Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Performance Monitoring Committee Meeting, Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 1h 21m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1138273470?rel=0

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 2026-10-12. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:09] - Good evening, everyone. I wanna welcome you all to the Performance Monitoring Committee. My name is Arben Eshreffi. I'm the chair of this committee. I'm joined by Ms. Chernoff and Chair Mansfield. I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee to start, and we'll start with public comment if there is any.

[00:00:27] Do we have any public comment? - We do not. - Thank you. - We're gonna see something. We did not talk about that. - Mr. Rousley's not providing public comment. - No.

[00:00:43] - No comment. - Okay, so seeing no public comment, We'll move on to the approval of the meeting minutes from October 21st. Do I have a motion to approve the draft minutes? - Motion to approve the draft minutes. - That motion has been made by Ms. Chernoff. Is there a second?

[00:00:58] - Second. - Seconded by Chair Mansfield. Is there any discussion or revisions to the meeting minutes? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and vote. All those in favor, please say aye. - Aye. - Aye. - And that motion will pass unanimously.

[00:01:14] We'll move on to our information items for this evening, starting with 4.01 Department of Academics, program evaluation schedule 2025 to 2026. And I will pass it over to Dr. Ellis. - I'll just pass it over to Dr. Tyler and I'll just mention that this is a carryover from our previous meeting.

[00:01:31] - Yes. - And we have a quick update on our program evaluation schedule for the year. - Thank you. - Good evening. Before I hand it off to Dr. Blakelock, one of the practices we've, one of the practices we've been engaging with as a research office for 10 years is we reached out to other research offices in Northern Virginia divisions, Prince William, Virginia Beach, and others.

[00:01:53] And early on, one of the things we built up was our program evaluation practices, and we did follow some of the examples of Virginia Beach. At our last meeting, the other offices were very complimentary in their praise of the evolution of our program evaluation process with policy, with the collaborative nature with clients, with storytelling, and using visualizations, and really simplifying the results.

[00:02:21] Just to let you know that neighboring divisions have appreciated how we've evolved in our practices, definitely led in the last three plus years by Dr. Blakelock. So as we talk about what's next, just emphasizing this is about meeting the needs of the board and the different invested parties about the areas of interest in ways that really tell a story that informed decision making.

[00:02:45] And it's nice to get feedback from your colleagues that they really appreciate how the work has evolved in the division. So with that, I'll hand it off to Dr. Blake Locke. - Congratulations on that. - Thank you. - Thank you for sharing that. - Thank you. - That's awesome. - Thank you, Dr. Tyler.

[00:03:01] I am the last stop on this hot potato toss, so I will go ahead and just jump right in. So just a quick reminder of the process, the phases that we have in program evaluation. It's to develop the logic model, evaluation design and schedule with a data collection, and then report the findings.

[00:03:16] So what I want to do this evening is give you brief update on the program evaluations from last year and where they are and where we are some of the program evaluations for this year as well so we can go to the next slide and all this to say is that as we've been standing up this policy we've been getting a little bit better at it every year as far as what our systems and processes look like so that we can be more efficient and speed up our speed up our timelines a little bit so as you can see here on the campus and Welcome Center reports are published they're on our website that's hyperlinked right there. The gifted and talented services report will be probably published later on this week. We just need to add one little thing to it. The edge report we're

[00:03:54] still working on, one-to-one device deployment. We will be looking to publish that in early December. And then for the BEAM program, we're working on pulling those data together right now because we had the summer. It was a summer program, so it pushed us a little bit into the school year for us to be able to work with the data that we had. Go ahead to the next slide. So we've had a little bit of movement on this since this first came together, but looking at some of these, we're in the data collection phase, which is really, for some of these, is where we want to be at this point in the year because we don't want to miss

[00:04:29] opportunities to collect data. The one changes I would say is that the PBIS evaluation design is actually in the evaluation design phase right now, and it should be, it's moving along very nicely in that line and other than that you're seeing that we're in data collection or still working on logic model in other places so if we go to the next slide and finally you know based on kind of following up a little bit with Dr. Tyler was saying is the support that we provide outside of the program evaluation schedule to pretty much any program that is looking for it so we try to do this with new programs as they're getting stood up so we've worked on the after

[00:05:08] school pilot that actually has a full evaluation design ready to go for when that program gets running. HamSci we finished one up for so they've got one whenever they're ready to start working on the data. We are working on Academy of Global and Linguistic Studies. We've paused for just a moment on that one. We found if we get involved too early in the process it sort of creates some confusion and we want to let them get their legs under them a little bit more. And then I'm also working with the Division of Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility. They've developed a logic model and evaluation design a few years ago and we're reviewing it to update it to bring it up to where things are.

[00:05:43] Um, so I'll close with, um, you know, as we're looking at these schedules for last year, this year, um, we're going to start, you know, think probably thinking about probing next year. And usually around the time the superintendent's explanation of needs comes around and we're looking at budget and programs is a good time to start thinking about what it is we want to look at for the, for the subsequent year. Um, and with that, I will, uh, ask if there's any questions.

[00:06:07] Thank you very much. Uh, board members, any questions, discussion? Yes. No, these are programs. What about curriculum? Looking at UFLY versus Focus Phonics or like if we're moving the needle at all.

[00:06:27] Are we looking at any of those kinds of things? So Mr. Roundsley may actually make public comment. Just kidding. So I would separate curriculum review from program evaluation. That's not to say that we are not doing curriculum review, looking at the data, looking at usage and things like that, implementation, but that's separate from the work that Dr. Blake-Lock is describing. I will also add that we did an overall curriculum audit, and the Department of Teaching and Learning is working on action steps that came out of that audit, and I know that doesn't address

[00:07:05] your specific question about specific curricular programs, and we can talk more about that. And then I'm assuming, can you put it back a little bit? We'll be looking at the, I'm glad you have summer school in there. Are you looking at ESY at all when you're looking at summer school?

[00:07:25] So we had done a project around ESY in the 23-24 school year that we reported out on basically looking at capacity issues around being able to whether expansion was a possibility, hiring practices, and those sorts of things. In this case, it was more of a focus on just basically content-bearing summer school programs, looking at the elementary, middle, and credit recovery in the high school level. It started off as our one big summer school, and then we broke it into three parts, those three parts, because of the vast differences between the programs.

[00:07:59] Applied that presentation by, I think, Dr. Carter previously, so there's a record of the results from that evaluation. Thank you. Any other discussion? Thank you, Chair Streffi. I think I might know the answer to this, but I wanted, if I missed it, I'm sorry. How long on average do these take? I think you're gonna say it depends but it depends it's like i know you so it really depends on where we have started and where we are going so as we are building these program evaluation

[00:08:37] designs as programs are coming online the front side of the process is very quick so dual language immersion we built the program evaluation design as they were being stood up and so that this year We just had to kind of take a look at it, and we were up and running. Some of them depends on conceptually how abstract the concepts are associated with the program and what the intended outcome is, how easy that is to necessarily measure.

[00:09:07] So we work through that process as well, but we usually try starting July 1 as soon as the new school year starts, and actually we do a little bit of work with the programs in the spring, just getting them ready for the things that they're going to need to start thinking about as we head into that July 1 timeline.

[00:09:24] So we really try to have data collection starting usually around October, November. The latest PBIS is a program that actually has a very robust data collection practice as it is. So we're working through that one, but we're not missing any of those opportunities. Does that answer your question?

[00:09:39] Yeah, I only ask because I just want to make sure in terms of the lift that the work can get done because I heard you mention we might be ready to solicit for more things that you might be interested in. And this is a really fulsome list. I mean, you guys are pretty busy. So I just want to make sure it's manageable and that we're timing it appropriately and making sure that we can get the information that we need without log jamming the system, essentially.

[00:10:02] And I would, I'm sorry, go ahead, Dr. Lee. So we would say we usually can have a capacity to do five a year. Okay. So once we have the reporting done on the ones from the 23-24, we'll be wide open to continue going for the 24-25 ones. I mean, 25, 26 ones, and then, you know, be ready to start working on the next year after that.

[00:10:22] So they're, like, on deck, so to speak. Correct. Got it. Yeah. That was actually a question for one of our colleagues. From the perspective of the sponsor of the evaluation, if you think of an April in one year being identified or notified they're on the schedule and then publishing a report August of the follow-up year, you're thinking of a 16-month window typically.

[00:10:43] Okay. And that's the client perspective, but it also gives you an idea of the bandwidth that the research office is dealing with. If there's five full-blown evaluations and three or four unofficial ones, if that's what you were asking. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And then just sort of to pivot, just anecdotally, I know I just wanted to speak to the collaboration of this work and how it carries over because we are getting ready in December in the Curriculum and Instruction Committee to talk about usage, device usage, and specifically one-to-one.

[00:11:12] And I definitely have thoughts and feelings about those things. So I think that this work will really support that. And I'm looking forward to seeing kind of what the findings are because that will potentially support decisions down the road in terms of what that topic is. And then additionally, the credit recovery in light of the grading policy changes, again, just that collaborative work that's happening across the division is so timely.

[00:11:37] And so I'm just grateful for your work on that. And again, just the third plug, the dual language immersion. As we look at these CTE program expansions, the five-year plan, we're looking at rezoning and where we can physically put these programs. Again, it's just all really at a high level.

[00:11:52] It's so collaborative and tying together for us as board members. So I just wanted to compliment you all, your team on that because it feels very responsive to the work that we're doing and it's the information that we need just in time. And so I just, I thank you for the work of your team.

[00:12:09] - Thank you. And the last item I would add would be we meet monthly with the Auditor General and we're finding that there are situations in which the topics are more appropriate if we're looking at kind of cost-benefit analysis or other considerations. So there's collaboration around which topics would become Auditor General topics, which one would be program evaluations, there's curriculum audits.

[00:12:31] So there's a lot of collaboration about finding the right fit for each ask. I love that, different purposes for different things, and certainly being on the LAMP committee and hearing those audit results and diving deep into all that is great feedback, too. So thank you so much.

[00:12:47] It's great. Is there, you know, way down the pipeline five years from now, looking at the new programs that, like, North Star is not particularly new, but North Star Tape, Recovery School, Transition Center down the road, Those kinds of things we're looking at way down in the pipeline, but they're still probably on a list somewhere, hopefully.

[00:13:12] And then the other thing I was wondering, for your one-to-one device deployment, are you including assistive technology in there? So I'll answer the last question first. The one-to-one assistive device technology is not included in that.

[00:13:27] It's very much focused on screen time with the Chromebooks that the students are using is really the center of that. - But that would also include assistive technology if a kid needs text to speech and speech to text, right? - Yes, but it's what we're looking at specifically is the work around the working with the Chromebooks, what are students doing with the Chromebooks, how much time are they spending on them, what kind of content are they accessing, was the crux of that particular program evaluation.

[00:13:58] - Well, it leaves a possibility for an extension of that first one-on-one evaluation. Maybe it evolves into additional topics when you see the results. Because what I see happening sometimes is we have Read Write Gold and we have those other math assistive technology programs. And they're not really being utilized appropriately, I don't think, because either it's too much overwhelming and they're not taught, teachers are not taught, or we're just not providing it and teaching the kids how to use it.

[00:14:25] So, you know, it's a lot of money for Read Write Gold and for EquatIO and for those other things. So it would be nice to have an audit of some sort who's really using it and who's finding benefits from it, you know, and really work to maybe, you know, make it more accessible because we've just lost Learning Ally.

[00:14:51] So that's really audiobooks for kids with disabilities, and there's really not anything like it. So I just, and I think that it would just be a really good idea to look at those assistive technology and see who's using it, when we're using it, if we're using it, can we do it better, that kind of thing.

[00:15:15] Yeah, the only other thing that I would add as a curiosity here is some of the special programs that were initiated or are going to be initiated through some combination of grant funding, where the grant is for three years, like, let's say the Access Academy or through some partnership, either the Access Academy or communities and schools, we just discussed in a previous committee meeting, and, you know, how the conversations around funding would overlap with programs.

[00:15:50] evaluation um seeing that some of those programs will have to come out of the operating budget at some point right and so we would have to decide what the impact of those programs and the outcomes have been if if you wouldn't mind i want to respond to miss mansfield chair mansfield's first question first uh before we get into that around rise around tape around those different programs as well so rise and tape both of them were included in that process whereas the program was coming online, we actually built evaluation design, so they actually have logic models and evaluation designs ready to go. They might need a little bit of a refresher now that the programs

[00:16:30] are actually live and up and running, but those are two great examples of us working with the program sponsor program staff to define those programs and identify ways to measure their outcomes and their processes. And then, Mr. Estreffi, briefly to your question, specifically Access Academy. As part of the application to be a lab school, George Mason University had to submit a logic model and very specific documentation for how they would evaluate the program. So we're collaborating with them on that evaluation over the next, I don't remember the timeline, two or

[00:17:09] three years. And then other programs, I think Dr. Blake-Lock already addressed that. Any other discussion. Seeing none, we'll move on to 4.02 Department of Academics VALS and MTSS data update, and I'll pass it back to Dr. Ellis, perhaps for introductions. Who I'll pass it to. I'm going to, I'll introduce Catherine Neal, our supervisor of elementary reading and writing, and Stephanie

[00:17:41] LaPaula, our supervisor of MTSS, and they are going to go through some information around Val's data from the first quarter and then dive deep into all of MTSS, and then we have some guests who they will introduce who will speak more specifically about the day-to-day work around MTSS.

[00:18:05] I'll also mention that RASI provided more specific data in a separate attachment. So you'll see the presentation and then two separate attachments with data around first quarter BALS. And I'll pass it off to Dr. LaPaula.

[00:18:23] Good evening, everybody. And you're driving for me, right? Okay, perfect. So this is the game of back and forth. I'm just going to do like two slides and then hand it over to Catherine. But I just wanted to set our learning intentions for this evening. And so we recognize that both of these topics are pretty meaty, and they could each be deserving of their own full committee work session presentation.

[00:18:48] So we're going to do our best just to give you some of the highlights of what's going on. So we're going to review some of our VALS data and also the ways in which we're directly supporting our schools, as that has extended up into the secondary level this year. Also going to share some specific data at the division level related to MTSS practices.

[00:19:06] And then you're going to hear from our schools about SEL at the middle school level and the launch of our new behavior resource teacher model at the elementary level. And bonus, it says two LCPS schools.

[00:19:22] What that should say is three, since Larissa supports two schools. So two people, three schools. So the way that we've structured this tonight is, again, it's impossible in the length of time that we have with you to go really deep into all of these areas, but this is just some grounding for us.

[00:19:39] So this is the reminder that in LCPS, how we conceptualize the MTSS framework is that it's not a thing. It's not something we give to kids, and it's not just the intervention module in Phoenix. It's actually made up of academic response to intervention, behavior, PBIS, and school mental health, social-emotional learning supports that we provide to kids.

[00:20:02] And then it's not its own framework, but it's part of our group. I included that we are also overseeing the elementary behavior model, which is the behavior resource teachers that are elementary schools. And I'm going to turn it over to Catherine to talk specifically about VALS data.

[00:20:21] All right. Good evening. All right, so we wanted to start with VALS data just to kind of talk about who was screened in the fall. And so kindergarten through second grade, all students are screened in those grade levels.

[00:20:38] So we can consider VALS as a quote-unquote universal screener for these grade levels. However, when we get into third on up through eighth grade, the criteria differs. So for third graders, the state has required that any student who's new to Virginia public schools and students who receive summer intervention services are screened in the fall.

[00:21:04] This doesn't mean that a school could opt to screen additional third grade students if they choose to do so. So if they're concerned about a student or if they want to compare the fall data to the spring data from the previous year, they are allowed to go ahead and screen those students as well.

[00:21:26] For fourth through eighth grade, the state has required that students who received either a fail basic or a fail below basic on the SOL are screened. And then also students who pass the SOL with an audio or read aloud combination are screened.

[00:21:47] Again, if a school decided to do so, they could screen additional students. If they're concerned about students and so forth, that is their option to do so. The state has just required, you know, within those two bullet points.

[00:22:04] Kind of a broad overview or summary of the data for kindergarten through third grade. Really, this probably should say kindergarten through second grade. We did notice that kindergarten and second grade had similar percentages of students at the moderate and high risk level, while first grade shows a noticeably lower percentage in these risk categories.

[00:22:28] So definitely something that we want to continue to pay attention to now that we have two fall screenings under our belt, so to speak, we are able to kind of look at some longitudinal data and to see, okay, so what's going on at first grade, what might be going on at second grade, and looking to see if we can have some comparisons between those data points.

[00:22:51] Third grade doesn't test all students. In the packet that you received, you can see the detail of who was high risk, moderate risk, and low risk in those grade levels. For fourth through eighth grade, this, of course, was the first time in the fall that we have administered this particular assessment.

[00:23:14] And so we noticed with fourth and fifth grade that morphology and word reading showed the highest percentage in that well below range. But then also looking at the other subtests, students had at least 50% of the students in that well below range in the other subtests as well.

[00:23:32] For grades 6 through 8, morphology and word reading continue to have that highest percentage of students in the well below range compared to other students. So we're already seeing some patterns, possibly, of where we need to target our instruction.

[00:23:49] Some conclusions and insights that we can draw from just what we know so far. I think having this being the first time that we have administered an assessment like this, we found it somewhat affirming because we kind of knew that comprehension isn't always that area to intervene on for our upper grade students.

[00:24:19] We know that sometimes there could be other things at play. The VALS really has kind of opened the door for us to kind of pinpoint maybe where on that word recognition side of Scarborough's Rope, we can look and say, okay, here are some foundational skills, here are some gaps that are missing with students, and this is where we need to focus our intervention.

[00:24:40] The VALS data also provides some additional measures with why students might be struggling with the reading SOL too, and so we can kind of look at it from that lens as well. Some actionable recommendations. We continue to have regular meetings across departments. I know I'm up here and Dr. LaPaula is up here, but we also meet on a regular basis with SPED, our RASI department, also our L department to talk through not only these data points, but also how are we providing supports to schools.

[00:25:13] And then we do have ongoing collaboration times with principals, reading specialists, and teachers to ensure that we are all kind of looking at this VOWS data from the right perspectives and how it helps to support our core supplemental and intervention instruction.

[00:25:33] And then finally, for overall the support with VALS, I know that there was a high level of support for our secondary schools with administering the VALS because it was brand new for 6th through 8th grade.

[00:25:49] There's also been lots of different touch points where we've been helping to support the core instruction. And then, again, additional supports to help assist schools with interpreting that VALS data and developing those intervention plans for students.

[00:26:10] Okay, so now what I'm going to do is if we think about that being sort of the RTI arm of the conversation for specific for literacy, addressing those gaps, creating those plans, I wanted to talk in whole about some of the other components of MTSS.

[00:26:33] And so because you're the performance monitoring committee, I was working under the assumption that you enjoy hearing numbers and things that in terms of supports that we're providing to schools. So glad I got that right. So I just wanted to let you know that last year our team, our division level teams, provided over 1,055 instances of support to over 102 schools.

[00:26:56] That's our team of, at the time, eight that's at the division level. And so far this year, as an underestimate, because not all of our data is in yet, we've supported 350. And the biggest sort of rise where we're seeing this is around literacy and also in the middle school level.

[00:27:13] we're getting into the middle schools more to set up structures to support MTSS the next slide is going to talk to you about something called a request for support and I wanted to explain this data but also provide some context for why this is important so in the literature it's it's well researched that we want to provide schools with a way that when they notice that there's a student concern that it's we provide an efficient way for a teacher to say I'm concerned about a student I need some support and we don't want to create a process that gets in the way of

[00:27:48] someone requesting support or a process that doesn't that isn't acted upon and so within the MTSS module there is a way that staff can request support for a student we have not required the use of that within the module because a lot of schools had their own mechanism through Google forums or other ways that they have done that so what I wanted you to see here on this slide is the requests for supports broken down by behavior, mental health, literacy, and math for the full school years. 2023, you see it's low. 2024, a little bit higher. And then you're going to notice

[00:28:23] for this school year so far, we see a big spike in behavior. I wanted to explain why that is the case. We required the use of the request for support system for all of the schools that had a behavior resource teacher this year, because they're supporting two schools and we didn't want any requests for supports to be lost as that person was floating between the support so we are seeing an uptick in that you could see that is pulled as of the end of the first quarter intervention data last year we had over 19,000 students that received intervention they may have

[00:29:00] received intervention in more than one area as a reminder they can receive it in up to four so far this year again pulled at the end of October we are sitting at 12,518, and I know that we have many more that have gone in since I pulled those numbers. That's just the number of students. The next slide shows an intervention plan can have more than one goal. So as a reminder, we have 12,518 students with plans making up 15,580 goals.

[00:29:33] You can see it's probably not a surprise that the majority of our plans are in literacy. They have historically since we started capturing this data at the division level this committee has historically been interested in knowing why or in what areas are students receiving that intervention support so what are those we call them learning gaps that have been identified so you can see the breakdown number of students these are the top three areas in which they're receiving intervention by the four main areas executive functioning might catch your eye that was a new one we added this year that's sort of a word it's

[00:30:11] getting a little bit more traction we're hearing that a lot of our students are coming a bit dysregulated struggling a bit with organization and I think we're gonna be able to hear some of that and how we're seeing that directly in our schools but we're seeing more plans created around that as well which means the kids are getting the support that they need in a timelier way so I wanted to kick off talking a little bit about social emotional learning and if you have been here with us for a few years just a little bit of history if you have not we started implementing social emotional learning in 2019 and we started with the

[00:30:50] second step curriculum and we rolled that out at the elementary level so that's what you're seven six oh my gosh six I almost did that oh no I have a middle schooler sorry it's always in there apparently you do as well so that's awkward, and I'm sorry that we all had to experience that. But for that many years, we've been implementing it, and the elementary schools have been very clear, like, do not take this away from us. We love it. Our staff views it favorably, and our kids are seeing impact as a result of that. Following COVID 2020, we kind of know the state we were in. Our middle school

[00:31:29] started clamoring also for a curriculum that would help support these social-emotional competency skills as students were transitioning back into the schools or doing at-home learning. So we went with Second Step because that's what we knew. That's what was working at the elementary level. It's CASEL approved, checks all the boxes. I will fully admit, as soon as we started implementing it, we realized that it was not a good fit at the middle school level. Since then, we have been trying really hard to work kind of with the curriculum, but in place of the curriculum by making a lot of our own resources trying to tailor it to meet the school's needs

[00:32:07] so we have noticed that as a as a an area of growth for us so what we did was we started running some focus groups with our students and with our staff to hear not only about their experience with the curriculum which we knew wasn't quite going the way we wanted it to go but also just advisory in general what's your experience like in that advisory time that's blocked off in your schedule and last year we ran focus groups our division SEL team ran focus groups with six middle schools with almost 100 students 100 students which actually led to where

[00:32:43] we are this year which was a pilot of a homegrown SEL curriculum a design team came together this summer which was composed of middle school teachers and members of a unified mental health team, so counselors, school social workers, psychologists, and they designed the lessons based upon the feedback that the kids provided in the focus groups and the teachers provided in the focus groups.

[00:33:09] The lessons are all aligned with the SEL competencies, and these are the five schools that are implementing it this year, and you're going to hear specifically from Lunsford in just a couple minutes. We gather feedback weekly from staff and students. There's an opportunity after each lesson for people to tell us what they think.

[00:33:27] How is this going? What do you like? What do you not like? So we can make corrections in real time. I don't know that this number will floor you the way it did me, but we don't always get feedback from people when we ask for feedback, but we sure are on this. We have over 150 responses from staff and 2,434 responses from kids.

[00:33:50] And they are telling us, they are telling us, you heard us. The lessons are more authentic. They're more engaging. This doesn't feel great to say, but they have really leaned into the lessons on stress, and they're saying, wow, I really needed this. This is really, it's meeting me where I am. So, so far, everything has been met pretty favorably.

[00:34:13] And then you'll also hear directly from one of our behavior resource teachers tonight about the elementary behavior model. So just as a reminder, the behavior resource teachers came about as a result of the community listening sessions that Dr. Spence conducted last year where challenging behavior was lifted as a theme across all locations.

[00:34:36] And then it was an action or recommendation within his post-entry plan. So as a result of that, we hired 13 behavior resource teachers, we call them BIRTs, and they support 26 of our elementary schools this year, impacting up to 15,000 students.

[00:34:54] So each behavior resource teacher supports two elementary schools. We quickly also realized that we needed a coordinator to help do some program management. this was a brand new launch and just the impact is enormous and so we also hired a coordinator to oversee that program within our mtss team and really the three areas in which this behavior resource teacher helps to provide consistent support at our schools is it's three-layered approach so they they provide support at the school-wide level tier one so they serve as pbis lead to really help bolster that implementation of tier one those core practices they also directly

[00:35:33] support classroom teachers with modeling, creating feedback, or giving feedback, classroom practices, all of those things that we've been talking about for a really long time, and then also providing direct support to students who may be exhibiting challenging behavior.

[00:35:52] And so my final data slide is just wanted to give you an idea of what the support has looked like. This was pulled on November 7th, so these numbers will only continue to go up as the year goes on. remember this position is only about three months old and so we're still learning about it and the impact that we're able to make with this position but the top chart is showing you how many students have received support from our behavior resource teachers so far this year obviously some of those numbers from September are carrying over into October and we'll continue to see that

[00:36:25] as continued needs arise and then you can see for our staff so to take it back this would be somebody submitting one of those requests for supports the behavior resource teacher would pick it up go and meet with the teacher and then identify the best approach if it's going to be a classroom level of support or a student level of support and so I am going to now hand it over to Lunsford for Stephen to give an introduction Lunsford is one of our schools that's implementing or piloting sorry the middle ground curriculum at the middle

[00:37:01] school level and they will actually also be the first school that's going to host another round of focus groups from our division SEL team when we meet directly with teachers and students. My name is Steven Drowski. I'm a math teacher over at JML. I'm also the co-lead for our SEL committee. As you heard earlier, the advisory program is something that we're doing here. The SEL program is directly trying to address those behaviors both in the school as well as out of the school and within friendship groups. The middle ground

[00:37:38] program that we have started piloting this year has been extremely helpful to your statement about curriculum. You've got programs, where's the curriculum? Middle ground is the curriculum. And as it was said earlier, this was developed here in Loudoun County by our own teachers, our own counselors. So it directly impacts those things that we see in our own community that our students are asking for, that our families are asking for. So what you see up on the screen is our particular school six through eight.

[00:38:10] Some of the demographics and what we are looking at is rigor meets relationships. Developing the relationships with our students through the advisory program, creating advisors for our teachers so that each one of our students has a trusted adult that they can go and talk to at any point in the day in the school is one of our key points.

[00:38:30] If we have these relationships built, we know that we're gonna have better behavior because they're gonna have more respect. They're gonna have an intention when they come into the classroom to listen to and work with our students. Our fall math testing is set up here.

[00:38:47] This is the proportion for each of our students within sixth, seventh, and eighth grade for fall of 2024 and '25 and how they break out into the different tiers. So when we first started to implement this, obviously we had to talk to our teachers first.

[00:39:05] And I'm sure most of you understand when you talk to a teacher and say, we got something new, we want you to do more. The response is not usually good. However, the fact that they recognized that they were heard, that in particular the Second Step program for middle school was not a best fit.

[00:39:25] And the fact that we were using the expertise that we have in the county here to work with the students and hear us, us teachers, our students, our families, to create something that is directly impactful to them has been tremendously helpful. and the teachers, as you can see, showed that.

[00:39:42] Again, the middle ground is just the curriculum for the SEL program, which is run in advisory. Go ahead. Our students gave feedback. You heard how many students are giving feedback. They recognize the benefit of the advisory program, and specifically now, especially the ones in seventh and eighth grade where they've had Second Step last year and are now working with the middle ground program, have recognized that they've been heard, and they're willing to talk more because they are starting to build that trust.

[00:40:15] Hey, if I ask for something, I'm gonna get it. And building those feedback loops, those relationships, building that trust is something that we're trying to continue to do and foster. So we're gonna be continuing to add on to these feedbacks.

[00:40:31] We're building our own student roundtables this year. We work with Dr. Orr, Ms. Brenner and Ms. Faroche as well to make sure that these are well thought out questions, that the feedback is able to be looped back into the development of the middle ground program itself so that it can continue to grow and face the needs that we have here in the county.

[00:40:50] Also, one more, the teachers themselves are giving the feedback. As we know, we have expert teachers here in the county, but they all have their own specialties. And as advisors, we come across topics or subjects that we may not be super comfortable for.

[00:41:06] Getting the feedback from the teachers, not going off to some other corporate place, but keeping it right here in the county, allows us to respond very quickly to what they need. So we're able, we're starting to build our own data set so that we can then start creating professional development opportunities, whether they be in person, co-taught, or just asynchronous, so that these teachers can get the assistance that they need on their time when they're ready for it.

[00:41:33] We are building our own village, so to speak. This is, again, because we just started this year, we have a ways to go. This is what our village looks like. We'll have two teachers working with students. We'll have some teachers working with other teachers as mentors, as advisors, so we can continue to build our village because individually we're not gonna be able to meet with the students need, as you've heard about all the different programs and supports that we are building here in the county.

[00:42:02] And finally here at JML we have a whole slew of different programs, extracurricular activities that we're able to then take the middle ground program, start to work the language into these programs so that we can see in a real time, real situation, not just standardized tests, how are these students using these skills, from executive skills to self-regulation, how are they using it in real life?

[00:42:27] Thank you so much for sharing, and I will also add that the middle school office has been such an amazing partner with this work, really supporting us in trying to strengthen our advisory practices and also working with us and giving us time to get before our leaders to help share this, share the feedback.

[00:42:52] So it's been really wonderful to watch how it's started here and then to hear the impact at the school level in such a short amount of time. Now I'm going to hand it over to Larissa Lemp, who's actually joined by Mr. Cadwell, to talk about the behavior resource teacher model at two of our elementary schools.

[00:43:11] Hi, I'm Larissa Lemp, and I currently serve Cold Spring Elementary and Frederick Douglas Elementary as a behavior resource teacher. And as we mentioned before, we serve on three levels, systemic school-wide, instructional or at the classroom level, and then at the student level.

[00:43:27] If you could advance the slide, please. So at our school-wide system of support, obviously, we're serving as the PBIS lead. But what's really important at the heart of our work is that we are soliciting constantly feedback from our administrators, our counselors, our teachers, in order to know what to do in order to drive our PBIS programs.

[00:43:46] And we are constantly looking at ways to provide that direct instruction that's explicit for students as well as reinforcing the behaviors through program system-wide efforts such as points, whole school reinforcers like pajama days or dance parties, glow parties, et cetera, for meeting the expected behaviors that are put out by the school as communicated by their tenets of PBIS.

[00:44:16] So each school has a different focus. And for example, Cold Spring has respect for self, others, and property. And so when students are showing that expected behavior, we are looking to reinforce for our students those expected behaviors.

[00:44:32] And again, working with teachers, counselors, and administrators to making sure that the supports are in place for those expected behaviors to happen. Next. And then we're looking at working at the instructional level, at the classroom level. We, again, are collaborating with administrators, counselors, and teachers in order to plan and implement strategies at the classroom level.

[00:44:55] This includes, in addition to visual schedules, social stories, environmental supports, reinforcement systems, whole class lessons. That has been, I would have to say, probably the biggest joy that I've had, if I can speak on a personal note. I had the enjoyment of planning and working with our first grade team at Cool Spring Elementary to teach whole body listening and turn taking because students were not even being mindful that they were making noise.

[00:45:22] So we went even into a bell ringing lesson where students had to carry a bell across the room to a friend without ringing it so they could learn what quiet body is. And it's been extremely successful, received well, and the students are definitely responding to non-bell ringing behavior when those first grade teachers are saying let's have non-bell ringing behavior and the kids get very quiet so we'll be continuing those lessons this week so if I just wanted to give that little anecdotal feedback about that and then if we look at the data for instructional and staff supports you can see that at each school there are

[00:46:01] different grade levels that are requesting support so at Cool Spring we've got a lot work being done at the K1 and 2 level whereas at Frederick Douglass we are looking at grades 2, 5 and specialists. So we've had a lot of specialists work at Frederick Douglass where we see that when students transfer from their homeroom teacher to the specialists sometimes there are changes in what are perceived as expected behaviors and so it's been enjoyable to collaborate with those specialists in order to determine expected behaviors and then to provide

[00:46:38] that systematic explicit direct instruction to the students and then also work with the teachers to develop those reinforcement systems and it's anywhere from just being explicit from when the lesson starts and saying okay we're going to engage in this activity we're expecting quiet voice calm body turn taking what does turn taking look like raising my hand with quiet voice it's just those explicit behaviors every time delivered so students are reminded we're doing this activity, and this is what I'm supposed to do.

[00:47:08] Next. And then if we look at individual student supports, we do get those cases. As you've seen with the overall MTSS data, we've had that spike in those requests for supports. So we do, again, receive those requests for supports from the classroom teacher, but they can originate from counseling or administrators.

[00:47:28] So I've had on several occasion referrals, and then I'll meet with the classroom teacher in order to determine what is needed. And if we are working long term, sometimes I can go in and give a visual schedule and it seems to solve the problem. But if we work long term with the student, then the teacher submits a request for support and then we open up a student conference to document our duration of work with the student.

[00:47:52] And so we are always looking to identify student needs and preferences. So I often deploy a lot of preference or potential reinforcer profile inventories and we send those home as well as ask the student to weigh in on things that they prefer in the classroom so that we can know what their top tier reinforcers are in order to get those expected behaviors to happen.

[00:48:17] And then we align those needs with direct instruction for replacement behavior that is socially appropriate. So we might have a student who likes to talk a lot or to make a lot of noise in the classroom. But what is really going on? Are they seeking sensory input from the vocal cords or from the sounds that are made from the mouth?

[00:48:34] Or are they seeking attention? And then looking at what reinforcer would help them to maybe find a different way to find that same input or meet that need. We also align preferences with data-driven reinforcement systems, as I mentioned.

[00:48:50] And then when necessary, we will also draft and publish MTSS Tier 2 behavior support plans so that we can progress monitor explicitly the work being done to meet those goals and to see those replacement behaviors in action from the student.

[00:49:05] And then begin to fade support as the student becomes more independent and the behavior is generalized not only across the classroom routine, but then also across settings within the building. And if you can see here, we've got a lot of...

[00:49:23] Lower grade requests for support, so at Cool Spring, currently, we have a lot of work going on in kindergarten, first and second. And then at Frederick Douglass, we've got K1, 2, and 3. And there are more being submitted today.

[00:49:40] And then we have anecdotal feedback from staff. This is going to be the toughest part of my presentation because it really highlights teacher, counselor, and UMHT member feedback with the work that I do with both of the teams at my school.

[00:49:55] So, first, we have an art teacher that explains that after working with her and having a group of six students in her class that tend to feed off of one another, we kind of did a special art class on the side to reinforce behaviors, and so her feedback was six out of five stars, so I guess that's a thumbs up.

[00:50:16] The BRT has been extremely helpful with behavior management and working with students to show star expectations. It has been a great support for students with challenges. Our BRT is super easy to communicate with, really cares about staff and listens to their needs. Our school would totally benefit from having Dr. Lemp full-time.

[00:50:34] That's what you're going to hear often. Full-time, full-time, full-time. All right. Thank you. And then from a school psychologist, I appreciate having someone who is an expert and can support Tier 1, 2, and 3 behaviors and collaborate with the SIF-B. That's been another opportunity that I have had is when we have students that are demonstrating Tier 3 behaviors and require those supports, the SIFT-B will work with the student with the Tier 3 interventions, but then I will come in and work with the students at Tier 1 in order to tell them how to respond

[00:51:07] to the unexpected behaviors from the Tier 3 students so that the teacher in the classroom knows how to respond in order to support those Tier 3 interventions. And then last but not least, this is from a counseling team. We truly appreciate the addition of a behavior resource teacher, BRT, to our school team.

[00:51:26] Dr. Lemp provides specialized expertise in supporting our students' behavior, which enables them to be available for learning. Some examples include visual schedules, social stories, full-class lessons on teacher-reported needs, and support for PBIS and UMHT efforts. In a very short time, Dr. Lemp has become an integral part of our staff.

[00:51:43] The only change we would like to make would be to have her join us full-time. Thank you. Chris, do you want to add? I just wanted to add that from the administrator perspective, having the BRT at my school has been really supportive for our teachers and our students, not only working at tier one and trying to refine some of our practices and bring on new supports and structures to enhance what we're already doing.

[00:52:15] But also it's really been powerful to see Dr. Lemp's work with teachers and with students. And just for the teachers, having that partner to support them, because, you know, when you have a challenging student, it's tough. And so teachers, you know, they'll try all the tricks in their toolkit, but sometimes they just need more.

[00:52:32] They need a different perspective. And so Dr. Lemp having that specific behavior lens really brings that and has worked beautifully with the teachers to support the students. and from the coaching and coming up with behavior plans and the reinforcing systems. And, you know, and some of the things have just been, it's one or two meetings and the student is doing great and we have others that we know that she's going to be supporting the teacher and the student probably for the year.

[00:53:01] But that's, you know, that's what we're here for and it's really to help the students to be productive, successful learners and the teachers to feel empowered so that they can feel that they're doing their best by every student in their classroom.

[00:53:19] So I told Catherine I copied off her part of VALS, and so we also added some conclusions and insights and recommendations that we're going to use moving forward. So this is just a recap. Just, again, right now where we sit, you can hear MTSS as a whole has been pretty busy with the work that's happening within our schools.

[00:53:38] Again, you can see the number of students receiving intervention as of the end of the first quarter, you've heard. So far, the pilot of the middle ground curriculum has been viewed as favorable not only to staff but also to kids, and they are letting us know. And the role of the behavior resource teacher has been invaluable to supporting school-wide systems, classroom teachers, and students.

[00:54:01] So ending with some recommendations, we obviously want to continue our ongoing collaboration with various offices, departments, and especially our schools. That's where we learn, that's where we see the things we think up, and then we're able to see if they actually land the way that we hope that they will within our schools.

[00:54:18] And when they don't, we pivot, and when they do, we keep trying to move forward in that direction. We want to continue to provide professional learning on the core components of MTSS, so I really appreciate opportunities like this to help tell the story of what MTSS actually is and that it's more than just those intervention plans that we're putting in place for kids.

[00:54:40] While those are important, there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes. Also, continuing those ongoing cycles of feedback, we're going to start up those focus groups with our kids around the middle ground curriculum so we can make programmatic decisions moving forward. And then the role is new, so we need to continue to calibrate the role of the behavior resource teacher as we look at continuing to implement with possible expansion in upcoming years.

[00:55:06] So I just, again, want to thank you for the opportunity on behalf of myself and Catherine for sharing not only VALS data, but also some division-level MTSS data and giving an opportunity to showcase the wonderful things that our schools are doing every single day for their students, the staff, and the community.

[00:55:25] And we look forward to more opportunities like this to share the work with you. Thank you very much. I want to thank you guys again for being here with us and for sharing all of these insights and giving us a window into this work. So we really appreciate you.

[00:55:41] I'll open it up for discussion and questions. We only have a few minutes. Would everybody be okay if we stayed a little bit longer just to entertain some discussion? Because I think it would be super valuable. Would that be okay? I'm getting head nods, but that's the typical of educators, right?

[00:55:59] They'll just sign themselves up. Okay. That's Chair Mansfield. I'm going to go back to the VALS data real quick. So thank you for your presentation, and I am glad that we are now looking at spelling and morphology because we know that better spelling leads to better writing.

[00:56:21] Spelling is more correlated with reading comprehension than word recognition. And I think that how are we going to make things better as far as... Now, I realize that this is, you know, 37%, 33%, About 27% to 30% of our kids who are taking the vowels grade 3 through 8, it looks like, on that other piece of paper that I have.

[00:56:51] And out of those, we have these spelling issues and morphology issues. So I know we use, for lack of a better word, words their way and word work. And if it worked, it would have been working. So what are we going to do instead?

[00:57:08] Because I also know HMH into reading is also pretty much words their way, rebranded. So instead of pyramid words and rainbow words and all the rest of that, curly words, whatever, flower words, how are we going to change the culture?

[00:57:30] Because I see even we're talking about reading comprehension. There are reading comprehension goals. But as I've said before, spelling really affects reading comprehension as well as morphology. Got to know what the words mean.

[00:57:48] So what are our plans for those kinds of things? So I think I'll start with HMH into reading.

[00:58:04] And that is our core program. And I can speak to kindergarten through fifth grade. So it is our core program that does have different components to it that may or that do look like Words Their Way.

[00:58:19] I think in my experience and in the struggles with Words Their Way, there's a lack of understanding on the teacher's part as to how to teach using word analysis and looking at what students are being able to do on their own and how do we go back and systematically and explicitly teach to that.

[00:58:43] So I think in connection with our letters professional learning that many of our teachers have gone through that has a very strong component of advanced word study and morphology instruction combined with our understanding of HMH and how it's organized and really being able to, there are, I mean, with HMH, there are holes that we have to fill.

[00:59:11] And I have a very skilled team that is able to help us fill some of those holes. For example, we've been able to take all of, I don't know if you've seen the Word Study Studio with HMH Interreading. It's an additional component of it that's kind of, they kind of, I don't know, touted as their intervention.

[00:59:32] but we are using it and we're encouraging teachers to use it for their morphology and word analysis instruction in the classroom and we can go through all of those lessons and really through the scope and sequence be able to take those lessons and match it to where the students are I'm not saying that there isn't a need for additional professional learning for teachers there definitely is but I do think we're on the right track with using the materials that we have to then, and to connect it to the data, to be able to connect some of the dots.

[01:00:04] It's just when I see middle school doing rainbow words, or I see pyramid words, I am just wondering, okay, well, where's the phoneme graphing matching there, first of all? And then second of all, morphology is so important. I mean, we really do start at kindergarten, first grade with s, right? And ed and ying. So, and then spelling rules are so important. And we know how important spelling is so um that's so i'm hoping that and maybe it is just having more understanding of what

[01:00:39] the kids can do on their own and what parents can do with their kids um so i'd be happy to talk to you more about that bert i just think it should be called like bertie because it's a little birdie that's on your shoulder talking about what you should and shouldn't you know quiet hands all the rest of that. Don't bring that bell. I appreciate that. So this is just tier one that you are working with. I was a little bit struck that the CIF B, I guess, are not also talking about

[01:01:17] what the other kids could be, how they could understand kids who are having some difficulties. So the birds are working with tier one and tier two primarily. We might be called to consult on a tier three case, and when I say tier three, it could even be a student that has a case manager with an IEP. It doesn't necessarily need to be a student who receives services from a SIF-B, but SIF-Bs, by and large, are for tier three cases. They're just special education. Yes, but we will coordinate when there is a case that would require the whole class to be able to have

[01:01:56] response behaviors to the unexpected behaviors of the student who is currently receiving tier three interventions. So, and Ms. Chernoff can help me with this. So this would be kind of the difference between a specialized instructional facilitator in reading and math versus your instructional coach that's in the, in the, okay. Okay. Great. I'll look for a job later.

[01:02:24] It sounds wonderful, and it really is great. I'm excited about that because I think part of the issue with people and COVID and the kids is they don't know how to work together. They don't know how to be social, and I think this would help.

[01:02:45] So thanks. Okay, that's all. Sure enough. Please. All right. I'll try to keep it tight. This is near and dear to my heart. So excited to have you all here. I echo the sentiments of Ms. Mansfield.

[01:03:01] This VALS data is not great. It's concerning. And what's more concerning to me is, again, the staggering difference between our general education and our English language learners. We continue to see those gaps. I mean, just something's got to give. And I don't know what it is.

[01:03:19] I know some schools are cracking the code, it seems, in high school and, you know, with math and intervention and, you know, putting highly skilled people with the kids with the most need and, you know, really, really working collaboratively with whole staffs on professional learning around different things. So I want to, as a school board member now in this role, I used to be in the meet the needs role right in front of me, but I feel the same way as a school board member.

[01:03:43] I feel like it's the same model, right? You've got to look at the needs, you've got to meet the needs, and then you've got to push on one next step, and then you've got to evaluate, is that working or not? And this data across elementary really continues to tell me, and maybe I just need to be more patient, but I feel like it's telling us that we're not adequately meeting the needs here in Loudoun County Public Schools, especially, particularly with English language learners.

[01:04:06] And if we can't do it, who's going to do it? Like, we have so much, and we have amazing teachers, so I really do think there's some kind of formula. And I know this is sort of soapboxy, but I want to ask, like, what is the burden now? Because now, I mean, we knew sort of you alluded to it, like under the fog, the needs were there, but now we know the needs explicitly.

[01:04:28] So specifically, how does this impact Val's tutoring? Do four through eight get the mandatory minutes that our K through three students get? Also, how should we be rethinking about staffing around reading specialists and also our English language learner teachers getting some of this high level literacy training?

[01:04:51] Because just like co-teaching in EL needs the gen ed teacher to support, our gen ed teachers, our EL teachers need that gen ed support now. It feels like everybody needs everything right now, like all hands on deck. So I know it's like a loaded question, but how are we going to respond?

[01:05:08] Because this is a huge lift in my mind. So as far as the literacy tutoring, I'll start there. So EIRI, which is Early Intervention Reading Initiative, started way back with PALS when the PALS assessment came out.

[01:05:31] So that funding source is a state grant, and it still only funds tutoring support for kindergarten through third grade. So what's that? That's correct, which is about 30 minutes a day, two and a half hours a week.

[01:05:49] So that regulation is coming from that grant, which is not connected to VALS, although VALS has replaced PALS, So we use the data from VALS to be able to determine who receives those interventions.

[01:06:06] So it's anyone who's high risk on VALS. That's kindergarten through third grade. For the rest, there is not a funding source. However, we have identified some local funds to help support schools with additional tutoring.

[01:06:23] And for fourth through eighth grade, there is not that two and a half hour per week requirement. Not to say that 4th through 8th graders aren't receiving that 30 minutes a day or however long their intervention might be.

[01:06:39] There is a level of flexibility there. I think as far as, you know, the data helps us target where we need to begin with students. And I think that in the past it has been somewhat of a vague kind of focus on where exactly do we start with students who are not passing their SOL.

[01:07:03] And many times it has gone the comprehension route because we're like, oh, they don't understand. They need some more test-taking support. What we're finding and what we have, you know, we thought, and this has affirmed, is that it's really down to being able to decode the text.

[01:07:21] And we have to be able to lift the words off the page, and our students are struggling with that, and you can see that here. So I think we have talked about, you know, targeting our interventions, using the right progress monitoring tool that really gets at whether our intervention is having the impact that it's supposed to have, and also teaching, supporting our students, delivering those interventions with a sense of urgency because we have a gap to fill.

[01:07:49] And if we don't have that sense of urgency, we're not going to make the gains that we need for our students. But here's the problem. When they get older, they need it more. They need longer, more frequent. more consistency, more systematic, more explicit, all the things. That's what's so frustrating because it just goes downhill from there. Yeah. I'm just worried about staffing. Like needs to me says people. That's always kind of been my thought. And we have seen that success.

[01:08:24] So, I mean, I know the reading world, the reading specialists are maxed with these NTSS plans, maxed. Now we have progress monitoring. That's a new thing this year that they're doing. hearing about that. So how do we need more people? I mean, I'm asking, like, for real, like, do we need to re-evaluate the way that we're looking at the reading specialist role as these kids are progressing into middle school? And I mean, I know that's sort of unfair to ask you specifically, so we can just put it out in the ether, because I think I know the answer is yes.

[01:08:58] But I'm really concerned, because that role has always been a many hats role. And I think that's part of the reason that it's been so tough sometimes to move the needle is because there are so many administrative tasks. There are so many other things that they are doing besides just intervention. And then, you know, I'm going to say it, intervention on a computer program, not my favorite. I think I have some other people at this table that agree. I'm going to keep beating that because again, if the gaps are this big, it's just, I'm not going to rely on a computer program to fix that. So to me, it's like, yes, I'm so glad we have the data and that now we can pinpoint the skills I think that we should see some kind of closing of gap just because of that

[01:09:38] also to allow HMH to take its hold because we're still reeling from you know time lapse I think of old programs but and I again I I you know my heart I know our people are crushing it I just I'm worried and I want to make sure that we as a school board are hearing this in this committee specifically which was set up to say what are the needs and what are we going to do about it and so i'm really kind of just preaching to myself in january but um anyway i i appreciate you being here and you do not have to answer the question about more reading specialists but if you want to

[01:10:15] go ahead but it's not only just reading specialists it's people who systematic instruction with study with an instructor who understands the system yeah it's understanding the system and that's the higher level of letters, which is more expensive and less accessible to people. So, and I don't think it only has to be reading specialists. I mean, I think you can also, you can train other people. The research is there that you can do it. It's just the right instruction with the right

[01:10:45] supervision. Yeah. So. I would just like to follow up a little bit. I think we have started something new. Our team has put together a group of reading specialists for like a reading specialist focus group because we know that last year was really challenging with the implementation of the student reading plans and all of the interventions. And as a result of last year, we made some changes to that process and we needed to figure out if the changes that we were putting in place

[01:11:24] were working. How did they feel about it? So we had, it was last week, we had our first meeting and we really spent a long time talking about that intervention process. We talked about progress monitoring. Many of those reading specialists felt like the progress monitoring that we're doing this year is more targeted to what students, what they're actually measuring for students. And it's measuring and showing whether they're making progress or not. They also talked about how the intervention plans and some of the different changes that we put into place this year with the module plans really helped with kind of that clerical aspect of it

[01:12:02] so that's really good that's positive like I feel like we're moving in the right direction they also had a lot of wishes too and I think that there are some like next steps that we can really do as far as you know looking for ways to make that progress monitoring digital right Because I think that's really the piece that's really tough right now.

[01:12:23] The VLP office said that they are also going to be putting out a four-to-eight progress monitoring tool that we will have access to next year. So, again, hopefully we can have some of these alignments to how we're measuring are the interventions we're putting into place actually having the impact that they need to have.

[01:12:40] And if they're not, then we need to find something new so that we are closing those gaps. And I just have to say, just because you passed the SOLs doesn't mean you're proficient. in reading that i mean i it drives me insane because people think oh we're having these progress monitoring and everything else and they're doing so well but we don't see it in the sols well there's a reason because they're not so great so yes ma'am may i just speak really briefly to middle school or four through eight so i recognize that dr dr picard could not be here

[01:13:16] this evening but i didn't want to just be silent on middle school because we do know that this is first year of implementation for vows in middle school we really we remember how tough it was last year in elementary school we do recognize that we we you know the data speaks for itself we need to make some significant changes in middle school also this committee is getting a preview tonight we're going to talk to the full board in December about literacy and dive deeper into middle school so I just wanted you to to be aware of that and also to assure you

[01:13:52] that we are having cross-departmental collaboration amongst these two amazing teams but also the secondary literacy team and EL and special education this is this is a whole group effort so they do they meet so consistently and never before have we all been on the same page like we are with this so a work in progress and the conversation will continue in december so stay tuned for that yeah and i think my major i know i get fired up so i love you guys for being patient with me but i i think my sentiment is that my heart is i want to support our people so that our kids close these gaps you

[01:14:31] know and we want to support you and so we're going to try and do that the best we can because it's like readings like we're the thing it's really important um okay pivoting to you and the lovely work that you both do. Um, thank you so much. Um, and now you've gotten a glimpse into what I'm about, but I'm, I'll go a little easier on you guys. Um, love, love, love that you're willing to pivot from second step because it wasn't working. Like that's an example, right? Like I've heard that too. I think it's great. I have two middle schoolers, so, um, definitely living our best six, seven life. And I definitely hear that. So I appreciate that. And I wanted to just

[01:15:10] ask about a little bit of a pivot too in this I think you sort of mentioned this the MTSS plans now have executive functioning which is so wonderful I'm asking about I want to ask how does that interface with 504 because the guidance in the past for parents at least was to begin the 504 process for executive functioning how can we use the MTSS plans to sort of interact with that

[01:15:37] So great question. So remember that those two processes are separate from each other. So one is going down that special education eligibility route consideration and one is the intervention process. Executive functioning was added as a learning gap to sort of categorize the types of behaviors that we were hearing.

[01:15:56] the lack of organization, the dysregulation, the things that some of, in particular, our secondary schools were pulling kids together to run sort of these organizational groups, these study skill groups during their resource time. So we added that as a learning gap. So all of those area of concerns have learning gaps underneath them. And the majority of those numbers, that 255 that I showed you, those are coming from our secondary schools right now because they're properly labeling them for what they're working on with those students okay that's great to hear i mean it's a big transition and you know for me as a parent like i sort of see the mtss plan as a way to

[01:16:35] begin that documentation to say whether or not they do need to go down that path so would that be accurate yeah we certainly want you know unless there's other things yeah suspicion of a disability we would definitely want to in every instance that we could attempt intervention first put it in place with fidelity and then look to see if the student's responding to the intervention yeah as part of that full rrt process perfect i love that and then as far as the behavior i mean it's just something that we heard so much like you said through the listening sessions our first year on the board it was just like this is a need this is a need so to hear you filling that

[01:17:11] gap i'm just so appreciative and i've been to 99 of our schools now i'm getting closer to my goal but everywhere we go where there is behavior support it's celebrated right out of the gate when we say like what can we celebrate about your year this year they're like we have behavior support it's so great so I just wanted to give you that feedback obviously your staff feels the same way my question is I don't want to put you out of a job but how do we build capacity here because when I listen to you talk like you really know your stuff so are we working with TAs are we

[01:17:44] I hear that you're working with general education, but I'm wondering these skills that you have seem that they would be great to transfer across so many different areas of people working with kids. So while we do work on coaching our instructional teams, everyone involved who's either supporting a classroom or a student, as far as behavior resource teachers are concerned, we meet regularly and we receive a boatload of professional development within this vein in order to be able to then transfer what we've learned then to those teams.

[01:18:21] So as needs arise, we report them to our coordinator, Lauren, and we are able to then assemble professional development opportunities for ourselves where we identify needs so that then we can meet the needs of our students, our teachers, and our schools. Awesome. Yeah, can't wait. I'm definitely listening, and it feels like a need that most people have.

[01:18:40] So thank you so much. Thank you both for being here and for your work. Wonderful. So with that, I think we'll go ahead and conclude. No, you guys are great, and I appreciate the perspectives, that you all bring and thank you all for presenting tonight and giving us again a window into your work.

[01:18:58] And I really love these discussions in the back and I appreciate you staying over because I think we're getting at kind of the route and the feedback that we need as a board to really just think about the levers that we have. And just to kind of lighten the mood a little bit, I wanna thank you all because I have a five-year-old who now comes home and doesn't like the energy I'm bringing sometimes, and shuts off all the lights in the house and says, you need rest and reset, and you know, he is, and I'm learning so much about my own child through your work, right, and the

[01:19:38] work of our teachers, and how I can support him through so many things, so really want to thank you again on so many levels. With that, we'll move on to new business. I do have something really quick i think dr ellis on the new business i'm wondering if we have any updates on the new cut scores and if there's anything that has come out of the state on that yes uh really briefly thank you for that question um and i'll provide a more detailed written update to the school board this week but i did want to let you know that last week on november 13th the virginia

[01:20:13] Board of Education voted to delay raising the cut scores until next year. So this year, the 25-26 school year is a quote-unquote planning year. Thank you all so much. And we will continue to follow along for updates.

[01:20:33] But in terms of impact to LCPS, there will be no changes to the cut scores for the SOLs administered this year. Thank you, Dr. Ellis. That's great news. Any other new business? Seeing none, we'll now adjourn this November 18th meeting of the Performance Monitoring Committee. Thank you all for coming out.

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