Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County School Board Regular Meeting, Thursday, January 22, 2026

Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 1h 41m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaqYNBSmQ8I

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-14. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] hours in the day and this is an acknowledgement of that. And then finally we have guidelines and limits on required staff meetings and evening events. I believe the staff meetings are limited to three per month is what we agreed to. For our education support professionals, wages are going to increase by 4.25 percent per year of the contract. It's a larger increase than for our licensed staff callback pay which is a situation where say in one of our schools

[00:00:39] i'm not wishing this happens next week i hope it doesn't but an extreme cold a pipe could burst we have to call a plumber who's off their shift to come in attend to that get it cleaned up get it fixed they've already gone home for the day that's a situation where it's callback pay this sets a minimum guarantee that if you are called back you will be paid for three hours so it takes an hour and a half to fix that pipe you're still getting three hours recognizing you were home you were getting ready to have dinner with your family we changed your plans thank you for coming in for

[00:01:15] working conditions the cba will require some common sops to be developed department by department to ensure employees have clarity around departmental procedures how to procure items that are needed say for custodial ordering procedures or things like that enhanced access or increased access to professional development for our teaching assistants we will begin instituting paid 15 minute breaks for our hourly employees and i think about with the weather coming in how hard our

[00:01:51] custodians and building services employees are probably going to be working on monday to ensure that our schools are safe for students to come back they're going to need that time duty-free meal breaks ensuring that they have those duty-free meal breaks clarity on the process for temporary promotions and what happens when a support employee is covering for a vacant position is and is within there and refers back to the school board's policy some information some

[00:02:25] procedures around hvac standards for when workspaces offices are maybe too hot or too cold depending on the season what should happen what's the required response time provisions for allowing people to relocate within the building and finally uh sop for training for new hires for office associates and registrars to ensure that our current staff aren't burdened with okay do all of your regular job and also teach Tim how to do everything. This will really guarantee that they

[00:03:01] have a good onboarding experience with the appropriate people to make sure they know how to use their systems. Okay, so what is this all going to mean? What effect is it going to have?

[00:03:18] For employees, it's just nice to have the clarity on wages and benefits for a defined period of time uh it's once we get the scales into the cba like we'll you we'll be actually be able to look and see okay here's what i'll be making in uh two or three years according to the scale um and it that can help with financial planning a great deal there's some security built into that um the guidelines protecting planning time during the school day and the work-life balance i think are uh key again particularly for our elementary teachers

[00:03:53] as well as like those workload relief days um and there's just i think like i said a greater acknowledgement of the um kind of the unique nature of a teacher's job um the child care benefits are huge i think it's great for like i think this is like a family-friendly cba there's obviously the pr the paid parental leave is the big one but also just the recognition of the difficulty in finding child care having the employee preference program for edep i think

[00:04:26] sends a message that this is a good place to be if you are if you have a young family or if you're thinking of starting a family and the enhancements to the leave programs uh like i said there was the obviously the parental leave but also the the bereavement leave that dan mentioned the floating leave day, there's just an ability to take personal leave and hourly increments.

[00:04:53] Again, there's just like a bigger, I think, recognition of just kind of the reality of employees' lives and the occasions on which they might have to take leave from work. And this, I think, accounts for that.

[00:05:12] For the division, I believe all of these provisions help us enhance the retention of our employees when they look at the landscape of opportunities when they're thinking about their work-life balance this these provisions allow them to feel really good about what they have here it's modernizing and enhancing pay and benefits for recruiting we have not finalized the salary scales for the next three years but the draft i looked at today hints that by fiscal year 2029 our teachers at year 32 in the doctoral lane will be making six figures and that puts us on par with

[00:05:51] fairfax prince william louden and compensates teachers with what they deserve this really coordinates employee needs that workload relief time with division initiatives the data-driven instructions specifically that's a huge emphasis that i think we're going to hear about in a little bit that data analysis and workload relief days create time where teachers and administrators can really dive in and do that work and plan to take action on data i feel this is one of the most

[00:06:27] important things it affirms that employees voices really matter and that they have a voice and problem solving through the various committees the health care committee work site meetings and the Labor Management Committee. Also importantly, it brings consistency across work sites so that a teacher at one school knows that a teacher at every school has the same time, the same benefits, the same opportunities, the same access. And we save the most important obviously for last, the reason that we're

[00:07:02] here for students. In terms of the the licensed employee agreement, you know, we've outlined several areas, several proposals that will help keep teachers being able to focus on what they are doing or going to do in the classroom you know the less time that they have to spend in meetings or be grading or all these other things that take time that are important but still take time the more time you do those things the less time you have to do

[00:07:36] be prepared for lessons and so now i think we've taken some steps in the right direction can we pause you for just a second there's a really strong gas smell up here um apologies but i want to keep everyone safe do you think we should evacuate i think we should evacuate for those of you who are watching just like if you didn't hear what we just said we are thinking

[00:07:59] we smell gas so we are just going to leave um until we get the building cleared so so the snow

[00:13:40] wasn't enough excitement for us um we had to do that so thank you i think our first obligation is to keep everyone here safe so wanted to make sure there wasn't anything else so apologies mr redding and mr klobuchar please continue this is such exciting news and we want to make sure you have enough time to share it i just had two things left the first is pointing out the last impact positive impact on students and this is because of both the esp and the licensed agreement we're all hoping this leads to higher retention because we know that higher retention leads to

[00:14:16] just overall better experiences and more consistent academic achievement and so we think this cba is a huge step in that direction second thing i'd like to say the last thing is i've been asked to announce the results of the ratification vote that was held over the last two days and i'm happy to report that both passed obviously but they passed overwhelmingly 99.5 95% of licensed employees voted yes on the CBA, 97% voted yes on the ESP side, and we

[00:14:52] had well over 50% participation across both bargaining units. So that is good news. Thank you. Congratulations. And so with that, we will turn it over for any questions or discussion.

[00:15:08] I have a question related to the data analysis and workload relief days. are we doing now? And I'm kind of afraid to hear the answer but tell me anyway.

[00:15:24] Currently principals would have to allocate out of their own budgets any substitute release time that teachers would use. I was at Woodbrook, I want to say it was Monday, it might have been last week, but I was at Woodbrook recently and they were doing one of their data analysis days and they'd relieved a grade-level team to dive into one of the quarterly assessments and then use that data to plan and i don't want to steal dr mclaughlin's thunder on this sorry um but that right now that's kind of does the principal have the funding available and how they engage in that

[00:16:01] this actually sets a budget line items aside for every single school to be able to do this great thank you can we get some updates as this goes along of how that's working absolutely i I think we'll see a lot of that in the different academic reporting that goes on over the course of the year.

[00:16:27] I would just like to say congratulations, first of all. I know this has been a long time coming, years in the making, and so congratulations. We're really excited. I was wondering if we could bring the rest of the negotiating team up, and I just was wondering if they would be willing to answer some questions.

[00:16:45] just curious I know Tim you're kind of the face of it but you know this was a little bit out of everyone's comfort zone I feel like negotiating such a big contract and a big deal and I would just love to hear you know how the experience was for you and you know what you learned from it and and you know kind of what you took out of it being able to be a part of this hi everybody I'm Maddie Levy I am a K teacher at Greer I'm also the secretary for the

[00:17:16] union something I learned over this process was patience definitely it was a long journey there were a lot of late nights I think it was a lot more work than we all bargained for funnily enough I think it was a really interesting process and that like as a teacher I got to see more of how the division thinks and how they make decisions which was really interesting and informative for me and I think for my colleagues as well. It also felt like quite the opportunity and heavyweight to

[00:17:54] be representing all of my colleagues and I wanted to make sure that I did them justice and that their needs were met and I heard what they had to say and represented them well in our meetings. That's awesome. Anybody else? Evening. My name is Adam Florence. I'm a bus driver for transportation and i also will be in a plow this weekend well thank you very much there's that uh for me you know i've lived in this community my whole life i grew up here my parents went to school in this very

[00:18:34] building and you know if if the story they tell me is true they got suspended for making out right so it's it's been a real honor for me just to play a small little role um when i started this i didn't know anything about the process and at this point i still only know a very small amount but i'm honored to be here i was honored to be a part of it just to make my little mark so thank you that's great thank you my name is jayla cream i am a school counselor at monticello

[00:19:13] go mustangs we're very well represented as we should be so i hadn't obviously like everybody else had no clue what to expect um but i knew that i kind of paused when they asked me to be part of it and i had to think like what am i going to bring to this and what i knew was that i spend i literally get paid to advocate for people and things and i spend a lot of my time trying to find common grounds whether between students and their teachers families and what we do so like i thought that i at least had some skills that i could bring um if they were needed but they really weren't and i thought it was really cool that um everybody you're coming at

[00:19:50] it from different sides and you have different not priorities but just different ways that you do prioritize things and what's important for you but everybody was very like thoughtful in what they were doing and and the way that it was approached that yes we have different things that we would like to have happen different experiences different things that we would like i think everybody approached it with openness and not a lot of people can say that that happens in this scenario and so i think that that was by far one of the things that i took away the most And I would echo what Maddie said.

[00:20:22] It was really difficult to kind of have the idea of I'm representing people because I'm a licensed staff member, but I'm not in a classroom. And I never want to take away that classroom experience and the value of it.

[00:20:38] But I do obviously want to advocate for those people and also the folks like me that are not exactly in classrooms but have a big role in what goes on with our students. And so being a school counselor, speaking for a whole lot of us at very different levels, that was a little nerve-wracking at times.

[00:20:55] That's it. Thank you. I am Dee Curry. I am an alumni of Monticello, so I am going to say go Mustangs. But I am a teacher's assistant at Henley, where I know Ms. Spillman's son.

[00:21:13] So I wrote some stuff down because I ain't going to say much. Excuse me, can you bring the mic down? Thank you. So tired days, and I felt like it wouldn't come to an end.

[00:21:28] Like everybody else said, I don't have any experience, but I am a teacher's assistant. I feel like I fought for what I think the TAs wanted, especially across the county. And that it was a give or take.

[00:21:46] You know, you've got to give some and take stuff away. It wasn't always easy, and walked out of there some days feeling defeated, we didn't get what we wanted but in the end we did so thank you and thank you for everything you do for lee hello my name is timothy walker i'm a custodian degree elementary school and what i take from this is when i first came aboard this i really didn't know nothing at all and to have a team like this to bring me aboard and just show me what to do and learn and listen i took a lot of

[00:22:21] pride in that and it was great i learned a lot from them and from dan and his crew and i understand a whole lot more situational at Abomar County, what their burdens are, and I also hope they understand what our burdens are too. So it was a pleasure. I can't wait to be started all over again.

[00:22:45] That was amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that and for your sacrifice, and I think all of us can relate to the feeling of representing a large group of people and feeling the weight of that and making sure that you're doing it justice so I think on behalf of all of us we just want to say thank you for the hours and the work that you put in and obviously we have a wide range of jobs represented and it sounds like you did it really well so thank you very much other questions or comments yeah just wanted to say thanks to Dan and your team as well I'm thinking back 29 years

[00:23:25] when I was teacher and coach at Albemarle High School and our third child was born and I got no time off. So the fact that we are one of the few school divisions now that are offering six weeks of parental leave is really, really exciting to me. So thank you for that energy. I also want to thank Tim and the rest of the team, Mary and others, for the hard work that you put in, some of which, a fair amount of which was unpaid. And I want to go on record

[00:23:58] to say you know I come from a teacher's background and I would advocate for a larger wage increase for teachers honestly I would hope and and I may be speaking just on my own that we would grant teachers the 4% wage increase that I think you all deserve I know that Charlottesville teachers are getting a

[00:24:33] five-and-a-half percent wage increase and the ESP employees at Charlottesville are getting a nine percent wage increase so if we are in a competitive situation in a recruiting situation for example it's tough to compete with division that's paying significantly more to both teachers and ESP so I expressed that perspective and I realize I'm coming in to use the baseball analogy coming into the game in the ninth inning not knowing everything

[00:25:12] that's been discussed so I just toss that out there as consideration that I believe you all have been behind in terms of compensation for a very long time even before I started teaching in 1990 so again thank you for the work that you've put into this CBA but also the work that you do every day so I appreciate that their comments I guess I have a question I mean as some of you know I was initially reluctant to support not collective bargaining

[00:25:50] generally but because the legislation at the state level really stunk it gave no So all the guidelines were stripped out, which is why it took 18 months before you could agree to start agreeing.

[00:26:07] And now I know there are several versions of collective bargaining legislation in Richmond and something's going to get passed. And I'm just wondering, have you looked at that and how do you feel about, I mean, it's not clear what will be grandfathered or not.

[00:26:27] And so the timing is odd, but I have those concerns. We're definitely watching to see any legislation that comes out and whether that would trigger anything that could potentially require the school board to revise their resolution or require us to go back to negotiations with the union around either agreement.

[00:26:53] We'll have to keep an eye because there are several versions and we don't know what direction the legislature will take and what any final bill that becomes law would look like. But, I mean, if that is what's required, certainly we would go back to the table and make sure that our CBAs are compliant with the law.

[00:27:16] I don't know if you want to go. I am just wondering why the difference in wages between licensed staff and ESP. Yeah, our initial proposals had both bargaining units with equal amounts in terms of an increase.

[00:27:42] And that was mostly because that's kind of been the standard for a long time. But we always felt and we always had kind of had this in the back of our minds that, you know, as we got closer to settling on just an overall compensation package, that we would want to actually have our ESPs get a bigger increase, largely because there are our most underpaid employees and we feel that they deserve more.

[00:28:12] And so there wasn't really, there was no hesitation on the part of anyone on the team when it came time to make that decision. So I think as we were trading numbers towards the end, you know, our last several counter proposals included higher increases for ESP versus licensed.

[00:28:34] And yeah, that's something we would do again. Any other questions or comments? If I may, I'm also wondering what happens if we have a great recession like in 2009 again and we, you know, the next three years the economy tanks and what do we do then?

[00:28:59] So the board's resolution has a provision in it that should there not be available funding to meet the requirements of the CBA, it would force the parties to go back to the negotiation table and make changes that the budget can bear.

[00:29:15] So that would be another time when we would have to come back together and revise the agreement. And it would probably trigger, I believe, another ratification election and another board approval as part of that. Right. That provision recognizes that we as a body have no revenue generating authority.

[00:29:35] So we are completely dependent upon the county and how much money there is. Other questions or comments? Ms. Osborne, you were here from the beginning.

[00:29:50] I thought maybe you'd want to say anything about, no. - I'm just glad we're at the end. - So yeah, I mean, I think that was the one thing I wanted to say is I joined the board as this was coming to a vote to even have a discussion about a discussion.

[00:30:07] And then was able to join Ms. Osborne kind of on the resolution team. And then I've been watching this with anticipation. And I mean, I would just say in my wildest dreams, I never would have been able to come up with the extensive selection of things that you came up with that support.

[00:30:26] You know, one of the things I always say to people who don't understand education is, we have people anywhere from 18 to probably, Dan, I don't know if we have anyone at 80, but in some school districts you have people, you know, and so how do you have a resolution that supports all those different places someone is in their lifespan?

[00:30:46] And I honestly think you guys did it. So, I mean, a huge thank you to everyone who supported this, who spent long hours, tough hours in those hard conversations to get to this point. And I honestly think we're one of the best examples for the state in this.

[00:31:03] So, thank you. It's also, it doesn't go unnoticed that all of everything that is in this agreement is stuff that you guys should have had a long time ago anyway. So I'm not really sure why it took this long to get it in writing.

[00:31:19] So thank you. Do you want to just remind everyone of the next step? Yeah, happily. Thank you. So the board will hear this again on February 5th. And at that time, you'll have the opportunity to vote to approve it.

[00:31:36] Should the board vote to approve, this would be in effect beginning July 1. It's a special meeting. Sorry. Did I get the wrong day?

[00:31:53] It's Thursday at 4. The meeting he refers to is Thursday, December 5th. February. February. I'm sorry. Wow, December. It's the gasketing test. It is Thursday, February 5th at 4:00 p.m.

[00:32:09] It's a special meeting to do the vote on this. So seeing now, thank you again. I feel like we should do a round of applause.

[00:32:24] Okay, no. Okay. I was thinking. else? I think the next thing on our agenda is a 10-minute break. Dr. Berlin, I'll just make a note real quick. First of all, that was awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Tim. The second thing is they're still filling the tank in the back. So that's why the gas smell hasn't stopped. So I just want to give you a heads up. That's what's going on. It's not continuing to leak at this point.

[00:32:58] Thank you very much. The next thing on our agenda is a 10-minute break. I am looking at my Colleagues. Yep. Charge ahead. Yep. Okay. Charge ahead. So item 9.0 is our division work session. And that today is our mid-year data review by Dr. Pat McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent for Strategic Planning, and many, many other people who I know are here to support this conversation.

[00:33:29] Yes, good evening. Thank you Chair Berlin. My name is Pat McLaughlin. I'm assistant superintendent for strategic planning And I'm here tonight to give you an update on our mid-year data Review as you alluded to usually I'm flying solo But I bought plenty of friends with me tonight to to come up in and help this work So we always start by taking a look at our vision, mission, values, and goals. And as we get into tonight's presentation, I really want to point your attention toward our mission.

[00:34:05] The first statement, the first sentence of which states that working together as a team, we will end the predictive value of race, class, gender, and special capacities for our children's success through high-quality teaching and learning for all. When I read that, I always think about our achievement gaps. And the reason that's in there is because one of our primary goals is to close those achievement gaps. One of the most significant metrics of whether we are doing that or not is our end of year SOL testing and so tonight I want to update the board on our mid-year progress toward the end of the year with

[00:34:40] our spring testing and also take the time to highlight and celebrate some of the effective practices that are taking place within our schools. So just to to give a little bit of an overview within the division we have well there's more than this but three primary ways that we monitor our work. One are our quarterly assessments which we administer to pretty much all students in grades three through eight and then select students in high school based on the course enrollments that they have and we do that in October and December and March at the end of each quarter. We also give our VALS assessment to our students in

[00:35:18] kindergarten through eighth grade which is an extension this year of those grade levels in September, January, and April. And we have the Virginia growth assessment that takes place in October and then again in January. And I put these three up here because what we'll look at tonight is one data point, and that's our quarterly assessments. And as we get that in, we try to look for consistencies or inconsistencies between those quarterly assessments and our VALS literacy assessments and our Virginia growth assessments in math and reading and see if they are aligning or if they're telling us something different because that might change the way we focus our attention. So tonight

[00:35:58] we're going to focus on our quarterly assessments and specifically we're going to look at the results from students who took the reading test in grades 3 through 8 in grades 11, the math test in grades 3 through 8 plus algebra 1 geometry and algebra 2, and our science tests in grades 5, 8 in biology. We We chose those grade levels because those are typically the grades that impact our performance framework, what we used to call our accreditation in the school division, with other grade levels not having a test that impacts those.

[00:36:32] And just to go over a couple of key terms, our quarterly assessments are generally assessments that we have built in-house that align to our pacing guide or assessments that come with some of the resources that we have adopted for example HMH we use primarily their unit assessments KITM is our new math program and we use KITM assessments for that but we we build our quarterly assessments specifically around our pacing guides so that when we give them in October and in December and in March we should have been through all of the material that is on

[00:37:08] them. The SOL I think most people are aware of is our end-of-year testing that gets reported up for the framework, the performance framework, and also gives us some comparators between other districts and the state. And we'll take a look at the state average. That's one of the one of the metrics we use is that we always want to be we want to be as much as we can above the state average for for all of our testing and all of our groups. And the final piece that I'll touch but discussed briefly, is a group called Gap Group One.

[00:37:41] Our primary, some of our biggest gaps that we see and our most persistent gaps are for our black students, our students with disabilities, and our economically disadvantaged students. Our economically disadvantaged students are, that is a protected category of student.

[00:37:58] We don't really get to know who those folks are. There's very few people in the division who have access to that information. So in order to give us a decent estimation of where those students are, we use what the state used to call Gap Group One, which includes any student who is economically disadvantaged, an English learner, and/or a student with an IEP.

[00:38:21] So when you see Gap Group One, that's kind of our best estimation at economically disadvantaged. So tonight we'll review our science, math, and reading data. We'll hear from schools to celebrate some of the successes that they've had so far, and then we'll respond to any questions from the board.

[00:38:37] I'll be able to take any questions about the data itself. Dr. Hayes from the Department of Instruction has some of her staff here to answer any questions specifically about our instructional program. And then our guest tonight from Woodbrook and Journey and Mountain View, I'm sure would be happy to talk with you about their work.

[00:38:57] So let's get into it. The first category we'll look at is science, and that is grades five, eight, and biology. combined. And I'm going to take a little bit of extra time just on this first slide to kind of explain what we're looking at and how we're looking at this. So the blue bars on your slide are results from the 24-25 school year. Q1 are the results from the first quarter division assessment. Q2 the second quarter division assessment. The SOL is the division average that we ended up with at the end of last year. And then the state designator

[00:39:33] is the average for the state last year. On the purple bars, the same categories, but for our current school year, and those stop after the second quarter. I want to be clear that we are not at the point where we can say these are predictive right now. So if we see that our quarter two was five points lower than where we ended up with the SOL, we can't guarantee that based on this year's quarter two, we're going to be five points higher than that. But we use this data to see if we're moving in the right direction and the way we help to determine if we're moving in the right direction is to do two things to compare

[00:40:12] our results this year at the end of the second quarter to our results last year at the end of the second quarter and then also to look at how we grew between quarters one and quarter two so as an example in this slide you're gonna see and this is a trend for science and our membership groups that at the end of the second quarter we were at 62.3% of students reaching a score that we consider passing on the quarterly assessment. Last year we were at 70.1% of students who hit that target. So this year we're 7.8% lower. When we look at

[00:40:49] growth for science we grew 15.1% more this year than we did last year and we calculate that by looking at our growth from quarter one, 48.9, to quarter two, 62.3, compared to the growth from last year, which was actually a slight reduction from quarter one to quarter two.

[00:41:10] So for science, the trend that you're going to see with all of our groups is that we are a bit lower at the second quarter than we were last year, but we're growing at a higher rate. If that higher rate of growth continues we would anticipate that we're going to have a higher result but again we we can't say that with certainty as I mentioned before there are three groups that we were going to look at in particular these are results for our black students in science they were three and a half percent lower than we were last year but grew 19.9 percent more than the

[00:41:47] previous year for our students with disabilities were two and a half point a lower and grew 15.8% more than last year from quarter to quarter. And our final numbers for science looks at GAP group 1 and they're 12.4% lower and grew 8.7% more. One other thing that I wanted to to highlight with you is that we've got some schools who are who are beating the average in growth for us in the division and I think it's it's appropriate to celebrate their work. So So when we look at these slides, you'll see our division growth rate.

[00:42:25] So we grew from quarter one to quarter two 11.3% for our black students in science. But Burley, Walton, Albemarle, Monticello, and Journey beat that, with Journey growing 33%, so you're seeing a 33% improvement in pass rates for black students from quarter one to quarter two.

[00:42:44] I think that's tremendous, and that's one of the reasons their eighth grade science teachers are here tonight to talk with us. In special education, the division grew 7.7%, and we had Albemarle, Burley, Henley, Western, Lakeside, Monticello, and Journey, again, leading the pack with 31.2% growth.

[00:43:06] You might notice that we don't see any elementary schools on these. One of the reasons is because it looks at a single grade level, and we set an N number of 15. And if there's not 15 or more students in that category in the fifth grade at those elementary schools, they could be identified if we put their information up here.

[00:43:25] So we have some elementary schools that are growing, but we couldn't include that. You will see some elementary schools in GAP Group One because that's a broader category for science. And as a division, we grew 7.2% with Walton, Western, Brownsville, Henley, Albemarle, Burley, Lakeside, Hollymead, Journey, and Monticello growing above that average.

[00:43:49] I wanna point out that Journey is at the top, or almost at the top in all three of these categories. I think that's something to really be celebrated with them, and Monticello's growth rate of 32%, I think is a great place to be. So when we look at our reading data, you're gonna see a bit of a different trend, that for our overall data and for all of our student groups, we are performing at a higher rate than we were in the previous school year, and we're growing more.

[00:44:19] For all students, that's 4.9% higher and growing 1.1% more. For our black students, we're 9.1% higher than last year and we grew 3.8% more. For our students with disabilities, we're 10.8% higher and grew 5.8% more.

[00:44:38] And for our GAP Group One students, we are 10.8% higher and grew 5.1% more. We also have some schools to celebrate here. As a division, black students in reading grew by 1% from first quarter to second quarter.

[00:44:54] But Albemarle, Crozet, Monticello, Stone Robinson, Greer, Baker Butler, and Woodbrook beat that average. And that Woodbrook number, I think, is really one to celebrate at 21.3% improvement quarter one over quarter two.

[00:45:09] That's one of the reasons our Woodbrook team is here tonight. For students with disabilities, the division had a 4.1% growth rate with Journey, Stony Point, Albemarle, Mountain View, Brownsville, Ivy, and Crozet coming in higher, and Crozet leading the pack.

[00:45:24] And finally, for our GAP Group 1 students, we had a 1.2 rate of growth. Stony Point, Greer, Red Hill, Mountain View, Albemarle, Western, Woodbrook, Brownsville, Ivy, Baker Butler, Crozet, and Broaddus Wood all beating that average.

[00:45:41] And then the last set of data we'll take a look at is math, which is our third through eighth grade, Algebra 1, geometry and algebra two. You'll see again that we have a, the trend is similar to what we saw with reading, with our quarter two results higher than the year before and our growth rates higher than the year before.

[00:46:00] So for overall our students grew seven point, came in 7.1% higher than last year and grew 5.3% more. Our black students grew 7.6, came in 7.6% higher and grew 7.4% more.

[00:46:15] Our students with disabilities were 6.1% higher and grew 2.6% more. And our Gap Group One students were 9% higher and grew 6.1% more. Our schools to celebrate in this category include Monticello, Albemarle, Woodbrook, Greer and Crozet for our black students.

[00:46:36] Stony Point, Baker Butler, Hollymead, Red Hill, Agner, Ivy, Woodbrook, Brownsville, Monticello, Albemarle, Community Lab and Greer for our special education students. And take a look at that Greer number, 33.3% increase, that's I think a great celebration for the folks at Greer.

[00:46:56] And finally, our math numbers. We had Western, Burley, I'm sorry, our Gap Group One numbers, Western, Burley, Crozet, Agner, Woodbrook, Albemarle, Community Lab, Monticello, Ivy, Brownsville, and Greer, with Greer again at the top of that performance increase with 27.2%.

[00:47:16] So there is certainly more work to do with all of this. The reason we use these assessments is because they are formative and they serve to help us target our focus for the third quarter and then after the third quarter for the fourth quarter as we lead up to the end of the year.

[00:47:35] But one thing we wanted to do tonight in addition to just sharing the data with you was tell some of our stories about what is working in our schools. And the first story that we want to tell is from Journey Middle School and with their eighth grade science results.

[00:47:51] Tonight, we have Deneen Lilly and Steve Whitaker here, who are their Science 8 teachers, along with Ashby Johnson, who's the principal. And just to highlight a couple of things with Journey Science, they had a 25% higher pass rate in science from quarter one to quarter two, and I think had the second highest in the division, which is not a place that Journey often finds itself there.

[00:48:16] Oh, I got ahead of myself. They improved black student performance, 31%, students with disabilities, 31%, and Gap Group One performance, 25%. And I'm gonna turn it over now to Steve and Deneen.

[00:48:35] - Hi, I'm Steve. - I'm Deneen. - We're eighth grade science teachers Journey. I'm also the lead science teacher at the school. So thanks for letting us talk to you for a couple of minutes. We got lucky in a lot of ways, not with the data, because that's really our students that we're celebrating and not something that we're doing.

[00:48:50] But we got lucky with the relationship that we were able to form pretty early on. These are a few things that Deneen and I talked about this week as ways that we can encourage our students to do better and maybe feel more comfortable in our classrooms than in some other classrooms. We are both big believers in building strong relationships with our students from day one and getting to know each of the students individually so that they feel comfortable taking academic risks in our class.

[00:49:14] When they come into our room every day, they know that we have a very strong structure and expectations. They read the board, they do a do now or a warmup exercise and they get into the academic mindset just about as soon as they come into the classroom. And we reinforce that on a day-to-day basis as the year goes on. So by about now, we feel like they're starting to get those habits mid-year and they can come in and get to science instead of dealing with some of the overhead that goes with just getting into that academic frame of mind.

[00:49:41] We have clear expectations. Our classroom management is, I would argue, fairly strong but very consistent. We're different people, but have very similar beliefs in a lot of ways about what a classroom should look like. But students are also given the gift of two very different teachers, two different personalities.

[00:49:58] And I think that's something that's really hard to overstate. Our school gives students quiet study time twice or three times a week. That's time during homeroom where they can come and ask content area teachers for some one-on-one support, remediation, reworking quizzes, and they come to do that with us.

[00:50:16] Specifically with our learning checks, our quizzes, they can come and work with us on a second or third attempt. And in those attempts, they're allowed to ask us questions. We can push and probe and find out what the weak points are. So it's really individual remediation for areas that are tricky for some of our students. And I think we're both feeling really good about the number of students who typically aren't represented in that kind of remediation, being a little more vocal and being more of their own agents this year to ask for some academic help.

[00:50:44] We also use something in AVID strategy wicker strategies called total physical response where we'll give students four or five key vocabulary words with every unit and give them gestures that go with them so this might be density a way to talk about how tightly packed something is and what's encouraging to us is as students are taking our learning checks or our end of unit assessments we'll see them make those gestures to themselves and so it's a nice way to get those things to stick into their heads we also do something that we're lucky enough to be able to do which is co-teach and we fully co-teach we combine classes from time to time so we'll be in one of our two classrooms with upwards of 40 45 students with one of us usually taking

[00:51:21] the lead in teaching and the second doing the logistics the one-on-one support putting out fires taking kids to the bathroom who need that like I said a minute ago they have two trusted adults we can leverage that teamwork by creating flexible grouping so there are some weeks where I will take groups of students into my room who need remediation Deneen will work with students who seem to have it and can do some enrichment I mentioned that we've got two very different teaching styles but I think they're really compatible and and like I said we got lucky we we struck up a friendship that's built a lot on mutual respect but we also have a lot of fun when we're together and I think it's great for the students to see a positive professional but fun adult

[00:51:59] relationship there's one more thing that we do that I want that Deneen's gonna talk about because she's really the person that developed this so about a year and a half ago we met with Chris Gilman who is the god of data and we said our kids know the content and they're not doing well on tests so it's we don't know what to do and he said one of the big things is having them be able to figure out what a question is asking them so Steve and I developed attack that test one to ready and it is basically read it one time read it a

[00:52:39] second time rephrase the question and sometimes we even have a contest saying get it to as few words as possible how can you really hone in on what this question is asking examine graphs and tables see what they're showing us analyze your choices decide which answers to eliminate and then you've got this you've got to go in confident and so we've given you a copy of the one to ready system and on the back is a sample question so at the start of the year we would go through this it would take about 20 minutes that we would do this together and we would read it and we'd check the box and we would read it a

[00:53:14] second time and so on and so forth and at this point now we can say you have a one-two ready today pick it up and do it and then we do go over it still of course but they're more confident with looking at these questions and it's also a way for us to review sixth and seventh grade material so that's it yeah thanks for letting us talk to you if you've got questions let us know we'd invite you to come visit us in our classroom anytime so a second success story that we want to highlight tonight is the work that Woodbrook Elementary is doing with its

[00:53:51] reading specialists and tonight we've got Jana Gatlin a reading specialist at Woodbrook Andrea Blount who's our intervention in title one coordinator and Christy Isaiah who is the principal at Woodbrook and I've had the the opportunity to to spend a lot of time working with Christy this year and to see the evolution of the reading specialist role there that really has been reimagined in a positive way one of the some of the results that they're seeing I think largely because of this compared to last year at mid-year their reading scores are eleven point three percent higher their black student reading scores are eighteen point five percent higher gap group one is eight

[00:54:28] point seven percent higher and so I'm going to turn things over at this time to Jana and Christy. Good evening Chair Berlin, Dr. Haas, and board members. We are excited to be here at Woodbrook. We rethought reading intervention and what it may look like. So an ideal instructional model should look like the majority of your students are being successful with their tier one instruction and smaller groups of students may require targeted intervention.

[00:55:02] At Woodbrook, however, that has not been our reality for the last couple of years and it just looked different a large percentage of our students have required reading intervention which signaled that our existing approach was not producing the outcomes our students needed so as an administration team during the summer we thought what could we do that needs to be something different and it became clear that we could not continue to do the things we've always done so we thought outside of the box and we've kind of worked with um andrea blount and also Karen who are who are just perfect they're just great to work with but we

[00:55:40] worked with them to kind of think of what could we do that may look different that might help our students and so we shifted our instructional approach and changed how our reading and reading specialists work in the classroom so instead of working across multiple grade levels and primarily outside of the classroom each reading interventionist is now in partnership with a grade level So we have enough reading interventionists that they're assigned to kindergarten and first all the way up to fifth grade and they're embedded members of that grade level community versus working in a silo and kind of doing reading

[00:56:15] intervention over here, but in the classroom we have reading and it just wasn't merging for the students. So we have seen some success and we're excited to see that instructional shift combined with the usage of an implementation of our HMH reading curriculum and also our data meetings that we are also focusing on data-driven experiences.

[00:56:36] And I also have Jana, who is one of our reading specialists, and she will come and give her perspective from the instructional shift. Thank you, Christy. Good evening, Tara Berlin, Dr. Haas, and board members. Like she said, my name is Jana Gatlin, and I'm part of the reading team of six at Woodbrook Elementary.

[00:56:55] I'm here to celebrate our reading games and highlight one of those key shifts that contributed to the progress. Dr. Louisa Motz, a literacy expert researching, writing about, and advocating for science-based reading instruction for over 50 years, says teaching reading is rocket science.

[00:57:14] Although we're not rocket scientists, we have a deep understanding of the complexity involved in teaching students how to read, particularly the ones in our building. This year, our role as reading specialists had shifted from to focus on greater instructional impact by coaching and co-teaching with classroom teachers using data to guide instruction decisions and strengthening core instruction so that fewer students require intensive intervention so we made the shift for several reasons there was little connection to tier one instruction in what students were doing

[00:57:51] we couldn't see how our students were performing in the classroom we lost a lot of instructional time collecting the data we needed to make instructional decisions. You throw in some progress monitoring in a snow day and you could lose a week of instruction easily. There are not enough reading specialists like Christy said to serve the high number of needs in our building with the traditional pullout model. So we turn to reading science for answers and we know that the reading science tells us that strong tier one instruction is the most effective way to

[00:58:25] improve reading outcomes. Reading science also tells us that reading specialists supporting classroom instruction reduces the need for intensive intervention later. So our observations and combined with the reading science convinced us to shift from a pull-out intervention model to a push-in instructional model. With this new model, it allows us to push into classrooms to support core reading instruction. One day we may be co-teaching HMH and the next day we may be pushing in to lead a small flexible group. It also

[00:59:01] allows us to model evidence-based literacy practices aligned to the science of reading and allows us to collaborate with our amazing teachers during instruction, PLCs and data meetings. So we can use that data to adjust instruction and target support early. I'd love to share several reasons why this model has worked well for us. We found that it strengthens our are instruction for all students, not just a few.

[00:59:30] It helps us to see students in a variety of settings. We're more knowledgeable about both their strengths and their weaknesses. We may be working with a poor reader, but they're an amazing artist or athlete in other ways. I recently had a team member-- I was able to observe a team member being a warm demander and saying, I've seen you do this in the classroom.

[00:59:54] I know you can do it here. This new model has helped us build teacher capacity through modeling and coaching, and it offers opportunities for co-teaching. We know the terms they're using, and we can use that to align our intervention with theirs.

[01:00:11] It helps build trust and safety with our teachers around a common goal. It also makes tier one and tier two interventions more effective because fewer students need that intervention, and we can offer continuity and reinforcement of those skills they're already learning.

[01:00:31] And it keeps students engaged in core instruction while receiving the support they need. It allows for real-time reteaching opportunities and scaffolding. Before I conclude, I'd like to highlight the impact these changes have made at Woodbrook.

[01:00:48] It's improved reading achievement 22.7% higher than last year. We are ecstatic. This is the first time in years our numbers have trended up. Let's just let that sink in a little bit. Earlier identification of students' needs.

[01:01:05] There's more eyes and ears out there, and so we see those needs earlier and quicker in the year. There's a more sustainable school-wide literacy growth, and we have contribution to PLCs. There's an awareness of those data pieces, and there's accountability.

[01:01:21] I think my favorite shift and most great impact is a mindset shift from this is my student this is your job to what does the student need and how do we get it to them? Overall, we're excited about the improvements we've seen so far. We'll continue to refine our roles as reading specialists in ways that directly improve student outcomes. Our work is focused, intentional, and grounded in evidence because reading is a gateway skill that makes all future learning possible. Thank you.

[01:01:54] Thank you. I think if we could hold we've got just one more and then if we could hold them to the end I think that'd be great yep so our our final success story that we that we wanted to highlight is some work that's taking place at Mountain View Elementary School about a year ago we had a group of schools primarily from our urban ring who was able to attend a workshop with the Darden School Partnership for Leadership and Education, and it was led

[01:02:30] by a gentleman named Paul Bambrick Santoyo, who has written a book called Driven by Data 2.0, and it was a two-day workshop on data-driven instruction, and every principal that was there walked out saying, "This is going to be a game-changer for us in our schools," And many of them are implementing on a small scale this year, but Dr. Kennard and his team at Mountain View said, "We're going to jump in with both feet with this."

[01:03:01] And he created a couple of positions for Katie Gifford and Sarah Kim that are unique to Mountain View. They are the Mountain View math and reading curriculum specialists, and they are really helping him be a pioneer in data-driven instruction. Compared to last year at midyear, their reading scores are up 15.6%, their reading scores for their black students are 9.7% higher, students with disabilities 27.5% higher, and GAP Group 1 students are 17.1% higher.

[01:03:32] And I'll turn things over now to Seth, Katie, and Sarah. Good evening everyone, Chair Berlin, Dr. Haas, members of the board. Thank you for taking a moment to hear about the work we are doing at Mountain View.

[01:03:48] So last year we ended the school year realizing we had a few challenges we had yet to overcome. The first one was the ever-changing state standards, including the updates to ELA and math standards in '23 and '24, were complex. They affected different grades in different ways.

[01:04:04] And as standards changed, curriculum didn't necessarily change with it. So the expectation was that teachers would understand every single change in a standard and alter their instruction. the same time they're adopting HMH, which is an amazing curricular resource, but it is a deep resource, and year three we are still finding amazing components within it. Preparing to also adopt a new math curriculum, KITM, was overwhelming. We also look at a school population with a lot of transiency. I looked last year at our data at Mountain View and found of our students that did

[01:04:38] not pass one of our math tests, 70% of them are with us less than 18 months. We were having students come to us with higher levels of need than we were used to and with that requires more planning more in-depth preparation for lessons and more data analysis and we're doing a lot of data analysis we were testing and testing testing whether it be at the division level whether it be the unit tests in hmh the state sol test we weren't quite sure with what to do with all the data we were sharing it with teachers but making the assumptions that in addition to learning a new curriculum and keeping track of all the changing standards we also knew how to disaggregate this data and make

[01:05:16] instructional decisions so after attending driven by data with pat and a bunch of principals i came back and discussed with my assistant principals what we can do looking at our solutions we came up with the idea of building based curriculum specialists and this is based on data and the data tells us that having an expert within your building not only with the subject matter but the resources you use to teach that subject matter in addition to the standards of the state that is readily available for teachers who can do model lessons and partner with teachers walk in the classroom and say let me show you how to do that or do you want me to watch your instruction

[01:05:53] and answer questions right away about is there anything in hmh that can help me reteach this are there any stories for fifth graders that are fifth grade interest level but still teach those early phonics skills to have those answers right away is impactful so we created these positions through some creative staffing and the idea was when we look at the learning curve which is more of a cliff when it comes to adopting a new curriculum how can we help teachers get over that and support necessary so the positions that we created were ones we expected someone to be an expert in the SOLs as they change to be an expert in the curricular resources

[01:06:29] and the supplemental resources because no curriculum is perfect to help organize and segregate data and help lead those driven by data PLCs alongside me. One of the challenges when we have data coming in is to organize it in a way to look for patterns so when we sit down as a group we can make decisions based on patterns have already emerged and not take that time to start segregating and pulling up the patterns. We enter these things with that data ready to go because these positions. These folks also conduct model lessons in addition to being experts in these things they are amazing teachers and finally they coordinate with the divisional staff as part of a 90-day planning process, and curriculum development as we take

[01:07:07] on KITM, and we refine our work with HMH. So to give you some concrete examples of things they have done, I'm proud to introduce Katie and Sarah. Hi, I'm Katie Gifford, and I'm the math specialist at Mountain View. When Sarah and I collaborate, we start with the PLC process. You can see from the graphic that it encompasses three specific sections of our PLC. We first start with previewing previewing the beginning of the unit and also the assessment. On your screen you can see an example of what it looks like when we previewed the unit 5 coming up in Kiddum for first grade. The thing that we start with is always grounding our

[01:07:47] work in the standards. We read the instructional guide provided by the VDOE and we take note of any important vocabulary that we read and also essential skills that our students need to learn throughout this unit. After we discuss that document we go to opening the assessment that is provided either by KITM or that has been made by the county through the CAT team and we look through that assessment to see does this assessment match the skills that the state is asking us to teach and then that we need to measure you can see here that we have highlighted for this unit in KITM it only teaches numbers up to

[01:08:23] 99 but our standards actually ask us to teach numbers to 120 so that alerts our teachers that we not only need to teach the suit the information in KITM but we also need to supplement up to 120. So now we can have discussions as we're planning to how we can use the KITM resource but also use other provided resources from VDOE and other places right then and there in our PLC meetings to guide teachers and their instruction. Following our unit previews Katie and I

[01:09:00] model and co-teach lessons in classrooms. Our proximity in the building allows us to respond immediately to the instructional needs of our teachers and and our students. This step is crucial in supporting our teachers with high quality implementation of curriculum and standards.

[01:09:17] Finally, we compile assessment data and look for trends. We utilize the data analysis and action template from Paul Bambrick Santoyo's Driven by Data Work. Here's an example of a data review with our fifth grade mid-year reading data. A key moment from this data review was identifying that students really needed more practice in specific, so we right away chose the resource that teachers then implemented back in their classrooms.

[01:09:44] These immediate action steps are transforming our core instruction. - So while you can't necessarily see the work that we're doing on a day-to-day basis, the heavy lift that Sarah and I are teachers at Mountain View on the standards, but also the ability to provide resources and strategies immediately has been appreciated and valued by the teachers, teaching assistants, and the administration.

[01:10:20] Our data continues to improve thanks to our strong PLC practices, the trust our Mountain View teachers have in the two and teachers' dedication to improving learning they're doing during PLCs. Thank you for listening and for your support in our process.

[01:10:41] - Thank you all. I've also had the opportunity to sit in on a PLC and watch the process in action, and it was really wonderful to see, and it's really a game changer for the school. So as we start to wrap up the presentation, What's still to come for us is our growth data and our VALS data.

[01:11:00] That should be wrapping up here in the next week or so, and we should start being able to see if what we're seeing is trends from the mid-year assessments or if we need to put a focus somewhere else. All of our schools have also recently come together to create what we call 90-day plans, which take that data and the principals identify one to three priorities that they think are gonna be most impactful for their schools during the next marking period.

[01:11:29] I'd encourage you, if you're ever out at our schools, to ask the principals about their 90-day plans and what they are focused on. And we will certainly open the floor to questions, but I really do want to thank again all of our school-based staff who came out tonight.

[01:11:46] They've been working since probably seven o'clock or before this morning, and it's been a long day for them, but I know they were happy to come here and I'm really excited that we got a chance to celebrate Mountain View Greer and Woodbrook tonight. So we will open it up for any questions or comments from the board.

[01:12:04] - Oh, journey, journey, it's the gas. - Got to him, I'm messing up. - Pat, quick question about, I noticed on the science scores, unlike the other test scores, a pretty significant drop off from last year Q1 to this year Q1.

[01:12:36] that a different which didn't seem to show up in the math reading so I'm gonna invite Katina Dudley up who is our our math our science coordinator I'm the science coordinator for the school division there's not much of a difference in our assessments we keep them the same year-to-year but I do want to speak to two things that i think um would be driving i'm going to actually pull the data up

[01:13:10] really quickly because it helps me to speak to this work sorry i'll also say really quickly while i'm doing this i go into steve and denean i just show up a lot in the mornings to talk to them about work and if their students suspect that you're looking at or observing them they get very defensive and tell you how much they love them it's so funny they're like just so you know um okay so here's our science data our middle school data if you were to look at that just as middle school you're not going to see much of a difference from last year's to this year so that blue and purple data would be the same last year

[01:13:49] in elementary we paste our science curriculum to the HMH curriculum there's a lot of science embedded in HMH and we thought that it would be really great for our students to see the science before they did the curriculum in HMH I I will say that we made a really big mistake.

[01:14:08] The theme in fifth grade is actually energy transformations. And that unit ended up like next to last in what we taught. And we need that to be the first unit that we teach, because one, it's a very challenging unit for our students, and two, it cycles throughout the year.

[01:14:25] So they get energy transformations when they do sound, light, electricity. Everything they do is around energy transformations. For us to put that at the end was really a pretty big mistake that we didn't catch. So we redid our pacing for the curriculum in fifth grade, but I am confident that what you're going to see here with that purple growing from Q1 to Q2 to Q3, that we will continue to see that in fifth grade as well.

[01:14:50] At the high school level, we are actually changing our high school course progressions, and I think this is really important and I'm actually still very excited about the decisions that we're making. Previous years, our students had the choice to take earth science or biology, and this year we added physics to the ninth grade curriculum.

[01:15:09] Physics has been proven through research to be a strong foundational course in both math and science. A lot of school divisions do not do this because we don't have enough teachers coming out of programs to be able to reach the needs for our students.

[01:15:27] We had great success in hiring teachers, and we're having really great success in that particular course in ninth grade but what you will see if you were to dive into our numbers is that our honors biology course used to be over a hundred students more taking that class we had a lot of freshmen honor students taking honors biology and this year we are down because we have a lot of those students taking honors physics instead of honors biology so like you see with any new implementation we're gonna see a dip in that data and I do think that we will

[01:16:01] still see a dip in that data even with the sol possibly so i want to i just want to be transparent as a decision we made this is where our students are what the research shows though is that over time students do better in their science courses and their math courses and more students take higher level math and science courses and i'm really excited to see where our students go with this projection so while i think that is going to impact our data year one i do think that we'll see better data in years to come as a result of physics being a first-year course for our students

[01:16:36] i'll also add that while it's a strong foundational class for both our science curriculum and our math curriculum it's also a very foundational class for careers and i think that's really important in the past about 20 percent of our students enrolled in a physics class in outmore county and that's heartbreaking to me that so few students take such an important science class so i still really strongly believe in the decision that we've made as a school division but i do think it's going to impact our high school data in year one can i just say i really respect and appreciate you acknowledging a mistake and then or a misstep or whatever you want to call it and then

[01:17:14] put what you're going to do to fix that i think it's refreshing and i just want to say thank you for you should have seen my email last year i just i really appreciate the transparency um and the honesty it's refreshing so thank you thank you it's just really where we were and I hated it all your last year but by the time we got the year started it didn't make sense to change it so anyway yeah here's where we are that's great thank you just done I just on that kind of science question I don't this is just

[01:17:45] a one thing I was thinking is you know if you know we look at this data in Q3 and it's falling kind of this question of what are we going to do then right like right now we're kind of looking at okay you know it looks like well it was pretty low you know you know one in two school one in two kids are not kind of you know below that benchmark but it's trending up if it's not if it begins to trend down I think that's one of the questions I hear from the public

[01:18:20] like what are we going to do right like are we waiting for another year or what can we do in the moment, kind of particularly science or math, so that we can correct that going forward? Because it's a hard thing, but it's an important thing.

[01:18:37] All of this is formative, right? And it's not a contest to see who can get the highest or things like that. So these tests are valueless if we don't come up with a plan for what we're going to do after we get that information.

[01:18:55] And so, as part of that 90-day planning cycle, this tells us the what, right? How many kids passed, how many didn't. During 90-day planning, principals really dig into the why. They look at performance results by question, by standard, by teacher. And they try to identify the areas where students were underperforming so that they can shore those up in the third quarter.

[01:19:19] That's one of the heart, that's just the heart of driven by data, where we're doing this teach and reteach cycle based on what the data is telling us. So we hope that it's all higher and that we've had some success.

[01:19:37] But at the end of each quarter, we try to pinpoint that and move forward. This I believe third quarter of the year is the most important one for our students academically. When we were doing 90 day planning, I likened it to moving day at the masters, right? It's the day when folks start to separate themselves from the field and really determine whether they're going to be champions or they're going to be lagging behind in the pack.

[01:20:01] And so I think that all of our principals feel that sense of urgency to make sure they're pinpointing instruction. And I think some of our 90-day plans are really nicely focused on that. Can I ask a question and kind of piggybacking off of that?

[01:20:18] were sharing um the science from journey which is super impressive how are these shared across schools if it's working so well at journey i heard you mentioned plc's is that the standard for sharing this stuff because i would love to move away from this siloing where we have something working in one school but you know maybe henley teachers don't know about this or or you know walton um how do we share that information so that we have the most success for these students yeah i don't think there's a formal process uh to that uh most of our of our principals can access

[01:20:55] all the division data uh and access it by school we we have these leadership team folders where they can go in and kind of see things i do know the the middle school principals meet on a fairly regular basis uh and and imagine that's part of their discussions uh that are there but i think one of the other things that helps is that we've got our at our 90-day planning meetings we've got curriculum coordinators there and they are able to to to see what some of the issues are and talk with our with our teams about what we might do what we might prioritize if we see this area of weakness within our students in fact

[01:21:32] that's one of the things that the coordinators at the end of each quarter come to a cabinet meeting and and kind of give us a broad overview of where we are in reading math and science and what we think we need to to put our focus on moving forward yeah yeah I just I think the sharing of this information could be really powerful and there's no sense in recreating the wheel and and as much as I hope that people are watching this meeting tonight and learning about this stuff my guess is that not all the teachers are watching tonight but I you know it is super impressive and when we're getting something right I would love for that information to be shared and that and that's where district

[01:22:09] support comes into play when we've got our coordinators directors and I notice dr. lips come in the back but they're they're part of all these meetings they they sit in on PLC's they learn what's going on and then they pollinate the other schools great observation I have a few more questions but I don't want to did you have a few more did you want one quick one and specific to the Woodbrook team. Congrats, Kristi and Jana and Andrea. Jana, you mentioned earlier identification of student

[01:22:44] needs. Can you expand on that at all? What does that actually look like? I can give you two examples that we're doing. The VALS is our major testing so we are immediately looking at that data and we're looking at what they did not just in their scaled scores because it doesn't really, that keeps moving and growing but we look at what they're doing in those the vows offers progress monitoring so we can progress monitoring those areas where we see they have indicators that are

[01:23:21] critical for them to you know for a lot of our woodbrook friends it's letters and sounds like which kids do not know their letters and sounds in first grade yet so that we can get that solid before we move on so and the vows is really helpful with providing that progress monitoring for us another way that we got eyes on something early was a friend that had a speech issue or we suspect have a speech issue so we i was able to sit down with the teacher speech just came out with a screening form fill this out before they can get screened and we got to sit down for an entire planning period and say do you see this yes i see this no no i don't think this is applies

[01:23:59] sometimes no this is never so there have been opportunities so we can you know they're not siloed and having to make all these hard decisions with so many students on their caseload that we can sit down with them and say yes i see this no i don't using valves using the resources in the building and our support staff is amazing so thank you yeah um dr mclaughlin you mentioned the vows and the growth assessment data hopefully in the next week um can you just remind me when and how

[01:24:32] we get updated on that information and what sort of um information we're given to compare it with the data that you gave us sure typically that hasn't been something we've we've made a specific presentation on with the board but but we can certainly work with Andrea and her team and Craig and in India and my team to put together a report that gives kind of an overview of what things are looking like mid-year with both of those we'd be happy to send that yeah I mean I don't want to speak for the rest of the board members but I think it's something that most of us would probably feel is important absolutely I'm excited to see it too

[01:25:07] awesome thank you I'm curious about the use of like reading software as an intervention method and I'm not sure who can speak to that but how much we're using it and how effective it is and I'm thinking especially as we're getting into budgeting and and things like that just you know what's working what do we need to be focused on hello I'm Andrea Blunt I'm coordinator for intervention So we have now, for the first time, an approved list of resources.

[01:25:40] So before the Virginia Literacy Act, it was kind of teachers were finding whatever they thought worked best or they were using what worked for them. Now that we have a more condensed list of resources, they can choose from those. And so if a student is showing that they are in need of intervention, software is one of the choices.

[01:26:02] So if that's what worked best for them, then they can choose something like Lexia, that's what you're referring to, but sometimes, like Jana was talking about with the progress monitoring, we find that software is not the best intervention for students, and so then they choose to use a face-to-face intervention.

[01:26:18] - Okay, great. And do you think that that software has played any role? I saw our reading numbers are looking better than last year and seem to be in an upward trend. Do you have any insight as to if that's playing a role and things we should consider?

[01:26:37] - So we're teasing that out right now. I think there are so many things that play into what's happening right now. I think one of them is probably Lexia because it can serve so many students at once. But we also have a lot of other great things going on like the collaboration between tier one.

[01:26:56] I also think that we have a strong tier one program now. So that is also playing into the effect that people are seeing this trending upwards, but we are trying to tease it out. So what we do is reading specialists as a group, and the question that you asked, how do we share this, is we have DPLC.

[01:27:15] So the science teachers are getting together and talking about what's working, why is it working, how can we capitalize on that? We do the same with reading specialists. So we look at the profile of a student and say, this student is making a lot of progress. Why are they making progress?

[01:27:31] Let's look at what intervention we're using. does that match, because sometimes we were mismatching what the intervention was. So we sometimes tend to focus on fluency all the time, but fluency might not be the intervention that's needed for that student. So what we're trying to really tease out is, here's the profile of a student, because now we have a universal screener, we have formative data, we have lots of data that comes with HMH, so looking at specific needs of the student and then matching it to the intervention.

[01:28:01] So we may find that, yes, it's one intervention works for this profile, but not so much for this. Okay. That helps. Thank you. I appreciate that. I want to make one quick correction in the spirit of Katina, correcting my mistakes.

[01:28:16] Last year when we did our mid-year review, we did have mid-year data, VALS data, and growth data. Okay. Because of the shift in the calendar this year, but we also didn't come to the board until March to do that. because of the shift in the calendar and when we gave our quarterly assessments we wanted to come in earlier to present this to the board even though we didn't have the other two pieces and I would love to get that additional data once we have it and then I just had two questions regarding math and one thing that jumped out to me I know there's been a lot of talk about KITM and the

[01:28:52] frustrations that we have encountered with the rollout and one thing that jumped out to me and forgive me I'm not sure which team it was but they were talking about the curriculum not matching the math standards so it goes up to a hundred or ninety-nine and the standards are to 120 so we have to supplement that and that's concerning for a number of reasons one I feel like it puts a lot of extra work on our teachers and two we should have a curriculum that I think we all thought was going to meet our standards so I would love a little more information on that and then I have another math question but i guess that's first and i'll invite uh craig to come up and uh talk through that

[01:29:35] craig normer executive director of curriculum assessment instruction and i'll step in for an elementary math coordinator tonight um i would say that finding gaps in the curriculum to the sols is something that we're working both and the content advisory team with and i think individual schools are looking for the bdoe first approved kidem as their primary resource they felt it was the most aligned curriculum to the virginia standards without getting too kind of in the weeds i would say like most math curriculums are written for the common core standards or they were several years ago virginia's math standards have always been

[01:30:15] have always deviated from the common core standards the most recent virginia standards are the most aligned and kitten was the first curriculum that took basically their common core Version that they use in every other state and realigned it for Virginia. I think there are still certain I Wouldn't say tiny there are certain places Like when we're talking about 299 or 220 where they are misaligned because other states the standard is 299 and so that is how

[01:30:48] Illustrated mathematics and therefore kid and kind of build that standard out. We do have resources provided by the video We also have CERN which is also provided by the VDOE and so we are trying to create an Albemarle County math curriculum That incorporates multiple resources. I think as we move forward with this project Getting really good at being able to use each resource Instructionally it will be important to improving the math performance of our students. I guess that kind of goes into my next question about math specialists I don't think we have very many of them, but

[01:31:27] I'm wondering if that's something we need to consider as we're going into the budget, and also if it may help with our science scores as we were hearing, you know, the math is such an important foundation for science, we're talking about physics and things like that.

[01:31:43] So, with that early intervention with math, I'm wondering if that might help with science as well. So, I'm curious, is that something that we're considering, is that something we need, especially with the issues we've had with KITM? As a former math specialist myself, I will always advocate for our usefulness in Almaro County public schools and in all schools.

[01:32:05] I do think that schools that have been able to use their tiered services staffing or their title one staffing like you did to create that position have always seen success with it. It is often just, well, it's always a difficult choice. I've also been the principal who's always how much reading intervention, how much math intervention and sometimes maybe a lift up from the board or in the budget to help get a few more positions started we can see whether or not that kind of has impact and getting the ball rolling it is in the mix yeah I would say you know from I think the board I said I remember my first sort of my first budget and we

[01:32:44] this was before the changes in the LCI and we said I'm looking at factor a cough we said okay first reading specialists next round is is math specialist because of the budget cuts from LCI we just were not able to do that and so I think that is probably something I'm looking at my board like we haven't done an official conversation about this but I definitely think this is something we want to see and actually just in being out in schools this week more than half of the principals like when I asked them very specifically what do you need the number one things they said was math specialists no matter if it was a high school or a elementary school or a

[01:33:22] middle school. I do think the instructional coaches at the elementary level have really dived in to help with some of that math implementation but you just see even with HMH implementation having both the coaches and school-based reading specialists kind of tag teaming that kind of problem around implementation can also help kind of lift things as far as modeling lessons and spreading practices across schools. I think instructional coaches are another key piece that see things working in one school and are able to talk to other coaches and implement change across schools a little bit more rapidly and

[01:34:00] help break down silos. Awesome thank you for all that information, appreciate it. Other questions? I'm curious, I don't want to put you on the spot but I am just curious from you know your view as a student you know gone through testing throughout your your career just thoughts on what you're what you're hearing today and what you know has meant the most for you or your peers you know kind of did you come on the other side of testing and when you felt like you've been struggling I think over my years especially like over code I kind

[01:34:38] of lost some of like that foundational skills especially like in math and that and even now especially with like simpler like calculations I'm like I really wish I could go back and do something more but what everybody's like showing tonight, especially how even Ms. Spillman asked about like how like technology is playing a role in it and just how they're finding new ways to learn. I think it's very important and I'm definitely seeing seeing ways that I didn't know teachers like had to do with all like the data collection. Like whenever somebody is teaching me, you just don't really take that into account

[01:35:17] that teachers go through all this data and find new ways to teach kids. So I think that's really cool. Thank you. Thank you. And I think you you've lifted up something that's always on my mind you know unfortunately for the next 18 years we're gonna be having this conversation but so all of our students you know no matter where they are if I think of your kindergartner right now all were at some point affected by COVID either as a an infant you know with a child care workers wearing masks so they could see mouth movements third graders trying to learn reading online math you know math students in fourth and fifth grade trying

[01:35:53] to learn complex multiplication line and so this kind of foundational piece was is missing in different places and it starts to you know you start to notice it at different points in a student's career and we're going to continue to see that you know for the next ten years so other questions or comments just a brief comment I want to thank all the school staff that were here tonight and I know know it's getting late. I was struck by how seriously you take the data, the really granular

[01:36:30] data in doing your work, and also how important collaboration seems to be in terms of creating a synergy to empower your students, and I greatly appreciate that. I just want to share how proud I am of our educators and our district staff for this Herculean work that you're doing, and I know that we we had a conversation with the student cabinet today Maximilian we were talking about as a group you know our our students prepared you know when they

[01:37:06] graduate are they prepared for life we talked about we played a telephone game with a quote from John Dewey where he talked about education is life itself and what we talked about was that our our students they are preparing but they're living their lives and this this is their life and when educators work hand-in-hand with them and make their day-to-day experiences where they walk

[01:37:36] out of school happy is it and they can see their own progress and know what they need to do next they're living their lives in the schools with our teachers and I know that's what motivates the teachers we want we want we want to be happy, we want to be proud of the academic success of our students, we want to see that growth, we see those numbers.

[01:38:05] I want to note one question, so I hit a note that we want to see the VALS data when we can discuss if that's going to be an agenda item or just a report, and then my other question is do we typically do a review of the third quarter data as a presentation to the board?

[01:38:35] we have not in the past uh but again if it's the uh the consensus of the board that you'd like we can either prepend and publish in the consent agenda or do another uh presentation okay we'll talk amongst the board and and kind of let you know um uh and schedule that out thank you so much thank you again to everyone who stayed so late um to share your your amazing stories and the work

[01:38:59] you're doing with our students thank you i just have a couple of appointments to announce um i am appointing diantha mckeel as my jack jewett representative to the school health advisory board she informs me that's how she started even before she was on the school board for 16 years so she will be my appointee there i'm also be

[01:39:46] environmental sustainability or those new people who have who have appointees they all started at the same time because we started aces four years ago and everybody's term ends in march So I was going to reappoint my person, but our bylaws requires us to repost and then appoint.

[01:40:09] So I guess Judy and Ellen and Rebecca and Allison will have appointees, I guess, to ACES.

[01:40:21] I may be wrong, but I know that Christine will inform everybody what's the gassy in it.

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