##VIDEO ID:jf1U-UPeIso## all right I would also like to welcome Mr Man Moody our new business administrator welcome to your first meeting and we'll see you tomorrow again with that like to call roll call here here here here I'm sorry here here here letter board member Caitlyn [Music] with muted muted sorry uh board member Caitlyn Whit leather okay student representative all right please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance please take notice that the adequate notice of this meeting has been provided in the following manner that written notice was sent from the office of the secretary of the board at 11:49 a.m. on December 11 2024 that said notice was sent via email to mwood and South Orange Township clerks in the editors of the news record Star Ledger and the Village Green and tap into Som I'll start with the board president's statement the school board meeting is a business meeting in public and not a meeting with the public often times it may appear to members of our audience that the Board of Education takes action with very little comment and in many cases unanimous vote before matter is placed on the agenda at a public meeting the Administration has thoroughly reviewed the matter with the superintendent of schools the superintendent is satisfied that the matter is ready to be presented to the Board of Education it is then referred to the appropriate board committee members of the board committee work with the administration and the superintendent to ensure that the members fully understand the matter after the committee discusses the matter it it is then shared with other board members for consideration only then is it placed on the agenda for board discussion and action at a public meeting and with that we're going to have our discussion which will be on our update on the district implementation of the record Equity audit and the 5-year work diversity plan good evening uh I'm Dr Kevin F Gil with the assistant superintendent of access and equity and uh as Deon Sanders said when he went to Colorado I bought some luggage with me I have over here miss car wble who is the director of access and equity and Mr tunday at ad doyan who's our director of human resource I did that on purpose because I'm not sure if the public is aware but access and Equity is bigger than just uh myself and his office it contains both Carrie wber who's my director but also human resource which tunday adado Doan leads but also Tiffany Barnes Jessica stoa Robin Curry who's my assistant as well as Mo'Nique Durant and uh Jennifer De Los Angeles all make up the office of access and equity and so I just think it's important to know that when we talk access and Equity we are united front we are united team and I'm happy that both of them are standing standing by my side today so tonight uh we're going to go through and update you on where we are with the implementation of the Ruckers Equity audit um and hopefully you will see that there's been a lot of work happening to help us meet those recommendations uh the reason why you know we're referring to it as that Ruckers Equity audit is because although compliance got us here compliance is not driving this work this is work that we have to do we want to own this work and we're going to Own It by just taking ownership that we had an audit done of us on equity and we are committed to making sure we get Equity right here in the South Orange and Maplewood School District say now Keith Keith got me doing some fan stuff here hold on for a second I'm trying to advance the slide sir thank you so as we always do when we do this update we want to make sure everyone understands what's guiding our philosophy on page eight of the equity audit uh Dr Fergus kind of outlined and his Ruckus team outline what is the guiding principle the only thing I the main thing I want you all to pull from this anytime we talk about the equity audit is centered around the needs of black latinx populations and free and reduced lunch eligible families within our in our school district our bipo population so the things that we do Equity is about listening to those voices who are most marginalized to kind of help us narrow those opportunity gaps to make sure we're fulfilling the uh the role of equity we also want to be very clear that we don't want others in the community to think that you're losing something you're actually gaining something by us working through this Equity you're gaining a school system that looks at the humanity of all of our individuals whether they're adults whether they're young people and that you know we want to make sure that everyone feels valued as well as they belong here in our district just a reminder there were three four areas that we got recommendations on these seven are our curriculum and instruction recommendations I will take the time to read them just to remind everyone of these because we it's been a minute since we've been together uh the curriculum and instruction recommendations are to prioritize material and verbal messaging regarding math and growth mindset to Foster heterogeneous student collaboration in math instruction and I want to pause here and say that although the equity audit highlighted math we are looking at this across all of our subjects but to meet the mandates of of our recommendations we do a lot of focusing on math because that was particularly called out but we're also looking at some of our other subject as well ensure low track students receive high quality instruction that they need to become better math students again all students or students in all courses create a clear plan and timeline to identify high achievement students for underrepresented backgrounds uh for higher track math courses create enrichment and acceleration opportunities increase accessible and Equitable parent involvement and revisit the choice policy for our math course selection and one of the reasons again my math was picked out is was in our middle schools there was a pathway from middle school to High School uh that gets our students uh Through Math and then putting a little more emphasis too on what's happening in our K5 program to get them ready for that there were some intervention recommendations interventions surrounding our multi-tier systems of support or our inrs systems one was to develop a district ride tier system of support that includes defining academic and behavioral tiers available and processes for you Iz ation to extensive review of our inrs implementation process guide in order to address inconsistencies and redundancies develop a list of tiered interventions for academic Behavior Support and develop tools and protocols for the operation of intervention team meetings then there were some recommendations seven of them that we call are developed for p pedagogical capacity with an equity lens basically building the capacity continue to do Equity work through the adults in our district that serve uh our young people to our students who build belonging amongst themselves and feel welcome and and nurturing and to Galvanize our community around uh what Equity means and so one we have the we recommended to develop and Implement a professional development series that focus on the continued development of crosscultural capacity in order to replace bias-based beliefs such as color blindness deficit thinking and racial discomfort continuous assessment of educator knowledge on the intervention support systems curriculum and instruction improvements through professional development build teacher empathy for all students and the using various tools but it particularly called out the work we were doing around challenge day which create a humanistic bond between teachers and students conduct a curriculum audit of courses in the humanities English language arts and history using a cultur responsive protocol to determine where more inclusive materials and pedagogies are needed please note that we actually expanded that we're using our four core subject that we're going to be doing an audit in and then we're going to move to some of our elective courses as well too and I think that's important to know that we're using this to really do a broad brush on everything hire more bipo teachers and create Affinity spaces to support those teachers to increase retention you'll hear the word bipac used a lot that stands for black indigenous people of color for those who may not be familiar with that term uh build on the successes of infinity spaces for students of color such as the max Scholars again this is not at at this moment is looking at the successes of our Max Scholars Program and in termining how we can utilize that those successes to build broader Scopes around Infinity spaces for our young people here in our district and provide Ain for more Affinity spaces for our bipox students across School levels and then there were five recommendations given around intentional integration one further modeling of the int integration in which factors with greater skewed patterns are weighted more intensely over other factors for instance hous household incomes and parent education could be weighted more than racial R race and ethnicity but it's also important to note here and I'll note it again later our algorithm is race neutral so our intentional integration initiative does not use race as a factor we monitor race but it's part of the algorithm race is not included the Supreme Court said we couldn't do that so just want to make sure the public understands that the pattern of average household income and parent educational levels should be examined over time in order to understand whether the triple ey plan can be sustained a stage integration that prioritizes Seth bordon and South Mountain over the next several years review our preco quarantine school years uh 20189 2017 18 to understand withdrawal patterns and then the last one was the triple I plan needs to parallel an integration of academic support Support Services in other words all of the work that we're doing to meet the needs of this Equity audit needs to be driven through all of our schools so it's not just integration of bodies of moving people from school to school it's an integrating the entire School experience and that's what that last one means so also on page eight of the audit uh the Ruckers team outlined for us so we can monitor and manage expectations that to this is a three to five year process and I think that's important to say now because as you understand as I go through the uh presentation today there's a lot of discussion around what are the mixs going to look like what does the data say we use the first year to build foundations we have to get our school system in a place to actually build an infrastructure that's going to provide the kind of data we need to build the kind of metrics that individuals need to see also understand this when you see us as we progress through our presentation today we put together a series of activities and goals to meet those recommendations the full implementation of this plan is supposed to take between three to five years next year is year three we hope to start seeing I'm using hope but we will start seeing some implemented principles to these recommendations with some data metrics to see that we finally moving in a place where these recommendations are going to start to become part of our fabric so uh you tonight you won't see a lot of data you'll see a lot of examples of the work that we did but then we'll also be working towards and showing you how we're moving toward the future so we're going to start with year one progress so we have not really met with you to talk you about the progress we made last year which was year one of our implementation phase right so Year One was 2324 we're now in year two which is 2425 and we kind of wanted to make sure you as a board saw the progress that we made it's also important for us to start here because this is what we did with the monitor so we sent our implementation plan to judge Wallace and to BPW and we have quarterly meetings those quarterly meetings have consisted with us going through that plan year one all of the activities that we said that we were going to do and update the judge and BPW on our progress on meeting those activities while we go through those activities they ask any qualifying questions or any information that they see fit what you're going to get today and see we just finished going through year one our last monitor meeting was in November we finished going through all of our year one activities and our goals for year one and uh there were questions that were asked we met those questions and the judge appear seems to be pleased right now with our progression um and so we want to keep that going the conversation has been Rich BPW has been uh a partner in asking some of these questions and so right now uh we're moving in a good direction in terms of the monitoring and in terms of where we're going with our plan uh judge Wallace judge Wallace understands and and also Dr Fergus is in those meetings with us that this is a 3 to five year process and so they understand that by that we're going through we're progressively going through implementing these now people say well this started three years before we actually got here so really and truly we're looking at about five this is year five or so we're monitoring some of the data to see where those gaps are and seeing if those gaps are are are are narrowing but to get the true effectiveness of these recommendations we're looking at a we we put together a fiveyear plan to get there I hope that makes sense uh as we as as we walk through on what we're doing um it's important for you to note and I want to say this because I think this is something that you should uh knowe these are 23 recommendations 23 recommendations over 70 activities that we put together to meet the goals that we set forth that's a lot of work and this team that you see around me and the people that I mentioned including and including our special services team and our curriculum and instruction team have been working diligently to make sure we live up to the uh uh the purpose of this completing over 70 activities to keep us moving focused and keeping us on par to meet these recommendations is an awesome task and I didn't want to go any further without thanking those individuals letting everyone know that this there's there's been a lot of work that's been going on to keep us moving to meet uh what's been asked of us to meet so as I said before year one was centered on building an infrastructure Dr Fergus met with a team of stakeholders and us in the district and he talked about the fact that we don't want this to be a checkbox system we don't want this to be something where we say done that check done that check done that check we want to build something that's effective and sustainable so he gave us some guiding questions to ask for year one as we started putting this together to build an infrastructure we have to look at what committee or group is going to own the recommendation or own the work that the recommendation sits in that's very important because when you talk about accountability to make sure we're moving that work has to live somewhere I talked about what Frameworks are we using to support the work you know it's enough to say hey we're going to do do a curriculum audit but what framework are we using one of those Frameworks we're using is the New York University steinhardt I got it right steinhardt scorecard um we're talking about what what pedagogical practices we're using we're working with a couple of uh scholars in that uh the GOI Muhammad work that's been centered around that as well as we're doing a culture responsive teaching um that that's also that framework that's also out there as well as it's also some work from Gloria Billings as well uh we're doing that kind of work so when we talk about Frameworks that's the kind of discussion we're having a few M later on you're going to see and you already receive for our new our tier system of support we've created a diamond a framework that talks about tier support not only tier support in terms of academic intervention specifically around Ela and math but off behavior and then some we have a social emotional uh learning Wing to that as well too so when we talk about those Frameworks we spent last year really building out these Frameworks to build this infrastructure so we can be successful at implementing this work what data will be used to guide this goal we didn't have a data in infrastructure as you know we talked about it a lot last year but now we do we have linked it which has been providing a wealth of information and data for us to use in schools we last year was the first year that all of our elementary and our middle and high schools did the culture and climate uh uh survey so now we've got Baseline data for K to 12 or 3 to 12 because the serve our students our K through K1 and two students could not complete the survey but our K and kada 2 parents were able to complete the survey so now we have Baseline data on that now we can start looking at you all received uh unbridge presentation that had our key performance indicators in it you can look at those but we are probably going to now we have the infrastructure to go back and revisit some of those ke kpis and actually put data metrics to some of that stuff which once we get that sorted out the next time we come to you we'll kind of share with you what some of those metrics could look like but I want you to know we are now in a position as a district to actually start putting some data pieces together to help Drive the work that I think that you want to see and then then the professional learning what kind of professional learning is going to happen you know we're building an infrastructure around building some Equity PD here in our district but we also have to realize anytime we do something different whether it's a new math program a new reading program whether we're in we're doing cultur responsive teaching we have to do PD on top of that to help bring our Educators along right and so everything has to be thought out from where we want to the end result to how we get there so these five questions helped drive us to build the infrastructure so year one was about us building infrastructure and that's what we're presenting to you tonight we heard your calls we heard your ask that in order for us to really understand how we're doing uh we are using a coding system similar to what we're using for our district goals that Mr ban is having us put together that he brought with us brought here with him and we we we copied you Mr Bean we didn't quite use the same uh uh uh codes that you used but we used the color in the configuration so we're we're GNA we're going to keep that going and we think that that's an important piece because it's easily to understand in October of in October 30th last year remember I presented to you our Five-Year Plan with the kpis with all the action steps and all of those things and so we're updating you on our progress to get there this is different in that right now the progress is are we completing the activities and goals we said we were going to complete to keep us on track after next year which is year three we will start putting together a metrics to show have we met or how we meeting the actual recommendation so year one year two going into year three is about the activities year three four and five will be about have we implemented those particular recommendations so as you can see uh the hard work that we put together for school year 2324 for the curriculum recommendations are progress I'm happy to report that we met and completed all the activities necessary that we said we were going to complete to keep us on track to meeting these recommendations as well as in our intervention recommendation we completed all of our tasks that we said we were going to complete and all of our activities and our goals to keep us on track to meeting those four recommendations that were given to us uh by the Ruckers team in terms of our intervention processes going forward developing a pedagogical capacity with the equity lens again we completed all of the activities for year one that we said we were going to complete to keep us on course to meeting all seven of those recommendations in terms of the intentional integration and I'll talk a little bit about this later we are still in the planning stages if you went if you look at those five recommendations um there weren't really any goals set with them there was a lot of you know planning that needs to take place to put some of those asks that were in the recommendations what we did do last year is Dr Fergus came and met with the ales group to go through to understand what our intentional integration process is and get a better understanding through some of his recommendations and so now that we've had that meeting we're going to try to put together the plan and the plan to go forward to try to um make more progress towards uh meeting those recommendations so we're we're looking at because he asked us to do some averaging household incomes we' got to get an analysis of that we've got to get the data from the the Two Towns to kind of put that together um the first recommendation talked about uh SK looking at what factors are weigh more intensely but after he learned about the the race neutrality of our formula um that particular recommendation I think we're we're in good shape of because like I said our formula is race neutral um and then some of these other things so it's going to take a little more planning it's going to take a little more strategy but hopefully the next time I come to you this these lines will be moved to yellow and hopefully more towards green that that we're moving towards this I'm not going to read this list for you but these are just some of the goal accomplishments uh that we achieved last year and so when I told you about the 70 activities uh I didn't list all 70 of those activities as a board you have the unabridged uh presentation that shows all of the activities we were supposed to do but I definitely want to pull out some of the amount of work that was done here in a few of these I actually want to click to give you some of the uh uh work that products that came out of that for example uh we're proud to say that we provided professional learning on growth mindset growth mindset was a huge piece of how do we transform the minds of our teachers and making sure that I understand the the the um the abilities of our young people to actually be successful uh in and then if you look on this particular um I did it right I'm happy this is just a a a running example of one of the growth mindset uh PDS that were done by our coaches uh this year so this is just an example of some of the work uh that they were able to share and that they were able to do uh this year um if you go down to number seven one of the things we said we wanted to do was find a um a tool an assessment tool for our gifted and talented work to see what students needed gifted act action plans that was more Equitable uh we we we instituted the the Nary test last year and um that test provides us with now data points um I'm not letting you know what school this is but this is one of our elementary schools at the top that shows us the number of students that were tested and where they fa in their grade range again talking about now having the data we now have data that we can actually look at to see who is what level what they scored on the Nary test how many of our students are moving towards these uh Gap plans and how we can make sure we help support their acceleration and then also this the next set of numbers here that I'm scrolling up to this is one of our midle schools this is one of our Middle School testers who were tested and again the same amount of data we have this data available to us and now it gives us an opportunity to really have strong conversations to see what we need to support uh the students who score uh on the Nary test that show us that they need to be part of the gifted and talented work that we do here and make sure we have those Gap plans for them skipping down to number 13 examine existing practices across school and built a tier system of support we're very proud of the work that we've did not only with our inrs work with our tier system of support this is that diamond that many of you received earlier this year uh that that uh our wonderful Partners in uh curriculum and instruction uh Dr Cara thank you for your work and helping put this together uh and your leadership in this um this is what we're using we now have have a structured uh tier system of support structure here in this school district that's exciting it did not exist when I came here but we now have a structure in place that now we can hold people accountable for we can actually move our students through tiered interventions of support and that's a game Cher and helping to meet the needs of all of our Learners uh also in uh also here you can see that we also have broken it down with a Behavior Support tier we have uh a a wonderful outline that talks about all of the different uh reinforcements and values that we need in behavior that that we would like our students uh to have we talk about the wonderful work we did we have we operate using the castle cell framework when we talk about social emotional learning we now have embedded that into our fabric of what we're doing and then when you go down you can look at some you know one of the things they ask to do is having an actually a list of automatic interventions and things that we know that our students need this is a wonderful guide that our teachers have that we' put together that have some of the automatic interventions when it comes to some behavioral things that you want to look at when it comes to students and and it goes on and on we we have one for uh the social emotional learning as well one of the things we uh we did was we restructured our inrs on Intervention and referral services manual last year this here is another example of the the finished product on that but then we also and I think I put it in here somewhere now have a tiered system of multi-tier system of support manual that incorporates our inrs work yep there it is right there this is our new this is what we put together now the New Jersey tier system of support our SSD this is the current manual that now combines both the work that we did with our New Jersey tier system of support and our inrs uh p and it's linked in the program and in in in the presentation for people to view and look at uh going forward went to the wrong presentation sir trying to get you started um 17 this is an example of the seed work so we talked about professional development and some of the work we're happy that we can send individuals off to seed training who bring that bring that work back to us and they are mandated by getting this training to come back and do seed classes for sta faculty and staff I think this year we started a parent seed or are going to start a parent seed and so going back getting this Equity knowledge and bringing that back is crucial to this work this is just an example of one of the sessions that we did or one of the the the road map or sessions for one of our seed sessions uh to to highlight that work um Miss wble worked very hard with uh a select group of teachers in our district to help put together this this that you see here is our fiveyear professional development plan grounded in the work that we do with seed also working on some restorative justice work within our schools as well as focusing in on building common understanding around tier system of support uh Universal Design and other things culture responsive teach teaching and we now have a fiveyear plan on what that professional Learning Journey looks like in this District to make sure all of our teachers are fundamentally grounded in the equity skills that they need to provide Equity work here in our district and then I'm I'm going to go to U this last piece here this is what I mentioned earlier this is just the example this is the culture responsive curriculum scorecard that we're using to do our curriculum audits uh that were asked of us in the uh recommendations as well and this is the New York University uh steinhardt model uh that we're using uh I think we've conducted the equity audits in all four of our four content areas already and now we're going to be moving towards some of our elective areas uh next in the very near future I keep W to get you going man so let's talk about where we are for year two now um all of that was year one we were happy to make sure we we reached our goals now I want to give you an update on where we are for meeting uh our year two year two activities so you will see as we go through this some of these areas we are in good shape we've met them we we finished those activities others we're work in progress and some we have not quite started yet but we're going to get cranking up we're going to get cranked up in those uh in in the new year when we get back together after the after the Break um some of these take a little time to get going uh but for the most part we review where we are we meet with the areas or the committees or the teams that are responsible for this work to see where they are and then if we have to push or nudge we push to get them moving forward so on the the first curriculum recommendation these are all the activities and you can kind of see visually where we are with some of that this is goal two go three go four go five goal six and recommendation seven goal seven and we are actually about in this one this is a lot of orange this is actually that heterogene genous work that we're trying to move forward and trying to actually that we're getting ready to really ramp up the work in designing what next year's math pathway process is going to look so of all of the things that you see that in these curriculum you're getting ready to get a lot of information soon on where we're moving in that direction in terms of that work in our intervention models again we're in very good shape with this particular recommendation because of all of the front-loaded work that those recommendations asked us to do and so now we're just um moving towards sustainability with that work so this is uh go our first recommendation the work that we've done in there and those are the activities seven activities and then we combined recommendations two three and four because they were pretty much just about building this structure around our tier systems of support and so these four activities are helping us to meet the recommendation requirements for uh two three and four and then uh pedagogical capacity pieces you saw the work that we've been doing around seed and things we're in really good shape and meeting uh all of our activities already in that particular area here before we get out from The Break um this is the goal second goal continuing assessment uh work the third recommendation now you would see some Reds there on the restorative justice the reframing piece keep in mind that that that's a lot of work we did a lot of work with the administrators now we're trying to figure out the best possible approach to spread that out we started with some small restorative justice uh trainings that uh some of our teachers and administrators are participating in so comeing after the after we get back from the break we're going to actually start ramping up some of this work as well too because this is this is also necessary in helping us be effective this is the fourth recommendation this is the hiring more bipo teachers you're going to get to hear from Mr adad Doan later to walk you through that 5year diversity plan he'll go a little bit in depth with maybe some of the challenges that uh we're coming across and especially you looking at that fifth one there with Partnerships with seeden Hall and Montclair State University um you know in a utopian society we we wish we can go in and people will jump right on board and partner with us sometimes it takes a little more massagin and a little more uh partnership and contact to get us where we need to be and then the Mac Scholars work that's we're we're ramping up some of that work uh that you will see you'll see a lot more of these activities moving in a little more better Direction uh when we get done with the holiday break and then providing Infinity spaces across bipox students one of the ways we were able to meet some of this is there was a lot of focus groups done last year with uh various bipo student groups and we already conducted a couple of focus groups this year so we're really leaning into that focus group model in terms of really engaging our young people and then again our triple recommendations are still in the planning phase as we really try to figure out what what what is next in trying to meet those uh those those goals so there was some questions around funding and this also came up in our um in our monitoring uh as well as uh several of you on the board one ask questions about it so so we budgeted $350,000 to to uh implement or work on implementing our recommendations we've expended so far only 128,000 of that but there's few more expenditures there's more expenditures to come um you know we still got to put together possible challenge day uh possibilities uh there's there's extended work that Handover is working with us um you may have gotten the thing around the survey they didn't actually charge us for the survey this year because they're doing some professional development work with us however they're they're very they're very good about helping to create dashboards and things around Equity pieces uh that that we that we may look at uh we still have our EOS work that we're doing that's yet to be expended out of this so there are some there are some um other dollars that are going to come out but all those dollars are geared towards us meeting uh the work necessary to uh move our recommendations forward and then we also received we were fortunate to receive an additional $250,000 identified for our workaround triple I we actually decided to in order to use that money we're going to look at these recommendations that were given to us uh by the Ruckers team in terms of intentional integration but primarily that fifth recommendation remember that fifth recommendation was around how do we integrate our entire schools not just the bodies but curriculum through teachers through all of that and so really utilizing that dollar to help support us through our tier systems of support through U our culturally responsive pedagogy work and using those dollars to kind of help help do do some of that work is going to be instrumental but also we're using that dollars to help pay with for the ALS Group which is still working with us on Triple ey uh which helps take a little relief from the main funds that we've been using for Al group from our general budget as well as Dr Fergus is going to be doing continued work with our district and we're going to use some of those dollars to help support him in his continued work with our school but to date right now we've only expended about $26,000 from those funds that we received there's also uh wonderings around Dr Ferguson what his work means to us as a district he uh like I said he met with us last year we gave him our plan he he thought our plan was was good he offered some suggestions that we used to tweak our plan he gave us the framework to help build our infrastructure and this year he's coming back to primarily work with our school administrators uh uh uh he's he's coming back uh these six dates we pretty much outlined with him the only one that's in the air is February 5th uh he's going to come in and do some meetings with all the administrators in general but then also he's going to uh have individual meetings at individual schools with individual principls and maybe principal teams and a lot of this is going to be centered around our tier systems of support and how to integrate our Equity work in moving that work to make sure sure our tier one supports are where they need to be for all of our students to be successful and done in an equitable manner as well is looking at some of our uh performance data our behavioral data and our attendance data and really helping our leaders think through how they can utilize what they're seeing in that data to create plans and opportunities to help narrow gaps so we're excited to have him uh come coming to us in that in that work with that I will now open the floor for questions but before uh Mr President before you open it up to the other board members one of your board members sent some specific questions that I wanted to answer first uh and I just thought let me do that while I have the microphone uh and then I'll turn it back over to you if that's okay um so a board member wh letter sent some very important questions uh to to to to us to address tonight and I wanted to make sure I put those questions into the into the space to make sure they were answered the the the first three questions centered around the funding pieces which we had the slide that kind of showed what we've done with those dollars and so uh board member Whit letter after I finish going through your other questions if you still had more questions of those when President goes around you feel free to ask that but I thought that slide was particularly designed to talk about what we've done with the funding another question was asked on what data we were going to present uh and I talked earlier today about we what we presented were a lot of activities that we were able to succeed we didn't have the data infrastructure I wouldn't have trusted those numbers without the data infrastructure now that we have it we will be more intentional about making sure we add a data component uh to and and we're going to do something different with our kpis to actually have metrics to go along with those kpis going forward I think we're in a comfortable position now that we have the infrastructure necessary to put together metrics that will actually be meaningful to move the work um you did she did ask if we were considering using a v a visual progress tractor what do you think uh Mr Whit letter how about that visual tracker yes we actually absolutely we actually love that that process and we uh we think that that's that's going to be very very helpful to us uh I talked to about Dr Fergus and what he's going to do uh that was another question what did he look what what did that work look like uh that last slide on Dr Fergus talked about him coming back to do that kind of work uh and if it didn't get to all of your answers when you come around to ask Miss with letter please ask for any qualifying the monitoring process with Jos wall she asked about you know what is the status of the monitoring process we are moving in a really good Direction with that monitor process we have regularly scheduled meetings um as I said before judge Wallace seems pleased with our progress BPW as well as Dr Fergus are in those meetings and they're pushing us they asked us very intentional qualifying questions questions we've been able to answer uh going forward uh they asked for a lot of data pieces data that we can provide for them the next big presentation that I'm going to do next month is that the one that talks about enrollment numbers class sizes and you know demographics that's a huge huge uh present ation that's coming where you're going to get a lot of data and see a lot of things the one thing that they did ask us to do going forward in the past when we've done that presentation we've kind of uh only given like a breakdown a general of the AP courses what they've asked us to do is do a breakdown of every single course that we offer here in our school system that's why it's taking us a little time to put that together so it's going to be an extensive report it's going to be broken down demogra cly by race and gender as they asked us to do and we're going to be actually looking at the numbers and and where we are it'll have that um that that risk ratio graph that we always do in terms of math and all of that so but to answer your question the the progress the monitoring is going going quite well and we're pleased and I believe judge Wallace is pleased and BPW and Dr Fergus are in those meetings uh making sure that we're standing we're we're we're in line with where they want to go um have any challenges AR risen during uh implementation no significant challenges none that we've not been able to uh uh uh uh address um and so one of the things and that that question is always asked of us in the monitoring as well too Jose Wallace asked us that and BPW ask us that and if there's any major challenges he wants to know immediately and right now now we haven't had any major challenges I think uh the fact now that we put some infrastructures in place that can support us moving forward is is going to be quite helpful all right and so those are those questions uh and I'll turn it back over to you Mr President from C him thank you uh so uh one I want to thank you because this was really comprehensive I think the addition of the visuals was really helpful in just grounding to your point we have um a lot of robust work happening um there is a great deal of work that's been undertaken and I really do want to just lead with uh gratitude this is a Monumental multi-team effort that's occurring and everyone's engaged in the Improvement of this for all of the kids in our district and it's really exciting to see it take shape over the last couple of years so thank you um on the very first slide of the records report it points us to kind of this grounding idea that the somsd community has historically been shaped as it says right by the Norms of white affluent families and that these recommendations aim to systemically shift towards more culturally responsive and inclusive practices pedagogy programming centered on the needs of our black latinx and free and reduced lunch eligible families so I think you did a really nice job tonight eloquently naming that the transition will take time and the impact will be felt by all stakeholders in the district which does um to to kind of land the plane right necessitate spaces where families students Educators can process those changes build trust and Foster understanding I think we learned a little bit tonight about the the Deep planning that's going into what that looks like in the next five years for educators which is exciting but with the context in mind I did have a couple of follow-ups about how the district's planning to do this within the community um to build trust because I do think that so much of the success um and continuation of things like the triple ey and um these the success of this integration plan and the rers report um will really be how do we effectively support the community and the families through this shift uh so it was exciting and I was happy to see that um we talked about the dedicated seed trainers um Kate def Kate backo iart and eart and Amanda masella bringing that valuable work on equity and diversity into the community facilitating conversations I think it's a fantastic step forward um I'm curious how will the district address challenges that are facing by families who are adjusting to a more Equitable system ensuring that those families do feel supported so are there opportunities to expand this type of programming um and I think strategies may be centered around disseminating accurate information on the triple ey on record Equity report like Q&A sessions for families who might have reservations or who might have misunderstandings or misconceptions about those pieces absolutely and if you noticed on the um the tracker but the things dealing with our fam we're still in the red piece that we haven't started yet but that's been intentional because uh the the Mandate is and I'll use our math for example back map so we know where we want to where we think we want to go with map but before we present a plan to you all part of that plan has to be how we're going to engage families so go this year everything that we do has to have some type of family kind of Engagement P portion to it on what is going to be our plan will it be forums will it be surveys will it be both and so um we're thinking about that intentionally and it's going hand in hand in where where where we need to go um and so part of the planning processes going forward is you know thinking about what the best medium or mode is to make sure we engage our families right now uh we got the survey out to our families uh the Dei survey which is giving us some basic online data but anything that we do towards an activity um we want to ensure that we we add a component of Outreach to our family so um it's it could look like several different several different things it could look like a community night um I know our superintendent right now is doing his community forms and things like that and so um we want to be intentional uh about engaging our families and we want to honor as the records team put out there that we have to make these spaces to put voice in the space and so now that we're in year two that's going to be even more critical as we move closer to implementation of all of the recommendations you [Music] wel Wilson thank you for that great presentation um one is just me saying back what I think I heard correctly um and then I have and then one is a question so thank you for further explaining The Five-Year Plan and and the great conversations that you've had had with our Monitor and with um Dr Fergus about the process and so what I think I'm hearing is that um you know last year October 2023 or actually I think it was a couple months before that um we extended our contract three or excuse me extended the settlement timeline by three years and so by 25 26 that would be year three and based on this uh plan that you have by year three a lot of our a lot of your ideas action items will be implemented um and then youve got year four and year five to review and my assumption is that okay in reality maybe there are a few things that are like halfway being launched or like might still need some you know finessing fine tuning um but that's going to be okay because they've seen that this is the fiveyear plan and there's progress and we're not going to get quote unquote in trouble um for some things maybe being still struggling absolutely and it is our hope that in year three we should start having uh you should start seeing us show on our um are meters where things are being partially implemented uh moving towards full implementation that is our plan that's our goal that all of those recommendations will be in that kind of in that kind of area and I think we're moving in a good direction towards meeting that goal that's great okay and the second one is M question so with the further modeling of I of the intentional integration initiative um I'm curious uh since it does mention that race and ethnicity would be potentially part of the modeling of of looking at um and considering um or a factor to consider to evaluate the II further are any of these conversations looking at the impact of black and lower SCS students disproportionately traveling farther um and if not like what are some of the things that you are looking at if you are going to be looking at race when it comes to further modeling so um the Supreme Court has been very clear we can't create an integration model with race and so Our intention is not to do that so what we monitor it and for what for whatever reason there is also a correlation between sces status and race and so we we are seeing that correl that correlation play out in our implementation of triple i as you know the algorithm gives us three uh uh SC tiers one two and three one low two mid three high and they're place to try to keep that 5% variance in each of our schools we're seeing two things one um well I know we get a lot of questions sometimes people say well I go to such and such school and I just don't see Triple ey working because I'm looking in the classrooms they look the same well you're not going to be able to see an outward appearance because we're not intentionally using race to do that it's based on SCS tier but we are seeing uh based on that some movement in diversity in our in our buildings but we're also seeing and one of the things the factors that we are talking about is we are seeing that for many of our black families they are the ones who are not getting to their closest school they're the ones actually getting sent to the third fourth closest school based on where the algorithm plays we think there's two well one major factor in there we've looked at the demographers report of our of our community and our number of black families is decreasing uh tremendously the other factor in that and we've got to look into that also is housing and where our families are living and so when we talk about monitoring we got to and I think that gets into some of Dr fergus's triple I recommendation so that's going to be some of the deeper dive work that we're going to have to do but it's those kind of things that we're monitoring to kind of see how uh race is playing out in in our schools yeah sorry I was going to say yeah you know I think maybe even just for an outsider like I understand what that what that slide means and what that box means in the II Section but an outsider it's it's kind of written a little confusingly because yes obviously we can't use race but then you say but we're using race to model so you're like what does that mean um like when I monitor monitor yeah no I know but it says to evaluate it says model factor to evaluate in the box so my point is I would use some examples like for example if you know that low SCS um and and specifically black but low SCS students are the ones that are traveling further farther excuse me could we be looking at how that impacts if some of them need breakfast are they missing breakfast do they have to bring that breakfast into the classroom because they didn't get to school in time for breakfast um what does that mean for um Early Child Care like being able to directly ask some of these parents I know we have our survey but our survey also has a lot of gaps in it so maybe we could be a little bit more intentional about literally like reaching out to those families directly and saying how is this impacting you um so that that box that's in our plan can be a little bit more specific um and the actions can be a little bit more specific okay thank Youk you and I can say we've heard from some of those families too they've come up to this office so absolutely so thank you yes thank you for that for more second Gable yeah thanks again for the presentation very comprehensive and thorough um I was just thinking about the um the student experience piece and all this and I know um that there were focused groups about um around Affinity spaces and all so assuming the students in focused groups Express a desire to engage in uh more Affinity groups in the school and understanding that we can't clone Mara Hicks and the phenomenal work she's been uh doing with Max Scholars do you anticipate we'll have enough um capacity among our Educators to lead this work as it expands I believe so and so one of one of the things we have a lot of clubs especially at our high school that how some of this Affinity work so what we really want to replicate is there's a lot of programming work that happens um through the Mac scholar program I don't think our expansion is going to be create all these large Mac scholar groups across our district but maybe use some of the foundational pieces that created Mac by the way they've changed their name to GMAC you're going to hear about that Global majority and not minority but that's coming out soon coming out soon to you to you soon and and how that process can help inform Us in build in building some of these other spaces I'm going to actually let Carrie talk a little bit more about that because she's been actually doing a lot of Hands-On work with u Miss Hicks so we have um we did an audit of all of our uh clubs and and really we have over 12 clubs that that align with affinity goals which is really great right so um what we're doing at the high school is really outlining what are some of the successful ideas that make Mac work well um and and how do we replicate that piece so we've talked about um giving seed likee trainings um to some of the club leaders right so that they can really understand some of that um Equity work even on the student level um and also some of the uh programs right so so max Scholars it's it's definitely a community right and students work together so are there places that we can use those processes in those um and we're also looking at what does this look like at the middle school level is is our next step right so how do we build that out um and use some of the programming that's at the high school and and will that work in a different way in the Middle School to support our kids so that's some of the work we're doing now um and Miss Hicks is int integral and it would be great to clone her so I'm open to all ideas around that um so thanks for thank you um thanks to all of you for this terrific work um my question I suspect if board member V lman was here he would be asking this so in his St I'm going to go ahead and ask looking back at curriculum recommendation number two fostering heterogeneous student collaboration in math instruction uh and specifically looking at the last two revising the sixth grade math curriculum and exploring the use of consultation model in special education to increase access to general education and higher level courses uh I wonder if you can go into detail on both of these to talk about what the current thinking is and the development of what sixth grade math is going to look like uh from the context of making sure that more students have access to those higher level courses when they're asked to be to commit to a track so early in their career um well at the same time ensuring access to the highest level courses for students who want to be on that track thank you um so one of the things that we looked at um especially as we got our njsla scores in is our academic level courses need to be um updated for specifically in our middle scho six seventh and eighth um academic level regular sixth grade math right and so that's something that we're looking into and also looking at curriculum resources to support that so that's what the sixth grade that's our process is to do one each year and build on that and what that does is really um allows more deeper critical thinking in those math courses and has offers the opportunity for teachers to have more resources to build that critical thinking um and also that heterogeneous work so that's what we're looking at right now as that piece um as for the consultation model that's not specific to sixth grade but really looking at um are we able to provide our teachers with uh additional supports to help students who have special needs in that class that maybe don't need a full inclusion class right and a second teacher in the classroom but might need some support once a week might need to meet with a special education teacher on the side for a little bit of additional support but that can stay in that regular regular education classroom without that additional support we're in the very early stages of talking about that um and it wouldn't be for everyone but just another option on the continuation of services and any other thing I will add to that is that we are looking at neighboring districts and what their Pathways and things look like so we're still doing some research around that as well too so um we're in the planet stages that's why it's [Laughter] orange yeah I have a question question or first off a comment like I I I love seeing the work that's been done in building the data infrastructure and finally seeing that come to fruition because you know that was a discussion that we've had over two years and then finally seeing we have infrastructure to start monitoring students I'm glad to see that um also I'm very glad to see that the framework of the road map and always showing what our progress on all these goals are district goals I think there a great framework that we should continue um one question I have is I think I want to make a comment is I think it's important to mentioned that when we talk about the growth mindset that that's about the expectation that we have of our Educators and not the idea that we have to instill that into our students because a lot the issue is there's this idea that these students can't do this work so they don't get taught at that at a higher level so I know that Math and Science are often the area that we have the the most difficulty in Staffing so I'm wondering how is this factor of I guess making sure that the Educators that we bring in have that that same attitude about equity and instilling the growth mindset is in terms of recruiting teachers um well you know our our plan is you know once we instill this kind of equity mindset and our leaders and our and our individuals that when they're going through the hiring process you know you are selecting individuals who meet the standard that we expect to have that kind of mindset now we're going to have a training infrastructure in place to help build on those skills but we spend a lot of time investing in our building leaders or our district leaders who do some of this hiring and it is part of that is when you're selecting people you select people understanding who we want to be in this particular district and that they meet the standard that that that we expect especially having an equitable mindset um Mr adado Doan I don't know if you want to add anything in terms of that I think you know so but yes so the way we're the The Way We Grow that is investment in our leaders who are actually doing that hiring to make sure that when they're hiring and we actually go through that when we do some SLT hiring or this Mr Moody could tell we ask the equity question to our business administrative person who was coming into our district it was very important that we put that question in there right and that's the kind of strategies that we want our leaders to use that all of these recommendations all of this Foundation that we're putting in when you're selecting candidates to come to our district to work that they're coming with that mindset uh in place and so um we're confident that once we roll everything out that's what that's what we're going to have and we are investing a lot on the front end right now of our administrators to help with that going forward I'm just going to Echo my board colleagues um and thanking you for this presentation I'm a visual person and so being able to see the actual visual progress of the 70 I think you said activities that you all have been working um working on is very very helpful um also happy to hear that the Monitor and BPW seem to be pleased with how things are going um so I I have two two questions one is actually going to come off of Will's question here I I'm still not clear about the heterogeneous and what that actually means um so I'll I'll just start with that and then I think as we look to next year as we think about what this committee structure looks like next year um you know kind of piggybacking off board member Wht Letter's question about data and what you've been presenting I think when we think about the committee meetings it would be really helpful to actually see what are the things that you are presenting in your quarterly meetings so that it's not just that oh you know we've accomplished this or we're here but this is actually what we've shown and this is why the monitor is very pleased with the progress and then of course Dr Gilbert what you were talking about year one it was about the foundation whatever data that can be shown um again that's more Forward Thinking so just as we think about next year um but that's it thank you I was talking to uh Miss wble because we did ask Dr Fergus about the heterogeneous piece too and so did you want to share so we really talked about what it what it meant in a in a few different ways first it means that um students in a classroom working in all different abilities so you have a sixth grade classroom who was learning sixth grade standards and none of those two kids are going to be at the same level right and so what does that look like when those students are working together and how do we support a student who is learning has learned this much math and maybe a student who has learned a little bit more math and how do they work together to to benefit each other in in their math instruction right and so using a variety of really good best practices for teachers helps students all abilities work in classroom and we want to really strengthen those um not only the resources that the teachers have um but also the instructional practice and and they do a great job at the middle school but providing even more professional learning on how groups work together how you can do uh an example in math is a low floor high ceiling um math task right and so that's a that's a a maybe a word problem that anyone can do because you can solve it if you really struggle in math or you can solve it and it could be challenging if you're really doing well in math right it's a problem that anyone can access and so really doing professional learning on that type of instruction is really helpful in the heterogeneous groups um and so that's really where where he was honing in on and how can we uh support our instructors doing that okay thank you um just a followup to that and please pardon my ignorance here because the idea is that this will be for the 2526 school year is is that enough time for these teachers to undertake the professional learning and obviously you mentioned a lot of like additional resources but it it essentially for those that aren't familiar with it I mean that that changes a lot right and so I guess the question is you know from uh from the time that everything is set and they start this professional learning is it's eight months I'm trying to just do the quick math in my head right it's eight months or maybe it's even less because we're talking in the spring is that enough time to do that for the next school year so I would say similar similar to the K5 roll out I would say um kimine is our math supervisor and she's been doing a lot of professional learning on instructional practice over the last several years right so what we would really be looking at is to further that and also if we bring in new curriculum resources we would continue that learning for the first year or two or three through that curriculum resource so for example in K5 we have our new Eureka Math uh Eureka 2 um and so our teachers although they've been doing great work in math all of these years they're still getting professional learning we're in year two on the ins and outs of that particular curriculum resource and the same process would be happening for sixth grade math so we would we're choosing a curriculum resource updating that curriculum there's new standards that we're going to have to um update it anyway um and then as we begin to implement that continue the professional learning that that uh Miss be has already been doing um on that those instructional practi IES thanks I think just to build on this idea I think I support obviously our commitment to these heterogeneous groupings and inclusive practices um so much of this stve tailes rate between that place of like cni and special services work and so um these are practices that I think support equity and Student Success that said I think there's so many moving Parts in terms of what we've lifted and what we are kind of putting into motion um that obviously I'm not asking for this in the moment um but I think it might be helpful to have a clear timeline which would outline the professional training and development that's planned how the resources and staff would be allocated in the coming months and years just so that we could have that articulated with Clarity um in terms of scope and sequence for those efforts so that we understand how that change will be articulated rolled out and then obviously communicated um like with any change sometimes it it can be uncomfortable depending on on where you are as a stakeholder and so I think the more clarity we have on some of of how that work comes together and then the forecasted changes would be really helpful so thank you yeah thank you frommer w letter I can you see um so first thank you so much H Dr Gilbert and all I know I sent over a ton of questions and I appreciate I didn't know you guys were going to do it for this presentation it was more just throwing it out are you planning to do something more visual so to see it uh was very helpful and it just added to even more questions that I have um sorry about that so I want to focus more just on the inrs piece of it because you know one it's very exciting that we have an inrs that was implemented standardized districtwide at the beginning of this school year we know Fergus has been here multiple times and going back to 2017 he talked about the lack of inrs and the inconsistencies from school to school um exacerbated inequities in the district so to have that in place is really important but what I wanted to ask now is what is the current approach that the district is taking to assess educator knowledge around intervention supports I'm sure it's not you know one PD session and done um so how is how is that training Contin in um and then the other question is how is the district measuring success and identifying improvements um now that we have introduced it you know one of the things and I have to follow up with Shaina um that stood out to me not in a good or bad way but in the last meeting curriculum and instruction had mentioned that the number of students receiving reading intervention has decreased and so um just more data an analysis around why there's been that reduction and then also just how we are measuring the success of programs like I ready and identifying students who need more supports okay thank you um so so first we're looking at we've because we've expanded the idea of inrs to include ntss inrs and our um support for our GI students um what we've done is we've taken a multi-year approach to supporting what that looks like um our students our teachers are getting a ton of professional learning specifically this year around the tiered supports and looking at data to know what students need so we're doing that through I ready uh support we're doing that through professional learning around um uh Exel um and and a number of different other data pieces and so what we want is we want teachers to be able to look at that Exel data and say okay this is the next Le support lesson you need whether that means you need extension whether that means you need a little support in uh adding double digits whatever that is and so that's what a lot of our teacher practice uh instructional practice professional learning has been about is how do we take that data and use it in the classroom in real time and so that's been a large amount of our professional learning specifically in ela and math this year um about that data and that instructional practice that that's linked to it um in addition our uh Vice principles who run our ntss committees uh were have gotten some professional learning around that process so that they can really begin implementing that um in the next round of inrs um Dr cray and I will be going to the different schools and using a rubric just to see how it's going and to see if there's anything that that we need to tweak um I know she speaks to Vice principles often uh trying to see you need anything how can we help um we we're speaking to the high school a lot about their inrs process as well and so just being a a resource for them is really helpful um we've also done a lot of professional learning for the administrator specifically on the actual manuals because they're very intricate and we want people to be able to see all of the tiered supports that are available um and bought several resource books for our teams so that they have uh so that the teams have a lot of resources that they can delve into when creating plans um I'm trying to I wrote down most of your questions Kaylin I'm sorry and I think that answer is great to hear that you guys are going to go into the schools I think that will be um eye openening too um and then it's not really a question it's more Comm ment but um I know it's like beating I I've beat this drum for a while now but I think when I saw the visual of the parental awareness piece of it um and I know I think it was like two blocks were filled in so obviously there's more work to do but um when it comes to any child making sure that all stakeholders involved with that child just understand what the resources and support services are and what is available to them I think is so critical um and doing it in a way that's not just you know coming I know these Community forums that we're hosting um we're getting some people to attend and they're great but you know when you have that guardian or that parent in front of the teacher in a parent teacher conference um you know that's also a really great time and I just also would hope that there's a plan in place to put inrs on our uh District website and a userfriendly format because sometimes you know the teacher notices something but sometimes so does the parent and being able to understand what they have access what their child would have access to I think um is really important too so I'll just add that that is uh being added Dr karea is working with uh Mr Draper and they're adding that to the website and my favorite uh document that she has um created was the difference between uh 504 IEP and inrs because um that's confusing right and we're we are alphabet souped out in education and so you know parents come and they want help but they don't know what all those letters and numbers and all that means so um we're really excited about that and I'm hoping that that Forum that we did for IRS were videotaping um and that should be on the website also when that is created in January is awesome that's all I have thank you so much all right we'll just go on to the fiveyear all right okay good evening board members and happy holidays um just going to jump right in this is our 5-year diversity Workforce uh development plan that is to address the recommendations from Dr Fergus and the the Ruckers report okay it's just a reminder that uh this is an active report and we'll be continually monitoring it uh as opportunities arise uh such as our new superintendent with his new fresh ideas Mr Bing and then also other opportunities that come down the pike like uh Ai and different things like that I do also want to I'd be well I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my team and uh particularly Dr Bean folks and all the support that she did in this project um I also want to acknowledge uh Monique Durant uh the team from Soma and the ASA team as well they were all part of this process okay all right and I won't read all of this this is our mission statement that guides our work um but I do want to call your attention to our core values uh and those core values are belonging empathy social justice opportunity and integrity and cultural responsibility we spent quite a bit of time on this uh on this work right here um and we partner with uh not only the senior leadership team but also uh members from the president's Council uh members from CPAC uh again members from so SAA and ASA um and and this work was really important okay theory of action and again I just want to remind you all that this this Workforce Development plan is is is strictly related to uh the recommendation for the Recruitment and Retention of bipo teachers uh or B staff rather and uh the Affinity Affinity groups to support that uh the theory of action for the recruitment these are our guiding principles and this will guide us through as we get through our objectives and I'll read it because it's very important if the so if if the South Orange Maplewood School District engages in targeted Outreach efforts to attract teachers who identify as black indigenous or people of color coupled with intentional efforts to remove barriers to entry and establish Equitable hiring practices that prior to our Recruitment and Retention then the district will cultivate a diverse pool of talent Educators who reflect the racial and cultural backgrounds of its student population and the presence of diverse teaching Workforce will not only enhance the representation of different racial and cultural perspectives within the district but also contribute to a more inclusive and culturally respons responsive learning environment in our theory of action for retention States if the South orang Maplewood School District increases the racial Consciousness cultur responsiveness and professional learning of District staff in support of the retention of teachers who identify as black indigenous and people of color then the district will transform and implement the policies structures and practices that ensure equity and result in Equitable hiring practices retention and improve access to diverse Educators for all students and will create a cultural responsive learning environment which students can achieve academically and possess the qualities needed for success in an increasingly diverse World okay year One Foundation and and our initial implementation okay again I'm just going to highlight key areas I'm not going to read all of this um but we begin with starting with a diverse Workforce committee um next uh and this is this year right so our plan starts out 2425 so the implementation started we did this work last school year but this went into effect for July 2024 so the next goal for us was to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment then we're going to do some targeted new recruitment materials we're going to partner with minority serving institutions launch a new affinity group program for just teachers and staff and then we're going to review and enhance our hiring practices I'm going to quickly go over year one uh all year excuse me I'm going to quickly go over all five years and then I'll jump into smart goals at the end okay so here in year two we're going to launch our mentorship program and this mentorship program is going to be different from what we currently do that's required by the New Jersey Department of Education so will be strictly focused on teachers of color U we'll continue to uh attend job fairs and and include histo um excuse me Hispanic serving institutions and other minority serving institutions uh we're going to continue to develop our workshops and I mean there professional development workshops around cultural competence and Leadership and then again affinity group participation okay here in year three is about evaluation and adjustment okay we're going to be looking at our data our Recruitment and reten data for opportunities we're refining our affinity group support we're going to strengthen new and our existing Community Partnerships and again we're going to expand on professional development opportunities year four we titled it scaling and sustainability okay so what we're going to do here is we're going to extend our proven uh successful program s districtwide uh again formally integrate Affinity groups so again we're going to be looking at starting small piloting our Affinity groups and then hopefully have some success and then launching them around uh the district as a whole next we're going to open up leadership development Pathways some of that work has already begun as part of Mr Bing's uh vision and then again we're going to have a a third-party audit from our outside group okay year five a reviewing and future planning okay and this is the final year of the plan so we'll do a comp comprehensive uh review of all of our uh initiatives um we're also going to include stakehold stakeholder engagement so we're going to be doing surveys town halls and different focus groups uh that'll also Drive some strategic goal setting and our plan for the future and then of course we're going to celebrate our success uh with all the initiatives districtwide key performance indicators again I'm not going to go through all of these um pretty self-explanatory but uh this is a data that that we will be able to show these are the uh outcomes that we'll be hope to show at the end of this uh plan I do want to highlight the fostering of safe spaces at the end there the next slide here is our data driven decision making okay so these are the data sources that we're going to use uh to drive the work okay so here I broke down the smart goals for uh each year and you can see them here I'm just going to highlight the um the measurable um initiatives that we have so here in go one and year one uh we expect to have 8 to 10 members which you've already completed uh goal two is our needs assessment um we're still in the planning phases of that um we are hopeful to get at least 80 80 80% response that um from our staff on that okay goal three we expect to have uh three brochures two videos and an update to our district website with all of our new content and our new marketing plan okay goal four um we expect to have at the end of this year uh three Affinity groups uh with regular monthly meetings and goal five the last goal for year one is to to uh complete uh the initial review and develop an action plan okay year two my computer is to implement the mentorship program and conduct at least four to four four mentor to Mentor workshops okay goto in year two is to participate in at least five recruitment efforts five recruitment events uh particularly those in Hispanic serving institutions and minority serving institutions okay goal three is to conduct at least four workshops with a minimum of 50 participants in each and that's a really aggressive uh professional development that we hope to achieve okay year three um we on a complete evaluation Report with actionable items excuse me actionable insights and then also we're going to strengthen our Community Partnerships goal one in year four again is to implement initiatives in at least 80% of our schools goal two in year four is to enroll at least 15 teachers into our our new leadership program teachers of color and year five review and future planning our smart goals will be here again a comprehensive review report and then goal two is to set future goals based on a review is to develop a strategic plan with at least five new goals uh to move the district forward okay that brings us to the end of this presentation but I do want to share the um our conclusion statement as we conclude our strategic plan for Workforce diversity our commitment to fostering a more inclusive and representative educational environment remains unwavering by setting an overarching goal of an of an 5% annual increase in the number of teachers of color we taken a significant step towards reflecting the necessary diversity within our schools together let's build a brighter more inclusive future for our students thank you any questions thank you so much for that I mean um we got to look at it in Personnel so she new for me um so I had one follow-up question from something we did discuss in Personnel that I didn't get a chance to confirm in our last meeting was about our needs assessment staff survey survey we had mentioned adding lgbtq supports in there because of the intersection with people of color and lgbtq and how that can add on another level of complexity um so is that something if we haven't already added it just a reminder to to to to put that in if you agree yes we we have discussed putting that into the plan okay great and then the other and there's Crossover with the um RoR implementation plan and it's my new favorite acronym PBIS um so I looked it up because I wanted to make sure I was sharing the accurate information msis and PBIS do have very different um distinction know right distinction when it comes to Grants so I do think even though I know we discuss it and you and you um love the idea of making sure we Outreach to them I do think it has value to add into the presentations because it does have a different distinction um and I think it would be good for uh the community to know that PBIS are on our radar and for those who don't know that's predominantly black institutions um and so because I'm involved in in in in PBIS right now for some of my my business work um we've been tracking the fact that HBCU are um overloaded with applications right now they're really worried about what's going to happen um next year and so um they're just admitting less black students to H HBCU and so that means that you're going to have that overflow and PB are going to be really really important um over the next few years so I want to make sure that we capture that for our recruiting efforts as well certainly we will definitely add it to the plan and we've already begun recruiting and looking at their recruitment efforts going to those PBIS as well thank you this is just I guess a question I was looking at the progress indicator in the implementation plan and you you had mentioned CN Hall University and mon Clair state so I wonder are there any other institutions within the state that you are partnering with yes and I actually spoke with Dr Gilbert about opening that up um we began some preliminary conversations with Montclair State but there's been some turnover um so we're still in a little bit of a flux but I do want to open that up I've had some initial conversations with the uh Ruckers uh Newark Education team um I have a new contact at NJCU which is a a Hispanic serving institution um so we're going to actually open that up on our document and um update our reports to include those other schools and just and just to piggy back the PBI is New Jersey has two um we have Essex County College and also Bloomfield College which part of our Clair state thank you ber Meyer so I I love seeing these goals and especially the discret smart goals that we can so easily track to you know watch ourselves and stay on track and Achieve these um the overall goal I wonder if you would just remind us you know Dr Gilbert referenced in the context of uh student placement that uh we are limited in actually using race as a factor in placement and I know there's limitations we have in you knowly be called affirmative action programs in specifically choosing uh applicants by Race So if you just remind us of exactly what uh our powers are to be able to work on that diverse Workforce well again I think and I highlighted a little bit in um the theory of action uh so we we want to do an intentional targeted approach to increase our diversity pool um but it's important to emphasize that you know we still want to make sure that we get the best candidates for our community and our students so uh regardless of race U we're looking for the best but we do want to incorporate and making sure that we getting uh teachers of color um to make sure that everyone feels comfortable they have the cultural competency and they're you know ready to be in this District we have a a dynamic District that's diverse and we want everyone to feel comfortable diverse pool diverse teachers diverse students diverse community PR eer thank you tunde for presenting that as nubie has mentioned we've seen it in personel um so I feel like I know it like the back of my hand at this point um I think and I know that as part of the district goals for the 23 24 school year it was about putting this all together um can we if we can go back to the Partnerships with all the local universities um and and more so for kind of the public like what does a partnership with these universities actually look like and feeding the pipeline Etc if you could just talk about that a little bit more yeah I mean there's um probably tons of different opportunities I know Mr Bing is engaged with seen Hall University on some my vision uh is to do a model of um paring kind of similar and I hate to use the but kind of like Teach for America where we establish an agreement that we're going to take on a certain amount of uh special ed teachers Ed uh Math teachers or science teachers and we're committed to working with that cohort of of teachers throughout the time obviously they still have to meet all of our standards and different things like that but that is uh my vision but there are other opportunities to partner uh whether that be through supports for our power professionals um getting them into teacher programs uh quickly um you know and find ways to to cut down on the costs for those folks um so those are the type of Partnerships and agreements that I would be looking at um on the surface all right I think that's all thank you Dr Gilbert um and I just before closing I want to just say to the board um to just thank you for the support of these two individuals that's sitting to my to to my side U I tell them this all the time uh they make me look good and then I make Mr Bing look good so it all it all rolls up it all rolls up here but you talked earlier about hiring and hiring people that have the value and both of these individuals I hope you hear that they not only uh believe this work they live this work and uh that's the kind of example that we're setting and that's the kind of example we we look forward to and I just want you to know that each time Miss wble is working and helping to help push uh whether it's the curriculum audience whether it's working through the hibs she's pushing it through a lens of centering this thing around our most marginalized students and when Mr adado Doan is out there recruiting he's out there recruiting with that same fabric and and and fervor in that to do this work right you got to have individuals who believe in this work and I just want the community to know and you to know that we are committed to getting this work done right and so what you see here are individuals who live it eat it believe it and we work hard to make sure we get this right and so um I just wanted to make sure I gave them their roses while they were sitting here thank you all right now we'll have our hearing of individuals and delegations thank you for coming in person and dialing in by phone this evening the South Orange map Board of Education certainly respects that you've taken the time out of your busy day to address the board at tonight's meeting we value public involvement in our school district and we are eager to hear what you have to say the board does have time limits by policy and will be enforcing those to enable as many people to speak as possible this seeding each individual will be given 3 minutes to speak please do your best to stay within the time afforded to you the first public comment period is usually limited to 1 hour and the second public comment period may be limited to 30 minutes all input share with the board of education is taken very seriously and will inform future deliberations and work by the Board of Education and his committees and know all right nothing in person and nothing online all right so then we'll just move on to new business anyone have any new business all right the Board of Education will meet in public session on Thursday December 19th 2024 at 6:30 p.m. in the district meeting room at 5:25 Academy Street in Maplewood New Jersey immediately following the opening a public session the board will move to go into a Clos session in the superintendent's office at 525 Academy Street in Maplewood New Jersey as well as using an online video conference platform to discuss Personnel manage within the attorney client privilege legal negotiations and other matters that may arise and require discussion to be announced at a later date immediately fin the Clos session the Board of Education will meet in public session estimated to be at 7:30 in the district meeting room at 525 Academy Street in Maple New Jersey in person utilizing an online video conference platform which will include hearing of individuals the community can view the meeting by following the steps which will be listed on the agenda if there are members of the community who would like to attend the meeting in person please note that masks and social distancing are optional in accordance with the guidance to receive for the local do in the CDC action will be taken with that I'd like to make a motion to adjourn second thank you board Callan all in favor all right that's unanimous and we are closed yes uh board member Callahan and second Board second cable yeah and we are done at 8:19 p.m.