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Alright, good afternoon.

We will be calling the board meeting to order in a moment and SPS TV will begin broadcasting.

All right.

Good afternoon, everyone.

This is President Taup and I am calling the board's special meeting to order at 4.30 p.m.

We would like to acknowledge that we are on ancestral lands and the traditional territories of the Puget Sound Coast Salish people.

We have with us directors of the Seattle School Board.

We have Vice President Briggs.

Director Clark will not be joining this evening.

Director Hersey will not be joining this evening.

We have Director Mizrahi, we have Director Rankin, Director Sarju is not here, will not be joining us this evening.

We also have Director Mangelson, Director Masoudi, and Director Yoon, and as I said before, this is President Taub.

The Superintendent is President as well as staff, and we will also be joined this evening by our newly elected directors.

This afternoon, we will be swearing in our recently elected school board directors, Jen Lavalle, Kathleen Smith and Vivian Song and Joe Mizrahi.

Following the oath of office, our new directors will have the opportunity to make a few comments and then we will take a brief recess to celebrate and reset.

Following the oaths of office and the reset, we will be moving into actual board business.

We will have an opportunity to do our progress monitoring, so we're going to put board directors to work right away after the swearing-in.

I am very excited for this evening.

This is kind of a moment for us to pause some of the day-to-day noise and bring us back to why we are here.

kids, their stories, their potential, and their future.

And I just want to start with this is honestly, especially for the new directors joining us today, the hardest job I have ever done.

It stretches you, it tests you, demands humility and courage every single week.

and responsibility is enormous.

We're talking about roughly 50,000 students, 50,000 individual lives moving through our schools.

So thank you so much for your dedication, for being here, for willing to not just run a campaign but then be sworn in and dedicated to the work ahead.

So with that, I'm going to pass it off to Superintendent Podesta who will administer the oaths of office.

Thank you, President Taub.

We'll begin with Jennifer Lavallee.

Jennifer, could you please step forward?

I, your name?

I, Jen Lavallee.

Dubai, solemnly swear.

Dubai, solemnly swear.

I, John Lavallee, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, the State of Washington, and the laws of the State of Washington, and to faithfully perform the duties of Director

and to faithfully perform the duties of Director of Seattle School District No. 1 King County, State of Washington To the best of my ability Congratulations

with the press.

Joe Mizrahi, could you please step forward?

I do hereby solemnly swear that I will support the constitutions of the United States and the state of Washington and the laws of the state of Washington and to faithfully perform the duties of director and to faithfully perform the duties of Director of Seattle School District Number 1, King County, Washington, King County, Washington, to the best of my abilities.

Congratulations.

Kathleen Smith, could you please step forward?

Thank you.

Repeat after me.

I. I. Kathleen Smith.

Do hereby solemnly swear.

Do hereby solemnly swear.

That I will support the constitutions of the United States.

That I will support the constitutions of the United States.

And the state of Washington.

And the state of Washington.

and the laws of the state of Washington and the laws of the state of Washington and to faithfully perform the duties of director and to faithfully perform the duties of director of Seattle School District number one of Seattle School District number one King County State of Washington King County State of Washington to the best of my ability to the best of my ability thank you congratulations Vivian Song, could you step forward?

Please repeat after me, I.

I, Vivian Song.

Do hereby solemnly swear.

Do hereby solemnly swear.

That I will support the constitutions of the United States.

That I will support the constitutions of the United States.

To the state of Washington.

And the state of Washington.

And the laws of the state of Washington.

And the laws of the state of Washington.

And to faithfully perform the duties of director.

And to faithfully perform the duties of director.

Of Seattle School District number one.

Of Seattle School District number one.

King County State of Washington.

King County State of Washington.

To the best of my ability.

To the best of my ability.

Thank you for your service.

Congratulations.

One more round of applause for our four newly sworn in directors.

We will now have an opportunity to hear from each of the directors, so I will call you up individually, allow you to share a few remarks.

We'll start with Director Lavallee.

If you want to come on up, one of the things that I don't know if you remember, but you came to one of my very first community meetings.

and I think it was probably long before you considered running for a school board but you brought data, a ton of data and thoughtful questions and you stayed after to chat with me to make sure I knew what families were experiencing and I love the fact that you bring to this board healthy skepticism, hard work and consistency.

So excited to work with you but give the floor to you.

Thank you so much.

Hi, my name is Jen LaValle.

I'm truly honored to step into this role today.

I want to begin by thanking Brandon Hersey for his deep dedication to our students in this seat before me.

He led through a pandemic and a time of major uncertainty, and it was no small task.

I appreciate the knowledge and the care that he brought to the board during this challenging time.

I want to thank everyone who supported me through the campaign, but especially my family.

My parents, both children of educators, instilled in me a belief in the power of public education.

My father served on the school board in the district where I grew up and brought me into conversations about advocacy from a young age.

And to my husband and my children who have supported me and spent so many nights without me at home as I've been doing this work, I thank you and I hope that you're excited about the work that we're doing together.

Throughout my campaign, I asked families what they loved most about our schools, and in my South Seattle community, I overwhelmingly heard our teachers, our diversity, and our community.

I am so grateful to have my kids at our local school where those things are all true.

But I also know that not every student is experiencing the excellence that we aspire to.

As we move forward, we must raise the floor for all students, because every child in Seattle Public Schools is capable of greatness.

Families are asking for more, more academic rigor, more diverse and robust programs, more access and meaningful opportunities.

Schools that are both safe and responsive to their child's needs.

Our community does not expect perfection, but it expects progress.

It wants partnership and clear communication and people that show up.

With this new board and our incoming superintendent, I'm excited to broaden our vision and shift the narrative together.

As Superintendent Ben Schulinger said, let's make Seattle Public Schools the greatest urban school district in the nation.

And now, let's get to work.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Director Mizrahi.

Director Mizrahi, I think I've said this many times, of all the work that you do, you're strategic, you're calm under pressure, and you understand how large systems move and how to move them.

So we're so lucky to have you as a board director.

Director Mizrahi.

Thank you, Gina.

Thank you, Superintendent.

So I was sworn in about a year and a half ago only.

I'm back up here.

In fact, it was so soon that my three daughters, who are in Seattle Public Schools, have a very reasonable policy that they'll only come to us swearing in every two years.

So we haven't crossed that threshold yet, so they're not here.

So I'd like to thank my family like Jen thanked her family, but I can't because they're not here.

So too bad for them.

Well, when I was sworn in a year and a half ago, by the way, I did not know that we were supposed to give speeches, which then I checked my email and Julia had told me we were supposed to give speeches.

So I hadn't prepared anything, so I prepared a little bit more.

But a year and a half ago when I spoke, I said, you know, off the cuff really, I was kind of vamping.

But what I said was that we have a phrase in organizing in my day job.

I'm a union organizer.

And we have a phrase in organizing that I always come back to, which is, it's not complicated.

It's just hard.

When you think about organizing, people can come up with all sorts of complicated things.

We're going to do these subgroups, and we're going to create this new organization.

No.

It's just about talking to workers.

It's not complicated.

It's just hard.

and I think there's a lot of truth to that with our school system as well.

There's a lot of problems in SPS.

There's lots of things we need to fix, but it's not complicated.

It's just hard work.

Something that I said a lot on the campaign trail, so I apologize for my fellow candidates who are with me because they're going to hear it again, but I believe it to be true.

One of the hard things about campaigning is that you spend a lot of time focusing on the problems with any system.

That's what people want to talk about when you're on the campaign trail.

How are you going to fix something?

What's broken?

But by my nature, I'm a very optimistic person.

So it was a little hard for me.

And I actually want to be leading with optimism.

And I'm going to say what I'm optimistic about, which is in my year and a half on the board, one thing I've seen that is very true is people have deep passion and commitment for their schools.

People love their schools.

They maybe don't love the district.

They maybe have problems with what the district's doing.

They maybe see the district sometimes as a barrier to the greatness of their school.

But people really love their schools.

And that tells me that we're actually not as far away as we might seem from what our new superintendent talked about building the greatest urban school district in the country, because that's a shorter bridge to gap than if it were the opposite problem.

If people said, well, the district seems okay, but I hate my school, that would be a huge problem, right?

So the fact that people love their schools shows that we are doing something right, and we have a really strong foundation to build off of.

So I want to leave with that optimism and really lead with this notion that it's just hard work that we have to do.

We have to build to back our trust with the community.

So that's not complicated work.

That's just hard work.

It's about listening to people.

It's about having authentic engagement, about having authentic conversations with the people who care about Seattle schools.

We have to boost our enrollment.

That's not complicated.

It's just hard.

It's about giving people the programs that they've told us that they like.

We have to stabilize the budget, and that might be complicated and hard.

I'll be honest about that.

So that might be one of those things that's complicated and hard.

I'm hugely honored by the faith that Seattle voters have shown in me.

I'm hugely honored by all the people who did so much work, volunteered, donated to my campaign to my family, who's not here, but who did a lot of work and sacrificed a lot of time with me to help me pursue this.

And I think a lot of people were encouraged by that optimism, and I want to continue to lead with that.

Because the last thing I'll say, the other thing we talk about in organizing is that the opposite of loving something isn't hating something.

The opposite of love is apathy.

And one thing we can say is that the Seattle public is not apathetic about their schools.

And that is also a great foundation to build off of.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Now we will have an opportunity to hear from Director Smith.

Director Smith brings a perspective as a parent with young kiddos.

You'll see she's got a slew with her tonight.

I think two of them are her own.

The grounding that matters, she listens and asks smart questions and makes decisions based on information.

And that's what students need.

So Director Smith.

Hi, so I did know there was a statement.

I have a short statement and just riffing a bit off of what Director Mizrahi said.

I think I'm describing things simply, but I don't want to give the impression that I don't think the work will be hard.

I want to begin by thanking my supporters, my family, and this community for the trust you've placed in me.

It is an honor to serve here on the Seattle School Board.

I know this role requires humility and a willingness to listen and learn, and I am committed to doing just that.

I am dedicated to Seattle's students, families, and educators, guided by values of transparency and clear communication, collaboration that brings diverse voices to the table, and centering human connection while making thoughtful, data-informed decisions.

With these values, I will work to strengthen public education as a foundation of equity, opportunity, and community.

Looking ahead, I share our incoming superintendent's optimism that together we can make Seattle's schools excellent.

I am excited to work as part of the new leadership team and with communities across Seattle to realize that vision.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Smith.

And last, we'll hear from Director Song.

Director Song served on the board with me previously, and before my first board meeting, when everything is all crazy and incoming, she was the only director who reached out to me and asked me, you know, can I help you with the agenda?

Can I answer any questions for you?

And I think that just talks to the kind of person she is.

So Director Song.

I often think I'm in good company with my new colleague, Director Mizrahi, but I'm surprised to also share tonight that my two middle schoolers said to me, didn't we just go to that?

Didn't want to come tonight, so I don't have my family here either, but I see some of my supporters here, so thank you for coming.

Today, this oath is both an honor and a responsibility that I feel deeply.

And before anything else, I want to acknowledge that this moment is not mine alone.

I want to thank first my family, my children, Ben, my parents, and our extended family.

Campaigns and public service ask a lot of families, and mine has supported me in ways big and small.

I also want to thank the many caregivers, educators, labor partners, community organizations, current and former elected leaders who supported this journey and who will remain essential partners in the work ahead.

After my last oath of office, I shared about my grandfather.

He grew up under occupation.

His education was disrupted by war.

He spent his entire adult life dreaming of coming to the United States and becoming a citizen, something he achieved at 77. We studied for his citizenship exam together and our first election was together.

His first vote and my first vote was for our local school district levy.

Four years ago, I said he would feel particular joy knowing all the many personal sacrifices and risks he made as his granddaughter made an oath of commitment to the Constitution and to promoting the interests of public schools.

I feel his presence today, but with a particular weight.

As someone who has spent decades volunteering of immigrant communities, public service takes on new significance in this moment.

During the Trump administration, when so many families feel anxiety about belonging, safety, and opportunity.

to take this oath today is to say clearly our public schools are for everyone.

But I stand here today not because of my story.

I stand here because of what this election said about our community.

Seattle voters did not merely vote on individual candidates.

They voted on the issues that mattered to them.

And for those of you who may not have attended the candidate forms, there was remarkably little daylight between candidates on the big questions.

academic rigor, the harm from school closures and other short-sighted budget cuts and the governance approach this district needs.

Voters sent a clear message.

We cannot meet this moment by repeating the same patterns, the same decisions, the same processes, the same approaches that have not worked or that run directly against community expectations.

I have the courage to do things differently and I expect the same from those that share this dais.

This is especially true as we welcome our new superintendent.

I know that some of my colleagues supported him because he brings an ambitious vision, a desire to make Seattle the greatest urban school district in America.

That is a bold and worthy goal.

But as his board, we must also recognize and internalize the simple truth.

We cannot fulfill that vision if our current families, staff, and school communities are not listened to.

A great district is not built on press releases or strategic plans, it's built on trust, follow through, and the daily experiences of students and educators in our classroom.

In my first term, I visited more than 40 schools.

I saw firsthand the brilliance of our students and dedication of our educators.

And I also saw the gaps, the inconsistencies and the inequities that our families talk about.

That is why I have chosen to return to this dais.

The talents and commitments are there for Seattle to become the best urban district in America.

And it's up to district leadership.

It's up to us to make the needed change.

So today, after taking this oath, I commit myself to the work ahead, to responsible and effective budgeting, to academic excellence, honest community engagement, to operational clarity, and to a vision of public education that reflects the hopes of every family who entrusts us with their children, particularly those that have endured tremendous sacrifice and risk in pursuit of better opportunities for them.

Seattle, I thank you for your trust in me, and to echo my new colleague, let's get to work.

Thank you, Director Song.

So now I'm going to call all board directors up.

We have to do the illegally required part here.

So all board directors, please come up.

Yes all board directors Superintendent Podesta will you please present the board Face the community

All right, thank you all for joining us here tonight.

It is my distinct privilege and pleasure to present to you the Board of Directors of Seattle Public Schools.

Thank you.

No we're not, okay.

all right you may be seated we are that was the first portion of our meeting now we're going to get to some actual business here so thank you everyone for joining us for the celebratory moment we're going to take a few minutes to enjoy each other's company as we reset for progress monitoring so if we could please be seated at the use in roughly 15 minutes so at 5 10 if we could be seated around the tables but we will So we will see everyone back around 5, 10. Thank you.

I love you.

Alright, I hate to start breaking up conversations, but board directors, if we could start assembling at the U.

Well, the student board directors listened.

Good timing.

Okay.

We've seen Director Mizrahi or Vice President Blakes.

All right, we'll give Vice President Briggs and Director Mizrahi one more minute.

All right, we're going to, we lost our superintendent.

All right, we're gonna move into the progress monitoring portion of tonight's meeting.

We'll have a presentation on goal one.

We'll have an opportunity to do a little discussion and then we will move on to a presentation on goal two and have a little discussion.

So with that, I will pass it over to Superintendent Podesta.

Thank you, President Taup.

I'm joined by my colleagues, Associate Superintendent Dr. Torres Morales and Mr. Ted Howard, who is our Chief Accountability Officer.

And I really want to make clear that we're kind of the spokespeople for a large interdisciplinary team that has been working on our internal processes.

to kind of prepare for progress monitoring discussions with the board, but also try to elevate our own practice.

We have others in the room if the conversation goes a particular way and we decide we need to phone a friend, but we'll do our best to get through this.

And I just want to acknowledge the work of folks in academics, schools and school senior management, in services, our technology folks, in business intelligence.

This has really been a full-court press and we'll talk a little bit specifically about this, that we're really trying to integrate this process to be sort of the tail end of internal practice improvements that we can discuss with the board as a highlight of what is going on, not be the front end that we're backing into.

We still have a lot of work to do.

Progress is the word of the day because this is a work in progress, but I really want to thank the team.

People work very hard.

Our original intent was that we wanted to make sure we could be responsive to the board's interest in a deeper dive, so only touch one of these subjects in a session.

We're doing two because November turned out to be a pretty busy month in Seattle Public Schools, so there's some information that'll be repeated.

We're gonna spend more time as a result on the early literacy goal than the math goal.

to avoid some of that redundancy.

And also, we've done more staff work on it, so I think we have a bit more to say.

But I just appreciate this opportunity.

I want to thank our newly constituted board for your interest in this matter and getting to work right away.

And I love the optics of this, that this is where you start because this seems like There's so many demands on the board, but when it boils down to what the most important oversight goal, it's not my place to say, but I would certainly argue that this is near the top of the responsibilities of the board, and so it's a great place to start.

So what we're trying to accomplish today is to talk about process again a little bit, set some context, which I'll do and I'll turn to my colleagues to go in a little deeper.

I am not going to pretend to be an expert in assessment as part of this process.

But I have worked closely with the team and watched multiple teams work on how they're gonna deal with data, how they will interrogate data to see what initiatives we can undertake so we can complete our strategic plan.

The life cycle for this in kind of constant improvement plan, continuous improvement as the board has articulated the vision and values of the community and we're using that as a starting point.

We're using very specific top line goals as part of that to think through our strategic planning and the initiatives we want to start.

We're still in a little bit of an awkward moment in as much as those are being finalized.

but this is a good place to start because the way we've structured this, this discussion is really about setting baselines and looking forward and so can inform how this process moves forward and how we do our work and our planning work going forward.

The subsequent touches with the board will be more true progress monitoring again.

We're establishing a context and a baseline here.

So the schedule that we all agreed to or that the board adopted, again, is built around a framework of three conversations a year per goal.

We are doubling up the baseline discussion for both math and early literacy tonight because we didn't we weren't able to find the appropriate spot on the calendar to do early literacy in November so we will do that one as well and then again get into math later.

That's something we'd like feedback on along the way while we all discussed a calendar that was structured this way and particularly since we have new, and I think we all need to be honest, we have new directors who have joined the board, we have incoming leadership, so our team is trying to be as flexible as possible that we kind of have a plan now, but we're certainly interested in taking feedback along the way, is this the right path?

I'm sure Superintendent Sheldiner will have his own ideas and experiences that's a point of elections, that's a point of bringing in new leadership is to get some new ideas on the table so nobody is religious on this exact methodology but we're trying to build something out so we do have running start for everybody that is involved in this.

So in terms of process, again, what we've been struggling with and trying to make sure is that this is part of a meaningful process.

While communicating with the board and the community is really important, we want it to be integrated with the work overall.

And so we're trying to get to the point where this progress monitoring discussions represent the tip of the iceberg in as much as this is the highlights of work that we're doing internally, to hold ourselves accountable, to look at what's working and what's not working, and we see various aspects of that.

Most importantly, or at least what we're working on first, is the internal progress monitoring processes.

We've worked hard to use these measures.

Again, this is a subset of measures that staff are looking at in detail with a team representing multiple departments, really focused again on schools, academics and services with data folks to help us synthesize the data and do research and analysis along the way to make sure that we come away from those sessions with action plans or at least further interrogation of the data that need to be done really at the school level, sometimes at the classroom level to understand because many of the discussions we've had in past years of this have been really at the system level and we're not going to address all these.

There are things that need to be done at the system level.

There's adoption of curriculum and system-wide professional development programs but there's also actions that need to be taken with individuals and in classrooms and so we really need to dig deep and it takes many hands, many eyes on data to do that.

Ultimately, we want to also make sure that all these efforts are aligned with how we look at school improvement plans and I'd like to ask Mr. Howard to speak a little bit to his vision for that and how we'll try to align that work going forward.

Director Rankin on the way back.

But as we come together to talk about progress monitoring It's important to look at section one and section two of the books I just passed out to you because you're getting just a quick snapshot of what we do in progress monitoring.

So I'm going to take you guys on a little road trip of what it's like to do a continuous school improvement plan at the start of the year and then what does it look like all the way down into the classroom and who participates and what does that look like.

And so the continuous school improvement plan is a roadmap.

It's a roadmap starting with the strategic plan from the board filters into the continuous school improvement plan at the building level, then it filters into building that.

What does that look like when you build that?

What does it look like at the beginning of the year?

Getting baseline data and in September we do some dipsticks, taking a look at what the correlated data looks like and that may mean attendance data, that may mean discipline data, that may mean sitting down talking to students who are struggling, mental health issues, things of that nature.

And then we personalize what that looks like.

We build our SMART goals around that and then we try to lift those SMART goals up throughout the year.

So if I took you on a road trip in August and September, you'd be looking at baseline data.

They would kick that off with the CSIP.

October, November would be the first look.

We'd look at early warning indicators, attendance, DIBELS, MAP.

And then as we look at the rosters, we would look at the master schedule and develop what that looks like for our students to personalize that to actually make sure we're meeting our students' needs.

As we build this, as you're taking a look at this quick look at this iceberg, you're seeing just a tip.

And so when we're saying the tip, imagine the whole year, but you only get a chance to look at this for a month.

And so there's a lot of other things that are happening below the water, but also throughout the school year, because this is continuous growth.

As we go, we learn.

We learn in September, we learn in October, we learn in November, and we want students to continue to learn, and we want that continuous school improvement plan to be adjusted, to be flexible, and then we want to leave space for what we don't know.

we have to leave space for what we don't know and what we didn't expect to happen.

It's almost like you having a house or apartment and a pipe breaking.

didn't see that coming.

So as teachers we want to make sure our teachers have the tools that they need and as we are building that it'll be successful.

Our principals are actually doing walkthroughs.

They're looking in the classroom, they're looking at attendance, they're doing observations and then they're checking in.

Parents, we ask parents to come and be a part of that conversation by sharing with us what works for their children.

what hasn't worked for their children, what our children need, what they've seen in the first month of school, and what they hope for their children.

And so as they build that with us, we're able to personalize that and actually make that happen.

That should be an ongoing conversation throughout the year, throughout the K-12 experience, all the way through until you get ready to launch to go to college or a career.

Thank you, Mr. Howard.

So just as we want, and we have a formalized structure around continuing school improvement plans.

The same with department goals.

We have a accountability structure and a performance structure that is really based around individuals.

This is an area where we need to do continual work and make incremental improvements in terms of making sure these plans cascade at the department level in the central office and across our lines of business, not just about the way we typically have these conversations about individual performance of leaders or individual contributors, less so about team performance unlike what we do at schools where there's a plan for the whole school as opposed to a plan for a particular department.

So this is work that still needs to be thought through and done.

And then all this is about improving our practice which means we really need to support our practitioners.

We need to support teachers, we need to support educators directly to make sure that all this is aligned to a plan and that when we have these conversations with the board and the community, this is a result of an integrated set of work that leads up to the results, the so what and how this is creating outcomes for students.

So the top line goal we're gonna discuss first is the early literacy goal.

The board adopted a goal for a second grade foundational skills that we're gonna start with the baseline tonight.

We wanna start talking also about differentiated targets or at least differentiated reporting.

because while the top line goal did not use the same distinct language around equity that we used in the previous strategic plan, we've heard loud and clear from the board about their expectations to understand how this work is playing out for multiple groups, we know that the community and the district is not backed away from any of its equity commitments, so while that is not reflected in the number, in the top line goal per se, we're proposing to keep monitoring differentiated targets, we're proposing tonight to carry forward some of the constructs we had in the past with African American males and students of color furthest from educational justice and to also keep tracking poverty as represented by students who qualify for free and reduced lunch.

And there are many more, and we know there's curiosity among directors and we're interested in what are these, again, this isn't meant to be the be all end all and staff are disaggregating this data a million different ways, certainly by the profiles of students and again by schools and by programs and by strategies so that's part of the feedback we want.

We thought this is a reasonable place to start and also gives us a bit of a historical context since at the high level these goals are similar to goals that we've had in the past.

so that's why we're starting there, but that's one of the things, any feedback, whether in this meeting or offline, we'd really like to have.

So that is establishing kind of the context and the process and what we're trying to accomplish here.

I'm gonna, turn it back over to Mr. Howard to just talk about kind of the scorecard that we're thinking of using in these discussions because it's a little bit simplified compared to things we've shown you in the past and then we'll get into the actual data.

All righty, so as we take a look at that scorecard, what we're trying to do is normalize what that looks like and get consistent language.

You see up there declining, you see maintaining, you see improving, and you see met target.

That could be something where we go up two points in the building, go down one point, but it's to get everyone on the same page where we're looking at what's working, what's not working, what needs to change, and we're developing a cycle of continuous improvement.

So as we're working through this process and taking a look at the performance status that you see up there, it's just normalizing the language, but it's also getting everyone in the classroom and in the buildings to actually get used to knowing that you're always going to start a new subject, a new chapter and you may be versed in it early on but then you may start over again and that's saying that in life that's what happens.

So we're starting off with using that language, the declining, the maintaining, just to foster a vocabulary that everybody's clear with.

I will read this quick quote.

We want all families to understand how we're doing and where we're working harder.

So these categories give a clear, simple picture of the progress toward every child reading at what grade level.

So this helps schools focus on what students need right now.

Leaders use the system to provide the proper support for each school.

It creates transparency that families can understand.

It protects students by ensuring we take action early.

It connects school level work to district big goals.

and it helps classrooms by keeping adults focused on improvement.

Now as I say all those things and we look at this, the hard part is now building it.

So to put a theory out and now turn it into action is what we ask every principal to do, every community to do, student to participate in that conversation.

So this continuous improvement with the CSIP builds into this common language around performance and then at the same time, our teachers, our principals, our students, we're continuously looking at data to help respond to that and get a real clear baseline to get a direction where we need to go.

Yeah, I'll admit when I first saw this scale, I was...

had a reaction that, well wait a minute, why do we have one way of succeeding and then three different ways that we're categorizing places where we're not as successful and the team really persuaded me that that's where we need to learn that having specific responses to where we're seeing improvement and how can we copy that, how do we react in places where our progress is flat is gonna be different than where we're seeing a reduction in progress, and so that's why this has got as many colors as it does.

I was first thinking, oh, this could be simpler, but I really appreciate the thought that went into this.

I'll turn it over to Dr. Torres Morales, who's going to go into the actual results, the actual baseline that we're trying to establish tonight.

Good evening, board directors.

I'm gonna start us off with the baseline data in our first goal, which is in the K through two literacy.

So what you'll see here is a brief description of the assessments that are gonna be used for the purpose of progress monitoring.

As you see, we're gonna be using the DIBELS, which stands for the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, and the MAP, which is the Measures of Academic Progress.

you'll see that the top line measure is actually going to be the map for second grade.

This was in response to direction from the board around the desire to start seeing data at second grade versus third grade because third grade felt too late and we needed to know in second grade so that we can make adjustments.

and so based on that, we also would start looking back at first grade and kindergarten so that we know in the younger cohorts or as kids are coming through where we need to start intervening in certain areas.

And so you'll see that in the blue, those are the interim goal measures, those are what we'll be reporting out on and then the pinkish color there, that's the map, that's the top line goal measure.

So the difference between the DIBELS and the MAP assessment, the DIBELS assessment is a one-on-one assessment.

It is conducted by teachers.

it does look at the foundational literacy skills, which was the intent of the goal.

And so built in there is phonemic awareness, letter naming, decoding accuracy, which is, those are critical to successful reading development.

It's also useful for diagnosing foundational reading challenges and when it's mixed with what's called the RAM, it is a screener for some weaknesses associated with dyslexia, et cetera.

The MAP is computer adaptive and students do take the test independently.

In the K2 version of the map, the foundational skills in addition to early reading comprehension and second grade are assessed, as well as vocabulary use and growth aligned to reading standards.

This is useful for providing a broader view of reading progress, foundational and early comprehension and ability to transfer and apply skills.

When you think about using these two types of assessments for progress monitoring, this gives you a bit more of a holistic sense versus being purely computer adaptive or purely teacher administered.

This will give you both.

So teachers have worked with kids and heard them read and giving their version of what they're seeing based on valid and reliable assessments, and there's a computer adaptive version.

So this is giving us a more holistic view for where students are performing in terms of foundational literacy.

On the next slide, this is where you're gonna see our top line measures with baseline.

So we went back to 22, 23, just to provide a little bit of the trend data.

In 24, 25, this is what you will see as where we ended and 25, 26, these are where the goals are going, moving out.

As you note, it is 2% per year is for all students, but then there are differentiated targets for groups as Superintendent Podesta noted.

We did not want to get rid of some of our equity stance on some issues to look at how are our kids performing.

At the end of the day, when we have some of our most marginalized performing and outperforming, that's letting us know that the system changes we're doing are actually changing the system where we need to change it.

So let's start with interim measure grade one MAP.

So interim measure 1A.

This is the percent of grade one students who achieved the grade level benchmark or higher on the spring MAP reading assessment.

What you'll see is that 63% of our students in Seattle Public Schools did meet those scores on the MAP assessment.

It is a RIT score which stands for a Roush unit.

It is actually a score of 171 for those that are curious and interested and wanna know more.

But that means that 63% of our students met the score, 36.5 did not.

You can also see the data disaggregated by some of the subgroups that we had indicated.

If we go to our next set of measures, what you're gonna see is this is the growth.

So what's the difference?

The MAP Growth is looking at, did a student make one academic year's worth of growth, essentially, for their grade?

So from the beginning of school to the end of school, did they make what would be considered one year of academic growth?

When we look at the MAP Growth Measure, this is specifically for the students who did not meet the standard, or meet the score.

That's why we're looking at the growth.

The important reason to look at the growth is that lets us know, are we on track with what we're doing?

Are our instructional strategies working?

Is the coaching working?

Is what we're doing with principals working?

And in a perfect world, what we would see is that all kids are meeting their growth measure and or exceeding it, and that tells us that we're getting kids up to at least a year's worth of growth or more.

so when you put the two measures together they become important to provide a more holistic picture as to what's going on in schools because there's one thing to say are the kids proficient or not and the other thing is okay for those kids who aren't proficient are we growing them by a year or more?

So when you look here you'll see that 66.2% of our students did not meet our growth measures.

So what is that telling us?

This is telling us that we do need to do something differently because not only are there a group of kids that aren't meeting the measure, there's a group of kids who aren't even meeting the year's worth of growth.

So that's why this measure is an important measure to look at.

What are the dates of the two measurements?

So when did they not meet the standard and then when are we measuring it again to see if they

We usually do them at the same time, so I believe, if I look back, this was from, this was spring.

These were the spring first graders, which are current second graders.

Yeah, you good?

Okay, okay.

So next we're gonna look at the grade one DIBELS.

As a reminder, the DIBELS is slightly different.

This is a teacher administered exam.

This covers foundational literacy skills.

And so when we look at the DIBELS, what we see for the first graders is that 74.2% of the students are meeting those foundational skills as scored by our teachers, not by computers.

So this is a teacher sitting with a student one-on-one actually going through reading and skills and those sort of things and marking the assessment.

and even then we had 25.8% of our students who did not meet the benchmark on that so we do have some more work to do as a system.

Finally we did kindergarten dibbles so this is actually important to look at as well because in terms of thinking about a long term second grade goal you do need to start thinking back and thinking earlier and intervening where it's needed and so for kindergarten what you'll see is 66.6% of our students met what would be considered a kindergarten levels of foundational literacy as administered by one on one with teachers.

So we're gonna talk a little bit now on pathways to success.

So we showed the data, we talked about it, we see that we're doing well, but we still have gaps, and we still have gaps in the same areas.

And so it does beg the question about, so what are we gonna do about this?

We can't just sit with this data and be happy that we have some promising data.

We have to think about, we need to do some things differently.

So I'm gonna give it over to Superintendent Podesta to kick us off on some of the draft strategic plan conversation.

I did say we have a timing issue here and maybe it's not as much I'm making a bigger deal of it than it is since this is really about a baseline discussion and as we finalize and continue to adapt our strategic plan that will lead to a high level set of priorities in terms of where we need to focus on, we need to focus on academics, we need to focus on workforce.

In the draft of strategic planning working now, we've identified five priority areas, academic and academic approaches, workforce development, unified system of leadership and accountability.

and support for educators and schools that they have the resources that they need and then engagement with the community and trust building are kind of the five areas and then there'll be specific strategies and priorities come from the priorities Those are areas of focus.

The strategies will kind of be general strategies and then we really need to hone in on a specific set of initiatives which will be projects.

The point of an initiative is to make system-wide change.

What is it, since we want growth, since we want change, what are we actually going to do to affect that change?

We also want this same nested structure for accountability and I was gonna ask Mr. Howard to talk a little bit about kind of the analog to this in terms of as we set goals and this discussion that we're having here is the accountability process at the goal level.

I think if you could describe kind of a cascading set of accountability that we would envision, Mr. Howard, that'd be great.

Yes, I'd be happy to.

I'm gonna go in reverse.

and say our students sit in here.

Do you guys still have a library card?

Yeah?

You do?

Here's a second question.

How many minutes do you read every day?

Outside of school books, the history books, the literacy books, on your own.

Not including cell phones.

Probably like an hour a week.

An hour a week.

Email reading, okay.

An hour.

Hour.

It depends on the day.

On the day.

Probably four hours, but any other day.

Okay.

Great, great.

I'm going to pick on some of the directors here.

How often do you read?

Okay, okay.

Read a book.

Okay, okay.

Hour day?

Okay.

Present top?

Probably include the newspaper in the morning and then kids' books and then my book in the evening, probably about an hour.

About an hour.

I think I read too many hours.

It's my escape from life and stress release and I'm ashamed to say how many I probably fit in.

Okay, okay, okay.

Thank you.

Ted, are we talking about, yeah, pleasure reading?

Yeah, it counts.

I know, but is that the only thing we're talking about?

Or just all reading?

Just trying to get an estimate how much you read a day.

I mean, a lot, I would say.

So, like, two hours.

Okay.

of books for pleasure, almost none.

I'm dyslexic and it's not enjoyable.

So I listen to audiobooks when I'm in commute.

And that counts.

Yeah, and that counts.

So the reason why I wanted to just do a dipstick is we want to personalize what we're doing when we start talking about draft strategic plans.

These are plans to be made, but they're made to be adjusted based off of just this quick survey I did with you here to find out How often are you reading?

And so as we talk to our parents and find out this information, we have to make adjustments.

And so we do come up with our goals and guardrails and they cascade down into our priorities, into our strategies and our initiatives, but they're gonna shift.

based off of the information I just got here, an audio book or someone likes reading or what they don't like reading, but we want our parents to participate.

Our parents, we ask our parents, first thing we ask them to do, get a library card.

We want you to visit the library.

Go on a field trip to go visit the library.

If we're gonna increase literacy skills, I need you to go to the library.

I need you to check out books.

I need you to read at least 30 minutes a day.

For high school students, I need you to read at least an hour a day.

And you should be reading anywhere from 25 to 30 books a year.

Picture books, starts with picture books.

But the reason why I started that way and worked backwards, I want you to see how we apply our goals and what it looks like and how we change our goals based on the information we got here and that's what we ask our teachers to do, we ask our principals to do that, we encourage them to get more information and the more information they get, they can personalize it.

So as they get to know their students, create a sense of belonging, create a sense of hey, this is your school, what you need, we can shift that and make that happen.

So as we look at our priorities and initiatives, they are a theory and then we will shift and change that.

So we'll set our goals.

using our CSIPs, we will set our priorities.

Guess what?

When it comes to report card conferences, they may change because after report card conferences, we may shift that practice based off of what we learned from those parents.

Then we ask our departments to come together to align.

They come together to work together to look at the strengths and weaknesses that they have together in their PLC or in their teams to see what they need to shift that practice based off of information just found out, hey, we have a student who doesn't like reading and wants to do audiobooks.

What are we going to do in the classroom?

What does that look like when we break into small groups?

How are we going to do that?

How are we going to do that in math?

How are we going to do that in science?

What are we going to do to address that?

That's new information that some people may have background in and some people may not have a background in, so we're going to shift that.

Then we have to monitor, progress monitor, have conversations.

Why are we having conversations?

Because some of our teachers have skills in that and some of our teachers do not have skills in that.

If I was to put some pressure on our students here and say, do you have a favorite teacher?

Wouldn't ask you to name that teacher.

they would probably tell me who their favorite teacher is.

If I put a little bit more pressure on our students, I'd say, do you know the strongest teachers in your building and the ones to stay away from?

They probably would tell me if I put a little bit more pressure on them.

And so in saying that, we want our students to know that every teacher that sits in front of them has the skills that they need to be successful.

And that's what this does with the goals and guardrails and the priorities and strategies to get to initiatives.

And that's what we're working on.

As we build this together, our board has given us the goals and guardrails and the pleather to be able to come up with a plan that is going to adjust and change throughout the school year.

was just gonna ask Dr. Torres-Morales to go a little bit down memory lane with our strategies.

We've had our early literacy goal for a long time in the previous strategic plan since 2019. It's evolved a little bit in terms of structure, but the aspiration, I think, is the same.

And so we've learned things along the way, and Rocky, maybe if you could kind of walk us through what's presented.

Thank you, Superintendent Podesta.

I'm gonna go through what some of the strategies were from the previous strategic plan and also what we learned from those strategies, which is gonna help inform some of our pivots and initiatives going forward.

So one was the implementation of a common K-5 curriculum.

with focus on systematic phonics to ensure consistent reading instruction across schools.

That was the initiative.

What did we learn from that?

That the curriculum that we did end up adopting lacked some critical elements and especially in knowledge building.

So for those that are curious, you can pull reports on this.

Ed Reports is one of them.

You can go there and you can look at ELA curriculum and different math curriculums and they'll give you what they call gateways and those sort of things and it'll just show you where they feel like curriculum are lacking.

And so one of the things that we found is that what we ended up adopting as it started getting more research was that it did lack some of those critical elements.

in the science of reading training, it's for all K through three teachers and principals to align teaching with research on reading.

What we learned from that, that it did improve our teacher understanding of the science of reading, but that the training must be comprehensive and required for everybody if we wanna see some of those results.

instructional coaching and monthly PLCs, ability to provide job-embedded support for improving the teacher practice, specifically in priority schools.

And what we learned was that the coaching developed capacity if integrated with the PLCs and with principal leadership, but in the absence of that, it doesn't always land well.

Principal Learning Network was to strengthen the instructional leadership in the priority schools.

And what we heard from that was that the priority school principals felt that supports were clear, coherent, and impactful.

So what does that lead us to know is that when we're thinking about leadership networks for instructional improvement, that this is a lever that we should potentially pull on, but how do we do that in a more robust way across the system?

DIBELS and MAP were adopted district-wide in K2 to monitor skills, development, and growth.

DIBELS, along with the RAND component, was used to help for us to screen for dyslexia and differentiate early based on needs.

What we found was that inconsistencies remain in how schools use the data for differentiated instruction, so for us that's an indication that these are strong tools we can use them, how are we using them, how are we working with schools and teachers and principals to build up their skill set to use that data and not just have the assessment sit on the shelf.

And then curricular embedded assessments which sound pretty fancy but basically it's almost like when you would have your unit test or your quiz or your what, So curriculum bed assessments lead teaching to real-time student progress.

They're promising tools for MTSS implementation and improving the use of real-time data, but more work to be done there around what does it mean when a student misses a question on a CEA?

In reality, those are aligned to a standard and that gives, from a teaching and learning perspective, an indication, hey, the kid doesn't know that standard yet, and it's quicker because it's usually done in short cycles, which means at the end of a week or at the end of a month versus waiting for a map result to tell you those sort of things.

Next we're gonna look ahead and Superintendent Podesta is gonna join me on this one because we're talking about now the strategic plan going forward.

And so we are looking at, here specifically we're gonna be talking about three priority areas and I wanna be clear this is draft.

Once again this is draft.

This is nothing that's fully baked and ready to go.

But the first priority is rigorous and inclusive academic experiences.

Second priority area is recruit, develop, and retain a diverse and effective workforce.

And the third one is unified leadership and systems of accountability.

So within our priority area for rigorous and inclusive academic experiences, you'll see one of the strategies is around high quality tier one instruction and aligned assessment.

So to adopt a new K-5 curriculum, as you'll note, I said previously that We did an adoption before, it was lacking some key elements, so we are in a space where we recognize we do need to do an adoption of a new K-5 curricular material for language arts, expand the use of curricular embedded assessments to align the instruction in a timely way with student needs, and then reinforce universal design for learning to ensure inclusive, accessible instruction for all.

For those not familiar with universal design for learning, it's a way to set up lesson structures in your instruction that make it more universally accessible to students.

Additionally, putting more emphasis on a multi-tiered systems of support.

I think y'all have heard me say this a couple times, but we are pushing this now.

Even this week, we had principals here in professional development working on multi-tiered systems of support up to and including through our high schools.

We had coaches here that were high school principals for years working with them on how do you do MTSS in your high school.

So every single one of our high school principals received that as well.

Here, when we're talking about the emerging initiative, somewhere in the vein of improve the data systems and the collaborative structures for monitoring progress and coordinating supports that students need, and also provide clear guidance for consistent school-based implementation of Tier 2 and Tier 3 support.

So what does that mean?

In MTSS, a student, we could see from CEAs and MAP and Dibbles, the student might need some more support, what does that mean?

Okay, let's give them a Tier 3 support.

in an effective MTSS system, schools and teachers would know how does a student get into a tier two support, how do they get out of a tier two support, and what is a tier two support.

And it should be a research and evidence-based support or structure.

So that's what we're talking about when we say the guidance being consistent for schools.

In terms of our second priority area around recruit, develop, and retain a diverse and effective workforce, the strategy is to develop and recruit high-quality professionals.

So the emerging initiative is around aligning the systems district-wide for consistent job-embedded professional development.

So what does professional development look like specifically for our educators?

System as a whole, but really a big emphasis on our educators.

Thinking back, if we talk about in the previous iteration of the STRAP plan with science of reading training, What does that mean?

How are we doing that?

K-3, all elementary principles, those sort of things.

And then connecting observation, feedback, and educator support to instructional vision for achieving goals.

And finally, unified leadership and systems of accountability.

It's more so related to performance management, so establishing the routines and structures for monitoring and accountability at all levels to connect school and classroom practice to goals and guardrails.

And when we talk about this, it's not just about schools, it's actually coming all the way up to even at the central office, like what are our department's goals?

What are we doing?

And how are we making sure that our strategies are aligned with what schools need to support them so that they can achieve their goals?

Thank you, Dr. Torres Morales.

I had mentioned this before.

This represents three priority areas out of five, and this construct was really helpful for us in our work with our partners at Education Resource Strategies in terms of how do we organize our work?

was the point of the priority areas that obviously the academic experience, all our teaching and learning staff can lead that effort.

The workforce involves line management as well as human resources and several areas where we're responsible for professional development.

The unified leadership and accountability That is a challenge and an observation we really got in the diagnostic work is that we have spread many functions across multiple departments and we need to reconcile that.

In addition to these three, there's a priority area again about resource and resource allocation to make schools have what they need to be successful and according to student need.

and then a fifth one about community engagement and trust building.

We're working on those as well.

In the end, this list of initiatives needs to be manageable and prioritized in each year.

We probably can't move all of them in parallel in any given year, but we can prioritize.

And we hope to have a draft set of initiatives to discuss with the board in early 2026. And again, our goal is to have as finished product as possible in draft mode.

So again, with the reconstituted board and the incoming superintendent, to be teed up so Superintendent Schuldiner can kind of tie a bow around it and you all can come to terms on how we move forward.

But I think we're making good progress.

I think establishing this baseline for progress monitoring is a good start.

I'm sure it's going to evolve.

This is not exactly how we'll do it, but it's made a difference in how we're approaching our work already, particularly as we're being mindful of the future and what we want to do next.

I know that was a lot of information.

I think we wanted to just get it all out there and then open it up for questions before we go to math and we don't have to cover all the ground in math because we covered a lot of it in this presentation.

Thank you, Superintendent Podesta.

So just looking at the time and how we're going to manage this conversation, essentially what we're going to do is we're just going to go around the U.

We're going to start this way.

We'll go around the U.

I'm going to ask that we have about an hour for this discussion for questions on the reading topic and then we'll move to the math.

and ask directors keep their questions or comments for this first round to roughly two minutes so if you kind of get over those two minutes I'm going to ask you to kind of wrap it up and that way everyone has an opportunity and we can hopefully or possibly go around again after we have questions and comments so with that we'll just kind of continue along the U Director Smith

Thank you.

This was, I think, a very comprehensive presentation, so I appreciate that.

I think my only comment is for science of reading.

It has training for K-3 teachers and principals.

I have seen some analysis recommending that the science of reading doesn't stop.

at third grade, but to kind of continue it on up.

But that's a very small issue.

Overall, I think this looks good.

Staff hang on an opportunity to respond.

No, I just want to say thank you, and we'll take that into consideration.

The initiatives are very much draft, so feedback like this is very important.

And I could also see the benefit, because there are times where, for some reason, there's a student that maybe is not at grade level by the end of third grade, and so if they're going into fourth grade, how is that teacher ready to support them if they haven't had some of the foundational science of reading training?

So thank you for that.

Vice President Briggs?

Oh yeah, mine doesn't work.

Can I?

Yeah.

Thank you.

Oh, it's still on.

I just have a quick question, possibly two.

are, as far as the data, the disaggregated data, who all is included in students of color from educational justice?

Are native students part of that group?

And is it possible to disaggregate them as a separate group?

And also students with IEPs?

I'm wondering about that.

that group as well.

We can disaggregate the data any way that you all would like and share it.

For the purposes of progress monitoring, that's a conversation that we need to have and happy to do it any way you all would like.

If it's that we would want to see those numbers in these sort of sessions, Fine, we can do it that way.

If it's that y'all would want to see them in some sort of like board memo, we can do it that way as well.

And then to your first question around students of color furthest from educational justice, it includes black, African American, Native American, Pacific Islander, Hispanic Latino, Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern North African students, and multi-racial students from any of these groups.

Ah, I see it's in the end notes, yes, okay.

See, you thought I knew that off the top of my head.

Yeah, very impressed.

Okay, great, thank you, that's all for me.

One comment I would add about that is we had as a recommendation not so much because I think the whole team thinks it's particularly useful, it's just that I wasn't ready to abandon it because it's something we've talked, we wanted to have this conversation and look critically, that's a concept we've had for many years, so before we just said, hey, let's stop, I have a feeling at the staff level, people might prefer to disaggregate the data another way, mainly because it's very difficult to benchmark.

This is a Seattle Public Schools thing, and so in terms of looking at other strategies, looking at benchmarks with our peers, it doesn't necessarily always offer a lot of value, but we wanted to think about it and get feedback.

She was saying to keep it under two minutes because of me.

I emailed a bunch of questions already, so you guys already received those.

I won't go into all of those to save everyone from them.

I'd like to mention kind of what Director Briggs just mentioned as well.

We're not seeing any IEPs, 504s, or specific learning disabilities charted out on this graph.

And although we do need to see, you know, the students furthest from educational justice that absolutely should maintain, we need to see, you know, the kids that are struggling to learn reading also broken out on this.

As well as, you know, high cap and multilingual learners would be beneficial as well to see how all of this data kind of goes together.

Going forward into this, we have a bunch of different competing curriculum at this point in time, along with apps and systems.

What are we looking at discontinuing, or how are we looking at the whole ecosystem of how these interact together as we're trying to meet these goals?

The next one, he mentioned science of reading aligned trainings.

Oh, okay.

I just didn't know if you wanted me to rocket fire for two minutes, and I'm happy to do that.

Up to you, but you want to give him a chance to respond?

It's up to you how you want to do it.

I will stop.

Either way, I got notes.

I have notes here.

I'll be real quick.

For the science of reading online training, when I've talked to teachers about that, there's been two call-outs in that it was a two-hour training that happened one time when they've done stuff in the state of Mississippi to improve reading rates.

It was 60 hours over the course of the year.

So those are very different things when we're talking about that we've done trainings.

Also science of reading, what specific trainings, because that's very much an umbrella turn.

I will finish with the last one, which is hopefully a short one.

There was a mention of the DIBELS assessments being given K through two.

I just want to ensure that we are in accordance with the law and offering DIBELS testing to screen for dyslexia at all points in a child's education with Seattle Public Schools.

So you can go for it in just a sec.

So we may have more time for questions.

The only reason I did the two minutes is because if we each do two minutes and they do respond, that's 40 minutes total.

So that gives it like, then we have a 20 minute fudge room.

So we may have time to go around again.

Absolutely.

If we go around again, I have so many questions.

But again, they already got them emailed.

And so I did compress into my top line questions.

I feel bad pushing people.

I just want to, we may have time for more questions as well.

And before I let Dr. Torres Morales give you real answers, I do want to highlight that we really appreciate those written questions.

Staff are working on responses and we'll transmit those to the whole board.

You know, we normalize our practices.

That's a practice we have and it's great.

It is really helpful to get those questions.

And again, we're trying to do this as much as possible as an interdisciplinary team.

So we'd like to get a lot of eyes on it.

And as we go forward, I think it also touches on the subject of disaggregated data.

do we want 100 data points in a presentation?

We used to have a presentation and a memo.

We're trying to figure out how that goes, but there is room for us to present more detailed information in other formats, but we appreciate the questions going forward, so I'll shut up now.

I'll also probably ask less questions as we've figured it out, but no guarantees.

Yeah, no, thank you.

And I think, you know, one of the things I want to do a call out on is when you talk about the high cap results, that's where when you look at some of these MAP growth measures, they become very important because oftentimes that group of students is proficient or above on assessments and people just say, oh, they're fine.

That's where you need to look at growth measures because it'll say, even if they're proficient or above, have they grown a year or more?

in school, because that tells us how are we doing with our instructional practice.

Just wanted a side note on that.

But in terms of DIBELS, yes it is administered, but we will get some more confirmation on that.

We'll submit it with your written response in terms of how it's used for the dyslexia screener.

For the science of reading training, duly noted and thank you.

We have been doing a little bit of work looking at Mississippi and where their data has gone because they're very much, I wouldn't say an outlier, but they're being celebrated for the reading results so we've actually been looking at some of the results when we're thinking about our goals and also just thinking about what have they been doing.

And so noted on the science of reading training and the amount and extent.

So thank you for that.

and then in terms of competing curricular, we are currently in the process of working through K-5 English language arts adoption and then related to that as part of the strategic plan in our work with ERS.

We recently pulled a team together of our elementary schools where we were seeing basically are the best results we're getting for language arts, to talk to those principals, have them get feedback from their teachers about what is it that's working for them, whether it was the core curriculum, whether it was something that they purchased on their own.

What were they doing and how were they getting those results?

For context for this group as well, what we found was when we started to look at where the schools that were having the most success, we saw the range in there, and when I mean the range, it was from all over different parts of the city, it was all different demographic groups, and so what we felt really good about was, okay, so we do have pockets that are doing this well for different groups of kids, different parts of the city, different socio-economic groups, pull them together so they can give us some feedback too as we're thinking of drafting our initiatives going forward, how are we using some of their successes to start replicating that across the city.

Director Mizrahi.

Yeah, thank you.

I'll have fewer questions, so I'll be able to cede my time to Director Lavallee.

First of all, I think this is really very helpful work, especially in all the work that's gone into setting the baseline is super important and I think will be really helpful as we measure progress over time.

So I want to appreciate all the work that went into that.

I think most of my feedback is on the the strategies piece of it is not negative feedback because I know I understand where we are in the process so I just want to give you my initial thoughts on it you know I think that it would be great to see I think all the things seem like the right direction it would be great to see more just tangible like you know how are we doing these things how are we aligning systems district-wide what professional development are we using and I think the thing that we have an opportunity to do is to really develop these strategies in ways that are, we can do a temperature check as they roll out to see which ones are working and which ones weren't.

I think one of the challenges that I had in our last round of progress monitoring was some of them were lumped together in ways that some things were working, but it was hard to tell which ones were working and which ones weren't working.

So I think being able to really identify which strategies are successful, which ones aren't, and we need to just move on from.

So as we build out these strategies from the idea form, like what specifically are we doing, I think building in ways to measure the efficacy of each strategy.

And then the other thing on what strategies we're using as we develop the goal, one way that we talked about this that I think was super important for those of us who are on the board was around resources and how we're moving around and allocating resources in a way that really focuses on this goal.

So I would love to see in these strategies what that means in terms of resource allocation, how we really are moving resources from wherever we're moving them from, and that's probably an important thing to know too, to that K through second grade literacy.

And I think that if we understand the resources that we're putting into it, of course then we can, as we measure what's effective, we can maybe pump more resources into those things.

And the last thing I would say is that really thinking about, and maybe it's in priority area too, how particularly in that K first and second grade, how we really orbit the student's school day around early literacy and thinking about how that becomes ingrained in their science and math curriculum and what they're doing in library and music and just, you know, if that's the goal is to really focus on that second grade literacy, how do we make every piece of the child's school day about literacy?

And I think that's the type of resource allocation that I would be looking for at least.

That's my feedback.

Thank you.

Thank you for this baseline.

Looking at the kind of draft that we have for now, one point of feedback that I have is a lot of these strategies are kind of broad strokes, systematic strategies, and what seems to be missing for me is what are your strategies around jump-starting the kids that really need to be jump-starting.

Is it high-dosage tutoring?

I'm not the educator, I don't know what those strategies are, but these right now feel very kind of high-level, applies to everybody, but I want to know what are the strategies for the kids that really need the extra support.

Another point of feedback as we're going forward, I would be interested to learn more about how this team plans to track fidelity of adoption for these strategies.

So kind of looking at one of the things that you had learned with your previous strategies, there's inconsistencies that remain.

So going forward with a new set of strategies, how will this team be tracking fidelity for each of the strategies.

And kind of echoing what Director Mizrahi is saying, with future sessions of progress monitoring, I think it would be really helpful to know what analysis was done and help us understand why we think the strategy didn't quite work the way we were working, kind of more of that analysis.

and also kind of echoing what he said around more specifics, I'd like to get us to the level where a parent would be able to kind of identify the strategy in their own students' learning.

So kind of getting to that, what can a parent expect?

And I think it will be really helpful to bring the community along around the work that we're trying to do for our kids.

Thank you.

I just wanna reply to that real quickly.

You're speaking my language around accountability, so I would tell you in year one, in this collection of our strategic plan, we have not collected that data yet.

We have learned some things, but system-wide, we have not identified universal strategies we're gonna put across K through 12. I would also tell you, when you're taking a look at the four disciplines that you have in front of you, I gave those out to you so you could see where we're headed.

The lead, the lag measures, the correlation of data, all that's in the best practices.

So you're going to see us start to use that language.

We wanted you guys to be proficient in the language we're going to be using.

So when we start to look at the SMART goals and start to collect these patterns, you'll be able to see it.

I would tell you, performance trends.

is what we're looking at immediately and performance trends refer to patterns of change with students over time and so we're looking at improving, what's improving, what's declining, what has worked, what hasn't worked.

We're also looking at the pace, students are progressing.

We're also gonna be looking at who's accelerating faster, slower and then we wanna identify what strategies that have worked, which ones we're going to lift up and the ones we're going to stop using.

and so as we start to collect that in our strategic plan, you're gonna see all this roll out in year one of our strategic plan and we'll be very succinct with you about what's worked, what hasn't worked, what we're gonna use for PD and support around that and how we're gonna continue to build that and learn from that throughout the year.

So we're just at the early stages in that iceberg Think about that iceberg.

That's all the stuff that's happening underneath, like the ducks paddling underneath.

We're doing all those things underneath to get to the point where you see us start to move forward and show growth.

But we're just at the early stages.

Related to that, when we talk about the multi-tiered systems of support, that is a model that OSPI does push that we need to do, all school districts need to do, because embedded in there are the research and evidence-based practices for what a student needs.

So it may be worth in a future time us just talking through what is that with the board so that people know because ultimately a parent should be able to know if their kid ends up getting a Tier 2 support that should have been a conversation in some way like hey this is what we're doing and no but it shouldn't also be that it's exactly this thing for Joe this thing for Vivian this thing for Josephine it should be what does Joe need and this is what it is and the family should know but it should be identifiable that yeah my student is getting a Tier 2 support for reading or even for science or for whatever it is So I think a little bit more conversation on that.

But duly noted on the fleshing out, yeah, we're there too.

We've talked a lot about this.

For example, what would be almost the work plan for each initiative?

What is it?

And within there, if I hear you and Director Mizrahi, it's also analysis of the outputs and the outcomes.

What are the steps that are going through in the work plan?

Are we hitting them?

Yes or no?

Are we checking fidelity?

And also then, what are the results coming?

So duly noted.

Director Mangelson?

Oh, sorry.

More response just to both your comments.

I think there'll be companion conversations as we discuss the budget about resources and how that aligns with this.

And then we do want to do a longer session just on the strategic plan and drill down into the proposed initiatives early in 2026. So this is a really, it is by definition a really high level delineation.

Director Mangelson.

All right, I just have one question.

I heard you all kind of discuss how, like when going beyond just data, you're engaging with parents, like there's a lot of parent involvement, and I especially heard discussions about like principals coming and talking and being engaged in these things, but I'm really, I'm curious because I didn't hear it mentioned, if teachers are directly being brought into these discussions.

Because I feel like, I mean, obviously as you move into higher grades, student engagement is a really good resource for understanding directly at the source of what's going on.

But I think especially K through second grade, I think teachers should definitely have some sort of a voice in kind of monitoring what's going on in their classrooms as they're the ones who are seeing it daily.

So I just didn't hear anything, I don't know, I'm just curious if there are plans for it or if that's currently going on.

So, thank you for that, and I'll clarify a bit.

So, for example, on Tuesday we had what's called school leader engagement session, and that's where every principal across the city comes in and we do professional learning with them.

And a lot of what that professional learning involves is working with them and what's called, like, their professional learning network, so small groups of principals around what their problems of practice are, but embedded in there, is how are they working directly with their teachers in small groups and professional learning communities?

So the way the model works, it's currently working is, yes, there's work being done with teachers through their principal or through their school leaders or assistant principals.

So teachers are also sitting with curricular embedded assessments or those unit tests and looking at those and analyzing those.

And so some of the work we did with them this week was talking through, all right, if you have a curricular embedded assessment, what are you doing with that?

And how are you working with your teachers to look at that and do reteaching?

So yes.

and additionally as we're talking through this multi-tiered systems of support, the intent would be with the more unpacked initiative that there is gonna be more direct also just coaching PD for the teachers.

But currently they are involved, it's not that they're absent, it's just that from our level what we're doing is starting with the principals and they're going down and working with their teachers on data analysis and the assessments.

Director Rankin.

This to me represents a, something has changed.

Something has changed because this is a huge leap in understanding of what, in my interpretation of what progress monitoring is intended to be.

And I don't know if veteran directors, all of our six and two years or whatever, can see the huge difference in what was just presented as to what we've had before.

this is the level we need to understand when we're leading a system of what is the district actually doing?

What are you actually doing to make these things happen and is it working?

So I just want to acknowledge that whatever you all have, there's been a shift that is really important.

Thank you.

We can all agree old and new that what we were doing before in terms of these discussions wasn't really satisfying to anybody.

So people really stepped back and dug into, we need to do something different.

And people really pulled together.

I'm very proud of this team.

And kudos to Superintendent Podesta, because as much as you will try to have us believe you're not an instructional leader, This is showing a level of systems understanding and reflection to us as the governing body that we can actually see what do you plan to do and why you think it's gonna make a difference for students and we'll be able to see that as this goes on and it's really, really, really an important shift has taken place and I just wanted to highlight that.

I definitely am missing seeing IEP students and multilingual students.

I think those are, students that are in need of the most support from our system.

They're consistently at the bottom of growth and achievement, and it's not because they inherently can't do it.

It's because they're not getting the support and access to education that they need.

And so we're not monitoring that.

We don't know if all students are actually making gains, because we're leaving out some pretty significant groups.

And then to kind of tag along to what Director Song was saying, Once we have that also, we'll be able to hear from you.

Okay, here's what is working overall and to better address the needs of students with disabilities, MLL students, here are some additional strategies that we're doing to support those students.

So that'll give us an idea of what's working.

And Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it.

I just wanna thank you all for providing this baseline in a way that I think is what why we need to do this.

What are we trying to do?

Are we getting there?

And what is the system doing to support what's happening out in buildings?

This is showing us that.

This is a huge leap forward in showing us that.

And I'm excited to see how you all continue to work to align systems and structures so that what's happening here is actually connected to and supports what happens in our buildings.

And it's not just a conversation around the U that doesn't go anywhere.

So I'm very I'm excited to keep working on this together.

Thank you.

Director Yoon?

Before you speak, I just want to tell you the three areas that we're really focused on is target systems and implementation.

Those are the three areas that we're really focused on.

What we haven't collected enough data on is what we're going to do to change adult practices.

That's the next step in this process and that's Dr. Torres talked about the principals getting trained up to be able to go in the classroom and do those types of things with walkthroughs and other things.

where we're crescendoing down and cascading down to those pieces.

So that's the next step in those three areas.

I actually have one question related to that and related to what Director Song was asking also about fidelity, is what types of, or if they don't exist now, I would like to see strategies to, you know, fidelity is important, but we also need feedback for if everybody is adhering to something that it turns out isn't working, what are the ways that you all are gonna get feedback from the boots on the ground, so to say, about, you know, I know we're in a, position of moving some things, but I know curriculum embedded assessments, because we don't necessarily have everybody using the same curriculum, for some teachers, those are not embedded in their curriculum, they're a whole separate thing that they're now having to pause to do, and so, that's not as particularly integrated as it may seem like it is.

So how are we kind of balancing fidelity with also the feedback and then the support so that we're not just, well, everybody has to do this, so we're doing it, but making sure that it's effective and supporting students and staff.

No, thank you.

And as we continue to look at adult practices, I would tell you we're looking at PLC quality, we're looking at MTSS fidelity, and then coaching implementation as an example of shifting adult practices.

That's just one sliver of what we're continuing to collect right now, but we're working towards that.

Now, Director Yoon.

Thank you.

I only had one question.

So how are teachers being supported in helping these different student groups meet the target goal?

Because from the data, every student group is at a different benchmark, and I can only imagine how complex it could be for a singular educator in a classroom to make sure different student groups are, they have the correct resources to meet these goals and it is a very big goal so I just wanna make sure the educators who are kind of doing the execution of this have those support systems in place and it's fine if you don't have a specific answer yet, I'm just wondering if that is something that will be implemented or at least an idea of.

Please.

So I think there's a couple things.

One, I would go to, if you go back, I was talking a lot about the principals and the work with the teachers.

We actually had teacher leaders with us as well.

If you go back to August, the first week of August was School Leaders Institute.

And each school had teacher leaders with them when we were starting our conversations around both multi-tiered systems of support and the Charlotte Danielson framework, which is their teaching framework.

So I forgot to mention that, that they have been brought along in this conversation.

But additionally, when we talk about multi-tiered systems of support, it's a big umbrella that has a lot packed into it, but when done well addresses a lot of the things we're talking about.

So for example, when you have a very functional MTSS system and you do a curricular embedded assessment, it'll tell us, Eliza got this question.

wrong, Eliza needs support with this specific standard and here are the instructional materials and how a teacher can do that versus a teacher having to go onto a teacher's pay teachers or go dig through all these materials and so the long term goal is to get us there fully recognizing we're not there yet but I wanted to just call it in the space that yes we are aware and that is the goal is to provide that to teachers.

That does not mean we're talking about robotic teaching and we're talking about teachers using their craft.

What it does mean is providing them the support of a research and evidence-based material and intervention when it's needed and then do your magic as a teacher in terms of the art and science of teaching.

And at the planning level, thank you for your question, Director Yoon and Director Mangelson.

While the words don't sing off the page, that priority area related to recruit, develop, and retain a diverse and effective workforce is the bulk of that is about teachers and supporting teachers and the connect, the observation feedback support.

So they're very much, again, this is all about improving our practice and teachers are practitioners so that is where the rubber meets the road.

And I would just add one of the things that we're doing and we're gonna continue to do is abandon certain things that are working or that haven't worked in the past and get very clear about what we do very well.

So you'll see that in our strategic plan.

We have to abandon some of the initiatives and some of the things we're doing.

We can't do all these things to mastery.

It was mentioned that if you're doing science and reading it takes 66 hours to get there.

Well we can't do that when you get an hour here and then Five years later, you get another hour.

We're going to see the growth sporadic.

So we are recognizing those pieces, and we're getting very clear about what we can and can't do.

Director Massoudi?

One comment I have was when I was looking at it I think that another category which other directors have mentioned is having a section for students that are non-native or don't speak English at home or English is a language that they're still learning and having that as a category for tracking their progress over for literacy as well as what has been mentioned for students with IEPs and learning disabilities.

I think that's also another category that's really important to be tracking and that's my only comment.

Thank you.

I appreciate the presentation and I appreciate the fact that we as a collective, as a board have started the conversation and started this journey together with four newly sworn in, sort of count Joe and that, Director Miserati in that.

with sort of this baseline conversation.

So we're kind of all starting in the same place.

So I appreciate the conversation that we've had.

I appreciate all the work that has been put into just sort of bringing this baseline.

And I know it's a lot of information tonight doing both goals.

So I appreciate you also being prepared to do both of those things.

I think that also hearing from us as a board sort of the information we need to see in the presentations to kind of feel comfortable with where things are at.

It was really enlightening and helpful and also I think something we're all kind of waiting is the wrong word for but like where's that strategic plan then fit in and excited for this sort of early 2026 conversation where we'll hopefully see some of the more details I think that I'm interested in similar to Director Song and Director Mizrahi mentioned.

I appreciate the work and thank you for the presentation we do have a little bit of extra time so if directors have extra questions additional questions I want to give opportunity so Director Lavallee

for picking on me, but I went ahead and rocketed through as much as possible right then, so I think everything else is just in their inbox, but they've got a whole list from me, don't worry.

Other directors?

All right, Director Mizrahi.

Can you explain the grade one map growth slide to me?

Yes.

I'm going to try and summarize my understanding, which is probably wrong.

So these are students who did not achieve grade level benchmarks.

We're breaking that group out, correct?

Yep, so those are the students who did not hit the benchmark.

And among those students.

Okay, among those students, yes.

Finish that thought.

33.8% of them made an academic year's worth of growth.

Is that on that same test or then the next year when we test them, they made an academic year's worth of growth?

I have to double check.

I believe it was from the same administration.

I'll need to confirm that.

I don't want to say that.

So they're not meeting standard and they also didn't make a year's worth of growth from the previous year when they took the MAP test.

Yeah, it goes through basically from that same, the way the statistics generally work is just it would be from that same assessment.

It'll look at it from their previous scores, do a determination based on where they hit.

Each student when they're done with the assessment will get a growth score or a growth rate that they should hit that would demonstrate a year's worth of growth and so that's where that comes from.

So someone who's in that all student 33.8%.

They are still not meeting standard, but they made a year's worth of growth.

They're like on the same trajectory.

They're on an upward trajectory, but it's not quite meeting standard.

Yep, they made a year's worth of growth or more.

I think one of the things, when you do this, like when we get in teams and we start looking at these data, Some of the things to look at there are, all right, so who are they?

Are they above a year?

Because if you're trying to do opportunity gap closing, you need to see that among that group of kids that they've done like a year and a half to two years of growth sometimes, not just that they hit a year, because if they hit a year, they're always going to still be a year behind.

Well, and the flip side of that, if I'm understanding this then, is that the students in the 66.2% are not hitting benchmark and they're falling further behind than they were the previous year.

Yes.

Which is why when we start talking about a second grade goal, it's important to start looking at first grade.

Because what this is telling us is that for this, you know, when you start looking back at the previous grades, that's the time where you need to jump in and almost like triage.

Well, and it seems like, not an educator, but like it seems like that would highlight maybe some issues with the Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions that need to be like boosted.

Okay, got it.

I would add to it is we have to disaggregate that data because sometimes we have students who are with us for one year, sometimes they're with us for two years, sometimes they come in year two and they don't get a chance to get to the tier two, tier three intervention.

So as we unpack that data with teachers and principals, we have to look at the interventions and how quickly we can actually establish that intervention.

Sometimes that intervention takes six weeks or eight weeks with that person.

And the teacher is the biggest change artist inside of that classroom.

And so if we can't get that teacher to have access to that student, we won't see that growth.

So I just wanted to kind of give a bird walk into what does that look like as we disaggregate this data.

So it's a lot in that data that when we look at growth data we're unpacking.

I would also say if you're talking about Ted, and Ted came in and he was predicted to grow from the first MAP assessment.

I was supposed to get to say 75 percentile and then Ted doesn't get there.

What happened along the way?

Was it access to the teacher?

Was it Ted stopped coming to school?

What happened along the way so Ted didn't get that growth?

That is so important even more so than looking at this data here.

So that's the unpacking, I think, that as we unpack this information that we're getting to, that way we can get to strategies and then Dr. Torres, what he's talking about with the MTSS assessments, we can actually learn from those pieces and then personalize that for why Ted's not coming to school, unpack that and maybe create a sense of belonging so Ted will come to school and we can address why he's not getting to school, whether it's bus problems or he's being bullied, all these different things.

So the more times we do this, looking at our four disciplines of execution that lead data, we can actually look into those problems that happen at school and predict that and actually address it before it happens.

Other questions?

Director Laval?

I did lie, and I do have a follow-up question.

I'd love to know a little bit more about how you identify the priority schools that you had listed on the document, and are there literacy rates being tracked separately, and are you doing any different programming in those priority schools if they've been flagged?

So the priority schools are an artifact of the previous strategic plan that had African American boys in the top line goal and that was really a staff construct in terms of our Is there a subset of schools that would have a significant number of African American boys students?

And so 13 schools accounted for 50% of that population in the district.

And so then there were particular practices and resources assigned.

Since we're still in the throes of developing the next strategic plan, most of those resources have been maintained, but that's not necessarily a strategy that we're recommending going forward.

But it's still built into how we're doing things now.

And yes, those were tracked separately and as part of the activity.

I saw those on the previous literacy monitoring reports, and I just was like, huh, I hadn't seen other notes to that.

So thank you for the clarification.

You will also see that looking at the city schools, there's a total of 30 of them and probably you would ask the same questions.

We have the same strategic focus on those students and access to budget.

Some schools got an additional even from 200,000 to almost 800,000 each year to actually move forward with these personalized strategies and then we monitored, checked to see what was working, what wasn't working.

it wasn't supplanting but it was extending what we were already doing so we learned a lot from that as well as we're going into this next levy rollout what we're going to do differently and how we're going to support the initiative not just the school and that was a big question people were asking are you going to adopt another 30 schools or are you adopting an initiative like literacy and then all the schools get supported for that literacy rather than just that school so.

Thank you.

Others?

Alright then we will take a quick five minute break.

We'll be back here at 640. All right, I missed my target by three minutes.

I'm sorry about that, folks.

We want to come back to the U.

We're missing some staff.

All right, okay, we're gonna move on to our goal two, our math baseline performance report.

And again, we'll send it to Superintendent Podesta to start us off.

Right, so while it's unfortunate that we weren't able to hold to our calendar where we were doing early literacy in November and math in December, the good news is that we get to skip over my intro part.

So the part that I was yapping is exactly the same, and you guys already heard it, so I won't do that.

other than I should talk about the goal itself.

Again, we're looking for the same level of growth and that there's a top-line goal that's been established by the board that, again, didn't specifically have call-outs the way we had previous strategic plan and so that's why we're talking as we've talked about with the literacy goal about how we will definitely as a practice with staff look at differentiated outcome data and and sometimes you'll see the word scenario in here and sometimes target.

Not sure we're exactly gonna set targets for every subgroup but we will certainly monitor and have thresholds in terms of if we are not closing the opportunity gaps that we are not, that we are still committed to and this implies that we need to see not only can folks not fall behind, we are gonna need to have more ambitious goals for all the groups that we haven't been serving well.

And I know we need to have a discussion about the top line goal and it's how ambitious it is, but whatever it is, there will be some correlation between that and a more ambitious goal for groups that we've not served well before.

So it won't be, if we're looking at 2% growth for any measure per year, it isn't gonna align with our values that that same 2% is applied to students who we haven't served well in the past.

We're gonna have to do something different there.

So we definitely are going to need to have differentiated practices and that's why we're looking at one of the many reasons to look at a multi-tiered system of support so we can address need.

however it presents itself, and again it may not lead to a specific target, that's a discussion we need to have, but it will certainly lead to different practices and will certainly lead to specific monitoring of disaggregated data.

With that, sorry, Dr. Torres Morales, I'm gonna turn it back to you.

Thank you, Superintendent Podesta.

We're gonna go straight into the baseline outcomes, because the first part of the presentation is similar around performance status, those sort of things.

And so in terms of math, Measuring the progression we're gonna once again talking about sixth grade math so we're gonna start looking back all the way into fourth grade so that we know where and when to start intervening as needed.

The two assessments that we're going to be looking at are the Smarter Balanced Assessment or the SBA and the MAP.

I spoke on the map earlier so I'll go quickly through the Smarter Balanced assessment.

This is what some people would call the state test.

This is the end of the year assessment that basically looks at is a student proficient at their grade level.

It is a computer adaptive test and a performance test requiring multi-step reasoning.

it measures mastery of grade level standards.

And this is important because that includes conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, problem solving and application.

What does that mean?

If we were to go back probably about 15 years or 20 years ago, a lot of the assessments were just looking at computational fluency.

For example, if you took those assessments back then and you were dividing fractions, it was flip the number, multiply, get your answer good.

That's not what these assessments do anymore.

It looks at do you know how to do that and do you understand what the concept means.

So that's the difference between math fluency and conceptual understanding.

So when you think about the Smarter Balanced assessment, it's assessing both of those things within a standard.

And then it provides, the purpose of it is to provide summative end of year information on whether students have met grade level expectations.

As you'll see below, for the interim measure we're gonna look at the fourth grade SBA, fifth grade we'll look at MAP and SBA, sixth grade we'll look at MAP as an indicator for where we believe our students are gonna land in the SBA, with the ultimate top line measure being the Smarter Balanced Assessment for our sixth graders.

Here you'll see, our top line measure with the baseline goal for the sixth grade SBA.

So what you'll see, you'll see the trend data for 22, 23, 23, 24, and 24, 25. 24, 25, this was the end of the school year, essentially, and now when you go to 25, 26 forward, those are the goal areas for the Smarter Balanced assessment and proficiency.

Okay, so our first interim measure is grade five SBA.

So what does that mean?

This is the current sixth graders.

So what does that mean?

This was when they finished their Smarter Balanced assessment for fifth grade last year.

So this is our current cohort of sixth graders, grade five SBA.

And in order to be deemed proficient on the assessment, a student needs to score at a level three or a level four.

So when you look at the number met for all students, it says 56.2%.

What that tells us is our current sixth graders, when they finished their fifth grade year last year, 56.2% of them scored a level three or level four on the Smarter Balanced assessment.

43.8% of our students did not.

Then you can further see that level, the data aggregated by the subgroups that we presented, knowing that there is a desire to see more data for other subgroups, but here is just currently, these are our current sixth graders, how they finished the end of last school year.

Next, similar to what we were doing in language arts where Director Mizrahi was asking me around growth.

This is for the grade five map growth for our students.

So of the students in grade five who did not achieve level three or four in the smarter balanced mathematics assessment, the percentage who met or exceeded their growth target.

So these are the students who are current sixth graders.

who did not get a level three or four on the SBA last year.

So when they finished their fifth grade year, they did not score proficient.

Of the group of kids, 48% of them are demonstrating a year of growth or more in their academics, 51.9% are not.

and then finally we're gonna go, actually I think we're gonna go through a couple more data charts but this one is the grade four SBA.

So this was our current fifth graders and as we were saying earlier, it's important to start looking back a couple grades so we know when to jump in instead of waiting till just sixth grade and only looking at sixth grade data.

sometimes it's almost too late, especially when you think about some of those growth charts we're looking at.

If we know we can't always get kids to grow by more than a year within one academic year, we need to go back and just start planning earlier.

So in terms of grade four SBA, these are the percentage of grade four students who achieve level three or four on the Smarter Balanced mathematics assessment.

So this was grade four, end of last school year, these are the current fifth graders.

So our current group of fifth graders in Seattle Public Schools, 62% of our students scored proficient on the assessment, and 37.9% did not.

I think one of the things I wanna call attention to that we've been pointing out pretty much all evening, but this data really shows us a stark difference.

When you start disaggregating that data, you can see how there is more support, there's more conversation needed for our subgroups about what's happening, because we have several students, several group students who are performing so well, they're taking that number in the aggregate high, so in general, people would say, wow, look at Seattle Public Schools, 62% of your kids are proficient in math, but when you look at our subgroups, you're like, no, we have a lot of work to do here.

This is not as great as we think.

And next, this is the grade six map.

So this is the freshest data we have.

We are gonna go into a deeper look on this and a future progress monitoring on math, but this is just for some context.

So this is our current sixth graders in the fall, how did they do?

So the percentage of sixth grade students who achieved the grade level benchmark or higher on the fall mathematics assessment, 51.4% of our students met what would be determined to be basically like a proficient score.

MAP does give you what's called a predicted proficiency where it helps predict where our students are gonna score at the end of the year on a MAP assessment.

And so currently, the prediction would be 51.4% of our sixth graders by the end of this year will score proficient on the SBA.

Next, we'll start talking through some pathways to success.

Similar to our literacy goals, I think, I don't know if there's anything further you want to say on this draft strat plan?

the concepts are the same, it's still a nested set of actions built around the goals and guardrails and our top level goals and that the accountability strategies would mirror these as well.

So I think the remarks I made and Mr. Howard made will apply to all the measures, this one and the Life Ready goal as well.

So we're gonna do a little bit of where we've been, what we've learned.

So on the left, once again, these were initiatives that were in our previous strategic plan.

And on the right, it's things that we've learned.

So one of the things was an adopted K through five instructional material with a focus on problem-based learning and visual strategy to develop conceptual understanding.

What we learned is that having a coherent curriculum across grades K through eight supports students in transition to middle school.

What does that mean?

A lot of times when you have an instructional material, within that material, it's almost like the instructional routine or how the lesson's laid out.

The more that kids are taught in that same manner, not because it's supposed to be wrote, but more so that they're not wasting brain space on thinking, what am I doing next?

The lesson comes in order of, for example, what's a goal?

What's the new knowledge?

Those sort of things.

and so the more that you can get into curriculum materials that do a similar cadence for kids, kids are then focused on what the standards or what the skills and knowledge are and not thinking, what am I supposed to be doing next in class?

I know, we do problems now, we do group work now, we do end of, so that's kind of what that's leading towards.

Required three years of training of newly adopted instructional materials for all K-5 teachers, that's what we did.

What we learned was that teachers need multiple opportunities to understand and internalize the structure and pedagogy.

Online training must be followed up with classroom embedded professional development to ensure materials are taught as needed.

Essentially, or as intended, apologies.

Essentially what this is saying is that, yes, you can train the teachers, but until you're going actually into the classroom and having some of that work additionally with it, it's not sufficient to just say, oh yeah, we trained them on how to find the lesson or how to find the material.

Actually, what does that mean in the classroom in practice?

So how are you marrying those two things?

developed a consistent pathway to accelerated math in middle schools.

Teachers need professional development and ways to support students to be successful in an accelerated pathway through different things such as differentiation and UDL.

I think many of you know the highly capable department and myself, we've been on a big listening tour through the whole fall, and I think I may have heard this topic come up I don't know how many different times.

So this is a big thing that we've recognized and we've realized, and within there is the idea of what does that mean and how do you do it and so it's not just that we're gonna do it, we need to have it consistent, it needs to be a fresh development, people need to understand.

If you ever wanna Google it, look up the spiral of the standards and it'll really talk about math standards and how that works but it's very possible and basically what we're saying here is that we know we need to do better on this part in future strat plans, in future work related to math.

provide instructional coaching, professional development, and PLC support to increase the quality and rigor of tier one instruction.

So what we learned were coaching cycles allow teachers to develop their teaching practice by planning, trying, and debriefing instruction moves in the classroom.

This is very much related to some of the question I was getting from Director Mangelson earlier around like what are we doing with the teachers and this is part of this is what we're saying we need to continue to do work on so that teachers know when students finish a CEA or they have map data what to do with that and how to help support kids in the classroom.

What we did required map administration district-wide in grades three through eight to monitor skill development and growth and differentiate early based on need.

So what we learned was the number of students who completed the map assessment increased each year, so our students are taking the map assessment now, but that our teachers need support and guidance to understand map results and use them effectively in their classrooms.

We've started some work on this already.

We have a team called the Students' Academics and Services Cabinet.

That means that every director, executive director that works in the schools division, works in our student services division, which is where special ed multilingual, our schools are, our regional executive directors of schools, and our curriculum academics instruction directors we all come into a meeting and we look at data.

And we specifically look at map data.

And so one of the trainings we did recently as a team was just around how do you use the map results and the scores aligned to standards, and what does that mean?

So for every student, let's say it's me, and I get a 171 on assessment, The map assessment will tell you these are all the standards and things that I've mastered.

Here's where I need more work.

And so some of the things that we're looking at now is how are we also getting that down to the classroom level for teachers so they don't feel like I'm giving the map because it's required and it's just a thing.

It is a thing, but it actually has a lot of stuff in there that will help you in working with your students, especially in moving them towards proficiency.

So we've also had some trainings done with some of our teachers on this already, but this is an area that we say we need some growth in so that people are really clear as to the what, how and why.

The map is not just to predict proficiency on an SBA, it actually has instructional pieces within there that can be very beneficial.

and then finally required curriculum embedded assessments in grades six through eight three times a year to increase consistency and access to grade level standards across our system.

These are promising tools for teachers to get feedback on their instruction and to provide targeted support to students.

Similarly to the MAP, there is some work that we need to continue to do here around what in the industry we would call question analysis.

Essentially, when you do a CEA or any sort of assessment, each question is pegged to a standard.

And so when a student does not answer that question or only gets part of that question correct, that in turn gives you the knowledge you need to know that, hey, I need to work more with this student on this specific thing.

There we go, okay.

Again, this slide is very similar to the one in the literacy presentation.

Again, we've developed five priority areas as part of strategic planning and we'll come in several weeks to the board to talk about these initiatives in a bit more detail.

And we want to make sure that ongoing progress monitoring discussions, whatever form they take, stay, there's a through line to our strategies in the strategic plan and our initiatives and then of course we'll be talking a lot about finances and resources as well and we're gonna try very hard to keep those conversations connected so you know what our priorities are and where we're allocating our time, people and money.

You'll note that these look very similar to the language arts, but it's the idea that this is an overlay for a different content area, different grade levels.

So even when you're thinking about MTSS, yes, but there is a difference between what this would be for middle school math versus, or late elementary, middle school math, and what it would be for early literacy, but the undergirding, the concept is still the same at the root.

President Topp will turn it back over to you for questions.

Sorry about that, just taking some final notes.

So we're going to do a similar structure, roughly two minutes.

We'll go around the U this way this time.

So we'll mix it up.

But I won't go to you right away.

I'm going to start with Director Mizrahi because he's going to go online.

And so just to make sure, since I'm a little worried about technology, we'll let him go first.

Thank you, President Topp.

Try again.

I don't know.

Okay.

Is that better?

It's very helpful.

I think similar feedback on the looking ahead strategies that I had last time.

So nothing new there, but I think this is all helpful.

The one question, maybe this is a goal setting question, so I don't know if we're past this point, but why, so maybe you have to remind me, because maybe this was a choice that we made as a board, but why are we using SBA Smarter Balanced as the benchmark tool for the sixth grade math and not map testing like we did for the reading?

when you think about second grade, SBA does not start until third grade.

So when the goal for literacy is now at second grade, that's why we would use the map.

In the past, we would have used, when it was third grade, we were using third grade SBA.

SBA is available for sixth grade.

Maybe it's an academic point, because we're going to be looking at both, but I think the benefits, in my mind, to map testing is that you're doing it multiple times per year, so you have more touch points to measure, more touch points to adjust and see how things are going.

that I think gives a teacher, a school, our system time to kind of course correct throughout the school year.

It might not matter, because obviously we're not going to not look at one.

We'll be looking at both.

And I think they're both helpful data points.

But I think we should also just be benchmarking the map along the way, because I think it's still a helpful tool.

Yeah, and I think that that's gonna be the intent.

And when you administer the map, it does give you a predicted proficiency that has a very high correlation.

Basically, that'll say this percentage of students or this student is predicted to be proficient.

And in general, what you'll see is that student does end up proficient on the SBA, but duly noted and thank you.

Yeah, and then I guess my last point is, you know, because now we have two metrics here, so I'm looking, we have fifth grade SBA, fourth grade SBA, sixth grade MAP, I assume because they haven't taken the SBA.

But it'd be helpful to see the fifth and fourth grade MAP testing.

Because what I'd be curious about is, and you all probably have an assessment of this already, but where is the big drop off happening?

Where is that inflection point where going in the wrong direction and having like, is it the gap between fourth and fifth grade, fifth and sixth grade, and like where is that really happening so we can obviously target when we're doing the most intervention?

Yeah, and so in our future progress monitoring, that is exactly what we're gonna dig in really deep on.

Currently this was the benchmarking, but I believe we're coming back to this in February.

and part of the reason that the sixth grade was included was Superintendent Podesta wanted to be clear that we do have some fresh data so let's show it so people will know and are able to see it and in our February session on progress monitoring, that's where we want to definitely get deeper into those pieces that you're talking about.

Okay, well that's my feedback but you know otherwise this is also a similarly great presentation and very understandable so I appreciate all the work.

Thank you.

Director Massoudi.

Maybe can you come back to me?

Yes, I can.

Director Yoon?

I don't have a question, but just a comment that I just really like how you all focused and emphasized the difference between math fluency and conceptual understanding.

These standardized test SBA map are designed very differently from tests you would take at schools.

and so having those trainings and it's also very hard for teachers to grasp learning a new skill to teach for students on a specific test because test taking is also a skill but in this specific standardized testing they test you on the conceptual understanding that may not always show up.

in a school setting.

So I really appreciate how you emphasize those two different categories and how you are attacking those two categories to ensure students have an understanding and are prepared for both and the teachers are also prepared to teach students.

what you just hit out of the park is so true and that's one of the big pieces our teachers are actually as they unpack that data and then our Our big, big conversation is about how we actually take the curriculum-based assessments and MAP and SBA and unpack those to see where we're having fall-offs, where we need to actually ramp up tutoring.

If we're doing certain things to come back to helping our students get where they need to go, but you hit it right out of the park, that is the conceptual piece, that theory-based, and then the actual things that we do in practice with our students.

We call that the strategy is the approach and the initiative is the practice.

And so we are really good at the practice, we're not so good at the strategy piece.

And so as we merge both of those pieces together, we're learning from these pieces.

These are great conversations because we haven't got to a place yet to say, hey, what have we learned and what are we going to say as we build our strategic plan for the next five years?

What are we committed to and what are we going to see in every building?

That's what we're collecting right now with the curriculum-based assessment, with the SBA and MAP, and you will see that correlated to elementary, middle, and high school.

And then what you guys have said to us you want to see is when you go to any elementary school, it should be the same.

should be the same assessments, it should be the same learning going on, and that's what we are building now as we do the fidelity implementation.

It should be the same when you go into different schools now.

We can exceed that, but there should be a baseline.

But that's what we're working on.

Director Rankin.

Again, iterate my excitement over that the conversation we're having is about whether or not students are learning.

And that is the conversation that the board should be having, and we haven't been able to have that when the information provided to us doesn't tell us if that's happening or not.

So the leap in growth that has taken place is what we've been pushing for, really, well, the last two years, but before that too, trying to get to a place where we're talking about what's going on.

And in a way that, you know, a board could be comprised of, I mean, we're literally representatives of the community.

We could be anybody, we are anybody.

And we need to be able to understand at a high level what's happening in schools, if it's working or not, and be able to tell our community.

And I feel like we're getting to a place where we're actually, that's what we're doing now.

And I feel really tired that it's been a really long journey to get to here, but it's an exciting place to be after a lot of strife.

So the question I have is related to what Joe asked, and so because it's the SBAC measure and the MAP measure, so they're not the same measures, but what I'm noticing is all students, all four columns that we have, every group, including the all student group, declined from grade five to grade six.

So I was wondering if you...

if you attribute that to it's a different measure or is there something going on that we should be looking at that's what's happening when kids are going from elementary to middle school that the proficiency rate or the benchmark or higher rate has gone down across the all student group and the broken out student groups.

Oh, they declined four to five also.

We can go all over the place on that question.

I mean, to be honest with you, predictive values of what's happening right now, it's personalized in each building.

We haven't identified those strategies that go across all middle schools, all elementary schools.

Some personalized it and they're doing wonderful things, but we're gathering that data right now to look at and disaggregate that to see what's actually happening.

We know there's a gap.

Yeah.

Well, and it looks like you did identify that you believe a through line from K through eight is something that's gonna help that?

Yeah, the two measures we're always looking at is algebra ready.

Yeah.

Was for kids coming into high school.

But at the same time, we gotta disaggregate what's been happening to get kids algebra ready.

It doesn't just happen going from eighth to ninth.

It starts way earlier than that.

Way earlier, yeah.

So what are we gonna be doing differently?

The two things that we're doing to actually address that immediately is how are we going to address ownership?

Right now it's been put on, the math department has to do it, but Dr. Torres has said across the board with MTSS, we've got to go across the whole system to give kids more time on task.

You can't just say the math department is doing that.

You've got to teach it in science, you've got to teach it in reading.

And there's also a ton of literacy in math.

Yeah, and so we got to unpack those things.

And as we unpack that ownership across the board, we can get to those pieces.

But some takeaways that I want to mention was where we're investing in leveraging that, which is our talent time, our PD, our tools, and then taking a large look at our programs.

And then we're looking at what our leading indicators will be.

for fall, mid-year, and spring, so we can pivot and make changes across the system.

And then what does that look like in closing that gap every 45 to 60 days?

So we're at the early stages of doing that with the strategic plan, but we're just at the early stages.

So when Dr. Torres comes back, he'll be able to say the MTSS strategies for our elementary schools are this.

and then you'll see that across the system, and then you'll see principals, you'll see district leaders going in to measure the quality of the implementation of that, and so then we get to fidelity, then we get a chance to see if this school's not doing it, then we can go in and coach them to get them to where they need to be, but we're just at the early stages of building this.

Early stages, but again, huge, huge leap forward, so thank you so much to everybody for the work.

Director Mangelson.

I don't really have much to say.

Just that kind of restating what Sabi or Director Yun said, I just appreciate how you're kind of looking at a bunch of different points and you're looking at kind of how things move together and how we're considering, yeah, I guess, if that makes sense.

But that's all.

Thank you.

Director Song.

I didn't get to thank you with the last one, but thank you for including in your end notes what are the actual skills.

That was very helpful, so thank you for including that information.

Some of the feedback I have would be very similar to the literacy part, but It is actually helpful to have the baseline for both literacy and math back to back because I think I had this reflection around there's a lot of assessment that's happening with our kids and it may be helpful, I don't want to create extra work, but it may be helpful for us to have a work session or like a mini work session to talk about what is the entire universe of assessment by grade level and like what are kind of the what is driving the assessment?

What are we trying to do with assessment?

Kind of more on a collective basis because I would just share as a point of anecdotal feedback at my children's parent-teacher conference, they offered that there was new assessment around writing, there was a new assessment around science, it's a lot of assessment.

but it would be helpful for us to just kind of look at it collectively and I'm curious if some of the assessment decisions are being made on a siloed basis or they are kind of made at a top level.

The other point of feedback, I guess more of a question is, so I think it's this year's cohort of eighth graders where the very first cohort of students in sixth grade, all students are gonna be taking math six and I think my understanding of that is and part of the reason we wanted to go in that direction is because that's when you're pulling students from different elementary schools into kind of the same school.

So I'm curious if this team has done any reflection or analysis on how that approach has worked or not worked and how it will influence your strategic plan going forward.

I don't want to ask a question on the question but expand a little bit more because I think I know what you're talking about.

Actually, I do know what you're talking about.

I just want to get a little bit deeper on the question.

So are you saying for when all of the elementary fifth graders get into their neighborhood middle school and taking the math six?

yeah we're working on those analyses now specifically one of the things that we had started to work through was for our highly capable students that were going between neighborhood schools and then into pathway schools and then what the offerings were going to be so we are working on some of that analysis now bigger picture when you think through I believe it's noted in here but some of the initiative work we're talking about is what's the math pathway in general for all of Seattle Public Schools so what we're going to be what we're trying to figure out now is what is the end point Going forward we know what it is right now like every kid can get to AP Calc I'm pretty sure everyone get the AP stats if they wanted to to sit for the exam and then backwards map it all the way down to kindergarten so that some of the work that we're doing now so to your question yes we're in that analysis we're super early I'm not even to the point where I'm like hey we can get you something this week we're very early but yes working on it and thinking about it more bigger picture for the system

I know the SBA has an alternative test, which MAP doesn't.

Is that included in these SBA numbers?

I think it's called.

No, the numbers in here are for the students that took the SBA and for the MAP, no.

We can confirm that though.

Director Lavallee.

So the first question that I had was about the computer adaptive testing.

For the early literacy screenings, we were using one computer adaptive test.

And for this one, we're using two.

Does that have any impact on the results that we're getting?

I'm asking this also because I know in my own child's elementary school, he's doing a test on paper and then filling it into the computer because without doing that work and sitting there with the pen, sometimes he's just sitting there entering data and being like, I think it's five.

And not really engaging his brain in the same way that he does on a written test with space to think through things.

So is there, do we expect that there might be any difference between written examination and computer adaptive testing?

It's actually been a larger conversation across the country for a bit, especially when most states move to the computer adaptive test.

And so what we find, we can get more information for you on it specifically for what's going on in Seattle Public Schools, but oftentimes kids will need scratch paper to work through some of the things.

And this goes a little bit into what we were talking about earlier.

I think one of the student board directors mentioned it around like, I think it was Sabi around, or Director Yoon, around Yeah, there's all the actual learning parts of it, and then there's like, how do you take a test?

And so it is an unfortunate reality of what we live with, but it is a thing where we do have to work with kids on tools.

I'll go back to when I was a principal, we actually had to spend some time, I was very clear I wanted it to be minimal, but you needed to teach kids how to use a protractor on the state test, you had to use a calculator, different tools, and different state, different assessment, but it is a thing.

So yes, we can get more information for you on it.

But students in general do have access to be able to work things out.

Perfect.

And then within kind of the combination of math and language literacy.

Director Rankin kind of mentioned it as well, but a lot of math problems rely heavily on word problems that you're solving, and that was also mentioned by Director Yoon in the different types of problems that we're solving.

Are you looking at any differentiation of test results to see if there's a divergence in data, especially for our multi-language students who are English learners, excuse me, who are maybe not at the same literacy point at this point in time, but do understand these mathematical concepts.

And so is there differentiation that we're able to parse in the data to learn kind of who is, who needs improvement and on what?

Yeah, we can pull some of that and unpack it and get you a more robust response around that, but there is allowable accommodations and we'll get you all further information on that, but for example, there are the assessment for students whose primary language is Spanish, there is a way to do that for them in Spanish, but it's not currently for all of our top languages.

And there's also allowable for certain students who have Diagnosed reading disabilities to have read aloud accommodations those sort of things so some of those things are built into the assessment I don't know if it'd be as robust as what we would like to see per se, but there are some of that does exist.

Yes.

Yeah, then there's questions of are the students themselves and the teachers aware of those options and able to ask for them, which is a whole different Not for this meeting

Yeah, we're still pulling data right now from the WIDA, which was formerly GLAAD strategies, but now they went into the WIDA strategies and looking at that correlated to the students and how they're doing on math.

But we're also pulling data to take a look at the curriculum-based assessments, like you said, when they're writing, to see how well they do on the curriculum-based assessments versus when they have to do the computer-generated assessments to see if there's a difference.

Right now it's just qualitative.

We haven't been able to to pull quantitative data regularly, but we're looking at that individually with schools, the teachers who volunteer that information to us.

Yeah, I'm not even sure that's necessary for ongoing reporting and monitoring, but at the same time when we're baselining, kind of knowing where the holes might be and how we might need to adapt them going forward for consistent monitoring might be beneficial.

Yeah, it's to get us to get a baseline to see where teachers are at so we can help our teachers shift their behavior.

So if we can't get a clear baseline then we're all over the place when we go in and say this is what we're going to guarantee.

We're going to focus on a strategy at elementary or middle or at high school.

So we're trying to get that baseline with our teachers so we can provide that professional development for them.

Okay, thank you.

Vice President Briggs.

Thank you.

No questions for me.

I just wanted to echo Liza's appreciation.

Thank you for this and for the previous one as well, of course, obviously.

It feels like we might actually get somewhere, which is exciting.

And then I'm just gonna, I know the board passed these and I at the time felt that they were too low and I still feel that way and I would love to see us blow right past these like in a year.

Director Smith.

Thank you.

I first do kind of want to chime in on some of the comments on literacy at disaggregating around IEPs and multi-language learning.

I know that will come up in the strategic plan, but I just want to chip in.

It's to be discussed eventually.

I also want to say that having taught math at a college level, I absolutely agree with focusing on the earlier grades.

I feel like even teaching college math, there would be times where I'd say, I'm too late.

there's foundational stuff that needs to be mastered in order to engage with the material.

And of course, I haven't taught in elementary or middle school, so I can't say, yes, this is definitely the right place, but I just want to give that agreement and support.

Let's see.

for the strategies that have been tried, for the adopted K-5 curriculum, and I guess this was a little bit covered with the grade 6 math, but I was just wondering about how it helps support the transition to middle school because we've adopted a consistent K-5 curriculum, but then I think it would be good to see that consistency in 6-8, and I think that's kind of been addressed.

Oh, also just commenting on the numbers where this year's sixth graders, their fifth grade score to sixth grade scores on the SBA to the map I think we have.

It is concerning to see that go down.

We also see the fourth grade compared to fifth grade, there's another drop, although it's not the same students, it's different students.

but the growth is actually significantly better, the map growth, than on literacy, so that's a reason to hope a positive.

The trajectory over...

like the starting in 22-23 that's actually it looks like it's on track so that's also good wondering how much COVID may have impacted you know the current fifth or sixth graders I know that that's a big big impact for the curriculum embedded assessments, compared to literacy, it looks like that's giving really frequent feedback.

So I think that's something, having it just three times a year, we're not getting that advantage yet, so that's something else to, and it might just be like, okay, it takes time to really start getting this started.

And then the last thing, comparing to literacy, the science of reading, we have really strong examples of Mississippi and other places where that's been effective.

And I'm just wondering if there are any examples of really successful math learning that we're able to follow and draw on.

will get you a response to that.

A lot of it, I think, were comments and agreed.

Yeah, yes, yes, thank you.

I agree.

And then in terms of the Math PD, duly noted because I think when we look at the previous presentation, it's really clear like, yep, we're gonna really hit hard on the science of reading and in adoption, whereas in the math, yes, we do have some current strategy work around a subset of our schools that are getting intense PD, et cetera.

I think this conversation here is begging the question of how do we do that more and how do we validate the research base for that versus just at a certain subset of schools, do we expand it everywhere and validate the research base on it?

Yeah.

No?

Please.

Okay, it takes a minute to turn on.

I just need to talk more.

But yeah, I think having seen the literacy monitor progress report first, seeing the science of learning, that was such a strong presentation and seeing what we've done with science of learning or science of reading and where we are going forward.

And so I think that having seen such a good example made it more apparent that like, oh, something feels like it's missing here.

So thank you for the first presentation.

Yeah, I think we'll go around.

I'll say my comments and then we'll go to Director Song and we have a little bit of time for directors if they have follow-up questions.

She's good.

So again, I think just more appreciative to the board for having this conversation.

I think this is a great way for us to sort of baseline and sort of all start in the same place as we monitor progress throughout the year.

So I appreciate everyone kind of coming in and sort of grounding ourselves for where we're going to go.

So we have a new set of faces at the U.

So that's super exciting.

But Director Song.

I have a follow-up question.

So similar to my comment about the assessment, the professional development seems to be an important strategy for both literacy and for math.

And I'm wondering how your team is thinking from more of a systems level how are we approaching professional development?

Not just the specific content that we're pushing towards teacher, but what is the entire universe of professional development?

When is it offered?

When is it scheduled?

I'm also wondering if teachers have, is there a feedback loop?

Do teachers have an opportunity to provide feedback on the professional development and also the assessment?

And how will you work in their feedback as you adjust your strategies going forward?

where you couldn't watch it.

I'm not trying to punt it over to Superintendent Podesta, so I'll start.

If you look to one of our looking aheads around the second priority area, this is a big thing that we've noted.

If you go to the work that was done by ERS in their analysis of Seattle Public Schools, they identified that as an opportunity area for us that we need to work on our alignment of the system-wide, district-wide PD because it does end up getting siloed as Chief Howard loves to use the word and it does end up happening and so it is something that they've identified for us and also said that we should set up some sort of initiative or priority to really parse that out and really develop it further so it's clearer.

Exactly, both with regard to that priority area around workforce and also unified system of leadership, there's been several areas we've identified, we've spread responsibility and accountability across our organization in novel ways that we need to think about and that would be kind of one of the system level responses.

Other directors?

All right, that concludes our baseline progress monitoring presentation.

Thank you so much, Dr. Soros Morales and Accountability Officer Howard and Superintendent Podesta.

I just want to say really thank you for your time.

I really thank you acknowledging that this feels a little bit different.

That was intentional.

There were a variety of just tactics that had nothing to do with knowing anything about education that we typically did these in regular meetings and I think this environment and a study session is a little bit more conducive to a different kind of conversation.

I really want to thank my colleagues here at the table.

We decided, well, maybe just different faces would be good.

That does not, I want to make sure that everybody understands this was a team effort and the people that carried too much of the weight in past conversations had enormous effect and input into this process.

All the usual suspects, Dr. Strotsky, Dr. Toner, Dr. Perkins, Dr. Anderson, and Dr. Ara Jackson did a great job of facilitating our students' academics and services cabinet in a PLC type environment and I just want to underscore everybody contributed.

We intentionally just wanted to do it a little bit differently just to be different because we thought it was a good way to reset the conversation and I think the content is different.

There's substance behind it, but I just don't want anybody to think that different people are contributing because everybody came and pulled their weight and I really appreciate it.

and our business intelligence team, I'm gonna leave people out, Phil Romano, but many, many, many hands.

Our executive directors of schools are the ones who are really tasked with leaning in at the school level and that's really, I think, some of us who could have picked up weight before are picking up weight and I think that's helpful for all of us.

so I just want, I don't want, this isn't us, we just had the privilege of being the spokespeople for this.

Appreciate that, thank you Superintendent Podesta and acknowledging the amount of work that it takes to get to this place and really refining it and I know I've heard from you personally the amount of work that your team has been putting in to present tonight so thank you, thank you all.

So with that, concluding our progress monitoring, I just want to do one quick reminder that we have our next board meeting on December 10th.

It will be our regular board meeting, but as there is no further business on the agenda, the meeting...

President Topp, can I ask one question?

Yes.

We need a third.

Director Briggs is not able to attend our audit committee next week, so it'll be Director Morris Rahe and I, so we need a third person, if anybody isn't.

I mean, everyone is welcome to join the meeting, but if there is a director who would like to join as the third, let President Topp know, please.

Let's have Carrie send out an email to board directors because I don't even know when it is off the top of my head, so I can't, I don't know when it is on the calendar.

So since we do need a third in the audit committee, we'll have Carrie send an email around to see who can fill in.

All right, with that, there being no further business on the agenda, the meeting stands adjourned at 734. Thank you, everyone.

Have a wonderful evening.

on.