non-negotiable. And that's that unified effort. Side note, unified effort, there's a fancy term for it that we didn't want to use. It's called collective efficacy. Nobody knows what that means and we didn't want to confuse people. And we do a good job in education of doing that anyhow using jargon. It's the number one identified thing in the country. Schools that have unified effort are the highest achieving schools in the country and that's researchbased. It's called collective efficacy and schools that have that are the top schools. It's from the research of a gentleman named Dr. John Hattie. The second was leadership with integrity. We believe leadership has to be anchored in transparency, empathy, and courage. So we commit to leading by example, communicating openly, acting decisively, and putting students first. The access and opportunity so important. We believe every student deserves equitable access to opportunities that prepare them for their future. and we commit to breaking down barriers, expanding pathways, and providing resources that ensure all students can thrive. So, if there are things that we're doing as a district that are keeping certain student groups from achieving or experiencing the type of of uh experience they deserve, we want to identify that and remove the barrier. We want to make sure that that access is for all and not just for some. And then, of course, excellence and teaching. We are above all things a teaching and learning institution. And so we believe high quality instruction and continuous improvement are essential to student success. And we support that through professional growth, using data to improve instruction, and embracing evidence-based practices that help to bring up our outcomes. So those are the values on which the plan was built, and these are the values that we'll reference every time we make decisions as a district. So a lot of times if you see one or more of these compass points attached to a presentation, it's because it mentions or ties in one of these tenants. The committee then moved to the vision and mission statements. Think of a vision as what? Think of the mission as how. So the vision is what do we want and the mission how do you do it? A lot of companies, if you go into a an organization, you'll see a mission statement on the wall. There's been a trend to shrink them because if people don't know what the mission is, if it's a paragraph long, people can't talk about the mission. But if it's a sentence, they can they know what the mission is. And our committee after much deliberation said we believe that the mission should be to provide that access and opportunity for every student to develop their unique potential in academics, athletics, and the arts. Those three A's the community the committee unanimously said we need to put that back in. It was in one of the original ones from years ago. We said we think that's very important to put that in. So very simply, what do we want? We want that. develop your potential in all those things. How will you do it? The mission. We empower the growth of the whole student through exceptional teaching and learning experiences. Whether it's in the classroom, on the stage, on the playing field, in the art classroom, you name it. It's all about exceptional teaching and learning. And so with that, I'm going to step aside. We're going to move to the set portion. And Dr. Zach Thank you Dr. Luga. Um and uh another really great activity and exercise for me as um as the the the set or the needs assessment or required Thank you. Uh required component of the the comprehensive plan is um broken down into a a very uh lengthy data analysis of all the data available. Thank you. the um supplemental plans, which sounds simple but is not, as well as a really thoughtful, meticulous way of analyzing the strengths and the challenges of our district. And um you know I think if I could just reflect before writing a goal this is the set to me is taking an authentic look in the mirror as to exactly what we truly need and how do we know we need it and are we asking all the right people and Dr. Lucabal referenced that that um this was looked at from a 30,000 foot view before anything was ever set put into place. There was the uh thought exchange very early on, a survey of the administrators, survey of uh the teachers um brought to um the parent council, the student advisory group and all along the way. And the set or needs assessment is part of that as well. These are a few of the data points that are analyzed for um for for for setting the goals. And uh you can see here that the uh the breadth of the data if you will is is is large that um something that that that that stands out that I want to call it's not just academic achievement but it is also our student growth which is the uh the PES and achievement measures but it's also beyond testing. You can see that our what opportunities are we providing our students beyond and and recognizing that as data points beyond just student achievement on Keystone PSSAs, I ready um you fill in the the assessment. There's the other factors are considered as part of the goal setting here. This slide reflects an incredible amount of work from a number of people in this organization and um these are also part of the comprehensive plan that we have to submit these reports as part of our comprehensive plan and I don't want to skip over this slide and I want to um ensure that we're recognizing and giving credit where credit's due here. Um under uh the leadership of uh Mr. Rutz, you've touched and and done a number of these plans >> and our OTL team. >> Thank you. Dr. Hopkins is carrying the baton for many of these as well and and currently moving many of these forward. Um this is this is this slide is not nothing to skip over and I joked in with um the team in the planning like there's so much that is on this slide. There's so much work. There's so much there's there there's so many components to this that if we went through each one of these, we will have touched every single staff member, every single student in this organization in some way. It it impacts them and is and is thought to impositively provide the additional opportunities that we need in 2026 and beyond. Here were the strengths identified and the the uh the bold strengths um sentence at the top is what PTE re it uh says we have to answer what are our strengths and I'm just going to highlight a couple of these that that the coordination of fiscal resources ensuring we are fiscally responsible for our community that we are maintaining and ensuring a standards aligned curriculum and assessment that we are also which I'm grateful for that we continue to build upon the excellence of fostering a culture of high expectations and and if and if I could just and the comprehensive plan is 60 plus pages and and this is outlined in great detail and depth in those in the comprehensive plan um as well as our challenges and the recognized challenges. And again, I want to point out that these are challenges that were brought to the team, from the thought exchange, from the survey, from the feedback from the groups. Um, some of those that I that that I'll highlight are consistency in using instructional strategies, building our capacity as leaders for supporting highquality teaching, ensuring that we are allocating all of our resources equitably. This was feedback for us, for the organization, for the leadership, for the teachers, for to to build upon and to set our goals around. And once we have those goals or once we have that data, then we set the goals and we go. Miss Tomlinson. >> Good afternoon everyone. I'm Ala Tomlinson. I'm a supervisor here in the district and I had the great honor and uh privilege to be able to carry this work from our previous administration and the work of uh Mr. Gabriel and now carrying it through to today. And I I'm very proud of the work that that was started here. And I'm so glad that we have that continuity in the exciting things that are happening here in Centennial. And we get to build upon much of the growth that we have seen over the many years and and again under the leadership and I'm going to point out Mr. ruts here and the and the OTL team as well as the student services team and the many teachers and students and and the the great things that we've done here. And so the ready and the set leads us into the go. The go outlines the work what we need to do over the next three years. And again, it goes like a blink, right? So the past comprehensive plan, that work, we've been working on it and that continues to lead right into this. And so what we're hoping to do today is to share with you that final plan, right? And look at what were the priorities that were identified by the committee, the goals that were then built from that, and then finally, what are our tangible action steps. So establish priorities. This is a component that is required but uh by the Pennsylvania Department of Education that we identify key areas of focus. Where do we want to focus our work? And we decided on two main buckets. The first bucket being achievement and growth continuing the work that we saw over the the previous comprehensive plan as well as access and engagement. Again, continuing the work from our previous plan. We created three priority statements. If we address the areas of challenge and concern around access and engagement, our families, community, faculty, and staff will have what they need to feel a sense of belonging and have support to ensure students are prepared for post-secary education, career, and life readiness. Priority one. Priority two, if we continue to strengthen our curriculum, our core instruction, our systems of support for learners, then our learners will be prepared for post-secary education, career, and life readiness. That's priority two. And finally, priority three is that if we strengthen our organizational systems to enhance employee efficacy in alignment with improving achievement, growth, access, and engagement, we will be better able to address our priority challenges mentioned in one and two above. Once the committee establishes these priorities, they look at all of the information that we've done in the ready and in the set, and we establish measurable goals. So goals translate the priorities into specific timebound outcomes. Things that we can measure ourselves, look back and say, are we continuing to make growth? Are we looking by the end of the 2028 29 school year? Are we going to be able to accomplish these? What do we need to put more effort into? What do we need to put financial resources towards? and the three goals and you'll see the the clear alignment with our priorities. Goal number one is that by the end of the 2028 29 school year, Centennial will have strength and access engagement. Thank you. um access, engagement, and communication for our diverse stakeholder groups, which includes families, parents, guardians, and students, the community at large, and faculty and staff. Goal number two is by the end of the 2028 29 school year, all schools will demonstrate continuous improvement in student success across a variety of growth and achievement measures. And finally, goal number three. By the end of the 2028 2029 school year, the district will strengthen organizational systems to enhance employee efficacy and student success. Once we've established these goals, we then need to come up with tangible steps to achieve those goals. Now, some of those steps could apply to all three of those goals. We'll take one step and and it's going to focus on all of those goals. Um, however, in order to make this more um more clear for for the community, what I did is I took some of those steps and and align them with goals so that you can see um where we're we're looking to go for those specific goals that are here. These are not all of the goals. Um they are some of the goals and or so I'm sorry not all of the action steps but some of the action steps and and if you go continue through the plan you can see more detail uh as to what we hope to be able to accomplish over the next three years and and this is this is what we our mission. So action steps for goal number one we look to implement a district-wide communication and engagement framework that promotes equitable and multilingual access to information. We want to establish formal parent and community partnerships that are inclusive of all stakehold student stakeholder groups. Expand engagement events and outreach with an emphasis on communication to increase participation in those events. We also plan to align attendance and intervention protocols by aligning attendance, outreach, and professional learning practices across all schools, focusing on documented use of tiered attendance strategies and intervention logs to support our students coming to school. With goal number two, the action steps, we will implement a standardsbased instructional system K through 12 to drive continuous student achievement through rigorous and relevant instruction. What this will require is that all teachers anchor practice in clearly communicated learning objectives and utilize strategic formative and summitive assessments for ongoing progress monitoring. We also will establish consistent data review and assessment protocols which will require all teachers to administer and analyze common assessments in each content area and engage in quarter quarterly data reviews with professional learning communities which could be departments and teams to identify trends and instructional next steps. And we will sustain foundational student support systems, maintaining and expanding schoolwide multi- tiered systems to support as well as positive behavior systems in K through 12 and align student services to promote academic growth, well-being, and continuous staff improvement. And finally, goal number three and the action steps really focus here on the development and implementation of a portrait of a graduate. And I recognize that that term can be a little bit of that as you speak. Um, what is a portrait of a graduate? What does that exactly mean? So, a portrait of a graduate is a term that is used to define a collective vision for student success. What does it mean for a William Tennant High School graduate to be successful? What does it mean to our community, to our families, to our parents, to our teachers, to our students here? And so developing a portrait of a graduate would allow us to identify very specific skills and competencies that the community agrees will help our students to thrive in work and life. And so having this portrait of a graduate is going to help us to align our work. And that's in every department. And I and I know that Dr. Lvah has already mentioned that the comp plan itself is about aligning that work. It's about making sure that it's not just in the classroom, that it's what we're doing in every single department. Are we leading back to where we need to be, where students are that northstar and that we're making those decisions around being student centered and that our foundation is truly excellence in teaching and so making sure that we are all on the same page and that our organizational system is built around that. So that is our comprehensive overview. We are gathering feedback as part of the required 28day review. There is a thought exchange that has already been sent out. You can also access that thought exchange here. As Dr. Zachin mentioned, it is a 64page document that is linked inside of the thought exchange as well as on our website. The first page front and back or first two pages is an executive overview. It gives you a snapshot of what we've talked about in these slides today to help it to be something that can be absorbed and understood um a little bit more easily than trying to read all 64 pages. Um however that draft um so once you see the executive overview you will then see the comprehensive plan as well as the required induction plan, professional development plan and gifted education plan all connected there in that document. And then we are asking that feedback be provided to us both uh qualitative um as well as quantitative. Um and so that we're hoping to have that by most of that feedback and we've gotten quite a bit of feedback so far actually in just looking it's been released from one day we've had 90 respondents which I think is a wonderful um return so far on the number of people who have provided feedback and that we hope to continue to have more community members participate and then be able to look at it as a committee before we present the final to the whole to the whole group. So, thank you very much. Any questions? Thank you. So, by the due date which is March 31st, it gets sent to the state and then do we get a rating? Like what what does the department do with the information? It says that you have a comp plan and you have been your comp plan has been approved. >> Okay. >> Um and so we then move forward with that work. Um it it's possible that they could send it back for revision if we did we have not submitted all of the necessary parts to the comprehensive plan, but since we've been following through that very lengthy process, I don't believe we'll have anything missing. It's a matter of the community agreement on this is our work moving forward for the next three years. >> Thank you. um not so far. I mean with the thought exchange most individuals will write a comment and then people will like like that comment or or rate that comment. I did there is also a uh quantitative um satisfaction scale on on the survey and just looking at the the 90 respondent satisfaction scale most of the respondents are rated five to 10. It's a 10 zero to 10 scale. Most of them rated five to 10 as far as satisfaction. Only four respondents um rated zero to four. So four respondents out of the 90 put a zero to four response as their satisfaction. So I haven't seen any trends and I didn't look very deeply into it after one day. I just kind of looked at the numbers overall to be able to provide you how many people have responded. But um that's the initial feedback so far. So, we do have some metrics that were built into our planning. So, I'm going to go back up to goal one. We did build metrics in especially at each of the different levels. Each um administrative team did work on creating action plans within their buildings in order to meet and reach these goals. And so it was looking at the number of people who participated in in their um family nights or their community nights. They looked at the types of groups that they had um the number of groups that they had. Um so looking to expand that. We looked at the types of resources we provided to families um for our communication. We looked at the people who were responding on um surveys, thought exchanges, and are there ways that we could communicate that differently? Um, are there ways that we could improve upon how we have parents uh participate and helping them to participate? Is there and we ask questions like is there a language barrier? Is there a place where we could be able to provide um individuals with the information that they need in the way that they need it? Um, and so how can we what can we do to improve that? Um, and so a lot of questions were asked and we looked at different tasks that we could put into place again with these action steps and and it would be going back and looking Have we been able to put that action step in place? And to what extent has that action step been accomplished? Do we have if this is what it looked like at the beginning of the plan, what will what does it look like at the end of the plan and doing a comparison? >> Seems like an incredible amount of work. I'm just looking at this. So, sincerely, thank you so much for for all the time and and work put into it. It was a wonderful team effort by many many many different people and I and as Dr. L said I'm very proud and very um happy to see how many people touched this plan and put the work towards doing great things for our kids. Thank you. We'll move on to recommendations. Recommendations. 8.1 recommendation to move the book descriptions for author visit at McDonald Elementary to the full board for approval. 8.2 Two, recommendation to move the library book order for Klinger Middle School to the full board for purchase approval. 8.3 recommendation to move the library book order for Log College Middle School to the full board for purchase approval. 8.4 recommendation to move the library book order for McDonald Elementary to the full board for purchase approval. And 8.5 recommendation to move the overnight conference request for the 2026 A Kappa Legal Symposium to the full board for approval. >> All in favor? >> All of us. Okay. And additional public comments by residents. I don't see any residents, so I'm going to say there's no additional comments. Um, and then any comments or anything? >> Okay. Going to make a motion to adjurnn. Second. Okay. All in favor? I. Thank you everyone. Thank you.