Work Study Meeting

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[2] Elisa Martinez: Rodriguez, member Nguyen.

[6] Nancy Thomas: Is there anyone from the public that would like to address us about our workshop item? Seeing none, we will adjourn to the table and have our workshop on the strategic plan. Great.

[25] SPEAKER_26: Come on down.

[29] SPEAKER_31: Come on down.

[38] SPEAKER_27: Are they coming in on this or at the close?

[40] Jodi Croce: No, he's going on his cell for that. Is he coming in?

[43] SPEAKER_28: He's going to be up here by the door.

[45] SPEAKER_31: I don't think so. I think it's okay.

[47] SPEAKER_28: I can take the time off of work.

[65] SPEAKER_25: Hi. Hi. Wendy, this is, let me introduce you quickly.

[68] Leonor Rebosura: We're starting a workshop. This is Jan Crocker, one of our board members.

[71] Nancy Thomas: This is Dr. Wendy Liao, our new principal at Schilling.

[93] Leonor Rebosura: I'm excited.

[94] Nancy Thomas: This is Nancy Thomas, our board president.

[102] Nancy Thomas: Really from Newark, right?

[107] Toni Stone: Oh, okay. Right midwest. This is Francisco Preciado, one of our board members.

[112] Leonor Rebosura: Hi, Wendy. Frankie.

[115] SPEAKER_27: Welcome. I know we're going to introduce you formally at the meeting, but we're starting our workshop. You're welcome to So the audience, if you'd like, you can have a seat. But you want to chat, we'll throw in a few things. Yeah, we may go chat. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, I'll see you guys in a little bit. OK. We're going to start closed at 6. Did you have anything for closed? Yeah. Yeah, we'll come back at 6. So I'll come back in an hour.

[150] SPEAKER_27: So I wanted to share this with you guys. Full steam.

[153] Nancy Thomas: I love it.

[154] SPEAKER_27: It's kind of dorky. I'm dorky. Did you call Ray? Oh, let's call Ray.

[157] Marie dela Cruz: Sorry. Sorry.

[159] SPEAKER_27: Would you give me his number? Sure. Is it L9 or 8?

[162] Rachel Bloom: L8. I think they got changed. Let me see. I don't know for sure.

[168] Michael Milliken: I have it here.

[185] SPEAKER_27: What steam? Full steam ahead.

[186] Penny DeLeon: Oh, do we have four? We're on?

[214] SPEAKER_29: We're sorry. You must first dial a text when calling this number.

[250] SPEAKER_27: Hey, Ray. Okay.

[257] SPEAKER_25: You're on speaker in our workshop.

[277] SPEAKER_27: I wanted to start by just giving you guys a good 15 or 10 minutes to really just look through and read it, write on it. This is a draft. We did get some help from a communications person from CCEE. And she's willing to, after we write on it and give her some edits, continue working with us.

[294] Nancy Thomas: And that's free, too.

[296] SPEAKER_27: No cost to us.

[298] SPEAKER_27: All right. Yes. Free for us. Free for us. Yes. But take some time.

[306] SPEAKER_27: what we're looking for is a framework, and I wanted to kind of give you a starting point.

[310] Nancy Thomas: I love this team resolution.

[314] SPEAKER_26: Yeah, it's looking good.

[315] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, it showed that there was input from the team.

[319] SPEAKER_27: Would you guys like a copy of what we're looking at here?

[321] Penny DeLeon: There's one on the back table.

[323] SPEAKER_27: This one's color, though. You've got to look at the color one.

[326] SPEAKER_29: It's more fun.

[333] SPEAKER_27: So you have the document, right, Ray? Yep. Okay, give me some time to process this. Give me some time to mark it up, write questions. Jay's on by phone.

[430] Jodi Croce: Well, this reads well.

[433] Cary Knoop: I like your pen.

[509] SPEAKER_27: And the fourth one would fit under rule one, but I just, she had a lot of latitude how to put it together, so she separated the strategic comparative and added one we haven't done much. It'll just fit under number one, I think. I didn't want to mess with her flow. She was doing good work.

[531] Nancy Thomas: What did you say? I just missed.

[533] SPEAKER_27: Oh, you'll notice there's four strategic imperatives when there's actually just three. So that's just a, that should be probably embedded somewhere else. But PD would be part of goal one. And teacher retention would be part of goal one.

[552] Nancy Thomas: Well, those are not our.

[554] SPEAKER_27: They are, except for number four.

[555] Nancy Thomas: That's the number four. Well, no, they don't talk about increasing enrollment. It doesn't talk about... Oh, okay, yeah.

[562] SPEAKER_27: Those aren't ours yet.

[563] Nancy Thomas: Those aren't ours, yeah.

[565] SPEAKER_27: I only just caught that one. I knew we didn't have four, so... We can change that. It should be the ones that you... Yeah, we have the actual ones.

[574] Nancy Thomas: ...have written.

[576] SPEAKER_27: I really asked her to look at kind of the format and the flow and the structure. She knows that we'll have edits and keep going back and forth.

[664] SPEAKER_28: CASP and SBAC, two different tests?

[673] SPEAKER_27: It couldn't be easy. So the big goals on these pages are correct. Like on page 12, Nancy, That is an accurate comparative. Goal 2, goal 3, those line up.

[703] SPEAKER_29: Yeah.

[704] SPEAKER_27: So we need to make them all congruent.

[733] Nancy Thomas: And that's just all laying something out in a coherent way like this.

[745] SPEAKER_27: Give us a few more minutes, then we'll kind of get into it more.

[764] SPEAKER_25: So it's like the cell phone, so like page eight, strategic plan, goal one, the broader one, the objective is like number one, you know, prepare folks to, so as long as we just put these under.

[776] SPEAKER_27: Yeah, we'll re-sort that and be able to drill down, but it should be a common format. It's really kind of the framework like the board asked for is the framework. But it is a draft, it's not a final product at all, but it gives you a better feel for what it could start looking like. I like page 23, that way it lays it out as well. That's kind of a good marking tool.

[881] SPEAKER_31: Under Goal 2, they're talking about bullying. That's a financial.

[884] SPEAKER_27: Right. So we need to sort that out. Yeah, it's not. That's what you were talking about. It's really more the format. I think there's a lot of polish editing. I really wanted to just see if you like the format and the structure and flow. And if you do, before we go into really defining it more accurately, we want to make sure you guys have a feel for it. But it was a bit of a Frankenstein monster in the first couple drafts. So let me just share where we are and how we got here. This is a mixture of what the board has put together in the retreats we've had to this point, and some of the workshops we've had, as well as staff work, largely ed services, and the team that I took to CCEE. We spent some time working on this at the last retreat that was in San Jose. And then that's where the person from communications at CCE said, well, I can help plan and polish it, get into more of a congruent document, and then you guys can help really refine and edit it. So it's very drafty. It's nothing that's ready for, you know, public consumption yet, but it's starting to get a better feel for something that's more congruent, that makes sense about what you want. So I think part of what I wanted to do today is kind of go through and if there's stuff you guys like or, you know, things that you notice that we need to tweak or correct, I wouldn't worry so much about the alignment of the goals. I know that's something that I've seen already that we need to look at. But is there something else we need to add?

[980] SPEAKER_27: That might be a good page 2 in the document. But just in general, your thoughts and ideas around it. We'll take notes. Char and I can take notes. And certainly if you want to kind of process a little bit, take it home, mark it up with a marker and give it back to us. We'll take edits however we can. And then we're going to run through a few more drafts with staff. We have it as a Word doc. We own it. It's not belonged to anyone else. And I do have it in the Word doc as well and the PDF. But our goal is to kind of just give a framework that we can start going through, I think, a little bit more of a community engagement process with schools next year and even starting people looking at it before they go to summer and try to see where people feel like, how does the school show up in this? What are some of the initiatives we're taking at a deeper scale? But what are your impressions of it, at least first glance, and kind of feel for it?

[1038] SPEAKER_28: So what you just said, that there's a recognition that goes two and three, the objectives and everything, and it has to be feasible.

[1045] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing about finances in the bullying too.

[1050] SPEAKER_27: Right, so we need to make the actual, we'll embed the actual strategic imperatives and limit it to those three. We haven't done that.

[1057] SPEAKER_28: I mean in the actual written portion itself, in the goals too.

[1063] SPEAKER_28: That's what I was talking about before. Goal 2 is fiscal solvency and all the objectives and... Are about something else. About something else entirely different. Okay. And then the same thing with goal 3, talk about increased enrollment and all those objectives are about something else. Okay. We can clean that up.

[1080] Nancy Thomas: So, yeah, looks like goal 1 is amply covered.

[1088] Nancy Thomas: In other words, maybe there's too many things we're trying to do in the strategic plan.

[1094] Diego Torres: Okay.

[1096] SPEAKER_28: Under goal one. Okay. So how did the pre-K-16 format come up? Because that's kind of the first time I've heard it in the district as far as being spoken of. I understand what it is.

[1113] SPEAKER_27: What page are you on now? Just the RALPHER document.

[1116] SPEAKER_28: Okay.

[1116] SPEAKER_27: So what has been our common language around that for Newark? K-12?

[1122] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, that's why the K-16 is, not that it's wrong or bad, it's just new. It's a new, like, how's that coming along?

[1131] Nancy Thomas: We do have a wonderful organization, Kedango, that's at two of our sites. You know, we might want to think about expanding to all of our sites, a robust preschool, or at a number of our sites, so parents have, all parents have an option to use one of our sites for preschool.

[1152] SPEAKER_31: Is it funding coming down the line for preschool? Isn't that some of the things that they're talking about? Well, we call it TK. Right, that's transitional, but pre-K would be different, it would be younger. Starting at grade three, three year old.

[1165] SPEAKER_25: And that's the conversation we would need to have like a universal preschool that the state has been discussing. They have discussed it, but they haven't funded it.

[1174] SPEAKER_31: So until it's funded, but if this is open with that being available, then it means there's flexibility. Do we want to say TK-12 for now? I think we want to say TK-12.

[1184] Nancy Thomas: T we have for sure. Because we have been saying TK-12.

[1186] SPEAKER_27: TK-12, just to make it consistent.

[1188] Nancy Thomas: For a transitional gate.

[1189] SPEAKER_27: OK. But I think we do have some, I think you're right, this really has been. And that would be part of the long-term planning, maybe is. For me, that might fit under goal three about enrollment. That might be a better fit where we talk about moving maybe towards university preschool.

[1212] SPEAKER_31: Well, yeah. I think that's basically because we're talking about getting kids at a point and getting them ready so that when we talk about kindergarten, it's going to be. I mean, kindergarten right now is so far advanced to what my kids had. in terms of what they offer in kindergarten. The kids that are ready.

[1236] SPEAKER_27: So are we keeping goal four or not? No, we would just strike it out. I think I would embed it. I wouldn't strike it out. I'd strike it out as an imperative, but embed it within goal one. Because that's still part of goal one is how I see it.

[1252] Nancy Thomas: So what is goal two going to look like? Really, what's gotten us in trouble in the past is we haven't paid attention to it. It gets out of hand. It's like monitoring and doing things right, not spending more than we take in, period.

[1269] SPEAKER_27: Maybe I can have the person who's helped edit this look at the thick of that report and vet some of those elements. I think that's probably a safer the safest place to look for language.

[1281] SPEAKER_28: Yeah. Yeah. My thing is now in the elements of the O4, as you said, incorporate that. I would be, I would be, well I am concerned about the comment, number one, where it explicitly states, increase staff of college hires and student experience. I think that would get us into the public.

[1298] SPEAKER_27: No, that's fine. Yeah, and I think that as far as that language, we can, we can restate that a different way. I think we can say that this, inclusive hiring practices or other different ways not to increase that. What page was that on, Tom?

[1316] Michael Milliken: Twenty.

[1316] Nancy Thomas: Twenty? I'm wondering about on page six you have the action words except for the word action. What about having, you know, analyze and reflect, develop a goal, take action and evaluate those

[1338] SPEAKER_27: Right. Yeah, and we've, this is one that, this has really been the core of the work we did with CCEE. I was even thinking in terms of action implementation or execution, so this is something that is... Or action steps.

[1355] Nancy Thomas: Take action.

[1356] SPEAKER_29: Yeah, take action.

[1358] SPEAKER_31: Analyzing, developing, take action.

[1360] SPEAKER_29: Evaluate action.

[1363] Nancy Thomas: Evaluating and analyzing. The state puts the LCAP around our neck. It's a big millstone. But we don't say anything in here about integrating it with the LCAP. And we have every spring plan steering committee. How will they interact with the parent advisory committee?

[1388] SPEAKER_27: And that was a big part of the conversation. The person we're working with from CCEE, her name is Anna Tinktokalos. It's a Greek last name. I can't pronounce it correctly. And she wrestled with that. She goes, how much do you want me to put LCAP language in there? And what I shared with her is my feeling from the board was that we needed a document that made it little easier to understand and not so education ease so it doesn't like shut people off but I think there's room to kind of show where it connects with LCAP or SPSA goals but I think that's that's where we are as far as this model this originally was plan do check adjust that was the original version of this model on page six But part of what we want to do is get some impact from the field and see what makes more sense. So we have some buy-in into the model. But that's the idea, is that we would improve what we have and not just start over with everything, but keep what's working and work and focus on what's not working with a common model for how we improve things.

[1455] Nancy Thomas: Evaluate and adjust. I don't get the word adjust.

[1458] SPEAKER_27: Adjust.

[1459] Nancy Thomas: Maybe put evaluate and adjust.

[1461] SPEAKER_27: I don't know. I would try it. I like take action. The other ones all have more than one word.

[1468] Nancy Thomas: The one here on page 9 about doubling the enrollment in advanced placement courses.

[1477] SPEAKER_27: Which page?

[1478] Nancy Thomas: Page 9. I don't know that that should be an objective because it's not shown that advanced placement courses You know, I think it's got to be more of something that makes kids successful in getting their A through G. And some of this came from, this district we built the model from was a larger district.

[1508] SPEAKER_27: They had a lot more resources than we do. So there's some things they can do that we're not doing.

[1513] SPEAKER_25: I think we increase the A through G graduation rates.

[1515] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, increase A through G graduation rates as opposed to

[1520] SPEAKER_25: Because we don't have an IB program, even though I have a program. I mean, I don't either, but I think.

[1527] Nancy Thomas: So we don't know how successful our kids are at IB, and if they're not successful, doubling courses and having even more students be not successful is not a good idea.

[1539] SPEAKER_25: I would say that we need to set up the systems in the beginning of K through 6, too, so that people can be successful. Okay? Okay, I can't say that our kids are not successful.

[1548] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, I don't want to put it in the negative terms, but I mean, the faculty manager needs to make sure that we have a pathway that our students can go to and be successful.

[1562] SPEAKER_25: Okay, so having pathways, but I want to make sure it's not tracking, so we're tracking certain students of like,

[1571] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, and I'm worried that we are tracking. I've heard things said about tracking.

[1580] SPEAKER_27: Just so you know, Ed Services hasn't had a chance to vet this yet. I literally got this at noon today. Okay. So normally I would have had Letty's team go through it and refine it, get it more close to what we're actually doing. But I wanted you to see it. I didn't want to have to wait until They had done it for you guys to look at.

[1598] SPEAKER_25: So for page nine for the district curriculum, if we can incorporate STEAM if that's the approach that we decide, because I feel like, I mean, I know the title says Full STEAM Ahead. But exactly, like we're going to have it in. So if we can do page nine, like the district curriculum, like we are adopting that framework, and then as we

[1628] SPEAKER_27: I'd like to see a graphic for the instructional model too. Like a real graphic for what is the instructional model and how is that STEAM implemented there.

[1640] Nancy Thomas: Something that looks more like... What you handed out at the last study session we had.

[1648] SPEAKER_27: Just something that's more like this, like a conceptual model. how do we do it, and what is, like, project-based learning the problem is. So something like that that might be a better fit for that.

[1658] Nancy Thomas: What about the four Cs?

[1661] SPEAKER_27: Four Cs.

[1664] SPEAKER_31: Question. You've got listed down 2017 in a number of places where there's no percentages. What does that mean? On page 11. Indicators. That means that we just started in 2017? So there's a number of places where that's sort of a default. Looks like it's something that's used in place of information that's not there.

[1689] SPEAKER_27: I'm not sure where she pulled that data. Where do you have that?

[1691] SPEAKER_31: Page 11, under social emotional learning implementation indicators. Under 2014-15, she put down 2017. So either we do not have the information from 2014-15. Yeah, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. That's a good question. So it's found in a number of places.

[1708] SPEAKER_27: You're missing the pizza, Ray.

[1712] SPEAKER_31: Great. The other thing, on the top of page 11, they're talking about career and future ready students who enter college on time, 52% and then who complete a college in five years. In other words, that's the goal that is, it's not a four year goal, it's a five year goal because we can't do it in four years, okay. I think that, I think in here we also need to have, how many kids need remedial help for having to take non-credit classes to be prepared?

[1751] Nancy Thomas: You know, and that data exists at our speeder community colleges.

[1776] SPEAKER_25: the visual and the kind of framework that works for me. I think as other folks have kind of identified, we really need to dive into the objectives more deeply as it relates to our area. So that it matches the focus of STEAM as a whole and then the different conversations that we've had of how we're gonna move forward.

[1805] SPEAKER_25: We have that strategic, I really like that strategic plan steering committee. That's kind of an oversight for the strategic plan. I think maybe under goal two, if you have some sort of financial committee in terms of getting the community engaged, like.

[1824] SPEAKER_25: Exactly, like for the finance committee. And this, I think, gives the opportunity, we do like, I know, We're always struggling to find people to volunteer in terms of these pieces, but I think by framing it and getting the buy-in from the sites, the people who are on the school site councils and the people, parents who donate their time for the PTAs, PTCs, that they might be interested in some of these committees that if they met biannually or quarterly, it's not. It's not overburdening the home. We have that communication, engagement piece with parents in the community. You could open it up to, it doesn't have to be only parents. That's the piece that we always, from a community side, we're really insular when it comes to our communities. It makes sense because the parents and the students, but being more inclusive so that the whole community can get involved if they choose

[1890] SPEAKER_31: Well, our board is certainly opposed to it, as far as that goes, because three of us have no children directly in schools. And so I think that that's wise. There's a wording here on page 11. It says, help desk school-based tickets resolved at first grade. I have no idea what that means.

[1907] SPEAKER_31: Number 11 under indicators of embedded technology. So it must be something specific to that.

[1912] SPEAKER_29: Yeah, it must be something specific.

[1913] SPEAKER_31: So I think that we need to go through and make sure that that kind of thing

[1920] Nancy Thomas: So I think this is a great start. It is a good start. I think that the preamble and the accountability dashboard and that stuff, you know, then I think it's a matter of now honing in on the three strategic imperatives. And I like the idea of imperative number two being wrapped around the Fitbank study because it covers everything that we need to do.

[1944] SPEAKER_28: We're going to do 401 right now, right? So there's a bullet point, second column, first one, page eight, where it says a common curriculum, which is understandable for this group, and a common curriculum and instructional model, how does that reconcile with teachers' academic view to teach in the style and manner in which they would like to teach? Because if we're prescribing how they're going to teach a curriculum, there's going to be a lot of prescription on that. Which bullet is that? Right there. Okay. So we haven't had that conversation.

[1988] SPEAKER_28: I don't think anyone has had that conversation. Because the common curriculum is understandable. That's a state adopted curriculum. That's district adopted curriculum. But then we add in common instructional model. Then we're getting into the details of telling teachers how to teach.

[2005] SPEAKER_31: Well, we're saying that we want to have more projects involved, more group work involved. We are saying that. Or is there more than one model?

[2014] SPEAKER_27: There might be different choices within the model.

[2017] SPEAKER_28: And we should allow teachers the opportunity to do that.

[2028] SPEAKER_25: within the framework of the common curriculum, the common core, that people can be creative. And for my class at this particular time, this project or this type of thing works best. And then maybe next year, this project works best. So giving people that flexibility, I don't think we should. I don't think we should prescribe that or stay away from that.

[2051] SPEAKER_27: Or maybe there's some exemplar models that we picked.

[2056] SPEAKER_26: I see what you're saying about the freedom.

[2064] SPEAKER_28: On the objective, there's two objectives for the academic growth forum, I think. Within that, I kind of don't see any smart goals with that. in terms of attainable metrics. And it's just a big problem, the specific attainable metrics that have been cranked up as far as increasing energy by, you know, a metric or increased evaporation rate. There are two here, and they're kind of nebulous. And the first one is to establish graded school performance targets for academic social growth. Conduct awareness assessment for each school focus on improving implementation of curriculum, instruction, etc. And there's a lot of, it feels like there's a lot of linguistics in there. of all, you know, 3rd through 8th grade students by 10% in the next five years.

[2129] Nancy Thomas: So that should be the person. So they can stay in the green or blue area.

[2134] SPEAKER_25: So with that, so you have the goal, the big picture, and you have the objective.

[2144] SPEAKER_25: under that then you have kind of the infographic or that particular piece that says this is the actual amount that you want to increase by within five years, right? So we are at 50% and we want to get at 70% or whatever those numbers are. So then that way you still keep kind of the structure of like objective one and then under objective one and you say like the metric.

[2169] SPEAKER_31: And then you. of social economic engagement, cultural development, so forth. I measure a page like that for the academic growth. Which page are you looking at? Page 14, which I love looking at. I think it doesn't, because we haven't talked about social and emotional, but in terms of academic and social. This was from the survey, it looks like. From the Healthy Kids survey? Right. but something that would be similar to that format. It's readable. If you're talking about it, if, you know, assuming that at grade one such and such things will be achieved, at grade two such and such things will be achieved, is that correct? You want really specifics in terms of reading at a particular grade level or computing at a particular math level.

[2225] SPEAKER_27: It's nice to have, like, here's where we currently are, here's the goal, and here's the state, to compare, like, to know kind of where we are relative to the state or whatever we want to compare it to. So maybe like inserting a column. And maybe progress from last year to this year, you know, do we increase, do we decrease?

[2247] SPEAKER_25: And I know, because this is always what we struggle with, we want something short so that people can read, but we also want it to be detailed. So maybe it looks like, so here's what we could do. This is looking like it's going to be more like a 100-page document, or 200, which is OK. But this is how, because that shows that you're actually thorough and actually thinking about the specific pieces. Anybody who wants to dive into that can read the 200 pages. We have some people. For the folks who don't have that, then what we can do is we can do one-page summaries or infographics of like strategic one pair to one. Bam, like here's kind of what it looks like. That's one, and then the other one's a two, and then it's a three. And those are our materials that we're saying like, these are our kind of three main foci for for the next five years.

[2302] Nancy Thomas: So one page for each, and then followed by the detail page?

[2305] SPEAKER_25: So I guess the suggestion is like, so once we dive into this, it looks like this is kind of a good framework. But when we fill it up with the different pieces of the details, it's going to be more like 100, 200 pages, likely, because of all the actual pieces that you mentioned of putting the metrics and the infographics. Then based off of once we have that, we can summarize. summarize that into an infographic that's one page. So that like if you were talking to a community member, you could be like, okay, you can go on the website and print out the 200 pages, or we have three sheets of paper here that summarizes high level what we're going to do.

[2346] Nancy Thomas: I agree. I think if we can get an infographic for each goal, that would be great. By the way, going back to page, she pulled them from somewhere else, I think, you know, so we should create our value or put our values in it. We can update that. You might give her the handouts from that meeting, that last meeting we have about our beliefs, values.

[2367] SPEAKER_27: I gave her eight documents to do this. I need to give her a break. I agree.

[2372] SPEAKER_31: I think we're looking at format. And I think the format looks very nice. It's just a matter of.

[2376] SPEAKER_27: Now we've got to work on contents. And Letty hasn't had a chance to even wrestle with it. So I want to run it through Ed Services next, and then Business Services, and then HR. Where do they embed the retention goals? I think that's good to mention in there. I think the retention staff training, that's important, but I don't think it's a imperative on its own. I think it's underneath number one. And number one should be the beefiest one. I mean, that's fine.

[2401] SPEAKER_28: Where's the reconfile of site leaders coming to this, as far as they have been?

[2408] SPEAKER_27: Do you mean like an org chart, or what are you thinking about? In developing this strategic plan? They've been part of What they worked on most is this model of continuous improvement. That's what we've done the most. And looking at, besides the other stuff that has worked with them on curriculum adoption, they haven't seen it yet, but I wanted to get it in front of the board first. That would be the next step. So I'm not, I think what I'm proposing is probably a full process to look at working through a closer document with staff, so that now we're ready to take it to and say, okay, what would you tweak? So I think we need to go through those steps maximum. I wanted to see if this is kind of the direction. But we're nowhere ready for primetime on this. I think that if we're able to incorporate some of those things, I think then we're ready to take it to staff and community and parent groups. But I didn't want to, this is very drafty. I think once we get it closer to what represents what we do, then we're ready to do that. But I think that principals have been involved with different parts of the documents I shared. The board's been heavily involved. But we still don't have enough input from parents and site councils. That would be next. What's our target? I think that here's my thinking is that if we're going to do a facility master plan, and take nine months to do that. It would probably be wise to do a similar approach with this and do a really grassroots, help us flesh this out so that when the facility master plan's done, it all becomes congruent with this so that you have a real process that gets a lot of buy-in. But we needed to have something for people to react to. Because I think part of the worry is if we just say, here's your marching orders do it, there's not buy-in at this point in all the aspects that we want.

[2527] SPEAKER_28: And that may feel that way, though, because once you polish this up and take it to another iteration of a draft and you bring it to the administrators or whoever is going to be involved in it, my feeling is they're going to be very hesitant to give genuine input because this is not a document that's been handed down to us.

[2549] SPEAKER_27: Right, but at the same time, there's nothing in here that would be a surprise to a principal. These are all things we've worked on.

[2554] Nancy Thomas: Well, a lot of them are part of the LCAP, but the other things are part of the FCMAT recommendation.

[2559] SPEAKER_27: There's been a conversation since I started. The continuous improvement model has been there since we've been working with CCEE. So I don't know if the principals would feel like this is, I think they would feel that this is helpful to get it to one page so they can work with the schools.

[2573] SPEAKER_31: I think where they need to have input is not on the data, because the data is the data. It's on what are we going to do with the data? What are going to be our percentages? What do we consider is going to be needed improvement. How are we going to change how we organize our sites based on this? Are we going to change how we organize our sites?

[2589] SPEAKER_25: So since the framework kind of, we're saying that this is the way it's organized, it's fine, the actual content of how much, like you said, in terms of the data, is it going to be 5%, 10%, 3% in terms of growth? Those conversations are the ones that need to get hashed out at the site basis.

[2612] Nancy Thomas: And they need to buy into it, otherwise they're just going to say, oh, that's another number that came down and came up on top, and we just... Yeah, but the district office put in the data.

[2622] SPEAKER_31: You've got the data, you stick it in, get as much of the information in a format that's consistent for each goal, so that when you look at it, you can anticipate you're going to have this kind of chart, this kind of chart, this kind of chart, so it doesn't change. so that there's a consistency and so the parents can look and once they figure out how to read the first one, the second and third is not as intimidating.

[2644] SPEAKER_27: And maybe it is how do we get schools, because part of the goal of this document was to be kind of a LCAP extract that could be easily understood and maybe each site needs its own kind of smaller version of here's our site report card that fits with that kind of a framework that says, like I'm thinking like a stoplight type of report card. like they have on the dashboard. So these are the areas the school has that are green and blue. And here's what we're doing to sustain that. Here's orange and yellow, that's kind of the cusp group that we're working on. And then here's the red priority. So that's kind of where I think I would like to see it go next. So we have some common metrics that are anchored to the dashboard.

[2689] SPEAKER_25: The way I would see it here would be, okay, we have this framework of STEAM. This is kind of what we're doing. These are the kind of big picture high-level goals, and this is where this is going to have to happen simultaneously with, like, what is the overall district percentage of growth in terms of the indicators, right, like from yellow to green to blue? Like, what are those goals? to your point that it would be helpful to be part of this, each each site would have their own one-page dashboard piece so you would see where they're at and where they're going over the next five years. So that just is or like you can see So if I only have kids at the memorial or at the junior high, then I might be interested in all of it. But I might just pick up that one to say, OK, where am I at for the junior high? What is the plan for the next two years, the next four years? And then it helps me as a framework, too.

[2756] SPEAKER_28: So that's what that darkening authority goes into each site. We just have to be telling each site to make sure they have that. that page.

[2767] SPEAKER_25: Okay, so it's incorporating that in a new format.

[2776] Nancy Thomas: How does a school know that if they're in yellow, how much they have to improve to go into green?

[2786] SPEAKER_27: And I keep coming back to that workshop I went to that said that... I know Luddy's worked with principals, I'm not sure I have a better answer than I would, but... I know they've been working on understanding the 5 by 5 report and exactly, like, what are the cut scores from going from, like, yellow to green or green to blue. That's something they've been working on and how they're going to start messaging that to staff. And that's just kind of the – but I think that's kind of what I'm – I think we're after here is this is not just a strategic plan. It's also kind of a district report card. But then you should be able to drill down and go to the site report card and have it look similar. So, and it should be, I think, aligned to those five categories. I guess it's five, is it more? Of, maybe it's six, of the dashboard colors and the pie, you know, the blues, all the pie pieces. So that's kind of where, it's five, right? So that's kind of where I think it could morph into. Because in here it could be, the other way I've seen them do this, this could be a pdf but then you could link into a school site report card oh that's the plan okay i want to click on that school i can click on it now and it'll hyperlink to that school report card and it looks the same i think that's kind of what we're after is a what's a common reporting that we can use i think we might as well lean on the dashboard it's already created every site everything's there right right but i think just to make it in a format that's There's not all the pieces we want to see as a parent are in the dashboard. Like, you might want to, you know, what's the total enrollment? What's the, a lot of those things are there, the breakdown, ethnic breakdown. But where are they in green and how green are they? Are they close to going blue? Or are they closer to tipping back into yellow? So I don't know. I think that's the part that I'm breasting with CCE about.

[2900] Nancy Thomas: And then the test itself is not reliable yet. from year to year.

[2909] SPEAKER_28: So before I get to them, on the color of the dashboard, it's likely to be very deceptive in terms of data measurement. They probably should focus their goals on the actual numbers itself, whether it's increased or decreased. So for example, in the suspension pie chart, one of the metrics, If you suspend a very, very low number of students in one year, and next year you increase it by two students, even though you weren't suspending like five students a year, you would get an orange. And you wouldn't get a green or blue.

[2941] SPEAKER_27: A hundred percent increase.

[2942] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, you'd show exactly a huge increase in suspension until your starting point was already so low.

[2950] Nancy Thomas: Those suspension rates are

[2954] SPEAKER_25: From my perspective, as someone observing the data, I would like to see the color and the number right under it. So then when I would ask, hey, I'd ask this site, this doesn't make sense. We were blue last year, why are we orange this year? And they're like, okay, look at the absolute number. From last year, it was zero, this is two. Oh, that's it, that means, okay, I understand. So that way you give people, like the full data, I feel like if we just had the numbers, then it's kind of, I mean, it's how you interpret data, I guess that's why they did the colors, right? Is you see that like, am I really gonna do like zero, two, four, and then we always look at the numbers? Just having both I think would be good.

[2999] SPEAKER_27: And that's kind of what I was thinking about, like the cut scores. So if we look at, here's a category called green, and we know that we're, And then there's another category below that's, I think the next one is yellow. At what number do you tip from yellow to green? And then what's the distance numerically between, that covers that span of yellow? So where do you fall on that? plot how close are you to the next deviation? It's more complicated than that. I know it is.

[3033] SPEAKER_28: It's not just a straight number or numeric cut-off point. There's that, there's a number of numeric cut-off points, but also there's an annual increase or decrease. So growth as well. Correct. So there's a two-prong. Growth and status. To dictate that. The color that you get. Right.

[3049] SPEAKER_27: Because it goes this way and up.

[3052] SPEAKER_25: So if you have the number on the code, I think it gives the data. I wanted to go to the front. It says Blueprint 2025. If you're looking at five years, let's do a math round, it would be 2024 if we started. It just sounded cool.

[3068] SPEAKER_27: There was no other reason for that. There's no reason that that number was on there.

[3075] SPEAKER_25: So that could be anything. And the reason I say that is because I think about there's two things of what we should think about. One, when the first time we get the full strategic plan, we will have it and we will read it. We're going to buy into it and get everybody on board to move forward. Then by looking at Blueprint 2025, 2024, whatever number it is, that knowing that the goal is When we, we're going to re-evaluate by 2024, whatever number it is, did we meet all the goals? So like, so what is the end goal is for us to get to these points. So we have to make sure that if I were looking at it, if I was 2025 right now, and I looked at it, I would be like, oh, so this is what they wanted to do like four years ago. Like, this is where we're at today. be able to say, okay, what happened? Did we do good or did we not? Right.

[3133] SPEAKER_28: So the person that was drafting this, did they have privy to the resources, the assets that we had?

[3144] SPEAKER_27: Not while she worked on this. She only had what she could find online at the state level through CCEE, whatever report she could find. We sent her some of the foundational documents we have, but we didn't share all of our data with her. But she's willing to stay with us and continue to work at no cost to kind of help us polish it. But she just wanted to get a kind of a first feel of what do you guys want to see more of or how can we tweak it a little more. And I think the other piece of the 2025, 2024, 2025 is I think the next step is really going to be about what's the engagement process to really make sure that there's buy-in here. Because I think that's, I think kind of a little bit to Tom's point is We get too far along to make it too polished, then people are going to know that, well, you guys already decided, why don't you just tell us? And the reason I think it is a draft, because it really is a draft, I think we want to hear it. What's the best way to report that? Is there common? There might be a different way that elementary's want to be reporting metrics than a junior high and a high school. I mean, it might look a little different, but I think as long as there's consistency. Because I think part of what I'm thinking If we have something like a school site report card, we should have a standard way that a school does a report like in the spotlight so that we know, hey, we know that you've been working on special ed as one of your goals. How's it going? What are you doing? You know, or ELL or math or whatever that is. So that's kind of, that's the challenge is how do we, my understanding and my belief is that the goal of this is to help build coherence in the system So people know what we're really doing. But right now, I think the starting point is at least trying to get it to say what we're doing right now. And then take it to staff through a process that says how we're doing.

[3255] Nancy Thomas: I agree. And I think if you position it in such a way when you meet with the sites and the staff that you're soliciting input to adjust and update it, I think people always react, at least I do, to something that I can start with. Rather than, you know, brainstorming a whole list of ideas. In a way, through our discussions, through our LCAP, through our survey of parents, we have a lot of this data. And it even says so in the beginning. I think we need to hone it down to a draft which we can ask the community to fine-tune and buy into it in the process of helping us fine-tune it.

[3302] SPEAKER_27: Yeah. I think the staff should weigh in heavily on how.

[3305] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, and is it realistic?

[3307] SPEAKER_25: You know, what are the realistic goals that... Well, I would say in terms of the next steps we'd be outlining, like, since this is a priority, because we have the three strategic imperatives, but if we don't have the metrics of what we're going to do with the three strategic imperatives, then we're kind of just going to... Or how we're going to do it. Or how we're going to do it, and it's kind of... So for me, it'd be figuring out, like, our, I guess, The first thing is your internal team, and then it's going to be the sites, and then that piece. And then when we can figure out a timeline, or what do you think for coming back to us to discuss once that input's happened, and we have more specifics.

[3349] SPEAKER_27: I think by next round, I can have Ed Services do a little bit of tweaking as well. So I think you can see another draft by May 15, or next iteration, I guess I would say. But also some recommendations on process. I think that's fair. I know that if I had had time and if I could have given Laura and Leti time to really look at it and help make it feel more Newark-ish, I think it would feel a lot more congruent. But I also didn't want to bring you a finished product and say, this looks great and you don't have to tweak it. I think that's part of the process. I think the more we can all kind of get in this Well, I don't like that. Can we change that? And then eventually, if we have a good process, then people will feel that this is really representative of what we're doing.

[3401] SPEAKER_25: I like the framework.

[3403] SPEAKER_27: It's a start. It's just a start. So it's not a finished product. But I think we could have a better handle on where we're going with it. And if we do an extensive process and we go to five years, it might be 2025. And that's OK if everyone agrees that input's going to matter, just like it will.

[3422] Nancy Thomas: with the facility master plan. So many of the things in the FCMAT report are part of the finance department. If we could have Kim Lola and her team parse out that strategic imperative number two, it just feels like they would. Right now, I sometimes wonder if they're included, whereas if they're the ones that actually do the work,

[3453] SPEAKER_28: And then, you know, always speaks to one piece of it, which is the modeling and ensuring that we follow fiscal responsibility. But I think within goal two of that solvency, there's I know we discussed in the past about bipartisan tax, and it's kind of been just pushed aside now. That should be in there. And then just overall strategies to further operate our district.

[3485] Nancy Thomas: Right, so I mean, and that would be the higher level piece, but for the monitoring, get everything under control, make sure it stays under control, that could certainly be a piece that the finance team

[3498] SPEAKER_28: Yeah, I hear you. Boy, if you mention parcel text, right now you might not get a very good deal. because I think we need to show that. Whether we succeed or fail, that's.

[3523] SPEAKER_25: Well, but this is why you have to have a plan, right? You're not just going to say, oh yeah, by the way, we're going to do, we want to consider a partial tax.

[3530] Nancy Thomas: No, it's a partial tax against the plan for continuous improvement of academics and.

[3537] SPEAKER_25: With specific metrics. So for example, it would be, we are looking at a partial tax that will build a K-8 school in area three slash area four for the purposes of having this implemented of STEAM focus.

[3552] SPEAKER_27: But that's why I think it might be wise to wait and do a deep process for next year, for nine months, so that it aligns with what we're going to do with the facility master planning architect. Because that's part of our conversation today was, it's really more about process that we want to pay for with the architect to really go to every site and get that input. This is kind of the same thing we're asking is, you know, every site, we're starting like bottom up and top down. So I think that's kind of what I was thinking about recommending is let's go through a process now that we at least agree on the general ideas and principles here, then have the staff help us flesh it out from every level.

[3599] SPEAKER_25: I'm trying to figure out, because on the one hand, I'm like, I want to move forward, because for so long, from my perspective, we've taken so long not having a plan, and it feels like we're all over the place. Just until last month, we finally got a K-12 math adoption. I have that frustration of like, I want to kind of move on this piece.

[3628] SPEAKER_27: But goal one, I think we have that, once Luddy is able to work through that, that's where we have the most information for this. It's goal two and goal three that are not really fleshed out as much.

[3639] SPEAKER_25: But goal one... That's huge. But that's the most important. Exactly.

[3642] SPEAKER_27: But I'm saying that one we could probably get in the format quicker than anyone else.

[3645] Nancy Thomas: Yeah, we need a straw dog. So I think we need something to react to. For people to chew on rather than... you know, try to make it bottom-up. All of our surveys, all of our... It should be both. All of the stuff we've done with data should feed into... I think we can do both.

[3664] SPEAKER_27: I don't think... I think if the people really know this is really a draft and that it's not set in stone, I think that's the only danger. But I think really, we can work through a draft format with staff and just show that we're really listening to them.

[3679] Nancy Thomas: And I think that... And I hope they do argue about you know, what the goal should be. Because if they think it's an unrealistic goal, they may just ignore it. If it's something that they help determine the goal, and it's a stretch, and we know it's a stretch, they're much more likely, I think, to buy into it and to have coherence around achieving it.

[3703] SPEAKER_25: And you have to balance that from just, I want to say, as an organizational apathy of being like, well, you know what, you can get 1%. It's like, well, yeah, you don't have to do anything to get 1%. All you have to do is make sure kids go. You know what I mean? It's got to be a stretch goal, but you don't argue about it. Exactly. And it's like, so you have this. You have to do both. You can't just be like, oh, you know what? I'm going to do this crazy goal of 3%, even though I know I can get that easily. I'm going to do 4% just to make it look good on paper that I got 4%, right? We really need to challenge ourselves as a district. I do like this idea of having it parallel to the Facilities Master Plan, but I struggle with the fact that I do want it kind of sooner rather than later. So I'm trying to figure, wrap my head around, like, is there a way to just really move forward on diving into goal one, mapping that out, kind of presenting that as a framework, that these are our thoughts, as we're discussing the facilities master plan and getting input for that. Because otherwise, if we think about it, again, being in the outset, if we were just to show up to these meetings for facility master plan, what do you want? Well, I want a beautiful building that provides world-class education for my kids. At the end of the day, that's what I want. Everyone's going to have ideas of how to get there. If we don't have a framework to even start the discussion, then for the facilities master plan, we're going to dream, maybe we have like five arts buildings, but does that fit within STEAM? No, it doesn't. So we've got to figure out this balance of moving forward on this quicker. And then the facilities master plan,

[3816] SPEAKER_27: we'll guide that conversation, because then... This is already largely framed out in the LCAP and SPSA plans, so I think we have a lot of that. But I think what's missing is common reporting structures and standardizing on the goals and how far they need to go, and what's enough of a goal. So I think that's... And I know Leti would be weighing in heavily if she was here. She's very sick today. But I think that... Let me take another draft, run it through Ed Services, I think we'll do another iteration of this at the next board meeting and have a little bit more of a recommendation from med services and how we can flesh that out quicker.

[3857] Nancy Thomas: I know we're out of time.

[3858] SPEAKER_27: Yeah, we're out of time.

[3860] Nancy Thomas: Sorry.

[3863] SPEAKER_27: But keep the copies and I'll... Get them back to me. I took notes from what we said today.

[3868] Nancy Thomas: Next up, we're going to be moving into closed session, where we're going to have conferences with our labor negotiators, employee discipline, dismissal, release, conference with legal counsel regarding anticipated litigation. Is there anyone in the public that would like to address any of these closed session topics? Seeing none, we'll be assessing to closed session.

No minutes available.