2020-07-28 PPS School Board Work Session

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-07-28
Time 18:00:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type work
Directors Present missing
Load video
YouTube


Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS Board of Education Work Session 7/28/2020

00h 00m 00s
good evening and welcome to tonight's board work session on the development of the reopening of school for 2020. this meeting is being audio streamed live on channel 28 and will be replayed throughout the next two weeks please check the district website for replay this meeting is also being audio streamed live on our pcbs tv services website tonight's going to be a little bit different instead of receiving an update during our regular meeting or meeting in this work session to allow for some more time for staff to share their plans for the fall and for board members to ask questions so superintendent guerrero would you like to start us off this evening thank you chair lowry i apologize in advance if the dog barks earlier governor kate brown and leaders from the oregon health authority and the oregon department of education they shared new guidance uh both to the broader public and to school district leaders as we all contemplate the reopening of schools this fall following the governor's press conference i joined the other larger organ superintendents and communicating to families that given these announced metrics and guidelines portland public schools in fact begin the new school year online in a comprehensive distance learning model until at least the end of the first quarter november 4th so along with health experts in a medical advisory panel we'll continue to monitor health conditions in multnomah county and make a determination in early october whether continuing distance learning needs to extend into the second quarter uh and if that's necessary i want to acknowledge that we've all been anxious to learn what the new school year might look like this news might provide a sense of assurance to some and further challenge others as we're nearing the end of the summer we all hope to get a different reality with this pandemic but we we believe it's both responsible and critical to base our decisions on what will best ensure the health and wellness students and staff for those of us serve in public education we will always prefer to have our students engaged in classroom-based learning but given current conditions it would be unsafe to have significant numbers of students and adults back on campus at this time tonight we have members of our team who will share with directors our plans for distance learning for the fall of 2020 understanding that many more details will be forthcoming in the coming weeks as we collaborate with school leaders and educators so you'll have to hear from various steps this evening directors and brenda martinic our chief of student supports uh is going to get us started this evening brenda thank you superintendent uh good evening board chair board our community our re-entry advisory team and our work group members let's see are we slight are we presenting the slides we should probably present thank you will the will the visuals get better do you think roseanne it's just the first slide that didn't transfer over well to powerpoint okay all right okay well there we go all right so um as the superintendent just shared uh governor brown made an announcement today that specifically spoke to opening of schools in oregon and within this presentation tonight we'll discuss some of that announcement and our responding message to our families and our staff based on this information and other information that we have gathered along our way so our presentation tonight will include and we'll go to the next slide it will uh thank you it'll include our guiding principles which we'll talk about uh how the information and guidance has affected our decisions uh oregon department of education requirements for virtual learning how we're planning for a rigorous and engaging student learning experience and our technology support and rollout we hope that this presentation helps to answer your questions that you currently have we're trying to provide you with as much
00h 05m 00s
information as possible within each presentation and hope that this will continue to provide the board the community staff and our families with answers to your questions and information to help make decisions in your personal lives in regards to fall opening of school i want to reiterate as i've done over the past couple weeks that these presentations at each board meeting are part of a story it's a continuum of how we're progressing through to september 2nd as we started a few weeks ago i presented the blueprint from ode it was released to us on june 10th which is only six weeks of work um from that date to today that we've had to plan to date with a changing landscape almost daily i presented our guiding principles the work groups our advisory teams our community engagement efforts and how we're aligning with the big five districts in oregon last time we met we went over the first three components of the blueprint and our planning in regards to opening schools in a hybrid model this week we have now confirmed that we'll be beginning in an online learning model for the next presentation we'll continue to narrow our scope down to the students experience and share sample lessons how a day in the life of a student will look and how we will be how that learning the comprehensive learning will be different than last spring i want to thank you in advance for your patience as we work as hard and as fast as we can while being careful to detail to daily changes and listening to our staff our students our medical and health community our stakeholders and our parents keeping in mind that we're leading with racial equity and social justice to center all of our work next slide so we continue to ground all of our discussions and actions in our racial equity and social justice work our theory of action and our strategic plan in regards to the re-entry work we're also focusing on three guiding principles and those are to ensure the health and wellness for staff students in buildings which governor brown's announcement did which what the superintendent's message reiterated and what we will share with you tonight how we're going to strengthen and innovate the instructional core which uh dr luis valentino will talk about tonight and how we're going to cultivate connections and relationships and that will really focus um primarily tonight around how we're looking at those first two weeks of school regarding connection and building those relationships next slide so currently our re-entry planning takes place in the context of two different crises that are happening we have a global pandemic and we have a fight for racial justice our global pandemic which has a disproportionate impact on communities of color nationally black people are particularly vulnerable and in oregon latinos are vulnerable to negative impacts during this crisis that's why it's important to acknowledge the different impact that this crisis is having in our schools and on our community a national fight for racial justice racial violence has ignited a movement this context calls for us to continue to learn all that we can about the impacts and experiences of our students our families and our communities of color and to be transparent in our communication about what that means and how we can support them to contend with this uncertain uncertainty the stress the daily challenges we do rely on a diverse information set to guide our decision making next slide we are fortunate to have a number of different avenues of information to help guide our discussions and our decisions the governor's announcement today is the main one currently providing rates of infection guidance per 100 000 the positive test rates uh under five percent uh by county which has provided us with strict guidance thus moving us to a virtual learning plan which we shared in a message today additionally i want to share with you some of the information that's been guiding our decisions over the past few months they focus on areas of medical and health as you can see we've assembled sorry we've assembled a health advisory team to help provide expertise to be a thought partner with us during this pandemic our first meeting was yesterday and it
00h 10m 00s
will continue to meet on a weekly basis the health advisory panel's purpose is to consult and provide expert up-to-date information with pps leaders in regards to decisions around safety and health of our students our staff and our community related to the pandemic this may include advice on procedures protocols trainings and operational decisions in alignment with public health authority guidelines and informed by the most current information and studies on covid19 we also use state and local government information public health metrics dashboard county by county data to inform our local decisions the blueprint guidance that has been provided for us by the oregon department of education our partnership with the district management group and how we've been working with the big five districts which include salem kaiser hillsborough beaverton eugene and portland public schools this focuses on peer review decision making processes articles and national practices our own res j lens our strategic plan and our re-entry guidelines which i just reviewed in the previous two slides feedback from our stakeholders including teachers parents students principals and community and a community through a variety of means uh the focus groups is an attachment for you in the slide but i wanted to pull out a couple of examples some of the feedback that we have received is around access to technology and professional development for students around the technology platform individual outreach to families specifically our spanish-speaking families headphones to help with noise reduction in homes where multiple children are learning in a virtual setting increased two-way communication for students and teachers and this is just a few examples of the suggestions that we're listening to and we're ensuring that we can make sure that we can figure out how to accommodate all of this information helps to guide our decisions like the one we made earlier today none of our decisions are made without extreme caution and scrutiny keeping in mind that we are in the midst of a global health crisis and trying to provide a comprehensive distance learning experience during this crisis in order to keep our students and staff safe while providing excellent online learning so today i just wanted to review the message that we sent to families and staff governor brown started her announcement today by saying that in all of her decisions she has continued to use science and data as her guide with the world experiencing a pandemic we and pps are doing the same we value the health and wellness of our students our staff and our community which is why although painful we have communicated today that the first quarter will be in a virtual learning uh model school will begin on september 2nd for the first two weeks we will focus on connection and building relationships on our technology platforms and professional development on september 14th we will begin our comprehensive virtual learning model and and school will continue virtually through at least november 5th on or before october 10th we will share a decision in regards to the second quarter if we'll be able to move back into a hybrid or if we'll have to continue virtual our meals mental health supports social emotional learning activities uh will continue uh and communication around our technology rollout will be presented tonight with follow-up next week around more specifics so now i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to turn the time over to dr luis valentino our chief academic officer and he will go further into the ode guidance thank you miss ms marnick good evening um board president laurie superintendent board members um as brenda martinez was was closing her piece one of the things that stands out for us and stood out was the the whole idea of a comprehensive distance learning um approach given what happened during the spring one of the things that that was very clear was that there were changes that would need to be made in our approach and in our strategy to ensure that all of our students received an equitable experience that exposed them to a comprehensive curriculum and so we have been intently listening for the message from the office of the department of education to ensure that we were clear about what the guidelines were going to be and so
00h 15m 00s
uh recently we received some guidelines from the governor's office and ode regarding the requirements for the implementation of a comprehensive distance learning model and so if you look at um the the key features of them they include the instructional time if you look at it k12 it will be 900 minutes to 990 i mean 900 hours to 990 hours k and uh the high school year that we um 90 hours of that 900 hours or 990 hours can be used for professional development and 90 hours can be used for parents family and community engagement that time has allowed us then to begin to think about how we're going to frame the day and the week for the students attendance will be taken unlike the spring this time because we are looking at how we're going to measure progress and growth over progress over time we really need to account for student attendance during the course of the day and during the course of the week and that and that is why when we're looking at our grades what we're actually looking at what are the measures that we're going to be using what is going to give us a sense of how our students are progressing given the instructional loss that happened during the spring that our students are moving at a pace that will allow them to meet grade level standards by the end of the school year and so our state assessment at the end will be the culmination of the instruction but as well as interim and formative assessments that have taken place during the course of the year all the while we will have to meet division 22 um requirements and so elements such as differentiation of instruction to address the needs of the various subgroups is a critical aspect of both the planning the delivery and the professional development that will help guide that next slightly a premise that has guided our approach following the governor's guidance but also best practices and recommendations by organizations of the council of great city schools agencies from across the state of oregon but also agencies from across the country so that we can cal best better calibrate our own approach in the development of the distance learning model and the premises include that comprehensive distance learning centers around the core values of care care for our students care for our teachers and care for the other adults who are part of this work that we make connections there was a break in the connection during the spring and re-entering that space requires rebuilding some of those connections between teacher and student administrator and teacher central office and schools and that it maintains a comprehensive continuity of learning that is marked by a full day of instruction full day of of work and the the importance of measuring progress and growth over time the second premise is that students will receive a comprehensive learning experience which means that prior to the pandemic our core curriculum that then informed a scope and sequence will will continue to be applied the big difference here is that we're really looking at the slide from the spring and integrate and blend some of those standards from the spring and some of those learning objectives from the spring into the curriculum as we move into the fall to support the student and the teacher and helping students with that slide the other premise is that educators will connect with students daily a feature of the guidance from the governor is the assurance that our students and our teachers will be in connection on a daily basis uh whether it's synchronously or asynchronously but it is still guided instruction by the team by by the teacher and so 50 of that time will be considered teacher guided where the other 50 of the time will be considered students guided and so an example of a student-guided experience would be a project so part of our professional development is project-based learning to support teachers in designing developing and implementing instruction that that may include a project that allows for a student to think more deeply and more broadly about a concept develop a broad set of skills during a longer period of time than a day-to-day activity an additional premise would be that families will receive focused support and training for digital learning tools one of the key features of the re-entry that was not existent in the spring was a comprehensive digital toolkit also referred to as a digital
00h 20m 00s
backpack through surveys through conversations with some of our administrators and our teachers but also through our own experiences with how some of these digits digital tools were used we built a toolkit that includes and that includes on content specific digital apps but also more generic apps that can be used by the teacher and the student and additional information we will be provided in subsequent slides to give you a sense of what that what that consists of um and the other premise is that comprehensive distance learning will include centrally and teacher design lessons this is an incredible opportunity for central office working closely with our teachers our tosas and other staff to co-create some of the units of study some of the lessons being used and in fact because they are housed in one location they are easily accessible by our teachers and our site administrators in addition many of those lessons that have been developed by teachers are now being shared broadly with their colleagues across across the school district and what aligning that content management system with the units and the lessons provides for internal excuse me internal alignment and coherence that will allow for us to be able to better support our schools and our teachers and finally a big premise is that our work needs to needs to provide integrated supports and that means that the office of otl the office of student support services in the office of student performance will work collaboratively with other parts of the district to ensure that the supports that our students need that our families need is integrated into the work of the teaching and learning experience for the students next slide please so the planning areas based on the premise and the guidance has five key areas one is that we're clear about the goals that we've set and that we are able to look at those goals and and then create measures that will define the success for the students once it is an implementation how are we going to know that our students are actually developing what they need to develop that they're acquiring what they need to acquire and that they are applying what they need to apply so we need to be able to define that success and so the condition of of academics is a key part of being able to define that success so an academic academic condition will include the teaching and learning experience which is part of that instructional core being able to use the instructional time according to expectation and that we are able to measure progress and growth over time and how our kids are are performing the operational condition which is creating the kind of space and opportunities for students to be their best selves includes being able to provide nutrition and the way that interacts with the ins with the instructional condition for example is that in the remote space being able to provide time for students to have their breakfast they have their lunch and how do we build schedules that create those opportunities for those students to engage in that work fortunately the governor has provided some guidance in even some of those areas the other one is attendance um being able to to as i said earlier to be able to engage students we have to be able to know that they are actually present to be engaged and so being able to monitor for that is a critical piece and then as you know for many of our students the clubs and the extracurricular activities are a critical part of their life and so being able to um create that space for our students whether it's a club that needs after school and they're able to meet virtually whether it's an extra curricular activity and then there are things like athletics that we are still figuring out how best to address that so with guidance from the various state agencies we will be able to then provide you also with updates that are formalized on how we're going to proceed with activities and how we're going to proceed with with athletics student and family support a key planning area for us as well that includes the equity and access component how do we ensure equitable access and inclusiveness to the instructional program that we offer and to the integrated support services that are made up be made available the the social emotional health well-being of our students is as important as the academic well-being and the physical well-being so how are we going to provide those supports working closely with our counselors working closely with
00h 25m 00s
the office of student support service to be able to develop and to provide that kind of support and then to provide through partnership support for our parents our families and our caregivers that is a critical piece given that many of our parents are going to need to return to work given that many of them um had challenges and being able to support their children at home during the spring period how are we going to support them to more effectively be able to do that and finally the digital learning needs um making sure that every student has access to a device that they have access to connectivity is part of the work that otis is working on and that will be shared a little bit further this evening that provides you with some sense of how all of these planning areas are working in an integrated way to ensure that the needs of our students our teachers and our schools are being met next slide please as an example of our reentry one of the things that we heard loud and clear was that rebuilding relationships connecting the teacher and the students in the as they re-enter the school year was critical so in response to that and also knowing what the loss might have created in the closure there is a recommended schedule for the first two weeks across k-12 and this is an example of what we're recommending for k5 so starting prior to the september second opening that there is an opportunity for families to be to begin to engage right by making sure that they receive a device that they have access to some professional learning opportunities that there is ongoing support and that there is some outreach as we move into august 27th and 28th with our teachers that we focus on what is the professional development and supporting guidance that they will need to to re-enter so when we think about community building when we think about expectations when we think about their interactions with our with our parents and our in our families what will that approach include when we think about trauma-informed practices right when we think about the approaches of making sure that we apply a racial equity lens to our work what does that what does that mean if not what it means for the teacher and the student in the classroom and so those are examples of what would happen prior to the start of the school year in supporting the teacher august 31st and to september 1st for example they would move into the work where if a family receives contact from from the teacher plc's begin to be applied to be used in schools virtually um there is personal planning time and there there is professional development and then the school year begins and during those during those two weeks there is going to be um part of the day will be in the instruction through synchronous and asynchronous teaching there will be planning time for the teacher that would allow him or her to work in concert with her colleagues or independently in developing their their lesson and then some um family time contact uh and engagement that will allow for the teacher to to engage in that way and then there's professional learning as well during that one third of the school day next slide please so after the first two weeks of engagement building community and reconnecting to the work of school there is a structured schedule that is being developed at the elementary level the middle school level and the high school level and so during the course of the day the expectation would be that there would be breakfast time if there would be whole class day opener focused on social emotional learning and then the morning instruction would begin um with the teacher in either whole group small group or independent work then there's lunch and then there's the afternoon now these are big blocks of time that we are unpacking um by subject area across the course of the day and the week and so as brenda indicated our next iteration will actually give you the the complete morning and the complete afternoon of what will constitute the student's day but it will also provide you with what will constitute the students entire week and we will be offering that
00h 30m 00s
um k-12 in our next iteration of this next slide please and so on um brenda martinec sean byrd and i have been working really closely together to to build to build this out and so when we think about the high school um dr bird is going to be talking specifically about those components that relate to the high school uh programming and the scheduling uh dr berg okay thank you luis uh good evening everyone i also want to thank our student board member nathaniel who met with me last week to talk about some of the issues that students are concerned about i look forward to following up with him again i was unable to go to the student focus group due to scheduling problems but i look forward to getting more feedback from nathaniel's we continue to work on this um this plan so for high school as you can imagine the uh the com there are complex cities uh that exist that we have to account for and when we first started talking about planning for the high school schedule it was under the impression that we would be going into a hybrid model and so our first concern was of course the number of classes that a student was going to take because they need to earn credits to graduate so and we wanted to make sure that based on the experience from last spring and how much difficulty some students had keeping up with eight classes we wanted to address those concerns so we talked about we have talked about a 4x4 schedule which is four classes for each semester for a total of eight classes for the year so it's still the same credit earning opportunity that students have always had it's just you earn the credits off four in the fall semester and then uh another four in the spring semester of course there are um concerns with there are concerns with any schedule that you that you put forth some work better for programs some programs and other programs we would need to make modifications for our ap and ib students and i'll talk about some of those considerations in just a moment we also need to make sure that we are building in additional supports for student groups who need need extra help such as english learners who need more ex more exposure to language learning opportunities and reading writing listening speaking also our students with disabilities and other students who just may have not connected with us as much in the spring semester to make sure that we're closing those learning gaps some positive things that we have this year is we have a standardized platform a canvas that we'll be using that will provide ease of and standardize access to each course so students will be able to log on to canvas and see all their courses there it uh also allows for teachers to put students in breakout rooms uh so there's a lot more ease of use with the with our new technology platform that we'll be using this year um students will be following a similar to a bell schedule um so that and that they will meet with their teacher for instruction just as dr valentino was mentioning for elementary school the expectation is the same for high school students and middle school students that they will be meeting daily uh for uh in-person instruction as well as some group work and uh independent work and just as in the elementary schools the attendance will be taken daily and that is based on guidance from the ode and grades will be reported so uh this will be a normal uh report card um will be issued uh each quarter and we also want to make sure that we're supporting uh as as our theory of action states that our support specifically for our black native and latinx students and we are i've been in a conversation with uh danny ledesma about how we can partner with our community-based partners that are working in our schools already how we can utilize their services to help us connect in more effective ways with these communities that have been underserved in the past next slide please so i want to show you an example of what a four by four schedule me a schedule looks like and so you can think of these as uh there's two semesters there fall in spring and you have four periods a day so in the fall semester a student may take this is a typical freshman student uh student will take english 1-2 in the fall and so they'll meet every day for the entire fall semester for about 90 minutes and then the second period they'll take algebra 1-2 then they'll take their world language and then some freshman seminar perhaps so they will get an opportunity to earn four credits in the in the fall semester then we move to the spring and we've asked our principals to uh be um uh thoughtful and how they part pair classes so in this so they that they're still reinforcing the skills because the student the student in this example they have english 1-2 in the fall semester they won't have english again until the next school year so the social sciences is a good class to partner with that so that
00h 35m 00s
those teachers can work together throughout the year to reinforce those skills and then the science class would be the uh partner with the math class a pe uh semester as a one year credit and then they'll have an opportunity for an elective so that's the that is the pure uh 4x4 schedule we know that uh this that we need so many modifications i referenced on the other side for different groups of students so if you go to the next slide please this is just one um example there are um you know we can use data to look at students who are rising into ninth grade for example uh that have had difficulty with math and so we don't want them to uh to not be in math every day so we can do something called a skinny schedule or light schedule where you see the second period on one day they would go to algebra for 90 minutes the next day they would have their spanish class for 90 minutes and that would be all year long so they would have those that instruction for the entire year um and so you're you're breaking the uh you still it's still a four period schedule but you're just breaking the time up differently that's one uh option we've looked at we're exploring some other options we know that particularly for uh i've talked to principals and i want to really um thank our principals for their creative thinking and their um and the teachers that they've been working with um for example at uh roosevelt high school uh they're able to schedule all their ap sections they'll be able to schedule all those in the fall so that then they can do a lab class in the spring to prepare kids for the ap exam um because uh the fall semester uh i mean the doesn't start until february so the time between the start of the semester and the test is compacted so it's important that kids have all the content um that's just one example of what what people are thinking about we also have come up with some creativity around world languages for students in our comprehensive high schools where they might take um their world language in the spring for the one two and then and the next fall then they'll take the second year of their of their um world language so that there's not so much we're trying to minimize the gaps that students experience there are schools such as jefferson high they have always double blocked their math class for uh students and their english classes so they'll continue on that path there are some still some concerns we need to address in terms of our ib program particularly for those students who are trying to earn the ib diploma that as you uh know is a very rigorous program we have you know we have students that have worked their junior year and now they're going into their senior year we want to make sure those students have the opportunity to earn the ib diploma that they have been working on so we will need to address these issues particularly for the full ib diploma students we have cleveland is i'd be for all schools so they have some particular needs that we need to address so we're still working with our principals and our and i'll be i'm consulting with more students also with the help of nathaniel on um how this could look and how this could work for students but we want to make sure that the students in this environment that's going to be challenging in some ways because they're virtual learning that we want to make sure that the load is such that they get that students can handle it and they can be successful and earn their credit um we're also looking at our middle schools i don't have an example of middle school schedule yet because we're still drafting that but i'll have that the next update and hopefully we'll have some more um answers for the uh modifications we still need to make to our high school schedule next slide so i'll turn it back over to uh i think to don wolfe so the jeweler yeah no it's it's still me i'll turn it over to the donald thanks so the digital learning just quickly um really focuses on ensuring that our content is is provided and is accessible and so atlas is our curriculum our curriculum management system that is then um used through our seesaw which is our learning management system it was referred to earlier pk5 and canvas 612 and then we the digital toolkit that i um described earlier uh kevin uh crotchet and don which we'll be talking about briefly and then uh high professional development to ensure that in this new environment that we're in in teaching virtually uh remotely that we also are able to ensure that from the classroom all the way through central office we have the capacity to support um so i'm i'm turning it over to don wolf for the next section on the digital learning so and we can jump to next slide so don wolfe chief technology officer um and what i'm going to do is luis and i and our two offices have been working um well before the pandemic
00h 40m 00s
struck pps talking about what might a digital toolkit look like for for pps and when we talk about gvc and adoption of curriculum how do we focus on digital content and whatnot took that idea and handed it over to kevin crotchet our director of learning technologies and his team and i'm going to let him talk about what they have developed in conjunction with the office of teacher learning around our digital toolkit it's we're pretty excited to to get this this cornerstone built out for the district as we enter into this full online phase of learning right now thank you don um thank you uh board chairs uh directors um and uh superintendent guerrero um can you guys hear me mm-hmm to make you sure great thank you um you know absolutely coming off of what luis and don just said as we moved through the spring we recognized without a doubt um knowing what this fall would possibly bring that our students and teachers and schools absolutely needed to start this coming school year with a robust set of foundational tools that would assess that assist them in bringing equitable as well as equally robust distance learning to the to our classrooms virtually um the tools in the digital toolkit were also chosen not just for their ability to aid in distance learning but also as tools that will translate back to the classroom for hybrid learning as well as the someday when we celebrate the return to full physical classrooms as luis and don were mentioning this this task of creating the pps digital toolkit started far far before the pandemic but of course really was spurred up in a need as we went through spring it is the work of learning technologies and otis and otl and all of the senior directors of office of teaching learning as well as a lot of input from mtss sped department and so many others as you can see on this slide digital toolkit is really broken down into three bands if you will that first set is your instructional and lesson design tools these are foundational tools such as canvas and seesaw that luis has mentioned but they're also those foundational tools that our teachers are going to use for communications such as remind and the likes these are also tools that help our teachers design their instruction they provide frameworks by which we can build formative and summative assessments and then of course the clever portal which is going to be our one entry access to all of the tools the next section is our creation in engagement tools these tools of course are for both our students and our teachers providing them with the ability to use different entry points for students to create and demonstrate their knowledge as well as tools that will engage both synchronously and asynchronously both in textual ways as in so as well as social ways so that we do focus on sel while we're also thinking about and working on um meeting student learning goals that next chunk um which is really three columns but it's just uh it's all of the content tools that are aimed to supporting our curriculum and our content at discipline that for span of course are just general tools such as research and library based tools tools that teachers can reach out to and use with their students for modifications and self-modification the next band is our humanities with tools that directly connect to our gvc and our scope and sequence and uh the same for our steam tools with that i think i toss it back to dawn yes so next slide please rosanna terry so the technology and rollout and in communication plan is of interest to to many people's today's announcement that we will be in full virtual has sparked interest i'm certain in parents that what if i don't have a device or families that are curious our device that we got um has failed over the summer and we haven't swapped it out what does that look like you're looking at a fairly compressed timeline if you look at it from august 3rd to august 28th right before the first day of school on september 2 is where we're going to be working through this this week and no later than august 3rd we're going to have communication out to the principles we heard loud and clear during the quick roll out that we had to do in the
00h 45m 00s
spring for the pandemic that we are much better served and it is far more equitably accessed for our families if we can center um the device gathering and internet hotspots and that that work at our school communities so keeping families local keeping where they're at so we will be providing our first communication to our principals focusing on how we're going to do that the tools we're going to give them the information we'll give them next next tuesday august 4th family communication will go out about how they reach out to their schools to let them know if they're in need of a device for the first time because they're new to pps or they didn't think they needed one during the pandemic during the shutdown and how they would get that let their schools know august from essentially that point august 4th through the 7th schools and families will work to develop that need and make sure it's it's communicated and well known it may extend beyond the seventh these are these are some frameworks we know some families will will take a little bit to respond or it may take longer for school to gather that information but general guidelines that should give my office um enough time to to get collect devices for each school and start delivery the week of august 6 through the 14th hopefully if we have all of the devices for students that we need by the 14th that's great but we will continue to deliver them to schools so they can make them available for students and families as long as that need is being made known this would include both computers as well as hotspots and continuing to to roll out the the signups for comcast internet essentials schools will work and arrange a family pickup schedule we're very cognizant of the risk of coming out we want to make sure that we do this in a very scheduled way so we can manage and maintain physical distancing and make sure that uh everyone can be as safe as possible as they come in to their school building to pick up to pick up the devices um starting august 17th one of the things that we will we we heard and got feedback from was how do we get support how do we know we need where to go to access things and how do we do that in a language that i could understand so starting august 17th we're going to embed some native speakers of our primary languages with the otis call center help desk folks and we will maintain that relationship so families can call in and get the technical support they need ask any questions what do they access how do i get logged in what's how do i change my password um and we will plan on maintaining that until till september 11th or longer if the volume and the demand is needed there we will continue to maintain a drive up schedule for repairs throughout the year and we will open that up as well for people to be able to swap devices at this point i'm going to turn this back over to brenda to discuss next steps and our processes as we roll forward thank you uh so here are the next steps in our process this is what we will be presenting on at the next board session and so this concludes our presentation and i open it up for uh questions or comments or any clarifications you need thank you uh brenda this is cher lowry and i know that we all have lots of questions i know we don't have tons of time so we could go in reverse alphabetical order um and ask one question and see how many times we can get through so i'm going to start with nathaniel um student representative shu um do you have a question for staff uh yeah i do um well let's see i i know i've said this before and um been had this question answered before but i i really feel the need to uh bring it up again um could you go over why you believe that the um the 4x4 scheduling for high schoolers is necessary or preferable because i i think i have worries that it could just introduce a new element and more chaos into the system just wondering again especially with the all virtual fall sure so uh like we talked about before uh nathaniel um the the eight period schedule that's eight classes that students would have to keep up with uh instead of four and there are things that we can do within the schedule to modify for students that need like the math issue that i think you and i talked about that too some students may need math all year long so there are ways that we can modify the schedule to make it uh more accessible but we are concerned about uh students taking eight classes at a time especially because they will not be in a classroom with the teacher with the level of you know assistance that they would normally have in a brick and mortar uh setting so we do know also from data
00h 50m 00s
from last spring there were about uh 2 500 students who had an incomplete at the end of the school year and we were only virtual for for 10 weeks so we look at that data and the what the level of expectation was and then this year as we talked about the other day uh attendance and grades have to be taken and reported so it's not just pass fail but it's actually accounts for your gpa and so we do want to make sure that people are um are able to be successful in this model yes sorry just a quick follow-up but wouldn't this model have um have us completing the same amount of work having the same workload right you do it's just divided up differently so you'll take four classes in the fall and you're so if you take english in the fall when you're done with english come february then you take another class so you you finish english so you do you and you set a meeting every other day like you do now you meet every day for 90 minutes for 18 weeks and then you move on to the next class so it's more like a college kind of like yeah schedule i'm gonna ask you guys continue that conversation offline because it sounds like there's still somewhere to work out and i want to make sure everybody gets a chance to ask at least one question director scott the question yeah i i do thank you um and i'm actually going to pick up on on nathaniel's question and expand on a little bit because i i i would be curious to hear a little bit more and again i'm going to i'm going to trust the educated education experts who work for the district uh in terms of this but it does feel like although i understand focusing on four classes um feels more manageable those are also four classes at double time and i guess i i i just i i am sure and let me put a different way i think a lot of parents are going to be curious about you know can my kid really learn an entire year of calculus in in one semester can they learn uh an entire year of french or spanish you know in one semester or physics in the semester um and so again i know you all been thinking through this so i'm interested um and i think it'll be good to talk a little bit more about why that works rather than eight classes regular time but my my specific question giving off that um gets back to the modifications you talked about potentially needing for ib and ap and that makes some sense to me i think i'm a little curious about the ib because i'm not as familiar with that program but i know with ap the concerns would be you know a student who took an ap class in the fall but doesn't take the exam toll later in the spring might be a little disadvantaged alternatively taking an ap class in the spring um because when the the classes falls you're even you're like triple timing you know the learning in order to finish before the exam so i am i'm curious whether you're thinking about modifications and then i think more importantly to me is are we looking at modifications there but also are we looking to implement those districts why because i know we do have the two ib am i right about that cleveland and lincoln both have ib programs um but of course we have ap uh throughout all of our high schools um so i'm sort of curious about how we're looking throughout all of our high schools using a racial equity and social justice labs um to ensure that we're giving equal opportunity no matter what high school uh childhood yes uh thank you director scott we are looking at so we're having conversations with all the principals and uh as i mentioned some like roosevelt for example they're able to schedule all their ap classes fall semester and then have a lab for the spring semester it is um it is the same amount of time students are in the class the same amount of time it's 90 minutes times 18 weeks instead of 90 minutes every other day so the time is the time um it is compressed i was actually a teacher on the schedule and i taught ap classes and um and i did we did have we did have solutions for kids that took my class in the fall instead of the spring um but it is uh it is something we're looking at the ib situation is a little different because the uh it's a it's a two-year requirement for the full ib diploma and not every student goes for the fly b diploma so i'm just go for the certificate which is a different level of level of requirement but those students who are going for the full diploma they start in their junior year and they take a series of courses and then there's a portfolio it's a very rigorous uh program and so we do have to look at what we can do to make modifications for ib students and also for ap students and also for students that just have other needs that we need to take into consideration such as students disabilities english learners and we can coordinate our support by pushing in support for example for english learners uh we can provide additional supports in the classroom um i think either schedule uh you know you're you still it's the same schedule as just how it's divided it's divided this way uh four credits in the fall four credits in the spring instead of every other day uh for 90 minutes with eight classes but um it's still the same exact amount of instruction and would say we're we're still working on some of those stickier problems such as ap and iv thank you thank you appreciate that right director moore uh thank you um so i have a great many questions um most of which
00h 55m 00s
i think i've already sent so i guess i will narrow it down to a couple things um can um can somebody explain what kind of um what kind of participation um the who has participated in the planning sessions um has it included teachers and staff and parents and students and i mean who's how how broad has the participation been and how deep uh thank you director moore this is brenda i can speak to that we have five work group committees that have a variety of people on those committees themselves we also have advisory committees that are attached to each of those five one is a principal group and one is a teacher group within the teacher group there are pat representatives in each of those groups additionally we have been meeting with principals elementary pencils middle school principals and high school principals to help us work through some of the specifics around the scheduling and the first two weeks additionally we have started uh jonathan garcia has started uh some engagement groups uh and so that is actually linked in the powerpoint document so we have met with a variety of culturally specific partners students and families does that answer your question um yeah i think um [Music] i think i would like to get a little more detail on um who's been participating and um to what degree um i i because i'm hearing from uh i i'm hearing from teachers i'm hearing from parents that um they're they're feeling out of the loop and um so anyway so any more detail that you can give on that would be helpful i think sure happy to do that and uh i'm sure you can follow up with that brenda in an email um it's my turn lowry and uh you can all guess what i'm gonna ask about music um and so [Laughter] um what is what are the thoughts around uh music education for next year so thank you for asking about music um as you know uh the superintendent is a great visual uh digital performing arts uh and so am i and so music press is really important and so even this summer there was an opportunity for many of our students to participate in the summer summer arts academy that actually that being conducted virtually of course and so hopefully we were going to be learning from that in in its application as we re-enter as a music collective or as an activity it is a critical part of our complete curriculum hello of all friends and so we are working with offerings and so we are working with um christian brazen um visual performing arts to to put together the plan for the arts program um in the virtual environment uh given that we may not be returning till november or so or after uh to ensure that uh um visual arts um and chorus instruments and all of those things to the degree possible are integrated into their into their day so there is a plan we haven't fleshed it out yet but that will be one of those um those offerings that we're going to bring to you to share with you what that's going to look like thank you um i see that it's seven and so we might have some people joining us now who are here for our regular board meeting um just to let you know we are wrapping up our work session on school re-entry plans and so we're just finishing up with our last few questions because it is seven i'm going to ask that board members who do have additional questions besides the one they're able to ask go ahead and email those to roseanne or to brenda and we can get responses um to those and i know we do have further additional work sessions planned i'm sure like me you have lots and lots of questions because this is a big uh juicy topic and we wanna be able to translate to our constituents and to the public what all is happening so i appreciate your patience dr constand what question do you have tonight thank you um director valentina going back to your presentation we know that one of our
01h 00m 00s
biggest challenges as a school district prior to remote learning in the spring and exacerbated during remote learning is lack of consistency um regarding grade level expectations and curriculum and instruction across our district so you talked about um internal alignment and coherence to units of study and to to curriculum expectations can you just talk a little bit more about what that looks like and in particular um how we can support uh principals to make sure that they're seeing that kind of coherence um in the classrooms within their own buildings definitely and to provide you with additional specificity um i would like to ask either dr tanya mckee or dr sarah davis to give examples of what uh that would look like given what director constant has asked if you're there so we have started to put together a district planning network that is comprised of teachers um from across the district and they'll be partnering with our central office uh ptosis and content specific administrators for all of the content areas including visual and performing arts um to ensure that our teachers are supported down to daily lesson plans so that they on any given day might be able to pull resources that have been created centrally especially our elementary teachers you know it's always going to be best even with asynchronous work if the classroom teacher themselves can uh recreate videos but for any given day maybe they won't have the bandwidth to do a math video in a language arts video and a science video and a health video and so we really want to support our teachers we also want these activities that we've created to be embedding best practices for distance learning because all of us are are figuring this out across the country and so we really want to support our teachers in working in in that way and so the scope and sequences have all been modified to really focus on the priority priority standards and we have done uh linking so you know if you're covering a specific standard and students are struggling you've actually um aligned the precursor standards to that to give support to our teachers for knowing what foundational skills might then help the student with the grade level work because we have to be focusing on grade level work for our students or we'll just continue to fall farther and farther behind dr mckee do you want to add to that sorry i have a four-year-old that's a little loud in the background um i don't think there's anything else to add um except for the fact that we've been engaging as many teachers as possible um that want to be involved in this work to ensure that we're getting perspectives from all over the districts are all over the district and so that's a positive we struggled a little bit last year getting teachers and as we move into this new virtual world it seems that there's a bigger interest in helping us create these uh these lessons and our units so feeling really good about where we sit right now as well as with the addition of all of the digital tools that were approved it's also helping us in terms of aligning our resources and providing teachers the tools that are necessary to meet the needs of our our black and native students as well as our english language learners and it's it's great it's feeling really good i know that we're all a little overwhelmed right now and our teams are working really hard um but this is starting to come together and with the um collaboration from the principals and all of the teachers joining us in this work um it's um getting ready to um to launch all right our next board member is director deposit yeah hi um i'm my question has to do with the technology piece i'm i'm curious what percentage of students have devices in their hands and hot spots what does that coverage look like and um what types of plans we might have for addressing the gap if there is one to get everyone you know i know we want to aim to be a a one-to-one district so i'm wondering where we're at with that what are the percentage of kids that
01h 05m 00s
still need devices um and how are we providing for those that don't have internet access at home so director to pass we handed out more devices in the spring than we initially got requests for because we just started opening up and said please just come down and get a device to to speed that up so that was over 15 000 devices we were able to um at the time acquire almost 19 000 18 000 in some change devices that we have waiting to to be redeployed so that gets us just between those numbers to about 35 000. um device wise we should be okay um again i will go back to pointing out that we are going to focus on our students first and then address how we're going to outfit any of our staff that need devices so i'm i'm not i'm not terribly concerned there my concern becomes the part of ones that are outdated that are so old that the batteries quit working and the chargers quit working and seeing what that demand is being in full virtual gives us a little bit of flexibility because we know there were a lot of families that are supporting their student at home with devices they have at home already and and that's great in a full virtual system because that we can continue to take advantage of that and i i believe our community will do that we've also had families reaching out and saying what type of device can i purchase to help my child in in an online learning situation so i i think would be okay there i was just typing an email somebody asking about hotspots we still have um two-thirds of the hot spots that we ordered last fall on hand because the demand was so much what people said they needed versus what came and picked them up um was far greater than that again that's a bit of an unknown i believe the the uh the providers have replenished their stock so the turnaround shouldn't be should we find a situation but we feel fairly comfortable at this particular point that we can cover those people if you're in need that we have hotspots we also still have a very large number of the comcast internet essentials subscriptions available for families that want to take advantage of that in cooperation with the fund so i'm feeling at ease about the resources we have to to bridge that divide we've got a um and again part of the reason we're going to focus on the schools is the community launch point for this is they know their their their students better and have better access to their to their families to help broker those relationships to give us a better idea of where we need to fill that gap director edwards do you have a question i have a question um so thank you and great questions by the other board members that answer some things questions i had um i think that uh just i'm going to state two concerns and then ask my questions one is that our next board meeting is the 11th which is i think two or three days before we actually submit the plan and i'm just curious if that's gonna be our last opportunity to have a public discussion and then second comment is um the asynchronistic and um synchronistic continue to be used and those are terms of art that most parents aren't familiar with so i think you just need to as we roll this out to families uh use uh i think language that they would understand my question um relates to uh ap ib and dual credit um college credit is really critical for college affordability um so the students can leave pbs either with an associate's degree or like a year of college credit by passing ap and ib and exams or going through a dual credit program and i'm concerned that given what happened last year and what we're heading to this year that um the plan to date doesn't look like it accommodates um that so i'm curious um how over the next two weeks that flexibility that was referenced at the very beginning is going to be sort of integrated into the overall plan that eventually gets submitted and i just think we're going to get lots lots of questions and that that was my question but i also want to just say i think staff has done a tremendous amount of work and this is we're doing something that nobody else has ever done before um and we're doing it with lots of other people so thanks to staff um so my question just relates to the flexibility and how in the next two weeks that's going to be built into the system the system so students have a chance to get college credit thank you from edwards we are um over the next two weeks i'll be in continuous contact with principals and we're working on different scenarios for how that works um you know this past
01h 10m 00s
year the uh ib exams were cancelled so it's an open question sort of to what's going to happen with uh ap and ib and colleges have been flexible due to the pandemic that we're in but i do um know that you know for jefferson uh those students that are in dual credit you know with pcc that is the schedule works for them and we've we've tested that there are groups of students that are participating in the challenger program we're in discussions with pcc to make sure that those students will be able to get credit but it is our goal to ensure that we're taking care of those um students who are earning college credits because obviously that is a savings to their family in the long run and good for them to to challenge themselves academically and uh you know the complexities of the high school schedule are just that they're very nuanced and we have to take things on a case-by-case basis in some cases with these schools so we are uh working continuously to refine this model and to make it work for the you know to the best that we can um make it work and that those other considerations the college credits the making sure that kids can complete ib uh diplomas those those students who are trying to do that and then the ap courses uh so so those are all considerations and we're we have different kind of models and simulations and i'll be happy to present more of those to you and we can also talk offline uh about kind of our process that we're going through all right uh director bailey do you have a question you'd like to ask tonight uh yes first of all i just want to uh echo director brian edwards and say thank you to our staff for an incredible amount of work and when things change day to day um um thank you uh so the question i have um when i watched as we're building a school system over the last couple of years knowing that parent engagement is a really important part of education and we needed to do some building blocks first before we could really engage in that work and now covet is kind of forcing our hand i think in a good way to accelerate that so i'm excited that you know we're starting off the school year with teachers connecting with every family and we'll have to build on that going forward um so one just a very basic question we know some parents are working and their shifts are um they're not off work when our teachers are on work um how will we how's that going to work just just off the get-go in that that first week or two when uh we're engaging with parents uh thank you uh director bailey uh that we're going to have to be flexible we're talking with our labor unions uh right now on on that flexibility and that adaptability so that we can make sure that we are engaging with students and families we're also uh working with our student engagement coaches uh and our restorative justice specialists to make sure that we're engaging with families that we're going out and making personal contacts if we have to we're calling families we're calling students so we want to make sure that we are uh getting connected with every single student in our district we were not able to do that in the spring and uh that is definitely a goal that we we just have to meet uh we have to make sure that of that we're also working with our culturally specific organizations so that we can ensure that we are working across language barriers that we are finding students who are not really interested in getting back into school and how we can do that and we will also work with our reconnection services that's right to get to get connected and and start to pull those kids in see how we can get them connected build those relationships and then keep them engaged uh and so so we're gonna pull out all the stops i wore this t-shirt on purpose it's a great t-shirt this is our our reconnect services for our students who have we've lost contact with uh our staff does a really great job at reconnecting with those students all through the year yes they do and i know we have more questions i encourage folks to email those into roseanne or to brenda so we can get some more responses and um dr van metedward's your question about an
01h 15m 00s
additional work session we'll check into that um we are about ready to start our regular board meeting for the 28th but i'm going to give everybody a three minute break it's 7 17 and we'll start at 7 20. so those of us who have been on since six can get a chance to stretch maybe get some more water and we'll be back in well it's two minutes now so


Sources

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sunshinepps.org/index.php?title=2020-07-28_PPS_School_Board_Work_Session&oldid=10095"
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Center for Transparent Analysis and Policy
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki