Regular Session

e

e e es saw go ahead and call our meeting than

our app EX for

to ad [Music] second good evening Mr chair and thank you I'm excited share this lots of good things going on quickly our they having their in evening great conversation and I was very very pleased to engage that conversation we spent an hour hour and a half just really working to talk about ways that we might about

way support students and talk about what the expectations are for our students excited next item is we are so very excited to be able toam for

e for support stort a than

bre St C

you e stud stud were they SCH

EX EXP for e

our to that few SC

sh is for to e

let's explore how Yonder pouches are Transforming Our educational environments for the better through the implementation of phonefree classrooms improved classroom environment teachers report a more positive and respectful atmosphere when students are less preoccupied with their phones and teachers can focus on the task at hand educating not competing for the class's attention with fewer disruptions and more engaged students there's a positive shift in the classroom making it easier to teach and learn enhanced focus and engagement Yonder pouches help students stay focused by temporarily securing phones in their pouches students can concentrate and actively participate in lessons less screen time means more face-to-face interaction and engagement leading a more productive classroom environment and better academic performance increased social interaction without phones as a barrier students engage more with each other collaborate better on group projects and build stronger relationships with their peers this allows students to develop essential social skills that are crucial for the future success in college and the workforce taking responsibility for your education knowing that their phones will be secured students learn to manage their time and focus more on their studies without external distractions this Fosters a sense of accountability and helps students develop better habits for managing their coursework responsibly student and staff safety most importantly the use of cell phones in a school setting can have a negative impact on a student's mental and physical health cell phones are often used to make threats of violence

towards School communities these threats require extended time to investigate social media is often used for cyber bullying threats toward individuals and instigating fights the use of a cell phone during a crisis situation can inhibit the students ability to stay focused on listening to safety directives finding in a safe space and staying hidden students will be able to make contact with parents once it is safe to do so Yonder offers a range of benefits from improveed focus and reduced distractions to increased social interaction and a safer School environment by creating a space where students can truly connect with their learning and each other Yonder pouches are making a positive impact on education if you would like to learn more about Yonder pouches and their benefits you can visit our website at chadam k12nc . us and under resources click Yonder pouch implementation for

e

e e saw sh

is

of e number each year I'm already seeing the help it's giving my seventh grader uh with the clear consistent organizational skills that are being reinforced in each of his classes and I'm hopeful these habits will well serve him in years to come and mean far fewer loose papers in the black ho I added this and when I was reminded that I thank you so much for your careful planning and your collaboration with RSM and with chadam law enforcement that you are well prepared for any kind of emergency that we face at our schools it was really hard this week for my daughter to come home and describe her lockdown drill but we had a wonderful conversation about what that means for um for her safety and her wellbeing so thank you for that and finally I want to thank you for your recognition that our schools and students and the staff within them are far more than the state report guard grades that are stamped on them each year I know chadam county has much to celebrate in terms of student

achievement and growth that has will be highlighted um from the recently um released State performance grade report however I am keenly aware that our schools with low letter grades are filled with talented capable hardworking students and teachers which uh from which school scores from a single assessment on a single day do not reflect I appreciated Dr Jackson's comments that I read in a recent ednc article quote our district makes an effort to recognize there are high performing students in everyo regardless of low performing status in chattam County Schools we avoid labeling schools as low performing instead we identify them as schools and need of support we collaborate with these schools to Target to create targeted plans uh leveraging their strength and uh best practices um so thank you for the many ways you show that you Center students and teachers when making decisions for our district with this kind of focus on what is best for kids and the wise and positive creative and professionals who work with them I know we can have a good school year to come having first name is it Stephanie okay that's okay not a problem um good evening my name is Stephanie pow I a chadam County resident a public school supporter and the grandmother of a PO student my granddaughter having graduated I'm following Julie Ricker who has thanked you for so many of the positive actions you have implemented and has been able to list every single one I concur with every word she said however I will not address specifics what I want to comment on and thank you for is the overriding spirit of the board superintendent Jackson and the administration I've attended many chav County Board of Education meetings I've been impressed by opportunities youve

created for such a diverse School population despite the sever funding deficiencies and interference by those who want to impose their own fears and agenda on the schools I have concluded that your ability to Pivot with these challenge is due to your spirit your focus on doing right by the chadam County students teachers and staff I admire your determination your resilience your resourcefulness and your creativity in facing the many challenges of public schools our schools today I'm confident that this spirit will survive as you continue to dig deeply do the right thing and find a way to support our students and teachers even when it means rearranging the the pieces of the puzzle to do so as I watch the students walk by my house on the first day of school walking either to their schools or their buses along with their parents sometimes Grands and of course their dogs not to myself that they are in good hands we look forward to a new school year thank you okay we'll move along to information items item a 2023 2024 count results overview and school support plans overview and well good evening again we are excited to share with you our previous year accountability results and just uh an item of note is that we received this information and we were allowed to view that and go public as of September 4th when it was approved by the State Board of Education so we've had a short amount of time to analyze this um we don't that compare us to

other places we have to hand mine all of that so what we have this evening is kind of a short overview and we'll continue to mine and we will be publicizing our annual accountability um booklet that we do that has information from each school as well as overarching information for our district so we'll have more comparables across our region and state as we're able to dig into that data um if you can look at the various attachments I'll just share with you the files that you have there so you know what's there um we have our press release and all of the links and information that was sent out to our press there for our public to see as well as the board we have information about our school support plans which we'll talk about in a moment and we have a sample of the one from chadam middle school we also have an an AR overarching document for support plans that shows the process that would be used at each school for support plans and then we also have a link to our presentation which we'll dig into now to the next slide so a couple of things we'll be sharing with you this evening we'll go over what the accountability model is in the various um areas that we are um seeing data for we will go over the school and District information for each of those areas we'll sh with you some of our successes and opportunities for improvement as well as some of our action steps that are already in place for that work and then we will also end with um sharing with you the draft of our support plan structure um the state of North North Carolina does not require us to do this until about November which we think is a little crazy um to think that we would not be starting support for our student uh our schools until then um particularly the support plan that we will dig into at um greater length today is the one for chadam middle school so you can see the work that's already in

place for that school um and I'll go ahead and turn it over to miss re KY for the next piece so of course we always want to start this presentation out with some there are a lot of acronyms of course in education that we love to throw around um so the first will ding into tonight is the school performance grade the state of North Carolina in accordance with the federal guidelines um uh determines this school performance grade by giving um an integer to 80% based on student achievement and their proficiency on state level exams and then 20% dedicated to the growth these numbers are combined created in integer on a and then given a letter grade and we'll kind of dive into that a little bit later the next thing that we'll be talking about I'm not done with those is um performance composite scores when we see that word performance that really is just the test scores so back again to those State assessments grade level proficiency or glp is defined as students that have achieved a certain level on the EOG or eoc's and of course or end of grade and they have scored either sufficient understanding thorough understanding or comprehensive understanding so level five being the highest score that a student can attain and then we have a College and Career ready score which is a percentage of students who scored either a four or five so again either have a thorough understanding or a comprehensive understanding um the school performance grades uh there's an elementary and middle school model and then there's a high school model so the element Middle School model incorporates reading end of

grade scores math end of grade scores math one end of course scores for any middle school students that have taken math one in middle school science end of grade scores in fifth grade and eth grade English learner progress and then of course 20% of growth for our high schools the model is a little different so it has English two end of course scores math one and math three end of course scor biology and of course scores act work keys assessments English learner progress Math course rigor which is the number of 12th graders that have achieved a certain level of math instruction which is math three um again 20% of growth and then it also includes graduation rates so the high school model is a little bit more complicated because it has a larger number the English language learner progress also in high school is only for students who are identified in the 10 grade so they're even just taking a little slice of all the Learners from that school just a couple of overarching highlights um growth you can see here we had 26% of our schools who exceeded growth we had 32% meet growth and we had 42% of schools who did not meet the growth um indicator you'll notice in just a little bit though we're going to show you some examples of how some of our schools moved up in performance grade growth but they did not meet growth some of them had as many as six points of increase in their overall school performance grade so um I don't want anyone when you see the list of schools that did not meet growth please make no mistake there was still progress that happened in those schools um but the way that the growth is calculated if it's not a certain uh level that it's a positive level of growth it can overarching end up being um a negative growth not met that's really confusing I understand that that's something that we have to work with each school to say you still made progress as a school but

overarching you didn't get that final growth score go to the next one one of the things that we're really excited about um 69% of our schools met are exceeded in math but the one that I think we're most excited to see is that 92% of our schools um met or exceeded for grades three through eight reading and you're going to also see some examples of the success we're seeing at high school with literacy and I think that shows our commitment to our literacy training that you all have helped support our literacy curriculum in both elementary and middle schools that we've um implemented over the last couple of years um and so that's a really exciting number next slide this particular slide shows you each of our schools kind of on a Continuum with their growth index um anything that is over a positive two is considered exceeded and um you can actually see a couple of the schools that um are7 or slightly over one that that is still a a considered Meats but to be in the exceeded category you have to be about positive two or higher so you can see we had some schools who had um very high growth index Northwood Virginia cross our early college nor chadam George Moses Horton um Pittsboro bonley JS Waters and Perry Harrison all had those Positive Growth um scores next slide we also wanted to highlight we had quite a who also had every single one of their student groups as you know we have about 10 different categories of groups that we are held accountable for um and we get a growth score for each of those groups and um at Elementary North chadam Perry Harrison Pittsboro and Virginia cross met or exceeded with every single one of those student groups at our K8 and middle schools Horton George Moses Horton and JS Waters also met with every single one of their groups and the groups May depending upon um each School based off of the number of students in each of those groups at high school we

had chadam Central Northwood and the Early College um and this is one of those examples where again chadam Central is a school that went up in performance grade they also had every single one of their student groups meet or exceed growth but you'll notice when we look at our um list of schools that did not meet growth they were one of those so again there are very positive nuggets in that information we also are really excited that we are if you look at 115 leas in the state for third through e8th grade reading we are 15th in the state um and I recall over the last 10 years we've been as low as in the 60s so we have gradually been working up um in that level and we're in the top 15 at this point so we're excited about the work with our literacy plans English to um for our high school students we are 13th in the state so again a lot of progress being made um with that so now we're GNA dive into the performance grades so um 84% of chadam County Schools received a school performance grade of C or better um this is exciting because it exceed exceeds the state by nearly 20% so the state only has 67% of the schools um across North Carolina received a school performance grader see or better um this this graph represents a comparison of school grades from last year to this year so for example last year we had six schools that received the letter b and six schools this year um we decreased the number of D schools increase the number of C schools but we do have that one F School Chad from this year and of course we have Chad Early College our our 1A school so I think something to not that % of all schools in North Carolina receive as a recognition of letter eight and we have

or letter a and we have one of them so that's something to really celebrate and be proud of so this graph represents the school performance grade integer that each School received so the horizontal lines represent the threshold of what you would need to be to receive an a b or c and we can clearly see that some of our schools are moving closer towards higher letter so virgin from for example is one away from becom a school George moseson is only one point away from being a school and you see that one point and you just you're like where is that one point right um and then Bennett Pard are only two points away from getting to a and sometimes depending on how the numbers you say one can drill down a little more and um the next is where our high schools fall with performance grades and integers and then again we have some schools that are extremely close to that next threshold so couple points and more schol Dr before this this graph represents the number of points that our schools grew as far as the school performance grade indicator so you can see like C4 through six points that is very impressive um they're one of the schools that didn't meet growth but yet they grew six points in their school performance grade so it just becomes really ironic and interesting for the um mathematicians car that put together all those formulas because you're really have that H so um

it's clear that we have many in schools that increase their overall score even if they didn't meet the threshold for the next letter grade yes so one thing to keep in mind here as well is that the goal that we set for our schools Dr Jackson has goals that he expects um each of our schools to meet and that um threshold in this particular area is we expect all of our schools to get two to three performance grade points so you can see many of our schol P that and to get those six points as Mr rosty mentioned is pretty significant it's about it it's double what we typically would want to see question yall may not have numbers right now what's the state grow okay I that's a great question look at our numbers and go okay so now we're g to get into some of performance compos so this is um we looked at the region and we looked at all of the scores combined so it's all of the high school scores all of the 38 reading and math scores all of our e progress everything kind of and we ranked third in the region so again quite impressive and we are um well above the state average the state average was 4 54.2 and we're at 57.8 and it's only Wake County and Chapel Hill that are above us this year you one of the things that I think we always try to mention too is that when you look at the comparisons across the region and the state obviously in every District um are different and um come with a variety of different needs for students and when you look at um the

comparisons up here you have Chapel Hill schools which has only about eight to 10% of their students that are students that have um at risk factors or a free and reduced lunch status um compared with our district which the district average is around 40% and we have schools as high as 97% so when you're really thinking about um the students and where we're meeting them and how far we're moving them um you're kind of comparing apples to oranges here as far as that that goes um we're probably most comparable when you look at surrounding districts Orange County Schools is a little bit more aligned with kind of the um diversity as well as the economic status of our district um and you can see where they fall on this list in comparison to Chad everybody's quiet at this point I think that's a big wooo so this presents all the areas in which chattam county schools performed above the state average um so you can see there's quite a bit up there I was running out of space on the graph so I had to combine some of the um indicators together on one bar there um the only areas were third grade reading eth grade science math 3 and ml progress but every other indicator we were about the state average that's another thing that's important to notice and celebrate um this just goes into a little B detail comparing where chattam County Schools was to the state so again combining all the three eight scores together what our average was compared to the states High School Achievements assessments put all together acts and work can and some of those areas were significantly above um the state of North Carolina is interesting I keep waiting for this to end when are we going to stop talking about the pandemic I know that Dr Jackson has kind of this we ever going to get past this um but the state keeps bringing up this comparison so I feel like it's important for us to share um

that our prepandemic overall performance composite was 62.4 the year that we came back it went dropped down to 47 point now n and now we're just four points under where we were pre pandemic so you'll see um it's interesting some of these numbers here this represents our high school indicator so these are our high school assessments and you can see we've either exceeded where we were pre pandemic or we're extremely close so when I'm looking at these graphs I'm it kind of I'm putting it into context of what year did these students Miss in their educational outcomes so when I look at this I I these high schoolers some of them missed their maybe first year in high school or their second year in high school so these students didn't miss necessarily their foundational years where they were learning the foundations of the Learning Blocks and the fluency so um the impact it seems like our students have that that didn't miss those years have made an earlier comeback when we look at high school scores which we're going to get into um the or middle schoolers the middle school students I was working in a PLC the other day the seventh graders missed thir grade which is where you get your foundation and become fluent and they were talking about the students struggling with the multiplication facts I was like that that's third grade and they missed their multiplication facts and now they're in seventh grade sitting and learning advanced math and still struggling with those facts that they missed in third grade so I feel like our middle school students right now are the ones that we need to kind of dig into to see what else do we think they missed so um we're going to dig a little grade um indicators so this is the third grade read to achieve data I almost put pre pandemic numbers up here and I thought of Dr Jackson um and I was like

well the thing is is that these third graders weren't in school during the pandemic so we don't really need to go back to that so again really our focus on pre pandemic should be the students that are in middle school so um what's really exciting about these numbers and is such a great Baseline is that well we had 6655 third graders last year that were enrolled in chadam keny schools 48.2 passed the EOG or passed the beginning of year so first time around they passed the assessment but when we look at all of those multiple Pathways that we've talked about in the past reading passages throughout the year mclass assessments a read to achieve assessment summer camp opportunities it increases to 69.4 so those are the students that showed some sort of on an assessment that says that they met the third grade reading thresholds according to the state of North Carolina the number on the bottom is the total number of students obtaining a pathway as outlined in the legislation and that number is 83.4 that number includes our special education students our second language Learners that maybe are new to the country so they're not counted in those top numbers so it increases significantly but that bottom number of 83.4 don't have as much control over that number because one year we might have a lot of third graders that are new to the country or it might so happen that we have a lot of special education students that year whereas that 69.4 is really the number that we want to use to kind of Target movement and last year I think we're at like 69.1 for that number so we're making incremental but we're hoping that next year with all the changes we've made incc that's going to increase included in the F score is not is it that's what I thought so really for a teacher they can see the difference

there from the beginning to the end okay but it's not included um it's for us to yeah I understand um so this is a fiveyear comparison um and we look at these of course that first bar in the light blue is 2018 2019 prepandemic of and then you can kind of see the change but it's exciting to look I put this together and I was like I really like the way this looks because you can see that we're getting extremely close to where we were and then exceeding in some areas like those high school areas too so I just thought it was something important to share and kind of take note of um the next couple charts these are just the charts we'll post to the website this is something that's required by the state of North Carolina we're not going to talk about these too much they're just here for you to um it's each school by grade for reading and math and science so Jimmy you can go through the slides and you can um look and it has a county average and state average for each of the assessments so our high school indicators give a couple of overviews there again we have another one of those charts if you want to see all of these broken down by school go to the next one um we particular excited um this year to share that our fiveyear and four-year graduation rates are sitting at 90% and that was the goal that Dr Jackson set for our schools um and you can see that the state foure is 86% and the fiveyear is 88% now I don't have data for chadam County Schools as far back as you know when it first opened or whenever graduation rate started but to become a thing but we have at least 15 years worth that we were able to track back and we have not seen the graduation rate um of this level in all of the years of data that we can find so we're particularly excited about the progress that our high schools are making um also um and going along with

our graduation rates we have our high school students who earn 36 million dollars in scholarships and of those 366 million you can see what percentage of um those were from Avid students 51.5% of that 36 million are from our Avid students also to note the class of 2024 earned 360 semesters of coursework so imagine how many degrees that is how many dollars that saved families um and so our students are obtaining quite a bit of um college credit while they're in high school we also had 97% of our students this past year who were accepted to two or four year colleges or universities and of those 89.6% of those students um said that they were planning um to go on to those universities of course some of those students who may have been accepted into universities may have gone into the military instead or they may have gone straight into the workforce and again you can see the other High School indicators here so um as always better is always possible and so we wanted to point out to you and be really transparent about where we believe that our data is telling us we have areas to focus on um and then what we're going to do about it what we're already doing about it so um an area of focus for us is our multilingual learner progress our ESL students um and while they are making progress they're not making it at the rate that we would like to see our students with disabilities um while many of our schools did make progress with this group of course our EC student group tends to be our our group that has some of the lowest proficiency which would be somewhat expected but it's still an area that we believe that all students are capable of learning and we want to continue to focus on that group eighth grade science fell slightly below the state average um and so we want to make sure that we are focusing there with some professional development for our teachers math three at the high school continues to be an area we want

to focus on and third grade reading was only 02 um percentage areas away from the state level but again that's still always going to be an area that we focus on I think it's always on our on our list because we know that's such a pivotal data point and then um as you'll see in just a moment um one of our major areas of focus will be supporting our support plan schools and so some of the action steps that we are already taking um currently um we will be working with an outside provider to do a program review of our ml um program and um you know that we've done a variety of these over the years with our EC program our dual language program um our AIG program and it really is helpful to sometimes have outside eyes come in and say Here's what's working and here's what we think you might want to consider um they they usually will help us have some recommendations for improvements and they'll also do comparisons to where we compare with Staffing or other types of programmatic um tools or resources as compared with other places so we're excited about that um our ml uh staff and EC staff are in the process of being trained on co- teing that work is already underway and started in August um some of them actually started this past year as well and then as you know we adopted the K5 curriculum the E curriculum really exciting to be out in the schools and see how excited our teachers are about this program and to see the level of conversation the level of rigor and the level of writing that is happening in all classrooms even in the first week of school um and to see teachers this excited about a program I don't know in all the adoptions of curriculum that we've done over the years have we ever had really this much Buy in so that has been really exciting to see um we will continue to sustain the letters professional development for any new St or staff that come to us who have not received that we will also have professional development on the science kits what we've noticed is that over the years um we provided the science kits to staff we're seeing some of those not being used um as consistently or with

Fidelity as we would like and some of that could be that we've not had enough training for teachers to know how to use it um because when the kid arrives on your door it has a lot of stuff in it but they might need help knowing how to make that match the curriculum so that work is in progress we've also o work to get Delta math intervention for our high schools and then you'll see here in just a moment our support plans we've already started um and we'll be meeting with principes this week to share more about those plans so a little bit to note about the support plans they are not state required um it's a process we started back in 20156 and we have a pretty good recipe for Success um with the exception of just a couple of schools almost every school that goes into the support plan process usually comes out of that process within one year so if they go in not meeting growth usually within a year we're able to have them meet or exceed growth um and we it's a tiered structure for us and we do this for any school that has not met growth any school that went backwards in a letter grade or any school that is a d or F school um it's an ongoing accountability structure and a way that we provide additional support layers to schools and also additional problem solving around data weuse number of funding sources for this we use state and local at risk student funds in instructional Supply funds professional development funds and contracted services so we don't receive any additional funding from the state for any of our schools um that are identified as low performing it's just something that we um commit to doing with the funds that we have available next slide so this particular chart shows you each of our schools that we will have on a chadam County Schools support plan this upcoming year um you can see there the schools that are not meeting growth um any school that is a d ORF any school that dropped a letter grade or any school that is deemed by the state as a school that is um low performing or as we say a school in need of support and that just shows you an

overview of which schools have that designation and then what type of support plan they will have and Mr swanel if you can click on the support plan process real quick you can blow that up a little bit so um I'm just going to speed through this but um you've probably seen this document in the past we've added a few new things this year but it has all of the legal language around um the supports that are required by the state um for communication about plans and that type of things you'll keep going scrolling up keep scrolling up we also have that same chart with each of the schools that we're focused on going we also then have a table keep going up that lists who is the point person of contact for each of these schools and then the next chart also shows how many instructional visits they will have how many data huddles they will have and all of the different um components that each school has keep going this chart shows for each of the schools in blue that have a support plan the individuals from the academic Services team that will be assigned to go to those schools on a regular basis for instructional visits and data huddles so you can see um particularly you'll notice that some of our schools that have the highest level of need will have a much larger list of support staff and then the bottom part of this document will show you all of the various requirements of support plans and so we do the instructional visits we have four meetings with the principle throughout the year um at minimum to look at data we also give um feedback on um principal and assistant principal evaluations of teachers to make sure that teachers are getting high quality feedback on their performance we look at any teacher that does not um meet expected growth for their um class and provide professional development to those teachers as well as additional supports and a number of other supports um we meet with those schools and we look at what their needs are so over the

years we've um provided additional funds for tutoring we've provided um books for a book study in a particular curriculum area that a school wanted to focus on we've provided additional supports from outside folks to give um coaching support to our principes or to certain staff so there are just a number of ways that we will um kind of Target or um create supports for each individual school that are very targeted to that school and if you'll click out of that back to our slide deck go to the next slide so there are a couple of things that are required by the state for low performing schools which is part of the reason we're sharing this this evening we wanted to get ahead of the plan with this um so chattam middle and Syler City Elementary are only two schools at this point that are designated as low performing um the plan um that we've included here is um a sample that we'll walk through in just a second um community members have from this board meeting until the next board meeting to give feedback and staff can do that as well um and any feedback that anyone would like to give can be sent to my attention um we will then bring these plans back for your approval at the October meeting um so that we'll be ahead of that state deadline um which is in December um the schools also um will be required to send a letter home to families outlining their support and things that they'll be doing to increase student achievement in their school so really the only thing that the state requires of us um for these schools is that we send a letter home and that we have a plan of some sort they really don't get into designating what has to be on that plan um and we have um this is something that we're really proud of we sh at the state level with other districts as well we've had other districts come in and meet with our team so that we could share our process that we use here in Chad and if you'll click on that link there at the top um we know um our school in greatest need in our district right now is chatam Middle

School and we're not going to hide from that we want to be very transparent about that we've never had a school that had a school grade of an f and we take that very seriously so we have already worked um with principal leak over the summer and we put quite a few changes in place at chatam middle already um as you know we've added an an assistant principal there to assist with um General leadership and oversight and instructional monitoring we had the staggered start um this year as well which helped the school really get off to new expectations and um very clear guidelines for structures in the school we also have a plan of support here that outlines all of the different academic staff um we will be meeting with the school weekly in a variety of ways we we have staff going to all of their PLC meetings we have staff going to each of their faculty meetings School Improvement meetings helping plan for those meetings as well so that we're working alongside of the principal um keep going up just a little bit that shows the individuals who are assigned we also help the school put some structures in place you'll keep going up like weekly staff Communications um ways of they're tracking data working with the administrative team um I'm meeting with them on a regular BAS I think I've met with them about three or four times already this school year just looking at um how they're organizing the school year they have plans for student leadership Community engagement um sessions for parents you'll just keep scrolling it's about a 10 page plan so you can see we have a lot of different things that we're working on with them I won't go into all of the details here but you can see some of the different things that are listed here even down to how are we managing student movement in the building um if we see that um student discipline issues are happening during transitions then how can we control those transitions so we worked with the school team to develop some new structures around things just like that um we're excited we went to meet with the chattam Middle School um staff uh during the work days to share this plan

with them and the staff are excited there are some amazing great staff members there I believe the school is almost 100% staffed if not 100% at this point um and so it's been exciting to be able to the year with quality teachers in place and people who are very very excited about the work they're doing particularly some of the international staff we have are unbelievable and are already serving as um leaders within the school in fact he took one of the teachers took over the meeting and started teaching us cheers and different things with data so that was pretty cool to see um them take leadership so again that's not everything um with our chat middle plan but it's up there for the public to see for you to see and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to um us and we're happy to answer it um a lot of these things are already in place and will be continued and ongoing this will also be a living breathing document so as we meet with chadam middle we'll continue to add things here we'll mark things off in green as we complete them so that you'll be able to see our progress as well back so um I love this quote that Dr Jackson gave us a couple of years ago and really just speaks to um what we know about our students our students are more than test numbers but we also know that we have to have accountability just like any profession does and the work that our teachers are doing with our students in the classroom I would put them up against any in the state and so we always want to make sure that while we share these numbers and while we share these plans of support that we also recognize and honor the work that our teachers and our leaders are doing in classrooms um because amazing things are happening in our schools and better as always possible and we're going to everything we can to continue to get better each and every day um we're happy to answer any questions that you have we know that was a lot um but we also wanted to make sure we shared um enough depth of the data yes I have a question thank you for this presentation um so while we have people

in the audience listening in you mentioned opportun feedback up Community feedback and I was just wondering if you can elaborate a little bit on what that will look like and how people can access that so that anybody listening in and so that we can also help spread the word yes so in the board item it has my contact information there's not a formal um form or process folks can send that in any language they can send it in an email they can call however they would like to give that feedback the school will also send that out to their stakeholders so that has been shared with their school Improvement uh team and then they will have to share that out with their stakeholders so anybody who is a family member parent Guardian in theol will receive the plan and they'll have directions for how to give that feedback directly back to the school so they'll email you back directly you want title it doesn't have to be any particular format um it could just be just an an email to me now the school will receive the feedback directly through the principal and he'll send that information to us the parents that are coming into school will have an opportunity to give that feedback directly to so the principal will send out in the weekly phone message a link to the plan and then we'll make sure that there is an opportunity and directions on how to get feedback in the past we've just done that where they email the principal and then advisory team yes in fact we have our first um District parent advisory I believe September 26th I hope that's the correct date but I'm pretty sure that's when it's coming up and we typically have shared the accountability results and the support plan structures during that meeting so that will be our plan again and so that would and so for any parent listening

they can find that information on oursite or school and the plan is linked here for chat and midle as well as all of the question the chart about school not grow a lot of explain I guess why that is it seems schol are ofina where students end and take those same students and sta them right so like rank them an average was 90% proficient so you're going to be up here or if your average was 40% proficient you're going to be here and they put you in a progression then the next year the same students take the assessment they they take all the assessments together and then they restack those same students so if in if this student in the third grade say this school the third graders were ranked 10th in the state the next year depending on scor and how they ranked if they stayed at the 10th percentile or ranked 10th in the state then that's meeting growth if if they became eth in the state then they exceeded growth and if they were lower would be less but then there's a standard deviation in there that's the simple way to kind of explain it that simple simple it is it is

very AR grow from AAS and performance and then I'm going to did that school kind of stay where they were or did they get better or worse and I'm it's probably the the thing that I would say our largest frustration with the way that the accountability model is is it's based off of 80% proficiency so in some schools um particularly schools that tend to have students who come to us with maybe already quite a few of their needs met or already have a lot of academic language opportunities that other students may not have that proficiency is probably going to be there regardless right but we have

schools like Virginia cross who are moving students and they're this outlier Li on Scatter Plots for the state they are moving students further than lots of other you know schools in the state but they still have a grade of a d because they don't have that proficiency and 80% of that school grade comes from proficiency alone not the growth I do think the question that you're asking though it does become increasingly more challenging when students are at a level five um and they're already in that top tier score to continue to move them and so the work that we have to do particularly with some of our higher performing School that are um our B schools and our a schools to continue to meet growth is we have to continue to up the level of rigor for all students in those schools even if you are a student who is a level four or five you still need to be moving and that's not always an easy thing to do I mean think about yourself with weight loss or in sports once you reach that point it's really hard to continue to to get beyond that point right so it's similar with our schools is that I think that's kind of what you're asking etic talk are how so of our focus and were kind of entering the end of second and third grade and just starting to get these test scor back so I think when we first came back our Focus was oh my gosh these students begin builds and now as I'm kind of sitting and work with teachers anding into the middle school

data that's when I started reflecting wow students and so we're trying to figure out now just ating earlier how are I think that another problem you're saying Mak sense if they but this is Middle School these are children that are ad they have and I wish that we could develop a curriculum that gives them that social emotional support while going you know them that's to them you know always the most unique group in I know that we have counselors schools aort not having good glasses but this part of our support plan and I'm trying to remember from looking at it includ sending more counselors to chat so the support plan does not necessarily um give additional Staffing all the time um we do allow staff to do position um transfers so if they want to add additional counselors they have Title One funds they can do that and so um chatt middle has done a couple of different things in kind of the student services area Miss Valor I can't remember exactly what all they've added but they've added a couple of different things they have the Avid support they have an additional person who helps with student behaviors um as well so they use

those additional federal funds that they receive um and of course they have a full-time social worker as well so we do um try to add additional supports where we can other things that we will sometimes do for schools that are support planed schools if they are a school that um is right on the cusp of losing a teacher um because of student numbers we will sometimes say we're going to allow that school to hang on to that teacher because they're in that support plan status so there are things that we're able to um to help provide additional supports but it's not typically we're giving a lot of extra positions we have um really great um allotments for our schools compared with neighboring counties um but we have to also look at how we're using those positions and how we're maximizing them and monitoring instruction so um we try not to always just think about adding people but looking at how we're using the people we already have that does that make sense um from what I've understood we have the fewest combinations going on this year that we've had in a while am I correct on from what I've asked and what teachers have told me yes worked with teens at schools to try our hardest to eliminate the the need well you must have done a pretty good job because I've heard teachers really expounding on that quite a bit and appreciating that last two years not yeah last year had maybe three or four and this year um I don't know zero JS wat has one yeah they do they tell you're right yeah doesn't have any so and Ks are difficult anyway I understand that yes we did a lot of it takes hours but we got thank y' for that you are so welcome and again that comes from not giving any additional allotments to those schools but that comes from creative scheduling and also looking at um the class SI

expectations jul used to and I know things change when everything goes T scor go use the if the state say in third grade the reading isorm way I look at they just arbitrarily say this is the new cut offs is that still happen because the bottom if that's still happening the bottom line is long story short no matter how well we ever do the St going to make because you mentioned Early College you know you're already sitting in an A and they had grow how did they you know you just shake your head and say okay if you're you're already making a 98 I'm just thr the number but you're already making a 98 how did you ience science back we will not have them at the end of the scho that so they do

go through science I would only say that the long and short of all of this is starts yeah the game starts long and short is truly this is the result of one day our students going into you know and there are lots of systems in place that will help us try to understand this this is one pulse point and I I really want us to understand regardless of what you call a kid I me a school there are kids in every one of these schools who have absolutely blown the top we have SK kids who who score fives and we have in in even the highest performing schools we have kids who scored once our job is to make sure that every single child is prepared uh to meet the rigors every single day in every single classroom uh and and I would caution us from getting so bogged down on this one one day it is an indicator for us and it should help us plan what we do but we should always be looking throughout the year at those formative places where we stop and look at how kids are doing um we also need to make sure that we not um that um growth formula they will tell you I spent two and a half hours on the phone with DPI and I and I'll say this publicly they could not explain it to me I'm being very candid with it was very difficult for them to make it make sense so I'm sitting here chuckling because we can't really make there's no real simple answer for it it's a

standard Dev and a negative two to a positive two and if you know zero is the midpoint and more kids are closer to the negative two than they are to the positive two even though they're within the range your school could be so that's how we have schools with because I couldn't understand how could you have a school where every subgroup me to exceeds growth and the school does not as a whole reg grow they could not explain that to me and so I would just say we we are working on that is a proprietary formula that we're probably not going to know uh so we we take this work and we begin to push forward uh and so that this year we're going to try to help schools move as many kids towards that plus two as they can get that's the easiest way I can say it so hopefully that helps I used it was like recipe it was a secret formula and only a handful of people what that secret form is andbody secr I have one more question just circling back to me cing back to parents engagement have such high percent ofs I know that they can email you in Spanish are the other materials available in Spanish I just want to make sure because I imagine about this they're going questions they're going want to talk I just want to make it's accessible I know that yall have accessibility in your mind to just there's concrete we can confirm about that yes so when the letter goes out to families it will be in Spanish the plan will be translated so that they can see the plan in Spanish as well and they can send their feedback in English or Spanish um and then the school typically usually has a curriculum night as well where they talk about these things so they'll also obvious the two-way

communication devices as well so that families can hear the information in both languages ability they all stuff politics that are going on now and competition for parents and who go to this school or that school it just blows mind that people in make decisions wouldn't want to make public schools look better and let's change the formula 7 or 6040 or 5050 hello had the State Board asked for that in that in the process of being asked for right now it's been yeah but the legisl would have to approve that Dr thank you any other questions thank you all very much we appreciate the information item be um ncsba board policy manual update 7000 series course first reading Dr Moran so as you know we're in the process of revising all of our policies this particular um month we have 19 policies for review from the school boards Association and it's the 000 B series so we've brought you the

7000a already the vast majority of these policies fall within our human resources um Division and if you look at the chart if you could pull open the chart I'll just point out a couple of quick things the vast majority of these that are in green are things that had just um small revisions to legal language or small changes in language to match um other policies there are a couple that are marked in Orange that we will bring back to you next month these these typically were places where we have an existing chadam County Schools policy that they are asking that we repeal and replace with a school board's Association policy and so we wanted to give a little more time these came to us very um I don't just actually a few days ago so we wanted to make sure we had time to look at that before we started repealing policies so we'll bring those to you next month but they are highlighted in Orange so you can see specifically which ones those are I think there are three the rest of them are um pretty much just um reference updates or um legal updates that are required by um State policy but um we're here to answer any questions about any of these that you may have of course we'll bring them back for um the final approval next month are there any that stand out particular the absences due to inclement weather is an area where there was some um language that was unique to chadam um that we had to make some decisions about the and if drer still here I don't know if there any you want to mention specifically um the three that were in question that we have some decisions to make about were the return to work policy superintendent contract and work day and overtime and again those were because we had chatam mised policies so the official School boards Association policy was not what was currently in our books and so again you know since we only had these for a couple of days to review we wanted to those until the next meeting um before we decide if we want

to just throw out the policies we have but really the rest of them you can see in the table it'll show you the notes for consideration um most of these will say it's language to be consistent with other policies changes in the reference to match legal updates so really there's not a lot of substantial change in any of these it's all um for the most part clarifying matching legal references updating School District to SCH school system small things like thatu and so I could I didn't detect significant difference but I just wanted to make sure when I read it that I wasn't missing one of those you know tricky legal words that changes everything you know any questions action items Dr still there um resolution arts and education week please so um this week starting September 8th is arts and education week and as you know chadam county has a long history of supporting the Arts across our district um we are competitive local Regional and state level we've been named one of the best communities for music one of only two in the state I believe this might be years seven or eight I keep forgetting which but quite a while we've been receiving that designation we also have support from our chadam Arts Council who provides our schools with residencies each year to provide our students with high quality instruction and arts um 2023 was the first year we also had artist year AER cor members in our two of our schools who are teaching visiting artists but they're basically like full-time employees this year we will have two more of those visiting artists with us um and we're excited that we've added some new Arts positions at a time that many districts are cutting Arts positions we um will have our um arts program facilitator with us um his name is uh Mr Brian D christofaro he is a CCS

graduate he also taught at multiple chadam County schools and came from a family of chattam County Schools Educators they have moved back um into the chadam area from Arizona and he will be working to support our Arts programming we'll be working on a more comprehensive Arch program update for you after he kind of gets transitioned and gets his feet wet here um but he's busy out supporting our teachers we also were able this year for the first time in the history that I'm aware of in chadam were able to eliminate the paired positions that we had at our K8 schools and these positions that were shared amongst schools wreaked havoc on the scheduling for schools instead of scheduling for what was best for students or instruction we had to schedule based off of when we had people available in schools and so this will also bring consistency to Arts programming so that every school has the same Arts programs every school has the same amount of time and the same every week experience for students in some of our schools we were we had a week B week um on certain Arts programming and so that will be eliminated this year one Chad thank you Chad that's right and we have amazing talented students in our district who are recognized up to the international level um and we have dedicated staff who you heard this earlier from the student who spoke who build relationships with our students and really hone their craft to help our students be the best that they can be so um it's a great week for us to celebrate our Arts teachers and our Arts students and so in honor of Education we for the Arts we have the resolution for your approval I moved at the chattam County Board of Education approve the resolution for arts and education we got a motion in an early second so we we'll take it anyway uh any discussion other than thought you know got to visit time or two when artists were working and I thought it was Fant actually I was in a um art class they didn't ask me to uh last Thursday with third graders and they were doing bunny hair day or

whatever was themselves pictures and it was wonderful they kids were doing a really good job so thank you for that and of course I was in a music class they didn't ask me to sing either think it was for that but I was I've been really impressed and thank you for all of that anybody else uh all in favor of the motion with an eye please I oppose like thank you Dr Moran again speech Inspirations PC contract so the next two items that are kind of backtack here um as you know we've used a number of strategies over the last couple of years to ensure that our EC positions are filled in our schools and tonight we have two EC contracts for your consideration um these are the types of services that will save our district from costly compensatory services or um litigation for St students who maybe have laps service times and so when we're unable to find a person to hire full-time we will often use these types of services to make sure that students are still being served um Mr Mike Thomas is our EC coordinator and he works specifically in helping um get these positions for our related services and I want to give him a shout out I think we have the highest fill rate that we've had in at least the 10 years I've been here um for our related services and so he's really um been doing a lot of work to help get these positions filled so he'll tell you more about these particular contracts good evening Mr um Mr chair members of the board Dr deck so we we are doing better at Staffing our speech language methology positions uh however we we do need to continue to utilize the tool of contract providers when we can we have contracted with speech inspiration since about 2021 um they've been a wonderful partner they've helped us that we can meets of our students and reduce compensatory Services the cost of the contct coverr F I move County Board of Education

approve disputes Inspirations pllc contract as presented got a motion a second any questions I think that's wonderful that we're able to provide new Services thank you all in favor with an I please I any opposed side thank you and we're Allied instructional servic contract so she's leaving you up there Mr Thomas so you're good to go thank you um yes Allied instructional Services they do provide services for students who are blind and visually impaired this particular service provides uh virtual Services which I had a question about myself and I learned today that often when well when students are learning to become teachers of visually impaired they're often told not or to reduce the amount of guidance that they provide students when they're learning PR sensory inut essentially student who is visually paed or blind the main form of instruction they have is for listening and so the computer screen can provide that they will have um EC service providers in the room with them facilitating that process we did use them at the end of last year when we were in a pinch and uh we had to do some creative thinking again this year and we're able to secure them we would prefer to have iners this is the option that we have and we need to get our kids services so um we again contract is also covered under existing funds so no new funds will be necessary I have a motion I have a second got a motion a second any questions any discussion all in favor with an i i any like sign thank you very much U next schedule Board of Education meeting is Monday October the 7 5:30 p.m here in Cal Services uh do I have a motion to adjourn got a couple of motions do I

have a second all in favor with an i i and oppose time thank you thank you all