I'd like to call to order this regular
meeting of the Boulder Valley School
District for Tuesday, December 16th,
2025. Board members may attend and
participate in meetings remotely in
accordance with board policy BME and
state law. Laura, can you please call
the role?
>> Booker
>> here.
>> Chavez
>> here.
>> Medler
>> here.
>> Quinn Linua.
Raj Paul here. Tamuadi
>> here. Anger
>> here.
>> Thank you.
>> Like everyone to turn their attention to
the screen for a land acknowledgement
this morning.
The Boulder Valley School District
resides and operates on land that is the
ancestral homeland and unjustly and
illegally taken territory of the Ute,
Pueblin, Arapo, Cheyenne, Apache,
Navajo, and 48 other tribal nations
historically tied to this land who have
called this land home since time and
memorial.
We acknowledge the atrocities committed
here, including the painful history of
genocide, forced assimilation, and
efforts [music] to alienate the
indigenous inhabitants from their
homeland, supported by the policies of
the United States government.
[music]
BBSD is aware of the many indigenous
peoples, past and present, and their
dignified nations and cultures, who care
for this land with strength and
resilience.
BBSD recognizes the histories of the
land in Colorado and the survival of
many nations that carried their oral
traditions into the present.
>> [music]
>> It is BBSD's responsibility to educate
ourselves, our community, and our
students so that we can embrace the
wisdom and knowledge of indigenous
peoples
and actively stand together to address
injustices.
In offering this land acknowledgement,
we affirm and honor the history, wisdom,
oral traditions, and resilience of
indigenous people, and recognize the
responsibility to care for and
appreciate this land together.
I'd like to remind everybody that the
mission of the Boulder Valley School
District is to create challenging,
meaningful, and engaging learning
opportunities so that all children
thrive and are prepared for successful,
civically engaged lives. Thank you
everyone. Good morning. Happy to have
you join us here today. It feels like a
full house for a Tuesday morning. Um
we're glad to have you observe and
participate in our meetings. At this
time, is there a motion to approve this
morning's agenda? Moved by Jorge,
seconded by Alex. Laura, can you please
call the vote
after?
>> Yes.
>> Chavez,
>> yes. Medler,
>> yes.
>> Raj Paul,
>> yes.
>> Tamuading,
>> yes. Anger,
>> yes.
>> Motion passes.
This morning, we will be taking an
in-depth look at BBSD strategic plan.
And I will turn it over to Dr. Anderson
for introductions.
>> Thank you, board president Raj Paul.
Board members, great to see everyone
here this morning. Uh board members,
this is our second in-depth update of
the BVSD All together for all students
strategic plan. Uh we had an update for
you all in September. Uh we've our team
has put together I think a very thorough
update uh today uh to touch on some of
the things that we didn't get a chance
to touch on in December. Um and so with
that that I will turn it over to Dr. Da
Cruz, our deputy superintendent to
introduce our team and get the
presentation started.
Good morning, President Raj Paul, board
members, and also welcome to our new
school board members to your first deep
dive work session. We're so happy to
have you with us. Uh we typically do
bring a team to these conversations and
that's true today. So at the table with
me are Dr. Nativity Miller, our chief
academic officer, Dr. Dr. Emma Herszog,
our executive director of academics.
Shannon,
uh, sorry, you're not in the same order
as what I'm looking at. Shannon Gamble,
our director of MTSS. Across from me, we
have Senna Nau, director of student
support services who oversees
discipline, behavior, restorative
practices, and bully prevention. And
Tammy Lawrence, a director of student
support services who oversees
counselors, mental health advocates,
mental health supports, and trauma
response. Not at the table but also in
the room. We have our executive
directors of schools and our strategic
plan support team members. All
[laughter] of whom are perfectly queued
up wave there. All of whom are invested
in this conversation and of course are
deeply involved in actualizing the
strategic plan in schools.
We do have a substantive agenda today
focusing on the efforts and priorities
within the all together for all students
strategic objectives that you see here
of no limits in which we'll provide
detail about depth of knowledge and
cognitive lift next best steps in which
we'll report on MTSS implementation data
and valued and included which will
highlight discipline data and
opportunities for the development of our
next two-year UIP.
As always, we're going to pause
throughout the presentation for
questions. Um, we are going to be
bringing you a progress update in the
spring again on our efforts in the
define the destination postsecondary
success objective. So, that's not part
of today's discussion. Today's deep dive
is into the work of these three
objectives and will convey the
monitoring and shaping of leading
indicators in the form of live data,
adult actions, and short cycle
improvement planning and of course the
lagging indicators in some areas where
we're discussing more periodic data. In
last Friday's board update news and
notes, you received three documents to
refresh the memory of continuing board
members and to build understanding for
new board members. Those were the MTSS
implementation summary, the BBSD
discipline framework, the data reporting
cycle, and today you've received a hard
copy of a depth of knowledge document
that will be referred to as well.
As Dr. Anderson said, we bring the board
updates in um a pace and cadence, and
you see that pace and cadence here. And
we bring these updates and review the
data that's available at the time. And
that was detailed in the data reporting
cycle that you received in news and
notes. Uh we were all here with you um
in this cycle last year that you see
here and in September we came to provide
a data and strategic plan focus update
and today we're here with the December
16th progress check. So we'll be back
again in spring and summer. I also want
to let you know that we've updated some
of the data points because they they
updated in Vizlab. We wanted to have
current um visualizations for you and
numbers and so today you may see some
slightly different numbers and we will
update those in board docs after today's
presentation wraps. So we're going to
start with a brief overview of our all
together for all student strategic plan
which comprises four strategic
objectives that focus our work which you
see here and that I also named um in the
agenda slide.
We have defined success markers that
we're aiming for within the five-year
cycle of the strategic plan. So by 2029,
what we believe success looks like for
us is achieve um increased achievement
and growth scores overall and for
historically marginalized groups.
Appropriate growth of students receiving
academic interventions.
Proportional rate of students identified
for special education and gifted and
talented. An increase in the percentage
of students who graduate and obtain at
least one grad plus recognition.
Increased fidelity to the BBSD
discipline framework. And a decrease in
out of school suspensions while reducing
disproportionality.
So we're going to begin by diving into
our first strategic objective and this
objective is no limits and it sets the
expectation that all students experience
grade level standards uh standardsbased
instruction. We know that this requires
a multifaceted approach and that's
indicated by those leading measures that
we name in our UIP and that you see here
in the implementation measures. All of
these measures require an understanding
of the depth and rigor of the standards
and the cognitive lift needed for
students to engage in deep learning.
Nativity and Emma are going to talk
about depth of learning, professional
learning or depth of knowledge,
professional learning, uh where we've
been, where we're going, and they'll
connect this to extensions and
differentiation and how these are part
of a larger MTSS system that we'll also
discuss today as we move to um talking
about tiered supports. And with that,
I'll pass it over to Nativity and Emma.
Great. Good morning.
All right.
Go. Um, as you know, depth of knowledge
is in our strategic plan and depth of
knowledge is a framework that is used to
analyze cognitive demand for students.
And as an academics team, we're
responsible for leading professional
learning for our leaders during PK-12
sessions. Our goal as an academics team
is to provide leaders with the learning
and resources that they need for
implementation. and we work in
collaboration with our executive
directors of schools for implementation.
As you can see on the slide, this year
we are facilitating a four-part arc of
learning that is focused is focused on
leader learning around depth of
knowledge and cognitive lift in
connection as Dr. De La Cruz said with
grade level standards as well as our
BVSSD adopted curriculum which was a
request from our principles at the end
of last school year was to connect this
work to the curricular resources that
they already have um through um and
helping them think through their
instructional observations which again
is where we work in collaboration with
our executive directors of schools and
they take the baton so to speak for um
implementation.
each professional learning we provide,
we try to include resources for our
school leaders that they can use in
their buildings to help guide their
work. And um there and so now I'm going
to pass it to Dr. Herszog and she's
going to talk about um the the expansion
of that work into gifted and talented
and acceleration and differentiation.
So board members, uh, just a little bit
of background on what web's depth of
knowledge and cognitive lift are. And
for folks who may be watching this who
aren't educators, web's depth of
knowledge is a way to really think about
um the level of thinking that is
happening at any point in time with the
idea that you know the further you
advance in school, uh topics change and
get harder, but we want our our students
to be able to think deeper within those
concepts. So, as opposed to be to recall
or taking a vocabulary quiz or um a um
you know, multiple choice or a matching
type of an activity, you want to be able
to evolve kids so they can analyze,
synthesize, evaluate, create
with what it is that we've taught them.
So, that is the basis of Web's depth of
knowledge. Um, and cognitive lift is,
you know,
it's it's funny and we've been in a lot
of classrooms and um uh and certainly
our team has and I think we're doing it
right when our kids are working harder
than our teachers,
>> right? And so as we think about what
cognitive lift is, you know, we're
asking our teachers, our leaders to to
really create conditions in our
classrooms
where where that, you know, the kids are
doing, you know, a lot of thinking, not
a lot of paying attention, notetaking,
right? and really evolving our
instructional practices and methods from
one where we're just um transferring
knowledge to where kids are taking what
they're learning and applying it in ways
that allow them to think and learn. So,
I wanted to I hope you weren't going to
say that on the next slide, Emma. Maybe
you were. No, you never know. So, if I
did, you know, I'm I'm I'm stealing your
cognitive lift. I apologize that. Uh but
at any event, I just think that I'll
I'll interject to make sure that you
know any terms that I feel like our
general public might want a little bit
of depth on, I'll just try to interpret
that a little bit.
>> One thing I would add too is that um
what we've really tried to emphasize
with our leaders is that if you look at
the resource that you have, it has um
depth of knowledge as from levels one to
level four. What we are saying is we are
not expecting kids to always be in a
level four, but we are hoping that kids
experience a one through four throughout
their school day on a consistent basis.
And I just want to jump in, particularly
the last school visits we went to, I'm
thinking like Shelley Ro's math class in
particular came to mind. She was really
using a lot of that and asking the
learners why um and really kind of
elevating that conversation about their
thinking. So it is just for the new
board members who haven't been able to
be in our schools. We are seeing that on
site visits which is really exciting.
>> Board President Raj Paul, you queued me
up perfectly. Um so as our principles
and assistant principles have been
learning about web's depth of knowledge,
they've begun incorporating that
learning into their school leadership
and we're seeing some beginning
application in schools as a result. Um,
we're seeing principles leading their
staff either as a whole school or
starting with a leadership team through
initial shared learning about web's
depth of knowledge and how to use it as
a lens when planning for instruction.
We've heard from many schools how
helpful using resources from our PK-12
arc of learning has been for their
leadership.
Principles have also shared that when
they visit classrooms either on their
own with a member of the SPST team,
their network executive directors or
directors of teaching and learning,
they're thinking about trends they're
noticing across classrooms in what
students are doing, what the task is,
and what the related level of cognitive
lift is in alignment with that standard.
From there, they're discussing
implications for their next steps in
alignment with their 90-day plans. Some
schools are also beginning to connect
thinking about cognitive lift with their
data-driven instruction cycles. From
unpacking a standard and thinking about
the culminating task to revisiting how
students did and planning for a
next-step retach. Some schools are also
beginning to embed feedback related to
web's depth of knowledge in formal and
informal observation debriefs. It's been
important to start with shared learning
and understanding first, and it's been
exciting to see how school leaders are
applying their learning in their
individual school contexts.
Just one point of clarification. Uh Emma
um mentioned something that's really
really important for our work which is
this idea of unpacking standards. Would
it be helpful if we explained what that
meant?
So, do you want to open up that one?
>> Um, so when I think about unpacking a
standard, I feel like that is one of the
major buzzwords in education in 2025 and
everybody says it and actually doing it
is pretty critical, right? Because we
all know the standards and we look at
the standards and we see the standards.
But
>> and the standards are what the state
defines within each content area what
kids should know and be able to do,
>> right? Thank you. Um, but when you take
one standard, any grade level, could
even be first or second grade, low lower
grades as well, and you really think
deeply about what do the verbs say?
What's required that students know and
are able to do as a result of that
standard? What does it mean for how I'm
teaching the standard? And then to Dr.
Anderson's point, what does it mean for
how I'm planning my questions and tasks
to make sure students are doing the work
of the lesson? Um, it's pretty easy to
check a box and say we're teaching to
what the state says. And it's a lot
harder to deeply internalize what it
means to show mastery on each and every
standard in a way where the students are
doing the thinking. So when we talk
about data driven instruction and
unpacking a standard often typically um
those cycles will start with looking at
an upcoming standard or standards deeply
internalizing what it means to teach
that and then planning accordingly for
where you're going with your tasks and
questions.
And this becomes critical because if you
look at the standards um vertically
right from grade to grade to grade
there's nuance you may be teaching the
same thing but getting you know deeper
within the the level of thinking what
you're asking kids to do but if you only
stay in like that those early stages of
web's depth of knowledge and don't get
kids to think what happens to students
what do they say I learned this for,
right? They're not you're not
challenging kids and then the kids are
getting bored and then you're getting
all kinds of other issues. And so
whether we're talking about our students
on grade level, above grade level, or
working to get to grade level, making
sure everybody get gets access to the
depth of the standard, meaning that they
they're challenged with what it is we're
teaching uh is critical and uh and and
certainly really really important to the
ways that we're trying to make sure um
that we're teaching our kids so they're
engaged and everybody's learning and
growing.
And I think the only piece that we would
add to that before Emma goes on,
>> one question before we move on. Uh for
the teachers and the training, um what
is the frequency and do they have a like
a long-term plan and goal and what does
that look like?
>> I'm glad you said that. That's something
I was going to comment on. [laughter]
So, um, I think one of the things when
we talk about the DDI and unpacking the
standards, we are super grateful for our
SPS data coaches as well as our DDI
coaches for the district because what
they do, they cover over half of the
schools that we have in our district.
And their job as coaches is to teach the
teachers on site with real data, real
assessments, real standards in in with
those with the curriculum that they're
teaching. And so they provide what I
would say embedded coaching on a
consistent basis because they each have
a case load of five schools and they are
there on a weekly basis assisting
teachers in understanding the process
and utilizing the data that they need in
their schools and the and the curriculum
that they're teaching. So they I would
say that they provide the embedded
coaching consistently and then what
we're doing is working with the leaders
um at these sessions so that then they
can lead some of that work at their
buildings.
>> Can you repeat what DDI stands for?
>> Yes. Data driven instruction. Yes.
>> And then strategic plan support team
SPS.
>> SPS. Alex,
>> thank you. we get so in these activities
[laughter]
>> and I don't want to take us down uh too
far because there's so much to cover but
I am curious uh our professional
learning or professional learning
opportunities are with the school
leaders and then the coaches are helping
the people in the classroom do this um
we where and how do we get data that's
not anecdotal about the teacher buyin
and implementation that could be like
shared with other colleagues or that
could be shared with a board. So we
could say, hey, the teachers
satisfaction with their PD in the school
has gone from 80% to 90% or something or
because we have a history of districtrun
PD where the teachers don't even show
up. So I'm really curious if there are
metrics for that that we could see as a
board.
So we're talking about two two different
things, right? You're talking about um
professional learning sessions that may
happen on on dedicated professional
learning days and times. Um, and then
you're talking about this this idea of
job embedded professional development,
which is really the application of what
you've learned, um, over time, the
refining, the deepening, and the
understanding. And so, um, I'd have to
check with our team in terms of I we do
collect we I I know that we collect
information on, um, the sessions that
we're that we're providing in terms of
um, quality and and suggestions. I don't
know that we've done anything around the
effectiveness of some of the job
embedded things that we're doing. But
then there's also professional learning
that happens at the school sites that's
schooldirected. Um so you know there's
like three kind of aspects of how we're
asking our our educators to learn and
grow and and learn how to implement some
of these new and different strategies.
Uh and it's a combination of kind of
where if you were to triangulate all
that data in the middle uh the end
result. So, let our team think about
what that could look like. Uh, I I don't
think it's like I don't think it's
straight line. We'd have to think about
it.
>> What I could tell you is that for our
professional learning, we have over the
course of the last year or so, we have
started planning that in January for
both kickoff and all year long for late
start. And so, one of the things that
we're doing is asking our teams like
what are the things that teachers need?
We're not just doing things that we feel
like doing. Um, we're looking at
curriculum adoptions, assessments, and
then these skills and strategies that
they need for datadriven instruction or
other things and strategically mapping
that professional learning throughout
the year.
>> Uh, thank you. That that's helpful. I
appreciate the multi-, you know, tiers
of strategies about how this is all
working and the metrics not matching up.
I was thinking um like one data source
that might be useful would be the
Colorado teaching and learning
conditions survey. Right? So in in
general you end up having school level
data on how people feel about whether
they're being supported in their work as
teachers. So I would encourage us to
think about that as a potential thing to
to bring back to the board. And I'd also
suggest the reason to start setting it
up as sort of a public part of this
process is that we have intentionally
picked the high priority schools. And as
we see the benefits of this, we will
likely be spreading it, you know,
farther and farther in the district and
will be going to places that may not
have that internal sense of urgency
about all this. And if we can show them
that the teachers like this and it makes
their job easier and they feel more
effective in some credible ways, that
will help us with later uh dissemination
and diffusion. That's why I'm interested
in it,
>> Deianne. And then we'll pick up with the
slides.
>> As a as a former teacher, I'm imagining
that some of these coaching sessions
probably feel a lot like um
uh team planning sessions and not
necessarily like they are instructional,
someone standing up and telling the
teachers what to do. It's like they're
planning together for what's going to
come next. And I can't imagine that that
wouldn't be useful to anybody to have an
extra team member.
Dr. Anderson had mentioned that um web's
depth of knowledge can be very helpful
when we're thinking about extensions.
So, as we sort of close out talking more
in depth about WEB's depth of knowledge
and move into talking about MTSS,
multi-tered systems of support as the
next portion of our update, we wanted to
spend just a little time also talking
about our gifted identified students
specifically in the context of both of
those things. We know from research that
while being gifted is one label, it
spans a variety of different profiles,
traits, and behaviors. There are six
profiles of the gifted learner as shown
on this slide. And each profile includes
different ways giftedness can present in
a student. These profiles are something
that we're keeping in mind as an
academics team, whether it's a content
team, our gifted team, or our MTSS team
under Shannon's leadership, and helping
schools to effectively support all
profile types in the classroom. For
example, the successful profile is one
that's often associated with gifted
students. Students who do well in
school, rarely get in trouble, can be
for perfectionists, and often seek
approval from adults. However, gifted
students can also include profiles like
the at risk gifted learner. At risk
gifted learners are more likely to act
out, present as angry or depressed, and
have poor attendance. On the next slide,
Dr. Miller is going to talk more about
how our gifted students are doing and
how we're leveraging Web's depth of
knowledge to meet their needs with
meaningful extensions. But we wanted to
include these six profiles to also note
that we're always keeping in mind that
one label of gifted spans a variety of
student presentations and needs.
When we think about programming for
gifted learners, um, one important
option is acceleration, which many
people talk about. But another important
consideration is um regardless of the
course a student is in is how
differentiation and extension are
embedded intentionally on a daily and
weekly basis to support student
learning. Instead of just another
worksheet or more additional work, we
define differentiation and extension in
alignment with the center for MTSS.
Differentiating differentiation meaning
tailoring content, process, product or
environment to meet student needs and
extension meaning targeted learning
activities that deepen students
understanding of the core curriculum
content. They involve more complex or
challenging versions of the same skill
or cont concept requiring higher order
higher order thinking as we talked about
such as analyzing, evaluating, creating
and problem solving.
Differentiating differentiation and
extension for us is helping us aid in
meeting the needs of all learners
including our advanced advanced gifted
or high achievers making lessons more
relevant engaging hands-on and
applicable for all learners and
increasing the depth of discussion and
thinking related to the standard as we
mentioned with DK
as Dr. Da Cruz and Dr. Alzine shared
with you in the September work session.
Our seamass overall we are seeing strong
growth from our gifted students. We
attribute that attribute that in part to
the work and learning we have done with
webs of depth of knowledge as well of
the curricular adoptions. Thank you.
Over the last several years we are
ensuring that our lessons have
intentional cognitive lift for students
through our depth of knowledge. and what
we believe that that will help build our
capacity um to continue to embed
meaningful differentiation and extension
in daily instruction.
Additionally, having high quality
curricular resources helps us ensure
that differentiation and extension align
with grade level content and standards.
They both differentiate and extension
are critical for our learners who've
been identified in a gifted identified
area. But they also matter for all
students who show mastery in one topic
and one unit but maybe not another and
may need an embedded extension for one
unit or another. Focusing on depth of
knowledge allows us to build our
capacity and understanding for how to
design instruction for each and every
student we serve. After questions,
director of MTSS Shannon Gamble will be
sharing with you the work of our MTSS
implementation and learning as we
believe MTSS provides the framework to
serve all of our students.
>> Question just waiting for that slide to
turn over. Board members, any questions
on this first um of the strategic plan?
Yes.
>> Um thanks very much for the
presentation. I have Can you go back a
slide? I just had a question on the
gifted and talented piece. Um, you know,
this is one of the things we hear about
a lot from parents is not feeling like
kids are being challenged sufficiently.
And so I was wondering if you could give
us some examples of kind of what this I
mean I I think we understand the
concepts, but what does it look like in
a classroom in reality? Like what does
this look like for kids who are not just
getting an extra worksheet?
So I think in connection to what we
talked about with depth of knowledge and
cognitive lift, our hope is that if
they're at gifted identified in a
certain content area that teachers would
teachers and leaders would be able to
know that and if student has mastered
say um a social studies standard and or
needs wants to raise their cognitive
lift, they would a an activity might
look different for a student who is just
learning it for this first time and then
somebody who is um you know wanting to
extend their learning. So if you look at
this this might help. So let's just say
like a level four they might things that
we we say to connect are to relate or
make connections. So they may do some
sort of debate or something with another
group of students around a concept or
argue a side of a story in social
studies. Whereas if you're learning it
for the first time, you might simply
being identifying or recalling
information as you're learning it. So
you can you can what we've been teaching
leaders is how to span the depth of all
through it with the one single standard
so that they can see what it looks like
for a student.
>> The other Oh, go ahead.
I I would say that as importantly um if
you're a parent um and uh and you're
seeing that your your student is doing
the same thing always as everybody else
then we're probably not doing what we
need to do. Does that make sense? So,
and this is critical board members for
our strategy and for our health as a
district that we that we learn how to
leverage our depth of knowledge and that
we um are able to differentiate not just
down but up
uh because otherwise what will happen is
you will have I think and this is some
of the what Jason I think you're
referring to is that parents will want
to go to schools of all gifted kids
right which then if we can't serve them
in their neighborhood schools or in all
schools to make sure if you're a gifted
learner, you know, your needs are being
met. I think that that's that's the
risk. And um but I would say that if
you're a parent, right, or if you're
wondering, is my my gifted kid getting
what they need? In some places, and
we've had this discussion, the gifted
kids get the pull out, right? Like when
I was in Fulton County in Atlanta, one
day a week you went with the gifted
teacher. Now, what you did may or may
not have been been strengthening what
was happening in the classrooms. it was
like a whole different special thing
where you were maybe challenged
cognitively but not maybe through in the
context of the standards and in your
peers. Um and so we don't have that type
of a pull out model with the state
doesn't resource us in that way but if
you're moving here from another state
that is the traditional national model
especially in elementary school. So um
it could be that folks are used to
something else and they're not seeing
that so they don't know what's
happening. So for a parent and if a
parent were to come to me and say,
"Gosh, my, you know, my gifted kid isn't
being challenged," I'd say, "Well, you
know, what are they good at?" You know,
are they ever are they ever doing things
that are directed intentionally by the
teacher that um challenge their
thinking? Um the other telltale sign is
do you get finished with your work
early, you can do do what you want, some
independent project that may not be
directed to get you to deepen your
thinking. I would say that would be a
red flag, too. But not easy. You know,
differentiating is hard. And I think
that, you know, because of our
intentionality with our high quality
instructional materials, our
standardsbased instruction, our MTMSS
process, and now our focus on depth of
knowledge, over the past seven years, we
have created the conditions to be where
we're at today for teachers to have the
the the support and systems that they
need to be able to do this. Well,
>> I'm going to piggyback on that and then
I saw Alex and Anna
Um, I think it would be exceedingly
helpful. I think a lot of parents don't
parents of gifted learners automatically
jump to acceleration. And I think
there's an underappreciation or a lack
of understanding around extension and
enrichment, which is really for I think
for a lot of kids can be the best path
forward, not just leapfrogging ahead.
And I was I'm just putting a plug in um
the communication to our parents around
the good work we're doing around
extension enrichment and what that looks
like so they know and dispelling some of
the myths around the only way to be
challenged is to accelerate would be
exceedingly helpful whether it comes
from probably like the district level or
sitebased but I think we need to educate
our parents that this is a really these
are two really powerful ways that we can
meet our gifted learners that aren't
necessarily you know jumping ahead or in
ways that may not be developmentally
appropriate or academically appropriate
so we're not leaving gaps in
understanding and knowledge. I think
parents don't really understand those
parts of gifted education
>> and and I think that's where we're
really trying to lean in with the MTSS
work, right? That it's not if they're
not making it's for every student. And
so what our hope is is that if schools
are implementing the framework, they're
sitting at the table, a team, a
leadership team having the conversation
around what does an extension look like
or can it look like for X, Y, and Z
student? And so that is the work that we
were working towards. Um, but that's our
best hope is that they would that we're
start to use the MTSS framework to serve
all kids both academically and
behaviorally.
>> Thanks for nativity, Alex. Anna, back to
Jason.
>> Um, well, Nicole, you were said a few of
things I wanted to say, so nice job. I
agree. Um, I guess one of the things
I've been thinking about after a couple
years of hearing from frustrated parents
of gifted and talented students is at
that communication level. And I do think
people are expecting pro pull out
program and that's not what we do. And
that the kids have different challenges
and we need to talk about these things.
But we're introducing a whole bunch of
um jargony words. So [snorts] extension,
enrichment, acceleration, integration
into curriculum um are all harder to
visualize than I don't mean to be
patronizing, but there it's much more
nuanced than what's the pullout program.
>> And um so I I do think communications
about this is really good. And it's not
going to be from the board or the
superintendent. It's going to be from
teachers to the parents and it's going
to be from teachers to the kids. So the
kids talk to the parents. Um, so I might
think about what the words are. So when
mom asked their son, "How'd it go in
school today?" They can say, "I did this
really cool thing." And they might use
the word extension, but they might say,
"I got to do this other thing nobody
else did." Um, so that the parents and
the kid are feeling it too with normal
words. Um, and then the other thing I I
really I've harped on this before, but I
really want to know I do believe that we
have different senses of urgencies for
different populations in different
schools. And so we are focused on our
high uh priority schools and we have
gifted and talented students everywhere.
So um I think uh the lack of the sense
of programming is one of the things that
contributes to open enrollment choice
white flight and actually exit from the
district. So, I do think we need to like
talk about it not just in our high
priority focused improvement schools,
but in the others and then as a district
help our teachers and leaders think and
talk about it to parents because I
really do think gifted and talented is a
$200 program. We're probably spending
$40 million figuring out how to
implement our strategic plan, right? So,
like the scale of what we're investing
in this stuff is so much greater than
the gifted and talented program. And I
don't think parents can appreciate that
the way we talk about it.
>> And if my question is going to get
answered in the next section, that's
totally fine. Um, similarly to what
Jason was asking in the differentiation
and extension, um, what and how do the
coaches teach the teachers on how they
implement that during the day and if you
also have a real life example of how it
plays out for a student um, during the
day.
So when I mentioned our coaches, both
our SPST and our DDI district coaches,
um I think it can play out in lots of
different ways depending on the school.
So often our teach we what we tell them
is that we're meeting the principles
where they are and wherever their
inpoint is. So often you will find um I
would say for my DDI leads, their day
looks very different every day. In some
schools, they're working with a group of
teachers in a small setting like you
mentioned where they're talking about
the standards, but they're also um they
could also be modeling in the classroom
for the teacher and giving feedback.
They could also be coaching a principal
who wants to actually do the work with
the teachers. And so often sometimes our
teachers are just coaching the principal
to coach their teachers. And so I think
it looks a lot of ways um based on our
five different coaches that we have at
the district level. Um we also work um
Em and I lead the coaching cohort. We
have schools that have coaches um
building instructional coaches and I
would say the same the same would fall
that they have a variety of where they
depending on what the principal needs um
lean into either the leadership team and
they're working with that team or
they're working with different grade
levels or content teams. So it's it
works in a lot of different ways but
they are their whole sole role is
teaching and learning with the teachers
and you and practicing these skills and
getting feedback in a timely manner.
>> I think one thing I would just add what
what Dr. Anderson said about the pullout
model really resonated with me. And so I
think something that we have started
doing as an academics team is making
sure our non-content but supportive
teams like the gifted team are really
deepening their understanding of our
curricular resources because I think
historically in gifted it was like okay
you do your stuff in your classroom over
here and now go over here and play this
game or do this thing or do this project
that may or may not relate to the math
lesson you just had or the ELA lesson
you just had. And so part of our work
now is when we talk about extension, you
just learned about this particular math
thing, you got done with it, rather than
five more pages of worksheets at the
same level, what's an applied problem
you could take on with a couple other
students in your class who are ready
that relates to that standard, but to
Dr. Anderson's point is maybe bumping it
up a level in preparation for the next
grade or the following grade. So it's
definitely a work in progress, but when
you act ask like what might that look
like over time to me that's sort of we
need we're building our capacity as a
team because everyone needs to deeply
understand content standards in order to
then then get to that place and back to
the multi-tered systems of support
connect connection
Shannon will talk more about it but as
schools are operating within that frame
as we're planning for our learners who
may need additional support to access
we're also planning for our students who
have already accessed and mastered. So
to Alex's point, it really is like a
both and and that structure allows us to
do it at the same time.
>> Thank you.
>> Um I just comment on the education piece
and I think Nicole and Alex cover that.
I I do think you know it's not
necessarily your job. I think your job
is to implement and you're doing that.
Um but I think there is I think as as
both Alex and Nicole said, there's a
real kind of perception that we are not
serving our highest you know our gifted
and talented students, our highest
achieving kids. And I do think it
contributes a lot to people leaving the
district. And so I think, you know, I
don't know that it's a email to parents
or, you know, communication from the
board. I don't think that's effective.
It's going to it should be something
where we, you know, we embed this in
back to school nights. We embed this in,
you know, as as teachers communicate
with their parents for the first time
about here, you know, not not just
addressing all families, like this is
what we do to kind of extend the
learning for your kid and this is what
it would look like. And I think um you
know this this stuff is really helpful
for us who kind of were you know more in
the weeds on this but I think talking
about depth of knowledge in some of
these terms really doesn't resonate with
people and I think talking nativity as
you said about you know maybe it's a
debate or maybe it's a you know really
giving people an understanding of what
this looks like. So because I think you
know whether it's people's own
experience or just this idea that if
your kid is gifted and talented that
they get this special you know bus to a
middle school to take math or they get
pulled out. And I think we need to help
educate folks that that is not the
model. Um, and this is the model and
this is what it looks like and this is
why it's more effective. And so, you
know, not necessarily your job. I think
it's all of our jobs. But, um, you know,
one important piece of that I think is,
you know, the very first time we
communicate with parents, which is back
to school night, people need to
understand that this is what it looks
like for your kid and this is the way
they'll be challenged in this classroom.
>> So, this is exactly how it's supposed to
work for our new board members, right?
You have board members hearing from
constituents trying to know and
understand what we're doing. You have
experts on the team doing the right work
and then how do we marry what we're
doing with the experience of folks
within our community and explain it in a
way um that connects the dots. So just a
just an observation as superintendent
there. And I think one thing we'll add,
we didn't I don't I think I failed to
mention this when I talked about our um
arc of learning with leaders, but that's
one of the things we've been talking
about with our executive directors of
schools is what does it look like? So,
we've learned all the things. We've
learned what the big words mean and how
it looks with standards and curriculum,
but what does it mean for me as a leader
as I lead in my building and what can
that look like? So, um I we have a
session coming up in February, actually
January, I'm not sure, one of those
months. But anyway, we that's one of the
things we can add is thinking about um
the application piece in the in the
school, but also the communication
piece, which is something I don't think
we've touched on.
>> Jorge, then Alex, and then we're going
to move on to next best step.
>> Thank you for the thanks for the
discussion. It's been great kind of
getting a better sense of this and I
feel like we're the the sandwich school
district right the gifted and talented
or kids in the middle and the kids that
we're trying to bring up from the bottom
and so I appreciate um that you
highlight at risk kids who are also
gifted learners underground or under
group kids as part of that twice
exceptional and so I'm curious kind of
what the district is doing to kind of
help us identify those kids who are seen
as at risk but actually need more
challenging stuff right especially
because we're making great progress
overall as a district but our
disproportionality our disparities are
still there and that's really it's it's
it's hard to move that needle on that.
So, I'm curious about kind of what this
differentiation might look like um for
those kids who are at risk in those
under groups, underrepresented groups um
and kind of how we can kind of what what
kind of what that looks like. Yeah.
>> I mean, I think going back to what Emma
said, I think our first take was
understanding the standard. So, that
unpacking the standard, right? So we
what I think we're at a place where
we're where we have done the work to
under to unpack a standard and
understand what students are know and
able to do where we are now Phil is
really understanding individual student
need which is hard right so what if
they're below grade level what are what
is their need is it just the standard or
is it actually a skill gap that's
preventing them from ac accessing the
standard and then if they're identified
gifted many of our gifted identified
students are not identified in the
content in math and language arts. It
might be talent um or something else.
And so that is that is where we're
leaning in to help teachers understand
where are the gifted identified areas so
that you and what's challenging about it
as Dr. Anderson mentioned is you know in
a school that has a large student
population every student could be
identified differently. Some might be 2e
some might be content some might not be.
And so I think that's the challenge is
is utilizing this the resources that we
have their ALPS, IEPs, intervention
plans, all the things to understand
where students actually are so that we
can plan instruction better for all the
students that we serve. And I just I'm
I'm biased, but I think leaning into the
MTSS framework as an every day, every
week, every year process is how we do
business is really the way to know and
understand each and every student in our
system. And again, both academically and
behaviorally, which I know our team is
going to talk about.
>> I would just add two very small things
because I fully agree with everything
Nativity said. One is we're constantly
working on expanding who has access to
our gifted screeners. So, for example,
just in talking with the gifted team
last week, like several examples where
we have students in subsparate full-time
programming and they're still getting
access to a gifted screener. And then I
would also say just ongoing
collaboration with our friends across
the table of really like when we have
students who are presenting at risk and
twice exceptional is so
multi-dimensional in itself, right?
because you can be any type of two
things as Intivity said taken together
and just really working to get to like
what is the root underlying cause of the
behavior and trying to support the
student with that as opposed to how the
symptoms might be presenting.
>> Um uh don't feel like we need to have a
discussion about each of these three
questions but I I do have three I wanted
to raise.
>> Yeah.
So um uh and again I'm thinking about
this from both a teacher and a parents
perspective. When we deepen and unpack
the the standards and when we uh deepen
the knowledge of the kids working on the
standards I I note that our standards
are pretty heavy in ELA and math. So,
does this take more time out of the day
so that the things that aren't in the
standards or not in the assessments
aren't aren't still there? Or are the
teachers using their ELA time more
deeply and their math time more deeply
with this? Or are we eroding the circle
time with music? Or, you know, whatever
the other things are that are not about
this. That's that's number one. Another
question for us in the long run when
we're working on this in the schools and
this I would like to hear a little bit
on but maybe more later but for the sake
of our community is all this work easier
with a school with 1.5 classrooms per
grade or with three point three
classrooms per grade um is there
advantage to more colleagues in your
school to do these groups well or is
small n of teachers make this easier to
do and then as we get into it uh you
know How hard is this for a teacher to
learn to do? Is it five years of support
when a new teacher becomes a master of
this? Does a master teacher who's
already been here 20 years uh is already
doing a bunch of this and we're just
giving them a little coaching to tweak.
So what is it as we think about our HR
and the great teachers we have? Like how
is it different for different teachers
to get up to speed on this? Is it more
helpful for a new teacher or more
threatening to a senior teacher? And
how's that work? So answer any of those
you want to.
Great teachers are the answer to all
problems first and foremost. Let's never
ever ever forget that. Uh I would say
that there are advantages significant
advantages to a three- round school in
meeting different and differentiating
meeting different needs of different
groups because you have more people and
you can organize kids in different ways
to do different things that you just
can't if you have one one and a half. Um
uh and it's hard.
It's hard. You know, differentiation is
is is something that we talk about, but
it's really teaching a group of kids not
one thing, but maybe three, four, five
different things at the same time while,
you know, while managing the classroom
and putting on band-aids and doing all
the other things that our educators do.
So, uh I love the question, Alex. It's
the right question. Um it's hard. Uh
great teachers are the answer. uh
schools with more rounds create systems
and structures that give you more
resources to meet individually needs of
kids that uh um but I would say that
there's teachers in this school district
that meet the needs of every single kid
in their classroom every single day
regardless of what's happening within
the greater school of systems. I think
that that's right. So, um, you know, I
will I'm I'm just really proud of the
progress we've made because,
uh, we're being super thoughtful on how
we really want to do this and do this
well and we've got the systems that we
can build upon and support and plug into
that let us do that. So, um, I think I
answered your questions. I I do have an
idea though, board members, because I
know we need to move on at our next
school visit. Would it be helpful to
look at some gifted and talented
differentiation and strategies? Yes. as
a place to look where it's working well
and maybe where we're still in progress.
Does that sound like a good idea?
>> I see the team taking a note as we're
planning our next school visit. So,
that's good.
>> Thank you board members for the really
thoughtful conversation uh suggestions
and considerations. as nativity said um
with depth of knowledge and cognitive
lift we are really looking at practical
application next now that there's been
some extensive knowledge base that's
been built and part of that practical
application um can should be and will be
the communication that you referred to
and working with our leaders on those
talking points and how to embed this um
the communication around extensions
differentiation and real
um a person if you will conversation
around what depth of knowledge looks
like and sounds like in classroom. So
thank you for those.
Moving now to the next strategic
objective next best step as defined by
implementing and tracking tiered
supports and instructional strategies.
This is really referring to multi-tiered
systems of support and using data to
drive instructional decisions. So to be
clear, when we talk about multi-tered
systems of support or MTSS, we're
talking about tiered supports for
students and the structures that need to
be in place to do this. And this is
where we focused our efforts toward
changing the conditions in schools in
order that we can provide those tiered
supports. And because the effectiveness
of MTSS relies on consistent, high
quality tier one universal instruction,
that's been a priority of ours. We've
taken many deliberate actions and made
many deliberate investments to support
this in schools such as initiating and
sustaining a standardsbased focus and
datadriven instruction practices
investing in high quality standardsbased
curricular materials as well as
consistent assessments such as the new
MClass literacy assessment and progress
monitoring tools.
the resources that we've placed in the
BBSD instructional playbook so that
every educator can access what they need
when they need it and short cycle
improvement and planning across schools
with 90-day plans. Our strategic plan
support teams or SPST teams are
providing intentional focus along the
lines of a double dose, if you will, of
support to schools to deepen MTSS
datadriven practices and use of 90day
plans. And something that we're doing
that we've never done before in BBSD is
that we're aligning our MTSS
uh foundation to a national MTSS
standard as Shannon's going to describe.
Although the indicators you see on the
slide name the implementation of MTSS
apply to academics as well as datadriven
instruction, what we know is that we
have to understand our implementation
landscape. So Shannon will share a
balcony view looking at the ecosystem
within each school and our system as a
whole.
Thank you, Dr. Dele Cruz. Um I was
thinking that you could consider this
little segment of um today's meeting a
little bit of a pallet cleanser between
the deep learning around some of the
academics and then moving into the
non-academic pieces that Senate and
Tammy will share next. So we're going to
kind of um as Dr. Dela Cruz said come up
to that balcony level and we're thinking
about imple implementation of a system
around MTSS. So we're going to look at
how our fidelity of implementation of
MTSS looks across the district. So um
looking at the systems and structures
that need to be installed and maintained
for us to be able to be at full
implementation.
I'm going to walk you through the phases
of implementation, some bright spots,
areas for growth, evidence of progress,
and close out with some final
reflections.
So, we'll start here with kind of a a
big picture view. Where are we in terms
of implementation of a multi-tered
system as a whole? Um, this visual here
is from the center on multi-tered system
of supports and it's an example, as Dr.
de Cruz said of how we're aligning to
some national standards for MTSS
implementation. Over the years, we've
moved from planning and installation in
the early years um and into
implementation in school level
monitoring and improvements.
Over several years, we've continued this
work without really having a
standardized way to monitor where we are
and to ask whether all the work that
we're doing is really sticking when it
comes to how it's implemented in
schools. And we know that monitoring is
a critical component to get us to
sustainability.
MTSS is not static. It's an incredibly
dynamic system. And we know that we
can't build it, put things in place, and
say, "Check, we did it. We did MTSS. We
have it in place." As the Center on MTSS
explains it, effective MTSS
implementation requires teams to
regularly engage in continuous
improvement activities to improve the
efficacy and efficiency of MTSS
implementation, but also to address the
evolving needs of staff, students, and
state, and federal demands.
MTSS teams continue to build
infrastructure and align existing
systems to ensure staff can sustain full
MTSS implementation even when faced with
staff turnover and changing priorities.
So this is the real challenge when it
comes to implementing and sustaining
MTSS. So now more than ever we need to
make sure that we're really closely
monitoring and adjusting our efforts so
that we can maintain a strong system.
One other addition that's a challenge
that that Shannon hasn't stated. Uh, you
know, we hire a lot of experienced
teachers and everywhere you go, they
talk about this differently. So, we
could be talking about MTSS and if you
came from Adams 12 or Adams 14 or Jeffco
or Westminster or St. Vin or Pter,
they'll they might not have the same
understanding,
different definitions. But if I were to
ask an experienced teacher, do you need
training on MTSS? They would say, what?
No, I've been trained on MTSS. But it's
different. This is a problem, right?
>> Absolutely.
>> So, it's just it's it's it's just one of
the challenges that that by creating
these strong clear systems on how we do
business in BBSD. Um it's one of it's
the only way to overcome this challenge
because implementing IMP MTSS isn't like
um
something that that is the same
everywhere else. It's nuanced and
different and not maybe as connected to
everything else as we're really
attempting to build. Hopefully I was
okay to say.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Um, I think
the other thing that's really great when
we think about this in terms of a
continuous improvement cycle is that
that type of work is becoming more and
more the fiber of the organization as we
scale out the use of 90-day plans across
our schools using data to set short-term
goals, monitor actions um, and outcomes.
That is all mirroring exactly what full
implementation of MTSS looks like. So
the short cycle planning that schools
are doing with 90-day plans is MTSS at a
system level.
So last spring, our MTSS department
collected implementation data across our
schools. In these conversations, we had
um consistent facilitators from our
department to increase our um
consistency of scoring and make sure we
had some inner raider reliability.
We use the tool called um we've called
it the BBSD MTSS rubric which we've
standardized um and adapted from the
National Center on MTSS's fidelity of
implementation rubric. Um we took their
tool and we made it match with CDE's
COMTSS um language and kind of the way
that they organized some of their
components of MTSS. So along with using
the rubric to gather quantitative data,
we also gathered really rich, wonderful
qualitative data from these
conversations and we were able to
synthesize all of this and integrate it
into a broader analysis.
The purpose of having these
conversations was really to understand
as a district where our bright spots are
and where we need to focus on making
some improvements. Um it was not to rate
or rank individual schools.
So we'll start by looking at some of the
big bright spots that jumped out from
these conversations. This is where we
saw the highest concentration of schools
scoring with either a four or a five on
the rubric. So a score of a four
indicates implementation of of an item
and a five indicates that it's not only
imple being implemented but it is
thoroughly and consistently
operationalized across all staff clearly
documented clearly communicated. So I
think it's important to think about that
difference of moving from a four which
means strong good things in place a five
is where um I could walk away and it
would continue to happen because it's
it's a process that is so clearly
communicated.
>> So reflecting on our some of our school
visits and I don't have the numbers so
I'm going to say some things but I think
I'm right but I could be wrong. Uh, Cole
Elementary
five, four or five.
>> Well, there were a variety of scores
across the rubric, so there's not like a
one single score for each school.
>> I'm just thinking to the meeting that we
had at Cole Elementary board members,
she'll remember that and how intentional
and system with the data driven
instruction piece. Um,
make a note, this might be something
else that we want to look at in our
school visits,
some fours and fives. All right. Sorry,
Shannon. I totally messed that up, but
back to you.
Can I ask it's related
>> um
how does this look different at a
primary school versus a secondary school
and just so I can frame as you're going
through bright spots areas of growth and
takeaways like how does it look
different and h are you are you
assessing it differently or looking for
different things at a primary versus
high school for example. So the
the assessment piece, the rubric is
universal, could could apply to any to
any type of setting. Um what's different
is is the ways in which things become
operationalized. So um
I'm trying to think of an example of
some specifics. All schools have um an
expectation to provide standardsbased
evidence-based tier one instructional
practices. what that's going to look
like in a biology classroom in high
school is going to look very different
than a first grade, you know, reading
lesson, but still having those standards
aligned evidence-based practices in
place for for tier one. Um, when we look
at things like meeting structures um
data conversations looks very very
different. Our high schools for example
are um you know would be meeting weekly
pulling some really high level data
drilling down from thousands of students
to the students who need support
immediately tomorrow or today coming
back next week. So there's this kind of
fast um turnaround of getting supports
out to students immediately at a large
scale at a high school where um if you
think about an elementary school, it
might be more about looking at some of
the um
academic needs of students that are
coming up through formative assessment
in those conversations as well as
thinking of the whole child and some of
the social emotional piece of what this
teacher is able to know and understand
of being with that student all day. So I
think when it comes to how this is
operationalized, it looks very different
at different levels, but the key
principles of an MTSS framework and the
practices that need to be in place, the
systems that need to be built are
universal. I I'd also say that at a high
school you have um like as as we think
about the other aspect of of MTSS like
we have advanced you know IB AP like so
some of the differentiation happens as
this the as we schedule the students in
terms of what it is that they need um as
opposed to being in um elementary school
which is everybody's kind of in just in
a round and then in middle school
depending upon where you are in middle
school some of them have some of that
and some of them don't. So I think the
structure of how kids get you know their
schedule also impacts how those things
could be different.
>> Yeah. And I think you know as a district
we've been really intentional and
starting to focus we focus our energy
first on elementary schools moving to
middle schools. We're not entirely you
know in the weeds at our high schools.
And I just think of like use of
standardsbased assessments. Are they
consistent horizontally and vertically
even within a building or you know just
how how these scores might shake out
differently based on where we are with
our level of intentionality around
supporting different schools at their
levels. Um just brings up a lot of
questions I'll keep to myself right now.
Alex,
>> uh yeah, I just wanted to have one of
the questions in my head, not just speed
of myself on this one. Um, and the high
school question is great, Nicole,
because I I totally agree and and I
understand the prioritization that we
have and sort of the fall back to the
scheduling sort of solution to this. But
one of my personal big priorities is
helping us really understand how we
fulfill the potential of all the kids.
And in our secondary systems, the kids
in the middle are often like doing okay
and not a fuss and not challenged. And
so we have all our grad plus stuff and
all sorts of things to challenge them.
But I do I would love to hear more
deeply at some point what our secondary
schools are doing so that that kind of
multi-tered system of support is not
related to just the scheduling. I'm not
saying that's what you said, Dr.
Anderson, but that the kids, the
students, because they're not kids
anymore by the time you get to high
school, are really finding challenging,
engaging stuff without being pressured
to be in an AP class or an IB class to
do it. And that's where I think
historically some of our most high
performing quote high performing schools
have dropped the ball the most is how do
you make sure the kid who's not an AP
and IB is having that kind of exposure
to deep knowledge and cognitive lift
that an elementary school is being
supported to do. I don't know how we
support a high school teacher in a nonAB
IB class to get that cognitive lift
going as much as possible.
Jorge.
>> Um, this kind of piggybacks off of these
questions a little bit. Um, in terms of
understanding what is presented here,
spring 2024 is when the rubric was
developed or when the data right now
we're talking about where So, is that
the starting point from 2024? Do we have
more recent data? Have we seen in terms
of our implementation? What does that
look like and what is the progress been
like in terms of where we're at now?
>> So, spring was when we collected the
data and had these conversations with
schools. So, these trends are coming
from that data from last spring. Um,
schools all have, while I'm kind of
sharing district trends and areas, each
school has their own reflections and
their own specific areas for growth and
bright spots, which then they've woven
into their 90-day plans. And so, um,
right now, where the data sits is within
those measurable outcomes in the 90-day
plans, depending on how schools decided
to focus their next steps in
improvements. um in there.
I we at some point it would be important
for us to come back and have these
broader conversations again to look at
trends over time.
Okay. So when we think about these
bright spots, so again these are the
these are the um areas where most we had
most schools score at a four or a five.
Um we
the first one here is around an
assessment calendar. So schools pretty
consistently following a defined
assessment calendar communicating those
schedules to both school as well as
families. Um using a body of evidence to
assess student needs. So this is really
about um using more than a single data
point to tell a story about a student
but bringing in a variety of data to
understand what the needs of a student
might be.
Um we saw a bright spot with our um
systems and expectations for multiple
means of two-way communication with
families and caregivers
um that would be used consistently with
most or all staff.
Student support teams are in place in
schools to engage in problem solving for
individual students. So this is kind of
the thing when people first think of
MTSS, they often think of this team,
which is where you have a a group who
comes together around a particular
student and does some problem solving to
get some supports in place for that
student.
um these teams are not only in place but
um there's time set aside to meet
regularly and schools feel like they
have strong structures and processes um
with these teams. And the last bright
spot here is around our standardsbased
assessments. So schools are using
formative interman summitative
standardsbased assessments to monitor
students mastery of grade level
standards across content areas.
For our areas of growth,
we noticed that there was a need to
address these items that you see here on
this slide. Um they're all closely
related and they all fall under the
response to intervention kind of piece
of MTSS. So progress monitoring tools,
diagnostic assessment tools, and then
thirdly is the ways in which these data
are used to measure a student's response
to intervention. So there are three ways
we're we're addressing these needs in
our system. First, by filling some of
the gaps that we have in our assessment
inventory. Secondly, increasing
awareness of what we already have. So we
noticed that um in these conversations,
we would say, well, have you have you
have you using this? and said, "I didn't
know we had that." So, really just
making sure that our schools are aware
of what resources they do have
available. And then third, providing um
professional learning, training, and
coaches so that the tools are being used
correctly and as intended.
Um we're excited to have our assessment
resources like MClass, EXL, and MAP to
address some of these needs more
consistently across the system and
pairing those with some intentional
professional development and coaching.
So we do expect to see these
implementation metrics change um as we
continue to grow as an organization and
we understand that this will take time
to learn and use these new tools and to
integrate them into practice.
Okay. There are some areas where we
noted um some evidence in progress that
maybe wasn't reflected necessarily as a
quantitative data strength but it came
through really strongly in our in our
conversations with schools. Um one that
was celebrated by schools was regarding
the implementation of datadriven
instruction or DDI as our district-wide
approach to planning and monitoring our
core instruction.
So we attribute this growth um to first
of all having some clearly stated
expectations for what full
implementation of DDI looks like
having an increased availability of
standardsbased assessments paired with
clear expectations that are for using
those that are outlined in our
instructional expectations.
Um an investment as Dr. Miller talked
about with our both our DDI district
coaches as well as our strategic plan
support teams um and the data
instructional coaching cohort to build
capacity across schools.
The other area that um that we're seeing
some evidence of progress with
implementation is in that the strongest
most consistent areas of MTSS
implementation align directly to those
in which BBSD has provided some clear
guidance and resources. So our school
teams reported
sorry I'm just going to click through
all of these so they're just up now I
have to click and talk. Um, our school
teams reported strong implementation of
academic evidence-based resources and
practices connected to leadership
development, our adopted materials, and
guidance provided by the district,
including a BBSD instructional model,
the MTSS guide, and the instructional
playbook.
When we were having these conversations
in schools, it was not uncommon to hear
things like, um, "Wow, this conversation
would have been really different if you
had come if you had come here five years
ago and asked us these same questions."
or um okay, we're not there yet, but we
are so much further along than we were
even just last year. So, there was
definitely a sense of pride and growth
and um continuous improvement in all of
these conversations. And we believe that
this is in large part because of the
strategic investments that have been
made to increase coherence and equip
schools with the resources that they
need to implement best practices within
MTSS. Starting with strengthening our
tier one
Um so we have as you can see here on the
slide protocols to guide databased
problem solving and decision-making. We
have an aligned assessment calendar. Um
we have standardsbased assessments being
used to drive instruction. Investments
in high quality standardsbased
instructional resources for tier one and
evidence-based intervention resources
and consistent use of the assessment
tools that we that we have provided. um
as I mentioned MClass NWA common lit and
so on
>> I've been hearing a lot about this
instructional infrastructure
particularly our um our standardized
assessments just as a look for I've also
heard that there's inconsistency in how
like some some teachers are putting
these as gradebook items and assigning
point value and some teachers are not.
And what does that mean when you have an
exam that's a beginning of the year,
middle of the year? So there's some
inconsistency in how that is tracked and
then how those reports are also shared
with parents and the explaining
particularly of like a beginning of the
year standardized assessment where a
student is not expected to get an A but
a grade might show up in a grade book.
That's so there's some inconsistency in
that [clears throat] aspect of these
standardized assessments. We don't want
to do that.
We don't want to do that. So, if we're
hearing that, we need to correct that,
of course. And ju just to clarify for
the team what tier one instruction means
and how many tiers there are uh in an
MTS model. Um I'm a little gunshy here
because I messed up last time, but t
tier one uh is whole group, whole class
instruction. Tier two is if I didn't get
what was taught in whole group
instruction, it's not too bad, so sad,
we're moving on, get a tutor. It's let's
circle back and and figure out what we
need to do to group you in a small group
or give you some independent support.
Um, and then tier three is when those
tier 2 strategies continue to not work,
we look look to add more intensive
interventions. Sometimes that ends up in
IEP, sometimes 504s, sometimes other
like real intensive services. Uh with
the idea that tiers aren't necessar like
if you're in tier two or tier three, the
idea is to try to get you back to tier
one.
>> Got that right?
>> And and just to add that it's that
example was academic, but it it applies
to non-academic areas as well. Deian and
then Alex.
>> I'm interested um in sometime getting to
see the aligned assessment calendars and
what that looks like. Um I think that
one of the variables that we are bad at
taking care of is the fact that it might
not be um the standards or the um depth
of knowledge that a kid can't get, but
they don't have enough time. And so I
would like to see how uh schools are
adjusting for students that all they
really need is more time to get there.
Uh not that you got it wrong. Um but I
do think um in following up on the
discussions we've had with our
neurodeiverse community um in particular
uh tier 2 is not a place to stay out of
as long as possible. It's not always a
path to IEP or 504 plan and it's not
always an intervention to get back to
tier one. There are kids who need that
support all the time and that becomes
something you know about the student and
incorporate into how you serve them all
the time. I got some more questions but
I'll wait till the question slide.
>> Okay. So, um there was one more button
to click there. assessment tools. On
this last slide, there's several pieces
here. So, I'm going to talk through each
one. Um these are just some reflections
that um our team had as we kind of
looked broadly at the trends and all of
the data. Um the first is really about
the mindset regarding the purpose of
MTSS as we were we were just discussing.
So, as we all know, there's so many
misconceptions about what MTSS is and
what it isn't. Um, and many schools
really wanted to share noticing that
there's an increased understanding among
their staff that MTSS isn't a single
process. It's not that team that meets
about that kid, but really that it's um
and not a pre-referral process to
special education, but that it's a
preventative schoolwide framework that
encompasses academic and non-academic
areas for all students. Um, as we
discussed earlier, it's not just for
students who are struggling, but it's
really for all students, including our
advanced and gifted learners, whose
needs can and should be met through an
MTSS framework.
The next is something I mentioned
earlier um, regarding our 90-day
planning. So, as schools are beginning
to make meaningful connections between
the continuous improvement model of MTSS
and the short cycle improvements of a
90-day plan, um we saw really clearly
with our schools when we had these
conversations last spring, our schools
who had already been engaging in the
90-day planning work, whether it was as
part of a UVA cohort or with alongside
the strategic plan support team, when
when the MTSS goals were already baked
into the 90-day day plan implementation
of this framework felt much more
authentic, much more tied to the
day-to-day work that the leaders were
were guiding. Um, and our principles,
this maybe is me being a little um, just
giving my opinion, but there seemed to
be some more autonomy and ownership in
terms of how the work was being led at
the school when it was built into the
work of the 90-day plan. Um and and also
I would would add that in those examples
the leaders were able to really um
articulate really clearly how they've
determined what actions need to happen
next, how they're monitoring um the
impact and most importantly how these
moves are meeting the needs of their
school community.
The third reflection here is regarding
our schoolwide behavior systems. So,
when we had these conversations last
spring, the vast majority of schools
reported um confidence around having
processes in place to monitor their
schoolwide behavior systems um and
having consistent alignment of
schoolwide behavior expectations across
classrooms.
Yet, at the same time, we understand
that um the needs of students and staff
continue to evolve. And so, our support
in this area will continue to evolve as
well. So, we're not marking this one as
a a done. We've arrived. This is
something that we're paying really close
attention to. Um, and so you'll hear
from S Tammy and Sennon later about some
of the ways that um we're thinking
through additional supports um for
schools and how we're continuing to
listen and learn about current needs
that are happening.
The fourth um piece on this slide is
around resources. So, as I'm sure you
can imagine, any conversation about MTSS
or or any school improvements, the topic
of resources is going to come up every
time. So, our schools are looking for
ways to meet the needs of kids,
families, and staff, which are
constantly changing with less and less.
And they're asking, how can we sustain
our efforts with increasing demands and
decreasing resources?
We all know that this is the
million-dollar question that that you
all are coming together and ask all the
time. um and that we'll continue to
problem solve through together. And the
last the last reflection here is
something that I don't think prior to
this that we've really named as a key
factor in MTSS implementation.
The challenges for implementing
implementation are there are unique
challenges relative to a school's size.
So for example, a small school with one
administrator, part-time counselor, a
0.25 25 interventionist and itinerant
staff faces some unique dilemmas when it
comes to the logistics of planning for
MTSS. Scheduling meetings um
professional development with part-time
staff who attended that one was somebody
here on Thursday or were they at their
other school becomes an added layer of
complexity.
Um, we have schools, you know, running
multiple committees and leadership teams
with the same 20 people just putting on
different hats and running to different
committees to do the work. Um, and we
know that teaming is a core component of
MTSS. So, when you have a middle school
with one math teacher and one social
studies teacher or the first grade
teachers don't have the same planning
time because their kids don't have
specials at the same time, um, having
that collaboration becomes incredibly
complex.
On the other end of the spectrum, our
large comprehensive high schools, as we
kind of talked about earlier, also have
unique challenges, but very different
due to their volume of staff and
students. So, um, when you think of
needing to orchestrate the complex
meeting structures and communication
structures to make sure that there's a
seamless flow of information from the
top to the bottom, um, that we're
getting large a large staff of teachers
aligned around the same universal
instructional practices across
classrooms or responding swiftly to the
mental health needs of our students
while managing recordkeeping of over a
thousand students. that can feel really
daunting and difficult to tackle.
So these challenges
really reflect our current reality of
being in schools. So we know that
solutions we can't find solutions in a
in a research or a book somewhere
because this is a constantly evolving um
situation. So, I think our best move
here is to really make sure that we
continue to walk alongside our school
leaders and our teachers as they're
wrestling with these challenges,
listening to their needs, co-creating
solutions that are that feel feasible
and sustainable. Um and ultimately if we
really lean into the implementation
science and thinking about the
continuous improvement cycles as a way
of doing business um that will help us
continue to to shift and stay nimble as
the conditions in schools continue to
evolve.
So now I'll move to the questions slide.
>> Well, we know Alex had a question so we
can start there.
>> Okay. Um, first off, I just want to say
thank you so much for this uh
presentation and this chance to have
this conversation. I want to check in
later with uh everybody on the on the
board and see how they feel about this
level of inquiry because I'm super
excited, but I'm a data implementation
nerd and this is what I live for. Um I
guess the first question for me is as we
try to um look at this from a familyf
facing perspective. Uh I would encourage
us to work with Randy and his team and
really figure out the family facing
language we use about this because uh we
on the board get coached on what MTSS
and DDI is. And I just think there's a
lot of better language to explain this
to families. the it's it's also that the
the language around what we do MTSS and
DDI are kind of very teacher facing and
school leaderf facing. It's not what the
student experiences because of it. So
man, I think we want to get to well, we
here at this school, we really look at
how the students are doing and we make
adjustments in how we interact with them
in the classroom uh in order to better,
you know, always be changing to help
them learn the most like that's what
MTSS and DDI kind of are and from a
family or kid facing. So I would like us
to work on the language. Um secondly, uh
I'm so excited that we have an
assessment system and an assessment
calendar. I I know this place from a
long time ago when uh we had 56
different schools with 4,000 teachers
and they were figuring out what
assessment they wanted and that meant
there was no support, no ability to do
this. Um I am I want to ask about two
things. One is
how
do we make the there's a an impulse in
America I hear it all the time as an
official of assessment's bad. That's why
kids lose their souls and that's why
they shouldn't be in school and you're
not doing anything. you're just testing
them all the time and there's way too
much testing, right? And so there's no
distinction between CAMASS which is used
to give us our summitive data and
compare to other students in schools
across the state at which we rock to
formative assessment that's used for all
this stuff to the assessment that's
linked to our curriculum that is part of
what teachers do every day to understand
if kids understood what they thought
they taught. Right? And so I think we
need to again have a familyfacing
version of this that builds the
constituency for smart modern teaching
which uses formative assessment in all
these complex ways. So we've made great
progress because we now have the system.
I still talk to families in the grocery
store who like how we my kid's being
tested too much and they don't or they
disagree or don't understand or don't
think that the role of assessment is so
key to making sure every kid is
differentiated with and that they get a
different experience. So again, it's a
um a sort of outward-looking thing about
how we communicate that which does go
down to how teachers communicate and how
leaders communicate as well as people
here. And then related to that, I'm so
curious how we as governing board people
and other people in the public, is there
a rollup of the data that comes from our
assessment systems that lets us have the
kind of inquiry that a sack would have
into their school? So when do we get who
all gets the data from this assessment
system? Is it avail
uh unified improvement planning process,
the 90-day process? Um it should be uh
perhaps considered by the SAC as they
think about approving a UIP and what how
does that roll up to us as schoolboard
members in a way that also demonstrates
the value of it so that we win the fight
to protect assessment systems. I'm
afraid we could lose that at a state,
especially with the current federal
changes and the ability of states to
just wave all federal requirements for
summitative assessment. We could also
have a ground swell of people continuing
to opt out and of people resisting the
use of formative assessment. So, I just
want us to demonstrate its utility and
also let people be familiar with it
again with family facing language. And I
guess Dr. Anderson, I'm curious what
your reactions are to that and to the
team about like, well, is it a bad thing
if parents ask what the data looks like?
Is it a good thing? Should the SAC have
access to this? What do you think about
the data transparency and insight and
how we deal with the public about it?
>> Well, first of all, I think uh
I think your assessment is spot on.
These are national issues and I think
that, you know, being able to take a
look at what's happening at the federal
level, right? like if you don't have if
you don't have the ability to assess you
know you know I'm not talking there's
high stakes testing and then there's
assessment right that drives instruction
and intervention right so so the
assessment to drive instruction and
intervention you know h happens through
the assessment framework which by the
way you are right when I got here eight
years ago it was uh you know we it the
assessments that we had uh weren't even
for yeah it was a mess now I'm really
really really proud of where we are um
but I and I and I do think this idea of
this family focus family facing and
focused language is the right thing
right even as we've talked about some of
the technical uh nuanced phrases in this
presentation and I've been like well
this is what that means right like we
probably need to have a lot of that um
uh but it is a critical piece in terms
of of access to the data, you know, to,
you know, there's we can certainly if we
get data um and it comes in some kind of
CSV file, then we could upload it into a
a visualization through Tableau and and
we could do that, I'm pretty sure. And
we do some of that. Some of that maybe
we haven't made it external facing. The
question that we would have to have is
when is what's too much? And if if you
sometimes, you know, folks hide in plain
sight. Oh, we're super transparent.
we're going to flood you with so much
information you can't go that you can't
understand this way from that way and
you don't know how how we're doing or
what's happening and then we say oh but
we're super transparent but we're not
clear right so I think that that's the
balance there certainly we work with our
school advisory committees which also
wasn't always a thing to get them the
data that they need to be able to
develop improvement plans that then also
align to our overarching district
strategy uh but in terms of the access
to the data and what people see. That
might be a good question for DAC to say
what's too much, what gets too
confusing, and at what level do you need
to understand to be able to develop
improvement plans um alongside your
principal and school staff.
>> Piggybacking on that one, board policy
says that the district shall communicate
to families district and state
assessment calendars. And so that's just
like that document is a great place to
just insert what do these what is the
what's the purpose of a district versus
a state versus a school or your
classroom specific assessment since we
have to do it anyway. We're I mean it's
just an opportunity to insert some of
that detail that Alex is coming up with.
>> Did you know that off the top of your
head? Did you
>> We just reviewed that policy. Dr.
Anderson.
>> I know I say that's pretty policy
Deianne.
[laughter]
>> I am um interested in in um helping
those teachers that are isolated like
you mentioned a middle school teacher
that's the only one that teaches their
content in that school. Um, have there
been any plans to put together um
something like an action research
conference where um teachers could share
what they've done, how it worked, and
what kind of assessments they're using
so that it goes across the district and
it isn't isolated.
>> I I would say that we have and this came
out of our teacher roundts that we did
several years ago. um uh for for folks
that that are the only person that
teaches their subject in their school,
we've done some we've tried to arrange
some of our professional development
days so they could have some co some
time together. I don't know that we've
developed anything in an action research
format. uh but but is something we're
sensitive to and I would say we probably
have done less with schools that are so
small that somebody who teaches a
subject that's widely taught throughout
the district but because of their small
school they're the only one who teaches
it. I don't know that we've done as much
there as we have with maybe some of the
other other subjects where there's one
teacher in the school that does this and
they have nobody to plan and nobody to
relate to and nobody to kind of bounce
ideas off of.
Um, additionally, our teams, uh,
Shannon's team as well as our DDI
coaches and leads, we often will coach a
teacher, um, if there's a request. So,
we have an internal system to provide
support. While we're small, we do lots
of work and we try to expand around 56
schools. So, if there's ever a request
for a single teacher or a grade level,
we will respond to that and send
somebody that's on my team to to help
coach.
I can um add two examples to that too.
In one of our smaller middle schools,
it's it's not impossible, but they've
kind of paired within like maybe um you
know, math and sciences, you might not
be um you know, teaching the same
course, but there are some some planning
that you can still do with a colleague.
Um and so it's not that it's impossible,
it's just an added layer of complexity
and planning for the leader. Um and then
one example of kind of what you
described that um is actually within our
elementary specials teachers that um
Aubrey Yay, our amazing coordinator has
has um you know put together structures
last year where an art teacher for one
school could partner with two other art
teachers and they could look at how they
were planning with the standards and
assessing. And so putting some some
thinking kind of innovatively and
creatively outside of the box to give
teachers those experiences.
>> One more question or perhaps a
clarification since I'm sort of new at
this. Uh when you say the word
assessment to me as a person who uh who
works with students all the time, I
don't think those are tests always. Is
that a tr is that truth? is are you
actually talking about tests or are you
talking about projects that might meet
standards?
>> I think the way we would design define
assessment could be used broadly to
include a variety of project- based
assessments, tests, more traditional um
yeah, I think it could describe a
variety of things,
>> but our assessment district-wide
assessment framework is tests,
>> right? So, we don't have district-wide
projectbased assessments. Those would be
more school-based, teacher based.
>> We are more than halfway through our
time today and we are less than halfway
through our content. So, I'm going to
ask if folks rather than taking a cover
break, folks can manage their own
comfort as needed.
And maybe we start the valuating
included, get through all the discipline
data, pause for some questions, head
into bullying, pause. Um, but getting
through those chunks of slides just to
help us stay on track. Does that sound
like an okay tactic moving forward?
Perfect. Thank you.
>> You differentiated our meeting there.
That was excellent.
>> And I love the engagement. These are
exciting. It's exciting work. And I
think we're all very happy to see that
we're actually living um not just
talking about MTSS, but we're living the
work. And so I think that's why board
members have asked so many thoughtful
questions to this point.
All right, with that cue we are moving
to the strategic objective of valued and
included. And the work in this objective
is comprehensive as you can see in the
implementation indicators on the right.
And the aim here really is for all
students to feel and have experiences of
being valued and included in their
learning environments. for schools to
engage in restorative practices with
students when appropriate and to
consistently apply recommended
resolutions for specific disciplinary
events. The endeavors here span
discipline decisions, adherence to the
BBSD discipline framework, addressing
disproportionate discipline, as well as
responsive and preventative measures to
address bullying. Senn is going to guide
us through our current context responses
and next steps and um I know that we're
going to pause for a break in between
but just to introduce this.
Additionally, we recently shared the be
well action plan with the board and the
well-being of students is inherent in
this strategic objective. So Tammy will
also address related data about the
well-being of students and how our
system is responding. But Sen will get
us started.
>> Thanks Dr. Da Cruz. Good morning
everybody. It's it's an honor to get to
present to you today. I'm excited about
our work um and to share our our bright
spots and our challenges as well.
All right. So, the first section,
just to kind of give you an overview,
I'm going to provide um some year-to-
date updates around discipline,
including an how office discipline
referrals work, how decisions are made
during that process, our most common
types of office discipline referrals,
and our most common resolutions to those
office discipline referrals, our
year-to- date suspension rates, and a
comparison to some neighboring school
districts. our year-to- date discipline
proportionality,
our year-to- date adherence percentage
to the discipline framework and how that
tool is used. And then following that,
um, we'll get to the kind of then what
next and what are we doing in response
to all of that data.
All right.
So, this slide gives us a nice
foundation. It's helpful to set a
foundation of the general process of
what happens when there is an office
discipline referral. Oh, thank you.
I can't see those slides. I can just see
my slides. So, thank you. Um, the first
step always for the school and school
administration is to restore safety and
tend to injuries, physical or emotional,
however those may look on an individual
basis. And then depending on the
severity of the situation, parents or
caregivers may be contacted at that
point. Um or depending, you know, if
it's a less serious matter, then
students are given a chance to share
their experience, give their side of the
story. Additional information is then
gathered from any witnesses, staff,
surveillance, video footage as
appropriate and available.
Once all that information is gathered,
the administrator might seek
consultation from me, from their
executive director or a level colleague
at another school to be sure that their
investigation is thorough and equitable
and within in compliance with policy.
Then with the facts as or as close to
the facts as are possible to be
gathered, the administrator makes a
determination to the best course of
action to be sure that the incident
doesn't happen again, that the students
who made the mistake learn from it and
that harm is repaired. Support plans
might be written to provide longer term
care for the students involved. And then
further followup is provided to
caregivers and staff who are connected
with the students and who may need to
know um about how about what happened
and how to provide care for the students
moving forward.
Finally, documentation about the
communication with families and with
staff, documentation about the incident
and any support planning is completed.
All right. So then considerations
for the office discipline referral
process. It is expected that our school
administrators make objective decisions
regarding disciplinary situations while
they balance the distinct needs of the
students involved, the impact of the
incident on other students or even the
greater school community. And again,
safety is the number one factor that is
considered. So restoring it, putting
measures in place to create ensuredness
that behavior won't happen again. You'll
hear me say this a couple of different
times because it's certainly
appropriate, but the age, stage,
abilities, and aspects of the students
involved and how those factors may have
influenced what happened and has been
reported are always considered in the
outcome. Our school leaders, oops, our
school leaders are supported in making
equitable decisions with the guidance
documents that we have for them that
provide procedural support. So, uh, the
codes that they are to use when
documenting, an investigation checklist
to make sure that they're following all
the steps and and everything is tended
to, the discipline framework that you'll
hear more about in a minute. And again,
I'm available for consultation. And I
always tell them 247 even if you're
working on something after hours if I
can answer I absolutely will. We also
have um assistant principal advisory
groups at the middle and high school
levels to discuss the most t common
types of office discipline referrals
that are happening so that we can have
really in real time conversations about
how everybody's approaching the response
to students so that if it happens at you
know east network northwest we're h
we're responding similarly and
equitably.
We also have ongoing professional
development for administrators to stay
current on best practices, any
procedural polishes that we're making as
a part of the valued and included work.
We've also continued to have
professional learning on implicit bias,
restorative practices and we
consistently review our discipline data.
Now getting into some data. So this is a
year to day year-to-ate high-level look
at the top most five common types of
office discipline referrals and the five
top most common resolution types or the
outcomes of the office discipline
referrals. And you can see in the bar
graph that the most common type of event
is in some type of inappropriate contact
followed by detrimental behavior and
disruptive behavior as the top three
with peer conflict and then offensive
language or offensive gesture ragging
lagging behind those three. our top five
resolution types where you see a very
remarkable and positive difference
between how often a restorative
intervention is used as a as a
resolution compared to the four listed
after that parent conferences, a lunch
detention, supporting a student, and a
diff a different type of loss of
privilege.
I want you to please note that nowhere
in this top five list is is any type of
exclusionary discipline. and there are
no suspensions,
indicating that our schools and our
leaders take
a lot of different other approaches that
are restorative to repair harm and
support students.
You might be curious about the codes,
the numbers and letters next to those
names. The codes that are numbers are
state codes that we get from the state.
The codes that have a letter B next to
them are distinct to us here in BVSD.
Every year we review the codes from the
state to make sure our coding is current
and accurate. And then the reason why we
have Bcodes is because we want to have a
greater depth of knowledge about what is
happening in our schools so that we can
respond appropriately and have just more
accurate data. Is there any more you'd
say on that?
>> Okay. This next slide gives us a
yearto-date
comparison of out of school suspensions
so far or at this point in the year. So
August through November,
you can see at the top in 2023 at this
point in time we hadund
183 out of school suspensions. Last year
166 and this year we've had 160. So
we're noting a downward trend.
We did And in the analysis of this take
into account declining enrollment and
maybe that could be part of the reason
that we're seeing fewer suspensions.
However,
when we calculated that the number of
students enrolled compared to number of
suspensions, we still note a downward
trend over the past three years.
This is my favorite slide.
Oh gosh, there's a suspense. Okay. So,
for for greater context, because it's so
easy, you know, I've been in this
district almost 20 years. It's we don't
always get the opportunity to look
outside and and check in with our
neighbors. This slide provides us some
interesting information about the number
of suspensions that are applied for
misconduct in some neighboring school
districts compared to us here in BBSD.
These numbers are taken from the
Colorado Department of Education and
their raw suspension numbers for the
last school year, 24-25.
You will notice that BBSD's numbers of
suspensions are dramatically lower.
This speaks volumes to the work that we
do to keep our students in school
learning alongside their peers while we
help them
shift behavior, repair harm, and stay
engaged. Another important piece to note
is that our neighboring districts also
suspend students kindergarten, first and
second grade, and we don't. Again, just
another point of pride about how we
support our students and their
engagement here in BBSD.
I wish. Okay, now I'm done. See you.
Just kidding. All right, this one's
good, too.
The discipline framework.
This slide will show you a percentage of
adherence to our discipline framework
that we imple implemented last school
year as a part of our valued and
included work. And we continue to be
successful with this. What this tells us
is that so far this year, August through
November, out of the 1,613
office discipline referrals,
95.7%
of the time the resolutions to those
office discipline referrals fell within
the expected range of response that we
would deem to be appropriate.
Now the small number of incidents that
don't fall within that range are
situations that are really exceptional
or unique and have yeah just some unique
circumstances. So, it's reasonable that
there may be times that there's a larger
or lesser response again given the the
circumstances with the students
involved.
And in those circumstances, schools are
consulting with me or their executive
director and and not making those
decisions in isolation.
Five years ago,
uh, every school
had their own set of codes,
no common form,
no common discipline matrix, no
accountability for suspensions or
exclusionary dis discipline.
uh working with
equity council, Latino parent advisory
council, teachers, principles,
uh we have revolution like it completely
transformed how we look at um discipline
and how we support students. No, no
restorative p. I mean,
of all of the progress we've made, I
don't know that there is an area that
has been more transformed in how we
approach this. Uh, so I just wanted to
for those that are new on the board, uh,
this wasn't always the case. Uh, and
we've been super intentional. Um, and
you're going to see in a second, we
still have work to do. uh even though I
think that you know in comparison to
other places that aren't even tackling
some of this really difficult work and
they just chalk it up as kind of doing
business suspending kids out of school.
Uh that's just how you have to do it to
to to to accomplish what you want to do.
I just am really real proud of that. So
I just wanted to kind of interject that.
>> Board members, any questions on the
first eight slides of the valued and
included objective? Anna,
>> I do I um
and some of the what um Dr. Anderson
just said um answered some of those
questions because I was wondering if
there is um is reporting standardized
and what is the process for a student to
report incidents and then who takes it
on? And then uh we just talked about
most of these being resolved within an
appropriate um time frame. So I'm also
wondering what is that time frame on
average?
>> So So this is all data that comes from
reporting to the state. Our data is
clean as a whistle. Uh we the data that
we report is incredibly accurate because
that was one of the things we were
worried about is because when you start
to dig into work like about this, what
happens is that uh you could incentivize
bad behaviors at schools where as
opposed to filling out the forms, they
just go off the books and tell kids to
go home for a couple days to cool off,
which is exclusionary discipline, right?
So, uh, I would say that the data that
that you see here is is data that we
report out to the state. I would say
that you're and I can let Son talk to
this more, but, uh, these these, um,
resolution to a discipline referral is
pretty quick within the week that it
happens, if not, you know, sooner than
at a couple of days depending upon
what's happening. Um, and, uh, again, I
can't speak to those other districts in
terms of what's being reported, what's
not being reported. I can assure you
that it's accurate and that we're not
like miscoding things to do things we
shouldn't be doing. Right? That's the
adherence to the framework. So um if you
do something uh we're really clear on
our matrix on where it falls on the
matrix which then gives you a range of
supports and potential consequences uh
that you can choose from as an
administrator where without any
oversight or any um
um accountability uh in this what can
happen is you can have administrators go
rogue right uh and over penalty ize and
over discipline. Um
and and I've seen that everywhere that
I've been except for where I'm at and
where we are today right now. Uh so in
any event, uh very very comfortable with
uh re really more I'm proud of kind of
the work that we've done here. But I can
when when we say we have 493 or four um
suspensions that that's what we had
and very very clear and and really uh
confident of the data that we have.
>> And what might be helpful is for our two
new board members an on part of their
onboard onboarding is how what does this
process look like? What do vortex
meetings look like? What what is that
framework? and maybe a place where you
have more time to really dig through
process, not just the where we are at at
time if that sounds good to staff and
board members to hold off on some of
those very that it will take a lot of
time to get to those questions and I
think they're really important ones. But
I think there might that on boarding
might be a great opportunity to dig a
little bit deeper in the process.
>> Yeah, that sounds great and I will speak
to the reporting question here in just a
minute.
>> Jorge and then Alex.
Uh first I'd like to thank the uh
teachers, administrators and everybody
for for this trend. I mean it's I know
it's been a lot of work. It's been a
long slow process and it's amazing um
that we've made it this far. Um and it's
clearly not just um the discipline part
of it but it's what the work that lies
ahead of that's done beforehand. Right.
So I'd like if you can if you could
speak a little more about um what
proactive strategies have we used like
what's coming before this right to
address this because the behaviors can
arise still right but we're not just
responding in a negative way but what
are we doing in advance of this to
prevent this and and where do our school
safety advocates fit when all within all
this thanks
>> I'm going to get to the the preventative
and the before part in my next section
so if you don't mind pausing on that um
our school safety advocates are there to
help in almost any capacity. So, if
there's a really in-depth investigation,
they are available to help with that.
Um, if there's a situation that, you
know, has major safety issues there.
They lies between um, law enforcement as
needed. They can be a consultant with
the school administrators and another
thought partner. They can help meet with
families and explain procedural pieces
and outcomes. So they really serve as a
um a sideby-side partner with schools.
And some administrators have a lot of
experience and confidence and
ask less of their school safety
advocates. Some of some of them like to
do everything with them. It kind of just
depends. And um it really is a beautiful
partnership.
Um, and this may be some of this we can
talk about during the Q&A on this larger
section, but um, uh, and I'm channeling
for the excellent input from Kitty
Sergeant on the board, uh, who, uh, has
historically been our, um, copy editor.
I'm sort of a graph copy editor
sometimes. And so when I look at slide
27, um it'd be really help to know what
those numbers are because all I can tell
is the proportionality, not the scale of
that,
>> which is important because when you look
down at the uh couple slides later and
you see a number like 160, I don't know
what proportion of all those other
disciplines 160 is.
>> And that gets to sort of the the meat of
my substantive question on this. I
really want to know the pre-strategic
plan baseline for these numbers because
in my estimation we made a huge change
when we changed the policy and we went
to being like the other districts with
numbers in the thousands to being a
place with less than 500 a year and now
we're comparing whether we get from 168
to 160 when 95% of the change from that
policy change is implemented. So for the
last two years and the next two years,
whatever, we're we're watching noise in
the system, not substantive data. By
that I mean whether or not our out of
school suspensions are 160 or 168. The
deal is we went from 2,000 to 500 and
now there's individual cases that are
driving specific things that don't
really have anything to do with our
policy or what we're overseeing, but
we're just congratulating ourselves
rather than moving on to the next
question. So I'd love to hear some
discussion of that. The next part for me
is part of as a schoolboard member um
one of the things you get are agrieved
parents uh who have been participating
in these processes and rarely are they
the parents of the kid who's subject to
the discipline. So, I'd even like to
know what proportion of our disciplinary
events involve another student and how
much of it is a student versus the
teacher or the school and there isn't
basically a a person who's the recipient
of the bad behavior because the stuff we
hear about a lot are the kids who are
the recipient of it and we've focused
our strategic plan and all our metrics
on the perpetrator. And I have no data
on the feelings of the kid who was
harassed and the kid who was bullied um
that I can interpret from this. And we
get a lot of grief. We have a lot of
people choosing to open enroll. We have
problems and disproportionality of the
enrollment by uh by people who are the
ones receiving it. Our LGBTQ community
is always talking about how badly their
kids are being treated. And then there's
a disciplinary thing and inevitably the
kid who's been bullied for three months
is the one who slaps the other kid and
is then the subject of the discipline.
So I'm I'm really curious if we can I
don't want to change the strategic plan
metric. Now I know that's not my place,
but I feel like the discussion we're
having about out of school suspension is
at this point not constructive to the
important work we need to do for the
next two years. And in fact, we could be
asking much better questions about
school climate and culture and the
experience of our students and the
question. So people know they can't
suspend the kid out of school. Great, we
won. That's why we're at 500 and
everybody else is at multiple thousands.
But so what are we doing next? And I
feel like our data is keeping us just in
that track because a board four years
ago picked that number which was great.
They did the right thing. But I don't
think we're measuring the right thing
anymore.
I I will say uh I think that there's a
validity in a lot of your points. You
know, the goal isn't to get to zero,
right? Like at a certain point there's
going to be incidents where we have to
suspend students,
right? There's going to be incidents
where we have to expel students whether
we'd like to or not. Like there that is
an appropriate consequence for some um
situations. I will say that uh some of
that information you're asking to
quantify like I understand the spirit of
what you're asking. I'm not sure that
that's how to get to it. We do have some
slides that that um that we're going to
go through that talk a little bit about
the bullying but and I think that we can
have a greater conversation as a as a
governance team after that happens. So,
um, but I do hear what you're saying
and, uh, yeah, no, it's, um, at a
certain point it's maintenance, right,
versus trying to even continue to, to
drop down to, are we at that point now?
I mean, at a certain point you get
there. Um, I think when you look at the
disproportionality, you'll see we have
more work to do.
>> All right. Right. So, speaking of
disproportionality,
this slide shows a year-to-date and a
three-year comparison visual of our
discipline disproportionality for our
Hispanic and Latino students compared to
our white students. And obviously, this
continues to be a prominent area for our
growth in the realm of discipline. So,
the orange bands with the key up in the
top right corner, you can see um the
numbers of incidents And you can see
that the the the different student
groups there on the left and the the
orange band means much less favorable.
The blue band is much more favorable.
So, we've made, as we were just talking
about, strides in reducing suspensions,
adherence to the discipline framework,
and and our focus is continuing to
narrow to determine the root cause of
this challenge that we and so many other
states and district across the nation
face. We are facing this headon and
continue to work collaboratively with
our schools to name and and tackle the
challenge.
bullying reporting or this this types of
concern. So most types of reporting is
done at the school level. A child
reports to a teacher, a parent calls the
teacher or an administrator. However, we
do have a link on our district and
school websites for as a dis district
reporting tool. This slide provides the
annual numbers of reports for the past
three years. And on the far right, the
little gold shield, our number of
reports made so far this year, actually
through yesterday, where we sit at 53
for essentially halfway through the
year.
Continuing with some bullying related
data, here is a look at trends over the
course of the school year in bullying
related incidents. You'll see that our
trend data is lower at this point in the
year than the past couple of years.
This slide gives us bullying incidents
by code.
So the top code,
well, let me back up. This slide has
this the same data as the previous slide
broken down by types of codes that we
use related to bullying related
incidents. And we can see the prevalence
of each type compared to the last two
years and to date this school year. You
will see that among the types of
allegations of bullying and harassment
based on a protected class, race is the
most common. So the the top code is
allegations of harassment or bullying
that are general in nature nature and
don't apply to any protected class and
then ranking below that. So you can see
that um
race is the most common in the protected
classes for the past couple of years.
Note that these office discipline and
referrals are um not disagregated in
terms of the incidents that have been
founded or unfounded. This is just all
of the allegations that have been
reported and investigated.
>> And to be clear, Sen, and back to that
slide, the the data for 2324 and 2425 is
endofear data,
>> correct? and 2526 is C like we're going
to want to clarify before we post these
slides clarify that and 2526 is is year
to date.
>> Yes. Thank you.
>> Yeah. On that fact, I mean if if we're
releasing these slides to the public, I
I think doing it that way without
comparing if you're going to do a bar
graph or a figure, it should be the same
time period. Otherwise, you're just
misrepresenting for quick cognitive use
by the the people who receive that
graph. So I I don't think that's an
appropriate way to share that data if
you're trying to get appropriate
conclusions from the audience. Um
another point I would make I can you go
to the slide of 34?
Um I'd be really interested to know how
these break out by grade level. And I
ask you that because I think allegation
of sexual harassment is hard to code in
the lower grades when you've got uh
pretty ambiguous things going on. And uh
I think you might have a lot of uncoded
bisexual orientation when sexual
orientation is not really what's being
manifested um in a world of uh trans
kids and other things going on. So just
based on the anecdotal reports I get
from parents. I I think if we knew by
elementary grade, then we might see
more, you know, uncoded harassment that
is that if the kid were older and they
had the words to describe, it might be
based on sexual orientation or uh gender
status if we use more than just sexual
orientation as a measure. Ju just to be
very very clear like we as we present
this slide, I do think that you make
some valid points, Alex. We're not
presenting this as some type of win that
we've done anything other than just
presenting what actually the the
information is today. We're not
presenting this as evidence of of
progress or or anything along those
lines. This is just where we are today.
Um and I just want to be really clear
with that. And to the extent that we
have anybody being bullied, right, like
we have work to do. Uh and uh the the
impact on on on students, board members,
you hear from the same parents I hear
from um you know this this data is is me
is in the big scope. You know maybe you
think oh gosh there's not that much
bullying on until your kids bullied and
then then this becomes the most
important thing that the district needs
to needs to address and deal with.
One last point. If we can integrate the
things we as a board talk about when we
have declining enrollment, I'm always
interested in how we keep the families
that are in our district. And one of the
reasons they leave is because their kid
is bullied or harassed. And so every one
of those is a kid with an experience
that may lead them to leave our
district. Um and so that's where I want
a of you know the the person who's
experiencing the bullying and harassment
um to be you know really a part of what
we're talking about more.
>> I just have a point of uh clarification
for from slide 31. Can you explain the
difference between the much less
favorable and the much more favorable
percentages in the student body and what
that means?
>> I I can do that. And so as we really
started to measure proportionality
um if you look at the um in the key up
in the the upper right hand uh so gray
would be proportionate. So the the light
gray bar is the percentage of Hispanic
Latino students that we have or the
white students that we have in the
district. Right? the the orange line is
is much less favorable because it's
disproportionate going the the wrong
way. Meaning that we have significantly
more um referrals
of Hispanic Latino students by
percentage than the percentage of
Hispanic Latino students we have.
Conversely, for our white students, we
have much less behavior incidents,
referrals
um proportionally than we have
percentage um of white students. So to
create to so both are disproportionate
just in different ways. And so when we
created this key, uh, we tried to scale
it to say that some disproportionality
would be more favorable, some would be
less favorable. And that's how we used
the color of the bars to kind of
communicate that. Uh so by looking at
slide 31 you can see that we have a dis
a proportionality issue with behavior
incidents for our Hispanic Latino
students and um not necessarily
proportionality issue for our white
students.
Yeah, this is one of those slides that
should be like focus grouped because I
think less than like two or 3% of the
visual people looking at it will take
the conclusion away easily that you're
trying to give them. Like share it with
Sachs and say and you look at some other
models, talk to some people about how to
present this data because I think this
really doesn't communicate very well. I
mean, you can figure it out eventually,
but I'd be really curious like what
percent of SAC members within five
minutes know what it's doing.
Not to pile onto this slide, but just
another Do you
>> want me to go go back?
>> Uh, I don't think we need to. Um, but
you know, the numbers clear this these
are behaviors that include suspensions,
but are not just about things that end
up in suspension, right? So, includes a
whole range of behaviors of different
various levels, just different
discipline referrals. And so I'm curious
if you could speak a little bit to what
what rises to a level of parent
notification or documentation that would
fit this the data that's in here.
>> Very generally speaking, anytime a
student is referred to the office for
some type of behavior that is that
significant, parents should be
contacted.
>> But we wouldn't have a data point to say
parent has been contacted or not
contacted. The expectation the
expectation is that you contact parents
when when a student is sent to the
office on on a discipline referral
>> and the doc the documentation point for
these data then
>> is the actual referral
>> the actual referral
>> right
>> okay great um and one more thing for
slide uh the bullying incidents by code
are those exclusive categories or it
could example you know a full range of
bullying right on gender sexual
orientation and race inity. How are
those coded here? So, is it just the
primary one or can I have I could can
one incident fall into three of these
categories?
>> That's a good question. Yes, an incident
could have multiple codes related to it
depending on what happened, how many
students involved. Absolutely.
>> I do think it's important to one of the
changes that we made several years ago
is to make sure that we look at this
data in real time. to board member
Medler's point about is the code being
appropriately used across levels. We
have a multi- it's not it's a multi-ep
department group with Sen Liz Lundelle
our equity compliance officer and um our
data team where we go through a full
report of every incident reported under
that code. We read the description of
the incident to make sure it's coded
appropriately and then we're able to
provide real-time followup if a school
perhaps is using a code in a different
way than another school might so that we
can have that across school comparison.
>> One last question from Deian and then
we're going to move on. Is there any
attempt to um find out the data from
teachers about some of the things they
don't actually take the time to write an
office referral to so we know how many
are actually happening in the classroom
instead of just the ones that are sent
to the office because that process in
itself is disruptive. So teachers may
choose to
>> to put a squash on it while they're
there so it's not disruptive.
We don't have a data point on that, but
it it it pulls us back to Shannon's
comments about our MTSS systems and the
work that we um will be doing to enhance
those systems across our schools in
terms of behavior in the classroom, how
it's supported, what teachers are doing.
Um yeah, and answering that bigger
question, we we don't have a data point
on that at this point.
All right. So, now shifting gears to our
response to what we are doing to prevent
and intervene. And like do Dr. Anderson
was just saying, we do have some bright
spot and there's spots and there's lots
of work to do. We know that improving
our disproportionate discipline
particularly will come as a result of
improving a variety of factors that
enhance our students sense of knowing
that they are valued and included. So,
we continue to focus on the overall
well-being of students, the aspects of
MTSSB,
the recommendations from the Bwell
survey that that you'll hear more about
in a few moments. The next three slides
provide a snapshot and summary of the
proactive and responsive systems that
are in place um at the school level,
smaller grade level or smaller systems,
and even individual student or teacher
level.
All right. So at the universal level,
you can think about this as what's
available to all all schools and at the
scale of the school level. So we have
professional learning specifically
around building capacity for restorative
practices in everything from restorative
questioning, implementing restorative
circles in classrooms all the way to
restorative justice conferences after
harm has been caused and there's some
type of disciplinary situation.
Professional learning has been ongoing
during our PK12
meetings with school administrators.
Additionally, our bullying prevention
grant that I'll speak more about in a
moment, resources to support schools
with classroom management,
restorative practices support and
consultation for schools with their
schoolwide systems between MTSS and
student support services department is
in place. So all that means is that the
MTSS department and student support
services and our teams meet weekly to
discuss needs of schools and really
decide the best approach for to respond
to the school, who's the best person to
do it and then execute from there
in terms of targeted support. So think
about this as what's available for all
schools but on a smaller scale. One
thing that's new this year is the use of
the disengaged teen book, which is a
newer research-based book that
categorizes
disengagement in a nice contemporary way
that's really actionable and usable for
parents and caregivers and educators.
And we're using the book in professional
learning with our assistant principles
and deans specifically.
Some of our schools have opted in this
year to being a restorative practices
school. Whoops.
So that means that they are working, one
of their leadership teams is working
directly with our restorative practices
coordinator to flesh out however that
those next steps are in their school.
And that might be just focusing on what
restorative mindset means, how to build
staff capacity for um implementing that
those practices and mindset in the
classroom to larger school systems as
well. We also provide support for 90-day
plans on culture and climate goals if
schools need that support. And
particularly this spring, our schools
who need more support with discipline
disproportionality
um will be having particular support in
their 90-day plans this spring to have a
focus on improving that in their school.
And then at the intensive level or you
can think just smaller scale. This is
when we're talking about really
individualized
student level support. Um a principal
might reach out to Shannon and her team
and say, "I've got a teacher that needs
some it's a newer teacher and they might
need some particular support with
classroom management." Or we've got a
student that um is in general education
and we are really struggling with next
steps for how to support them
differently. So again, that's where our
departments collaborate and respond to
this the school's needs there.
This next slide is an update on what is
happening with our bullying prevention
grant from the Colorado Department of
Education. We are in the first year of
another three-year grant cycle.
At the beginning of each school year,
the school team who's responsible for
implementing the grant work uses data to
decide their area of focus. And that
data could could be anything from their
bullying survey that's student bullying
survey that's required as a part of the
grant every spring, their student
climate data, discipline data, or all
the above to decide what what exactly is
their focus going to be this year and
what are they going to do.
Further, all BBSD staff have been
trained in identifying and responding to
incidents of bullying and harassment.
This training has been particularly
enhanced this school year through Senate
Bill 296 where all staff were required
to participate in a a learning module by
December 1st.
There are I mentioned the annual student
survey for students in grades 3 through
12 that gives us some great information
as well. There are evidence-based
classroom lessons at both elementary and
secondary levels.
There, let's see.
We reviewed the data from the BBSD
online reporting tool a moment ago and
the access for reporting concerns
remains visible on our website and um
just two weeks ago you we probably all
got one the beautiful email from
communications just reminding our whole
community about what to report, how to
report. Please, we want you to report so
we can help make things better for all
of our children and families. There is
also a bullying prevention and education
toolkit that is revised every year and
available to any of our schools and
teachers.
One other piece of information about the
bullying prevention grant that I want to
make sure you're all aware of is that um
in this now next three-year grant cycle
funding is being reduced by 40% over the
the life of this grant which is
prompting us to make some changes. And
one change that's already happened is
that our bullying prevention specialist
is now working halftime instead of
full-time. she's able to meet a need as
an as an elementary counselor halftime
in one of our schools. So that supports
that need and then she's now half-time
again instead of full-time as the grant
coordinator. So it was a strategic
solution to fulfilling a school need as
well as meeting a financial need for the
grant.
Next, an update on restorative
practices.
So, I want to just paint a little
picture for you about what restorative
practices, programming, and support
looks like for schools. It is not
it is, I think, one of those buzzwords
that's pretty abstract. But being
restorative is not a task that you check
off. It's really actually a mindset
about how we approach other humans, how
we approach students, and really the
work of being an educator. It means that
we approach everything. um
knowing and understanding and acting
from a place that everybody in our
school community brings value that
everybody has a responsibility for their
impact on the community because everyone
matters
and for that reason every everyone's
voice matters and everyone should be
heard and valued and included if you
will in our school. So in addition to
ongoing professional learning for our
administrators, para educators, bus
drivers, and all transportation staff,
all safety and security staff have also
received restorative practices training
this year. And our restorative practices
coordinator continues to collaborate
with our colleagues in special education
and in MTSS to create professional
learning content that's available for
teachers and schools directly. And then
the five schools that are our
restorative practices schools um are
represent elementary, middle, and high
schools. And they continue, like I
mentioned before, embark on building
that culture within their school and
their capacity as a leadership team.
And our restorative practices
coordinator is available for
consultation with schools at any time.
She is on the phone with families
explaining things. She's going out to
support individual teachers, principles,
do RJ conferences. She is very adaptable
and available.
So beyond all of that, um I think we all
understand everybody here that behavior
is communication and there are a lot of
factors that drive student behavior and
we would be remiss if we didn't pause to
consider the impact and the presence of
our federal government climate, the
presence the very real presence of ice
in our communities, um the economic
hardship and food scarcity that our
families are facing as well as just
overall tension and increased violence
in our own country and beyond. And we
are seeing that stress in our students
and our families. And and that is very
real. And it's important that we honor
and recognize that and own that as we
continue with our work. And as I said,
um as leaders in student support
services and MTSS, um we work really
closely together. We've had some really
rich professional learning this fall
that's continuing to help us narrow our
focus and drive our work. One of those
pieces being a framework specifically
for reducing disproportionate
discipline. This comes from the national
PBIS leadership forum. It's an
evidence-based fivepoint intervention
approach for equitable supports to
reduce discipline disproportionality.
We have aspects in place in all five of
those components.
However, that second bullet, and a few
of your questions and comments have
alluded to this, the second bullet of
implementing a preventative multi-tiered
culturally responsive behavior framework
is at the district level is our largest
opportunity for growth here. And so
while that work is happening on a
request basis in our in and in in some
of our schools um again we're going to
continue to discuss how that can look
and how we might flush that out through
MTSSB through valued and included.
I think I was lucky and have lucky
enough to have the most slides in this
presentation. So thank you for your
patience listening to me. And now I will
turn the floor over to my esteemed
colleague Tammy Lawrence.
Good almost afternoon. I was going to
say morning, but we're going to say
afternoon at this point. Um, thank you
so much um for having us um today to
share with you um where we are with um
all of our data. Okay. So, as we discuss
other wellness related data, we'll talk
about suicide risk and mental health
referrals. Before we do, let's take a
look at the overall trends with our BBSD
safe to tell reports. For clarity,
suicide risk review reports are also
included in this data. Safe to tell
Colorado provides an anonymous way for
students, parents, school staff, and
community members to report concerns
about their own safety or the safety of
others. The program was founded on the
belief that prevention and early
intervention are key to reducing
violence and saving lives. Safe to tell
encourages young people to and community
members to take an active role in
prevention by giving them a direct
anonymous way to report concerns and
empowering them to make a difference.
The framework established by this model
offers a sophisticated and efficient
system for sharing information with
local responders, schools, and district
staff.
Callers can choose from 38 different
categories of concern, including
bullying, depression, suicide, drugs,
violence, and others. Once a report is
received, school officials and law
enforcement after hours begin the
investigation. You can see that there
has been a steady increase in reports
from 2022 to 2025. This data reflected
here was pulled through the December 8th
and not reflective of the full first
semester.
I got to do the right ones here.
As we look at our behavior trends, it's
important to recognize what
important to recognize that what
students show externally is only part of
the story. More and more we're also
supporting students who are experiencing
internal struggles particularly around
mental health and suicidal ideiation. In
the first half of the 2526 school year
we're seeing strong utilization of
student support services across the
district reflecting the depth and
complexity of students needs. One key
component of this work is our suicide
risk reviews or SRRS. These are
initiated any time we're notified of a
pot potential threat of suicide. The
purpose is to respond quickly, gather
accurate information, and ensure that
students receive the immediate support
and care that they need. When an SRR is
initiated, staff work to identify the
specific source of concern, whether
that's something a student said,
something observed, or something
reported by someone else. From there,
the process helps to ensure the
appropriate people are notified,
including mental health staff,
administrators, families, and outside
partners when necessary. SRS also guide
teams in putting the right supports and
safety precautions in place immediately.
to this to do this consistently across
the district. Our staff uses an internal
tool adapted from the Columbia Colombia
suicide severity rating scale which
helps them assess level of concern and
determine next steps which includes a
support plan.
Looking at our looking at our data for
the 25 and 26 school year, we've
completed 369
SRRS as of December 15th with the
highest volume coming from our high
schools. For context, in the 2425 school
year, we completed a total of 777 SRRS,
which was a decrease of 90 from the
previous year and an an additional
decrease of 186 from two years ago. This
overall data reflects the ongoing and
significant need for timely mental
health response across our schools.
Overall, SRRS remain a critical tool in
ensuring students are identified,
supported, and kept safe as quickly as
possible.
As a resource to support our students,
mental health is our mental health
advocates or MHAs. Their role is to
provide short-term school-based support
focused on stabilizing students and
addressing immediate needs. It is
important to note that this support is
not therapy, but targeted assistance
within the school setting. Also, MHAs
work directly with students who have
recently experienced major traumatic
events and need additional care to
regain stability. Their goal is to
promote academic success and resilience
by offering intensive social emotional
support impacting their academic
progress. As of December 15th, we
completed 1,284
MHA referrals reflecting ongoing high
demand for support. The previous year
total referrals for the year was 1,847
and 1,111
at semester.
Every SRR and MHA referral requires a
coordinated school-based team, typically
including school counselors, MHAs,
social workers, school nurses, and/or
school psychologist to provide
comprehensive wraparound support for
each student. This work often involves
developing support plans, collaborating
closely with parents and guardians, and
partnering with outside agencies and
community a providers and community
agencies. Although we are declining in
enrollment, we are still seeing a slight
increase in the MHA numbers of referrals
for the year. We are continuously
monitoring the intensity
of the needs, especially Oh my.
Thank you. Sorry, my computer Oh, no. It
just came back.
>> That was weird. My whole system went
down
>> for a second.
Let me find where I was. I apologize.
Okay.
So, we're going to start again. Thank
you. Um, although we are declining in
enrollment, we are still seeing a slight
increase in the MHA number and referrals
for the year. We are continuously
monitoring the intensity of needs,
especially as our providers are
navigating this work while managing
through limited district resources in
this area.
As a reminder, the board received an
update earlier this year on the bewell
actions that are prioritized by our
district. We are currently in the
process of taking steps in alignment
with the recommendations outlined by the
Renee Crown Wellness Institute. For the
board and for those watching, the Be
Well Project was created to help us
better understand the perspectives of
the people who are closest to our
school's day-to-day experiences.
That includes our educators, our
families, and of course, our students
themselves.
We wanted to hear directly from these
groups because they see firsthand what
students are experiencing and what
supports are or are not working for
them. By gathering insights from all
three groups, the project aimed to
identify our bright spots, areas where
we are already doing well, as well as
gaps that need our attention.
Ultimately, the goal of the Be Well
project is to use what we have learned
to strengthen and expand the mental
health supports available to our
students across BBSD.
As you can see, the Be Well report
identified five key findings that are
guiding our next steps.
There we go. I didn't know I had that
extra thing there. Um, five key findings
that are guiding our next steps.
These findings are focused on students
own reports of their mental wellbeing,
how aware students and families are of
the mental health supports available to
them,
how frequently wellness centers and
other supports are being used,
families awareness of mental health
resources across BBSD,
and the broader BBSD systems that are
currently in place to support students
mental health. Our valued include
working group has taken a closer look
into those recommendations. The above
data helped us determine where to focus
first, what can be built out over time,
and how we can best support students
across the district moving forward.
And now we are going to open up the
presentation for questions. Sen and I
are happy to answer.
Thank you for that very thorough
discuss conversation. Dr. Anderson wants
to kick us off with questions. I can
see.
>> Thank you. Um, you know, board members,
as you can see, uh, the need for mental
health advocates and mental health
support continues to grow. Uh, you know,
I think that that is, um,
that is that is a growing trend. Um, and
as we know and think about the resources
that we get to support mental health in
our school district, um, th those are
are not I they're not they're not
directly correlated to our need. Uh, so
if the need goes up, there's no extra
dollars to support the mental health of
of of students that are in our school
district. and we we do a lot of
proactive work to help kids so they can
they can be mentally ready to learn. Um
and so I will just say that this the the
declining resources
uh is a challenge for us. And then also
uh this is where some of the small
school challenge that we discussed as we
discussed declining role. It re
declining enrollment really shows itself
because when you have growing needs and
you're going from full-time to halftime
counselors and you're reducing the
number of mental health advocates. uh
you know thinking about how you can have
schools that are more filled with kids
and resourced fully versus smaller
schools that are partially resourced. I
do think that that that comes into play.
Um so I just kind of wanted to lead with
those two ideas.
I have a question looking kind of just
doing some quick math as you were
presenting. The suicide uh risk reviews,
the um request for mental health
advocate support and the safe to tell
reports all were higher in the first
semester than in the second semester.
And I'm wondering
as we think about academic stress and
the the conditions in which our students
are showing up to school like if we have
if there's something at the start of the
year that maybe not that are we could
help our students with to prepare or
what that might be or in the future just
looking at the data in those. I know
sometimes we've seen data on different
items that kind of show the monthtomonth
like is it correlated with the start of
the school year and there's a lot of
unknown expectations and I'm feeling
overwhelmed. I can't get out of the
class that I thought I was capable of
taking, but it's now it's too hard. Is
it midterm? Like I'm curious if over
time just because for all of the all
three of those types of reports the
numbers were larger in the start of the
semester and like really supporting our
kids um early will help them be
successful throughout the year. So I'm
just kind of curious in the future to
dig into that a little bit more so we
can really make sure our setting our
kids off on a positive trajectory. I I
think that's as as you all contemplate
homework and grading policies, I think
that's an important data point for us to
see to see what we can get to the extent
that we could create a visualization
that's similar to the discipline
referrals by month. Um I'm wondering
I'll have to go back to the team, but I
could see what see where that be would
be something to take into consideration.
I think another area that um impacts
that as well is we are coming off a
summer and so students don't have that
direct um supportive adult in a school
system to talk to day-to-day. So
oftentimes when we come back to school
our providers are you know inundated
with the different amounts of supports
for our students to share what has
happened throughout the summer months
when they didn't have that directly um
connected supportive adult around them
every day.
Alex.
>> Yeah. Um, thank you very much for this
really important work and for this
update. Um, uh, some of my questions are
related sort of about information and
they don't mean to imply that we're not
doing the right thing. Just as a
governing board member, I'm kind of
disappointed in the information that I
have to have insight into it. Um, for
one I I mean I think about when I came
in I was I knew we were doing a lot big
priority and I was a big advocate of
getting evaluation to be part of this so
that we could know what's working and
what's not working. And I am frankly
underwhelmed by the Renee Crowns
information that we've got from it in
terms of the findings and insight. And I
and I'm I'm really like I don't know if
more reporting is a good thing because
things that weren't reported are now
reported or if the thing that's worth
reporting is going up. Like without
knowing whether an SRSR is a good thing
to have had or um uh or what the
underlying thing that's reported, it's
really hard to interpret whether we've
improved people's knowledge of the
mechanisms to report or whether we have
a 40% increase year-over-year in terms
of the bad thing that's being reported.
So I'm I'm left just not knowing very
much from this. Um you know uh
is it possible to catch you know what's
the estimate from other data to
triangulate whether the SSRS are
catching all the kids who needed it? Can
we use the Healthy Kids Colorado data
and see if our data on bullying is
wildly different from what kids are
reporting in other instruments? Um, so I
would love to see a more uh
evidence-based understanding of it and I
need to understand when we do get stuff
reported like whether we think a big
number is a good or bad thing um and how
that relates to the phenomenon we're
trying to understand more deeply and I I
just don't see it yet. And then on a
couple of just substantive things, one
of the things that makes me nervous
about report uh safe to tell is that
we're putting it on kids uh to report
their their peers mental health issues.
And I can tell you how many times I've
heard of people who end up leaving the
district because their kid reported
somebody else's mental health crisis and
they suddenly lose their entire health
group. I mean entire friend group. So I
really want on the mental health world
to check in on the kids who are doing
the reporting as well as the kids uh who
are reported on. I know safe to tell can
be anonymous but I I know multiple
people whose kids uh social experience
own mental health staying in the
district changed because they made a
report on another kid's suicide risk.
And so I I really feel frustrated in
these topics because they're so
important. We have to I think we need to
make budgetary decisions to protect this
work and invest more in it. and we're
likely to have pressure to not do so.
The feds and the state will underfund us
going forward. So that's why I think
it's crucial to actually have a much
better level of insight into that what
kids are feeling and how things are
working. And I just don't feel like we
have it.
It's really tricky, right? And I think
about this a lot to the extent that you
know the data that's reporting out is
more of a current conditions versus
trend data because of actions of the
school district, right? to to think
about kids who are in mental health
crisis or or at risk of suicide. You
know, how many of those factors are
school related, home related, personal
related, I think is really almost
impossible to triangulate. Now, now that
being said, um as somebody who's also
data dri, it's it's really it's really I
think complicated um and challenging.
Um, I do think that there's other data
sources that we could potentially
triangulate, right? You know, you have
Healthy Kids Colorado, not but not
everybody takes that, right? So, you
could pull some of that data. Um, you
can pull some of the data on the suicide
risk reviews and mental health advocate
referrals. To your point, is safe to
tell. Is that awareness of the system?
Is that a bubble of mental health crisis
that's going through with from a
particular group of students? I think
that is super tricky. So, um, you know,
uh, I've I've thought about this. I do
think that we can continue to think
about it more, Alex, but I I don't I
think some of these things just are more
of a this is where things are right now.
Um versus a you know, I would never put
in a um um a superintendent goal or a
strategic plan. Um anything related to
some of these data points because I
think some of them are more community
conditions in addition to school-based
conditions. So, uh, but making the case,
right, is that's what makes what's makes
making the case hard. Like, if if I
staff out and if I were to add 10 mental
health advocates for next year,
I mean, I don't have any data from next
year on how many folks I would need to
respond, right? Like, so, uh, if you if
you're always using lagging lagging
data, then I think it's tricky. So um I
will say that uh you know making sure
that we have the right ecosystem dialing
into data by school right because you
know you could have outliers in this
data that are school-based where we
might really have a problem at one
school versus other schools. Um how do
we allocate mental health resources? Is
it the same everywhere or do we
highlight the flip the places where we
know we have more issues and then do we
differentiate based on trend data from
previous years. So um I'm open up I'm
always open to new ideas around how we
can better present data to to explain
what's happening or to assess what's
happening. I do think that um that there
may be some limitations in in um in some
of this data. Uh and I would say that to
um to the extent that the Renee Crown
Wellness Institute had a research
model uh that may have told us some
things that um we had already assumed we
knew. Like I think that's maybe some of
the frustration like we we spent a whole
year figuring out what like that you
know we kind of did we know some of this
already. Uh so so the validation and um
and then the the recommendations on some
of the key findings. I mean I think
they're nuance. I don't think there may
be transformational changes. Things like
uh folks aren't aware of the resources,
right? Maybe you could have intuitively
figured that out, but we've validated
that that's something we need to do.
Expanding wellness centers, we could
have probably intuitive figured that
out. We've validated that. Um what what
didn't come out of that study is that
there was something that we were doing
that wasn't massively not working or
hurting or harming kids. Um but uh
certainly didn't give us maybe some of
the transformative information that we
would have hoped to to to deepen work.
Um but again, you know, sometimes you do
studies and sometimes that you you know,
you you you find things or sometimes you
validate things that you may have known.
So um I do appreciate how data centered
this board is. I do appreciate the ways
in which we need to think about using
data to inform our community and inform
our practice and inform our investments
and inform our policy. And in this area,
I think there's some things that we
could probably strengthen, but also um
some limiting factors, but I do think
that there's things that we can consider
that we haven't considered previously.
So, I know the team's been taking notes
um and that's something we'll go back
and reflect on.
Last
question. There's two slides and we'll
move on to our next final agenda item.
[snorts]
>> Yeah. I just wanted to to talk about the
wellness centers and see if there's a
way I don't know how you kind of I mean
this seems well how do we overlay kind
of the wellness centers? I think
anecdotally we're hearing that more and
more students use them that there's a
greater need and yet the data here shows
kind of you know that the maybe the need
is not being met. And so I'm not sure
how we're able to track um wellness
centers with this data and showing that
you know it's there's real benefit to
kids that there's a need for expansion.
I'm not sure my question but more just
like I want to be able to kind of
connect the resources we have. I mean we
talked obviously about the need for
mental health advocates and more
counselors. um you know obviously our
budget limitations there but here's an
area where we potentially can expand and
can provide more services um but I'm not
seeing that reflected in this work in
this presentation and so I don't know
more of a question kind of for future
looking f you know looking at this down
the road is how can we better track
those centers the impact on kids to this
data that we're seeing here
>> yeah we did not sorry do you want to go
first sorry we did not include wellness
center data in the um slide deck.
We really look at our wellness centers
at a universal support for students. So
all students are, you know, welcome.
They know about the center. They know
that they can come there and find a
trusted adult and we use that as a way
to connect them with the supports
available for our tier 2 and higher tier
three level of supports. We absolutely
could look at what that looks like. But
those teams in the schools, it's staffed
with the mental health advocate. They
work closely with the other mental
health advocate and the school team,
social workers, counselors, and the
admin team to help support students.
>> Couple of ideas in in the findings. One
of the recommendations was expand to
middle schools, mental health or
wellness centers to middle schools. Um I
will tell you that our funding for our
high school wellness centers is at risk.
It is um almost 100% funded through
philanthropy through our foundation. And
uh you know, one of the tricks with
philanthropy is that folks um get
excited about new ideas.
And then how do you transition
some of those startup funds into ongoing
resources?
And uh given our situation with
declining enrollment and budget
budgetary challenges and then the
changing of the school finance act uh we
we are are relying on um philanthropy to
maintain our wellness centers as opposed
to like a startup this is a good idea
and then transitioning the cost over to
central you know to district general
fund dollars. So um I don't have a good
answer. I I do think that um there's
there's work that we can do within the
be well report that will help us. Uh I
do think there's other data that we can
look at to try to continue to sharpen
our focus on what are the things that
are emerging as they're happening. And
uh but I think the our biggest risk is
that um and and you know we have the
data to show that the wellness centers
works. Kids who show up when they leave
they're feeling better. we have that
data. I I don't you know so to the
extent that I could tell you if you go
to a wellness center it prevents ABCD
are happy I can't tell you that right I
can just tell you the kids are having a
good experience and folks like them and
that's why we're kind of looking that as
a universal because gosh this is working
kids like them we think that it's a pro
preventative proactive approach and
we're also connecting kids to to more
kids to preventative kind of
opportunities but uh resources will
become our biggest challenge here
Any final questions? Board members,
>> did you want to present your last two
wrap-up slides?
>> Is is that like a sign if your mic dies
and you're done talking? Is that like a
Do we have some kind of strategic
micilling kind of
>> As we transition to the last few slides,
uh, very few, I want to just say a
couple things. Thank you for the
thoughtful conversation.
um around the valued and included work
we're doing. And in respect to um board
member Anger's question regarding
wellness center reports, our partners at
Renee Crown actually do track several
domains of um wellness center data
including attendance, time of visit,
students reasons for going, perception
data before and after and other domains.
Um, also I want to recognize the my
colleagues at the table for their
expertise and the expertise they bring
to their work every day and that they
brought to this presentation and
conversation. We have some other
colleagues in the room who bring
expertise to our schools every day and
that is our SPS or strategic plan
support team. They are here. We have two
administrators and three data and
instruction coaches. And what you see on
this slide is actually the 10 schools
that make up the first two cohorts of
SPST schools. And so the first co cohort
kicked off last year. I won't name those
exact schools in the interest of time,
but they are all included here. Um and
the second cohort of schools is in
active support by our STS SPS team. Now
um one thing to note, these are not one
type of school. It's a heterogeneous
selection of schools. We did that by
design with a range of readiness and
implementation uh when they enter the
cohort and then when they get to and
then they get to deep implementation
over the course of time with support
from executive directors and a double
dose of support from our SPST teams
last year. the first SPST cohort, excuse
me, um schools showed impressive results
overall and uh the cohort the second
cohort had an advantage. They started
earlier this year. Uh the cohort one
started in October last year. We were
building SPST last year and this year
it's definitely a welloiled machine
supporting schools. SPS teams are
charged with accelerating the
implementation of the strategic plan in
the cohort schools
and they are driving schools toward the
established expectations of datadriven
instruction core implementation
establishing and utilizing MTSS and
standardsbased instruction. And of
course, all of this work is driven with
short cycle improvement planning and
90-day plans, monitoring progress and
adjusting actions accordingly. All of
those expectations are in place in every
SPST school and between our UVA schools
or SPS and our SPST schools. We've seen
that these evidence-based expectations
and practices are being uh not only
actively supported, but are resulting in
greater outcomes for students across
groups.
differentiated funding and support for
schools has been allocated in the form
of additional FT at schools but also
through our SPST teams supporting
schools.
Something that we have definitely uh
learned is the realization that we know
focus enables excellence. Strategy alone
is not enough and in fact we know that
uh the ways that BBSD has scaled out
this work across all schools has been
getting national attention. our focus,
the results. Um, UVA has asked our team
to present at their annual summit in
November, which we did. They amplified
our the work that we're doing through
its publication in a partner spotlight.
And what's proven to be true is that um
success really comes from disciplined
execution, focusing on fewer goals,
acting on what drives those goals,
tracking progress, and being
accountable. In other words, a clear
narrow focus, clear goals, monitoring
leading and lagging measures. And that
focus and alignment can be seen in a
coherent manner across our schools in
BBSD more than ever before. Of course,
we still have work to do. We're aware of
this and we also know we've come a long
way in building coherence. We recently
asked our principles who've been using
90-day plans and short cycle improvement
to guide their leadership for a couple
years or more what's really val valuable
about it and they told us. So, we're
going to spend a couple minutes just
watching what they shared because it
really captures the value and the impact
on school improvement and another sign
from the universe.
Okay, so we will skip this for now but
send you the video. unfortunately um
because it's an excellent example of
short cycle improvement making a big
impact on leadership in schools and
outcomes for students. So this brings us
to the conclusion of our presentation.
We're always grateful for the
opportunity to spend time with you. We
value the discussion and your thoughtful
questions and we're still here for any
remaining questions that you might have.
Just want to thank you send send a thank
you out to our strategic or student
support services, the SPST teams and our
MTSS teams for all you do to help
improve the opportunities and outcomes
for our kiddos and support our teachers
in that really important work and for
taking the time to answer all of our
questions. Um you do amazing work and we
wouldn't be where we are without all of
you. So thank you for that. Uh I would I
would like to move on to our next item
of the agenda if that's possible.
which is
>> what's the next item?
>> We have an executive session still.
Yeah.
>> Can I ask one thing?
>> Okay, one final round of questions.
>> Um, first off, I just want to thank
everybody um who's presented and all the
people that contributed to preparing for
this and I know I sometimes ask
questions and can't understand what's
presented, but that's in the spirit of
trying to not only for my understanding
to make sure other people can understand
what's going on. So I and I know that
our disciplinary stuff dealing with
climate and culture and our mental
health issues are are harder to measure
and quantify. So I'm not trying to
figure out what the quantitative numbers
are for these things. I'm trying to have
more insight into them and I I maybe
it's a mismatch of like well there isn't
enough numbers so got a few numbers and
those numbers aren't providing me
insight. And so I'm if it's qualitative,
if it's people telling stories, if it's
people giving me their expert judgment,
I'd like to hear that as a board member
so I can understand how we're doing on
the mental health issues. So maybe it's
not a strategic plan metric, but it is
perhaps qualitative insight would be my
suggestion. And then I do have a
question for uh my uh fellow board
members. Like we've been doing this for
a while. We have two new board members.
It was great at CASBY to hear Nicole and
Dr. Anderson explain sort of their
theory of change of how we work as a
governing board. I think these meetings
are super helpful to me and give me uh a
lot of information and insight. I am
curious how the other board members feel
about this level of the depth of inquiry
and the use of this much time for it. If
anybody wanted to share
>> seeing thumbs up
any other last burning can't leave for
winter break without this question being
asked Dr. Anderson, I
>> I'd love to to answer um Alex your
question. I think it's helpful for us to
think it's helpful for our team to have
these moments that we reflect in time,
prepare, dig in, think through what's
working, what's not working. Um getting
great feedback from the board. You know,
I've got like 10 really good ideas that
came from our conversation today. Uh so
I think that to the extent there's
benefits for the board, I think there's
benefit for our incredible and amazing
team as well.
>> Thank you again for that presentation.
Board members public as indicated on
today's agenda. We have items to um
discuss in executive session. Is there a
motion?
I, Deianne Booker, make a motion
pursuant to CRS24-6-424F
to convene into executive session to
discuss personnel matters regarding the
superintendent's evaluation process,
specifically the superintendent's
midyear evaluation.
>> Is there a second?
>> It died again. Seconded by Anna.
[laughter]
It is time to go. Four members, we will
I need to
>> shall we reconvene? [laughter]
Okay. Booker,
>> yes.
>> Yes.
>> Chavez.
>> Yes.
>> Medler.
>> Yes.
>> Raj Paul.
>> Now I have that one died, too. Now I
have three mics. Two of which. Yes.
>> [laughter]
>> Tamuading. Yes.
>> Anger.
>> Yes.
>> Motion passes.
>> Okay. We will now adjourn this public
portion of today's meeting and convening
Glacier.
>> Lunch is available.