5.1.2023 FRSC Instructional Subcommittee

okay I'd like to call the instructional subcommittee meeting to order today Monday May 1st 2023 depth you ever roll call Mr again yeah Ms Laramie here miss Pearl here to the flag of the United States of America approach it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty pursuant to the open meeting World any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may

transmit the meeting through any medium attendees are therefore advised that such reportings or Transmissions of being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible okay there's any citizens input no citizens where I officially go on to discussions I just want to acknowledge uh National principles day today if anybody's watching uh lunch is on Kevin and

Shelley tomorrow but I do want to acknowledge all our hard work hard-working uh principles in our districts uh thank you for going above and beyond uh your efforts are greatly appreciated so kudos to all our principles um first discussion is 3.0 update on our health curriculum I missed a shop thank you thank you for having me tonight and I feel like this is the first time I'm coming and I'm not asking

for anything so this is kind of nice but um when I was last here you'd asked me if I could come back and just kind of give an update on how things are with the health instruction so I just prepared for you just a little blurbs on each one as far as where we are in the curriculum what's being offered I also did make some um I know if you've had

these 100 times but I made Boulders that just have the scope and sequence for all the curriculums too here so I'll make sure I give those to you before I leave so you can take a look at those also but um just to give like kind of an overview with the elementary help right now we're teaching Elementary Health in grades three through five 100 of our elementary schools are offering the program we also

have our puberty lessons that were added this year and um there's been a little a little angst on some pieces but it's gone very well and I think the teachers were surprised at how well that has gone um but it has and I really it only opened up our eyes even more so um for the need for students to have these discussions because there were a lot of questions and we had to run in

additional sessions and stuff just because of the fact that the kids were really kind of hungry for the information so I was really that kind of you know solidified for me how important it was overall besides my own personal opinion on that as far as our middle school health is concerned we have help that's offered in all our schools we have had some uh snap foods with some of our scheduling and that's mainly because

of the fact of we have so many things that we're offering the students and then trying to make sure that everything fits within the puzzle can sometimes be you know difficult and every school was a little different in their scheduling and I know right now where I Have a scheduling committee I'm a part of that's being led by Tracy and we're looking at how we can best make sure that the scheduling across the board is

consistent and that it offers everybody equal opportunities for anything that we offer within our schools so we've made a lot of great strides with that and the principals have been completely on board woodworking with the central admin to make sure that um we're basically it's a big huge collaborative asset and I think it's going very well so um I see that as not being an issue at all going into the next year

and so I think we'll be really rolling where we need to be in the middle school or next year and the high school health Remains the Same as we have a help one and health too students who need to graduate from uh from Murphy need to have both courses and pass both courses and we also offer other electives that are part of that but those are actually main courses and our curriculum stays

the same we do have teachers that are going to be coming together during the summer to rewrite some of our curriculum with health it's always a fluid process because it all depends on what's happening in the world so a few years ago vaping wasn't really on the agenda now it's one of the top ones that we're talking about we've seen smoking rates go down and vaping rates go Sky High so

you know it's always what's what's happening within that social media a few years ago we're having these conversations now it's all part of the conversations so we always keep that fluid but we know that we can always though I know we offer a good program I always know we can be better so we're always looking at ways to improve and and how we can do that so we're working

on that and then also our K to eight we're putting out there the survey to them how many with of them would like to come together during the summer and kind of refine our curriculum especially as we've started the reproductive Health the first lesson that went out that was written by myself taking all the resources I was trying to make that easy transition that soft roll out for the

first year and now we're all going to come together and write those next few lessons that are coming forward for the next school year

the middle school I know you had said there was some scheduling conflicts from what I recall and this is just from other schools that I've that I've worked at I've been uh Health life skills program that you're using it's I thought it was like three parts I guess what I'm asking is because some things were missed are we going to be catching up next year or are those students just

gonna or is there a way we're scheduling like the ketchup to make sure all those lessons are I think what it is is that like where you have a student right now that's in sixth grade and didn't get those units the great thing about bonifant is it's a spiraling curriculum so you're able to build upon that so any of the classes that we know that we miss we can build upon that for the next year

so they wouldn't have to miss anything so that's the important piece there it has like every year we'll have the different topics but it feels it becomes a little more aggressive based off the age of the student so it's age appropriate so it that would they wouldn't be missing anything on that sure and the scope and sequence of the curriculum you have there that's yeah through 12. uh that is for our three

three through eight is the three through eight because we teach it in grades three all the way to eight that's right yeah so and it doesn't mean that down the road you won't see me again when I'm looking for K one and two so I'll just heads up because I get a lot of questions from parents regarding the curriculum and what we're teaching and how and say reach out to the principal to the

teacher and you're allowed to see that curriculum absolutely so it's great that I can see it absolutely answer those questions now yeah and if you have any other additional questions on it or something doesn't look then you're not so sure about it just reach out to me or have them come out you know and reach out to me I tell when I send out the letters especially Beauty letters I'm

like don't don't call the principals don't call teachers call me you know so and then I can I can all right make sure it's good to know yeah so the one about the scheduling it that's a little troubling the explanation is troubling and I'm not sure how that even happened so just saying that oh we had a scheduling issue and they didn't do it like to me that's not okay

like this is the first time hearing as a school committee member that we have half the kids not getting help like or whatever it is so that's sort of alarming to me I will say some of the schools are at 100 for health for the middle school we just had two schools that it just it was trying to work with our different subpopulations of students and the programming that we have in the schools

and making it work for everybody it wasn't doable with every single grade we got a majority but I wanted to be honest in saying that there were some students that didn't have that and that's why I wanted to come today to give you that update because I didn't want you to hear that elsewhere because this is you know conversation that we've been and I'd like give an example one of the schools

working with the principal we've done everything to try to get as many sessions in as possible move this move this here it just was it was really difficult to do and I agree with you I I'm a pain in the butt I want everybody to have health and I push that but it's just it just happened in those two schools it was just really difficult do you have anything to say to that I

think that I will say that it's uh scheduling plays a plays a role everybody has PE yes and I will be honest and say schedule and played a role as well as training played a role for some of those teachers as far as to train them up and to deliver that curriculum so it's it's twofold that we are working through in those two schools if she's correct about that with the

training and as far as the reproductive health is concerned the other health I felt they were they've you know been doing that but it was just to have that all rolled together and you don't want to do one of one thing and not all of everything sorry or is it a teacher who's teaching Health the the PE teacher they what they do is divide up the um they teach part part of

the the PE and then yes absolutely like for our elementary we have trimesters so they'll have two PES every um trimester but we take one PE out and put in health and that was a way we could build it into the schedule and make sure that that happened across the board sorry Middle School and it's the same at the high school also all our sub-separate population classes attend with all regular and

classes all inclusion okay so now the teachers that are in that we have now our PE teaches now we can safely say that they're all trained yes if you still want to update on some of the training at the high school level we have health teachers too we just don't have like they're Health teachers and then for some of my schools at the middle school I have designated health teachers because that's their

certification license but the others are PE teachers who have been trained the bonifant this is our I think fifth year rolling with Donovan training so in in the program so they're pretty well versed in that it was the new one that just got approved in the last year which was to get real reproductive Health the get real and the always changing always growing that yeah the already changing

I've been going after puberty that's a little easier because that one is just a set set of lessons with the you know we're the other one you know with everything going on in the world you want to be very careful with what's being presented we don't want to be presenting something where we're excluding anybody but yet at the same point we don't want to look like we're promoting anything at the same point too

we just want to give the most factual information let students make the best decisions that's what school is right yeah back and let kids think for themselves yep that's what we want them to do so that's the curriculum that you're diving a little more into this summer and working on yes and we'll be able to like take a look at that before so absolutely and that is in here too the lesson that I actually wrote for

that are in here and it gives all the resources and again like if there's any questions with that please let me know I think I'm still a little confused on how you know it doesn't make sense in some ways you just said that this actually helped teachers in the middle schools that teach Health only yes that's what like two other questions why couldn't they just go for the time of being and teach the other units to

those special populations like the more questions that I ask are just leading to more and it might be the way that it was worded but and that might be my fault and in the wording it was just whatever it is I'm just saying that like to me it doesn't make sense when we say we have a health teacher certified in health that's that's what that certification is then logic I think would indicate that we

worked a schedule around so that they can actually go for some you know to try to make sure this is and you might only be talking I don't know there's no numbers so you could be talking 35 kids I don't know but it makes it seem like as if there's more than that so that being said it is what it is are they full-time what's that the health pages are they

full-time yes like example at Henry Lord we have a health teacher that's designated just for help but then at some of the other schools we don't so we have PE teachers that are doing you know the outside at the high school level that I have just so when you said you have some health teachers you're saying you have Summit some schools and some not so sometimes do not have them so therefore all the PE teachers are

certified and are capable of teaching that right absolutely we ran into some issues but they all are in good jobs right we need to do some additional I mean just like if you're a PE teacher and you're in the gym and then all of a sudden somebody says oh you're going to go in the classroom and teach it it's like oh wait a minute a big cultural shift but we we made it

over that hump and and now that a lot of the teachers that were worried about that first actually love doing it and they love having those conversations with the kids what would you do if a health teacher was up for three weeks what was that again what would you do if a health teacher happened to be out for three weeks as far as like the high school level or anywhere anywhere um just like

any teacher they would I would really hope that we have all their lesson plans but I have everything because everybody's submits their lesson plans to me so we would have a sub that would be able to teach but if it's a reproductive health I wouldn't put that sub in that position yeah it's like we could probably use our staff a little more creative to so this doesn't happen that's it could be just

my suggestion we had talked at the prior meetings about the permissions the opt-ins the opt-outs yes we can get data on that I don't need it now because it wasn't part of this but I'm just curious to see how that went because it was sort of controversial yes I I I'm pleased to say that the elementary with the signing we've had a lot of the parents that have signed we haven't had as many opt-outs

and some of the parents that were on the fence have contacted me I shared the curriculum with it we kind of talked about it um some of the parents it was more like they were concerned if their child was mature enough and and wouldn't be able to to have the grasp of the knowledge that was being put out there but then after speaking about it a lot of them

didn't decided to sign them in so I was glad that parents and I've made a point to put it on the ladder to please reach out to me if you have any questions here's my numbers one of my questions yeah that's written by me it goes out to the parents from the school just to kind of put it so it comes back to me because that's what I'm going to be best to answer this question

the information in that curriculum is so important yeah these days without kiddos and it goes back to what I believe Mr aggiano said is are they going to get it eventually yes it's going to come around yes hopefully not by the time they're out of Middle School no no no no and we see the difference like when kids come up and they're they haven't had a program like women back in the past

before we didn't have it yeah and then like now when they're coming up and some of the kids have had the pro you can see the difference like in and it's a split sometime times in the class so we definitely want to make sure every every kiddo has all that but they're well versed now as far as the scheduling is is this something that caught your eye in September is this something that you

knew was you were going to predict in in August that there was going to be an issue uh no it was more going into the school year because you were seeing pockets of it because there's so many different terms and trimesters so it right off the bat wasn't catching it right away because you could have a kid that has health and they don't have until third term so I wouldn't be

looking at that soon I'd be thinking oh yeah they have it later in the year but then when I was meeting with the teachers and you know when I meet them at plcs and we're going through the curriculum they're like oh well we don't know if we're going to see you know the guidance counselor said they're struggling we're trying the some of the scheduling so that's when it came to Ted and that's when we started the

conversations and then that's when I started working individually with the principals to see okay what can we do so we went from a like a larger amount to a much smaller amount just because we were like okay I'll let's do this we'll move this cohort here do this over here what ended up happening at one of the schools was some of the kids were getting double the amount because they were coming with

one cohort on Monday but then they would come with another cohort on Wednesday so they had already had that lesson so we figured well that's that's a negative but it's not the worst thing in the world so we'll go with it right he okay just I don't understand the same thing but what questions we asked against of course in my opinion like that the question and the answer was worse than

the first one that we have guidance counselors that when you have a you stop the school year you know you need help you need PE you need to match the things that you need to do a schedule what you just said is well they didn't figure it out until he went to the school year that becomes a bigger issue and a bigger problem for those places so I don't want

to keep going back in it but the more questions we ask the worse the answers get and that's to me is not can you keep us updated yes absolutely and I will give you that uh data on the opt-outs how many we have at the school the last thing I want one of the things I wanted to say is every the biggest issue that I find that people are concerned about I'm

concerned about what it is it's drug and alcohol awareness at the younger grades and it's not an easy thing to answer but we don't necessarily even get in any answer sometimes and it's very difficult for us to be saying what do we do what don't we do because the easiest thing to just say is we know we need to teach the kids at the youngest grade because this is what's happening in society yeah we

all know that that's the issue but we don't I can tell you I don't have a good answer other than the fact that it's embedded within our health correctly one in some way or whatever but yep if whatever you can do to try to get us a one-pager on what that is because I think that's equally as important as some of the other pieces so right moving forward we have to make that a priority yeah and

that is where um this program when I came in 2016 um that was when the Mandate went out that all schools from middle school up to the high school had to have a substance prevention program so that's when Karen long and at the time was Brad Bustin they had gone through the process of looking at all of those and then they had selected Desi highly recommended the bonavin life skills but like I've always

said it's a spiraling curriculum it has a lot of those pieces sometimes it can be a little dry so that's why we have some lessons that we supplant in to kind of tie that all together whatever it is and my only other question is I know the district the average are you located at the ad building with all the other District people I'm at the high school your offices at the high

school yeah high school because I'm also is a department head of the high school of of uh PE and health you have adorable yeah I do PE and health at the high school is the PE Health director of PE Health station she doesn't have to be stationed at the high school we actually were looking at um spacing because you know uh people they were actually re you know evolves moving so we're looking at moving some

things around so but miss Francisco Miss sharp they don't have to be at the high school they happen to be stationed that's been historically but they don't have to be at the high school we actually are looking to to see where we put people yeah right District people like around the district location yep um we're actually looking at that right now good thank you thank you you're welcome and I'll just

slide these over thank you yeah okay uh two discussion and vote for MLL corrective action by cigarillo hi everybody hey everyone um if you take a look at what I submitted you will see on the cover page uh the associated purchases with the plan but if we flip over to page two I would like to take you through the corrective action plan just to give you a little bit of background on what's Happening

um you sure can it's your first meeting right it is yes can we just introduce absolutely I still feel like I'm always the new person stalking and then absolutely that's well that's I I'll introduce her and hand it over to her so this is Lisa zagarella she's our new um MLL director she has been on board for a couple of months um but really has um jumped right in um feet first I'll say feed first but

has done an amazing job as as really not only getting to know the department but jumping in and supporting the department and putting systems in place so Lisa comes to us she's worked at Henry Lord she's been a department head for ELA she's been a coach she's been a teacher so she comes with us with a lot of experience and really has been a very very good addition to our team so with

that being said Lisa take it away thank you so as Dr Khan said that I started March 1st and the department of Elementary and secondary education wanted a revised corrective action plan by April 14th so I needed to kind of get a quick status on um where we were in our corrective action especially having been without a director although Dr Curley has been kind of at the helm and taking

care of our corrective action plan in the absence of a director there were some I sent a draft to Desi with lots of things that need to be addressed the top three that made it into the corrective action plan are what you see on this sheet on page two that we need to implement a high Implement high quality instructional materials for MLL students across grades K to five that is going to

just be wonders ml which is the extension of our current K-5 curriculum so wonders has this MLL branch that allows students to access both MLL resources as well as the core Ela curriculum our second um piece is implementing a system of language acquisition benchmarks for all MLL students across the district much like students are tested in content areas Math Science Social Studies and

Ela we do not have a benchmarking system for their language acquisition which is separate from their content acquisition so action 2 is around that and you can see all of the associated steps that need to take place and the resources and then finally to develop systems and structures for creating and monitoring Els Keys which are English learner success plans students have six years to meet their

language acquisition targets if they are not on target to exit our program within six years they are put on a success plan to accelerate their growth we do not have a although we are working on these success plans it's still skeletal as to how we put them together so we're looking to develop a more robust system and involve more stakeholders in the success of our English language Learners

so those are the three key points of our corrective action plan for the 2023-2024 school year want to pause there before I go into the associated costs and asks take any questions because that's a lot anybody So reading the first page the for leader model the the ml MLL students they don't take a net right do they take the anet test so it depends are yes many of them do are brand brand new students

typically do not take Eli MCAS I'm an Eli and that sorry just let me get this so This index is actually is that what it is yes all right so this weeda model right so we're adding another test on top of a net MCAS and now they'll be a third test is that accurate well for our multilingual lingual Learners access is the only test that that has anything to do with their language

acquisition okay everything else is a Content test that they take so one time a year their language acquisition is tested that's it we need to be able to see so they take that in January more or less and we need to see to Benchmark their progress our data is flat right so I mean let's say I'm never gonna lie about our data right because anybody can go look it up our data's flat we need to

be able to catch kids early see this is where they tested monitor their progress make some adjustments as needed so that we can make sure we support kids appropriately but this is nothing that we can get we can't get that data from a now or MCAT that's completely it's a language it's focused on on just language correct and and just as a fireball right exactly in our our newest students they don't take MCAS right

right if they're um new to the country first year they don't have to take it's well it doesn't for ELA it doesn't count and then the anap as Lisa just said they're not going to be tested so if they have no language whatsoever so but we do need a way to monitor their success and to support them in a more timely fashion right and I'm not I mean no we need to do what we

need to do to figure out where these kids all right I mean hands down but it just I'm not a big proponent of standardized testing and I I don't know even know what the test looks like but adding another test to some of these kids it just gives me a little makes me uneasy sometimes because of the anxiety that comes with it you know so what's different about this test is that it

they have the winning writing listening and speaking so we do not get that with any other test the kids do not speak there's no oral language test that the kids take um there's no listening tests that the kids that the kids take um and Desi has been very transparent with us that if we are not moving these students we will not be removed correctly oh I'm going to trust your your judgment no I just want everybody

to know that I wanted to have all of the information she was probably thinking when I saw computer-based I was thinking ABC ABC ABC what you're describing sounds more interactive the students actually have to record themselves speaking and the reason that they went to a computer-based test is that it used that it used to be tests that the kids were tested one-on-one so I would test

Stephanie I would be the sole person to be able to it happened in the moment right no one else could listen to that recording there was no other second opinion so it was very kind of subjective it was very subjective so that's why they now have moved and that is true of the access test as well what we're hearing a lot of teachers report is that when the kids go to take access

because they have no other assessment where they're doing this they get the microphone they don't have any real time being used to doing something like this so we're also hoping that having them have some times throughout the year that are a little lower Stakes than access are going to allow them to adjust and not feel as um unsure of themselves when they're taking access so as far as the Wonders

curriculum is that fairly new is that a new add-on to wonders like how old is it how long has the company been publishing it yeah I would have to I would have to look back at the publication date um I do believe it's fairly I do believe that it's fairly new yeah money um yeah and there's there's been a shift um just kind of in the pedagogy of ESL around moving away from these sort of

just English language acquisition only curriculums which then which is what I taught with you know when I was teaching ESL it was an English language acquisition curriculum it wasn't so much embedded with the ELA and then everybody kind of said well wait when do the kids get Ela and you know crickets yeah when they exit ESL what if they're not exiting ESL for multiple years yeah then they're not you know so are we

setting our kids up we're filling one Gap if you will and just creating another one so this is aimed at not setting the kit letting them grow their language acquisition while still being able to um not having to sacrifice their Ela content knowledge style Gap so on that same issue with the Wonders am I missing the when we added this I thought it was a while ago it looks like you can hear the

deciding in June of 2023 and so it's just starting but am I wrong to say that we voted for spending that money a year ago or something like that yeah you can go ahead at the um toward the end last quarter of the school year last year AGA did put forth a proposal to purchase materials the ell materials she purchased the bare minimum for the schools teachers were getting one

student booklet it was just kind of like let's let's look at this and kind of see what if it's worth a more comprehensive purchase and we've gotten in schools have started to use it and we've gotten some really positive feedback so we've gotten some really positive feedback from teachers and students around the use of the materials and so now it's ensuring that our kids have what they need in front of them fully

we did I thought we had a meeting where we actually voted because we get material subcommittee K-5 which is yeah

so just looking at this I'm saying it looks like we didn't really implement it like fully well I think at least it went to Lord and later right we silent it Lord and Letourneau will be getting additional materials so that they're not photocopying workbooks and they're not um they're not needing to spend time doing that each kid will have their own consumable it's going to then be sent

out to the other schools as well fonsica is not Fonseca is not using this curriculum currently and um Viv is not using this curriculum currently and great great thank you it's because those schools weren't using wonders with their foundational students they were using the language acquisition only program so when we made the purchase we made the purchase for the two schools that had their students

engaging in the core content but it was wasn't it around this is 70 one thousand right and you know yeah 71 000 that's correct and that's going to get us full for all schools like so if we purchase something on these two schools in a in a partial way we spent a good chunk of money compared to this if my memory is correct so I'm almost thinking like it looks like we're doubling or more tripling

what we're gonna get for the for the stuff but in my mind the amount was almost the same and it's not your issue no no the amount that you were looking at last year was a combined quote for wonders MLL and also one of those core materials for our special education yes we'll pull it apart makes more sense and also just adding some yes I can disaggregate all of that for you so when

you say when I first saw this about corrective action I also tried to think back to any other meetings that we had that we were told that we were incorrective action the department and I can't recall necessarily knowing that and seeing that so that's not your issue preceded you but what what was how did we become into correct in fact like did they come in do an analysis and say Here's the 35 recommendations whatever

it is because I don't I try to keep everything and I don't think I've ever seen that yep so oh go ahead I was just gonna say that since my coming on board and in the transition of the previous director out um we had been reporting out this year on in in two areas and one was around um you know how where how we train teachers support teachers around their SEI endorsement and the other piece had

to do with progress monitoring so we've been reporting back to the department um and you know showing evidence of progress in in terms of our own systems over the course of this year I believe I want to say it was maybe 2020 2021 was when the monitoring began it's as a result of the coordinated program review that's what they used to call it at that time so every five years six years they would come into a

district and do a coordinated program review and then give you feedback or recommendations based on what they reviewed they review records They review curriculum they review all all kinds of things and then they give you feedback on that and now that's changing to focused targeted focused monitoring focused monitoring and when you have certain areas that you have to fix they call that corrective action so you have

to submit reports uh evidence that you're putting things into place whatever they find so that we took that on when when we took on after the previous director left took on where we were and we have been working through some of those recommendations and Lisa had to as a result now we have to do a because it was a new director they asked us to put a a full report together in regards to

what was recommended what we have in place and what we're working towards as a result of the coordinated yeah when you talk I know you said you were going to talk about money is this but this is on the front sheet yes that's it and that's right approved that is not we would like it to be referred we're going to vote to refer to so because I looked on the pages completed

for when I was like I think that means it's done no no that means that I have to this these are things so on these in these reporting periods that I listed at the top of the sheet those are the things that I need to show them I have to physically send that to Desi so I had to list for them everything that I would be sending and these are not budget

they're not in the budget that's currently looking for us the materials and yeah well they would come out of their grants or materials and and supplies that we have what we have you know what we need to purchase what we have that's I guess the point of why you well we we didn't want to we didn't want to bring any contracts forth without coming through a subcommittee first right where we are and in in we

want to bring these fourth on the 15th but we wanted to make sure we went through the subcommittee and then we'll go through no I totally agree I just think I was curious if these you know some are already listed in line items right in the budgets not yet because we haven't we haven't got approved yeah yes we also have

so moved any other questions thank you very much wait seconds

Miss Laramie yes yes you're welcome and thank you thank you if there's anything else you require more information about anything please reach out at any time I'm happy to thank you share anything thank you we're now going to move on to 3.3 a discussion invoke to refer Ela Middle School curriculum adoption Miss Kennedy hello so um you've seen this proposed adoption timeline several times

um between instructional subcommittee and then also um the memos that go out on Friday and we've also spoken quite extensively around what the plan was there have been a couple of things added since then just to strengthen the um the buy-in from teachers and the support um that we'll need as a as a department in order to make this happen and so as you can see throughout this there has

been a heavy presence from our teaching population um our Ela Middle School teachers um we started with digging into the research around the two programs that we were going to adopt identifying priorities and involving teachers in that prioritization um and then we started a pilot as you as you know um throughout the entirety of the pilot we've been going into classrooms and looking at both materials in in the

student engagement in the in the instruction um and most recently because I think we've talked all the way up till March um so in March we had our half day P day and on that day all of our ELA teachers went to Morton and engaged in two different sessions ends around the two curricular materials that we were piloting the first one being amplify six to eight and the second one um was springboard by college board and

so we were lucky enough to have um two things happen within each one of these sessions the first one was a half hour presentation from the publisher and in that half hour presentation it wasn't a sales pitch it was very targeted to our priorities so I emailed them the list of priorities and asked them to speak specifically to these priorities and not try to sell us something because

we have limited time and no teacher wants to sit through that and so they did a quick presentation on virtually and then they engaged in a lesson with a classroom teacher in an academic lead and so miss agarella was one of the people who um as the Henry Lord coach who worked alongside the seventh grade teacher at Henry Lord with half of our Ela staff Middle School staff and presented a lesson to the teachers had

them walk through the platform experience it like a like a student would but also kind of seeing the mind of the teacher when it came to the planning piece around the lesson and then um amplify was done by Henry Lord and Doran so um miss sagarella and miss gibley did the amplify curriculum then in the other room it was the springboard by college board and the and the same thing happened with

um Mr varus the seventh grade teacher at Morton along um with Tara O'Brien the ELA Department had um at Morton and then halfway through the teacher's switch so they were able to experience both of these programs the presentation in the model lesson afterwards during that I should say they were also charting questions that they had around the curricular materials we answered the questions that we could

answer and then I sent um the other questions to the to Publishers um and even if a question was about one curricular material I sent it out to both Publishers so we would have answers from both of the programs um and an email was sent out to staff following that with all the login information all the answers to the questions um the recorded session for the PD and so that and then I just kept adding to

that as far as like one question answer started rolling in I rolled them out to teachers additionally throughout this whole thing um principles and other administrators were kept in the loop as to where we were in the decision process about a week later I sent a survey out to our um all of our staff that attended the PD and then they voted for um which program they would recommend for Fargo Public

School kiddos substantially yeah and so it was really cool because we saw um people from all every single School kind of putting in their recommendation and um and from all grade levels and different subgroups um and then the recommendations but I thought the most interesting piece is that they provided really solid rationale for why why one over the other and so you can see that 70 about 73

percent of our staff recommended amplify six to eight in their reasoning is bulleted underneath Rich rigorous engaging and diverse texts um the program itself is created for the Middle School Green which is something that differentiates it from any other program that um that's out there the usability features that benefit students their learning styles their built in scaffolding um a large text library that students

can go home and take advantage of as well as take advantage of in school it has a user-friendly interface um it's really like when you go into the room Miss Bernier from the high school went in to do one of the walks with us and she was like wow it's just like really really engaging for kids lots of writing and it's super interactive and then also usability features for teachers one of the big

points was around Auto grading and allowing teachers to instead of having to rubric score the kids although I always suggest rubrics grow them and make sure you agree but that they can focus their energy on the feedback piece of it so that students know how to improve their writing rather than you got a two out of for it speaks to power schools it has just in time scaffolding built in to the

program for the teacher where the teacher hovers over and it'll it sometimes will even give you a script of how you could um do it just in time kind of scaffold if a child stuck with their writing or the child says I'm done like what could the teacher say to prompt more um more engagement it's easy to navigate and there is detailed support so in addition to that we also applied

for gleam which we let you know through the Friday memo um and gleam is paying up to 50 percent of the cost of the program and a portion of the professional development package for teachers for year one and then in year two they will um support us in some of the monies toward the year 2pd for our teachers questions and so much as a question comment so this is I think the way we should do

things the way this is thorough we went through this we brought it for the subcommittee we checked it you were out front you told us about the grant we told you to spend the money either way you came back to us with this you went to the teachers you're like this is how I think all the decisions about this stuff should come this week when I look at the ELA like so

if this is for the Middle School English what is the comparable in math what is the like the programming cost for that oh I don't know if I can answer that question um what is the program Carnegie Carnegie yeah we've already we've invested in that that's my point so I'm kind of in my head think of so we for years have never had that's right that's right we have this so if we had

math curriculum and it costs six hundred thousand dollars something like that and then we have this one that costs 300 000 or 5 500 000. relatively speaking it helps to make a decision on what we should do like do we if it's 600 000 let's say 400 000 off more than this I would recommend that we spend a hundred thousand dollars towards the future while we have the money like that's what

I'm saying so I 100 agree with whatever but I just wanted to comment that this is the way it's supposed to go I think this is I think the right way to do it it makes the decisions pretty easy

I remember Mr Aggie I had to shut me down last time

um this package does include four years of teacher and student digital licenses as well as four years of consumables for our kids which is really important because what I don't I want teachers to know that this is here to stay it's all too often that in education whether in Fall River or not it's like a one-hit wonder you know you do it for a year and then all of a sudden you're changing it

just like with wonders we need to stay the course and um and stay with Fidelity to the program that's what the research base is focused on and then in addition Mr aguir in response to the Carnegie piece of it this with this package for PD I try to make it as close to the Carnegie package as I could um the Carnegie package is just it's just really comprehensive there's in-school coaching they're taking the um

the leadership on walks and looking at what instruction looks like in the classroom and so when I think about wonders our package was pretty basic and I'm like darn it you know like it we could have potentially I don't they were offering more but it would have been great if they were um but I I think that that we're spending a large chunk of money on that professional development in support of

the teachers and he's coming to high school too right for that one yes yeah combined yes I remember the math high school so with that the English at the high school has a different so if we were trying to compare the English we have to just make sure we compare them all well for the first time we have consistent curriculum all the way this will allow us to have Ela now we've purchased elementary math

Elementary La Middle School Math middle school so for the first time we have consistency High School is still a work in progress right now we only have pre-ap springboard um and Ninth and potentially 10th grade that might be a little a little leak into 10th grade um but we've spoken about like starting to explore some options there I don't think that'll be something that happens next year but I think the the

communication has started and that's important

yes thank you thank you thank you very much and so this will go before in May yesterday finally 3.4 discussion we're going to refer to your TP partnership renewal uh presented by Dr Curley thank you so we um as you know we began our partnership with tntp over the last couple of years it actually was born out of programming from the Department of Ed where we were a partner where we started working with

tntp around our instructional priority that was something that we brought you know into the district as a district priority and then into schools so schools could start developing their instructional priorities aligned with a district-wide priority we've been meeting with tntp as part of a Statewide initiative um pretty much bi-weekly for last year and a half to two years and that has

been that's been the partner that's really helped us drive our work in terms of developing the instructional priority and then really making sure that that instructional priority is driving all the work in decision making so in addition to that work this year we started to do work in our within our schools around ilt so just as we were strengthening our district ilt through a teaching and learning team we were

looking to support schools to support their teams as well we partnered with tntp this year to do some work with school-based ilts they came out to do learning walks in schools they um you know develop feedback for schools and then started doing these plan do study act Cycles pdsa Cycles with schools six to eight weeks that's a project that's actually closing out this year so based on feedback based on that feedback

um you know from principles we started to explore the possibility of looking into next year to continue some of that some of that project work around our ilts and then looked to potentially do some other things so that's what's outlined here in The Proposal continuing the work with our ilt's also looking at teacher leadership that's been the teacher leader position is something that has grown really in

you know in terms of the frequency of the requests some schools have a teacher leader at each grade level some are content specific and things like that but we're certainly seeing more and more of them and then in an effort to really build some consistency around how we are supporting teacher leaders and and building them up as leaders and then also in building some consistency across schools in terms

of what is expected of their teacher leaders we started to explore possible program with programming with tntp to do that kind of capacity building the third piece that's in here is around new teacher support so we have an induction program with you know that's with guidelines that adhere to what is required by the state and our new teachers have mentors and things like that but when we're starting to think

about teacher Recruitment and Retention we'd like to develop a more robust program something that's consistent again across schools we've gotten proposals from Individual schools um with you know here's how these to pay for monthly meetings and materials to support teachers it looks a little different at each school and again just trying to build some consistency and something that shouldn't be school

dependent one school is offering it another school is not can we develop a district program so that we're supporting all schools and then support schools further so that they can say here's what we're doing across the district and then we're going to add this little piece maybe because of a particular program they have in their school or maybe because of the number of new teachers they have and things like that

so there are three pieces here that I mentioned the teacher leadership the ilt work and the new teacher support I used feedback from principals heard back from every single one I summarized it there the kinds of things you know here's what's in the proposal what are you thinking you know is this something that you want to move forward with overwhelmingly people said it's aligned with what we're doing let's get to it

some of the feedback had was language that's already in the proposal that says we want to make sure it's personalized whether it's because we've been doing we've already been doing a lot of work with our ilt and we we want feedback that's not for the masses we want school-based feedback it's already part of the proposal or we're already doing work with our new teachers we don't want

to sacrifice that we want to get on board with the district is doing so that we have those plans in common with other schools but what about this extra little piece can we still do this with our teachers so those are the things that I would be bringing back back to tntp just to make sure that that all of these things are built into into the planning for next year with the go-ahead the plan

is to work with like Jay Correa Tom Coogan around the new teacher program to make sure that we are doing something that complements what the um what the existing teacher induction program does that we'd be working with our our school-based leaders instructional leads from those buildings so that we can develop what the um what that teacher leadership piece will look like what design you know the idea

for all of these pieces is really around capacity building I was really clear with tntp that we're looking right now at what are you what can we do to build us up over the next year not a long-term contract but really capacity building of leaders so that these are structures that will live on in the schools and across the district so I agree with you with the distance in all schools and

it's a good chunk of money you know but we want to get something out of it when I look at just this eight principles so that is sort of goes against in my mind of consistency across all schools so it's eight at a time um so they're doing some so the idea there would be to um to work in cycle so it's coaching is providing coaching for eight principles um beginning in November and then an

additional eight principles in December and there's going to be like kind of a rotating piece so they might get their coaching in November in January another set of principles don't have 24 but they're going to be multiple months it's not just one time right right and we might have principles um one of the things that the principles so that the other eight are on the the next page so it's a total of 32.

different opportunities so each principal will get their coaching twice what that what what we were able to do this year with tntp was within the confines of the contract itself and within the agreement that we paid for this year we recognized that at the beginning of the year when all of the ilts convened it was way too large of a group when they did it when we did our second meeting in subsequent meetings

they got us into small groups we have a closing that was scheduled it was supposed to be all schools on May 15th now they're actually breaking up that large meeting of 16 schools into four different meetings and so they're just taking their the resource allotment and and potentially instead of co-facilitating they're having facilitators split up and go to two different groups so they've been really

responsive to the kinds of things that um you know any issues that have come up any feedback that they get during one session they'll tweak it for the next so in this one it was just really specific that they I'd only have the capacity to coach eight principles at a time so we're going to develop a plan that says you know these are the priority these are the priority people whereas where some people said

I feel like I kind of got this we would put them in round two because there isn't as much and is somebody going to analyze whether they do have it but yeah you know like so you go back yeah my question is at the end of June of 2024 what would the district look like related to this so that to me is the one the one pager the one-liner of

this is what we expect by the end of June so that all people will be doing like things and all the schools to me that makes sense and if you're not then that means you're probably not you don't have the capacity to do the work if you haven't taken that training and moved yourself and your your school so we're not building capacity if they're not taking it and applying it

right so as I'm saying so at the end of June you'll be able to tell us all right all the schools you know did and Kevin was just not receptive or whatever so then Kevin's no longer impressive or something or whatever I mean you know what I mean yeah absolutely I mean the goal is so that we're not just wasting this money not saying we waste money but

you know what I mean we want to spend it and then have everybody doing well we want to invest in our people right I agree with you what we are trying to do district-wide we have been trying to do is putting systems in place but all the systems we need to monitor them and to assess them and say yeah that was a good investment know that we have to put we've done that with tntp

we've pivoted and made some adjustments based on feedback Etc but if we're going to invest hundreds of this is the time right we have money and we should be putting it right back into our schools into our kids as well as our adults but they need to result in something right we we know where we are as a district and these Investments need to yield increase student student achievement

that's really what is at the core of everything that we do so we have to put systems in place I agree with you we need to we need to see something for it I agree and I think when you look at that you know I've been vocal about trying to say we need more central office administration too because all these people are limited as well like this some of these things are jobs and enough

itself for a person so what I've been advocating for more positions under you it's not because I think you just need to have sit down in the bonbons and you know but I I do think that you need layers of support so that people are reporting to the right people so I'm totally in favor of it so I'll make emotional approvement to refer yeah

thank you this drag yeah yes Laramie yes Miss Pearl yes the business is there any new business second is that Miss Dragon yes Miss Laramie yes yes