School Board Work Session - September 16, 2020

This is Director DeWolf.

Hello.

Thank you for being here.

I am now calling the board special meeting to order at 3 3 p.m.

on this Wednesday September 16th 2020. For the record I will call roll as well as do a little bit of housekeeping and then I'll turn it over to Director Rankin for to chair today's session.

So for the record we'll start with Director Hampson.

Director Harris present.

Thank you.

Director Hersey here.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack here.

Director Rankin here.

Director Hampson here.

Director Rivera-Smith present.

Okay and this is Director DeWolf.

I would like to note the superintendent is also present as well as staff who will be presenting as we move through today's agenda.

This meeting is being held remotely consistent with the governor's proclamation prohibiting meetings such as this one from being held in person.

The public is being provided remote access today by phone and through SPS-TV by broadcast and streaming on YouTube.

To facilitate this remote meeting I will ask all participants to ensure you are muted when you are not speaking.

There will not be a public comment opportunity today.

Staff will be working to administer the meeting and may be muting participants to address feedback and ensure we can hear from directors and staff.

As one final bit of housekeeping before I turn it over to Director Rankin.

This meeting actually is two hours.

We've been having these reopening update work sessions as an hour and a half.

This one is two hours so hopefully that gives us a little bit more time to have some discussion as directors.

With that Director Rankin will be chairing today's 2020 reopening update work session as chair of the Curriculum and Instruction Policy Committee.

So Director Rankin.

I'll turn it over to you.

I'm here to be support.

Let me know however you need me.

Thank you.

Good afternoon everybody.

Today's reopening update is on Priority Standards Universal Screening Screener and Grading.

We'll be hearing from Chief Academic Officer Dr. Diane DeBacker DeBacker Executive Director of Curriculum Assessment and Instruction Cashel Toner.

and Executive Director of College and Career Readiness Dr. Caleb Perkins.

We are going to start with priority standards.

So I will hand it over to I believe is Dr. DeBacker were you going to start and then go to.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

So to Dr. DeBacker and Cashel Toner.

Thank you Director Rankin and afternoon to everyone.

I would like to give thanks also to staff.

As Director Rankin mentioned Keshel Toner and Caleb Perkins will be instrumental in today's presentation and then making sure that everything's working okay on the on the other side is Maria Gonzalez-Milsap.

So Maria next slide please.

Today's work session is around priority standards universal screening and the grading and reporting to standards.

As you'll remember all of these were asked for in the OSPI template that we had to that you as a board signed off on on August 12th.

So today is to bring you up to speed with what's happened with those areas.

You will hear from Cashel Toner on priority standards.

I will be speaking about the universal screening.

and Caleb Perkins on grading and reporting to standards.

Next slide.

This should look very familiar to you.

We are including it in almost every work session about the values that we are bringing into all the work as we went into remote learning this fall and making sure that our design principles as established by our steering committee for the remote learning playbook that everything we do is racially equitable.

We put health and wellness first.

We are responsive to our community's wants and needs.

Everything we're doing is actionable and most importantly it's adaptable as we find new and better ways to do the work in this very unusual time.

Next slide please.

At this point I hand it over to Cashel Toner.

Hello everybody.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Thanks Diane for setting us up for this presentation.

I'm going to talk today about priority standards.

So let's get into it.

Let's see.

So I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to talk about how your CAI team or if I say that that stands for Curriculum Assessment and Instruction team has approached responding to opening schools in a remote model.

The first thing to understand is that your CAI team takes this work very seriously.

and that we have been working literally all summer long to develop useful tools and guidance for our educators.

So where did we begin.

We grounded our work by taking a look at the dosage and instructional models available.

So what I mean by that would be specific time for content or synchronous or asynchronous instruction.

And then we relied heavily on the work done by the Council of Great City Schools and their guidance about reopening.

If you're interested in digging deep into that work I've linked that report for you here so you can take a look at it but I am going to summarize it for you just in case you don't have time to pour over that reading.

In this section of the presentation I'll share some of the work from the Council of Great City Schools and then I'll share some of the tools that our team created for our educators.

Before I begin I want you to know that we shared a very similar presentation with our school principals at our School Leaders Institute and we also shared this information with about 6,000 educators in our professional development sessions before school started with the strong start.

This is important because we need our school leaders to be informed about our instructional approach and our educators need to be oriented to the tools available to them.

Next slide please.

This is actually a shot a slide that we shared in those presentations I was just talking about with principals and educators.

And it shows a typical last day of school in comparison to to when school closed with some estimates around retention of learning.

And this slide is not intended to scare people but rather to make the case that students probably have what we're referring to as unfinished learning from last year.

And by using the tools developed by CAI we can consider how to accelerate learning for our students.

Next slide please.

So CAI began this process by grounding our work in the 6 principles addressed in the Council of Great City Schools article.

This is a strength-based approach rather than a deficit model.

We are not remediating our students as we open the school year but rather we're teaching grade-level content and providing just-in-time supports when and if students need more support to access their learning.

If you're looking at this slide on a laptop like I am it's a little bit small so I'll just read the big ideas from it okay.

And in summary this article from the Council of Great City Schools gives guidance to urban districts to stick to these guiding principles when designing instruction.

They would recommend sticking to grade-level content.

Focusing on depth of instruction rather than pace.

Prioritizing content and learning.

And CAI built several tools that we'll get to in just a moment to help educators do that work.

They recommend maintaining inclusion of each and every learner.

They recommend identifying and addressing gaps in learning through instruction and focusing on commonalities.

Next slide please.

This is the really important slide.

You all have spent a lot of time talking about operations and health and all of these other components about reopening school.

But this is sort of the one big takeaway for the instructional part.

The lessons that are being delivered each and every day by our teaching corps across our entire city.

We would really recommend sticking to grade-level content and instructional rigor.

This daily re-engagement of prior knowledge in the context of grade-level assignments will add up over time resulting in more functional learning than if we resort to watered-down instruction to try to re-teach topics out of content.

Again this messaging was shared with principals and educators.

So that's all sort of theoretical.

But what might this look like inside of let's say a 3rd grade ELA instructional block.

Next slide please.

So what would what would you see or what would we recommend to include inside of that ELA instructional block.

Well we would like educators to hold on to grade-level text We would like educators to practice differentiation.

We would like teachers to enhance opportunities to learn knowledge and vocabulary.

We'd like teachers to keep doing read-alouds.

We'd like teachers to use available text sets and connect content areas.

So for example in 3rd grade that would be making a connection between say science instructional material and ELA because inside of the science instructional material there's lots of non-fiction text.

We would recommend not rushing foundational skills and taking our time to make sure that students really have strong foundational skills.

And we would recommend our teachers accessing new training opportunities.

So wow that's a lot.

Next slide please.

That's a lot to think about.

So you might be wondering how are we approaching actualizing this guidance that we just learned about.

Well we built all sorts of tools.

And the CAI team worked all summer long to do this precise work for educators.

In fact many many Seattle Public Schools teachers worked alongside our content managers to help develop these tools.

And this is actually a screenshot of our internal website and I can walk you through some of the tools that are available for our educators.

So you can see here that we have K-5 priority standards by content area and grade level.

right there ready for our educators to dig into if they if when they need some guidance.

We also have pacing guides organized for our educators and we have weekly pacing guides.

So this is a little overwhelming for all of our system but that's okay because this is like Diane said this is all adjustable and these are the tools it's our best thinking at this moment in time to actualize those principles I was just talking about.

holding on to grade-level content providing rigorous instruction including all learners in our instructional blocks.

Next slide please.

I also wanted.

Can we go.

Oh yeah there we go.

I also wanted to share with you the tremendous work that your curriculum assessment and instruction team has lifted in order to support our educators.

So this is just a snapshot of some of the summer professional development that our CAI team offered to educators.

So you can see that we trained about 94 middle school teachers in the Since Time Immemorial curriculum and 17 high school teachers.

We also trained around accessing the American Indian Studies Library and how to use the anti-Indian prevention tool.

which is terrific work.

We also trained around our science instructional material that's adopted and our world languages instructional materials that have been adopted.

I can't overemphasize how much having common instructional materials at this moment in time helps our system.

So thank you so much for your support over the last couple of years to get these materials into place.

Next slide please.

This is just a little.

Seriously this is a snapshot because I couldn't fit all of the things on any more slides.

But this is just a snapshot of some of the professional development that we've offered for our arts educators our physical education educators and our college and career readiness educators.

So our team has been very very busy.

I'm thrilled to be able to have this conversation with you and share with you the precise work that your CAI team has been able to produce and ready for all of our educators.

Then we were able to teach this work to our principals and to about 6,000 educators virtually.

So this has been a heavy lift.

In summary we learned from the Council of Great Cities Schools guidance.

We developed tools to align with this guidance and then we taught these ideas to our principals and educators and we built accessible resources to support educators to actualize these ideas.

And I'll take a breath there.

And certainly our work is not done because we're just in the beginning of this journey.

And as we learn and refine our practice we'll continue to improve our tools continue our messaging and continue offering professional learning for our system.

At this moment that is all I have for this section.

So I'll conclude there.

Thank you Michelle.

Director Rankin at this point I think you wanted to take questions.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

So just a kind of quick little time check that I forgot to say at the beginning was is the hope for this afternoon is about a half an hour on these first two topics and the more time for grading since we do have a panel and chance for more questions.

So just putting that out there before we start going to directors.

So I will call on each director for questions and just for fun let's go backwards alphabetically.

So Director Rivera-Smith.

Sorry surprise.

I'm like I'm still writing my notes down but that's okay.

I'll come back.

No I can do this.

It's cool.

Thank you Cashel for all the information.

Deeply appreciative.

I know that there was so much such a lift here with all this work.

I wanted to find out if I could regarding this plan here just because this was a topic earlier and I'm not sure where Atun's work ended with this.

Was Atun involved at all in this this playbook or this process here.

Yeah yes they were our thought partners in some components of this.

Mostly in sort of the got sort of lessons learned from other districts that they've been working with.

And you know if I had a question about gee how are folks organizing you know fill in the blank.

They were thought partners in this space.

But I really think that once we got our sort of instructional vision there that I was talking to you about about we're not in a remediation stance we're in a stance of accessing grade-level content and offering rigorous instruction with just-in-time supports for students if and when needed.

Then our team was ready to dig in and build our tools around that around that sort of stance.

And many educators were involved in that work.

And so we were able to pull together teams of teachers At first you know we really were planning for a hybrid model.

And so we have all of that planning which someday we'll get to use.

And then we needed to rethink that a little bit for the 100 percent remote model.

And so teams of teachers and our managers for different content areas really built the scope and sequence tools and the priority standards and those pacing guides that I was showing you that website.

And then all of our professional development that we taught on those first couple of days before the strong start.

I think the CAI team taught about 40 or 40 or 50 sessions of different courses.

All of that was taught by SPS folks.

So that would be our content managers our curriculum specialists that work on those teams.

And then even some of our like teacher leaders taught specific courses as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for for clarifying that.

My next question was how are how are our educators involved.

So thank you for covering that.

I'm wondering too do we have priority standards for SEL.

Are there kind of places we want to get for each grade level as far as that's how how does SEL work into all of this.

Sure I can start that one and then if somebody wants to jump in go ahead.

But that's a partnership with the SEL team.

Right.

And so that there was professional development for all of the SPS educators again right before the strong start in that sort of professional development institute.

And 20 lessons were designed by the central team SEL lessons to be used inside of the Strong Start across the grade levels.

And so those lessons were offered to educators and then many of them taught them.

In my house you know I have twins that are in fourth grade this year.

And so one of those SEL lessons that came to life in our house was You know if you were in bricks and mortar in-person school it would have been maybe make an all-about-me poster you know and then share that or do a gallery walk or something.

But our classroom teacher actually taught the kids how to do an interactive PowerPoint and they made their class charter aligned to the RULER curriculum that is SEL lessons right.

And so they did that together on maybe the second day of instruction.

And then their independent work was to make an all-about-me PowerPoint.

in the afternoon time.

And then they figured out how to load that up onto their Schoology site and then took turns sharing their All About Me PowerPoints the next day.

So it's been really interesting as a parent to see you know how this guidance that we make sort of in my professional life how it's actually translated into the houses and learning spaces of children you know in my house it was that All About Me lesson.

that moved into the digital PowerPoint space.

So yes SEL lessons are included and have been really the focus of the Strong Start.

Thank you.

I know that is I mean that is the big question.

We can have some a great outline and process or what we're looking at for power standards but then we're doing this on you know virtually.

That's just that's the big kicker is in all this.

I love this you know grade level text differentiation knowledge build vocabulary.

But again like getting our teachers equipped to do this virtually is is going to be what makes or breaks a success.

So do we feel how do we feel confident that they walked away with the PD we needed over the first week before school started.

Did we learn what that there's going to be some additional that we still need to add in.

Because I'm like I mean I don't it's not even just teams it's other areas I think that educators are having a hard time just keeping up with with the new expectations and making it work virtually.

So I want to just kind of be reassured and know that we are.

You know it's not over.

I know and I know there are the Wednesdays and there are the school-based PD's too but I hope that we didn't just stop there.

I know that at Lincoln High School they've been having they have they're going through an issue right now with just some cultural some insensitivity that jokes that were made at a rally last week.

So it is you know it's it's an issue that the Diversity Equity and Inclusion group on the PTSA is raising.

And part of that they feel like you know it's like well our teachers did they get enough.

And they're raising.

Yes.

I hate to cut you off but we've got to get through everybody else and then two more sessions.

Like there you know we know that there can be more follow up to some of the trainings.

And the next so I'll just about the statement more I guess but I also had a question about we're hearing the arts.

Are we doing supplies for those.

I know we got an email recently from a family saying that ceramics was not having any supplies for students and I don't know how you do ceramics without supplies.

Is that something that we are.

That's that's not super relevant to this in specific.

Can we can we take that offline.

That's not really about the about a standard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Yes thank you.

I have two questions.

One that was kind of prompted by some questions that Ms. Rivera-Smith asked and then another that I was curious about it.

I'm sorry.

Was there a slide that I missed that listed all of the priority standards and their topic areas.

And if so can you do you mind flipping back to that.

Okay.

Is there one on maybe that's not the one that's unfinished learning ELA literacy.

Is it is there like a list of all the topic areas.

So my question is whether or not is there a priority standard around technology literacy.

So for example the example that Ms. Toner was providing around SEL and PowerPoint where I'm curious to know is there do we have technology standards in terms of what students are and when they're being expected to be taught how to use these various programs.

Is that identified or all of our standards are typical content areas and specifically to technology because I have concerns around it takes a while to learn how to actually use PowerPoint or use Excel effectively.

I've personally taken you know multi-week long classes in order to use them effectively and so I'm wondering do we have standards around technology app literacy.

I'll chime in.

This is Diane DeBacker.

Can you hear me.

I just heard Ms. DeBacker and Mr. Perkins at the same time.

Whoever would like to respond is fine with me.

Caleb I'll start.

This is Diane.

I apologize I'm having to call in on my phone at the same time I'm having Internet issues.

There we did not have priority standards for technology.

There are technology standards that our district has and those are the standards that are in the entire state of Washington.

But there we did not have priority standards for our tech standards.

Okay I appreciate that.

I have concerns around that and the implementation of how students are actually being expected to.

produce work around these content areas on applications that they are not proficient at.

So I just I'm just putting that out there as a as a gap in our processes.

My other question was on the slide that was up there about and I want to make sure I understood this correctly.

The teaching to grade-level standards what exactly does that mean that essentially it's everyone's getting the same content.

And there's I mean I don't I'm having a hard time understanding the statements that were made about providing you know rigorous grade-level content or grade-level focus and differentiation.

I don't I'm having a hard time understanding how those two fit together when you have you know maybe somebody isn't actually up to third grade standards at this point or maybe they're beyond.

I don't I don't I'm having a hard time understanding the focus.

Is it grade level and or is it differentiation.

Let me try to help.

So this is Cashel.

So thank you for your question Director Mack and I did move through that very quickly.

I did include the link to the article if you want to.

It does address a bit of that but I'll I'll take a try.

So the opposite of what what we're doing would might be you know opening school and then teaching.

Let's say you were in second grade last year and we finished in about March.

So then maybe we would open digitally and all of the children that were in second grade maybe they're in third grade now and we could have just picked up the the scope and sequence from third second grade in March for those students.

But what what we are in actually doing is giving students the instruction and 3rd grade content.

Understanding that yep there is probably some unfinished learning from last year with some students and then differentiating our support for students that need it.

Whereas some students probably participated in in the instruction that happened in the spring last year and are ready for 3rd grade.

And to your point potentially even some students might be working above grade level.

So that's where the different differentiation comes into play.

But our school system is functioning with children that are in their grade level and giving access to grade level content as as the beginning stance.

Okay thank you.

I rest for now.

Go ahead.

Thank you Director Mack.

Director Hersey.

Hey how's it going.

Quick question.

So what I would like to know is given the priority standards that we've set how are we communicating those like explicitly to our families.

In addition in addition to that question what supports are we providing to our students who are identified as being below grade level to give them specific support around priority standards.

Are we like utilizing our PARAs like is there specific training around how do we address these priority standards in detail.

I'm just trying to figure out in comparison to what we're doing in federal way where where do we stand in Seattle.

Sure.

Hi Director Hersey this is Cashel.

I can begin that answer and if someone wants to jump in that's fine as well.

So I think your first question is how are we communicating to families about priority standards.

So the beginnings of that work has been in the Family Connections meetings that all of our educators are engaging in during the strong start or in this first beginning of school and talking with families about the learning focus of the of the first few months of school.

Your second question is how are we I think it was how is how are we addressing below grade level students.

We would do that through getting to know the students first of all through like who they are right and then potentially working with families to connect to resources through our MTSS structure and that would include paraprofessionals that you were talking about or small group instruction and things like that.

So I hope those two things help with those questions.

Yeah they do.

There is a missing part there really quickly though.

I'm just wondering so you know what are we doing to prepare our paraprofessionals to be adequate support systems for our children when they arrive.

Right.

So like what what training or what type of tools are we giving them that directly relate to our priority standards to make them more effective interventions in terms of supporting our students.

So hi this is Cashel again.

So when we held our training for educators that was inclusive of teacher of classroom teachers specialists everybody and instructional assistants and paraprofessionals as well.

So just to sort of frame the instructional stance for SPS.

Then also training's been available for all of the tools you know teams or you know all of the digital tools that we're using for our paraprofessionals as well.

Wait so is Teams now a priority standard.

I don't I don't feel like that adequately answered my question.

I'm confused.

Okay I'll try one more time.

So we shared this this training very similar slides that I just shared with you around priority standards and the resources available and where to find them.

So that screenshot of our website that we built for all SPS educators including all of the charts and showing the priority standards by grade level and by content area including weekly pacing guides.

So all of that training was delivered to both classroom teachers and instructional assistants and paraprofessionals.

And folks have access to all of those resources and tools right now.

Thank you.

I rest for now.

Regarding communication to parents I see that Chief Campbell has her hand up.

Carrie did you want to chime in on that.

Yeah I just wanted to mention that's a great question Director Hersey.

Carrie Campbell Chief of Public Affairs.

This Monday we met with 3 of the board directors including Director Rankin Director Hampson and Director Rivera-Smith and one of the discussion areas and something we're going to move on in partnership with CAI is to create a short succinct explainer videos around priority standards for our families translated so that we get that information out to them in a proactive way.

So look for more information to come.

That is great.

Thank you very much.

I look forward to that.

You're welcome.

Thank you Carrie.

Director Harris.

Well my big issue was how do we put this out for our parents and our community and I think it may have been just answered.

However we did not get an ETA for that or whether or not we're going to tell folks this is coming.

Help is coming.

Maybe Chief Campbell can answer that.

Absolutely.

Carrie Campbell again.

Yes so we can probably next week in School Beat we would include an update.

Right now my team is deep in working to finish up the tech video so this would be the next in the queue.

But super super important as we lean into parent family teacher conferences in November.

Okay if we can give folks a head up heads up with the EPA I think that would help greatly restoring some trust.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hampson.

For time saving purposes I'm trying to decide between two two questions so maybe I'll just ask them both and then staff can decide which one to answer.

I didn't.

quite hear the extent to which the principles are geared towards a truly remote environment.

Like when I see Read Aloud for example that feels well my experience is that that's a difficult one to translate into a remote learning environment in the same way that it that it happens in in brick-and-mortar.

And so I'm just wondering if somebody could reflect on that.

Any specifics that we know or have learned in terms of adaptation that is different from an in-person environment.

And then well I'll just go ahead and let that be the question.

Can I. This is Director Rankin.

I just wanted to share my son third grade son's teacher has I don't know if she created it or found found something online but she's done read-alouds with that show the pictures and have almost like subtitles that show the words going along with as she's talking but it's showing the book and it's it's it's very very cool.

So I'm just.

throwing that out there and sometimes he turns the sound off and just reads the words and sometimes he listens to the whole thing.

So I wouldn't necessarily say that read I think there still is value in read aloud remotely.

I don't know that everybody's doing that.

That's just a little just adding that in.

Well that was just a potential example but it doesn't really matter what the

Help me understand exactly what the question is.

Is it about do we read alouds transfer into the digital context or is it more.

Yeah.

I mean I see that that is one area that can be problematic for many students I think.

And even with what Director Rankin just stated as as you know I mean I think those are things that you actually use in classrooms anyway.

But my question and maybe it's in that extensive article that you provided but the the question is what is truly different that is a best practice in a remote or an online educational environment that we're adapting or that we're providing as a resource to our educators.

Thanks for asking that.

I did you know I have so many things we could share with you but we don't have so much time.

But one thing I did not talk about is that we've developed something called a vision for excellence inside of each one of the content areas and grade bands that articulates like this is what best practice would look like and here's how you can get there.

A good example is what you guys are talking about would be the read aloud.

There you might think at first that that doesn't translate well virtually.

But it can.

And you know that can be one of the most enjoyable times for all students to access really powerful literature.

And so that can be done with a text tool that I think Director Rankin was talking about.

And it also can be done in an asynchronous way which which can be really nice for flexibility for families.

Director Hampson did you have another question.

Oh it's fine.

I'll I'll thank you for that.

Sorry I was on mute.

Yeah that that's enough.

Certainly we'll want to be hearing more about that as as we go along.

I think it probably has more to do with the content of the of the book and or the literature and there being relevant closely responsive and relevant relevant material for students as well.

But I'll I'll rest.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director DeWolf.

Yes.

Mine is going to be just quick rapid Cashel so just to clarify.

What we're saying is students will both have potentially Not retained fully the information from learning last year but given the remote learning we need to be thoughtful about retention for not for learning this year correct.

Correct.

Okay so the next step is then we identified and established priority standards.

There was some engagement teachers students etc. to clarify the things that by the end of the year we want to make sure that no matter what these students have learned so they're at least on track.

Correct.

Correct.

And we are communicating these to parents and teachers and students currently or it is our plan to do that very relatively soon.

We've communicated where to find the tools for principals and educators including classroom teachers and paraprofessionals.

Chief Campbell just talked about our plan to communicate with parents and families.

And we've done a bit of that through the family connection visits that meetings that happened through the Strong Start.

Awesome.

And then to to further clarify the priority standards are obviously going to be different depending on the grade level and the subject.

Correct.

Correct.

And so if I wanted to go find priority standards for math for middle school and or any of these priority standards because I think one thing as important as daylighting this for the community where's the first and best place to direct people right now to say you go here and you can start to explore the priority standards so you are equipped with the knowledge of what your child should be learning in schools.

So far we've built that as an internal site for our principals and educators and our next step is to make that more digestible for families and that's the work that Chief Campbell was just talking about.

And do we have a potential timeline when we can say that people should should expect that.

Hi this is Carrie Campbell Chief of Public Affairs.

I think that we can replicate at a high level maybe as early as next week the web pages but the videos will take a little bit longer just because of the technical aspect of them.

So probably by the end of next week.

We can replicate the web pages.

It would be good if we can include in next week's call.

Okay.

Those are all my questions at this time.

I'll turn it over to Director Rankin.

Thank you.

Yeah I don't have any questions.

I just I think I really look forward to talking with you more Carrie as the videos and the kind of different communications are developed because I think you know there's People are so stressed out and they're afraid that their child is missing something or they're worried about so many things at one time.

I I'm I'm just I'm glad that we're talking about this in this way.

And and hopefully it will be a support to families to know you know what they can kind of take a breath on.

And you know if if they if they if they're you know have have a minute to to check in and are concerned about their child's progress they can see kind of what they should expect that their child should be working on or or you know have learned how to do or understand.

And I think that that'll actually be a really nice way just in general even pandemic aside to help families connect to what happens at school because a lot of times it's just hard to you know have a conversation with your child about what they're doing what they're learning.

So I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that's going into that.

And if no one has any other questions I think we can move on to the next the next item.

And so yeah.

Was that a question.

Sorry.

No this is Chief DeBacker ready to go to the next section.

Oh you're ready.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Dr. DeBacker please.

Thank you.

The second item today to talk about is the universal screener.

As you will recall in the OSPI requirements we had to indicate as to how we were going to ensure that students were prepared for learning that they had the technology that they needed that they were ready to learn.

So in Seattle Public Schools we are doing this in two phases.

The first phase was completed during Strong Start during Week 1. However we also know that with the number of students that we have in Seattle Public Schools we're expecting this to be done with all students no later than September 25th and that was identified in the remote learning playbook.

And what we did and what we're doing in the Strong Start is we're attending to wellness academic readiness and technology access.

We've included here a link to a document that all educators received as to how they could do the wellness check and the readiness check.

So if you have a chance in your in a little bit of extra time there's a great document at that link.

There's a wonderful video by our SPS educators David Lewis and Brittany Sampson as to just the importance of making sure that students are know that they that we know that they're there that we care about them.

It is about building relationships building trust.

That's easier to do in in a face-to-face environment not as easy to do remotely.

So as you'll see on the questions that we've asked during this first phase was really around how are you doing and making sure that they knew that there was somebody in their school that was paying attention.

So next slide Maria.

This is a screenshot from the universal screener for Phase 1 and so there were 16 questions that we're asking and it can be anybody within the school.

We encouraged principals as they were doing and trying to connect with all their students that they have somebody connect with a student that maybe already knew those students maybe already knew the family had some type of a of a relationship already established.

So it could have been a variety of people doing the doing this universal screener.

You'll see questions on here such as and again we approach this from a strength-based or an asset-based for all kids is you know what's the best way to reach you.

So that basic question.

Tell me about the strength of your student.

Tell me about what your young person likes to do for fun.

What interests do you have.

What hopes do you have for the school year.

So you kind of get a flavor of what we're trying to do is that it's the beginning of a new school year.

It's an unusual beginning to a school year and we want to put you at ease.

We then get down to if you look at questions 10 and 11 there you know what are your students strengths in reading and in math.

Again that asset-based question.

What areas do you think your student needs to grow in in math and reading.

Maria if you'll go to the next slide.

You'll see the rest of those 16 questions here.

And you know did did you participate or did your student participate in summer learning.

If so was it successful.

What have you been able to set up in in your home environment in terms of a learning space.

So that was that the initial 16 questions was around wellness readiness to learn.

And then we asked these three technology questions and You all are very familiar with those.

Does your student have access to technology to a device either a laptop or an iPad.

Do you have access to internet and do you need support in getting access to any of our remote learning platforms.

So that's what we did during Phase 1 and that's still continuing and it can continue until September 25th.

Again building relationships.

emphasizing to family and to students that we're here for you and we want to start off in this really in a in a strength-based manner.

Next slide Maria.

We then move into Phase 2 and Phase 2 is similar or it will it will sound similar to some of the questions that you were asking.

I heard Director Hersey talking about how how we'll know where students are academically.

So Phase 2 is really what we're calling the academic screener and we have worked with our content managers and math and ELA especially to develop questions and develop ways to see where students are.

Cashel mentioned that we are starting with grade-level standards and we think that that's very important and and our the the research from the Council of Great City Schools has shown us that as well.

But we need to know where students are so then we can start working with them and basing their instruction and curing if necessary.

So a universal academic screener is usually supposed to be very typically brief and it's conducted with all students from a grade level.

We are using our curriculum embedded assessments that assess those priority standards that Cashel talked about.

And we're asking the teachers to do that based upon the first units of instruction not the entire year just you know in a in a classroom if we were there with them face-to-face we would be being able to do this one-on-one or and this way we we can still do that this way but we we want to stick with what's important and that's getting started on the right foot.

And the ultimate goal as Cashel said is assessing those grade-level content standards.

Maria next slide.

So this is a screenshot of the Grade 3 ELA academic screener.

This will look very familiar to those of you who who have have had kids in young kids in the system and to Director Hersey this will look very familiar to you.

So this is something that would be done if you were sitting across from a student.

You would give them a list of words And in this case if they got 21 out of 26 words correctly if they could pronounce these you would go to list B.

And then if they got the correct amount right in list B you would go to list C.

This has now been digitalized.

There is I wish I could take you to the link where it actually is on the screen and the words appear behind Really kind of behind a slide.

Think about it kind of like if you were seeing a Jeopardy screen you would see that question appear.

So it's it's really fun how we were able to work with the publishers of our curriculum to get that done.

So next slide Maria.

Director Rankin that is it for the universal screener talking about Phase 1 and Phase 2. So at this time we can take questions.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And just a reminder to directors we want to move through move through here.

So if everyone could try to aim on kind of the 2-minute mark I think that would be good.

Let us.

I'll start with Director DeWolf.

Thank you Director Rankin.

I don't have any questions at this time.

Still digesting.

So.

Thank you.

I'll pass it on.

Director Hampson.

Yeah let me just go back a slide.

If I can pull it up.

We can flip back for it if you need it.

If it's easy to access I just lost the.

One more.

Oh yeah the what are we hearing for this it's a lot of questions.

And what kind of feedback are you hearing in terms of getting these questions answered.

Is this being logged in homeschool I mean homeroom.

Yes this is this is Chief DeBacker.

These questions are being logged in a sense at the building level and some building principals are choosing to do it via spreadsheet.

We are not asking for Phase 1 to be logged into Homeroom.

Phase 2 for the academic work we will be logging that into Homeroom.

So you mean these the sample

Yes the the the sample ELA one that you saw that information would be logged into Homeroom and then as you as we would do that at each grade level for math as well.

But the the Phase 1 of universal screener we are not logging anywhere other than the at the school level.

And Wyeth I don't know if you have anything extra to add there.

Hi directors.

Wyatt Jessee Chief of Schools and Continuous Improvement.

Yeah so the really right now the technology just is taken right up.

I mean the needs the devices we have identified staff they bring it in.

We've got the directors working with principals.

A lot of times they're already on top of this.

They already know who needs a device and they're putting more things out there.

It is a sense of having that conversation.

Chief DeBacker talked about the academic and then the last part is around some of the wellness and basic needs.

So our staff are working with those.

We have identified staff at each of our schools really around basic needs.

One of the bars that we bring in for for example is gift cards to help get basic needs to families.

So when those things come up we have identified staff to get those those services to them.

And then if somebody was to need a you know like a support or plan or something more extensive then the team gets together they would schedule another opportunity to work with the family to co-design that plan.

And the students as development is not appropriate.

Okay.

Yeah I just wasn't sure if this was meant to be the expectation is that this is a comprehensive set of it's because it's called a universal screener 16 questions.

is either to parents or to students depending on something I guess the age of the child and then but you know I'm just wondering about utilization of this and what kind of feedback you're you're hearing if there's any evidence of this of the utilization or this happening and at what grade levels.

Like how would we know that this was being utilized.

How would we know that this is being done.

So it's a scaffold.

It's really about developing relationships.

That's the that and some of the basic needs to help them you know engage and get get this school year started.

That's the purpose.

That's the direct purpose that was provided by OSPI.

And so we would hope this is you know that You know it's not just about a checklist or that you're going to go through each one of these questions.

It's really about to help form a more in-depth conversation and developing a relationship if you don't already have one established between the educators and the families and the students.

And then the things that we do know that the use is because they're going to have you know they're going to be working on those basic needs and the things that we know we have identified.

And we'll be coming back around with you know each of the staff and students as I was kind of illustrating last week in attendance for example where even the basic needs and just identification of who those are and where those things are at.

But the more informal conversation if you'll allow me it's not something we would we would record itself.

Yeah.

So you're saying so this is a resource and not you know a specific you know way for for anybody to gather any level of what's working what's not working for students in this remote learning environment whether in spring now concerns what kind of trends.

There's there's there's no kind of aggregation of information coming out of this.

Right.

Like exactly.

And it's like a parent teacher student conference.

But there is those elements like I was saying of like devices internet some basic needs those things that we want to make sure that those are more tangible need right now.

Those are something that is in place and we do record that information take it back and get it and work on it immediately.

Okay.

All right.

I'll let the next director go.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Director Harris.

Thank you.

I'm particularly interested in Phase 1 Phase 2 and whether we are adding that to homeroom.

Now did something change in the last 10 days because that's not what I heard from Chief Jessee previously.

Director Harris this is Chief DeBacker.

We are adding the academic screener information into Homeroom.

So for in the example where we showed the ELA 3rd grade screener as to how many words they were able to get correct that would be added into Homeroom because that is a data point that would then help us as we then start to make decisions as to what each individual student needs.

Okay and what's the ETA for Phase 2. for the social-emotional to be added into Homeroom.

Yeah the screening you know like all these conversations that that information gets taken out by the teams you know at each school site that again relates back to tiered supports and the MTSS process that information It goes in anywhere from now to you know as it's ongoing and fluid.

That's a year you know those are year-long processes that we've already had established and Homeroom takes up that that information.

Like I was illustrating in the presentation about the Homeroom contract that there was also the notion of already having like 4,000 student groups.

So that's you know it's previous practice and we'll continue to monitor that that work.

I don't feel like the question's really being answered.

Is the use of homeroom data input required.

Yes it is required.

Okay.

Because in the past when we've talked it hasn't been required.

It is required this year it's part of the CBA.

It is required for us to lift in the information on the priority standards that Chief DeBacker just mentioned.

And with respect to social emotional learning in Phase 2 when will that be required.

Will there be an ETA to collect this kind of information.

Director Harris in the universal screener that we have set up so far we only had two phases.

So the the academic phase which is going on right now and will continue for the next few weeks we did not plan a Phase 3.

Thank you.

I'll pass.

Director Hersey.

In the interest of time we can move on to the next director.

Thank you.

Director Mack.

Yes.

Hi.

For the academic screener portion can you flip forward Michelle to the the academic one.

And I just I wanted clarity because the question around SEL.

Okay yeah the next one please.

Thank you.

So grade 3 ELA academic screener.

So this is just for clarification one example of one of the content areas.

So are there.

academic screeners for each of the priority standards that are created that they're that each teacher is instructed to give to each student.

So one on math one on English one etc.

And one on SEL.

Are there is there one academic screener per priority standard or per content area.

Director Mack this is Chief DeBacker.

There is a screener for every grade level in math and ELA and our own content people so they our own content people develop those in conjunction with our adopted curriculum in each area.

And so they have done that all the way up through like math in the high school level.

There is not a.

that I am that we haven't worked on it on the academic side for the SEL.

But yes there's academic screener for every grade level in math and English language arts.

Okay.

But just for clarification the two things that are being screened of all students in every grade level are math and ELA and that's it at this point.

That is correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thank you.

Yeah let me just just clarify real fast too.

So the the first one Phase 1 was that was the intention for that to be one-on-one with students or are some is it okay for some to be done in large groups like homeroom.

Director Rivera-Smith this is Chief DeBacker.

The intention is that should be done one-on-one.

And so you think about the monumental task that that is with you know roughly 50,000 students.

And that's why as we talked about Phase 1 it could be anybody within the school that that wants to connect with a student.

Again it could be that they had their older brother and sister the year before.

It could be a coach.

It could be an IA.

It could be the principal.

It could be the front office administrative assistant.

All hands had to be on deck to get this done.

All right.

Thank you for that.

I would also I think it was sort of what Director Harris was asking I think but I'm not sure if there was got the answers.

What is the timeline for Phase 2. It sounded like Chief Jessee was saying it's all year but is there an actual timeline for the Phase 2 academic screenings to be completed or is it really just all year done.

Again Chief DeBacker here.

Phase 2 on the academic screeners technically started yesterday or started on on Monday of this week.

And those will happen.

Those are done individual classrooms.

So think about a 3rd grade teacher having 20-25 students.

They would do these academic screeners with their individual students.

So that could take I mean depending on the timing it could take a week it could take two weeks.

We're encouraging that this can be done during the asynchronous time.

This could be done during the Wednesday time.

So it wouldn't happen all throughout the year.

This is similar to how we would start the beginning of the year if we were face-to-face.

You would do this to get an initial feel for where students are at and then you go from there.

Thank you for that.

Final question is I'm wondering where because I'm really I appreciate the questions that are being asked in the universal screener definitely to gauge where students are and I understand how that information will be used.

But I'm wondering I'm wondering where the accountability is for that to make sure that they are in fact being done because you know if a child or their parents are never asked these questions they might not even know that they were never asked So who who's going to know that and how is it who's going to be held accountable to know that those are going to be computed for every student.

Again Chief DeBacker on the academic screeners we will know because those have to be entered into Homeroom.

So.

Yeah.

Are you talking more about Phase 1. Yes I am.

Chief Jessee any comments on how we are holding schools accountable for Phase 1 screeners.

Yeah so there's those are the mechanisms in which a lot of our practices are out there again on the device.

They have to give the device.

We're double-checking every single student.

We're matching the rostering for device and technology right now.

We're also going through for this academic screeners Chief DeBacker mentioned And then on the SEL or any other basic needs we're going through we have site-based personnel who are we know where the request will come in.

For example is it proportionate to other schools.

So those are you know there's a lot more data set is simply then making a requirement to have them.

I also have other additional data pieces like did they know how many gift cards they ask versus those.

How many referrals were there for students for additional mental health services.

We go through those data sets.

We're monitoring it and we also see that we're out you know watching the practices of staff.

But ultimately like it's on the professionals to make sure they're establishing relationships.

Those are things those are happening all the time and they're ongoing.

Wheels are dedicated time in the schedules.

So I think it's really critical they have that dedicated time and they're doing that work because that'll lead to you know obviously you know better ongoing relationships which is the again the bottom undergirding line of having this particular wellness and readiness family connection.

Okay so so again who will know if a family is slipping between the cracks.

That is on the school leader.

Okay.

Thank you.

No further questions.

I don't have any.

This is Director Rankin.

I don't have any questions but I just do want to say that you know I think it actually would be pretty helpful for us to have not the individual information connected to each student but just an overview from the schools of of Phase 1 I think that could potentially tell us a lot about our school communities and and maybe help us identify strengths and weaknesses that we could address centrally or places where schools need support.

So I'm just throwing that out there.

And unless anyone has anything else pressing I think we are ready to.

Move on speak now.

Nobody.

Okay.

Let us move on to Dr. Perkins and grading and reporting to standard please.

Thank you Director Rankin.

This is Caleb Perkins Executive Director for College and Career Readiness.

I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about grading and reporting to standard.

The bulk of my presentation will be around secondary grading for 612 but of course we also care about reporting to standard.

Since we started these conversations in depth it's in the in the spring we have learned a lot about how we have shared goals about wanting to make sure we're doing everything we can to support students in this moment.

That we want to communicate with families through grading about learning and that we want to devote our attention to our students furthest from educational justice and really make sure grading is promoting racial equity and anti-racist practices.

And I just also want to before I begin also say how great it has been to take a collaborative approach to this.

In the spring we had the board SEA leadership PASS leadership as well as educators and even students weighing in and helping us think about this and that we try to take the same approach over the last several months to think about what's the best way forward.

We've been thinking about the fall and grading since since last spring when we first started thinking about what it means to do grading in a remote environment.

And most recently I'd like to just call out the SEA leadership and SEPTSA which has given specific guidance to us and time.

And I'm very excited I was excited to learn yesterday that we've also invited three educators today from Franklin.

So thanks to them for for weighing in.

There's a lot of hard questions in grading and I know there's different perspectives but we really appreciate staying grounded in that.

So this first slide just shares what the outline of my comments will be.

I want to start by just grounding us again in the pillars and policy that we decided on in August and shared in August as really the common ground that we have to build on.

And then I wanted to devote the rest of the time of my remarks to 3 questions that have come up and our responses.

One the first question being how does the grading scale connect to the conversion to letter grades given our new policy.

And I'll get into that in more depth in just a moment.

The second question is how are we going to figure out the process for incompletes now that we're in a different environment compared to the spring.

And finally how do we push best practices in education and in grading in particular.

And I think the the that's the piece that we really want to spend some time on the thinking about what are best practices and how do we promote them especially with the given all the input that we've received on the importance.

Next slide please.

So to start again with what we shared in August.

These are the pillars that have been guiding us and guiding the conversations.

They have resonated with with.

conversations we've had with students with teachers including and stakeholders including the SCPTSA they're they're also helping us think about how to be accurate how to be bias-resistant how to be motivational.

And we're excited to say that that you know these are things that teachers are doing quite well in many places in the district.

In particular that schools like Denny that's been doing standards-based grading for a while is one example of the many places that are looking and doing standards-based grading.

to be more accurate and to be bias-resistant and to be motivational.

We also know we have a great deal of work to do here and it's not consistent across our district.

And that's one thing that we're going to have to spend a good deal of time working on and we look forward to this opportunity in this year with this new policy.

So those are the pillars.

Now I want to pivot to the policy which should of course look familiar.

So for grades 6-12 as you know the board voted to make the final grading options for secondary be A-C minus or incomplete.

Those are the only final grade options that are available.

They also agreed with the idea of standards marking using power standards as we as we typically do K-5 but with robust comments to provide more information to families about how students are doing K-5.

Again I'm going to focus most of the time on 612 and I want to pivot to that first question that was asked as we shared some initial guidelines with the board and that is When we think about our 100-point grade scale and one piece to note is that all of our grades are loaded into a PowerTeacher Pro system that is on a 100-point grade school grade scale excuse me.

And so one question is what happens to the 60 to 69 now that we no longer have the D grade.

And I'd like to go to the next slide to just share what that looks like.

So the the response that we have made is that We believe that the if a student is in a class and ultimately receives a grade in the 60's that they should receive that normally they would pass and they would receive credit prior to this semester prior in any prior year.

And because they would have received credit we're advocating that they would continue to receive credit.

Since the lowest possible grade at this point is a C-minus then they would they would receive credit as well as a C-minus grade.

I do want to acknowledge that there is of course another perspective on this and there's and I think we're going to hear more about this from some of the Franklin teachers as well as Director Rankin which how do we make sure that our grades are accurate and communicating what what we think they mean.

And so another alternative is to make grades received in the 60s convert to an incomplete.

The reason why we're advocating to not have the grade in the 60s convert to incomplete is that that would likely result in many more incompletes.

In an average semester we have about 3,000 students receiving D's prior to last semester.

So that would be something to take into account.

And — Sorry.

Sorry Dr. Perkins.

3,000 D's.

3,000 classes.

Not 3,000 students.

Yeah no 3,000 course grades.

Good clarification.

So out of 6 if there's about 80,000 grades across about you know 15,000 students.

Yeah it was it's it's it would be about 3,000 of those 80,000.

Thank you.

So yes so again thinking about a specific example imagining a 12th grader who was needing to graduate second semester and got a grade in the 60s.

Again we're advocating that that that student get the benefit of the doubt and receive the credit as they would previously as opposed to getting an incomplete and needing to make that up.

But again this is a question that obviously has valid perspectives on multiple sides and we look forward to hearing others perspectives soon from from our educators from Franklin.

So that's one question.

What what happens with the grade point scale from 60 to 69 that we believe again that the what makes the most sense is for those students to earn credit and to and to be able to move on.

The second question I want to preview if we go to the next slide has to do with the incomplete process in general.

If we go to the next slide.

So To inform the question that I believe is Director Rankin asked what is our process for determining incompletes.

We had a very unique time in the spring where we were able to have an entire system come together and really focus on ensuring all students had an opportunity to earn credit and even receive an A.

But historically if we want to look back that this connects to Director Rankin's questions about the D's we On a typical semester if you can look at this graph award or students receive about 4,300 E-grades or failing grades out of about 80,000 grades each semester.

So that is one slide we just wanted to share one piece of data.

If we can go to the next slide.

And if we break that down by students of color furthest from educational justice as well as our African-American male students we see that that disproportionately It affects students of color further education justice and African-American male students.

And so this is this is our past reality and I know that there's obviously a chance and opportunity to do better and to to approach this in a new way just as we did last semester.

So I don't want to describe this as what what necessarily will happen but I did want to bring it up to the board to share this one of the reasons that we want to take a number of steps I believe we all do to ensure that the process for incompletes is giving students every opportunity to earn credit and to to to be able to proceed with their with their academic careers.

So if we go to the next slide this is the slide that I'd like to linger on the most which is this is our proposal.

How should we have a process for incompletes going forward to ensure students are getting those opportunities.

And so you can see there's a number of proactive steps we're we're advocating for.

One is a series of recommended practices.

We've shared those those with the board previously and I'll share them in detail in a moment.

We also want to require that teachers update their gradebook every other week for students who are at risk of receiving or of earning an incomplete with specific guidance to students and families about how to address that incomplete.

And we want to just give a shout out to the SEA leadership who's helped us think through how to get this guidance precise enough so it makes sense and is clear.

And so that idea of specific guidance to students and families comes directly from those conversations.

We want to be able to use our Wednesdays to support these students particularly through advisory where high schools have advisory.

We want to connect them to existing plans.

MTSS of course which we've been implementing for a number of years has the idea of every other week approaching the you know connecting with students about how they're doing.

So that's where that every other week piece comes And then just as we did in the spring we want to essentially develop some incomplete reports or students at risk of receiving incompletes or earning incompletes so that school leaders and counselors can see what's happening.

And we would propose to do that 4 times per semester.

So these are all the proactive steps we want to take to make sure students are getting every opportunity to be supported and earn the credit and and move on to to the next level of their education.

In addition we need to think about the follow-up.

We want to give the students an opportunity to obviously make up any incompletes and that gets into the individual student plan idea that we developed this last spring that we want to continue and go forward with as well as an appeals process.

So again this is question number 2. How are we approaching the process for incompletes.

Our response is captured by these proactive steps as well as the follow-up steps you see on this slide.

And now we'll go to the next piece.

The final question that I wanted we wanted to directly address that came from the board on grading is how are we promoting best practices.

It says recommended but really these are best practices and they're they were developed back to the original point of all the collaboration.

These came from conversations with students and with teachers starting in the spring and over the summer.

Teachers and students at at at Franklin at Sealth at Denny and other places to really kind of inform what what should be the right approach as well.

And the SCPTSA also helped shape our input on these.

And so these are an effort to try to make sure again we are setting up grading so it meets those three pillars.

It's anti-bias it's motivational and it's accurate.

And and so these are some of the practices that we're putting forth and asking all school leaders to engage their their their teachers with on these practices.

And finally I just I'll go to the next slide and just repeat that.

These ideas and these proposals and these responses come from a lot of conversations and a collaboration.

And again there always are multiple perspectives on some of these challenging questions but we really appreciate all the time and energy and really the consensus that I think we've come to from across these many groups on these important questions.

And of course again we appreciate teachers from Franklin coming today that were invited by I believe Director Rankin to share some other perspectives on this work.

We can go to the next slide.

So with that we hope that we addressed the many of the questions that you raised.

If there's anything else that we didn't address we hope we can address them through the question and answer portion.

And with that I'll turn it to Director Rankin and our teachers from Franklin.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Dr. Perkins.

So my plan here was to do one round of director questions now and then hear from the Franklin educators and and then have another opportunity to go around.

Keeping in mind that we want to have that opportunity for that second round I'm just going to ask directors to know that you will have another opportunity.

And something that I just want to say I guess I've had the opportunity to talk with Dr. Perkins and Dr. DeBacker about about this earlier this week and I'm I guess I just want to kind of highlight the the opportunity that we have in the midst of the challenges to stand up something that's really supportive of students and student learning and put the put the the heaviest burden on us as a system to make sure that we're reaching students and that they're they're learning.

I would really like to see us as a system shift from being sort of achievement-driven to being learning-driven.

And when I put forth the amendment to remove the D from the grading scale it was with that in mind not to not to lower lower standards as to what a C minus represents but to raise standards on us as a system to make sure that we you know if a student is is not not demonstrating proficiency I think that you know earlier than the final grade that there's a signal to to to teachers to families to us that that student needs something that they're not getting and it is our responsibility to figure out what that is and how to support them.

Because I you know getting getting the credit and graduating on time all of that stuff is is important but it's important because it symbolizes that a student has learned and is and is prepared.

And it's that part that I'm worried that the balance in trying to you know acknowledge the challenge of the situation that we're in right now and not expect you know students to do everything that they could do before or expect that you know their home situation is conducive to learning or whatever it is that I you know we don't want that pressure to be on on them in that way.

But we also can't allow ourselves as a system to say oh well this is really hard and and we just want them to continue on because then they get to you know their senior year and they're we actually did not do our job to prepare them for graduation.

So that is kind of and I the opportunity that we have right now especially with the priority standards is in trying to move away from sort of achievement focus to learning learning focus is the priority standards kind of also give us an opportunity to really agree on here are the things that you know we expect students to have learned that we want them to be able to understand and to do and kind of you know clear hopefully clear away some of the noise and the kind of busy work that that you know adults take part in too in the in professional spaces all of the time.

You know do things that you think what what is actually what what is this actually for.

So this is an opportunity for us to sort of clear some of that out and really focus on making sure that we are that students know what we want them to know and that we're giving them what they need.

And in that case there's there's a lot of stuff in this presentation and the draft document that I like quite a bit.

And but I'm I am concerned about that 60 to 69 percent.

So moving on to directors for questions.

I will start with Director DeWolf if you're ready to be first up.

Sure.

The only thing I don't necessarily want to take too much time when I get to the panel but the thing I just want to be thoughtful How how do we land on what's our decision going to be about the 60 to 69 on a 100-point scale.

Is it are we just going to assume that the C-minus and then it goes to incomplete.

Is that it says here it's a topic for board work session discussion.

So I just want to know how do we how do we clarify that finally for the community and is this the time to make that decision or just trying to think about next steps.

Director DeWolf this is Chief DeBacker.

I think it Caleb stated it but I want to make it clear that the CA&I team is recommending that the C-minus do does dip down into the 60-69.

We have given guidance around that already to the schools.

That doesn't mean it can't be changed but the recommendation from staff is that the C-minus does extend down there so.

If we were going to do anything different we would need some very clear direction from the board.

Director DeWolf did you have other questions now or you want to hold until after the panel.

That's it.

Okay.

That's it.

After the panel.

Thanks.

Director Hampson.

Hi.

Yeah.

Back on the I couldn't tell the proportionality of the you know you presented Caleb at the at the beginning some of these these trends obviously with it dropping down to zero in the spring of the incompletes or the E's given and But I can't tell is I can't tell what the proportionality is and I can extrapolate from that.

No good good point and that we should probably add that.

So roughly speaking and I will need to confirm this with research and evaluation.

If 4,300 out of 80,000 grades then you know a little bit more than 5 5 or 6 percent are receive of those grades are receiving E's.

If you go to the next slide we'll see that those percentages are higher.

than 5 to 6 percent for these particular groups on average.

And again past past actions don't predict future necessarily.

But.

So yeah I guess given that and I you know I look at this and wonder what the what the hell happened in 2017. But because that seems like an anomaly.

But but I think my concern with this band of the 60 to 69 percent with the C C-minus versus a and we can talk about about this more after Director Rankin if because I feel like I do want to hear from the panelists.

But how you know if it's unless it's a senior that student then has to come back into the next quarter or the next year and maybe even further behind than if we'd provided an incomplete and tried to get them caught up.

And so I think that's the concern is are we going to actually is the unintended consequence of that generosity that then we're going to see an increase in incompletes in the subsequent quarter or semester because we didn't actually do the work that we needed to with that student to get them to where they need to be.

Yeah there's absolutely trade-offs.

I think that the alternative piece is that right now or I should say prior to the last semester 60-69 the student would would earn a credit and would be and move on to that next piece.

And I definitely hear Director Rankin's point but that may be too low a bar.

But but that's that's what the communication has been for years and years in terms of their ability to to to take that to receive that that passing grade and move on.

But but would we be concerned about that student not having all the skills.

Of course that that that's something that obviously we need to continue to think about.

So there's absolutely tradeoffs.

I just think from our perspective the potential of hundreds if not thousands more of incompletes is something that we just need to think very carefully about.

That's that's sort of the purpose of this slide.

But we don't have any reason.

I mean we're not basing that on any particular data set that says you know in fact we would have.

I mean I guess technically by definition if the same number of students were at that level then we would yes have a higher number.

And what are therefore the other mitigants to that other than failing to teach them you know that other 10 percent.

Did we discuss a middle ground of 65 percent meaning what is the what's the mitigation to teaching a pandemic and the inaccessibility and other factors that students are dealing with that is fair and appropriate but at the same time recognizes that our our obligation to provide them with with an education.

So I'll I'll Just leave it at that as a comment because I want to hear from the panelists and let it go to my next director.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Director Harris.

I would like to hear from the panel.

I'd also like to hear from our colleges and universities about this because I've taken a fair amount of flack from higher education on our A's or incompletes last spring.

since the good folks from Franklin etc. have shown up.

Could we please get to them.

Thank you.

OK.

Let's just quickly if if Director Hersey do you have anything.

I don't have anything.

We can move on to the next director so we can get to the panel.

Thanks.

Great.

Director Mack.

Yeah thank you.

I have a very quick question.

about whether or not our teachers any of them are allowed to grade on a on the curve meaning that they assign this percentage will get A's and then there's always a certain percentage that fail in the class.

Do we allow that in Seattle Public Schools.

Do we allow curve grading on a curve.

Because there's always someone who fails in that setting.

And I'm wondering if we still have that practice that we would allow that sort of grading.

In short there there's a fair amount of teacher autonomy in terms of grading.

I've never heard of that being you know in terms of having a allowing an allotment of every grade being given.

That doesn't sound like a practice we would condone.

But if there are specific examples that we should look into then I'd be happy to do that.

Yeah I guess I would like clarity because this was a practice when I was in college and I remember very clearly that it was always set up in such a way that grading on a curve there were a certain number of students that would get A's B's etc.

And I wonder whether or not that's actually happening in our schools because that always means that someone fails.

And in this in this environment if we're we're going to an A through C minus it still would be impactful.

Thank you.

If you could if we could figure out whether or not that's happening.

Thank you.

Yes.

We'll we'll see what we can find out.

The one basic thing is that since there is a grade point scale that underlies each all the grades with PowerTeacherPro that that would be more challenging to do.

But but anyway I will look into it.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Anything pressing before we move on.

No.

I I am I I'm likewise concerned with the 60s becoming a C but I would definitely want to hear from the teachers so we can move on to that.

For that if I we have are are thrilled to be joined by a few teachers from Franklin who have been moving this work forward in their own practice and teaching in a way that is focused on supporting students especially students furthest from educational justice and our obligation as educators and as a system to support them in their learning.

So I'm really looking forward to hearing from them.

We have Lisa Rice Olivia Geffner and Lindsay Stapes.

And I believe I saw your names in the participation list.

So if you're here go right ahead.

Hi.

I think I've been I've been delegated to go first.

So my name is Olivia Geffner.

I teach obviously at Franklin.

teach social studies and language arts.

And the reason that the three of us are here is that the three of us along with another teacher last year we decided as sort of a 12th grade team that we were going to as 12th grade language arts and social studies we were not going to be giving D's that we were going to be using that 70 percent C-minus sort of as our threshold.

And but one thing I wanted to bring up first and I think I'll Pass it off to Lisa and Lindsay.

I feel like we're missing an opportunity here to really talk have a real honest conversation about assessment and about what sound grading practices actually looks like.

Oh sorry my computer says I have bad network quality so I'm sorry if I am going in and out.

I can hear you.

Okay good.

I think that we I hope we can all agree that So historically our grading practices and our A-E system is racist and is harmful to particularly our African-American students but students of color in general.

And I just feel like we're missing an opportunity that if grading is really representing learning and it's here to represent what kids are actually learning that we just keep not having this conversation that's Every time a new a new grading policy comes down whether it was lowering the GPA graduation GPA to 1.0 or it was changing the gradebook last year we're just avoiding this actual conversation about how inequitable and racist our grading policy is in order to just make these like quick fixes and seemingly top-down decisions.

We had a lot of success with our 70 percent mark.

I think we had almost all of our students passed at the 70 percent mark or had sort of significant things going on they didn't pass the class at all.

As teachers it's our responsibility to teach students.

And I think if you're letting kids those kids in that D range I mean a D means you didn't learn these skills or this material.

And it's our responsibility to help get you our help get our students to the place where they are ready to be moving on particularly for us as 12th grade teachers moving on into this next phase of our their lives.

So I will stop there pass it off to Lindsay and Lisa.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you Olivia.

Hi I'm Elisa Rice and again I teach at Franklin.

I teach 11th and 12th grade Language Arts.

This year I'm teaching African-American Lit and I also do the UW in the High School program.

So excuse me.

Oh I thought somebody said something.

So.

Okay sorry.

So I actually eliminated D's from my grade book 3-0 whenever it was it was decided that we had a 1.0 GPA requirement.

And I did so because a 1.0 GPA requirement is really ridiculous and I was really offended as a person of color as a Black person that this was okay with you to send Black and Brown kids into the world with no skills.

And I rarely did D's in my class anyway but at that point I said no this is I'm putting my foot down and I set a C-minus as a threshold at 70 percent.

And then I did what I had to do that was necessary to make sure that my kids got there.

I mean what I was already doing I'm like I didn't do a lot of D's to begin with but I had to really tighten up my pedagogy and where my head was to get my kids there.

So I think that When you say that a 60 percent is still a C you're basically saying that you don't trust your teachers.

You don't trust the educators in the district to do their job.

We have a job to do.

You know, we're here to teach kids.

We're here to educate kids.

We're not here to pass them along because you were quiet in class.

You didn't make a fuss and you show it up.

So I'm going to give you a D because I don't want to argue with your parents.

If I fail you, I want to argue with you.

If I fail you, you know, cause that's uncomfortable.

You know what?

It's time to be uncomfortable.

Okay.

You people, I say you people, people, decide what's comfortable for them and they want to roll with it.

And that's always every battle I've had with Seattle Public Schools has been because somebody's comfortable.

When I wanted African-American lit and other and Asian-American lit and Native American lit and Latinx to be core classes instead of electives I was told that well it's always been this way let's just but it's all because it's always been doesn't mean always has to be.

If that's the mindset that you know we had then my blanket would still be in the back of the bus somewhere.

Because people be afraid of change.

Okay so we can't be afraid of change.

We can't be afraid of some incompletes.

If you hold teachers accountable the way we're supposed to hold our kids accountable it should not be an issue.

Every teacher in the district should be capable of making this shift.

They know what a C-minus looks like.

Okay it's time to stop being lazy and do your job.

It's time to stop being saviors and I said it and I meant it.

We can't be you can't be White saviors and think we're just going to scoop these kids up and pass them along without any education.

It's not okay.

If you would not do it for your kids if this is not acceptable for the kids that you brought into the world why is it acceptable for other people's kids.

I just don't understand that.

Okay.

So again I'm offended as a Black person as someone who used to be a Black child who has raised Black children who had a Black son.

Okay.

I'm going to be hella pissed if I find that you just handed my kids grades.

This is not acceptable.

Our kids can learn.

They are capable of learning.

And I'm sick and tired of you all acting like our kids can't do what they do what they what they're capable of doing and lowering the bar and lowering the bar and you know you may as well be Oprah up there and you get a D and you get a D and you get a diploma and what does it mean.

Kids are getting diplomas that they can't freaking read.

And I feel like you all are okay with this.

Some of the things that Caleb Dr. Perkins was that put out there were things that teachers should be doing anyway.

They should be calling home.

Okay.

I do this.

When I see kids' grades start slipping before a certain point I start calling home.

I say kid know this is where I start calling home like parents.

This is where we are.

I don't do deeds.

They will fail this class.

We sent out last year when my other colleagues joined us.

I've been doing this for like three years now.

My other colleagues joined me last year we did across the board for 12th grade.

We sent out a form we sent out a letter as part of our syllabus letting parents know this is what we were doing.

And not one parent complained.

Everybody signed it.

Parents knew and understood and I think they appreciated it.

So and it's things like you know I give extra time to get things done.

You know I don't take off points for late work up to a certain point.

I mean you can't just turn in whatever all semester because that's not okay.

But I take late work and I don't take points off for the late work.

I mean there are things that you do to make it work.

You work with the kids.

You don't penalize them for things that kids get penalized for.

And I feel like the people who are making decisions regarding you know what happens in the classroom where people have not been in a classroom for a while.

And I think that really needs to be addressed.

So I think that's all I have to say.

Lindsay.

Can I add one thing to what Lisa just said.

Sorry did I cut you off Lisa.

No no no.

I do.

I hate to cut any of you off but I do want to make sure we get time for Lindsay and then and for directors to ask questions because what you guys are saying is I know going to get a lot of wheels turning.

All right.

Hi I'm Lindsay States.

I also teach at Franklin.

I teach AP English Literature to 12th graders and then I also teach algebra both ELL and non-ELL.

And honestly the D throughout my career has kind of been the manifestation of deficit thinking vis-a-vis our kids because it's a way to socially promote them.

It's a way to kind of say well I mean you kind of were here and then we allow them to go forward without really having the learning that they should have to move forward.

I don't remember who was saying it but one of the other directors had said that she had gotten some slack from community colleges If we're sending kids out into the world and they're going to colleges with D averages they're not prepared.

And I don't have any sort of documentation to this but I do know from personal anecdotes that my students who have gone out and like kind of were D-level students and they tried to do college they end up dropping out and they end up struggling and they end up feeling like school is not for them.

The thing is when we changed our policies The students will will meet the expectations that we give them.

That doesn't mean we don't have to provide additional supports.

I mean we were lucky we worked with an interventionist last year who was able to kind of hustle with the kids and make sure that if they missed something they would come in and make it up.

And so we were very lucky we had this support system in our building.

But it's our responsibility to make sure that they're leaving with C-level at least because that means they did the learning.

That means they are able to do what we are asking them to do.

And unfortunately if if we're just kind of I don't know D's technically a lot of people who give out D's it seems pretty racist because a lot of the times it's they don't want to deal with the kids anymore and they just want to pass them along so they don't have to talk to their parents as Lisa pointed out.

So I'm finished with that.

Thank you.

I just I so appreciate the three of you being willing to give some time to come and talk to us today.

And you know what it's your your proof that this this can work.

And I also you know really appreciate you all saying that you know this is our job.

And I feel like as you know as a school district and as a school board director it's my responsibility to personally to make make sure that we're giving our students what they need to succeed.

But I want to make sure that we get to directors questions And just keeping in mind that we are scheduled only for about 15 more minutes.

And I think our the three educators indicated to me earlier that they are willing to answer questions.

But directors I don't know if you have I guess just I'll just go through the list and let you ask questions of staff or educators as you as you wish.

Director DeWolf do you want to start off.

Thank you.

Yes.

You know first of all thank you Lisa Olivia and Lindsay for being here and thanks for sticking to our meeting and for giving your your feedback and insights and experience and expertise and everything back to us and reflecting that back to us.

So just want to share my gratitude.

And in addition I would just say you know one thing I think that COVID made clear and I've had a lot of really really good discussions with my directors and particularly Director Hersey and Director Rankin early on when we had to go into closures about grading.

And so what you've elevated to me is really important and I and I want you to know that the work that you're describing and you know reimagining or re-envisioning grading is not something that we're going to let slip away.

This is a this is one of those perfect opportunities for us to engage in that.

And so I would just ask you to be flexible with us as we you know hopefully we'll have some future discussions particularly in the maybe the C&I committee.

around this topic because I think you're right.

Every way that we can think about operationalizing this the work of being an anti-racist organization this is one of those areas.

And so I'm really interested in that and I just thank you for elevating that today.

And so no no necessarily no questions but just to share my gratitude and to offer a commitment that we're we're absolutely looking into this particularly as it pertains to our commitment to anti-racist organization.

Thank you Director DeWolf.

Director Hampson.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for the presentations on grading.

Thank you to the teachers for your bravery in coming and speaking to us to board to staff.

I can't from the bottom of my heart I appreciate it.

We need this additional view and information.

We need the full picture.

And in my in my initial thoughts and in my initial questions and then listening to all of you confirms that to to out of fear again I and I agree that I think that this is the district tends to be very fear-based.

If out of fear of incompletes and of increase in incompletes which means that we haven't done the work with those students and if we're particularly concerned about students furthest from educational justice and particularly Black male students then we have and we are giving C's for D work that we have completely missed the point of targeted universalism.

So that is my assessment and I want to make a very strong statement that I do not support giving C grades for for D-level work at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Hampson.

Director Harris.

I'm old and I've sat 25 years on various advisory committees at what used to be called community colleges.

And I think we do our students a huge disservice if we grade inflate and we represent to them receiving institutions.

And I wasn't just talking about community colleges.

I have taken a great deal of flak over A's or incompletes from higher education as well.

We have to do the work and a culture of low expectations I I I can't deal with that.

That to me is is failure-based not just fear-based.

And and I could not agree more with the words of my esteemed colleague Hampson that we are missing the boat when universal target universal Targeted universalism.

If if we do this in fear we're doing our students and their families a huge disservice if we misrepresent what they're capable of.

And it's our job to get them up to speed and to do whatever the hell it takes.

I thought that's what the whole strat plan was about.

And beyond thankful to the Franklin teachers for their additional work and for their courage quite frankly.

It's not a popular feeling necessarily.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Harris.

Director Hersey.

I just want to take a quick second to thank my fellow educators for coming and spending your time with us even though I know you have had a long day.

I guess my question would be to staff like what else do you need to hear.

quite frankly I think that if we are handing out C's for D work then that is coming from a position of fear.

And my question would be what are we fearing.

Are we fearing that is going to expose the educators in our system that are not willing to meet our students where they're at.

Are we are we afraid that we are going to fail more so than some of our our classrooms are already failing our Black boys.

I really see this not only as a lowering of standards but also just really really a statement to what we think our children and our educators are capable of.

Right.

We talk very widely and we we praise our world-class educators but yet when we are given the opportunity to really to really step forward and take a stand for not only equity but high expectations again we lower the bar without giving our educators the ability to do what they are best at and giving our children the opportunity to show us their brilliance.

And so if we don't move forward in a direction that not only sets high standards for our children because they can and they will meet them then what message are we sending to our families.

I think that this is just very clearly an opportunity for us to plainly do the right thing and to hold not only our system accountable but quite frankly ourselves in giving our educators the space to do the work that they do every single day and helping us bring our entire system along because they are proving quite literally and frankly that this work can be done and it can be operationalized throughout our system.

It is up to us as the district to provide the supports necessary to make this possible and to provide the direction and the leadership necessary to show that this is a real commitment from us at the top of this structure and at the top of this system.

And if we are not willing to do that then we should all pack our bags and find new roles.

Because this is what it looks like.

to really reimagine and rethink the way that we do education.

And I signed on to be a part of an organization that is ready to innovate not lower standards.

So I'll leave it at that.

Thank you Director Hersey.

Director Mack.

Yeah thank you.

I also express extreme gratitude for the educators coming here today to talk about the culture of low expectation and the damage that that can cause.

I second and agree with the sentiments of my colleagues that have spoken thus far.

I'm counting votes if this were a vote and it sounds to me like this board is expressing very clearly that we do not agree with the giving students D's or C's for D work.

And so my I think I want to reflect back and ask the question of staff or the superintendent whoever can answer this question specifically what is the process by which we need to as a board to clarify what was intended when we adopted the A-C grading standard that we adopted that that our intention was not to lower standards it was it was still to you know maintain standards and ensure that students are learning.

What do we from a process perspective need to do in order to communicate that to the district so that that communication that's gone out thus far which is in fact great great inflation that we can have that changed.

What do we need to do process-wise.

Director Rankin this is Chief DeBacker can I respond.

Yes please go ahead.

Yeah.

You know we we said very very clearly that we want that we knew we needed discussion in the grading area.

This is exactly the discussion we were hoping for.

It is very clear that the board's direction is to have The C extend only down to 70 percent.

We will communicate that to staff.

And I'd also like to say that when we adopted the new grading policy in the spring you as a board gave us the direction that we wanted to talk more about grading and that it shouldn't be around percentages.

And our our our proposal is that we form a workgroup to talk about standards-based grading K-12.

Now as long as we still attach things to points and not to actually what students know and can do then we're going to have these discussions forever.

Another board might decide something different.

So that is also something that I would offer to you is that we need to talk about how grading can be different.

And if we look at what happened to K-5 let's talk about that 6-12 as well.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that Dr. DeBacker.

Can I just get clarification that even though we're not taking a vote here that the district staff feel that they have heard from the board.

I think I heard that from Director from Diane DeBacker but I just want to clarify.

Director Mack you had asked does the board need to do anything further in order for us to then re-communicate to the staff.

Is that correct.

Well to communicate the change from what you've already communicated because if I understand it you've communicated that these will be shifted to C-minuses.

So there needs to be a different communication going out correct.

Yes.

Yes.

And we will do that immediately tomorrow.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Director Rivera-Smith.

Thanks.

Hi.

You guys did all the work for me I guess.

But I want to say wow and thank you so much to these teachers.

You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear such honesty and such truth and such just clarity on something that you're right.

I mean you're in the classrooms.

Nobody knows better how it works with students and how your job is best done than you.

And thank you so much for being here to do that.

I guess you know my only question would be maybe to you is is what makes this possible.

Like what do what do we as a district need to do for teachers to enable all teachers to do what you are doing already and that is not accepting D's because it's a letter D but because it's accepting that your work did not get the child to be where they need to be.

And so it wasn't it was never about just getting rid of the D's for us when we changed the policy it was about getting rid of the acceptance that the best we could do for students was a D because I'd almost rather them have I's because at least I's came with a lot of supports.

But then they'd be students with C's and no supports and not the real work they needed to be to get to that grade.

So again what do we need to do as a district to enable teachers to do what you're doing.

Well Lindsay brought up that we have interventionists in our building and We have one in particular is amazing but we have interventionists so we work with them.

So I don't know if other buildings have interventionists but that helps a lot.

We had a supportive admin team until you know well things got iffy at one point but our admin team was very supportive.

You know when I first said I was going to do it they were like do it.

And then when the other 3 joined in you know we went for it.

I think they need support of their admin.

They need interventionists.

Lindsay Olivia what else.

I would say that the incomplete process needs to be pretty clearly delineated.

I do incompletes in my algebra class and if I don't know if there's a possibility to make a template that this is the teachers would go through and say this is the work that needs to be done.

Also having people to facilitate that work after the classes ended like people who are able whether it's support staff or whoever or a class or something because advisory would not be enough for this for students especially if they're truly struggling.

But if there were support staff that were hired and dedicated to help students complete incompletes And just kind of they they're going to need some shepherding.

I mean there are always students who like might have an incomplete and they just needed to hustle and get the work done.

But oftentimes there are additional supports necessary for the kids to be successful.

So funding for that would be really helpful.

A template for how incompletes are to be done would be super helpful.

I don't know.

What else Olivia.

I think also on a on a larger scale that this does ask teachers and buildings to really rethink the way you teach in some ways because you really have to think about how what what you're teaching and how you're teaching it and how it is really best teaching students certain skills and certain ideas.

And I think that can be probably pretty scary for a lot of teachers in a lot of buildings.

And I think if if it came from the district and the board that this really is a priority and we want you to leave high school having learned and be prepared not just with a diploma in your hand because those are not necessarily the same thing that we would take the time would be given and maybe you know maybe there are more PD days over the course of the school year where we actually have time to talk about it or our Tri-Days at the beginning of the year actually devoted to talking about sound grading practices and talking about strategies that we're doing on the front end.

I mean I think the the pieces that Dr. Perkins showed earlier Those are all practices that people should already be doing.

Like if people are surprised by those things then that's a problem.

I think.

Yeah.

So so but having that really be the district and the board saying that this is a priority and that we want we want our students leaving here with the skills to really be successful in whatever they decide to go do next and we have high expectations of you.

And we have expectations of our teachers that they they know what they're doing and they know how to teach this and give honestly some teachers some more training on what sound grading looks like right.

We shouldn't be grading for participation.

We shouldn't be grading for behavior.

I hope no one's grading on the curve.

I can't remember which director said that but that is horrifying if people are still doing that.

Don't do that.

It's not sound grading at all.

So that yeah that would be my.

I was going to add also is that I think a lot of our success came from the fact that we were consistent.

We had high expectations.

We let the kids know the expectations.

Everybody knew.

And we let the parents know too.

What was going on.

The parents knew.

Everybody knew across the board what was going on what the expectations were and we were consistent.

I mean the Mr. Marr who's not here right now the other per the other our other colleague who did it with us you know he started his class out every day with we're not doing these.

This is not who we are.

You know you are being told you are you can do this.

And they start seeing some you know when they start seeing their work they start they respond to the positive and they respond they see their they see the work coming in.

They see the feedback and they start feeling better.

I mean it sounds corny and cheesy and stuff and I guess education 101 but it's true.

It's very true.

You know and they will meet.

I mean Olivia said they will they will meet the bar.

They want to meet the bar.

They want to please.

Give them a reason to please.

Otherwise why are we doing this.

Just keep 60 percent as a D and call it that but don't be inflating grades.

That's not cool.

I if I could would love to hear all of everybody you know keep talking about this for another hour but it is 503 so I want to be mindful especially of staff time and get us wrapped up.

for all the information you answered my question with and I hope that you stay in contact with our CAI department to keep sharing some of that wisdom.

Thank you.

Thank you Director Rivera-Smith.

I feel like we have a pretty I did not really know how this was going to go or be received today and I'm I'm really grateful that we had the time and opportunity to hear from educators who are are doing it.

Know it can be done.

And I want to echo what Ms. Rice said at the end about the the enthusiasm and giving letting students know that we want them to succeed and the consistency of those expectations is especially in a remote model.

I think students are you know they're looking they're trying to figure out what is going on who they are what life is right now what their future might look like.

And we have an opportunity and we are as as educators as a school district something that is a constant.

And so just it's it's palpable on overhearing my kids classes how much and something that we've known already but even more so kids just they really want a community that they're accepted in.

People who are rooting for them and and people who want to include them and have them be seen and valued as a whole person.

And that might sound.

corny but that's I mean just that alone you know that's that's what I feel like our job is in large part.

So I as we have talked about there isn't a vote in this meeting but the consensus is pretty resoundingly clear I think.

And I guess I will wrap this up by just saying as the chair of the Curriculum Instruction Policy Committee I am open and available and would like to keep this conversation going.

And if there I know if there is support needed for the grading guidelines that go out I I'm just going to go ahead and speak for speak for our educators that are joined us today that I'm sure people are willing to you know take a look or give feedback if there's anything.

And I know that a lot of the work had been done that's really great that's in there.

And so I'm I'm just thrilled about the way that this is is moving and I'm excited for our students.

And and I think that that is just that what do we Zachary do we just end end the meeting.

Do you want me to end it.

I'm happy to adjourn it yes.

And I just want to end by saying too that this has probably been one of the most exciting goosebump giving conversations and work sessions we've had in the past few weeks around these reopenings.

So I'm really grateful that where we landed today.

There being no further business on this agenda this meeting will stand adjourned at 5 0 6 p.m.

on Wednesday September 16th.

Thank you all and we will look forward to talking to you at our next meeting.

Have a good evening.

Thank you everyone so much.

Thank you.