Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Student Behavior and Accountability Committee Meeting, Monday, August 28, 2023

Date: Monday, August 28, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 1h 22m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/859009198?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

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 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:07] Good evening. I am calling to order the August 28th, 2023 Student Behavior and Accountability Committee meeting. Joined with me today is Mr. Mehedivi and the other board member, Tiffany Polifko, is absent today. I've been informed that we don't have any public comment this evening. So moving on to item number 301. Is there a motion related to the minutes?

[00:00:43] Thank you, Chair. I move that the committee approved the meeting minutes from draft meeting minutes from June 26. I'll second that. All those in favor of approving the minutes, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. That will pass with all committee members present and Ms. Polifco absent for the vote. Moving on to action items, item number four, item 4.01, policy 8205, discipline authority. I'd actually like to make a motion to table the action on this policy pending

[00:01:22] receipt of feedback from the SEAC committee. We ran into some issues. I've had some conversations with staff around the timing of the release of this policy for feedback.

[00:01:39] SEAC has not met in order to be able to provide feedback on this policy, which they feel they would have feedback to share. Yes. Mr. Chair, I thought there was the, didn't we get feedback?

[00:01:59] I thought in the board docs, there is a feedback from SEAC in the board docs right now? Well, that's the older version. It was posted and shared, but the SEAC committee said they wouldn't convene until October to be able to review that through committee meeting.

[00:02:21] And what's the time frame for us for this policy? Well, if we wait for the feedback in October committee meeting, the earliest we could bring this back is November for policy review.

[00:02:40] This policy, its five-year anniversary was in May of 2023. so it would be slightly it is slightly past due now I'm not so sure I mean again I think we should collect feedback so we received feedback from MSAC it was open on the website did any other

[00:03:05] advisory group also provide feedback the feedback that's posted is all that we received I'm just

[00:03:34] pulling up the data while you're looking at that I'm curious from staff also just in terms of the

[00:04:28] feedback received from it looks like there's an employee and a parent do you have what was were you able to incorporate some of the feedback that was received from those or what what actions were taken based on that feedback we did receive the feedback and review it I know some of them were personal narratives of stories that happened that wouldn't be something that we could place in a policy we did look at the language some of the language questions O are languages that are basically aligned with state code and reviewed by Division Council,

[00:05:06] and we did not make changes there. And a reminder, too, is if when feedback is received, well, we note it and review it. Unless it's an easy fix, a moving of a comma of our period, we do not put changes in there.

[00:05:21] We leave that up for the Committee to tell us if they're going to accept that feedback or not. Yes, go ahead. So I think there was one feedback from MSAC about the lines being repeated.

[00:05:40] is 43 to 49 and then 51 to 57 but that paragraph repeated by any chance so there maybe i i gotta read this carefully to see if it's subtle difference between the two of them it seems

[00:06:05] exactly the same paragraph says lines 51 to 57 are a duplicate of lines 43 to 50.

[00:06:49] if you remember that's the area that we were adjusting in a committee and trying to figure out the right name and wording for that documentation but it seems like in the cleaner version maybe it's just the The cleaner version has the one paragraph correct versus the red line copy.

[00:07:11] So maybe just it didn't get deleted. Yeah, that is correct. So going back to your motion, I think as much as I'd like to wait, but I think if it was happening in September, I could see it.

[00:07:32] But by the time they wait, October, November, I don't know if we should be holding a policy to wait for one advisory council. And that's why I think then once we set this precedence, something, then it will just -- then we have to wait every time.

[00:07:49] So I don't know. I feel -- I can see it from both sides, but at the same time, I think -- I mean, we did share, and I think there was an expectation of them to provide feedback, and I don't think we receive any feedback, right, Mr. Fulton?

[00:08:05] I mean, at this point -- I mean, we haven't received anything, but that was shared and communicated with them, with SEAC. The information I had was they would not be able to review it until their October meeting? So I would like us to continue this process, Ms. Ogedekbe.

[00:08:24] Okay, so I think, and I understand, and I will just share, I felt somewhat conflicted about this as well. I think given that there's two of us today, we're sort of in a stalemate, because I'm not supportive of taking action on it today.

[00:08:42] So I think my motion will fail. I don't know if you want to make an alternate motion, which may also fail, but I don't know where we go procedurally from here do you have a coin if you need it i don't think the coin is going to help tonight because i think if i make a motion okay i'll make the motion i think i'm not going to get seconded but then we can just go from there so this should be what i'm hearing is that there is a feeling that this may be moved to the september meeting for consideration as to whether

[00:09:16] we could bring it back we could bring it back in september and at that point perhaps we'd have a full committee. And I will just share, this is a conversation I had with the SEAC Chair and Vice Chair. I've been speaking with Dr. Smith about this. I think that we have fundamentally some differences in schedule. SEAC meets, they don't meet for four months. We only have a break for one month and we've got to figure out how to get their feedback and also not

[00:09:53] stop board business and those conversations are continuing and in the meantime I think this is one where it would be helpful to have their feedback so we can bring this back in September and discuss it then so that motion will fail for lack of a second and and that we can move on yeah go ahead I mean I would make a motion I think the best thing is let's have all three board members in the next September meeting and then we can go from there okay this This will bring us to Action Item 4.02.

[00:10:32] This is feedback on discipline data. I know this is, we had looked at the data in our meeting in June and talked about coming back in September with a discussion to talk about additional data points that we would like to see as this is added to and brought forward.

[00:10:56] Any thoughts on this to share? I'll start with you. I didn't know if you wanted -- well, we've seen this presentation before, so we could either walk through it again, or if there are thoughts that other committee members had on additional data points that we'd like to see added, let me know what -- I think it would be good to walk through the additional data that's been brought up and then we can go through the question and answers.

[00:11:25] Okay. Great. So staff can present the presentation.

[00:12:12] Thank you. We're going to present some information. We had several questions that were asked about discipline. I know Ms. Polivka had some things that she wanted to address, so we were also able to come back in September. But some of the questions that were in reference to student behavior, bullying, bullying responses, bus discipline referral, and technology and bullying violations.

[00:12:37] We do have members, we have Ms. Evans from Student Services and Student Mental Health that's here. I know we have a couple of principals here in the audience, too, that I've invited folks to address any issues that you come up with, especially in reference to bullying because of the change in the state code that requires a 24-hour notice.

[00:12:58] So at times when we go through this, I would like to let them have the floor to talk a little bit about how we do respond to bullying incidents that do happen in school and current practices. If you look through there, this part of it, next slide, please.

[00:13:15] We also heard in our last meeting that you wanted some updates or discussion about teachers' experience with student behavior and their responses to do that. And Dr. Tyler and his office has put together some data looking at the surveys from that student behavior. Next slide.

[00:13:34] All right, before we get into that, if we could do this, because the bullying piece was addressed and I do think it's very important for us to share, if we could have Ms. Evans and either one of our middle school principals or other staff that are here, if they could step in and talk a little bit about the bullying response.

[00:13:49] And that also ties in with the changes that we made in the policy that's part of the next item. - Good evening. So in response to the new legislation, it's House Bill 1592 and Senate Bill 1072.

[00:14:06] We did develop a standard operating procedure that is consistent for all administrators to follow. So once we receive a notification regarding an alleged bullying situation from a student, family member, educator, or community member during the work week, the school principal or administrative designee immediately meets with all the known students involved in the situation to understand the situation.

[00:14:32] The school principal or administrative designee is to ensure the student's safety and connect the student with appropriate supports in the building with the unified mental health team members. And then the school principal or administrative designee must call the parent of all the students involved and explain the situation that occurred within 24 hours of notice of the report of the bullying concern.

[00:14:55] Not all of the information may be gathered at that time in making that phone call, but notification must take place within 24 hours. We will document the conversation in our student contact log, and also in our student's conference log where parent communication is captured.

[00:15:13] And then as a follow-up to that, we'll send a letter, which is a bullying response letter, which I can make sure you have a copy of, that goes home to the family or any of the students that may be involved and it gives out resources that they can use to talk to their child or listen to their child during the difficult time that they're navigating.

[00:15:35] Do you add anything? - No, I think that's wonderful. And we as school admin have been trained on that this past summer by the school administration office to make sure that we were familiar with the new protocol. And it's really just best practice to have that quick and open line of communication with families.

[00:15:52] I think the other piece of this, too, is we look at this very proactively as well. We look at how can we continuously educate our students on how we treat each other and what's acceptable behavior with and within the schoolhouse. I can say my experience is working in a middle school, which just comes with a lot of challenges.

[00:16:11] Many people say to me, I'm so sorry that you work in a middle school, and I tell them what I do, and I say I'm so lucky because it's such a wonderful time for our students. But we're always looking sure to have that proactive, rewarding, good behavior when we see it and, you know, really teaching our expectations and being very methodical in doing that and very clear.

[00:16:31] So I think it's that twofold. The other piece we always, I think, do as a middle school community, and I'm sure my high school colleagues as well, is it's always helpful, too, to have those face-to-face conversations. So very often when we may have a situation, the fastest way to be in touch with parents is by phone.

[00:16:48] But I always feel like any opportunity that we can have conferences with parents is helpful as well. And I would like to add one situation that we are expecting to come up that we wanted to also have steps in place was what happens if a school counselor or a school social worker get an email from a parent over the weekend or after hours when an administrator is not necessarily available, nor are they available.

[00:17:13] But if we do open that email, that 24-hour starts. So we've advised our Unified Mental Health team members in our PD last week to immediately CC the administrator, acknowledge the parent's request, and send the letter. And then the administrator will follow up the first school day back.

[00:17:38] So the way that the legislation was written, there weren't work days, and it, okay. But it's not when it's sent, it's when it's received. Right. So we are encouraging our mental health staff not to open their emails. They aren't expected to do that over the weekend because we're not on call.

[00:17:55] But if they do, that's how they're supposed to respond. Yeah, I will add that the letter that Ms. Evans and her staff developed is nonjudgmental.

[00:18:11] It just basically lists that there was an incident reported to us, and here's a list of all the resources that can be provided for you. I know it can be a struggle for an administrator or a counselor or a teacher, as we're seeing, get messages like this and worry what's going to happen to a student over the weekend, so that provides those services to them.

[00:18:31] I did invite some elementary teachers to be here this evening. Fortunately, they couldn't be here. We heard overwhelmingly this summer that the amount of emails they get that mentioned the word bullying are quite extensive, but the number of times it actually comes down to a bullying incident is very, very minor, very small.

[00:18:50] I believe we had slightly over 300 and something incidents that were labeled as bullying by administrators after a review. The policy does say 24 hour notice, but we also have to follow up within five days as to where we are in that administrative review investigation.

[00:19:08] Can I just add one more piece? So then as our follow-up, based upon what our review of the incident determines, then we often, if there is a continued concern, we'll set up a comprehensive student safety plan, which will just be our supports in place for our students, and we share that with the family.

[00:19:31] They're part of making that plan, as well as teachers and anybody that that student might interact with during their day, any school employee. So that way we're all on the same page and we are aware what supports that student may need and then set up a timeframe to meet and discuss that plan and make any adjustments as needed.

[00:20:01] So can I ask questions while we're on the slide? There's pausing. So some of these percentages seem low to me. You know, we have for even the first one, the school's administrator set high behavior expectations for all students 31% of survey respondents didn't agree with that statement I don't know if there were graduated levels of responses to this question or if it was a yes no but that seems that seems low so I'm

[00:20:37] wondering in terms of a response and kind of coaching at the at the school level, how do we kind of push the needle around these things and make sure that we have, you know, we can meet high expectations.

[00:20:59] When we have high expectations, that's just one of the questions. But I'm curious, what do we do in response to receiving surveys, responses like this? And let Dr. Tyler go ahead a little bit into some of the survey responses that did occur.

[00:21:17] We do look at that survey data, but we also look at the real data of the number of disciplines or incidents and referrals that are actually made. For instance, and I think it's very important to share, there's some bus information that was out there that is perceptual.

[00:21:33] And when we looked at the real data as compared to pre-pandemic, we did not find that to be the case. I do think in talking to administrators, most of our students do behave well and they deal with incidents. We did see post pandemic, some behavior from some students that seem to escalate very quickly, and we're more likely to see the zero to 100 behavior.

[00:21:56] But we did have most of our students throughout the school day and throughout the school year are not the students that are being disciplined or referred at that process. So the perceptual data that we look at, we also look at the actual data, teacher referrals, teacher discipline, what does occur.

[00:22:14] I will say our administrators do refer students to discipline in school or out-of-school suspension when their violation meets that need for that disposition. So I've not run across case where administrators are not suspending students or placing them in in-school restriction if that is the required response to what their behavior is.

[00:22:38] So just to add a little bit about this, when I look at these numbers as a school administrator, I kind of want to get to the, it's great to have anonymous survey data, but I need more information in order to create that better learning environment. So a lot of it is that collaborative conversation. Okay, you're breaking this down. When you read this question, what do you gather from that and having that dialogue?

[00:22:58] And I can say just experiences talking with teachers is I think sometimes they feel like they need to support and handle everything on their own. So we're always saying, you know, we are here to support you as administrators. What can we do to help you versus, you know, having that feeling I'm in my classroom and I'm really struggling with this student.

[00:23:16] But if we're not aware, we can't, you know, provide that level of support. So I think it really is having that open dialogue and then also sharing with teachers, you know, what does our discipline code look like? What are some things that the state has put in place that might change the way we would have looked at things differently maybe some time ago?

[00:23:36] And then what, you know, how can we work positively to reward positive behavior and hoping that will then have that positive impact on students who are possibly repeat offenders or have repeat infractions. I would just like to add, too, and piggybacking on what you were saying, that a lot of the schools are looking at the classroom patterns, right?

[00:23:56] And if there's a specific classroom that's struggling or sending lots of referrals, you're going to put supports in place there. You could do an RP circle to remind the students of the classroom behaviors. I know at the elementary school level, they have a specific PBIS-focused training for the students related to what's expected on the school bus when they have issues that are becoming a pattern on the school bus.

[00:24:19] So there are a lot of options, and our MTSS PBIS team can do push-in support in classrooms to help teachers with managing those behaviors, as well as the mental health staff can go in to also support. And I'd just like to add to that, and I think Ms. Johnson and Ms. Evans brought up good points.

[00:24:37] More of our administrators are walking through their staff and what the Student Behavior and Administrative Responsibility Code looks like, what those expectations are, and then the level of responses that was developed through what a lot of county public schools have been working on since 2012 as a response to the incident, how I can support it.

[00:24:55] But also working with teachers and working in classroom management responses and other skills that are so helpful for keeping the student in the classroom because when we do have a student leave the classroom, we know there's going to be a learning loss any time they have to exit the classroom for whatever reason.

[00:25:15] And we also know we want to keep the teacher and student relationship as the most powerful relationship in the building. And the administrators have that response to do so, but part of their job is also preparing the student and the teacher to be back in the classroom together at some point for learning.

[00:25:31] Mr. Rhademy. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. So initially, I know you were presenting the bill, and I was trying to track within the slides where that was, and I think I wasn't sure. But I'll just stay on this slide for now. So maybe this is a question for, well, Dr. Tyler, welcome.

[00:25:50] It's always nice to have you in the committee meeting. So can you tell us, I mean, it looked like at the survey, is it 4,716 folks responded to the survey? That's pretty impressive. - That is correct.

[00:26:09] And the options are agree, strongly agree, then disagree, strongly disagree. Schools have the ability to filter out the non-respondents. So yes, over 4,700 teachers responded. And in response to the perspective or the question around where does this stand overall, typically our teachers are responding 85, 90% agreement with the quality of instruction the climate in the building. While it's still a majority, this tends to be the lower area that we saw as far as increasing populations of teachers who are not seeing that consistent behavior we

[00:26:48] want to see or practices. So yes, these areas are still a majority. They tend to be the lowest in the area of looking at climate from the teacher experience. So the bar that says here, so 69%, if I just try to understand that.

[00:27:07] So this is where the teachers agree. And you mentioned agree. Sorry, what was the four or five things you mentioned? So to simplify it, so there's five options. They can choose not to respond if they don't have any particular experience or an opinion on a topic.

[00:27:25] They can strongly disagree, disagree, agree, and strongly agree. So you see the percentage who agree or strongly agree. So it's the affirmation level from teachers that yes, the school administrators are setting high behavior expectations for all students at 69% agree or strongly agree.

[00:27:45] And when was the survey done? It was done, I believe, in March of last year. Or last year. And it might have. I can go back and verify that. So this is something we do on a yearly basis or is this one off time that was done?

[00:28:01] It's done on a yearly basis at least the last 10 years, I believe. And we've actually created a consolidated, kind of aligned survey practice of multiple departments the last four or five years. And so when I said last year, you're talking about the fiscal year, not the calendar year, March, or this year, March.

[00:28:23] It would have been March of 2023 is what this date is from. So, I mean, this goes back to my, can we, because it tells you a snapshot of one year. Has that increased, disagreed, I mean, decreased?

[00:28:39] So if I look at just, I mean, the number fourth kind of calculate, students know there are consequences for breaking school rules, right? Is that increasing, decreasing? How do we get a better assessment on where we are today?

[00:28:55] Because 59% doesn't tell me, I mean, it tells you something, but it doesn't really tell you either it's improving, it's not improving, or is it going down? Is it something that you can share also that will be really helpful? Because if I look at that, I think, and again, Ms. Johnson, you're here,

[00:29:12] I think the sense, I think, because I was going back and seeing, it was not, it was back in May when it was presented, so I know the school board's memory is like dog's memory nowadays, it's like, so I think the thing that, I think where some feedback we were getting from the teachers is that the students are not behaving, and there's no consequences for their behavior, and as a school board member, I know in the last three, four years, we've touched a lot of discipline policy, try to make them, I don't know what's the right word, but I think more

[00:29:50] compassionate. I think that was, if I could use the word. And I don't know, I guess there could be positive consequences, and there could be some unwanted consequences of that as well. And so I think the activity I guess bringing the committee is saying, well, what can we do to help address and fix that comprehensively? So for your school, and again, I'm going not it might be working and things could be but then for us looking across the board um how's that you know not all administrations are the same also so how is that impacting not impacting and what how can we help see the data and i think you know one of the things i think is so good like

[00:30:30] been i like data driven right i think we've made a lot of these things because we felt like it needed to be done um but i think data speaks volume and you know we talked about the dress code policy and then we'll talk something more about cell phone use and et cetera. It's like how do we use data?

[00:30:46] So this data is helpful but it's not, gives us any sort of way to really understand whether the policies we've made, perhaps, again, this could be that the 59% or these numbers over the period of four years could look like they're going down and then it looks like, okay, the policy what we did is really impacting that and that's kind of the essence of asking and then i would also be interested again i'm not sure if you want to bring committee or you share this like breaking down by i'm sure by elementary middle and high school too so what

[00:31:22] does that look like because i know last year not last year fifth graders or sixth graders we had a lot of challenges coming in out of covid and that sort of could have spiked certain things too so i think that could probably be helpful to see as well and then i guess mr tyler lastly how many questions were asked of this survey I guess in context of student behavior only these five questions or were there additional questions were asked so we can provide multi-year data the school see two-year patterns in their actual school level reports we tried to simplify what we provided for

[00:32:00] the public but we can provide two-year trends and these are select items related specifically to to looking at student behaviors. So there are, I believe we had something, 30 to 35 items on the staff survey.

[00:32:16] So the short answer is yes, we can provide multiple years. We can come back with that. Schools are able to see two years at a time and we can break it out by level. And there's a pretty good range of items in the staff survey that we administer and the one the state does.

[00:32:33] - So Ms. Johnson, not to put it on your spot, I mean, would you like to see data more than two years? would be helpful. I think that would be helpful. And just kind of having this conversation, I do think, and I feel like we are constantly saying this, but the last, I've been in education for 18 years, and the last four have been unlike anything I've ever seen before, that we really, in our students coming back from being out of school, we were very focused on making sure that we were showing grace and, you know, making sure that we met all of their social emotional needs, which are important, and we also need to hold those high academic standards, and I think

[00:33:09] it was hard for us at first maybe to balance those two things, so we really focus on grace with accountability, and we've spent a lot of time, and I know some of my colleagues are, we have to teach the expectations of school and those behaviors a little bit more explicitly than we may have thought we had to at first, you know, and you can, we all know that as parents, we can do that, you know, you can have that be fair and firm, And I think that's really where we're looking at that shift, is rewarding that positive behavior, but also having those clear expectations.

[00:33:43] And I think for us, there was just, we always just did school, so I don't think that we necessarily thought at first we needed to have those explicit skill set taught, or kids were coming to us, at least perhaps at the middle school level, having had that innate.

[00:33:59] Do you think that that realization, I saw some nods around the room there, but do you Do you think that realization is common among your colleagues as principals or APs in other buildings?

[00:34:14] Because, again, I remember Mr. Mehedevi and I were at an event together and a teacher came to us and just shared her experience of how difficult it's been and how the students just don't listen and they brush by her and kind of check her in the hallways and feeling like she has no recourse and I think, you know, and I think I have a 12-and-a-half-year-old and I'm constantly reinforcing expectations, right?

[00:34:45] It doesn't go away. But I'm curious, do you feel like, is this something as you talk to other principals that everybody's realizing, oh, we need to kind of go back to basics again and reinforce and talk about what the expectations for our school community are?

[00:35:01] I think so. And in our previous meeting, I was listening to a little bit what Ms. Biegler was saying about even in terms with academics. So I think that is part of it, of just looking at those, you know, what are our expectations. And some of them have shifted. I don't want to say that what we did, you know, in 2019 is going to perfectly fit what we do in 2023.

[00:35:20] And we've learned some really great lessons of ways we can do things better to support students. But I think trying to navigate through, maybe the better way to say it is, okay, in 2023, we've kind of now found our way of where we need to have our focus. I don't want to speak for every principal in LCPS, but I can say that's a common theme.

[00:35:40] I don't know, Sinead, if you have any thoughts you want to share.

[00:37:33] Very much so. I think, and it's also helpful context. I think one of the things, and again, kind of being newer and not having the history of when policies around discipline were shifting a few years ago but one of the questions is did we did from a policy perspective should we be rethinking things it sounds like there there is this shift though just in terms of philosophy that it is more about more about the whole child but that doesn't mean there aren't expectations and so bringing teachers along in that journey to

[00:38:10] kind of make sure everybody's on board with that and we still have high expectations but we're thinking about more so why these behaviors are happening and how we can help change behavior rather than just punishing them for not meeting our expectations yeah and I was just going to add we did have much more punitive responses previously but there wasn't as much learning and an opportunity for growth so I think we did sway coming back from the pandemic and mental health was on the rise before the pandemic and then after the pandemic we've seen it's an epidemic with students and we're seeing behaviors that aren't typical for age groups suicide screens at

[00:38:49] the elementary school level have skyrocketed because the kids don't know how to navigate these emotions these big emotions that they're feeling so we are going backwards but not all the way back to where we were before because it does need to be that accountability this isn't acceptable in school but let's find out what the why is behind this behavior and from a trauma informed approach so we're looking at it holistically and trying to figure out what needs to be individualized for this student to learn that the behavior is not okay and we can move forward and see change and I just want to say twofold too I look at this and say okay

[00:39:27] what do our students need but what do our teachers need they're exhausted as well you know they have gone through a lot these past couple years and I feel like in some ways we're like okay back to you know back to where we were before so I think that's part of this too is how do we not only support our kids but support our teaching staff as well thank you chair so I think maybe again so I think I've been here on the board for four years and I think that was the whole intention

[00:40:00] to create discipline policies that try to address the whole child and not be punitive and but then sometimes you hear feedback, and I think, so the entire idea is to make sure that the feedback loop was set up that, okay, so we did, based on how we, you know, we want to think more comprehensively, but then if the data corroborates that, yeah, we're thinking as a whole child and not something that it addressed, I think the data would reflect and help, and I think it looks like it does, but there is still, I think, I guess improvements,

[00:40:33] if you look at the 61, 59%, I think you mentioned, Ms. Johnson, that there's room for improvement in educating the kids about the expectations, and then hopefully that number also increases as we go forward with it, too. So thank you.

[00:40:50] Okay, are we ready for the next slide? This is the teacher's experience with student behavior. When it comes to the student response, too, I think it's very interesting Dr. Tyler can share some things with you.

[00:41:10] Is there any questions on this one?

[00:41:20] Next slide. And then here's from the Teacher Advisory Council results. I do have questions on this one. So what are the numbers?

[00:41:37] So if you remember at the last meeting, one of the last meetings, Ms. Polifco brought up the Teachers Advisory Council for the superintendent. And I think we had somewhere between 110, 120 teachers who meet monthly and they discuss a series of topics. So this is a summary of some of the perspectives or the feedback from these teachers on their experiences and this is a listing of amongst those 120 or so teachers what was most frequently mentioned in the feedback in the surveys where we had open-ended comments was around behavior issues of students 55 of the 120 or so almost half of those teachers

[00:42:16] brought up behavioral issues consequences for student behaviors either being ineffective or just not it's not clear that there are clear consequences there and you see cell phones and and drug use. So whether you're looking at actual incidents over time, you're looking at teachers' experiences on the survey with 4,700 responding, or a group of teachers who were kind of hand-selected to be part of an advisory council to the superintendent meeting on a monthly basis, there are concerns from teachers around student behaviors. Are we consistent? Are there consistent

[00:42:53] expectations? Are we implementing or carrying out those behaviors consistently? So this gives you with the actual incident data and the survey data, this is kind of imagine a large kind of focus group of teachers giving you open-ended feedback. And this is the frequency of these issues coming up amongst those 120 or so. I do want to add that a lot of times when teachers and staff members are making comments about ineffective consequences or results, they're not always referring to the administrative response or the policy response. A lot of

[00:43:29] times they're also referring to colleagues who don't enforce the rules at the same level that they do or with that expectation. So thank you, Dr. Tyler. So you mentioned maybe the number of them is 110?

[00:43:46] I'm remembering from some of the meetings in this room, there were around 120 or so teachers, but every school was represented and some of the the largest schools had two teachers so about 120 or so is what I remember from the meetings I attended so it's almost 45 percent of the right the teachers felt that they're having a lot of behavioral issues but the earlier results we saw that that's that's again I shouldn't say not the case but I mean that's the 4200 or 4217 or sorry I came number 47 16 um they don't see as much of

[00:44:26] that. I mean, 69% see that. So how do you, how do you reconcile the, the both of them? Like what the teachers, um, advisory council is saying and what the data is saying, how do you reconcile and what, how do you communicate or, or what can we do? I guess that's, that would be my, not, not so much to you, but I guess just generally, but what would we do? So how do we reconcile that? That would be the first question. So thinking about it, our takeaway was that every teacher is significant. The idea of if it's 1% or 2%, there's a large population of teachers that this is the

[00:45:04] area of greatest concern. So whether it's 60% or 70% of teachers are feeling that we're handling the behaviors and expectations of students well. The takeaway was there is a pattern here and teachers are experiencing this and this is an area of need. Maybe not as much academic supports where 85, 90% of teachers feel supported, but this is an area of need.

[00:45:28] So there are slight differences between the two groups, but the takeaway was this is something we need to focus on in supporting teachers. So would that be a follow-up then to have a tag cloud on what kind of behavioral? I mean, because this behavior is a big bucket. So would that be sort of the next sort of level discussion, saying, okay, so we heard this.

[00:45:49] Now we want to understand more when you talk of behavior, categorizing them so at least then all of us collectively you know would like to address this so was what's the next steps to better understand what concerns the teachers are raising in the context of behavior I guess so I would I would really hand it to dr. Fulton and Jen Evans and well others who are following up on this with training and conversations with teachers on a frequent basis as far as understanding because there's only so much we'll get from surveys and even focus groups until we get an actual

[00:46:25] practice. I don't know if Dr. Fulton had a follow-up on what happened after we get to this level of analysis or other colleagues. We work primarily with the school-based administrators for them to understand it, but as I mentioned earlier, a lot of them have gone and started working with their teachers so they understand that discipline referral process. If there was a time when a teacher made a referral into the office and then that was not follow-up on it, one of the things that administrators now are doing are following back up with the teacher where they may not share all the details, but they share in part of that decision-making process that went on,

[00:47:01] and what are the guidelines that they follow for that student, and also the expectations of if we send a student home, they don't go home and magically get better and come back. We're often creating more of issues down the road that we do have to address that have to be met, and part of what our administrators do look at is the success of students who have had struggles. You know, our greatest victories don't come from our greatest challenges, so those students who have worked through some of these challenges and behavioral issues that the administrators and the teachers and the school counselors and all the members of the staff have worked with that student for success

[00:47:39] are some of our greatest stories. But those occur when the students have met struggles and created struggles within the classroom or on the bus or in the hallways that was addressed by that school staff. So they're doing a very good job of taking that holistic approach and explaining it to everybody.

[00:47:58] the new SSA positions that have at schools, and many of those are coming from teaching positions into a position that's gonna be that bridge between a lot of different facets that work with a student, but also working directly with the staff to understand what roles they're doing with those students that are providing the most challenges to the school.

[00:48:19] - So thank you, Dr. Fulton. I think, so if I read the line, it says students are having a lot of behavioral issues, and that's kind of where I'm going. It's a statement, I mean, so yeah, students are having behavioral issues, but doesn't go into what's, is there, has there been discipline action or not, right?

[00:48:38] I think the initial sort of feedback was the students are having behavioral issue. Of course, I think we accept that because of coming out of COVID and the challenges, but are we addressing, are they converting into disciplinary actions or they're not, right? I think that's, the difference is if they are, if you're addressing that behavioral issue, then I think it becomes a moot point.

[00:49:03] But if those behavioral issues are not being addressed in whatever fashion, through discipline, through support, and so on and so forth, then I think that's the feedback of the chatter that we heard was that that was not being, to kind of connect the dots back again, to say, okay, they're having behavioral issues, but are the behavioral issues being addressed?

[00:49:25] And that's kind of, it can't lead from this here, but that would be my sort of trying to understand that better, More than just saying, yep, we're having behavioral issues, but what are we doing about it? I would say, and please keep in mind, if somebody like me can be positive, anybody can be, because I never get a phone call with somebody telling me how great their kids were during the school day.

[00:49:48] If you had my Friday afternoon, you would have thought the world was ending based on those conversations, and it's not. One, I do think our students do exhibit a lot of strong, excellent behavioral skills as do our staff members. I would say, having been in this business for, you know, approaching four decades, we do a better job than ever addressing behavioral issues with students in multiple ways, behavior interventions, academic interventions, and when necessary, discipline interventions as part of that process.

[00:50:19] I think there are more ways to address them, and I do think we're doing a very good job of breaking down the silos and doing an approach that's going to include multiple people in addressing that student behavior. So, Dr. Colton, I want to just chime in.

[00:50:35] No, no, I think we are in agreement. I think you as staff and everybody is doing a really good job. I think where we're just coming back is to connect from what the staff is sort of talking about it to where the gap is. That's all. So, I know, I mean, you don't have to, I mean, I think we've been in this committee and we've been working together for some time now.

[00:50:55] But it's just that that's where we're trying to understand that have we covered that piece between the teachers and then that component of it. I think that's a great point. And one of the things that we talked about, the administrators, and I know their level directors have been talking to them about, is working with the teachers as an understanding, school counselors, unified mental health staff, and everybody, and communicating with those expectations.

[00:51:21] And also taking more of a team approach to student behavior. It used to be it was passed off and it was dealt with and then brought back, and we're encouraging that. And it takes a little bit of time, but we're encouraging that more of a team approach so the teacher is involved with that student and the behaviors and the success of the student.

[00:51:41] So you're right. I think part of that is that communication that's going to take time for us to build that. There's a lot of strong teamwork that happens in school, but it's also getting everybody involved and understanding what their role is with that student and the fact that they are working together. Usually when an administrator does get a referral about behavior, they have multiple different sources of information that's coming in about that student. So besides what they're hearing from the teacher, they're hearing from the parents, other students, the school counselor, social worker that may be working with a family, or no, the attendants, the nurse, all those different areas of information that's coming in. And how does that administrator then

[00:52:18] take that information, figure out the behavior issue to address, and then share it out and work out with the group. I do think we're better, and administrators are better at sharing that, but we have areas to keep growing. I was just going to add, I think behavior, like you're saying, is a huge bucket, and I'd love to be able to know exactly what they're seeing, that they're not feeling like is being addressed, because I even look at the other three categories, and those are three behaviors, right? You've got students are maybe missing school and not catching up on their work students are using cell phones students drug use is increasing those are all examples of

[00:52:58] behaviors but there's so many more is it talking during class is it getting up out of your seat is it so I think that could be skewed I don't know because there's so many things that could fit under that but I do agree with Dr. Fulton in that we're really looking at ways to be a team and make sure all those connections are made within the school building to surround that child with support and accountability, so everyone knows the part they play in that.

[00:53:24] One specifically is with the teachers. I would imagine, I've never been a teacher, but as a teacher, if you refer someone for a concern and then they come back to your class the next day, the assumption would be maybe it wasn't addressed, I don't know, because they're not supposed to know the discipline side of things, but what can we share?

[00:53:42] So it's really transparency with the process and confidentiality with the details that I think we need to look at as a system. Lastly, I think this, Chair, that I think this number two, which I was going to, I think Ms. Evans spoke to, so I think the teachers, 37 out of 120, are saying that the consequences are either ineffective or non-existent, so I think that's a big number to then kind of drill down upon, just to understand, I think, as you mentioned, about the communications and dialogue as far as where that gap is and then addressing that.

[00:54:18] And I do think that's an excellent point to drill down, because we would like to know areas we address one things I do here from administrators is a grading scale and how they grade students gets tied into how they believe students and not being able to address behavior or not having consequences for their behavior that's different than the areas that we address with students so when we as Ms. Evans said it's a large bucket of different behaviors that we can look at and what what are going to be addressed attendance issues you know it's against the state code for us to suspend a kid for any truancy violations for its attendance.

[00:54:52] So those have to be addressed in a different way. So students repeatedly tardy may be frustrating, but it has to be addressed. We don't remove the student from school, which is counterintuitive anyways, but we have to do something else to them that might not be as visible to the staff members, but it's maybe a lunch detention, it's after school, or it's another consequence, that we just have to do a better job of sharing this is how we respond to the student behavior.

[00:55:15] Okay. We can go to the next one. We did have a request about bus referrals.

[00:55:31] So we decided and worked with Dr. Tyler to look at the last two full years where we ran transportation, 2018-19 prior to the pandemic and last year, which were both full years of bus transportation, we did hear concerns that students were getting in more trouble on the bus than ever before, so we wanted to look at that, make a comparison pre-pandemic, next slide.

[00:55:57] And so the category, yeah, I'll let Dr. Tyler go over this. He's good at this stuff. So you've seen these slides before. You remember every time we get a discipline data request, we ask you, is it number of students referred, is it incidents, is it violations, or is it the actual outcomes?

[00:56:14] This is a good reference document whenever we're looking at data to make sure we're looking at the particular data point that matters most to you. So the next slide. And there's more explanations of the differences in school restriction, out of school suspensions, just background information.

[00:56:31] Next slide, please. So what you see in this kind of separated here, a stacked bar is four years ago, the last full year before the pandemic, we had a total of 1,192 students, meaning when we had a bus referral, regardless of whether it led to a suspension or another disposition, there were 1,192 students involved.

[00:57:00] And you see the 2018 breakout is there. it actually decreased as far as total number of students impacted when you looked at last year, four years later. So a decrease in overall number of referrals, an actual, as you see there, in-school suspensions, there should be an actual coding on that, in-school suspensions in orange actually increased last year, but the out-of-school suspensions four years ago was actually more, 48 versus 36 last year.

[00:57:32] So this gives you multiple data to view total number of students impacted, students who were referred, students who had in school suspensions, students with out of school suspensions. So as Dr. Fulton was saying, as we go to the next slide, we're actually seeing a decrease.

[00:57:50] Now what's the nature of the actual violations? You see four years ago, 81% of those violations are disorderly conduct. And we can break that down a little further, but as Mr. Mejedeby has noticed, with a lot of these requests, we start broad until we get more details about what would be interesting to you, but four years ago, it was disorderly conduct overwhelmingly.

[00:58:10] When you go to the next slide and go a little further, you actually see a kind of a breakout of the nature of it. So more relationship issues between students, safety concerns, and in this case, school operations impacting the actual operation of the bus.

[00:58:30] This gives you more detail and it shows you how this was refreshed after the adjustments that we saw, I guess, three years ago from the state. So it's harder to figure out or pinpoint whether the nature of the actual incidents has changed, but we didn't see, say for example, a change in what we would consider some of the more non-discretionary outcomes where there were drugs or weapons.

[00:58:55] It was still disagreements or interactions between students, maybe disrupting the actual operation of the bus is still what was most predominant. And as you go further, the next slide, You see the little donut chart showing you that representation and the slide after that.

[00:59:15] This gives you a breakdown of what we mean by safety concerns. It's pushing or shoving. It's endangering of others. It's fighting that results of no injury. You do see tobacco or vaping or alcohol drug possession or distribution. That does fit into that category of some of the behaviors where there's less discretion from administrators on how to deal with that versus others.

[00:59:39] but Dr. Fulton can go into detail about kind of breaking down the actual nature of it. But what you see overall is that the total number of incidents is down as far as on bus violations. The total number of suspensions is down, and we're up slightly for in-school suspensions.

[00:59:58] So the other questions were around, are we seeing differences in the actual rates by the key student groups? And this is what some people refer to as our equity lens. when we're looking at this data, we need to break this down and look at, are we seeing differences in referrals? The next two slides show differences from one year to the next. And what you're looking for on that risk ratio in that column, the Office of Civil Rights states that if a group is being treated disproportionately at a rate of 1.5 to 1, 1.5 times more likely to be referred than another,

[01:00:36] you're in kind of a cautionary zone. If it's 2 to 1 on a consistent basis, that's a level of being different enough in treatment that if you can't explain it, there may be discriminatory practices going on. And you see for referrals, there's no group that's significantly ranging from that risk ratio of one to one. That was four years ago. The next slide has last year the same. So what this means is that if we see differences in suspensions, it's not because we're seeing differences in referrals. So when we go to the next slide, we do see differences when we're looking at suspensions

[01:01:13] though. American Indian four years ago, a very small group, so two students of the seven who had a bus referral were suspended. You see it's greatly disproportionate. It's approaching that for black and Hispanic students. Interestingly enough, it wasn't that case for students with IEPs. If you remember, that tends to be the most disproportionate group when it comes to suspensions where they're typically three and a half, four to one. Last year, let me go to the next slide, you see again

[01:01:47] disproportionality when it comes to suspensions based upon bus incidents. Yes, these are small numbers, but it still shows a pattern of there are certain groups where they're gauging in behaviors that are very similar, meaning because we in the past have controlled for the nature of the actual violation and they're still being suspended at high rates. And lastly, on the next slide. We did get a recommendation or request for data looking at technology and bullying, and we can follow the same pattern of analysis that you see here for providing that later.

[01:02:25] You see from the data on the slide, we were anticipating this would be September, but we had a chance to get to this analysis this month. And Dr. Fulton can speak to whether you may want to see some changes in analysis for those technology and bullying discipline referrals moving forward. And I think the last slide has action steps that we're taking to address that. Can you remind me what ODR stands for? It's one of the column headers, students with

[01:02:57] ODR. Those are referrals. Office of Discipline Referral. Okay. So this is great and also great context to also have the information about the Office of Civil Rights and what they see about data and kind of how that's interpreted that's really helpful obviously it would be great to see information about all suspensions broken out by this in this same same

[01:03:34] similar data it's really helpful to hone in on bus data and I know that that's what we asked for and then Mr. Mejedevi asked the question is there a plan to share this with the full board or did were you augmenting it with additional information in September and then bringing that forward in October? The plan was for us to share it in September, and if you wanted to, we could do it before the full board. That would be, I think, a request that would come through your committee.

[01:04:02] I would like to add also with the bus discipline referrals, it's really hard to compare the years beforehand. In 18, 19, we were still doing paper referrals in some cases, and so we may not have even gotten them all of them. Last year, there was some concern about how referrals. There was just kind of a block when the lead drivers did referrals and there was a concern about something.

[01:04:27] So we met with all the bus drivers as part of their training, talked the importance of them reporting it out when something does occur on a bus to share that information, that administrator's responsibility. We did streamline the process on how those referrals will come in.

[01:04:43] we took some responsibility away from a lead bus driver of having to determine what the consequence was or the fear of what that, they don't have to do it, they just have to refer it. And we have a generic disposition that's our offense that's listed and the administrator's job is to review it and look at that. So we did reach out to our bus drivers to let them know the importance of what they do during the school day and that support we can provide.

[01:05:04] Safety and security also work with the bus drivers to just some challenging incidents that happen to buses. And although we can't possibly conceive every possible scenario that might happen with bus drivers, just the safety measures that they can take on that bus, we hope we'll give them a little bit better connection with the school administration and addressing concerns that might happen on a bus and dealing with students that might be struggling riding transportation, especially riding transportation with peers, as Dr. Tyler mentioned.

[01:05:35] A lot of those incidents have to do with poor interactions and social interactions with peers. Thank you. And then I think my final question, and then Mr. Mejedevi, I'm sure you have some questions as well. But so looking at the disparities in the outcomes and specifically around suspensions.

[01:06:01] So I know overall we're trying to do things to reduce those disparities. But when you see them, now what are we doing to dig in to try to understand why were these particular students selected for suspension and is there any kind of follow-up action and are we looking at this like are these within a specific level that this is happening more are we concentrated in specific schools where some follow-up conversations might be helpful to address this and again I know some of the numbers are low

[01:06:32] but this is concerning well I agree and one of the we we do look at encourage schools to do equity audits we do review suspensions or out-of-school school suspensions, we review every one of those to make sure it was a suspendable offense before a student was removed from school.

[01:06:55] To do so, I think part of that is looking at what that response to and also drilling it down to exactly each one of those consequences as to why that student was suspended versus other measures that could have been used. I think the other piece too that we didn't drill down is looking at if this is a particular area our particular cluster of schools where we're seeing that that's something that we would have to look at uh what's the length of the bus ride of those students longer bus rides tend to produce more discipline issues and that can be a factor too so there's a lot of things that we could look

[01:07:29] at as a possible reason for those and that would be addressed mr mehedevy thank you chair um i to chair the manager i guess i didn't realize we were almost in 725 i mean that's one thing we'll bring it back i just have one question and then i can bring back the time discussion so the slide that you have uh dr tyler says what was the nature of bus violations for 2022 2023 so there's something that we are tracking starting track this year is that is that fair to say that like we were not

[01:08:05] tracking that before so dr fulton would know the exact year that the state initiated changes in the categories i don't know if it was two or three years ago uh but but he would know the actual date when the actual categories changed it actually changed during the pandemic but i would say you know 21 22 we put them in place but 22 23 was probably the first year administrators and everybody was very comfortable with the change from the s bar from the old code that was used so okay that's i'm just trying to get so that going forward then we can track it i mean i think that

[01:08:44] the data is here and mr smith is here also i'll link my bring my discussion on the click uh on terms of presenting the data that you shared with the committee which is public data how do you share this data and and have you know again this those two slides you have us on the suspension and i understand the context of 2018 2019 to 2022 2023 because of pandemic and so on so forth but going forward how do you continue presenting this data that we can see the trend too i mean there's a reduction in the reduction in numbers but not i mean there more work needs to be done i mean this

[01:09:21] is still um you know that there's still quite a bit difference between between the the different groups um so that's there and lastly on the ieps so iep demographics i don't does there overlap because if i look at the number uh ieps are 13 but the iep students could also fit in the different demographics, too. So how do you, I mean, that's a different discussion of how do you break that down, because, you know, is that skewer numbers? Is it, you know, so I don't know if that's something, some feedback to take it back, how we present that. So I know we took a lot of time at 7.30,

[01:09:59] Madam Chair. Are there, I don't know if there's any pressing items that we need to cover tonight, or do we defer them to next, next meeting? I, um, if there isn't a pressing need to address the information item on reporting of student conduct, we could defer that to the September meeting as an information item again, as well as the conversation around student use of social media.

[01:10:30] I did have a new business item that I wanted to bring up as well. If you don't object, we can defer those. Sure, absolutely. So the new business that I wanted to bring up is I did want to begin a conversation around cell phone use during specifically instructional time, but I think in general, cell phones at school.

[01:10:54] And, yeah, Mr. Mejedevi, if you'd like to... That's not fair. That was the new business that I was going to bring up too, so I'm glad you did. So I think we have a... At least on this one, we have a consensus on that. Okay, great. So we would like to bring that forward then. So can I ask, like, what capacity would you like the staff to bring that i guess i i would like an understanding of we talked about this what are our neighboring schools doing i know some some recently have

[01:11:29] implemented some new policies i am hearing across the board what a distraction they are they also seem to play a role in potentially incidents of bullying where people are you know filmed and then their pictures are shared or you know whatever is going on so I it's something I think we need to address I know somebody had raised the question about you mean for next year right and I think that that's for the board to decide if we're going to take

[01:12:04] action you know sooner than saying in the next academic year but I I would like some recommendations from staff about ways that we can limit the use of cell phones at school by students mr. Mahadevi chair well the one thing I like to add is that I know we we do have I mean again we have the the school principles too I think it'll be again this is again data driven to kind of collect data as far

[01:12:40] as how they would like to see because they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis so what approach is that maybe it's a survey or feedback I don't know that's the right word or not or a focus group or some some sort of a way to say well should we defer the instead of school board making a policy and saying, hey, use or don't use, or do we ask, you know, I don't know if the policy with the policies right now, we defer back to the principles, or we don't.

[01:13:12] I don't know if that's something. So things like that, I think, would be helpful to have a view on that. And Mr. Wilson is here. Could he address that, too? Because I know we do have a policy 8650 that addresses student technology, and that's run through the technology committee, and it has not through this committee.

[01:13:30] So I'd like to give him the floor for a few minutes, too. Oh, just real quick first. I think that the social media item was actually a student cell phone policy. So in the board docs agenda, there is a student cell phone use. So not sure how that works with new business and information items, but it was listed in information items in board docs.

[01:13:48] We do have policy 8650, which is the student responsible use policy. Section F of that policy does address bring your own technology, BYOT, which would be any device a student would bring in, which includes cell phones. Personal technology devices are permitted at school and can be used in instructional areas with permission from the teacher.

[01:14:07] So that does exist in policy that it is a permission-granted scenario for students to use those devices. So when we reviewed this this summer with principals, we did what's called a consultancy protocol, which we take ideas and we get feedbacks and we did groups of principals and almost every principal we met with.

[01:14:27] The one item that came out of that was, It's not a one-size-fits-all solution. And different schools have different scenarios. They have different tools they're using at their schools. They have different courses and classes and just depending on what they need.

[01:14:46] So what worked at one school, we heard pretty much that what worked at one school would not work at another school. And so that flexibility of what the principals needed for their building is how we decided to move forward with it at that time. So we did collect the feedback. It was, like I said, it wasn't a survey, it was a consultancy protocol, so that's much more of like a conversational feedback than it is like a survey that we'd have the hard data to pull out.

[01:15:12] But I did want to do some level setting. There is no technical solution that can be deployed. We are not allowed. We are restricted from blocking or impeding cellular data service for the FCC. Specifically, it states that there's no exemptions for use within a business classroom, residence, or vehicle. So I make it pretty clear that you are not to do anything to stop cell phones from working.

[01:15:30] So this would need to be a policy or practice or behavior. There's not really a technology that could be deployed that could restrict this. Along with the student technology responsible use policy, so you heard the student permissions from the teachers. We also have the student discipline policy, 8210, which calls out defiance of authority of any teacher principal.

[01:15:50] So if a teacher says don't use the device, policy 8650 would say the student would have to get permission. And then policy 8210 says if the teacher says no and you still do it, then that's a violation for discipline. So I will say that even though 8650 was just passed, I think three or four months ago by the board, it is up for review again on the Technology Steering Committee, specifically to address state code that is very specific in the block of the use of TikTok on student devices.

[01:16:19] So that is the change that is going forward at this time. But it is gonna be under review in the Technology Steering Committee, so just wanted to make you aware. And then I just wanted to give some idea the type of things that our students are using their cell phones for. On the first day of school, we had 100,000 unique student view logins through iOS and Android app. And just anecdotally, being at school, that's how students were finding what their courses were and what their schedules were and what classroom they needed to go to and helping students get to the right one. So we also had 10,000 logins in LCPS Go for access to instructional

[01:16:54] resources. These are both just from the first day of school. So it is used. We have things like QR codes. I don't think there's a menu anymore that exists in a restaurant. Everything's a QR code. Similar at schools, there's a lot of QR codes around schools, in schools. There's even QR code for dismissal practices that some schools are using.

[01:17:13] So I just want to be mindful that there are existing practices in place that could be impacted if there's some sort of put your cell phone in your locker and don't bring it back out. And I do think that it is a challenge. I don't think it's easy. Cell phones are not going away.

[01:17:30] And I would challenge anyone who has a cell phone to put it away for a week and not use it and see, like, how they interact with things, whether it's taking a picture. Using a Chromebook is really not going to be a good solution for – and, again, those could be negative consequences of things, but there's also academic and instructionally valuable reasons to be able to have those tools and have access to them.

[01:17:53] So that's just what I had prepared to say tonight. I don't know – I know Mike Henderson is here. He's our supervisor of instructional technology. I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add from an instructional technology perspective. Good evening.

[01:18:10] I'll just reinforce what Aaron said about, you know, there are ways that kids can use their cell phones that provide some flexibility and some choice and options. And what we talk about a lot in our work with teachers is, you know, find ways to provide options and flexibility for kids, and technology is really great at doing that.

[01:18:32] So if you have a project that you're working on and you need to take some photos, your Chromebook might not be the best tool, but your phone that you have access to or your tablet and your backpack might. Or there might be situations where students are doing something on their Chromebook and they need to look up some directions or maybe watch a tutorial video.

[01:18:49] So that might be easier for them to do on their phone while they're doing their work on their Chromebook. So, again, as Mr. Smith said, that there are certainly challenges, but there's also opportunities that come with giving kids access to devices. and those are things that the board and the technology committee and this committee might need to weigh over the coming months.

[01:19:10] So I know we're late and I think this is, thank you for sharing that. But I think, you know, with all due respect, I think that that's where we need to be driven from instruction versus technology driven. I mean, I'm a technocrat myself. And so how the instruction, I mean, I think this is not so much of technology, whether with cell phone we can restrict or how we can govern them, but it's just how from a policy perspective in the classroom what what can we do to make sure that the kids can use a cell phone in the building not so much of you know what applications and what we can do i think that's secondary but i think in

[01:19:47] terms of whether they can i mean i know certain middle schools they don't allow them in the classroom some in high school kids are using cell phones and and and going back and forth and so is it creating a good decorum you know is it creating good learning environment i mean that's the question we're trying to address with cell phone more than the technology aspect of it and i think you know as far as whether that's instructional or not i think that's where i i would defer to the cni folks i mean whether that material that they are teaching and whether the cell phone is

[01:20:24] helping or not versus um you know here making a decision whether it's it's there or not i'm not trying to rationalize whether we should keep a cell phone my whole objective and the intention we're bringing is we collect the data on it right just to go about and seeing what the feedback is and then then figure out what we what we want to do with it or not um that's all so we're not looking to ban or nothing to do from uh i think um sorry to interrupt but i think maybe looking at some of the data and and you know some of these infractions that you mentioned would fall under bullying and i don't know if they're all based on cell phone it could be cyber bullying is one of the

[01:21:03] discipline or offenses that's in our discipline code that it could fall under to do so and when those incidents do occur they do create disruption and turmoil for students that are involved with it and also those ones live longest in our memory about what did occur uh you know and i agree with what aaron and mike said that most of our students know how to effectively use a phone um and do so without being disruptive distractive the other thing as you looked at data you might want to look at you might ask us to do a regulation that would kind of empower teachers and others to

[01:21:38] say here's the expectations of what that cell phone is including uh not recording students or anybody else within a school building unless you have explicit permission of a staff member because i do agree that students who record others should not do so during a school setting because it's not really purposeful and it has no value and it can lead to some of those areas of concern that you mentioned.

[01:22:12] Okay, thank you. Any other new business? Okay, with that, we're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you, everybody.

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