##VIDEO ID:CJD8JHy294U## this is our truth and Taxation public hearing um the first thing on the agenda under stewardship resources truth and Taxation presentation era good evening board and public um I'll go through our tax process real quickly and hit all the required parts of this hearing um in this hearing we're going to talk about the levy process um where the taxes the amounts come from the district's actual budget for last year and for this year and then we'll have public comment um we are required by law to hold this hearing um from law in 1989 um the county sent out your tax statements and we'll hold this hearing to talk about those and how they'll be spent this meeting is required to be held between certain dates at a certain time and all the different bullet points that we'll talk about the schools cycle um we have a fiscal year end of June 30th which is different than the other government cities and counties which year end is December 31st so the the amount that we're living right now um is not until our fiscal year 26 operating year kind of hard to see but um the county assessor will um determine values on properties um in late 2023 and early 2024 um we will calculate the levy based on several inputs between July and September um in November you got your proposed tax statements um not your final ones um we're having this hearing and then these will be certified in January by the county and you will make payments on these in April and in November it's confusing sometimes when you get your property tax statement because it may seem like your taxes went up unfairly or by a significant amount and what happens is we just have to remember the taxes are just a giant pie and every taxpayer in this the county um is assessed a certain part of that so um let's say um Mindy and Ben have two properties Indies is the blue Ben is the orange and they're each valued at the same they're each $100,000 and our Levy is 500 th $500 and there are only two taxpayers so it's really simple and Mindy's home value goes up to 100 25,000 the assessor thinks it's beautiful and Benz only goes up by 110,000 still nice not as nice so um the levy is still $500 but because the home value went up more on Mindy's home she is going to pay a larger percentage of the taxes she's act hers is actually going to increase where Ben's is going to decrease because his his property is the smaller percentage of the total property value so it's important to understand what's happening in our County and our district because that feeds into how much taxes we end up paying that's something else happened this year in law that affected taxpayers positively um this tax statement this proposed tax statement the taxes on the value are the proposed value is flat the state increased the Homestead market value exclusion which deducts a part of your value right off the top and you're not taxed on it so if your home is valued up to $517,000 you will get an exclusion and you will not be taxed on a portion of your property so that that amount went up and it's very obvious on this property taxpayer's um statement this person's taxes will go down um quite a bit if they're in our district because if you look at the back of your tax statement you can see um our District's taxes are going down 4.6% we would have liked them to go up with an operating referendum but that didn't pass so they're going down um 4.6% and this is the breakout and it was it was confusing this year because we had some debt dropping off and some other debt going up so overall um the general fund Levy is going down and The Debt Service leves are also going down and the reasons for these the general fund is going down um we have to Levy for retirees health insurance um we do have a trust fund still from the debt we issued but um we need to start putting that on the levy because when our trust is depleted all of that liability will go on the levy every year and right now that's about $3 million so when that trust is gone that will end up going on the levy The Debt Service um the best way to describe this is we the debt for those this this Levy is for fiscal year 26 so we don't need to collect any um taxes for that service in 26 and we structure our debt payments so that um the effects of those issuances aren't um volatile on the taxes so people don't feel a huge increase when we issue debt we structure it so it's nice and flat so the school building bonds those are the blue and those amounts those Debt Service payments were structured to be lower until this debt came off the roles and then that those payments go up significantly and taxpayers overall our our debt service payments are going down um so that is a win for everyone we're meeting our debt service obligations and we're paying off our debt this shows a summary of operating referenda in the state of Minnesota and it breaks it out I really like this chart from bar it breaks it out by um Metro districts and Rural districts in total um so you can see of the total 278 rural districts in the state of Minnesota 191 of them have an operating referendum so 68% of them do and that Authority for those districts is averages $98 Metro districts also um 89% of Metro districts have operating referendums to assist with their operations the average Authority for those districts is $1,559 so if we had that per student would be you know we would have a different conversation in the upcoming months regarding our budget so just something to be aware of and this is just a map that shows the operating referendum in the state the exciting part you heard from our Auditors last month our audit um we got a clean audit and unmodified opinion the best opinion you can get we retain our low audit status which is probably only exciting to me but um I'm glad to have it and the best part is our fund balance we increased our fund balance we met the floor of our fund balance goal we're at 10% of our operating expenditures in our unrestricted fund balance so um we really thought this would day would take a lot longer um even you know a few months ago but because of how our covid money was coming due it all had to be spent by September 30th there wasn't enough expenses in 25 before September 30th to use up all our Co and I didn't want to lose any so I moved part of that back to 2024 and that is why we have our fund balance goal why we met it so this is just very exciting it it puts us com kind of at a restart like we're here now we're just working on our operations and this also our fund balance you can see the 10% for this year and I'm predicting for that end of facil year 25 we will also um be about a 10% the yellow is the Department of education's um fund balance measurement it's the sod calculation how they measure um District Health if a district is below um a negative 2.5% they're an sod statutory operating debt um and we never want to be there and we never want to be where we were just a couple years ago in fiscal year 22 with the fund balance it definitely helps with our cash also and without that covid money we wouldn't be where we are like I was saying um the orange in here represents the covid funding so the blue is our expenses for the last 10 years the green is all our revenues except for covid money and you can see without that covid funding we would not have exceeded expenses in the last couple years so it's it's exciting that we come through this because we all know it was very difficult um there's still more difficult times to come but we need to celebrate um what's happened where our money comes from has not been consistent the biggest part has consistently been State AIDS Federal AIDS um went up in 21 through 24 and that is co money um that is going away in fiscal year 25 we have we spent because that's all done um approximately $350,000 in Co money um a lot of it was for summer school we just had a really robust summer school so some of those expenses will have to be cut back but we were able to use that much for that the fees and donations have become a bigger part of um our revenue and you know everyone is feeling that but we have to make up our budget somehow and then taxes and other local is a smaller part of our budget unfortunately our expenses where we're spending money has consistently been an instruction and this is this is great 73% of every dollar we spend goes directly to a classroom um 11% is spent on our buildings and some may argue that's not enough to upkeep our buildings but we're making it work right now um pupil support is transportation and counselors and nurses that is also shrunk and then administrative support also has decreased and that's at 8% so definitely the majority of our money going to the classroom where it's most importantly spent and with that um like we have talked about for years we spend the majority of our money on people and you know extremely important um in a district our size it's also important to keep up our um transportation Fleet and that we didn't buy any buses last year we had one budgeted we ordered it and they there's a long need time on those so we didn't get it um so we're ping it this year but just know we're putting off um Capital Improvements and purchases that we have that has been a part of our normal operations for several years and um with the size of our districts it's just important that we keep a balance and remember those are important also where we are today fcal year 25 our original budget for the general fund you approved a $900,000 surplus um um we did have $650,000 in that budget for fund balance health and when I removed the covid funds from 25's budget I removed that fund balance health because we're at our goal and you can tell me to put it back and I will put it back um but because we're at the 10% I removed it it's a discussion um topic definitely so overall our budget we're about Break Even it's very close um another you know reason that fund balance is important when you look at our revenue and this is not on an acral basis this is what cash in this is Cash in cash out um we're down $4 million right now from the beginning of the year from July 1 because the state holds back our money we don't get all our Revenue right away so you know we need that cushion to be able operate throughout the year until um those receipts catch up this has been a topic especially with the the legislature approving um linking inflation to um the the formula the basic education formula and if they had maintained that our district would have $5.7 million more um since they decoupled those so um just another example of why it's harder for districts to make it um when in these days you can see what inflation has done the unfortunate part is next year um the legislature capped the basic formula at 3% increase right now inflation for next year is anticipated at 2.1% so that's my assumption I'm using right now sorry about that um 2.1% but 2.1% on our total expenses is quite a bit and 2.1% on our formula is only $600,000 so there's a disconnect because that 2.1% isn't on all our money it's only on a small part and if inflation is at 2.1% health insurance is likely at five six seven 8% and it's just a losing battle for school districts right now but again we're making it work and this is really exciting um because we um spend less than the average District um we spend $1,300 less than the average district and you'll hear how our test scores are above State average and above the districts in our area that's exciting we spend less because we get less money um the amount less is $1,300 less and when we asked the voters for the referendum it was $1,100 so um just kudos to everyone in our district for all the work they're doing um to make this District work does anyone have any questions Eric can you flip back to that page that showed the percentages of Levy change um you showed up there at the um show I test County City ground ra oh yeah for sure back yeah so if I if I'm reading that correctly it Taska County increased their Levy by 3% city of Grand Rapids increased by 4.6% and we decreased Ours by 4.6% yeah if you look at that chart we're this is the only entity who Levy went down besides city of Bigfork on that entire list I didn't get a lot of calls from taxpayers complaining about their taxes Cara can you clarify uh we look at a 4.6 uh percent decrease uh in tax revenue is that because we don't need that money oh goodness no um it we we can't really say we need more money so we're going to get more money it's all set by formulas our decrease is a result of um assumptions a few years back um so they go back every the it's every other year so I believe it's 23 and 21 on these taxes they look at adjustments they look at any changes in assumptions for enrollment and our tax capacity so our tax value in our area if any of that has changed um these show up as adjustments so the the $268,000 is is because of the retire Health um just me saying our budget's going to be more tight I don't want to pay this out of the general fund because it's a year leg um so structurizing that and then just adjustments so so 168,000 in adjustments is not a lot um when it comes to assumptions from two and four years thank you Mr chair I think one of the things that Cara hit on is that structuring of debt and structuring of our Levy uh and if people look at their property tax statements you'll see that a portion of the school district uh tax went up and a portion of it went down um and that has to do with how that was structured so that in the end it was fairly level and that's intentional it's part of budgeting and and kind of the formulas that Cara talked about but a lot has to do with the planning so just wanted to to comment on that um the I think the approved part is the part that went up uh and that's because of that green that dropped off do the tax formula when they calculated do have anything to do with us getting rid of properties and buildings kind of things or no it would if those immediately went on the tax rules and had value um but they haven't made it to the tax RS yet the ones that we disclosed I was just wondering if anything to do with taxes good job thank you Karen thank you cara uh Julie has anyone signed up for public info this time we're going to adjourn the taxation hear come back into session for a workshop at 6:30 job car emails just for the record thrilled by the audit [Music] yeah e thing could you see those small figures on the screen isn't that nice I don't know what you're saying I could always see them yeah over there see helps a lot helps a lot thank you it does actually this is really nice yes there's nothing the only thing I I gotta get here earlier and be this this is this is what e e e e e e e e e e 30 she was presenting Deli of the month that's always yes all the work up to order uh the first item on the agenda tonight is a review of the 2025 Schoolboard meeting schedule superintendent gross all right thank you Mr chair um in your packet you'll see a calendar for 2025 board meetings uh again our our calendar is not uh coincidental with the school year ours runs January through December and we started with the draft you'll approve this or a calendar at the organizational meeting in January but this draft represents a pretty close mapping of the 2024 calendar onto the 2025 calendar uh for our board meetings the days in blue are the days that were proposing for a regular meeting the days in green are the days that we're proposing for the workshop you can also see the Big Fork dates in there uh shown with that gradient uh as well uh January in June and September the days in Gray are days that we cannot have a board meeting whether that's because of absences due to you know a conference or a holiday or a uh an election date or primary uh we also tried to be aware of M uh the Schoolboard conference things like that so um can't think of any other nuances to share the um we we tried to stick to the same number of meetings as well and work those workshops in where we can um I can't think any other nuances I don't Mark questions or comments from the board so if you see something between now and January sixth that uh stands out to you and we need to make an adjustment U that would be kind of the last chance to do that we obviously um the board can call a special meeting or we can call a special meeting with three days notice if we need to we have but this is how this looks right now well bet thank you uh next item on the agenda strategy team update gross all right I'm not gonna go uh talk a great deal because the the meat potatoes is is uh on Deck but I just wanted to just highlight our strategy team again this is a group that comes together to work on the implementation of our operational plan and so uh we you've seen this graphic before you'll see it again tonight um but it starts with our strategic directions our operational plan feeds the work of our strategy team our strategy team's purpose is to improve outcomes for students ultimately uh by creating action steps and I'm seeing really a good deal of maturity come out of that group it it's maturing over time um Anna does a great job of facilitating this this group and I appreciate the diligence of the team that that assembles because they're ultimately stepping away and out of their you know already full-time job away from that to come and uh do this deep planning and and thinking for our district this is a process you'll see this again later but this is the process we use to get better we start by listening developing high level action or a plan objectives goals planning they feed our early outs and then we monitor to see how we're doing these are our strategy team goals that were updated for this school year and I'm so happy that even though those are small that I can still see them um we did expand or add to the number of goals that we have for this year in part because there were some goals from 23 24 that we needed to stack on to or continue with uh so and we also aligned these now you can see how these align with the objectives on our strategic plan so it's listed on here uh the first couple are about evidence-based approaches and uh they tie into our work around reading and the implementation of some strategies uh in a book um uh in a book that our secondary staff are working through the next one uh is in the Equitable education Direction and that's ongoing work in our Behavior area that's a carry over goal from last year the same with the third one or fourth one there that's a carryover goal from last year improving our school to home communication we've developed some expectations and we're taking steps towards that and so uh that's good to see that that work being refined and implemented uh the bottom one here this is implementation or the second of the bottom implementation of our wit and wisdom curriculum and working that plan so that's part of the work too is ensuring that that is a is successful uh and the bottom one again is a evidence-based approach goal around Orton Gillingham and you can see some very specific expectations there and one of the things that we've really been thinking about is accountability and how do we make sure to um measure what we're doing and ensure that we're meeting those objectives doing what we say we're going to do we have science that we're also implementing whoops so that's also in our in our plan to do that again walkthroughs are how we're measuring whether that is happening or not work around crisis this will probably be an ongoing goal that we have every year um and so our crisis team is tied to our strategy team through members that crossover uh I sit on both um a couple of our principles sit on both and so so that's a way that we kind of cross populate those two teams Dart this is how we're measuring uh uh student this is how we're measuring student data or tracking student data or identifying students in need of extra support and so this is is about implementation with Fidelity you can see that next one is about data and how we're using data and then finally um that last one is about testing protocols again one that we carried over from last year that's in about ensuring that the data that we get accurately re represents what our kids know and can do and so uh we just want to make we think it's only fair and right to our kids fair and right to our families fair and right to our staff um and our community that those that those data are accurate so those are the goals for this year again they feed they feed and they serve really in support of our strategic directions you can see that lined up there so um just wanted to share that out that that work with you and then this next um this next piece that you'll hear is going to be a deeper dive into parts of this work so I'll uh hand it over to uh looks like Anna there's a whole bunch of yeah thanks yeah there's a green laser on there too is awesome watch out danger that um all right well thank you for inviting us to come today we're excited to be here um before we get started I just want to introduce our team um we come and talk to you all the time so we brought some other leaders uh in data today so I'm Anna I'm the director of special services Ashley Lind first grade at Coastal teach Jill East principal Ryan B and Bobby Adams was gonna be with us today too so um so we're happy to be here we figured you were sick of hearing from us though so we um other people uh today we're GNA talk about we're going to kind of start with the big picture so we're going to start with our strategic directions and talk about how those align with our data work we're GNA talk a bit about the role of the strategy team and just add a few more details um from what Matt just said we're gonna talk specifically around assessment and databased decision- making because those are the two heavy lifts that we've had in our data work over the last four years um we're going to have um a few of our teachers talk about how they use data practices in their classroom really to design responsive instruction for students um and then we're also going to talk about how we use data tin form systems implementation and make decisions about what to implement um and then to determine how our implementation is going and lastly we're going to talk about um last year's MCA results and next steps from that um so connection to the Strategic directions uh data is really infused in all of the Strategic directions and some capacity so um when we look at Equitable access representation and outcomes there's no way that we can determine if our students are getting what they need and all students are getting what they need without some objective data so our data framework has really been pivotable pivotal in identifying disproportionalities and giving us the information we need to Target specific disproportionalities that we're showing up in our data um and really it's the foundation for ensuring that we're making progress and correcting those disproportionalities when we think about a culture of trust engagement and belonging um one of the things that gets confusing in education systems is there's a lot of opinions floating around and everybody has a little different opinion on how we should do something or what we should do or why we should do it so data really gives us that that um that objective point that we can all look at and we can all use to get on the same page and really be transparent and create Clarity around what's happening and what our next steps are and if what we're doing is working databased decision making is really a huge foundational evidence-based practice when you look at the research the effect size of putting together a multi-tiered systems of support framework in your school setting is one of the highest evidence-based practices that we could do for our students and to improve student outcomes um we also use data to monitor the Fidelity of our implementation so how well we're doing something um is built into our evidence-based practice framework so you'll see that in walkthroughs um you'll see that in different ways that we measure if what we said we were going to do is actually happening Partnerships and collaboration again in order to have healthy conversations we have to be objective um we have to take that emotional piece aside um we have to triangulate our opinions with actual tangible facts um and you know we're going to talk more about that in a bit and that can be difficult and that's kind of right where we're at right now in terms of our learning um and lastly stewardship of resources we are running on as you all know um a pretty you know we just don't have enough resources to do do everything we need to do but data really helps us identify problems quickly and efficiently and provide a quick response so this creates an efficiency that saves money time and capacity so data shows up in our operational plan um in four places you can see objective 1.1 and 1.2 are both in our Equitable outcomes represent ation and access strategic Direction and again that's really the foundation of that work um and these objectives are around not missing any students and ensuring that the data we have flowing in that that we're analyzing um was taken with Fidelity and is accurate and that we're counting every single kid um and then from there objective 1.2 is really around identifying those disparities so how do we take that data identify what groups of student students or at the classroom level what individual students um need additional support or need to be targeted objective 2.1 is around a culture of trust engagement and belonging really specific to students so the purpose of this objective is to make sure that we are getting feedback from students on how it feels to be part of our building on and how they're doing in their emotional well-being um and their social well-being in school and that's really important important for us to live out that culture of trust engagement belonging strategic Direction objective 3.5 is around building that multisystems of support framework so that's around not only the data collection but then following that up with processes and procedures to ensure that we're taking that data and using it to improve outcomes for students and ensure they get what they need in the system so from there the strategy team uses the Minnesota multi-tiered systems of support framework um we've really embraced this for a lot of reasons the first reason is the Minnesota Department of Ed has partnered with the University of Minnesota so we know that this framework is foundationally sound in terms of its structure um and they're using evidence-based practices the second is it's a very cost effective um framework to use in that the Department of Education provides a lot of supports around this so we've accessed a lot of pre-professional development um a lot of the people that are on the team at the state level work with us individually or with buildings to help um build out their systems and troubleshoot so it's really a costeffective um framework to use for us as well and the two areas of this framework that are relevant to the conversation today our assessment and database decision making because we've done a lot of heavy lifting on that assessment system um which you guys have heard about for the last four years pretty much continuously we're getting very close to Fidelity on that um we have just a couple hotpots that we're working through um we know where they are uh but ultimately most almost all of our spaces we have several data points coming in on all of our kids that we use as a universal screener which Jen's going to talk about in a minute um but we feeling really confident in that system is built and we're just continuing to refine it um but that really isn't where the heavy lift is this year um the heavy lift really Falls more in the databased decision making um section so now we have all this data what do we do with it right how do we use it as at the district levels how do we use it at the building level and how do we use it at that classroom level um so we're really working through our shared leadership teams um and our early outs and the different structures that we already have in place to build staff skill sets in databased decision making and we're right in the messy um so it's not something everybody's feeling super confident about that's okay um so that's kind of where we're at on that whereas you know we can we can send out those assessment windows and people are very confidently getting their kids screened right away um so you can tell we're a couple of years a few years down the road on that one uh but you'll see that the goals are really around decisionmaking um so we have one goal related to a building level procedure around identifying students who may be in need of an intervention and that's our Dart teams um so you can see that the goal is really that those Dart teams are using an evidence-based procedure to analyze and identify what kids might need intervention in the system and what the next steps are for those kids you can see the next goal is more at that individual classroom level so this is really around teachers building their skill sets to analyze the data for the students in their classroom um identify a group of students or individual or an individual student that might need something different create an action plan around it implement the change and monitor the change over time so the mtss assessment framework provides us with um with four key things it provides us the ability to know who needs support what specific support is needed and whether those systems are working um whether our systems are working or what we've implemented is working and then also to know whether students have what they need for academic social and emotional and behavioral success um one thing that we're working on too just kind of as an aside is there's really no one data point that tells the whole story and when I think about kind of where we're at with database decision making a lot of the questions that we get from staff is you know this one test doesn't tell the whole story and you're right it doesn't but when we can look at several different data points when we can look at that star test when we can look at their attendance rate we can look at their office discipline referral rate and reliably know when kids come down to the office and kind of what the procedure is for that we can start to put together the picture and really understand our students better and then you layer on a social emotional screener where the kids giving us direct feedback right on how they're doing so from that data we can really put together a good plan for in investigating that problem at a higher level and a more efficient you know more efficiently than we would if we didn't have that data um again you're always going to have to dive in and dig deeper from the data but it really streamlines that at least you know what questions you're asking um so again we're at a point with our assessment where the big blocks are in place and Jen's gonna talk about those so that's super exciting um any questions on that I know I was scared of it all right so see all right so like Anna said assessment is pretty much hashed out at this point so I'll go kind of quickly through these but the four big buckets for assessment and a strong system are Universal screening diagnostic assessment progress monitoring and program Fidelity so to go first in Universal screening when we talk about this we Al we often make the comparison of going to the doctor and you get your temperature taken when you go there right and that temperature depending on how high or low it is is a good indicator as your health your overall health Universal is the same thing it gives us a good indicator as to the health of the system and the health of the student and that's in regard to any of the universal screening assessments that we administer the social and emotional behavioral the academic or when we're looking at Universal data as a whole so just so you know this data or this process is reviewed every single year it goes to our principles it goes to our BLT members we seek feedback I can tell you that our um calendar of testing has not been the same for every year that we've been doing this there's never been one year that's been exactly the same every year we analyze we go through that continuous feedback loop and we make improvements we're also always aligning it to State mandates again we're looking at that systems health and individual student health over over time um we aim in our Universal screening to make sure that 97 to 100% of students are screened this is huge and seemed almost unattainable when we started um but we're there in a lot of areas and we've been there consistently over time um so only in rare cases do we not screen our students um we primarily screen in math reading social emotional Behavior harmonics and spelling uh we do this three times a year universally fall winter spring we have an additional November window and that's um really the purpose there is to provide families at conferences with the most recent information um you'll you'll hear things like fastb Star Orton Gillingham Sabers those are all our Universal screening tools um and then we're careful to monitor local testing limitations the state has statutes around how much we can test locally we are not even close to hitting anywhere near what those State limitations are so we're all good there um and even with that and still staying under that mandate we have some teachers who increase the frequency of their testing because it guides their instruction immediately so depending on where people are in their understanding of how they can use these resources um some teachers provide a little bit more testing we also rolled out last year a teaching and learning website and all of our assessment information is now built in one spot there um and we just we're working on building some analytics to see how this is being accessed but I can tell you it's it's been a game changer to have this website and people accessing that AC so that Universal screening that Health the system data is used across tiers of supports and districtwide we're gonna dive in I'm so excited for people to share their real life experiences with it um but it shared um it it user cross tiers so some some evidence of that is in tier one um a few years ago we didn't have a universal phonological awareness um resource and we adopted that then we found that it was being very effective so actually in grade two we said you don't need to do that so much our kids are doing well in grade three we have fluency groups that um teachers are running because of this data we just about two weeks ago um got Freckle which is a um online software program that ties to student star scores and is an intervention that progresses them through their own individual Pathway to proficiency we did that because we had some concerns in 4 five based on that Universal screening data and we're providing enrichment AC cross grades and buildings based on that in tier two and tier three I don't know what we do without it all of our database decision making our intervention groups um our referrals for special education our students receiving special education all of that data guides that work um as it guides our gifted and talented identification and I think this year um we've been excited to dive in at the district level and see how is this data feeding into our growth in our district operational plan um because we've really established that Fidelity the data that we're looking at is clean and good and um we can really determine resource allocation Staffing um areas of disproportionality based on what we're seeing um with that quick little screener so just like you go to the doctor and you get that temperature taken if it's of a very high concern they might do further testing and that's really what diagnostic testing is and this is something we haven't really brought to you before because we were living in just like let's get the data collected and let's do something with it and now that we're really good at that we've been able to dive in to diagnostic assessment and it's a game changer so diagnostic assessment sometimes lives in some of those Universal screening platforms that I mentioned and we just dig deeper into analyzing the data for individual students um but in Reading we made a big shift this year and what we did is adopt the QPS it's a quick fonic screener and so for any student below a certain level we give them this diagnostic assessment and instead of using screening data which is big picture we use this diagnostic assessment data to create homogeneous groupings with our students in their reading need so a good example of this is in grade five we give the star assessment if a student did um per Poly on that we gave them maybe a fluency assessment if they did Poly on that we gave them a diagnostic assessment and then we targeted their intervention um instruction which is really I think this when you talk to other schools doing mtss this is a set this is sets support a lot of schools are not taking their data analysis and their data collection into the world is diagnostic they're living in Universal screening so quo store intervention staff they dug in and did literally hundreds of one-on-one testing sessions to get students DED correctly um and we're always continuing to research and grow mathematics is definitely an area we need to explore next in terms of what do we need to do diagnostically to to intervene with students um progress monitoring is the next you know core element within that strong assessment system we've you've seen this before I don't know I love this picture but um once the students have been universally screen once we have done diagnostic assessments on them then we get together and we group them into those homogenous groups and then we decide what intervention is best to meet their need and how are we going to measure its growth so progress monitoring means that you are choosing something to monitor growth that is sensitive sensitive enough to tell you that what I'm doing is working sensitive enough so that we can respond if it is not and so progress monitoring typically is a little probe that happens uh weekly every other week monthly depending on the students need and it can take anywhere from 1 to 15 minutes most of them take one minutes and they really drive all of our database decision- making at the individual student level again this is an area where we shine where we shine in terms of the conversations that our interventionists are having and that we're starting to bring to our teachers in terms of their complexity is is really phenomenal um and I'm really excited to share that on 11:20 we were able to bring the first training to teachers in terms of the new platform that we're using to look at this data so that they know where to access the data how to interpret it how to start an izing it and we'll continue to build that up because it's it's pretty complicated um so this next slide I did share with you last year but it just really nicely depicts how how complex those conversations are and and the degree of conversation that is happening for thousands of children across the district I mean it's phenomenal when you think about there is a name attached to thousands of graphs that look just like this so just pay attention to the green and the blue the green is the student goal line and when we're talking about progress monitoring at our system we set our EXP expectation to end of year a lot of systems don't do that they say you came in here this is realistic growth we think you're going to get here good enough we set it to a realistic and we make decisions based on if we're getting to realistic or not so that closes the ISS out the blue dots are those progress monitoring probes that are sensitive to our instruction that tell us what we're doing now and the classroom and intervention is working a little black square is where that student um started then the intervention happened we collected all that data and you can see that trend line is going to surpass their goal line and again end of the year goal um growth so this student we would continue on we would exit them early and they would go back into tier one and we would open up spots for more students or to intensify for more students this is probably my favorite graph again just pay attention to the green and the blue the green is that goal line the blue are those individual um weekly progress mon monitoring probes and you can see in this one the student was trending upwards in that first section but if we would have continued doing what we were doing they would not reach their goal so this is where again our system is different and every six to 10 weeks at the start of intervention we have a big interventionist meeting where we look at every single one of these drafts and we don't just hold on to a student because they're our student we move students around based on what the data is telling us and we intensify so here that Gap that you see is not a gap of service it's a change in their intervention where we intensified and then you can see after we int ified how the trend line went much higher and that student was then projected to hit their end of the year goal and then the the data doesn't always look exactly like we want it to do and this would be an example of a student who had many graphs that looked like this and was continuing to not make progress and in this case maybe we would move on to a special ed Emil so again you've seen this one before but I think it depicts nicely the conversations that happen and then those conversations have just gotten deeper this year and at the end of last year where we're not just looking at the pretty colors and the graphs we're talking about errors and accuracy and Trend rate of improvement and goal rate of improvement and what all the decisions need to be to get that child to um to where they need to be by the end of the year to grade level all right so the last element within that strong assessment system is assessment Fidelity and I think um we would all say we probably underestimated the importance of paying attention to this in our first two years we were just like test and this is what it is and this is how you do it but we weren't really monitoring the Fidel gave assessment system so that has changed we now I mean it's it's a little bit of compliance we just monitor to make sure that every test is is given within the time frame and um you can see with that 97 to 100% goal we're almost there the high schools are always going to be a little bit low because in 11th grade we don't assess everybody that 97 but we need to get to the 90s there um kudos to the Middle School this year they have um they get the most improved award they definitely have improved in um following our testing windows and um and testing in all the different areas um we've also Incorporated this year Fidelity chunks so those progress monitoring probes where we're collecting all this important data they need to be given a certain way and so we do observations of people delivering those to make sure they're hitting all of the standardization elements we also do this with licensed teachers who are administering um the onetoone assessments with our K1 and two and three students we make sure that they are completely standardized in their delivery and um we've also encouraged principles to do walkthroughs for standardization and then our principles were fabulous about um coordinating efforts during welcome back to share with staff the training and the access to the training that they need to deliver the universal screeners perfectly with standardization so the thought behind that is it's unfair for one child to sit down and have a teacher say take a test and then the other one to have a teacher go through a script telling the child exactly how they can be successful on the on the on the test that needs to happen every time and then lastly we won't go into this link but we have our mtss cycle which has really built itself out where we really have an just a system for checks and balances of everything that we just sped about here so we um look at it at every building and then um in the K8 buildings we have our three times a year state of the building staff meeting and um you know to use Matt's terms I think it's fair and right that the people in a building know what the data is saying about that building so me as the physical education teacher I should know what's happening with reading I should have a sense of urgency around that I should care about what that data is saying about the building where I work and about our students growth so these state-of the year buildings the purpose is really celebratory it's to build Collective efficacy it's to build shared awareness reflection and growth and then we've just got into that looking at areas of disproportionality so we won't go into the link but you have that or we can get that for you um East um East example is here and it's just a nice example of um everything that we cover at those state of the buildings and then when there's something big that needs to be hit across systems we build that into the template so then we have assurances that everybody's seeing the same information across buildings at the same time so those are our elements and now the tougher shift that we're in right now like Anna said is database decision making okay okay so as Anna talked about our data database decision making this is what we are grounded in all the work at the building levels um it does align with what we're doing um at the strategy team we just want to make sure we have alignment across all of the elementary schools so what we're doing at East is the same as what they're doing at Cohasset or the Middle School um it allows us to evaluate outcomes for students and look for those inequities and little pockets um of disproportionalities and it helps us um figure out where we're at and what we need to do and if there's any causes to what the data is telling us at each school so this came uh with the student uh with the teachers they see this in their carry all training so that helps them make the connection with the carry all training and what we're doing in the classroom it's a five-step process and currently we're working on the current performance the performance analysis and the plan development and that's what teachers did we've been working on it through early out we'll continue with it in this next cycle in this winter and spring and then also next year so a little more detail with that um that's the first step is that teachers looked at their data all that data that Jen was talking about and they look at that and think is there something going on different than what I should be expected we TR want that 80% Proficiency in math and reading and if we're not there then what's going on um does it show certain genders certain groups of students certain subpopulations what what are some what is it telling us and what percentage of proficiency are we at in those areas in each classroom and then the teachers look at that they analyze it why why is this happening and what is missing what skills do the the students need and they did this in teenss this year so and then they brought that something new to the annual goal set setting meetings with the principles they brought their goal they made so it was really nice I just wrapping up with all fifth grade right now and I got to see see the the common theme or the thread with all the different um seven sections of fifth grade and how the data looked from each different class so because they did it in teams and then met brought that with their principles for goal setting they could see if some classrooms are more successful and it'll be interesting to see once we dig into it throughout the rest of the year why and then what they did about that um and then they made their plan so they found out what their class was what they needed to do and then their specific plan so within that it could be things in the classroom um tier one things adjustments I needed to make some had students that go to tier two go to tier three um and so on also right now we're in our winter screening so once winter screening is done we'll go back to this plan and then see where we're at hopefully the proficiency is increasing hopefully more students are are exiting out of interventions and we're just getting more information about them and getting to Stronger proficiency and then step four and five we're still working on this in our early he cycle but just implementing that I talked about monitoring that and making sure that what we said we were going to do we're doing sticking to that at early outs um and just keeping track of how those kids are doing and then same with evaluation this will come at the end of spring um when we do our spring testing did we meet the goal what what if not what are some things we can think about for next year and then we'll complete the cycle again next year with their annual goal setting and actually so I get to talk about how this impacts tier one and then tier two and so I've been in the district this is my 15th year and beyond all this I will say even though financially we're not doing super awesome systemically we are doing so great I would say that we're the healthiest Place we've been where we can actually talk about students in a really meaningful way um and it's really exciting to see so as they were saying we benchmarked three times year and it's happening right now and um we're able to use all that information to create strategic groupings for our own students in our classroom and then how we partner with our interventionist and so we make sure that every single student in our school that does not meet grade level is teered up somehow or paired up somehow with an intervention that will best meet their needs and then it's closely watched also that we can use that information to kind of queue up maybe who might be a good uh candidate for gifted and talented screening even as young as first grade we can kind of start looking at their percentile and start watching those patterns and seeing if we need to do additional testing just to make sure we have those numbers in in mind so when we are getting to space for different services for them we're ready also with benchmarking we really used that to kind of guide our whole group instruction so I know they're mentioning Orton Gillingham and that's been a major game changer for our instruction we didn't realize at least I didn't in the classroom and I have a pretty big background in literacy of how big our hole was in phonics until we started getting Mark information and it showed yeah that's a massive hole that we have and then Orton Gillingham came right in as our instructional approach to help fill in the hole and you'll see with our data being first grade and we've been doing it for about three to four years now of solid o OG that there's been huge changes because of it but we didn't really have the data to prove that it was a need until this came along um also with our math instruction it can also help here C us up there as well for example benchmarking shows us that place value is an area weakness in first grade so we shifted what we were doing and you'll see as well that that's kind of been filled in now so that's been really helpful um we also I love the winter adjustments like right now it's kind of I geek out right now it's really exciting things are happening um as they were mentioning we adjusted the windows so this year it's a little different so people have feels about that but it's happening right now so that way we're queued up to come back January we're starting fresh uh we've had it before where it's like come back in January and then people say the dad might not be accurate because they like wa nobody's going to have you right but I'm really excited to come back and be ready to start so I also get to serve with our mtss team and so right now we're screening and then we'll be meeting the week before break starts to realign our groups have a plan and then we'll be meeting with our teams to know exactly how we're set up to come back so that's really exciting um as I was saying about the national percentile that's really really important to be watching for both not only um um students that you're watching who might need special education support but also they saying that gate window so those percentiles can actually tell us much more than maybe the other scores and that's just a little bit of a deeper dig um and of course what's working in your tier one and what's not and what we need to change so for example this is my data and this is one of the um from last year and so there's two different scores you can kind of look at but this is from benchmarking and this is the one I really like because it doesn't show you who's at grade level but it also gives you that like Peak into your um uh excelling so we have below obviously so below approaching at and then your exceeds and of course we'd want these ones to go down and these ones to go up and so you can really desegregate it a little bit more when we were first getting used to instruction we look at this report we look at a different one that would just kind of tell you who's where they need to be who's below and who's about there um this has been really really helpful to kind of come up with again those strategic groupings and then how can you make sure that not only your kids that are above that our acre level they don't just want to stay there we want to make sure every kid making grow right so we can look at that really closely and that's been super helpful okay so then progress monitoring okay I forgot to bring my water my water so progress vings clutch like they were talking about because it allows for us to make micro adjustments all the time so Bobby Adams who's the interventionist that would have been here her classroom's right across the call for me and we're constantly talking on Wednesdays that's when we Pro matter we'll make micro adjustments right then based on what we're seeing if I'm seeing as one kid is just not catching on certain sounds and it's been like two weeks at this I'll say like hey what are you thinking how can we switch and her and I will on the Fly make an adjustment like not a new Intervention which is like a little tweak that her and I are pretty proficient in to make that change for that kid the next day and then we adjust and we continue to monitor so again as they were saying students who are in tier two so again as a tier one teacher as Jen Ed my responsibility is that is tier one it is also tier two so any child I need a small group with doing intervention with I then take on that intervention role but then of course they get Services through adess and americore and all other interventions and then tier three would be your special education so what we're doing is if a student is receiving any tier two level intervention we need to be monitoring that every week we want to make sure that we're not wasting a week of not making any growth on that child right then as we expand larger we can go to like by-weekly or monthly whatever you'd like as Jen was saying I'm kind of so I'm one of the ones who probably test more than they should but I want to make sure I'm not losing anybody and I also really like that time with kids and again going back for strategic goals here acal uses of resources I do have 30 kids in my first grade classroom which is by far the most I've ever had and if it wasn't for Progress monitoring I don't know that I can ensure that I'm making sure they're all learning and why this is my number this is what I have I will never use it as an excuse I'm okay like this is what we're doing but to make sure it's working I need to make sure I've got touch points right so um we meet with them and then we kind of see a purpose so this next this is um based on some work of Hattie so John Haddie has a lot of work that says like when students have accountability to their own learning right if they're the ones who are kind of guiding their own instruction and again I'm first grade so it looks a little different but my students track their own learning and so again that's kind of why I'm weird about it and do it a lot because I want them to make sure that they're seeing that part and we kind of connect together so some of my kids are above grade level and so their chart numbers look slightly different because their goals are going to look different right but their paper looks the same as that are peers and so then we also really work together as a team so I have a class of 30 students I have one extenuating circumstance so that one child does not receive is not fast spread assessed she's got a completely different plan um so when I take my class average even though I have three other students who are on IEPs they are my students and I'm responsible for Le and learning so when I take those averages that's a 29 students even though some of those are automatically like currently it's not appropriate so they're like a zero but my team team my class we're a team we're all invested in this and so every week we adjust and you know we do like the drum roll thing and we see that it's growing and that's why like when we do a reading passage and we read it three times obnoxiously it gives it purpose right like why are we doing this we're working on our fluency okay why are we doing the site with flash cards we're working on our fluency or each of the pieces that we're monitored on um so each of the kids have one of these for site words and passages and then we have both these posted in our classroom and there'll be weeks at a flatline and then we have a conversation about it like did we try our best that week but were we struggling or was it just a hard passage and those happen but it's been really I've been doing this now for several years I was bummed out because normally I hold on to him and then I threw them out this year because I was like this is so dumb and then Jen asked me for pictures of them and they were gone but and then home to family so again we are strategic directions we talking about transparency and how important that is and I believe in that like as a mom in the district I had the luxury of knowing exactly where my kids are because I'm connected to the system but I feel very firmly that if I know as a teacher anything about your kid you should have the same information and so again I my team uh uh Jordan ID and I we send this home every time we progress Monitor and so families get a letter much like this and then their own students score for that well bi-weekly piece and so some of my kids don't do decodables like that is one of the sensitive test a lot of my kids don't need it anymore so we cross that out and we keep growing and we just see how much they grow and families get to know where their kids are and it gives kind of some meaning to like hey you know those things we sent home for you to read like that's working or maybe you should start doing those you know some of those conversations you can have so we try to stay super connected in both those pieces with any of the information we have for tier two this is what Mrs Adams is going to talk about but her job's been so cool to see change and adjust as we've added in these pieces and everything about mtss and dart so I get the opportunity to serve along side her in both those pieces so mtss would be that multier systems of support we sat down and that giant grade that she had up with all the sticky notes we go through our school as a whole and like super fun being a first grade teacher having taught half those kids that show up in a two-section school um and you kind of figure out who needs help and how are we going to help them and what does that look like and so every one of those sticky notes has a kid's name on it and so every kid in our schools can get align like paired up immediately with an intervention that's going to help best work for them and not only that but then the intervention like progress monitored form that we're going to use to help monitor it as sensitively as possible so those happen and that information gets shared with the classroom teachers too so everyone knows what everyone's doing because you should know the data on your own kids right so you can make those adjustments and so Mrs Adams collects that we make adjustments and then also in tier two right now she's also servicing enrichment groups so we have kids who are hitting those tiers that would be great gate candidates or they're already going through gate testing that are getting that extra enrichment support and that's happening across all of our elementary building which has been really exciting to see um also with tier two there's multiple different types of interventions that are now being offered so it's not just um like back in the day when we had lli everybody got the same thing right so now it looks different based on whatever that kids needs are whether it's comprehension whether it's bonics whether it's phic awareness it it's very you know Down's been like based on a diagnostic report of what we can do to help that kids um a need would be math we're not quite there yet um in all the sites but this has been a huge game changer so that when we do go to a CST meeting when we're talking about a special education evaluation our data is straight numbers there's no there's not a lot to say about that um we could obviously have a narrative to share but it's very easy to be very clear about the pieces the one thing that's really important that Jen was talking about is we do make an adjustment on their goal so she was talking very clearly about how end of the year goal and we've adjusted that now if any kid is going to Dart for a real estate goll for that child and so that's kind of hard for some classroom teachers to like swallow because what we're saying is no that kid's not going to end the year at grade level but the intervention's working because they're making realistic growth and so those are really good conversations that we're having at the dart table at mtss and with classroom teachers starting to get better understanding around that so that's tier one and your two hi I'm really excited to be here representing tier three um we've heard a lot about overall we've heard a lot about classroom and now I get to talk about the individual child and that makes me very excited um so over the last three years I've seen a lot of change since I've been there and it's really awesome to see that special edes included in this we now have a data monitoring system where we can guide our instruction we can alter it where we need to so um you probably are very aware but when a child qualifies for special services we take the deviation if they have a big enough deviation between their intellectual score and their academic score and usually it's a couple of years is why it's hard to qualify for special but when you do um there's things that we need to look at in the past when you clarified we had a hard time as a specializ teacher seeing where they were at where we were to begin and now we have something and that is just been really awesome for us um we use when the student qualifies I can look at their star scores I can see where the great equivalences so I know exactly where to start for them um once you know their academic levels um the student is screened at their instructional level not their grade level because we know that they're below grade level and then I can take that data and I it guides me to write their individual education plan and along with that I can tell their parents this is where they at individually compared to where their peers are at um and an intervention is set up in fast bridge and monitored any other fast or Ed cler but Ed cler really has everything that we need so this is what it looks like for me and I know that um there's a little green little oh could I actually use that I don't know if I'm brave enough yeah there is but this this in yellow you're going to see that I have these scores that I can use and in the fall this student scored 980 and that told me that he was actually at the ninth grade of the ninth month of third grade so this November when he took his STAR testing again um he scored at the sixth month of fourth grade which was really awesome I could see that he was really growing because that star score really does tell us where is that academic Benchmark for them and how are they going to do on the MCAS I will share with you this is not the first year I had the student because he is a fourth grade student and he's catching up and that's what we want we're early intervention in the grade school we want them to come in we want them to do well so that we can exit them if that works for them for sure this is looking at progress monitoring I do monitor weekly I look at their graphs weekly this student has a goal that is written at the third grade and also so his objective would be for the third grade and the fourth grade because I have one year from the of his meeting and I want to see that he's making growth and mine I usually save the grade that they're instructionally at and I want to move them to another grade he was at the third grade he or she um the student was at the third grade and did move to the fourth grade so you can see that the blue is third grade and the red is fourth grade on so when you look at this on the bottom of that graph I see this and what I love about this is I can see an up Arrow I have the date on there that I tested I can see if they're going up I can see the words that they're missing and I can make a note because maybe they went down a little bit but maybe they said a three-word phrase three times and that could be nine to 12 words so I take that into account at that point um the monitoring graphs you see below is um what I would use to see if maybe I need to amend an IEP this student you can see that their goal line is in green it and this student has met that goal on three occasions by monitoring him weekly looking at his goals um I'm able to see and then down below you can also see the scores the errors that they made and their accuracy I really pay attention to that because I think it's important that that accuracy piece is there um I don't want to be working with them instructionally at a level that is um exceeding where they're at instructionally because they're not going to grow as fast so I do kind of take all that into account as well so this is kind of fun in my room as well everybody has their own individual pen they have their own student graph and I love this you can tell this student right here they were at third grade level they passed their goal you can see and now I started the fourth in October I started their fourth gr goall I think it's super cool this is a m they have a fifth grade cool boy want their picture taken and sent home to their mom because they went up this week so before I even start testing they say oh can I see my graph what do I need to get I mean that's buying that's motivation for for them and that's cool um I get weekly I sign up to get monthly emails to say how my progress is going I can see their rate of improvement what I did cut off on this is below it will also tell me their attendance which is really kind of a neat thing so down below this it would share like where they absent or was it a school related something and those are all things that I put in as well which I'll explain later but um I I do love getting this monthly I can look at that you can tell you can see that I'm using arton Gillingham I am seeing this child 30 minutes a day five times a week so if a student is not making appropriate progress I don't write away just change my intervention I need to actually see is there something causing this that is beyond just my instruction I don't want to just change it too quickly so is there attendance of factor so as special education teachers Anna does have us put in attendance um daily and I think it's it's awesome information for this student right here you can see that if this student is struggling you can tell that in Orange this child has been absent that much the blue is school related um could be Star based could be a Halloween party I don't care they're in school but they're not with me that changes their instruction so I know now that and down below you can see that I put it in by date I say if it's School related or if it's a school event or if it's just the student is absent um this student has missed more than a quarter of my instruction so I'm not going to change the but what I am going to do is I checked with true and see and I said have you notified this family because I'm really concerned about this right now and I notify the parents as well um have that conversation with you know like today there was a you know there was a fun day in school and it was an an all day thing for one that the class had earned and I said you know I need for half an hour because I had to keep in mind you know if I have a child who's in the fourth grade and they reading at a first grade level I want to make sure that I am getting the instruction that I need in so the second thing I'm going to look at is I'm going to look at my monthly email progress report and I'm also going to look at Ed climber to see if they are at risk on Savers now the student that I showed you that had um absentee issues and was had missed over quarter my instruction score at a risk on Savers which is our social academic social emotional rating so when you look at this what are the challenges of an outr student um attitude towards School low ability level um tendency and treny behavioral problems poor peer relationships my student has four of five of those so those are things that I want to take into account if there aren't atten if there aren't any attendance issues and everything's going really well they're always in class they're doing their homework there's no reason I need to add an intervention oftentimes for me I'll keep AR gingham going I'll amend their IP for maybe 15 more minutes and I'll use something called press I'll do something that's going to push them to the next level and that would be one to one soham isn't a really is is structured add like an ability group I bring different abilities together more than great it goes by ability and I may add a one toone press in that case and then on my graph you're going to see where I'm doing or Bingham you're going to see where I added an intervention so in closing I just want to say as a special education teacher right now we have the tools to monitor our students at their instructional level um we can change our intervention in a timely manner if needed and we can communicate to parents by showing then graphs you know we can we can talk all we want but if we put a graph in front of a parent that is so impactful and I think the biggest thing for me I'm honestly gonna say is that when we go to a fall conference and and we see this is when we roll out somebody's MCA scores it is not my parents favorite thing you know what we already know they L is that telling is that telling our parents that no really they're doing actually really well individually no but we can show the MC's SC they're very important for them to see but I can also say this is where they're at right now this is where they started this is where at now we have those tools it's not just in MCA score anymore it's individually where are they at and now we have the graphs and the tools to do that so A couple of things that I would show at that meeting is I would show the star report you can see where in the fall my student here went from partially meeting to in the winter now he has met I have high hopes that some of my students right now are going to meet the MCS I hope um I will tell you since we have been doing this in the last three years I have exited many of my readers which is really really exciting that is what early intervention in grade school should be like we have some kids that of course are lower and will continue in that program this isn't for everybody but I have really never exed as many as I have in the last three years this is a graph of a little girl that I could show her parents a little girl or little boy I don't even know I just put different graphs up of my students but this is a third grade student who was reading at a first grade level I can tell her parents that she's reading 72 words a minute at her grade level next to her peers who are reading 87 words me at the third grade level but guess what I get to show her parents that maybe she's below grade level but look at the progress she made and as a mom I want to see that they're making that progress so I think that's kind of exciting so thank you very much all right so um you know we very intentionally brought the ladies in today to take you through what this looks life tier one tier two tier three so Ann and I just briefly are going to share some systems level examples um of of how we're using um data inform practices and data so um you've seen this graph before you haven't seen the most recent one but we'll talk through it so um this is our foundational skills data for kindergarten in first grade um and for the last three years we've been seeing growth and reduction in our highrisk students and we attribute that to our strong intervention system but more importantly our tier one instruction in or Gillingham um but you can see that last year in the spring we had a dip down and I can't say that I was totally surprised by that um any strong system when you implement it you're going to experience drift and and and that is going to change um so we looked at this data and we didn't just leave it and say okay let's do more of the same we stopped and we made a hypothesis about why do we think that occurred well first of all kindergarteners came in last year 4% lower than the year before that's going to be a contributing factor but we really did land on we think that there was some drift in implementation Fidelity of orang Gillingham practices and so in response to that we um use this data to get staff trained as ort Gillingham certified they went through an extensive training for that staff are then meeting these people are meeting with principles to review the key components of OG Fidelity to tee the principles up they can't be um experts in everything to to go into a classroom and be like these are the key elements I should see if it's being done with Fidelity and then to support that they're doing it on the systems level not on individual teacher level this is an evaluative it's just going in and making sure that we have Fidelity um they're doing this through walkthroughs they then meet with our OG certified people and we go through the data and then we te them up for the next walkth through so we're constantly trying to build towards that Fidelity and so do we expect that that data will go back up with all those Fidelity elements in place absolutely we do and if we don't see that data go up we'll we'll look at the data and make another hypothesis and act on it so I think I actually think this is if you unpack this for what it is all the elements from teachers like 30 hours of training to get to that point everybody doing the same thing principles this is a beautiful example of how schools should run when looking at data and responding to it I think it's it's really a great example um this is another example just really quickly these are um different schools the colors are different schools this first graph shows you all students influency tests over time from Fall 22 to Spring of last year all students except for kids who receive tier two so the tier two kids are out of there tier two kids are down here and what's really cool about this graph is you can see the slopes are similar for three out of the four schools obviously we have to do something here with this school here but in two out of the four schools here our tier two students outperformed in growth words per minute over time than our tier one so that's a perfect example how core and more works that is the only way you're going to close achievement gaps is if these students grow at a higher rate than these students so they're catching up which is beautiful and at the same time they didn't Plateau the kids who were not tier two continue to grow at a nice rate as well so those are two systems um examples and Anna will take you through a special education example um just quickly the graph you're looking at is the average fast Bridge early reading score for all of our K1 students across the district so um it starts on Fall 2021 and you can see the low points are the fall every year the high points are spring um but the interesting thing to notice over time and this is our um again focused on our literacy instruction and intervention that that is trending up over time we've seen a 177% increase in Spring scores since 2021 um and this is with a lot going on um um so we've had as Brenda mentioned we've had a lot of exits so as we've implemented um our Orton Gillingham reading instruction and as we've you know worked towards Fidelity on that we've had better data taking practices we are exiting kids all the time so that's great um so this is with exits which is really interesting because then those kids are no longer counted in the data so as they move up we don't get to keep them in our data set anymore but so even with exits and also the other thing that's been happening during this same time is we've been testing more kids one of the things that we noticed um was a lot of our students weren't getting tested and specifically our students with cognitive impairments and at this point so we were um we really want every student tested with the exception of about 1% of the students in a building so if you have a building of 600 student there 600 students there's probably about six that aren't appropriate for testing um so we also increased the number of students that we were testing and that includes some of our students with the most significant barriers um and we're still seeing good increases so that's really exciting um so if I wasn't seeing data like this some of the things that I might do and I do anyway just because um is I might break this down by building so I might pull these graphs by building um I might look at a specific program disability category um so I can kind of pull that data in a lot of different ways so if I was not trending up um I would do some of that diagnostic work before I would go towards like what's my solution going to be to make sure I have a good handle on what the actual problem is so all right Ryan so the next few slides are on our MCA data and um I sit back and think like at times people ask ask us what are we doing about our MCA data you just heard it that's amazing this stuff wasn't happening four years ago these systems take time to build and when I say not yet we're not seeing it yet but it's coming um this is exciting it takes time to build systems it takes time to put things in place for kids but we're going to be seeing it soon and um so again when I talk about our data we're just not there yet we will there's glimmers of Hope in our data um but there are some areas that we need to dive into with sense of urgency and we'll talk a little bit about that today so when people ask well what are we doing you heard we're doing a lot of great things um you get goosebumps thinking about um the data and what's happening for kids as a result of having um clear data as well so here's the reading again you could find this on our MD on the MD site in our Minnesota report card to take a peak again there's some highlights in the data there um in certain grades grade five you could see there's a 2% increase grade six two % grade seven 3.6% um you could see we've heard earlier our scores are higher than neighboring districts and that's okay like we hear we're above the state or higher the neighboring districts but we're not satisfied there we need to continue to push forward um with a sense of urgency number of things Solutions put in place there um implementation of decoding curriculum over the past four years we have interventions in place um and again for both special education and general education um we've had the intervention block we've talked about that before of including that so kids are pulled out at a certain time they're not missing cor instruction we've had our caral training as a result of the redact that all K5 teachers are going through in K12 special this year um getting training we have adoption of our uh Wht and wisdom curriculum K8 which has been great it really fits that upper end of Scar's rope that we've been missing um and we believe that knowledge-based curriculum is going to be um very impactful we have a number of things great things and you heard about them going on in our early outs around strategic Direction work and things of that nature which is exciting as well um you saw Carol here a few weeks ago explaining what she's doing with the reading coaching piece and then as principles we're doing targeted walkthroughs we're looking for specific things as it relates to the curriculum as well and so you can see uh 53.8% of our students in the area of reading were proficient again we're not satisfied there and we're going to continue to push we have a number things going on and we're excited about them for math you could see there's a glimmer of hope in specific grade levels uh specifically in grade five um again the district's higher than uh districts around us okay we still have work to do we have a number of things happening in the future here with new standards new curriculum taking that through the same process we did with Ela um special ad added a new intervention 2223 and we have continu support with math interventionists and we're continuing to seek out um americore folks in fact we have more of them in and around our buildings this year in the area of science we adopted a new K8 uh curriculum um we have walkthroughs for implementation and we have early outs dedicated again um not satisfied when I talk about a sense of urgency those this is one of those areas that we really need to need to push our new science standards will be tested this year again Matt talked about earlier The Continuous Improvement cycle that we've have in our district you've seen this brought to the board um a year ago but again it's here and it just there's a lot Happening Here with a lot of work being done with this by listening uh taking feedback from staff reflecting working with our BLTs walkthroughs and Fidelity checks um looking at new research but also taking into account older research um we brought evidence-based practice we brought aita archers work to to the table this year and we rolled that out to staff and some training and then just making sure we have a constant state of growth reflection and refinement through this process to continue to better our systems again um if you think back uh four years ago whether it be Co we didn't sit back and just take a break we continue to push forward push forward push forward and we're gonna continue to do that because um it's what kids need they need our best bar all right so some barriers that we're experiencing just as we've been moving through the work over the last um few years here is we really um need to bump up tier one capacity if you look at our um at the two colored pyramids here and I'm sure you've seen these before as kind of a representation of our data um green being tier one yellow being tier twoed read being tier three right now we're seeing about double the amount of students in a tier three that we'd want to see about double the amount of students that we'd want to see in a tier two um and the problem with that and um really is schools with the funding that we get and the resources that we have we don't have capacity to intervene at that level on that many kids so we really need to build up that tier one capacity um to meet the needs of more of our students and again this is something things you know kids change over time um you know I think back to when I started in education a long time ago and the kids they look different um you know they they have a lot of different factors and and we need to keep up with those as we move through so we've adopted a new science and literacy curriculum um and we just need to continue to ensure that teachers have time practice and professional development with those evidence-based tools um at that tier one level we've really built out some of the tier three and tier 2 work and now it's really leaning onto that tier one work um you know and really prioritizing competing demands when our pyramid looks like this you have to put resources in tier two and tier three but then that pulls away resources from tier one so it's always this decision about where do we put the resources where do we put you know the energy to get the most bang for our buck um we really need increased leadership capacity at all levels um we'd like to see this happen through our shared leadership teams at the building level we have so many experts doing wonderful work in their classrooms who could provide a lot of expertise and support to their um to their grade levels or their teams and we just really like to increase that capacity with the people who are right in their classrooms doing the work I mean you heard from them today there's truly amazing things happening at that classroom level um you know we we have some historical patterns of behavior around change um that we're working through and some of that you know that's just something we're all dealing with right um sometimes we've gotten pushed back we've thrown out the initiative and started over and every time that happens it sets us back right so um so we're really working on how do we stay the course how do we make adjustments where they're needed and we know adjustments are needed things are not going to be perfect when you start you have to get into it to learn what's needed um but when those challenges come up how do we maintain engagement and when we're right in the messy middle which is where we're at um and there's confusion and frustration which we experience at times um you know it is tempting to say are we doing the wrong thing you know but the decisions that were made about how to move forward were grounded in research and what we know is best for kids um they were not SL csti decisions we looked at our data we looked at what was effective and what was working um and what was supported by the research so um we need to just make those micro adjustments as we go and learn to kind of live and work through some of that tension live in tension and work through it a little bit um I'd love to be up here and say that the impact of budget cuts is non-existent um that's not true so um as we you know so when we look at capacity capacity of people in classrooms as those class sizes go up they have to learn new skills to meet the demands of the higher case like the higher numbers higher case loads higher class sizes um so that's already putting stress and I just have to commend the people who are just leaning in and working through this anyway I mean you saw all the great work happening at the classroom level and that's happening despite other challenges being added to their plate as an outcome of budget cuts um we're also seeing that there's again we're just running into some capacity with how that work gets LED um you know and just balancing the management of the day-to-day with making sure we're doing the things to get our initiatives and get our implementation to Fidelity um and ensure that teachers have the support that they need um so those we're always balancing those things and lastly um technology has been a real kind of bugger all of these systems to be able to pull data and do these things are really grounded in technology and we've felt the impacts of that more than ever um within the last couple years as that department has been reduced over time so um some things that we think you know to work through the barriers or some things that we can do to improve is really just stay consistent with a predictable framework you know last spring and right now we've talked you through a lot of the framework that we have in place to just to continue to move forward um and when it's tempting to abandon ship um we need to stay that course and make micro adjustments based on feedback but not throw the whole thing out the door when it gets stressful um we need to keep Fidelity at the Forefront and continue to refine our walkthrough process um you know that's another barrier that had come up in the past where sometimes we started things and we just didn't see them to the Finish Line we didn't get there so um so really keeping that Fidelity in mind making sure that teachers have support at all levels um of where they're at with their learning um and stay in alignment with that operational plan we get a lot of opinions about what should be happening um and ultimately we need to feel confident in the decisions we made about the path forward um we need to continue to work with Cara to find some creative funding options that's something we didn't talk about a lot in this slide but the the amount of headstands that have been done to figure out how to fund some of these things creatively in the background um couldn't have been done without Cara so I just need to acknowledge her work there um we're going to continue to build that leadership capacity like we talked and we're going to continue to use a consistent process around curricular adoptions and really ensuring that teachers have support at tier one level um tier two level and tier three level so you know we need to really layer that support and make sure that we're working towards Fidelity because sometimes that's been the problem we haven't really had a layered plan in addressing staff's needs and we need to continue to work towards that any questions that was long um it's kind of hard to explain but we aren't consistent with the student population going through from grade one through grade 12 yeah do you know how many new students we get so that when you're in first grade how many kids are there in sixth grade yeah yeah kind of that what is the turnover rate you know I'm not really sure I know you know I look at that for special ed and it's highly variable from year to year just based on the local landscape um for special ed I don't know anybody in Jed a lot of yeah right now it feels like we're turning over a lot I don't I don't know that we have that data systemwide like persisting enrollment yeah yeah I mean be interesting because that didn't skew your numbers yep um yes you're always getting a new K in and maybe they don't have this level serving on the dart team at Cohasset I will say that a lot of the students that come forth in at the dart table Based on data are kids that we did not see K12 there are a lot of new enrollments in 3 four five yes and I I I truly believe that we're a transition District and um that can affect your scores yeah I you know and students do bounce with the um rise in online options it's kind of go and come back they'll go for a year come back they'll go for six months and come back yeah um so we are seeing a lot of just you know some gaps in in our time with them so yep other questions Davis here uh this is an astonishing report I am really uh very proud of the work that's being done uh under very very difficult circumstances uh but uh Rising above it is absolutely incredible uh work uh in data uh and research and Diagnostics is incredible the attention to the individual students uh in our program it's not a it's not a uh a broad patch it's individual students that are finding success and that's absolutely incredible and I hope that uh you will share uh my admiration with the people in the trenches doing this work on a day-to-day basis this is incredible thank you you absolutely will I don't have a question but I remember when you and Matt D stood and asked for mtss money I remember yeah and and at the same time I remember uh one of the leadership folks saying you either have to be all in or don't do it and you have to be in it for the long haul you can't pull it out and in that space and all of the data that you have and I'm a data geek so I love it um but this is one of those it's hard to pull a plug on something that's working and the numbers are showing it because that takes the emotion out of it when you actually look at the numbers and it's super impressive and I love the fact that you said we need more in tier one because my fear in public education is we have a lot of extra money for here and we have a lot of extra money for here but we actually don't focus a lot it's kind of like that kid that hey they get along and they do okay and they're good in school but the one that's the behavioral problem is the one that the parents have to pay attention to and so it's I always think what if we have that kid that can cure cancer somewhere in the bell curve and we can't get them what they need just that one more time so I think that that's really cool super excited about the classroom stuff like that's a story we need to tell yeah more people need to hear it and as a parent to know that my child didn't hit that MCA score but I knew that they were improving that's the feel good right that leaves like knowing my kids not not inadequate right I mean that's the thing and so just all around what a great great presentation and you guys are doing such a great job in a time that was hard both for from the general public but also from our financial standpoint so thank you for all of the work well and I think it goes back to the teachers like there's so much happening at that classroom level so sure interested to see if the buildings will even move that faster because now you have a lot of the grades together as opposed to separate and seeing what that'll do yeah thanks everybody for the presentation um on in the agenda the next item is the FY 26 budget preliminary time plan superintendent gross thank you Mr chair this is kind of the first um kind of you know it's not like deep conversational kind of thing it's just sort of an awareness of where we're headed over the next couple months um know if Julie are you able to pull this up somehow if I warned you about doing that you're not if not that's okay they have a copy so it's not a big deal um there there really only three like um I say Target dates in here deadlines that we have to be aware of the rest are really how we're filling in those gaps the first Target that we have to be aware of is on April 15th that's a contractual deadline with our teachers group around Ula notifications so uh that's something built into this timeline June 30th is a date that is important for a few different reasons one is that statutorily we have to have the Ula process done by then and then second we have to have the U budget adoption for fiscal 26 kind of done by then so those are really important uh walking through a few things and just in general I'd say this is a timeline that is less aggressive than last year more aggressive than fiscal 24 and part of there are lots of reasons why that's the case um that and I'll maybe get into this well I'll get into it now I guess that when we're looking at a eveny year fiscal budget it ties back to something I said earlier when Carol was going through even getting a sense of what's Happening legislatively matters because we want to be basing any decisions we can on our budget and corresponding reductions on the best information we have and if we can get a sense from the legislature early enough um are they going to address the unemployment mess that they created are they going to address the compensatory Revenue problem they created if if we get a sense that those are priorities um and that helps us make assumptions that are better that gives us a better kind of a more accurate ability to have a budget that's that's you know um going to be helpful so anyway working through some significant dates here uh First Step obviously is this getting the fiscal 25 budget update par is working on that now we have to have this year's budget as the best shape we can be and also as tight as we can so that we have the best idea about where we're going to end this year so that we can make good decisions about how we're going to start next year um going in here January 13th and this is you know a unique Dynamic we have three board board members coming on in their second meeting we're going to be talking about a budget cut Target um and budget assumptions so talk about steep learning curve it's right there for people but you know we don't really have time to to uh wait around for that it's just the reality of our situation so though that's just a work session to discuss um the budget budget assumptions and to get an idea of where we might land for for a reduction Target the ultimate decision on that if you remember last year and you know just about every year the boards made this uh resolution directing the administration to make cuts um to the degree that we can incorporate an actual number in there I think that's helpful just people get uh adjusted to our reality and where we're headed some informational meetings with uh leaders staff uh union leaders in here get some feedback another date that is out there and and this is kind of that February 1 end of January um there are some incentives in their teacher agreement for staff that notify Us by February 1st and so um that's an important date that we're aware of we've held staff meetings the last few years I think it's been helpful to get out there and and talk and listen about where we're at and why again um get feedback uh we had a community meeting last year it was very useful uh I think to and we it was well attended in here and so we're going to plan to do that again the end of February is our Target date for preliminary budget reductions um again that's probably a 10 days off of last year so pretty close but a little bit more Breathing Room in there and um then we'll start talking about what how that would play out with stranding um final reductions due March 11th we have a team from Union that we work through stranding with so that we can make sure uh be sure to get that right it's too important to have any uncertainty about that um it's very stressful and want to make sure and get that right after that is usually when I meet with board members to go through the implications or Consequences of reductions and then um the 21st of March is when when that that preliminary notice if we're doing ulas that that would occur in the um then the board approves on the 24th so um that's when that happens that the approve or the approval goes out there and then Ula final approval on the 7th um this Gap in here is not enough time to accommodate uh or necessarily accommodate hearings if some would request a hearing on a Ula so we would have to adjust this deadline here uh or the 7th adjust that date if there were to be hearings requested and um that's something we can do but ultimately we're trying to get that done in April that's you know we want to be fair as Fair as we can to people that might be uh look needing to look for a job we want to take our time too so we get it right we want to make sure we hit our deadlines in June and April so those are all the considerations but this is what the timeline looks like at this point and um again it's kind of a a little bit less aggressive than last year but a little bit more aggressive than fiscal 24 any questions on that those the hearings would be in May wouldn't they yeah they would be later the when we um when we have that notice of um on the 24th when that the school board approves staff reductions non-renewals and Ula proposal the that resolution languages that we're proposing someone for Ula that's when they have a certain amount of time to request a hearing we have a certain amount of time to hold the hearing yeah and then um by the time those gets scheduled that often ends up being kind of late April or May the big thing is we just have to have that entire process complete by June 30th and we're you know we're in a position where you know we don't have a lot of probationary staff anymore so uh most staff reductions if they're teacher reductions or principal reductions um require Ula d uh Matt Mark and I I'm sry Pat murri and I went to the uh uh delegate assembly on Friday and heard uh extensive discussion about budgets um the two thoughts one is that there's very little money uh and uh the likelihood of additional funding uh coming in is pretty minimal but beyond that uh uh all bets are that the legislature will not finish on time that it's going to go on later which really gets off into a lot of trouble yeah they'll either I think you're right I think they'll either drag things on and not get done or they just will you know agree to not get anything done um so it's uh it's going to be interesting I you know this when we have this house that's kind of locked up um it's hard to speculate how that's going to play out and whether they'll be incentive to cooperate or incentive to just stay with the party so that you know there's not any you know partisan consequences to that it's hard to say you know the one of the things that um our our public kind of locally in at the state needs to observe is that this is a Statewide problem the number of school districts that are going to be making reductions this spring is going to be enormous the uh Schoolboard Association did a survey I can't remember the the the data but it was astounding the percentage of districts that are making reductions this spring so you know again it's coming on the heels of a historic funding year and I think that just kind of um points to what a misnomer that is and also the impact of those uh mandates that we've talked about some of which which you know for us the unemployment um mess they created uh that's has the potential to be A200 or $300,000 problem for us to fix with this budget and the compensatory formula change that they made has the potential to be um you know in that $800,000 range so that's a million dollars of a problem that they created that they didn't need to make they didn't need to do that um and they enacted laws without a long-term solution and that that kind of bad you know process is going to lead to pain here so one of the things I'm hoping is that with like you said David the um based on the the the Outlook that we got last week from the state um that the Ed orgs will kind of come together and realize that uh there's not a lot of powder to burn and if they have a more unified approach to what to ask for uh that would increase the lihood that we could get something uh what we need um because I I don't I don't see there being a lot lot spread around so moving on in the agenda last item on the agenda in DP any indicator report you sat through a lot s well you know I I I work in development system so that was actually everyone my name is Bianca carel I'm the current on the district in 318 endowment hunt I'm kri gig I am I'm I'm actually on my off year on endowment because um I cannot vote so this is my seventh year on endowment and I also am a teacher in the district he you go so we just wanted to offer a snapshot um of our most recent granting cycle which closed um in October typically Clos in November we um end the cycle about a month earlier this year to kind of a comate requests and things like that um so we awarded 48 of the 65 grants that we received or the requests that we received uh either partial or full funding um so District employees requested in total uh grants equaling $131,000 um in Grants uh and the endowment was able to award 58,7 60 so was nice to be able to have that that number and be able to um fill those Grant requests so this year we had a range of requests um the ones that we funded uh supported field trips transportation musical instruments stem projects PE equipment uh debate program um and also calming and alternative seating needs in classrooms So based on the submitted grants we received most locations were awarded Grant funds this includes ALC Big Fork Cohasset East West Elementary uh IEC um Grand Rapids High School and also middle school so that's all I have as far as just that overall snapshot was there any other I know that in the indicator report we highlighted um a few of the grants that we supported one of them great little graphic um but one of them was uh an Arts uh fund for just supplementing Arts um programming um one that I was excited about was um uh poet and Residence at middle school and just being able to offer that that experience and I don't know hopefully Inspire youth to get excited about poetry so those are you are there any questions or anything questions well done thank you thanks for coming tonight then this really is important to our students absolutely well I will say it's um it's exciting to be able to say yes sometimes you know that's why I really enjoy being part of this granting subcommittee and to be able to you know create these opportunities that go above and beyond um and really allow for our students to thrive and which impacts our community thriving right thank you so much for this opportunity thank you there any other business to come before the board here Nour [Music] e