e e e good evening I'm going to convene our meeting tonight here this is our board meeting for February 11th 2025 it is 6:30 on the dot this is one of our study sessions so before we get started I will read Our Land acknowledgement we are gathered on the land of the Dakota and oju peoples I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota and oju Community their Elders both past and present as well as future Generations St Louis Park public schools also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasers of many indigenous peoples including those on Whose land the school district is located this acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to the dismantling of the ongoing legacies of colonial power and the district's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous communities to thrive in our schools all right with that done we have uh three things on our four four things on our on our agenda tonight discussion items and um we have a CIP progress update we have some policy and um related to 409 506 and 621 um but we'll go ahead and start and we have a number of people here to give us a CIP progress site update I could read the whole thing in here but um I think I we'll probably have some waight for people to introduce themselves as they're presenting so I will turn it over to Dr Lafayette and pres okay good evening cheer Cox superintendent Dr Hines members of the board members of cabinet my name is Sy Lafayette I'm the director of assessment research and evaluation and I have the honor of introducing tonight's data study presentation which is our continuous Improvement planning progress site updates which will be presented by our site leaders our principles and site leaders that are you're going to hear from in a second I just wanted to remind our community that our continuous Improvement planning process actually started last spring and it started when we planned for improvement which was step one where our principles had already been studying our data and then started to prepare a proposal for the data that they wanted to focus on for this year as well as the strategies and they brought their leadership teams together in the summer and now we are in steps two and three where those strategies are being implemented and we are studying them and evaluating the progress and we are getting ready for step four which will be coming up in the next couple weeks where we start to then begin planning for next year and for our continuous Improvement planning goals as principal Kalinowski who you're going to hear from in a second and I presented earlier this year every site was asked to uh focus on at least are up to four goals one being a care team goal two being smart academic goals and then the fourth goal being either a building culture or climate and family engagement goal and so what you're going to hear tonight from our site leaders is an overview of their goals they're going to highlight some uh things that they're excited about some opportunities some potential amendments as well as talk about how they've been sharing their continuous Improvement planning progress with our community whether it's within the building or with families so with that said I will hand it off to principal K good evening evening thanks for having me back I promise I'm not going to talk as long this time as I did last time around our c go um this year at the middle school um our care goal is around teachers incorporating student experiences into instruction essentially we want to ensure that students have an opportunity to share their own lived experiences make connections to the curriculum be able to examine their own worldview and beliefs and how they're connected to the curriculum so we've had we have two care Cycles where teachers will identify a researchable question around an instructional practice around incorporating student experiences into their instruction they gather some data from students through surveys through interviews they try an instructional practice and then they gather feedback from students on how that went and so we just finished our first care cycle um within the last few weeks and staff came together and did some sharing with one another about what they learned and actually tomorrow we'll be launching our second care cycle to go even deeper into um this particular goal but again we want to offer students the opportunity to bring themselves and make those connections to the content our second goal is really ensuring that we're aligning our instruction to grade level standards and benchmarks and the data that I used our building instructional leadership team used was around math and a need to increase our math scores uh we had done a little bit of auditing around our math benchmarks last year and found out that we were not teaching the math um to the standards and benchmarks and so that became clear was a need around the entire building and so we've been focusing on aligning instruction to what the Minnesota state standards say and grade level benchmarks and we've provided professional development for staff to learn the process on how to do that to work collaboratively with one another to continue the process I've had teams ask for additional time because it is a time consuming process to do it can be hard to do in a collaborative team time and 45 minutes in a day you sometimes need a bit more time to sit down and actually get into the work so I've had many teams ask for additional time which I have been happy to provide professional development dollars too because I believe this is essential to changing all of our scores at the middle SCH School ensuring that they're aligned to grade level standards and benchmarks our third uh goal is around amplifying student voice and in particular our the voices of our multilingual students um as part of instruction because again going back to the data our access scores which is the annual test that our multilingual Learners take to see how they are progressing acquiring English shows that there's a need to really have some Focus on our ml students and ensuring that they're able to speak in the classroom and to be able to develop those language skills so we have been delivering professional developments using elevation which is a platform provided by the district which is a great tool and resource for teachers and teachers have implemented well this is a little outdated because I presented this to our parents in January but two strategies and come back and shared and reflected on how that went and we'll be unpacking the third strategy later this month um and then our fourth goal is our building goal to improve communication with families about what our students are doing in class including important summatives so the first part was um our website needs we're working on it thanks to Communications who've been a great partner in this and we have completely overhauled our academic page where every course that is offered has a year overview that includes all of the units and standards that are taught in that course as well as communication on a regular basis from teachers uh that they send out at the beginning of the unit and then one week prior to the summative so that parents are aware of what students are doing in class and that there is an important summative coming up within the next week that they should all be kind of paying attention to and helping support students and making sure that students are organized with that um and then we are going to be bring branching outer communication to better use schooly particularly the calendar feature for students um so a highlight uh I would say as our professional development around speaking strategies for ML students using elevation um it is a wonderful resource and teachers have received it and it's pretty easy for them to see the data in it and then actually apply it to their classroom and they were very excited about it so it's exciting to see see them excited to be about their own learning um an opportunity that we have is to go back to teachers around our unpacking benchmarks to see where they are at and what they need next in order to continue the work and we shared uh the initial zip goals with our parents in October did an update just this very update in January with them and then we will update again in May at our last site council meeting for the year so that uh is a quick summary of the Middle School continuous Improvement plan so and I believe that my colleague Lisha padic principal of high school is I was GNA say I was going to actually oh yeah yeah I was going to say if we can maybe if because we we have a lot of schools to go through and it might be hard to remember and maybe keep in the STA of mind and maybe just if there're particularly if there's some essential questions for understanding here at this point so um director Davis did I do have a question um thank you this is really helpful um and I know we're sort of keeping it high level but um I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the uh goal number two with the benchmarks and the professional development I I think last school year we heard a little bit about maybe updating curriculum or using a purchasing a new curriculum and so could you just tell us a little bit more what's happening so it with math we do have a new curriculum CPM that's being implemented this year and so far it's been received very well by parents and family if you want to know more we're actually going to have our math department lead share at our community dinner next Wednesday and kind of go through some of that so you're all invited 6 pm. in the cafeteria at the middle school um but again like through that process of really trying to determine why our scores weren't where they were at when we so the state puts out bench level descriptors that says what proficiency is we were missing the mark and then as I was working with other departments was like yeah we're not really teaching to the standards and benchmarks there so the math curriculum was adopted because we needed to have actually curriculum written by math experts related to standards that we were implementing because what had happened was the curriculum started to kind of be watered down especially with covid and having to digitize and and so what was happening is that the curriculum was starting to be delivered more at the level where students were actually operating rather than at the standard that the state said they needed to be at and so in particular with the new math curriculum we just needed to be able to level up and say this is the level that students need need to be at and so that was helpful for that and again as a building it was like we need to be at the level that the state says a sixth grader should be writing at a seventh grader should know these social study standards at and so it wasn't just a math need it was across the board need I have one other question unless somebody has a follow up on that can you just um say what CPM stands for col College college prator yes so CPM stands for college prepatory yes thank you I don't I'm so like in the habit of like CPM there's so many right we were CMP years back so to add more confusion to the um I as it relates to goal number one um where teachers are incorporating and they shared about how they Incorporated student experiences into their structure wonder if you could get give an example of that because I you know through how are teachers being supported to um make sure that this that we're incorporating a variety of student experiences and not just the ones that they're maybe most likely to be comfortable with incorporating right so this there is an indicator on the teacher development and evaluation rubric that we have unpacked and so some things that are in that part of the rubric involved students having opportunities to just talk with one another about their own experiences another example would be um activating prior knowledge so when a topic is introduced just spending some time with students to even say what do you know about this or what does this mean to you and having an opportunity to share and talk the important thing is also for them to talk with one another there's a part in there that says structured peer interactions as well so it's really about students having an opportunity to share what they know or what they believe about the content as part of their making meaning and understanding for that so that can happen in a variety of ways where students are in groups um sharing their own thinking with one another teacher is asking you know what do you know about this um how can we build on what you know to actually further your understanding of this topic thank you yes yeah I just want to flow up there the uh so I have two questions uh the first one is how how do we measure the success of the measurement you us it so for our academic goals we'll be using MCA testing and access test scores especially in ml students y for ML students yes so those will be the measurement pieces for the academic goals okay that one is like how do you handle the resistance to change it during the this improvements it's a good question one thing that I've really tried to do is just to be very intentional around our goals and to involve the building instructional leadership team in the decision making so it's not just me saying this is what we're doing it's a group of teacher leaders that are saying this is what we need to do and part of their responsibility on the leadership team is to be a model for it and to promote to to be leaders in it to stand up and deliver professional development as well and so and to generate some excitement around that and so I would say for me that's been key in really helping move the building and there are teachers that like I don't know if I want to do this it's like but this is what we're doing this is the plan it's aligned with our Strate iic plan we know we need to to move so then it's around supporting them if there's some resistance really for those individuals to say like can we talk about what you're really feeling here and what can I do to support your movement so thank you yeah all right we'll have another we'll have some more opportunities to ask questions but yeah on uh goal number four uh improving communication with families um are we getting feedback from families on you know how the overall the website is working for them like is it the information that they're looking for or do they know that the website has been overhauled and they can find the things that they're looking for there well I've done you know I've tried to communicate this through sharing it with parents when we're meeting as well as putting it in the oral times parents who have seen it have been very appreciative I would say I get the most feedback around the emails and uh that they really appreciate just a and what the teachers are doing is just sharing this is the unit we're starting this is what we're covering this is what you can expect your student to be working on throughout the unit they should be working on this at home and then letting them know that you know a major summi of or test or project is due in a week giving them some understanding and so parents are really appreciating that and actually I have a teacher out on leave and we've been trying to figure out how to fill this and they're like I'm starting to get email saying I'm not hearing about what they're doing I need to know what they're doing and so even like in in a particular circumstance where there's an absence of communication they're noticing and they're saying we really like this like can we get this back so it feels like we we like it's been a while since I have had a middle schooler but like in high in grade school we had a lot of communication in Middle School it seemed to fall off in terms of what was happening in some of the classrooms as I remember so it's sort of like a quick like hey we knew everything and now we don't know that much so that sounds like a good Improvement so yes all right again we have some more opportunities to ask some questions but to keep things moving along here all right I think we'll go ahead and let our next speaker come up so thank you thank you thank you all right good evening everyone um Lish Paddock High School principal um we're really excited about some of the work that we've been doing um and planning it's kind of been a work in progress to get to some of the goals that we're looking at tonight um or today and reviewing but our goal our first goal is um we are really um wanting all 100% of our teaching staff to engage in um the alignment of content standards scope and sequence culturally relevant curriculum as a part of their care team process and and um this work originated through kind of doing some Equity learning walks and looking at student academic success and collecting um the schoolwide data on um things that we were seeing in the classroom um and we realized after processing through that and some noticings and wonderings that uh the high school didn't really have a written curriculum um and so as we talked through through our leadership team we decided that it was really important for us to start designing curriculum and putting things on paper because we believe that transparency is important for not only our students but our families um so this is a part of a five-year process we kind of went back and forth about how long do we think this will take and it's a working document right um we may have it done before that but right now it's it's a it's year one of um a 5year plan and what we're really doing this year is we are making sure that every single course will have an outward basing document so a template that will be consistent we've been working in alignment with the Middle School to make sure that 612 is very like you're going to get the same product when you look 612 you're going to see the same things that are outward facing as you would in 12th grade um and uh additionally we are looking at um how how this process of you know unpacking standards creating this curriculum um looking at um what we should be teaching in the classrooms um is informing our classroom practices and so that integrate is integrated into our care work where we're working with local students and how we create a learning experience that's based on what we're fighting with our curricular designed with the standards based um units um our second goal uh we have worked with our yda students um and we they had presented some data about um students that take choose to take AP and Ivy course work particularly students of color and so this goool was created um after some unpacking at some of our data digs with um Dr Lafayette uh we decided to look at our retention in those courses uh cuz our retention rate was um I think we were losing about 14% of students that were taking these courses our our bipo students that were taking these courses and so we wanted to retain um by 2% more of the students that were we wanted to like decrease that number of students that were requesting like mid mid year I would like to go back to a different course or I would opt out of the a and IB um classes um so we've been doing a lot of work with our Park leads built-in bolt um we've been we just recently we're looking at some of this retention data um we created a survey that can go out to students if a student if any student comes to our counselors there are particular questions that they would ask to try to get gather some more feedback about why students are choosing to leave our AP and ivb courses um and really identify that root cause um we also have been doing a deep dive into AP IB concurrent enrollment alongside our PSO and if you look at our AP and IV courses and concurrent enrollment there is a very significant discrepancy in students that choose to take bipac students that choose to take IB and AP and concurrent enrollment courses at the high school they do not match our demographic but if you look at our PSO numbers it is almost entirely flipped um there are it it matches our demographics so we are trying to unpack by talking with our our students my principal advisory Council we've talked with teachers collected data on why our student what is their experience in PSO that we can that they're not experienced in our high school and how do we bring back our students so that we can offer some of that cours workk at the high school um so we're still continuing to do that I just met with our pack students um or the principal advisory Council students last week and just kind of asked questions right like what's the experience in these courses why do you think what is what are you getting from the data what are you noticing lering um and it was some very interesting it's just interesting to hear the perspectives our high school students because they're so like they just they they have a lot to say um and then another thing that we've been focusing on is not only do we want to retain students but we also want them to have an experience of an advanced or college level course before they leave right high school and so um our social studies department has done some excellent work over the course of the last three years and one of the recommendations was to have every student next year um enrolled in an a the AP and uh AP Human Geography so that'll start next fall so every nth grader coming in will have an advanced course work and uh Advanced course College level course that we were are hoping will give them that experience that they will choose to take more advanced courses as they go through high school and will and will and will not um it will build their confidence right that I can see myself in these classes and I can I can move forward and take more classes like that if we move on to the next one will you explain partly built in both say it again before we go um Park leads is my leadership team so it is a building instructional leadership team and our building operational leadership team and we put them together so we meet separately one works on instruction one works on operations and when we all come together we are the entire park lead got it great I'm not allowed to ask her a question it's sure sure I mean I think if it's getting deep into some of the things I think we be nice wa but if you yeah go ahead well I just um one question that I'd like if you can answer and then the second one you can give me an answer later but the first one like um at our high school we're finding that um fewer students are taking AP classes in general because of the test at the end of it where PSO and concurrent enrollment um or CIS offers the ability for students not only to get free college credit but like they're kind of guaranteed the college credit has that have you looked in have you addressed that we're still like trying to gather feedback from students I don't have there's been there's lots of theories that we have of Why students are not choosing opting into those classes AP is college board is aware of this and they're you know they're in a state of discomfort because they're losing money and they want more students to take AP classes so I mean I'd be curious what you find because we are we are transitioning more and more outside of um going to concur in their dual enrollment um so I would be curious what you find um and then I guess my second question is about the um Benchmark and standard alignment I just want to say to the board and to the rest of the board I can attest to like how difficult it was coming out of Co to be able to hit the bench marks that we needed to and I so I I feel the pain of the teachers trying to bring you know go back to um not what we were prior but um having the rigorous curriculum in this so I get that I'm just wondering and you can um answer this at a you know in a one-onone or in another time um where in the process of like curriculum review has the standard alignment been so and like when the um design teams and things like that present to us they talk about standard alignment and I'm just wondering why I particularly if you sort of if I sort of if I group things the way that I understand which is 612 and then instead of K2 and then 35 type of thing why why wasn't that happening and we can talk about I can follow up with you on that one yeah thank all right um so goal number three we just met and did AIG last week with Dr Lai um and um my leadership team uh we are analyzing F we were noticing um that we were having a lot of students that um were failing courses and then we were having to take credit recovery um and so we were starting to analyze from semester 1 to semester 2 of last year actually we actually analyzed three years of data um last week but um comparing number of FS that were administered semester 1 to semester two of various years and then comparing that to this year and we wanted to decrease that um through the implementation of mtss or a multi-tiered systems of support uh by this spring and so we're currently looking at um how we've implemented our tier one we've had some conversations with Dr Robinson we've had some professional development um multiple professional developments on the tier one process and how we Implement for all students our our academic um tier one systems and then we're looking at um where those failure rates are coming in and what's happening from each semester um so like I said we just conducted our final grade analysis last week we're comparing the reten or I'm sorry we're comparing our there's a typo here but we're comparing our failure rate data from the last 3 years um and then we're planning for what are our next steps in supporting um our teachers in that tier one intervention and what's our mtss process moving forward so what is tier 2 intervention look like if students are in that 15 10 to 15% and they're still struggling academically um and what is what does tier three look like if they are needing if that 5% uh and and then our last goal is the reduction of our suspensions and dismissals of our black students um by 5% by a deepened understanding of non-exclusionary practices specifically intentional implementation of restorative practice um we have um what what I would say is unfortunately predictable data uh suspension and dismissal data at the high school school with regards to our black students um they make up a majority of our suspensions and dismissals and it's very disproportionate to the number of students that actually attend our high school um and so we are looking at how we can better Implement non-exclusionary practices better deepen our understanding of restorative practice as a way of um a way of being to not only build community build relationships with our students um inside and outside of the classroom so that in times when we are uh in conflict or there are things where we have to have hard conversations we're better able to problem solve um and work through that with our young people um and it really is something that um we've been working towards for a few years now and uh we believe that like this restorative way of being is really going to get us to this non this decrease right so how do we create non-exclusionary practices in all of the spaces right that could be in the classroom that could be out in the community um that can be and what are not what are the the places where students may be choosing to exclude themselves and why right like unpacking because it it can be bigger than just um it can be bigger than just uh disciplinary right like I could we got to look at what's happening in the classroom also right why are students not engaging and so I'm hoping that you'll see the intersections of the overarching like when we know our standards when our students know what they're expected to learn this all inter is interwoven with each other and it will um it should lead to a decrease in apps right uh it should lead to a decrease in um in our disciplinary data because students are are seeing themselves in the curriculum and they're there's they're in the classroom um and there's learning happening um and there's also um students are choosing to stay in those classes because they see they feel Val and seen and hurt so they're staying in those Advanced courses they're not opting out um some of the things that we're doing currently with that is just continuing to work with our restorative practice team at the high school um reviewing that data um with our Park leads Department um trying to provide professional development opportunities for not only staff but also how do we engage students in community building restorative circles so it's at a very tier one level like we are just sharing space with each other and we do that at least quarterly um um and then uh we're trying to plan with some of our student leaders a retreat so that we are kind of going from both angles right we're we're working with the staff so that we are deepening our understanding but this is isn't just about the staff it's about the students having an understanding of the the value of restoration and how we share space together and then um just continuing to collect the data on how we're using restorative practices in the different spaces because it can be used not only uh I think the biggest thing is that restorative practice is not an approach to discipline it is approach to share space and build community with each other okay a highlights so last week our teachers engaged in teacher Le PD for our course over overview designs um of our standard based curricular units and culturally Rel curricular units so that took place in this picture actually here is some of our staff delivering like the template and kind of walking through like what are we placing in here what's the purpose of it um and how this is going to be outward facing kind of some tights and loose um some opportunities and amendments as we were looking through it uh we decided to add a literacy component so um our coaches we're so grateful for our coaches they um created some options and S suggestions of potential literacy options to put in there for teachers uh and then we do a monthly data analysis with all of our our department heads and so each department um is assigned a group and they kind of follow our C goals and then they deliver that back to their um their departments uh and then some of the valuable work that we are doing is teaching our leader our teacher leaders and developing our teacher leaders so that they're able to drive this work um as much as possible and so that's represented here by the template um we had our first community staff share and the kind of the November December area um February we will give another update and then in April will be our final update tentatively yeah so uh go three I have a question you say collecting the data so for the F So when you say the collecting data are you collecting the demographic data for that yep yes I love to see that uh can you talk about a little bit more about the interventions one interventions yeah about tier one interventions yeah because specifically ml language if someone comes don't speak the language now putting General Ed that's not helpful like specific interventions you have for like an ml student yeah well that's a great question I would say it would really be individualized based on the needs of the student and so um that's how we would we would kind of look at what are the needs of the student and then we would apply at a tier one level every student gets the same interventions and so if we felt that the student needed a tier two or a tier three intervention then we would start collecting data and provide provide those interventions so um it might be looking just just I'll give you a specific example if you put me a class which taught Chinese or Somali I don't I'm not from that location I don't understand what you guys so how can you help someone like that so if we have a student that might need multilingual language support we might um I think when they come in we would do an assessment to see if they needed MLL supports and then we would they may be placed in a our melal lingual learning like a course for that with teachers that can help support the literacy and all of that um or they might be put in a co-taught class where teachers teach like if it's it's a science class they would have their science teacher and they would also have a multilingual learning teacher alongside them is that a part of T1 interventions that would I don't necessarily know that that would be a part of tier one Advent uh interventions cuz not all students get that no um we would also assess and depending upon should I come on closer to the microphone depending upon on their level would depend they would get courses assigned so we have English language development courses that are with an El teacher which is focusing on language acquisition but we also have Co classes as well with the content area teacher as well as an ml teacher to support uh in that classroom but in terms of like interventions thinking around like how do we make things visual how are we highlighting academic vocabulary so that students are learning academic language to support that pre-teaching that I think happens in all classes and with your literacy I'm sure that's one of the strategies that your coaches is suggesting and teaching academic content which benefits all students but in particular our ml students really do need to be pre-taught vocabulary um in order to have access to the content and so those are some of the things that we would do at the middle school to support our ml Learners in the general education classroom and we do want them in the general education classroom as much as they can because it's important for them to be with their peers and I want also say two really being thoughtful about how they're scheduled because we it's really important that they have language models that there are enough students that are actually modeling um English as well you know as for them to have that model and that support too so does that answer your question yeah absolutely you know like understanding question is a part of the answer if you understand the question you know have an answer already and and I think like we we need to have the same model all the way from the high school to the middle school you know to elementary schools questions comments for I want to give space for my colleagues too get that fine so um I am wondering I mean I have lots of questions but I'm going to limit myself to the um goal number four where you're talking about a 5% decrease is that compared to last school year is that what you're measuring your 5% off of yes and so then where are you at with that because we're it's February right so how are you doing so we had a meeting that's a great question so here's where we're at we just had a meeting gosh we really unpacked the data Dr Robinson was there um and Dr lafay at with alongside my leadership team and we looked at the data um to be honest with you we were disappointed because it was we were like right on track I think and so we were I was kind of like here we are we're kind of in the same spot that we've been predictably year after year after year um and that doesn't mean that it can't change by the end of the year I believe that if we were to CL the data today we would see that we probably overall have a decrease in our suspension the dismissal but predictably um we would probably see the discrepancy of our our black students that's pretty it's even if you take it outside the context of schools like when we're able to reduce the use of exclusionary type practices whatever system the disparities tend to stay or in fact grow that's why I'm asking but I have a lot of curiosity around um how this is being received and you know I know um restored practices has been a big part of this district for a long time but there's also been some aspects to the journey that have been harder for some folks and and I'm just you know I I believe really strongly in this and I also believe strong have to do it with Fidelity over time if you actually want to see the change and so I'm wondering sort of what you know how you utilizing outside resources how are you making sure that this is being done with Fidelity yeah um I agree that so our belief and my belief is deeply that as a restorative practitioner it really is a personalized Journey right like um and it's how I reflect on my S as a how I show up for others restoratively um and so um I'm not going to lie it's been a CH it has been a challenge um there's been a lot of frustration uh expressed by my team in how do we grow this work and how do we lean into it full-heartedly because it truly is a way of being that can be really transformational and is felt by all in the community when you get to that point of like not making it but just like the culture and climate and the feel when you walk into a building that truly Embraces restoration um I think that it takes some visible winds um in the sense that um sometimes we have to slow down and take the time I believe restoration is is not is urgency looks different right for restoration we can do the quick thing and uh suspend or dismiss kid or we can slow it down and have that conversation um and take the time it needs to repair the harm to problem solve and have conversations uh but it really is founded on like how we share space and how we built community and relationship with with each other um and that's been really challenging is like um is how do we provide those opportunities because I I also believe wholeheartedly that you have to share restorative space in order to grow restorative space and you have to share it often and frequently and it's not going to be perfect but you got to sit in it um and that's the hard part that's the hard part is that we often times want to move to the next thing check off the Box let's keep moving and it kind of pulls you back in and says like we got to take our time right there's there's multiple things that I know um that there was urgency around even last year where we were like we got to pull this back and we got to really think like how do we do that we can do this we can do this fast or we can do it right um an urgency in restoration take it takes the time it needs to take to get to where you're trying to be to repair that and bring that Community back together right um and it takes it takes just as much work for me to make sure that I am staying in the in the in the times when we when there's nothing going on and we're good that I am putting forth the same effort to stay in relationship with you so when things get really hard for us we're able to like grind it out and like have the hard conversations or um say the things that we need to put in the space so that we can all be valued seen and heard yeah I I mean I I appreciate you sharing that I I think what I would reflect back is that um I me I think all of that is true and I think the risk of you know so when I when I was the liaison for the middle school for a bit and I would talk the teachers there but also like when I was out when I'm out in the community talking to folks there's this real risk that people see restorative practices as a lack of accountability right um and then when hard things happen in the building and folks say oh well you're just focused on this then you're you're you're running this risk of this narrative undermining what you're trying to accomplish and I think I appreciate your interest in s of going slow to because we don't want to do harm right like doing there's a real risk of doing harm um but also I think uh if we I guess I would encourage you to think about that goal and about the 5% reduction I I care deeply about reducing our disparities um but I also think that I worry that if we're if we're not making progress towards that and sort of trying to push ourselves towards that we're going too fast and so maybe looking at the numbers right like the the the actual n instead of the percent right because even if the disparities are getting worse if we're having an impact on if we're excluding fewer black students that's still a positive right and I'm not saying that's that's where I want us to be as a district not yeah but I think I just worry about if we if we try and hold ourselves to percent reductions in this context it can be really I I spent 15 years doing this right and I think as a restored practitioner not in a working with schools and I just think often times we fall into this trap where if we don't we don't hit those and then and at the same time hard things are happening this narrative builds around like we shouldn't do that anymore and and I I just feel really strongly that this is the work right like oh yeah you know somebody who mentored me in this work used this phrase um restorative practice is not a thing that you add to the plate it is the plate right like this is this is the foundation of how we engage with each other um and it's not quick it doesn't fit neatly into a 40 minute period or however long your periods are right and so um I really appreciate you doing the work and engaging yeah thank you sorry call no you were it's this meaning of this right and like I mean it made me start to think like do we spend more time talking about this at this stable again or find some other opportunities for board members to do that because I'm I'm hearing that and and what I took away from a little bit of what you were saying there too is that which I mean I think we were saying this too like it shouldn't show up when there discipline it's it's something that's a brain and so that the schools and everybody knows that that's it this is it this is how we do this and they're not like when a when a event happens they're like see right I mean that's what you're saying right well fundamentally you all know I'm a lawyer right and so like I I work with kids a lot in the legal system and I've over time developed this fundamental belief that restored practices are more effective than our criminal system and our pun practices and the reason for it I believe is that people are fundamentally and kids in particular are more accountable to rues rules than they are to relationships or to relationships than they are to rules and so if you don't spend the time to build the relationships they're not accountable to rules none of first of all none of us are more accountable to rules than we are to relationship just like reflect on that for yourself but for kids in particular if we don't spend the time to build the relationship there's nothing for them to be accountable to right and so it can't just be in those hard moments that's why Court doesn't work right it's like some random person you've never met telling you what to do versus a Restort practice where you're bringing your teachers families support folks who do care and who you do feel accountable to as a relationship so it can't just be hard time right and you're addressing the real issues and not the like the discipline can often be a a response to and something that somebody did in the classroom to have out but it's not necessarily the course of what caused that right the traumas I you know trauma induced or trauma affected I don't know the terminology but I know that that can be a part of it too and so when you're not when you're just disciplining it you're not correcting it you're just saying you're bad for this and you're bad and this and it just sort of perpetuates again and I I think a part of it that is so personal because I think every person is on their different journey of restoration but when we're in relationship with each other even students it is amazing like there is accountability attached to Restoration yeah I think it's just depending how how you your mind set about restorative practice right um because you're really thinking about like how did I show up to impact how somebody else is able to show up and how are we having that conversation and what questions am I asking and how am I leaning in to your lived experience so that we can get to the root and move forward in a positive way and that work is so important and it's all founded on relationship and Community because we can't have those conversations if we don't have relationship ship in community and I believe that once we once our entire community and our entire school is feeling in that we're seeped in the way of being and that's just how we do business right we just this is how we show up and we're able to have those conversations whether really great ones or really hard ones we'll get to the other side but there's there is accountability and restoration what I think a lot of people misunderstand about restoration is there's still consequences right still consequences for our choices um and restoration takes place at different points sometimes we do have to interrupt Behavior right sometimes discipline is necessary um we may have to send a student home based on some of the things me there are there are necessary times when that needs to happen and that doesn't mean when you come back we're not going to welcome you and say how how are we going to share space differently than we did before because we made a mistake and now I want you to have a fresh start let's get you back into the classro and let's let's let's do it differently this time I don't want to drag us into another conversation but it sort of it made me think of the conversation a little bit that we're having last night too about cell phone policies and of course that too but I don't want to drag us into that conversation but it was a very common theme that we heard last night was ement enforement so that's another conversation for day I think but just I I think it's important though when we talk about relationships in like your two previous goals and then connected to the middle school goals this idea of um and a there's a somewhat from my opinion is a somewhat limited understanding of what cultural responsive literacy is and one of the things that it is like student engagement this is my big thing right now because I'm leaving a presentation in this next week but student engagement is not necessarily a kid sitting quietly and listening and doing it that's not that doesn't mean that they're engaged in the in the material so the culturally responsive literacy is such an important part of all of this because when they're engaged when they're actively creating goals when they're actively participating and transferring and transforming their own knowledge then that is when your discipline problems go down that's when your classroom management problems go down so all of these are like super intertwined um and I just want to say oh my gosh your poor teachers have so much going on so I hope that as District we are giving them time to do the important work that they are doing yeah I mean we heard something again yesterday in the this session a little bit about that relationship and importance of protecting or whatever I think may be supporting that relationship with the teachers and the students but I mean I don't think I this is just an old teacher being grumpy I don't think the relationship has to do like oh my gosh you're my favorite teacher I mean that's not what we're talking about necessarily we're talking about a relationship of trust and some your willingness to be vulnerable to learn in an environment and that vulnerability is really the main core of a relationship I don't need to be somebody's favorite teacher but I want them to be able to trust me and not to be vulnerable to do something so crazy as to learn something great okay yeah I don't have question my colleag I question I would love to see the numbers though if you guys send the board uh the suspension and dismissal data yes yeah we can do that um just can I just say one last thing I'm sorry um this is I was just gonna you're just taking away time from your peers but no it's okay I don't I don't know if you're mad about that um um just thinking about culturally relevant uh the culturally relevant pedagog um and how it's intertwined with all of this and I believe that if students see themselves in the curriculum if they're able to feel like they are contributing to the classroom we will see all the other things like that's our overarching goal is like let's get deeply grounded in our standards and how we create lived exper or how we um create curricular units where students are in the classroom because then we will see not only I will see a decrease in my suspension to dismissal data but my attendance and treny data is going to look different my FS are going to go uh are going to decrease um and like all of it will be improved because students if they don't see themselves in that classroom they will exclude themselves they will exclude themselves and find other places where there isn't learning happening right to be and so um that's why it was really important for us to venture on our Five-Year Plan but it's the it's probably the most important work that we're doing right now because it will have implications for every else that we're doing and we should see improvements in everything so I will I think I mean again it's great this is but that's why we have these sessions so that we can have party conversations and stuff too so did you Dr H for you giving her hand signal okay oh like get off the stage got the hook sorry all right all right I'm gonna now turn it over to um my elementary team who is going to present for uh Corey at PSI all three of it takes three people three of us us uh good evening Cher Cox and superintendent Hines members of the board in the cabinet um I'm May mson I'm the principal here Hobart Elementary and I'm joined by my colleagues I'm Maria G principal of Aquila Elementary Clarence po principal at Susan lingren yes so I'm going to go through walk through the first three goals of psi's continuous Improvement plan um the first goal is just that each teacher will collaborate in at least two care Cycles um related to culturally relevant literacy annually um their second goal is on the spring 2025 Minnesota comprehensive assessments or MCAS in Reading student proficiency will increase from 71% to 75% demonstrating Mastery in of the Minnesota Ela standards and smart goal 3 is on the spring 2025 Minnesota comprehensive assessments and math students student proficiency will increase from 76% to 80% demonstrating Mastery of the Minnesota math standards so I have the task of um of sharing the highlight and I also think there are some highlights on here on this very slide that um Corey could have could have shared I I would just wanted to share with the board after um the presentation that was given last year by Dr Lafayette about our goals as as a system we want our kids 80% of our kids demonstrating Mastery and I just want to highlight that at PSI this is we're very close to making this happen and so I I think that's an incredible highlight that I don't get to talk about but I will be happy to talk about the one that was assigned to me um which is that um PSI is really work working to increase family uh communication and engagement um you might be aware that this year PSI um the de the racial demographics look a little bit different right so historically uh PSI has not enjoyed the racial complexity that our other sites have enjoyed and so theyve been making a concerted effort to ensure that that is happening um with enrollment through the lottery um however that works it's a mystery to me because we don't do that at Aquilla but it's I know that there's an intentional work behind it um so with that in mind uh PSI has a weekly communication called a prena uh and the goal uh was to raise the rate of this the open rate which we can track for La pra from 77 to 80% as measured by Constant Contact and their current data reflects not only that they have bypassed that goal so they are at a current open rate of 81% however um they also have been seeking out a feedback from Heritage Spanish speaking families which they have they've not currently had uh or they've not historically had uh critical mass of Heritage Spanish speaking families and so this is news they've been seeking out feedback uh with a group they called SOS Uno We Are One um and so this is a group of Latin American families who they added based on feedback from the from the families a sharing culture section just to ensure that in Every Family newsletter um parents are getting the families are getting windows and mirrors for students so that uh the feeling of welcome and the feeling of community is for is for everyone at P La so yeah not only achieving academically but they also have this great stuff going on and I have the opportunity to speak uh on behalf of Corey and Megan at PSI um regarding um opportunities and amendments so um the notes that Corey shared with us this year we started using an instructional pacing guide um and common grade level assessments tied to Benchmark uh adalante and bridges math our leadership team which comprises our culturally relevant literacy coaches and principles meets with gr level bi-weekly to look at progress data and other professional development tied to our um sip our continuous Improvement plan and our care work for the second semester we are adding action related to our biliteracy plan Spanish English in conjunction with with our pacing guides so that is happening at PSI we can try to answer yeah so um yep so with with any any curricular tool that we're using um we have we have or we create pacing guides to determine where we would like students to be or how we would like teachers to be facilitating learning throughout the year other questions comments about I mean we can try we'll do our try or questions to take back to get um some responses on the other opportunity here too I have a questions but I'm not going to ask because B not here well make sure that that information gets shared so yeah but we appreciate you pinch hitting for Cory and I think he you guys at least three of something whatever all right so does that bring I think it's me next all right um so I'm Maria Graver principal of Aquilla so hello Cox director superintendent Dr Hines thank you for giving us this time um so we have a very similar goal to PSI for our first uh care smal so the collaborative action research for equity which we believe at Aquilla and I know we believe throughout St Louis Park is one of our greatest lovers for affecting academic change and ensuring that students are making the growth that they need to make and at Aquilla I will be completely transparent as you know from looking at our data that we have lots of opportunity for growth last year was a rough year and we're fighting back right now um so we'll talk about that in a minute but our first smart goal um was that during this year each teacher will demonstrate knowledge of focal students so within the research each student H or each teacher has focal students so we'll demonstrate knowledge of their strengths and growth edges in both care Cycles so just like the middle school we just finished our first care cycle uh teachers will be sharing on the 19th because we have uh conferences family connect time this week so we didn't want to do that to them in the same week um we've been following their data all along so we are focused on literacy uh we are a site that currently has 33 of our just about 40 teachers engaged in letters training which is um what is required and which we're excited about for Minnesota Department of Education to ensure that we have um the proper basic structures for teaching literacy so uh that is our smart goal and you'll hear more about that as we move through our liter goal is that during this year and again I will remind you that last year our our scores were quite depressed and so our proficiency goal for reading based by on the MCA grades 3 through 5 is to go from 49 to 52% and so we'll we'll talk a little bit about math more than that but if you're interested in literacy data we also have that we presented all of this data with our continuous Improvement Plan update on January 27th um to our our PTO and then we made that available as well in our communicator um our math goal is that during this year third through fifth grade students will increase math proficiency from 53.9 7% to 55.97 per based on MCA data so when you look at this and you think well that's only third through fifth graders what is beneath that is the foundation that we are laying in kindergarten through second grade to ensure that um students are prepared to uh to achieve and our last goal is quite wordy and I had to change the size of the font so I hope you all appreciate that too I smash it on here um we have not uh in the time that I have been at Aquilla and this is my fourth year we have not um had a consistent counselor nor have we had a consistent umal social emotional learning curriculum and so we are very lucky this year to have both both a social worker and a point8 counselor um and so what they are doing and what they have been doing is working together to ensure that every classroom receives tier one social emotional lessons and we're doing this to then gather basic line data as to what students are communicating that they need right we believe that behavior is communication so we're tracking closely what students are demonstrating that they need so we have a few ways of doing that we have um a call log that uh Miss Mia who's at our front desk takes care of and then we have our restorative practice coordinator who also uh keeps notes of the work that he is doing and then uh assistant principal toine and I also make note of that along with weekly meetings with our um students support team so that is our counselor our social worker our restorative practices coordinator myself and assistant principal toline so um every student gets these introductory lessons and then on top of that um teachers will reach out to our team and say we could really use a lesson on X and then they will have a lesson prepared by our counselor Jesse case and she will go in and deliver it so that's kind of where we're at right now um and it's going really well um the lessons start out really really talking about identifying size of problems so in kindergarten in first grade we talk about squirrel problems raccoon problems and bear problems um and then students are able to identify what is happening we also talk a lot about self-regulation so if you're at a quillo you might see a students in the hallway going from robots to jellyfish just understanding what their bodies are trying to communicate as they move through the day uh we just want to make sure that folks have a baseline of social emotional learning and skills um not written in to this goal but um sort of throughout our entire school and I believe throughout our elementary schools but definitely throughout Aquilla we use the zones of Regulation um so we talk with students on a daily basis about what zone they're in how they're feeling how they know that they're in that zone just so they can start to be aware um what we know is that um you say you before you've got a maslo before you bloom right so mle's hierarchy that very basic layer is uh survival right so we want to make sure that kids are are able to move beyond that to identify um what they're feeling and move up so that they're ready to to Blue any questions about our goals before we move on all right okay um so I I I I want to be clear that our highlight is also an opportunity so this is our current U map data so measures of academic progress is one of our most solid predictors for achievement on the MCA it's one data point so this is our current math data and I want us to look first at the left side the side that looks like the like the Sun but is is not as beautiful as the sun because this is where we know our our work is right this is where we know we have a job to do to ensure that the students who are not yet in the green or blue or even edging in the yellow that we get them to where they need to be so looking at that data for grades three four and five we can see exactly who those students are so when we click on this we can identify the students and to that end um all of our teams last week and the week prior um had release time 3 hours of release time so that they could delve deeply into the data um go through it identify exactly which students were not achieving and then disaggregate their performance to determine what they might need so that's I'm talking specifically about math right now but we also did that with literacy and so those meetings included grade level team teachers uh they included the m M teacher that serves that grade and they included any special education resource teachers that also support students in those grades so that we could really have a holistic view um and so that that is where our our work was and so what we know is that there are certain things that are working and what we also know is there are certain things that we need to shift and it's really interesting to look at this data because in the data even where we see students in the red or in the orange we have students that are making growth but they're not making growth quickly enough to be accelerated into the yellow green or blue and so that is the work that we are we are beginning to do right now um that's the opportunity and we are excited for the opportunity we are very excited to have um collaborative classroom as our literacy curriculum we're very excited to be partnering or to have had the opportunity to partner with Rebecca Denny from collaborative classroom who's been in to observe our teachers and really give us um next steps for literacy in terms of math we are still very excited to have um Heather Hong who was our math coach is now a member of our our second grade team so that we can keep moving along we're still learning we have opportunity there because we're still learning how to best Leverage The Bridges intervention and extension uh curriculum tools so we have work that we can do there and we're looking forward to do it doing it um in terms of our highlights I would like us to focus on the the blue and the green So within that uh those two sectors we have in third grade 56% of kids who are set to either meet or exceed the standards uh on the map test and then we have in third grade that little 5% that we believe we can get over the line along with students moving students from the red and the orange so we believe that we are on Pace to reach the goal uh in math uh for third grade for fourth grade we have a little more work to do but we believe that with that 35% solid uh last year our number was at 39% uh there we had a sort of a a Nat in third grade in math last year I think it was at 39% we are on Pace to to move that that up and then as you can see in fifth grade we have 54% of our students already set to uh meet or exceed goals on the MCA test based on their map scores and then another 16% that we believe we could move easily and then we have 30% that we are going to be working hard uh to move up as close as we can to Green reader blue um the way that we're planning to do this is that we analyze in our care work we analyze student data um weekly uh teachers have care meetings or instructional supervision meetings where they're really looking at student data and what next steps might be that is for literacy and math even though we're just talking about math right now any questions this isn't about ailla or anything like that this is more of a high level question I just want to make sure that my advocacy is like not undermining our efforts at our district um so I like when I got on this board and I hated map or not map um test scores and just how how test scores sort of penalize districts and how we're using them however as a as a literacy teacher I did a deep dive last year and this year into math scores and my advocacy at the state level has been that map is way more useful than MCAS um I don't want to undermine your work is that is that what you're finding as well I really appreciate that director manini because um we find map to be a formative observation right we think of MCA as more of a summative test because we take them once a year and the scores don't come out until you're ready to be in the next grade right so they don't give us useful dat so we we look to the map as one of our data points um and we use the balanced assessment uh rubric that or image visual that Dr lafay had introduced and what what we are looking at mostly is ensuring that our daily curricular measures are also reflected in students map growth so that's where we're looking for disparity but definitely between MCAS and map tests we we believe that the map is a is a greater reflection of what students are doing to be honest as well um our teachers are working really hard to ensure that students have all of the necessary instruction by the time they take the MCA test which is not at the end of the year right it's sort it's sort of late April early May um and there's still plenty of learning that goes on after that and so um I think it would be an interesting Endeavor and we haven't done this but just to compare students map Performance in the spring with then their MCA performance great this year from a professional learning goal it is difficult it is challenging and there's not enough time for educators to do like we need we need like the Dr lafad and the Rebeccas of the world to do it because there's just there's not enough time it's so hard it's mind flowing and and time is money so we we chose to invest our some of our professional development dollars in ensuring that teachers could have these uh these days to dive into Data but another thing that we chose to or we have chosen to uh invest professional development dollars into is ensuring that every single teacher um across curricula across placement is on a learning Equity learning walk we haven't had the opportunity we just didn't have enough sub sometimes but we also just didn't have enough learning walks scheduled um but the district level instruction and learning team really gave us the autonomy beginning last year to take over ownership of those walks and make them what we needed them to be at our sites and we're really leaning into that at Aquilla and what has come from that is the opportunity for teachers to see number one how skills are playing out across grade level so understanding we can say in math for example but a cross-curricular Endeavors understanding the vertical articulation um another thing that that we have done that has been really helpful um in tandem with those Equity learning walks is to ensure that we are teaching to meet or exceed the standard to view the standard as the basement and we're really working to ensure that students have access to instruction that is meeting or exceeding the standard um and that's it's it's a challenge right we unpacked and unwrapped standards after working through that with our in one of our data meetings with um principal Bailey and Dr lafette and uh Dr Duffy we brought that learning back to our staff and really drilled down on um ensuring that we knew and had a parody across teaching teams as to what the verbs in those standards me like what does it mean and where that falls in terms of depth of knowledge yeah yeah thank you very much oh yeah I'm sorry I question what you are one of our title schools yeah um and so I'll have the same question for you but how do you see like so how do the funds that you receive as being a titles will help you or or do they help a great question so um last year our title dollar were designated to support um three MLL teachers we have are the school with the largest population of students who access multilingual learning and so our title dollars um were used to to support access and that enables us to have uh an MLL teacher that pairs with kindergarten in first grade and is able to push in during instruction as well as um to pull students out so uh director AB abim director Ibrahim h get to call AB sometimes on campus um director Ibrahim asked the question about if a student is new to the country right so we we are the school with the largest number of students who are new to the country and the way that that um that we were able to support students is to ensure that we have uh one one teacher for every two grades they're able to work directly with teachers so they're attending data meetings those teachers they're co- teing sometimes um that is that is how our dollars were spent we also had um title $3 dolls that were spent on family engagement to ensure that we are doing everything that we can and funding everything that we can to strengthen the partnership between a Aquilla school and aquil the community did that answer your question okay Taylor you yeah uh yeah it was more of a highlight I think I'm thinking back to the conversation we were having about restored practices and how it's like you know it's not a part of the culture but it's you know it is the culture and I think for me I believe that you know the social emotional learning is a critical foundational like element to building that culture um so I'd be really interested I think it's really awesome that that's one of the goals for uh Aquilla and I'd be interested to know if that's something that other elementary schools have taken on the past or or whether you know we're doing something similar at the other elementary schools and I'd be interested to know like what kind kind of results we're seeing from that and if we can if we're not already doing it elsewhere if can be duplicated in that way well thank you director L because I have been itching to talk about restored practices um and I would like to offer that should the board decide to return to a conversation about restored practices I would I would love for um Elementary to be invited because I think of vertical again a vertical articulation of restorative practices and ensuring that we have um or demonstrating that we have common language and common frame uh from prek through through 22 um that that's happening um I cannot speak for other schools but I and I can say that at Aquilla this is um the second year of really trying to have trying a concerted effort around ensuring that we are a pro-social community we are a community that is about building relationships because uh to the point that was made earlier it is the job of students it's the job of humans who are learning to make mistakes and at the elementary level our students are learning academically and they're learning socially and our youngest Learners are still learning how to go to school right and so it is our job as the adults in the building who also make mistakes to ensure that that's a safe place and that we understand learning as part of restoration right so we have academic circles we have circles every morning pro-social Community Building circles we have circles that are intended to repair harm and our goal is to have a community that is so welcoming that students want to be a part of it and we're fairly successful if I don't say you know if I do say so myself I don't toot my own horn but we we are a site where I I believe I would intend that students feel valued um and we are not we haven't arrived at that right that's constant work and a large part of that is ensuring that their voices are heard and restorative practices create the atmosphere where students know that their voices matter when you're sitting in a restorative Circle a community building Circle there is no hierarchy everyone's voice is necessary in that Circle um and that that is who and how we want to be thank you all right and I would like to hand it off to Proud principal po thank you principal Graver good evening I think we need to stand up let's just stretch thank you we've been sitting for a while wigg thank you I am um super honored and excited to be here tonight uh good evening chair Cox um superintendent Dr Hines um school board members as well as cabinet members um I have the honor of sharing about Susan lingren and we like the other sites have four goals and I hope my hope and my purpose tonight is to have you see that there is a Common Thread through everything that I share um with the SI so hopefully we have been we have done that and are continuing to do that so very similar to the other sites our first goal is our care team goal we have a literacy goal a math goal and a school team climate goal this summer I did a lot of reflecting and I wanted to come across I wanted to have a message that is easy to remember for the staff um at Susan linin so I came up by myself this 3 three and four I wanted them to know and it's on our weekly communication just like my colleagues behind me due every week for the upcoming week three three and three three three and four there are three expectations to remember there are three principal assurances and there are four zp goals so the team expectations and we team staff are synonyms at Susan lingren as well as the other sites we I needed the teachers to know that they have to be teaching District curriculum specifically cult uh collaborative classroom and bridges as our two core that's not the only thing we also have IB um at Susan lrin um going forward and then data Collections and Care work just like my colleagues we have care meetings throughout the month and we also have data Dives I can't say enough wonderful things about our culturally relevant literacy coaches teams I just want to give them a shout out Jan Rachel and Kim have been amazing to work with we like the other sites we're calling them data Dives but we have these meetings with each of our grade levels where we are diving into the data we are looking at it and those three amazing educators are going back meeting with me once a week as well but then going back and figuring out what can I do for you what can can I do for you what can I find for you um so wonderful collaborative teamwork what are the principal assurances that they will get from me respect the second bullet point I had a hard time so I had three support guidance and Direction and then the fourth one is follow through and I shared this at back to school Workshop week and I've shared it uh in January beginning of January when we came back from winter break and then clearly are SI goals now um like my colleagues um I have presented um which I have at the end of this part but I presented to our Susan lingren PTO at in um September and then again in January so that's why you see January 2025 um update in blue so this first zip goal the Common Thread that I hope you see is that I want my teachers to have a literacy um care cycle as well as a math care cycle so like you've heard from my colleagues there are typically two care cycles that we do in a year they can do more but typically it's two and I really re um came across being specific of one has to be in literacy and one has to be in math so in the progress finalizing care Cycle One um car share team meeting was um on February 5th uh all were welcome uh and I have some photos from that and I'll share more about that coming up starting care cycle 2 if First Care cycle was in math then the second care cycle is in literacy SI goal number two which is our literacy goal um and I appreciated the previous conversations about MCA and map I don't disagree with those conversations at all um but our goals at our literacy goal at Susan LR the percentage of all students um students proficiency on reading MCA grades 3 through five for the public will increase by 2% from 54.9 to 56.9 by the spring of 2025 here are some things that we are doing um and progress we are in progress because like you've heard um the MCAS are taken in April maybe beginning of May but typically April teachers are using the district curriculum of CCC 90% of the time um and I have looked into this by teachers are also using supplementary resources like efly and Lexia Core 5 how have I measured this I've measured it by learning walks and also principal walkthroughs the classrooms you might say clearance why is it 90% my thinking my hunch wondering it is still a new curriculum we are getting there last year I'm going to be honest with you this is a great Improvement I think really being focused on what we're working on has increased that we need to get that to 99% or 100% so I think teachers like director Mancini has said there's a lot on their plate um and they are navigating and working on that and that's my job as the structural leader as well as my team members to help them to support them will you and besides being my initials what can you say what CCC oh yeah collaborative classroom is the name of our literacy curriculum at three of our four sites so PSI has a has a different one but Aquilla Peter Hobart and Susan Lang all have the same one okay thank you you're welcome thank you I appreciate that question they're not using [Laughter] my collaboratively working um with our literacy instructional assistant um using data to meet with students that need extra support uh last year Dr Duffy as well as team met with the principles um and came together we each have um a literacy focused instructional assistance we are lucky enough to have Jennifer Valen cour who is a teacher a retired teacher um but she has been working and working really well with the teams of teachers focusing using data so we're not just picking kids out of the air we're looking at the data excuse me we're meeting with the teachers and figuring out how can we get those goals how can we get those students to feel successful and um feeling proud of themselves Next One S goal number three which is our math goal the percentage of all students proficiency on the math MCA test again grades 3 through 5 will increase by 2% from 56.4 to 58.4 by the spring of 2025 our progress in progress as the MCA tests are taken in April teachers are using the district curriculum of bridges so there's no initials it's called Bridges 96 to 98% of the time measured by learning walks uh principal walkthroughs now Bridges we are farther into that curriculum and I think that's the reason why that is a higher percentage they're more comfortable um um and they're focused on that we need to get that collaborative classroom to that point and I think we will consistently teaching math Corner which is a part of brid's math curriculum math corner is really interesting if you ever have a chance to come visit a couple of you have um math corner is a really interesting part of our math curriculum it is where there is a calendar up on the wall um and there are estimations it's so filled with math vocabulary math talk and the students really get into it I was lucky enough last year to observe a teacher also have um they were talking about volume so he had colored water he really got into it and the students were so engaged it was great so math corner is a part of the old overall math curriculum Bridges sip goal number four um I want to also give my colleague Dr Becca Star Credit for this one her and I met last summer um and she helped me really um brainstorm of what what I wanted as an instructional leader and what I could do in a goal that was sometimes kind of hard to measure um so we came up with this one during the 20 4 25 school year 75% of the staff evaluated will be at proficient or higher in the on the TDN rubric so proficient and then above that is distinguished so again it's unsatisfactory basic proficient and distinguished so we I wanted them to be at proficient or higher and we wanted to focus again had that common R uh we will focus on TD TDE stands for um oh my gosh teacher thank you thank you team rubric uh 1A collaboration with colleagues to improve student learning 1D support of school district initiatives Mission Vision and core values and 3D classroom culture of collaboration and respect in Buu progress on this partially excuse me partially completed and in progress part of the activity so in a sip you have the goal but then you have activities one of the activities was to do a book study on the thin book of trust we did that it is a wonderful book uh and it is very thin easy to read but it's very very powerful in regards to um the whole world of trust and what trust means um and we needed that at Susan lingren and it really has helped so we did a book study and then we did a jigsaw activity where grade levels and Care teams were presenting and they really got into it um at a staff meeting and they talked about higher levels of trust amongst our team have been shared with me personally and across the board so that not just because of the book study not just because of the book but we have like my colleagues have said that whole vulnerability and that whole 3 three and four they know what to expect from me they have permission to call me out like hey you didn't follow up on that email hey you didn't get back to me or I didn't really feel 100% respected when we had that meeting or discussion and that has definitely improved and um it's been a really great feel in the building I feel um collaboration and collectivism is at a high level SE uh culturally relevant literacy coaches have started data Dives with each grade level uh they started it a while ago but again Rachel Kim and uang have been wonderful to work with um just a rockstar team and then I uh principal Pollock is in the prog progress of evaluations of tenure and probationary teachers so for the public um uh and maybe Schoolboard members that may or may not know every probationary teacher is required to be evaluated or observed three times a year um and like our next deadline to keep us on track is March 1st to have our um third excuse me third evaluation done and then the 10 year teachers who are have reached 10e status get observed every 3 years so it's like a threeyear rotation and sometimes um community members have asked me so you don't watch them this year and this year I'm constantly doing walk or and my colleagues are doing walkthroughs we're constantly keeping track of different things so it's not just that third year but that's the official uh measurement on that communicate real quick back to school Workshop week I talked about that uh September 17th is the PTO meeting that I presented it was really quite interesting because um I met with Dr Lafayette and just what is a sip we know it a continuous Improvement plan or sometimes sip in some districts but why do we need that does that mean we're a bad school does it mean this and I was able to really um expl explain it and teach the parents at Susan linger what it truly is and how it keeps us focused on improving just uh not that long ago January 28th 2025 I did a midyear update uh at the PTO meeting and talked about those specific goals that I just shared with you and February 5th we had our care Share care Share which you've heard at some of the other sites is teams share and present their findings and results of their first care cycle um I have to tell you I share this with my adult children um it was a goosebump feeling day um and what I mean by that it was really quite cool to hear I know what's happening I'm in classrooms a lot but to see the Susan ligin staff actually to hear and see them come together um and I really started that care Share meeting as a a Time to learn from each other it's not a I got you moment it's not a check the box I did it it's really what can I learn from my colleagues or what can I learn from the second grade team I'm a visual learner it might be kind of hard but here is some photos from the actual February 5th care Share so they got up they had to do a slide they presented it was really quite uh a great meeting so any questions I have a question that I I don't know that it's fair to ask you it might be interesting to hear from Dr Leia another thing that maybe we talk a little bit at some other point but it just started to hit me again when I was listening to your presentation and it's about why are we okay with 2% being increased or what is it what's Magic that 2% like don't we want it to be you know all the percentages right so can you can I don't know if that's a fair question to if you want to comment on that I'd be happy to comment one of the things that um I've always shared with our sites I've been here for six years now and I'm like you can set it at 2% you can set it at 20% but if the practices don't change within the building it doesn't matter that's uh and so 2% is kind of like the Baseline growth data that mde looks at when we submit uh data for atps and things like that so but for me and what we've seen especially when we take a look at our MCA fifth grade math data for example in world's best Workforce presentation so there's the plug we'll be coming up next month what we've seen is when our teams have studied their data and they've studied their core curricular resource our tier one we see improvements because then the practices also change and so then they've changed by double digits in uh a lot of our fifth grade teams and you're going to see that in next month's presentation even though we set the goal of 2% because again it's about the practices and then the beliefs that then underline the practices that then lead to the change good thank you good that's a quick question and this could really apply to anybody but you're here I you know you talked about like for the reading U that 90% of teachers were using the district curriculum and you're trying to get closer to 100 me what does accountability look like for that and I know that that's the same I could ask any of your colleagues but so um this slide you know the 3 three and four that didn't magically but I I was very focused on that is one of our expectations because last year was our first year with collaborative classroom a curriculum this is our second school year um and it's new it's there's a lot on teachers plates and um so it's like trying to learn this and do it well teachers for the most part want to do a really good job and they want to do it well um but sometimes you know they don't have a it could be a lot of different reasons I don't want to sit here and make a bunch of excuses but um that's where they clearly know that that's an expectation so when I'm in that classroom I need to see I want to see and need to see collaborative classroom being used if they're in the literacy um part of their day or or Bridges math curriculum um and that's I have seen a great Improvement next year there will be even better I appreciate that I think that makes a lot of sense but I also but I'm not that doesn't totally answer my question about what is accountability look like if they're not getting there right like I understand saying that we're accountable to this but if you're walking through the school and 10% of the teachers aren't aren't doing it what does the followup from that look like uh individual one-on-one um meetings with me as an instructional leader like I have been in your room X number of times I've only seen collaborative classroom books or instruction being done once can you tell me what's what's happening what support do you need for me or the culturally relevant literacy coaches so that's every time I go in there I see collaborative classroom so there are one one meetings um the principles I know this isn't what you're asking but the elementary principles will be meeting individually with teachers on Fast bridge data um it's our reading fluency data and talking what is the plan here is your data to Mr Mrs or Miss um the teacher how can we tell me what is coming up for you and what is our plan you and I when on one not anyone else how can we make this go up how can we improve this what are you going to do and what do you need from me what do I need to support and follow through on for you support accountability L thank you thank you questions comments from there anybody with me this is open to anybody but okay I think I think okay we got what we need there thank you all right I am honor to introduce principal mson and welcome to like officially this is your first time ever speaking thank you to the board and you've got more than a board you've got you've got plenty of people out here yeah I to follow all my wonderful building leaders in front of me so uh good evening again uh thanks for having me uh to talk about Peter hobart's continuous Improvement plan I'm I'm going to walk through our four goals and then I'll highlight one goal and kind of spend a little bit more time diing in for you so um our first goal is we on our care team so all of our teachers during our two care Cycles we'll focus on collaboration with special education for academic scaffolds and behavioral de deescalation techniques um our second goal is around reading and so that the percentage of students in grades three through five at Peter Hobart Elementary School will achieve proficiency on the MCA reading assessment and that will increase from 56% in the spring of 2024 to 60% in the spring of 20125 um goal number three is around math and it focuses on the achievement Gap so the achievement gap of students who are at or above the 61st percentile on the math nwea assessment between black students which was at 20% and white students which was at 70% in grades 2 through 5 at Peter Hobart Elementary School will close from 50% in the spring of 2024 to 40% 40% in the spring of 2025 um and goal four is the building climb or culture and climate goal and that is during the 2024 2025 school year Peter h elentary school will increase the use of non-exclusionary disciplinary practices by 30% and at least 90% of the staff will complete professional development on implicit bias through targeted staff training on recognizing and addressing implicit biases that affect discipline decisions so goal four the goal I really wanted to highlight was around that culture and climate component um and really uh one thing we honed in on one dis um non-exclusionary disciplinary practice is um having a matrix of expectations and really um as I heard us talk about um having students learn academically and social emotionally um you can't have an expectation of people without teaching them um especially students like how are we intentionally teaching them what it means to have Peter Hobart Pride um and so we have four pillars um at Peter Hobart one is we are respectful the second one is we are safe the third is we try hard and the fourth is we are community and so um I won't take ownership for all this Matrix um a lot of this was built prior to me coming to Peter Hobart Elementary but what I did think was really important is that we spent time with intentional planning and effort to teach students how are we spending time in each of these locations and really teaching students what it means to be respectful to be safe to try hard and to be a community um and so we spent time during Workshop week um not only looking through the different parts of the rubric to make sure that all of our staff was aligned in the language that we're using and how we're going to teach students um but then also having intentional planning time so grade level um teams and Department teams um had to come up with plans as to how they were going to teach us at the start of the school year um as we also went into winter break um we know that over breaks uh students uh go home they have a nice relaxing time and then we need to spend time reteaching those expectations as we come back so right before winter break we had some in planning time again to really emphasize what are we going to do when students come back how are we going to ret these expectations so that students know what's expected of them um so we can be clear and support them in their learning I'm going to actually flip forward just so you can see how I got um the opportunities that we have so we had two opportunities to share um or that I've shared so far one is um being a new leader in the system I had this phenomenal opportunity to work with our PTO um and they helped host a family hopes and dreams night um this was facilitated by one of our parents aliel WL um who has done a lot of work um as a restorative justice practitioner um and just this opportunity to come together in community um for myself and assistant principal Clark to really hear and partner with families as to what we what their hopes are um during that time I got to share our continuous Improvement plan and what we were focused on and then start to hear feedback as to what we what we needed to consider as a community um the second opportunity we had is um I shared the continuous Improvement plan with our we call it PT so another acronym for you it's the pedagogical operational leadership team um I know just we'll just keep adding more We'll add more and more acronyms for you to remember there'll be a test at the end um but that team helped approve the goals at the time um because I was alone this summer and so kind of um created them but we worked through that I share that with staff at the beginning of the year and then we had a check-in so at our January 8th staff meeting um we did a check-in um and really got feedback on what was going well or areas we needed to improve on and so that helped create this opportunities section so in goal four um there were some action steps within that continuous Improvement plan that you heard principal poock also talk about um those action steps are around implicit bias training um thinking about deescalation strategies as we work with students um to to be non-exclusionary in our discipline practices and then the Matrix of expectations so as I already mentioned we already have worked on the teaching plans and how that looks to retach those expectations and um help build our community with that um our deescalation strategy so um we are working um with Dr Robinson we're super fortunate she's actually coming to our next staff meeting uh not this Wednesday but the following Wednesday on the 19th to work through some um implicit sorry I'm jumping ahead the implicit bias training was with Dr Robinson um and we're going to be doing um the I which is a test that examines your implicit bias um so our staff is taking that and going through um some training with Dr Robinson and then for deescalation strategies um we've been fortunate to work um we have some Behavior Specialists that we're Consulting with to help talk through different deescalation strategies and how we think about when we encounter situations how we recognize how we enter everyone has their own bandwidth for what um what that looks like uh one example I like to give is uh my former principal partner um was a setting for special education teacher and so his bandwith for and patience for what um he thought was safe and what he thought was appropriate looked a little different than what my lived experience as an art teacher was and so um you know have helping staff recognize where that is and then helping them think through decisions um as to help students deescalate as opposed to escalating them and putting them in um potentially harmful situations and so those are let's go for any questions you have yeah any questions or comments can I just this is a big question this for any of you but how does um building gold care team goals and maybe um any sort of Cultural Literacy coaching how does that fit into our cucum plan do we have is that part of it at all nothing nothing nothing nope I can answer part of that so with atps the teachers are completing two care cycles and the care Cycles work towards our building goals right so the our building goals are often which is cuum the cucum goals so the building goals are direct ours are and I believe that everybody plans this way directly tied to those atps or cuom goals so that if we are moving students or when we move students right when we move each student just looking at to your hand when we move each student um we are also then achieving that cucum goal and we don't always make the mark so we try to build them so that they are interwoven is that does that answer your question yep and I think it also answers doc uh director Davis's question about some of the accountability that's baked into that I don't know Q comp is um it's the quality compensation it is the systems opt into it but it is a system of observations and using a rubric to help determine whether staff for staff and there's a financial component tied to it a small like a small Financial component tied to it for staff um so for example if they if they reach the goal but the incentive is not the dollars because they're not they're not they're not that much it's just the incentive is moving students but that's how he so yes but I mean I think it's important to um to note that the the care team goals are tied to the building goals so again I think that goes back to Dr why do I want to call you Dr Davis director Davis it's coming it's coming direct this is um question about accountability and that that is is part of the bakedin and I'm assuming what I also heard each of you say although I did step out to use the restro really quick is that you have an instructional leadership team within your building that help to create these building goals so again it's a part of that accountability but it's not really account I don't think that's a great word I think it's more of like it's um I don't know it's like a team it feels to me what you have presented tonight was really beautiful is like it's a team effort and these are what we want to do and this is how we're getting um moving forward so and I think it's broader than our our building team so our um our teams include our district tap in it um so that I mean that's I think what makes them the most powerful because our I'm just going to speak for you if you don't mind but I believe that our folks that work at the district have the gift of this balcony view for example with the elementary schools Four elementary schools um they have a balcony view of what we're all doing so they can cross-pollinate for us at the times that we don't necessarily know what's going really well in other schools so they give us that information which is kind of fantastic Ro four yeah you said you expect 30% the disciplinary practies a lot that doesn't tell me like like which numbers like I see in 30% yeah so there's um some of my some of it is my experience that I've learned through conversations of what they have done in the past so um I believe they spent one staff meeting on the Matrix last year um and so by increasing the number of times that we've come together as a learning community to address it that's one component of it um I will say to in my first year just collecting some baseline data as to what we're doing would be another component that's why there's not a specific number tied to it right now and just an overall percentage cuz my hope is that just volume of how we're addressing it and come to coming to Common consensus um is one way that we can increase how much we're thinking about non-exclusionary dis colleting the data um I'm currently colle colting um the amount of times that we're addressing it as a staff um and then as you've heard all of our sites another component is restor to practices and so um the work of Dr Robinson and some of bringing those staff members together and then how we integrate that and this that means is another data point I just had my same question as as before so you're tle School how does that how are those funds used to help you meet these goals one of my fun learning curves as a lead principal has been the budget so I'm working really closely with Dr star um some of the things that um principal Graver talked about we're looking at our ml numbers currently and are in conversations as to what support should look like um to effectively not only support the ml team and their work with individual teams but then how do we help Empower them to bring strategies to our whole site because my belief is that every teacher is a general education teacher an ml teacher and a special education teacher so we need to come part of my hope for that money is to be really specific about how we're going to bring professional development to all our staff not just add more people um the last thing is entitle $3 similar to principal Graver we have a couple of things which I can't tell you because I haven't told my staff um in the works that we're going to be doing in terms of family engagement and how we engage our students um and so we have a couple opportunities that will be accessing title 3 money as well thank you so TBD yes more to come after I tell my staff I follow I I'll ask this this question I ask already high school and the middle school I'll ask so uh how do you handle the system how do you handle the resistance change during the endorsement impation yeah so I think one thing you're talking about curriculum change management continuous uh Improvement PL oh um well the hope is that within our continuous Improvement plans because they are collaboratively built um collabora collaboratively um approved that there is buying at that level um I Rely heavily on my P team to help lead learning to bring um ideas back um not only to their teams that bring it to our meetings so that we can if there are things that they are feeling we need to address and have discussions about that we're having that um one thing I've told my staff is that I don't believe in asking them to do something that I won't walk side by side with them on and support them on um and so I really rely on my PO team to tell me what I'm missing or what they need so that I can help support them so um to try to synthesize my answer I rely on my poll team to tell me when there is resistance and how I can support so that we can bring everyone along together okay that that bring I just wanted to say thank thank you for being here and welcome to St Louis Park this your first time in the Board Room and um we're happy to have you here and um I'm not I'm not normally like a we need to hold on to Traditions person at all but um I'm a I'm a parent of Peter Hobart Alam there's a couple of others in the audience and just to see that the hopes and dreams are still alive and pH Pride right like I remember going in and the first thing we did at kindergarten like the first conferences or whatever it might have even been like open house was our pH hopes and dreams um so I I love that that is still like part of that Community um and I hope you I hope you keep that going I love that you're doing that so yeah thank you so thank you thank you um we have one more presentation to hear from I think I think director Scott you're up you're up with director Magnus in terms of like frequency at I think the next one you get a free stop or something like see glad to have you back here from Jersey M like not a free sub teer for glad to have you and direct Howard here good evening uh chair Cox um superintendent Dr Hines members of the board we are here today um to really talk briefly but we have a unique opportunity as you all know a central Early Learning Center um so we really are programmed Within in a building and so we're represented today by one of our leaders here um and we have one goal I mean it's it's it is a challenge to really um collaborate and identify one goal on behalf of three programs and we were able to do that and we took that opportunity to really work to establish a multi a multi-tier system of support uh mtss and so that is our building uh continuous Improvement goal by August 2025 we will develop and Implement uh the mtss process at Central Early Learning Center uh we have two um care cycle goals uh both are centered around identity adult development and so cycle one is uh through the lens of cultural competence uh the the cultural competence rubric teachers will examine their racial identities and consider how these understandings shape their instruction and impact relationships with students so this is more so about self um the the teacher educator and so psycho 2 is more so build on that development and that teacher or educator uh working through uh our young people and families around self-identity and so this is an opportunity to integrate culturally relevant uh literacy instruction during 2025 school year 2025 I'm Erica Scott Early Learning Program supervisor thank you for having me it's a very edifying experience to sit here and be the last group presenting and see the common threads that are running through each school and we are proud to represent St Louis Park's youngest learn Learners so some of the highlights that I wanted to share with regard to the identity work we we serve our young students but we also serve their parents we have a lot of parent education classes and we see the parents probably more than any other schools might so we have been engaging our families around the identity work work that we're doing in the beginning of the school year every classroom read our school is a family and then for those of you who have been in the building we have a giant bulletin board where we have collected family pictures of every every family who's part of our school community and it is this beautiful centerpiece that highlights the the diversity and the beauty of the students and their families in our school so if you haven't seen it I invite you to walk down and now we are spilling off of the bulletin board and onto the walls um we also uh engaged our lpac which is the Early Learning parent advisory Council around uh what the identity of the central Early Learning Center is one of our teachers received a grant through the park public schools and Community Foundation to do work around literacy uh literacy work and Collective Community work around developing this sense of a positive sense of self and identity and we and she has contacted a local artist who's going to be doing a mural for us and we're going to be having the the students participate in the artwork uh during our winter meltdown which is on March 8th but we wanted to engage the parent community what if you could come up with one word to describe the identity of our school what would it be and so we had 62 responses we did it in our elpek meeting and then I included the mention meter Link in our communicator and um you can see that caring Community love Foundation inclusion all of the words here are going to help shape that beautiful Collective art experience um and also this week we we're really pleased to invite families to come into the buildings for National African-American parent involvement day where even the little ECFE classes all the way to the fives classes read the book homegrown and everyone had a chance to to focus on their identity and what home means to them uh we are also really working with students to understand their identity their their personal identity and then their identity within the community and for many of students uh their first Community experience is the classroom community and as part of our Scholastic big day for prek curriculum um teachers engaged in uh you know some Hands-On uh Community work where they created giant posters and kids could plot their homes and favorite places within the community and really see themselves as belonging to this community and in doing so we worked with the teachers to focus on the eips The Early Childhood indicators of progress the social systems that's the social study standards so that we're making sure we're hitting all of those standards as we develop the the sense of identity um we have also really worked with our staff through professional development to build their capacity for the mtss uh continuous Improvement plan gold and within that we need to recognize and spend some time identifying what strong instructional strategies are and what it means to meet students where they are and that involves you know studying Bloom's taxonomy considering backwards design which is purpose-driven teaching where you start with the standards that's the end goal and how do you design the instruction so that you're meeting the end goal and then just building a capacity as our as a teaching staff to to Really hone our teaching skills make sure that they are we're using strong instructional strategies that will eventually set us on um an excellent playing field to build up our mtss process so through care Share we had a care Share In This Very Room in January it was awesome all of the teachers we did it in a jigsaw fashion they had a chance to share the the teachers who are teaching infants and the teachers who are teaching 5-year-olds how they are talking about how their implicit bias informs their instruction and then we'll be having another care Share in may we are constantly communicating our our work around identity through the Early Learning Communicator uh and parent engagement opportunities so thank you any questions I don't have question you know but I have a comments yeah so like uh and I'm glad this is our last presentation you know Central Community I have three kids all of they P year so you know they have we have a saying like in our language say like I don't know I'll say Somali then I will translate to uh it says like uh that means like you don't enter open doors but you you enter the you know open heart so that means like uh what I mean what I mean is like this is where the young Community all the community started here you know and remembering how many years ago my daughter is 13 right yeah she's middle school but like all my kids they remember you know they not remember first grade second grade but they remember their you know ECF teachers yeah they keep asking and in I can see the transformation in terms of the leadership in terms of the buildings all these things a lot of transformation happened here and you know uh and that's the experience when the community you know where they are marginalized Community other community they come in that's front and that's you know the way we treat them that's how we keep them you know from K1 to K12 uh I you know I I like the idea of pictures over there too like my last picture was the uh you know last year and all my three kids they want Jesus and you know this is you know we were intensive um seeing data sometimes you know but you know it's this is also like very know hopeful and uh I just want to say thank you all uh AA my favorite Soto like I like Community Gathering I always go there so yeah so I will say thank you all and you know I can talk the whole time community and how everything there but uh yeah thank that was great you know as someone who speaks a lot of language coming to that door first day it was very intimidating you know imagine someone who doesn't speak Lang and I can see the transformation from from the kid yeah and that's one of the reasons why I involved here why I'm sitting here too you know uh yeah I remember uh bringing my daughter here uh not being accepted to she was I don't know and I went to Hopkins and they accepted my daughter over there because this her age was young but how why I went Hopkins and they accepted me and I she she finished pre ECF class over there and I bring it next next year here and they accepted I don't understand why that time but I was I I feel that time I wasn't welcome you know like because like if it's eight issue why I why are experience but I see the Transformations I love all the teachers you know I I know them every all of them you know yeah thank you thank other questions comments feedback for any of our presenters again yeah just to uplift the work that has gone in for I know years to have you here at this presentation right like this isn't something that we've always had this kind of alignment um between our prek and our k12 and it's so important for like what you were saying getting you know keeping our kids from preschool to kindergarten but then also for their experience of going from preschool to kindergarten right like you are you are starting them on that same language that I think I've heard you all talk about right like how important it is to get that language of restorative practices starting in elementary well you're you're starting it in two threey olds right so it's um I and I know that is that is a ton of work and it's been a lot of work for all of our teaching and learning folks and and everybody to um to really get this I don't know I it just feels like a a unified front yeah and that is that's fantastic so thank you I would agree I thank you too I think it's funny when I tell people I teach middle school they're like oh my God that is terrifying and I would be terrified absolutely terrified to teach a three-year-old I just I don't even I like a Brownie troop of like five girls and it almost led to like me just giving [Laughter] up I just want to say thank you to you and thank you to all of you this was really valuable and appreciate you all sitting through our questions my questions um and um this is yeah this was really helpful thank you thanks I yeah thank everybody for being here tonight this was 2 hours but it was it was 2 hours of good Ed time and I've said this before maybe more to my family maybe a few other people but um uh I can come here really like tired and exhausted from the day but hearing from hearing and doing the school work always energizes me and I think conversations like today particularly again it's a long time there's a lot of people who don't want to come here and listen to this for two hours but I but I do get energized and it's energizing to hear the work that you guys are doing particularly as you're talking about Improvement right like we all know that like it's hard just doing the work just just getting kids in the classroom just teaching them just you know getting staff together all of those things and you guys are doing that and saying that's that's the base but we've got to continue to make improvements we've got to see results in students we have to get our staff aligned all the work that you have to do that goes into doing that it's just it's um impressive we're appreciative of it and we do appreciate you spending a couple hours tonight sharing all this with us thank you so much Erica needs a nap and a tomorrow she's getting a sub already so any yeah it's okay thank you thank you so much everybody thank you you're all welcome to leave [Applause] yes Elementary forward to the yeah but we would thank you everybody I don't know if you're this that brings us up to all of our policies and we have three here the uh and and if people need to this like I said it's two hours I don't know that we need to pause but you know this is discussion if we need to some bathroom and stuff please be be take care of yourself here and stuff to get up you know move around if you need to again um but I just want to I think keep things moving along otherwise but 3B policy development first reading of policy 409 employee Publications instructional materials interventions and Creations then we have a first reading of policy 506 student discipline and then we have first reading of 621 read act so I don't know I'm GNA pass it to Dr Hind to Dr Hines and then however you want to address it I mean obviously an order but whatever if you need to sure so um we'll start with um policy 409 this is a new policy that we're bringing forward um you heard through the presentation especially at the high school the creation of curriculum and it is important that whenever we have teachers design curriculum that we have rights to it so we are just codifying in policy that whenever we have curriculum development and design and we create the scope and sequence and we're using te we're teachers are doing it during their um school day that that it belongs to us so um I'm going to hand it over to Tom if he wants to go into any anything deeper when it comes to to this policy um and we can respond to any questions sure this really kind of came up for me when we were we've been working through um uh cyber security standards that we're writing for the district and this had uh kind of came up in the area of um standards around data and data practices in our district um and really it we didn't have any statement about ownership of data and and this was one of the things that was out there that speaks to ownership of data um and it's it's a u uh msba uh uh I mean basically we haven't changed any wording here it's it's their policy and it's been adopted by most of the districts around us we just for some reason had never adopted this policy so say what that data what you mean when you're saying data can mean a lot of things but well I we we're talking about curriculum we're talking about anything that's created by employees in our district using our systems using our our uh equipment all of those things as it states in the policy that the ownership of that uh content is is owned by the district you're saying content and this is not like results of T Test or evaluation data or personal data or something we're just talking we're using that has a general term for understanding corre content that's develop that is technology it's data it's whatever so it could be content it could be um a tool to analyze data it could be just um a spreadsheet that we use a teacher created in order to track um student progress so any tool or um any curriculum that is you that is created with our resources it belongs to the district if a if a staff person does this outside of of you know like they do it on their personal computer they do something that they're using to instruct they're developing some of that stuff they bring it into the classroom does that include that or you saying that it's like if it's used in order to um instruct or facilitate learning and they're using it here then yes it belongs to the district other questions comments this is first reading this our first chance this also I should add this has also come up when we have staff who are leaving the district and want to take in this information with them so this this becomes an issue in um cyber security because we don't know if if we allow them to take it we haven't dive dove into all of this um digitized um uh content to even know if there's pii data in these things about our students uh anything along that line so um if a teacher if teacher is leaving leaving and we have um inactivated their account and then we get a request afterwards saying I want all the stuff that was in my Google Drive we will say no because that's the district's data that's not your data when did usba come up with this this has been out for a little while um districts around us had have uh um aopt it in the past few years so so it it looks like it was origin the original statute or model policy came out in 1995 and it was revised in 2008 the so like uh I guess I have lots of questions I'm just going to have to explore with other people but it just seems to me like are you so as a um I just created a guided research research assignment with my in readers so that belongs to the district is that what this policy would say oh wow there's going to be a lot of pissed off teachers mhm because that's a lot of creative that's a lot of creative work that um Educators do on their own time and often not cuz um not to be spicy but I'm getting a little spicy uh the my prep period is 50 minutes long which is the same length as my classes not enough time to prep it is not enough time to grade it is not enough time to go through all of the dat that I need to go to so all of my I've never not brought home work ever in my life I what would that be like that would be glorious um and by the way the summer I'm on Furlow so I don't get paid for summer so that is not a paid vacation it just I'm just spicy because that's a lot of creativity it's a lot of creative work um to for teachers that's a hell of a lot of created work so I'm not necessarily in favor of this right now I need to do some Di this seems like we're penalizing teachers I can understand I can somewhat understand like if you're talking about curriculum tools um if there's a particular program that exists at one district and doesn't exist at another district and wanting to like I can kind of understand that but my Google form was created by me so that there's just a lot of intellectual cre that's going to be doesn't feel safe like Fair I've done all that work well so then I I would push the I would push the envelope to say did you create the Google form with your Google account through the district yeah but it's a question of creative content not the tool itself right no it's it's it's also part of that no I understand this isy that it's a part of the creative content I just don't think it's fair but would you create okay so no I'm to pke the beer that's okay well it's getting late and I I like when I first read it I I was thinking um I went to for example uh principal poock talked about the CCC curriculum that's what I was thinking like I can't take that material that the district has purchased from that curricular resource or that curriculum company and they can't use that in another place like that I could understand but the creative content that I have created for my classroom feels as though it should belong to me and and what I was trying to understand this I was thinking about you said earlier like you made a tool or you developed something to look at MCAS and map scores well and would that be kind of fall under something like this but that's all student data so I wouldn't take that any yeah yeah but okay I just meant the way that you could I didn't know if you had done something to convert and analyze that or I pointed out the St and then I just circle things I have a question about um sort of like how does this operate in a spirit of collaboration when you know that's something we just heard from you know happening among our among our build building great but um let's say Virginia creates something that's really great that would be you know useful to somebody in a district next door and does that mean that she can't share her Google form outline with somebody in Hopkins I'm just curious about how there must be some way for that to be able to happen um for for us to I mean I don't know to share things that we have created at as a district or individuals I don't know um so that's that's a question not for necessarily right now but how does that how does that work what's the overall urgency on this we're just looking to get something in here but if we need to take a little bit of time on this yeah this can okay there's no like a okay just one but I understand that we're looking at some things here about information and I'm wondering if this is also like and maybe I'm going off track here but like at my at the county they don't don't want us using flash drives or doing anything like that anymore for cyber security reasons and stuff and I'm thinking is it some of that kind of related to that too people could be taking information off their computers that could have other information and they could take that with them and they could technically do something with that information so that's what I was thinking was the spirit of this was trying to say like we don't want you to be just grabbing things from our network from all this stuff and just taking it with you because that poses a challenge to the idea of versus like you know you can't say I can't take a lesson plan that I sort of graded around you know how to whatever do this pronunciation or do something like that and say I can't teach that in another school district right like it's sort of saying like you know if I get laid off if I do whatever right like it just seems like that if it's in your head or if it's somehow sort of like I mean something that you've I don't know and I I think it there's when you talk about curricul development and curriculum design if you are doing it from scratch not using any type of resources that is the districts yeah books um links whatever this is straight off the dome right would that be different maybe right but if you are and if you're doing it outside of your workday on your own time on your own device this is just a fun project that I'm going to create for my students I have to think about that okay I mean I think about some things like I can't NE I'm not supposed to take things from my work either like as a County employee I create like Communications plans there's all these things when you're applying for jobs and it makes it really hard to do that when they say like can you share a Communications plan and this used to be my my challenge as a consultant they were like you really shouldn't be taking any of those communication plans so what am I supposed to you know that's a whole another cultural thing but I what I'm trying to get up too is I'm trying to understand this sort of like if you change positions if you're laid out you're whatever like at some point like you've got to be able to have something you're going into the classroom with or there's resources or things that we develop you know as individuals and I'm just trying to think about that you know how do how do you well just to just to Ann's Point like as um an AP teacher teach there is um or even in Middle School um I teach reading workshop readers and Writers Workshop and then as an AP teacher I taught AP Language and Composition there are collaborative communities of where we share our information we share oh this is how I address this this is how I get to that like I can I can understand for instance just for an example because I get really frustrated um at our school we're Google Workshop or workspace I think it's called um and we have the ability to so if I I can record myself giving a um a Google a Google slide presentation like I can I can record that and I can post it in my Google Classroom so that students can come back and see it um I don't have access to that on my personal Google class or excuse me my personal Google account because I would have have to pay extra for that and so I could see how using that particular tool especially when it comes to like profit if I was making a profit out of it and if I was posting it somewhere and I was like oh Teachers Pay Teachers or whatever you can here's this thing that I develop using um uh Google workspace I could see how that would be a problem because I'm profit I'm personally profiting off of um using District uh for lack of a butter word technology tools but it feels like my creative content of because it did off the Dome that's cute I used that for a long time now um so like my guided um my guided research project that I just did with my ninth gr or my eighth graders was totally off the Dome and it was based solely on the Minnesota state standards that and I was like told that I had to teach a book that I don't want to teach so I decided that I was like if I'm going to teach this I'm going to teach it the way that I think is culturally responsible to teach so I that's that's where I'm like having a little bit of a hard time with this um because yeah if I to a certain extent I hope nobody would do this but you who knows like we do work in collaborative spaces and then they were to go on to Teachers Pay Teachers and like sell the collaboration that we did for our district that would be would be that would be an unethical use so I don't know I think I need to ruminate on this a little bit more I'll just say for what it's worth I think maybe the language is over Brad but this is like literally the language that's called from msba but like Mami has this policy in place Hopkins has this policy in place like this is not um it's not unique here and so I'm certainly oh I think we need to have the conversation and engage with folks about it but I just want to say pretty positive we don't know about it like I don't know if a lot of teachers know about it but I don't know teachers in the audience do you know about this because I didn't know about this policy until I saw it I mean and and I wonder if this is a policy and I think we should move on because it's getting late but um I mean I do if people have questions I want they do want to hear that but is this a policy that's in place not to necessarily go and penalize people proactively but to give some clarity and also if there's ever an issue later on we've made it clear here so it's not you know what I mean it's a rule in B but it isn't nobody's going in policing this per se but anyways I I think we should move on to to the next policy and we have some opportunities to ask some questions about this it's important to here okay so 506 student Behavior All right so 506 this is um a reflection trying to do some redlining to reflect our mission vision and core values I will turn this over to principal Bailey and um Dr Dr Robinson in order to highlight any explanations so Dr Duffy and I spent some time on on January 3rd just looking at the current policy and we started to see that there was a misalignment that we say we have these core values for our staff our students in our community but then when we look at our student behavior intervention doesn't align so we sat together and we started to process and I started to look at certain things specifically our purpose if we're saying that this is what we do then it should reflect culturally relevant engagement right so then we started to look to see how long has it been when we had to revise it it was April of 2024 and it was still the same so then if you can scroll down you'll notice that even when it says just a general statement we crossed it out because we thought again about the learning within the diverse community in ecsc for early learning all the way to t+ what does that look like so we just went through and looked at the 24 pages 21 pages and just made a few updates but then we started to look at it to say I think we should get other people's eyes on it because you know we put our two cents to it it's now time for you all to share what you should we should do so thank you any questions um did you have the opportunity to talk to building principles about like things that were companying as you probably noticed we've done a lot of collaboration this year um a lot of things that we've done with uh instructional leadership team they are considered whenever we look at the policies we put it in front of them um whether it be a scenario or looking at some of their data to say what should we be doing differently and we shared this with them maybe about two maybe about a month ago and allowed them to look into it um some of them were saying yeah there's a lot of zero tolerance language that we need to we need to fix so yes I do I just was like wow we went from five to three such periods so I didn't know where that came from so if you're looking at it say say where a child a student is being removed I think that's where you're sharing so if we're going to use restorative conversations right we have to take that time out throughout the class period to say Johnny we talked about this can I can I speak to you out in the hallway have that conversation hopefully that behavior changed so if that's two times in that day or in that class period three times that's when we have another conversation to say we need to have you meet with someone else during this time got it Yeah well yeah I just first I wanted to you know than say thank you for looking at this I I agree I think it better aligns with our mission and vision uh and I think it you know further emphasizes the positive behavioral supports and interventions that stresses each student's Brilliance rather than you know focusing on the failure so thank you Kudos um I was reading some through some of the other parts of the policy and I'm wondering there's like a section where we're defining the responsibilities for each role and I'm wondering if there's roles that aren't identified in there that maybe should be better Define the responsibility for some of those so I and that thank you when we were looking at so it's the student the teacher and the principal right we started to think about so if we're doing like Community Building should we have like that restorative conversation after a student is readmitted what does that look like for our policy so we had to take a pause but then we started to ask if it's at the middle school or the high school there staff members that have a better connection with our students what does that look like it means that the principal or student can say I refer to have that conversation with the GLC or someone like that but I agree we may need to add that so thank you and then just one other thing I notice there's a lot of there's a lot of practices in that policy that I'm not 100% sure if we're following to a te um and I'm wondering if we have if that's a uh I don't know priorities everywhere but if it's uh something that we're working through and making sure that we are following that because I think you know for example we were talking earlier about we would like to see some of that behavioral data and have a a conversation about restorative practices and it turns out that's in the policy that we should be doing that annually and I'm not sure if we are but so that's just one example so this year we are um I appreciate that and that is another intentional practice that we're doing um each well starting September at the beginning of the school year um there's a member from each building uh that collaborated with us and went through the two-day training because again we looked at this and we wanted to make sure that going back to Dr hein's work we inspect what we expected we're going to put it out there we need to make sure we're following up so we meet every month to talk about what we're doing productive proactively to make sure that we are having those conversations but doing like morning meetings doing check-ins so that we are getting in front of whatever the issues are before it happen so yes I agree we started going line for line to say is this something that we're doing no but what are we doing going moving forward so thank thank you I I'm going to check whether people feel like this is on the agenda to be approved next meeting to is just something that people need more time with or if you people feel like you're doing okay is there any I just want to double check I mean if we can always change you know that put something in the AG but I just didn't know it's you know as we talk about this philosophically and and whatever if people need more time it's 25 Pages or whatever right I I I guess this isn't really answering question but I was on the policy Committee in I guess it would have been 21 when we worked on this and we substantially changed it against um advice in part of our legal council and I just remember it being a just a very difficult conversation to uh include both what we believed our um our mission vision and core values uh led us to and what was legally required which in in in many cases felt to be in conflict with each other um so I good luck I mean I think that's just it's it's it it was super challenging and um and I'm I'm I think we were proud of what we came up with and I I the changes that you have already suggested making it better um so yeah I don't know that's that's you're not seeing you're not seeing it when you looked at it it didn't seem obvious to you that there were changes that they made that that would have been like missteps based on what we did last time or anything like that what they have already written in has has clarified has clarified this for sure okay um but I just want to acknowledge that a lot of the language that's in here is things that we felt that had to be in there so whether we really wanted them to be or not so again if people need more time I think we just reach out to after let people let her know but otherwise we'll assume that we to move this forward in the next agenda so the next meeting on the 28th I think we need more time and do you want to say more about that I don't want to see this uh bring acent agenda for our next meeting maybe after that yeah but do it's there it's there you have some substantial questions no I don't have questions but I want to I need more time want some time to read through it yeah okay um then let's move on to the next one which is readex all right so read act um policy 621 new policy and I'll turn it over to principal B okay all right as uh Dr H mentioned this is a new policy with our literacy and um read act a lot of the information at the beginning is basically just talking about the definitions of what is meant when uh individuals here like for instance evidence base what does that mean foundational reading so forth so the that part of it is kind of um kind of clearly defined and I will go to Jay when they're talking about progress monitoring this is something that we've heard with the different buildings when they're talking about uh collecting data based upon how students are doing and that during their data Dives when they're having their care meetings uh a lot of that information is um being collected and they're also talking about the monitoring progress of students um that can go through not only care but through our mtss process uh the other part of that is with the reading screener and notification I know this is something that Dr Lafayette her Department uh have been working with a lot of the buildings talking about the various screeners that we have and then the indicators to show uh where the students were at the beginning of the year where they are mid uh in the winter and then there's also a spring assessment with that as well uh a lot of this information is basically talking about with our plan we also have to submit a local literacy plan we do have one on the website now that was kind of generated based upon the policy the literacy act going into uh play last year uh this year by June 15 we have to update that local literacy plan and with that it's where each classroom teacher will have to start looking at the data of their students and they have to keep track of those students and that's something that we also have to make sure that we are submitting um the other piece that I think is kind of comes up quite a bit is when people are talking about intervention so that's um six the part six there where uh it says like each student identified with the screening this is in collaboration with our mtss process and it's also looking at the data and then what's happening in our tier one in order to intervene for students that are not uh showing progress or showing growth so when we're talking about intervention uh we're also looking at those components uh as well before we actually think about what the next steps are with this there's also the collaboration and making sure parents are aware of where their students are so we have there's a progress reporting uh document that has been created to let parents know where the students are uh based upon how they're showing up academically and also when we talk about intervening with our curriculum um there's a component part of collaborative classroom which is called the systemic uh scope and SE sequence and it's kind of a structured literacy approach to support the students as well in the classrooms so if teachers have students who are not on grade level uh if they have been intervening having conversations as part of their mtss process collaborating with their care teams analyzing their data then we also talk about um there's a K3 component of the systemic scope and sequence which you might hear sips s IPS that's that structured piece there's a K3 component that kind of give that acceleration or beginning uh for students and then there's also a 412 which is called a challenge level for students if they're not on grade level uh so that's part of that intervening if you will for students who are not uh on grade level based upon the policy that we have here um the other piece is just making sure that we have staff development or staff training uh for staff and that's something that we're collaborating with MBE uh based upon teachers who have to be trained if they are teaching reading and so we create have a list of teachers who are going through that process based upon grade levels and if they're part of our M uh our Multicultural not I'm sorry our MLL program or our ESL or their multilingual uh teachers they are also going through a process as well as far as our special ed teachers so staff development is happening uh with this piece and um professional development the final part is um literacy incentive for the teachers who are going through the process I know with Early Learning they are also a part of this and I want to say they have most of the teachers except for one who have completed the program which is really great to have with that going forward um the only piece that I see that um will have to be identified and that is the literacy lead um and so it's just um making sure that whoever is working with the teachers that there's a monitoring and they also have to be trained and they can collaborate with other districts or we can have someone come from another District to work with uh our staff but overall these are pieces that I see that are happening in s's Park and so therefore I don't see any like big ads or changes through it so this is coming right from the state right yes okay and is it fully is it required in this level of detail is it is that yes okay what do you think I was presuming because as I look through this I'm like this is almost like like a whole like plan right and that seems weird to me as policy right what yeah what they're doing but I just have a just a logistics question like this is a lot so what is the compassion and Grace do we have for our teachers only because they're learn they're implementing new curriculum in both math I believe and reading um and I'm thinking Elementary School uh middle school is going to be needing to meet these as well eventually so my question I guess is like as far as the teachers looking at data and things like this like what is a reasonable timeline expectation for them to start being able to do all of the things all at once all the time because it's a lot and maybe you don't have to answer that question but it just like this policy lays out a lot a lot yeah I would have to say that a lot of these pieces are kind of already embedded in what we're doing and that's very clear after presentation yeah yeah the and the other part as far as the professional development uh I think St Lou Park was really lucky before reak right there was some teachers that went through the training as far as letters is concerned before that so uh St Louis Park have had at least two years of training before this requirement took place we had teachers that went through letters training through MD which was free and they kind of went through that and then the following year um we were able to have teachers go through letters training again so a big group of our teachers classroom teachers for K5 most of them have already been trained uh and so it's just keep in track of our new teachers that are coming in and I know um principal uh Graver mentioned about her staff having a large number of teachers that are participating so they're looking at how they can accommodate that through their schedules with the teachers because they know it's fine cons I guess I was thinking of like um you know when you implement something new the first year is sort of Rocky and then the second year you start to to gain a sense of like equilibrium and things like that and I just implementing I this is just my opinion you can disregard it like anything else but um being able to do that and then like learning the letters that's just the beginning that's not the end going through that training that's just the beginning understand data that's a different type of training that's a different mindset that will take time so maybe I'm I'm also asking the community to give us a little bit of a break as far as like being able to get our test boys up super fast super I mean because this is this is a slow implementation and roll out and um it's overwhelming and I'm not even like I get to start on Tuesday is my the start of my letters training so like I'm just beginning my journey and there are um their Elementary School teachers are and as I understand it from like amsd this is also not work that's really totally funded and supported by the state as well right that's what I was going to ask like to director manini and this point this is a lot and takes a lot of resources to pull this off there is a piece on there about talking about you know financial aid and how you're supposed to use it for these H how much Aid are we actually getting to well it's you know in the small hundreds of thousands so doesn't cover and so there's some conversation again saying you want we support this philosophically we love all this thing that you're doing but you're it's yet another thing that you're requiring us to do that you're not really giving us enough resources to do right so we it's another way we're being stretched continuously and I this I know that it's late but this is kind of an important question because we're going into legislative session right now and many of us have the ear of our legislators so the onetime money that they spent last year on the redex was that that was I think was that 3 million for all of the across the state of Minnesota am I getting that right the total total that was not enough and so like if they I'm not anticipating a lot of money from the state legislature this particular session um but to that point we're not we don't have enough right and I think there's people saying again if you're going to expect us to do all this and you expect this and expect this and expect this it's just like you keep saying you know that they've been saying this for the 25 years that I've been tracking on education policy what is this unfunded mandate you're giving us right why why do you mandate so much and so give us some Grace right like is it about money or can we have time for implementation or continue to roll things out but it's very difficult for a district to figure out what is urgent when everything is presented to you as urgent yeah yeah it's urgent yeah right and not only is it urgent but like you have to have it in policy right right and that I mean I guess I want our staff to know like that I I can only speak for myself but like as a board member when I look at this I know that this like if I if we were writing this even if all of this same content had to be in here there would be two paragraphs of policy and all the rest would be in procedures and the board would not be right judging anything anything in those procedures like that's not our role there's like a ton of things in this that are not our role as a board but the state has made it our role to create this policy that contains all of this level of detail that we don't really think is appropriate so I just want to say that like we that we don't we are not qualified to micromanage this policy from the board level it's it's ridiculous so we're not going to yeah yeah it's late and I want to go home at 8:30 you're but I I will say I have enough time to read the I will be having enough time to read 56 I'm okay if you guys bring next next meetings if I have anything I will contact uh okay because Ramadan is coming I don't want to read so I have a lot of things to read yeah so and so the 621 basically the recommendation is to pass it as is because we don't have a lot of lency with this if you want to take time to read through it you could but but as we've learned with everything and I was telling them the the parents and caregivers who participated in the conversation last night you know policies are meant to be changed to I mean to to the extent that we can so if we don't get something right we have other opportunities but we appreciate this being brought forward because it's being required and that we're staying on task with all this and so thank you everybody so I think unless there's anything breaking I think we'll just point of clarification um the policies we need more time on is 409 409 potentially I just need to think about things so yeah we have question can I let you know in two days yes you can okay I have to call you anyway what's that oh cell phones with the literacy lead and specialist we that I I just want to make sure that that's kind of yes yes I also want to say thank you because it's a requirement people have to trained in order to do we have to identify the lead on poliy uh it just stated that um you have to have like the specialist in there that so that position is the meeting closed right all right not just yet I have have B my grael okay now I'm going to B my grael and call it's done at 920 for