VOICE SESSIONS MASTER NOTES - WordPress.com · TABLE OF CONTENTS Click on a section title to be directed to the notes in that section. OVERVIEW ..... 1

VOICE SESSIONS

MASTER NOTES

OCTOBER & NOVEMBER 2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Click on a section title to be directed to the notes in that section.

OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................................... 1

ADVANCED ACADEMICS (OCT. 10) ........................................................................................................... 2

ADVANCED ACADEMICS (NOV.1) ........................................................................................................... 11

HIGH SCHOOL ........................................................................................................................................... 22

TRANSPORTATION ................................................................................................................................... 31

MIDDLE SCHOOLS .................................................................................................................................... 34

NUTRITION SERVICES ............................................................................................................................. 39

PRIORITY SCHOOLS ................................................................................................................................. 44

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS ......................................................................................................................... 47

SPECIAL EDUCATION ............................................................................................................................... 51

LITERACY ................................................................................................................................................... 58

VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS ................................................................................................................ 63

PRE-K ......................................................................................................................................................... 70

MAINTENANCE SERVICES ....................................................................................................................... 77

SCHOOL COUNSELORS & SOCIAL EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ................................................................ 82

ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS ........................................................................................................... 88

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OVERVIEW

WHY WE HELD THESE VOICE SESSIONS

To engage Metro Schools leadership with teachers/staff and parents/community members to: 1) gather

specific and extensive feedback across the school district on key topics that affect student achievement;

2) uncover areas that the Transition Team needs to address in its recommendations to Metro Schools

leadership; 3) clarify and set expectations on Metro Schools’ shared vision for student achievement; and

4) provide tailored advice to audiences on meeting individual, school and district goals.

FORMAT OF THE VOICE SESSIONS

Voice Sessions occurred throughout the month of October. Each topic had two Voice Sessions – one for

teachers and staff from 4:30-5:30 p.m. and one for parents and community members from 6-7 p.m. Each

Voice Session had the following components:

Live Polling (10 minutes)

Presenters prepared several multiple choice questions that were printed on large posters for

attendees to respond to as they entered the meeting room. Attendees used stickers to provide

their responses. Presenters wrote questions that allowed them to make quick assessments of

their audience’s beliefs and assumptions about the Voice Session topic. The data demonstrated if

there were any gaps in audience’s beliefs and the school district’s position.

Presentation (20 minutes)

Presenters gave brief remarks to introduce themselves, explain the mission and goals of their

department, and share their priorities for the upcoming school year.

Guided Discussion (30 minutes)

Presenters then led attendees in a guided discussion using three question prompts:

o What is going well?

o What needs to be improved?

o Do we need to change or stop doing anything?

Closing

Presenters gave closing remarks, answered any questions, and handed out meeting evaluations

for attendees to complete. (The evaluations were also compiled into a master report that is

available for review.)

WHAT YOU WILL FIND IN THESE NOTES

Each presenter compiled notes from the two Voice Sessions they hosted. This document compiles all of

the notes from every Voice Session. The notes are organized by session. There is a title page that

separates the notes by session and indicates the date, location, and attendance of the sessions. Each

section has the notes from both the teacher/staff meeting and the parent/community member meeting.

The Communications Department provided a template to all presenters to standardize the note taking

from these meetings and ensure consistency in the content that presenters reported. There is some

variation in the note taking depending on the presenter’s style. If additional context is needed on any of

the notes, the presenters of those sessions can be contacted directly for those details.

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ADVANCED ACADEMICS (OCT. 10)

Meeting Date: October 10

Meeting Location: Carter-Lawrence Elementary School

Teacher/Staff Session Attendance: 9

Parent/Community Session Attendance: 16

NOTE:

The Advanced Academics team hosted two rounds of Voice Sessions – one on October

10 and one on November 1. The Board of Education requested the Advanced

Academics team host the second session on November 1 because their first meetings

were on a teacher professional development day when there was no school. The notes

from the November 1 sessions can be found in the next section beginning on Page 11.

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TOPIC: Advanced Academics

SESSION: Teacher/Staff

DATE: October 10

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:

Number of Attendees: 16 ** Several late arrivals missed part of the presentation

Type of Attendees: e.g. All teachers? Support staff? Etc.

Encore teachers (3)

General education teachers (5)

Administrator (1)

Interpreter (2)

Central Office staff members (4) – Dr. Shawn Joseph & Dr. David Williams & 2 from HR

School Board member (1) – Ms. Buggs

PRESENTATION:

Encore Teacher: In Georgia my daughter did a course for dual enrollment, but they lost her

paperwork. Is that a challenge here?

o Matt: Good relationship with community colleges on transcripts, credits, etc.

o Matt: If it’s an online course, not seeing a lot of success in dual enrollment.

o Matt: Transportation is also an issue if dual enrollment is at another location.

Schunn: Connection to most positive benefit question

o Schunn: Most people want students to be excited & engaged – that is one of the most

popular things about our program

Examples given: Pre-K Literature Logic, ES Physics of Toys, MS Utopia

o Schunn: One person wanted students to be with like peers

Connected to research demonstrating the importance of this for increase in

engagement & success in education

Teacher/parent: Own child left out of Encore. Very unfair when in-school field trip only included

Encore students at Eakin in prior year. With second child, fighting with Green Hills moms whose

children at 3 can do everything – we are underserving poor areas – how do we get the word out?

Have you thought about a screening program earlier than second grade?

Schunn: We’ve done a lot of work in that area. We’ve also done some outreach.

Used to only have Pre-K services at Robertson Academy. Decided to move

services out to other parts of the city – moved to Ross. Talent development at

Casa Azafran & Davis as well as those two sites… Research shows second

grade is a good year to screen, acclimated to school & level of knowledge levels

off. We are looking at models of how people are screened.

o Teacher/parent: Those are the parents/people that aren’t going to know to look for the

program.

o Teacher/parent: I love that all children are going to be screened (second grade screener).

Schunn: Connection to we need to work on improving the identification of these high ability

students.

o PD catalog: Gifted 101 & Enrich Me

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GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Teacher Question: Can you explain the difference between gifted & academically talented?

o Schunn: Gifted students have actually gone through psychological testing – they meet the state criteria for giftedness. Academic talent, if a student makes a qualifying score on our (Encore) group testing.

Follow Up Teacher Question: Which group goes to the Encore program?

o Schunn: We (Encore) serve both.

Encore Teacher: Encouragement from above to collaborate with gen ed teachers, that they want us collaborating with the regular classroom – hasn’t always been the case – principals have been flexible on how we service the kids - have them for three hours, have them for one hour – attitude of serving these kids, don’t have as many teachers showing hesitation to borrow Encore students – from our personal perspective, relationship MNPS with community college for dual enrollment is excellent – able to solve problems with college with struggling dual enrollment student

Last few years, IB started probably 15 years ago, expanded Antioch & Cambridge – programmatic offerings continue to expand – teachers see the value, exceptional ed or advanced academics – encourage kids to consider those course offerings – really all schools regardless of classification, priority school or school that may have scores that are low, all schools still have opps for that kid to take advanced offerings

One of the teachers who couldn’t make it made a comment that virtual school wasn’t available at one of the schools – ceased the opportunity? – teacher extremely concerned (concern addressed by David & Matt)

Another thing going well is the opportunity that this represents but there is still a lot to be worked out with the logistics and things are going well with the fact that they have those AP courses – so there’s a lot of opportunity there

What could be improved? Teacher: Should additional resources be provided for us? Beyond Encore & differentiation?

Teacher: We specifically talked about RTI enrichment & there’s not enough time in the day to meet the need of those students. The population that we serve here, we don’t have that many on that level. We’re so focused on the majority needs (low performing) that we’re not focused on advanced students.

Teacher: Grading policy across the district – minimum of a 50 – retake opportunity – should there be separate grading processes for AP vs. non-AP classes? – making sure that it’s clearly understood what the pathways & designations are, everyone is familiar with Meigs/Hume Fogg trajectory, but why do certain schools have IB/Cambridge/AVID? – teacher training & communication

Newly elected board member sharing her experience at Neely’s Bend – when you have that one AP calculus or one AP physics, how can they take an elective & not feel so constrained by the master schedules – some of those kids want all APs, but don’t have that option because of scheduling, APs are only offered during a few slots not throughout the day at some schools

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Training for teachers & a lot of it is just knowing about it & being able to follow up on that training, have another session of it – it could be better improved if we could find a way to serve the students strengths, we really struggle with this at the elementary level (vs. AP at high school) because trying not to interrupt lunch/recess/etc. – identification, we have schools & we know these kids are there & we haven’t found them yet – frustrating & disheartening to know that you’re missing identifying advanced kids

With the education of the teachers, trying to figure out what gifted is & what is academically talented & what is the difference – how to identify, characteristics, recommendations for programming… Something I’d like to strengthen

The screenings – making sure parents/teachers know different ways to identify them as being gifted or academically talented

Encore teacher: When we are trying to get our list for testing in Encore, in some of my schools there was not very thorough communication between principal & counselor & teacher staff, lists provided by schools not fully inclusive of all teacher recommendations, principals not communicating effectively with teachers to know when it’s happening at all

Is there anything we need to change or stop doing?

Possibly have more not only grade skipping or early admits but figure out the flexibility to let a child grade skip by subject – always run into the problem of what to do with acceleration but that flexibility that they can go ahead in just math if not ready to go ahead in all subjects

The one concern that we talked about was the time/duration – with Encore they come to the building one day a week and it’s a program offered 1-3 hours and that was not sufficient

Making sure that the pathways for particular programs are clearly articulated & communicated – really clear literature that the schools could have – programs available within each cluster of all of the advanced academics options

One other thing that we talked about at the end – difficult for teachers to get together in different schools – periodically allow for IB or AP teachers to get together & talk between schools to pose as resources/contacts for each other

OTHER REMARKS:

None.

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT POLLING RESPONSES:

What do you see as the most positive benefit of students participating in advanced

academic programs?

o Interaction with like-minded peers: 2

o Being excited, engaged, and challenged about learning: 5

o Preparing for college & university experiences: 1

o Programs can be tailored to meet the individual academic & social needs of students: 3

o Teachers are clearly observing the excitement & engagement of students when they

participate in the advanced academic opportunities available.

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How well do you know about the advanced academic opportunities that are available for

your students in your school/cluster (AP, IB, Cambridge, AVID, Encore, dual enrollment)?

o Extremely well: 3

o Very good: 2

o Somewhat: 5

o Not much at all: 0

o It was surprising to know that half of the respondents are only somewhat familiar with the

pathways. Our department will need to brainstorm outreach methods to further detail

these pathways. We are currently working on programmatic one-sheets which will

definitely be a start at filling this need.

As a district, how well do you think we meet the needs of advanced students?

o Extremely well: 0

o Very good: 5

o Okay: 5

o Poorly: 0

o It was surprising to see all teachers respond in the middle – no teacher felt polarized in

either direction.

In which area do you think Advanced Academics/Gifted & Talented could most improve?

o Testing & identification of gifted/talented/advanced students: 4

o Communication about programs & service options: 1

o Quality of the program: 0

o Expanding advanced academic opportunities (such as more student interaction with

advanced academic specialists): 5

o It was exciting to see that half of the respondents want to expand advanced academic

opportunities! The Encore Office is working on testing & identification of advanced

students, so this is an area in which we are aware of needed continued refinement.

Which of the following services would MOST help to meet the needs of advanced students

(choose one)?

o Advanced content courses in 5-8 (such as advanced ELA & accelerated math): 2

o More training for classroom teachers for advanced differentiation strategies (such as

better strategies for daily enrichment): 4

o Full-time gifted specialist in every school building: 1

o Increasing AP/IB/Cambridge program options: 1

o Teachers are clearly excited about more training opportunities. We hear this often & the

Encore Office receives many requests for training, but registration for offered PD is low.

How can we best meet this training need for teachers for advanced differentiation

strategies? We were surprised that teachers did not desire a full-time gifted specialist in

each building to support them in a coaching relationship.

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SESSION: Parent/Community Members

DATE: October 10

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:

Number of Attendees: 17

Type of Attendees: e.g. All parents? Community members? Grandparents? Any EL parents?

Central Office staff (4) – Dr. Monique Felder & Dr. Sito Narcisse & 2 from HR

School Board Member (1) – Mary Pierce pop in, left before presentation

Translators (3)

Administrators (2)

Parents (7)

PRESENTATION:

Schunn: On the most positive benefit question – a lot gathered around engaging & feel

challenged about learning, that is the heart of our program – connection to thematic units & core

with like-minded peers research

Connection to how well we are doing & how we know about our options

o Matt: discussed goal of one gifted specialist in every building

Connection between Working Together: Teachers slide & most services with teacher training

cluster

o Gifted 101 & Enrich Me

“with access comes success”

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? We talked about options at all different levels – elementary, middle, high – different types of programs is something that was brought up

Different things at different levels – RTI enrichment component – added to student experience

Expansion of programs is going well, district trying to make sure that every school has the opportunity for choice

Excited about universal screener for second grade

Interpreters should have notes on options available, especially IB, in order to share and increase access with families

More advertising for the programs, we work for the school system, we knew about 3-4 of the opportunities discussed, but not all of them

What could be improved? We thought about the EL students when they enter the district, they have a test to test their English proficiency – can we do something like that? Student in private school moved to MNPS, parent transitioning back to private school. Can we test for advanced/talent for new students as another alternative to capture students, meet their needs?

That is really important. To piggyback as a parent, I did that. We did that, pulled students out of private school to MNPS, then

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moved to another county to keep students challenged. One of the things as a MNPS teacher (and parent) that the programs need to be communicated at the elementary school level. Parents made aware of these programs to know all of the options & programs available. Also with Pre-K, increase parent communication & testing process – not a big awareness with Pre-K teachers in MNPS, criterion to identify gifted & talented students at that age.

Access – personal experience came to the district asking about honors classes in 7th grade, didn’t have any more space, 30+ children in one class & 12 kids on a waiting list, didn’t have school scheduling capacity to have 2 classes, so just making sure there is actual access across the board. Consistency, some honors classes are very rigorous & others are just the same as typical classes.

My concern was I’m very happy about the universal screening but what methods are going to be used to test these students? We know historically that minorities are not valid test takers. Tests in the past in MNPS are culturally biased. If we are putting the efforts forward to screen, are we capturing all of the testing that we use? Also use from the teacher side, providing supports, if you look at all of the schools in MNPS, so if we could just through mandatory PD or development, the principals know who wants to advance through principal knowledge of who wants to develop, having Encore rep/subject matter expert in every school so no one falls through the cracks.

The other thing about the universal screener, it’s great it’s in second grade but…. [parent interrupted]

A universal screener in second grade might not catch if students are developing skills later. One other thing I’ve noticed is fifth grade is every repetitive, elementary pushes kids so far then fifth grade is mostly a repeat.

Especially when we know that’s right when parents leave the district, transitioning to middle school.

Is there anything we should change or stop doing?

As a fourth grade teacher (and parent), one of the things that I’ve noticed with the Encore program is it’s such a “special time” and the “smart kids” get to go – the climate – nothing that I create – try to downplay it, but I think it is something that more kids could benefit from and I think spot on about the test not being biased. When I was in graduate school, I sat in an Encore class & it would be better to have Encore teacher come from class to class and offer enrichment to everyone. One of my observations, just enrichment, why are just this little group of kids experiencing this? Why not let the whole class experience this once a week? Then the Encore kids if they need to do a little bit more… Or have the Encore teacher collaborate with the classroom teacher….

I absolutely agree with that.

Then you don’t have the stigma. The Encore kids feel privileged or special or sometimes bullied.

And you hear that from students so as we’ve done some state level student focus groups in high school. And you hear a student say “oh as an X kid” or “regular class” – if they’re using that terminology, they’re putting value judgment on peers.

They know in the elementary school classroom. The kids are

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really, they’re smart, they figure it out, no matter what we do or not do. They’re bright kids that miss by a point or two and they don’t feel valued. I had one kid who qualified this year & it’s just a joy & we want the kids to have that intrinsic motivation & joy. And the other thing that you were saying about the universal screening, if we only have 33 teachers & then 6,000 Encore students, how do we service all of these new Encore students?

OTHER REMARKS:

None.



academic programs?

o Interaction with like-minded peers: 1

o Being excited, engaged, and challenged about learning: 3

o Preparing for college & university experiences: 2

o Programs can be tailored to meet the individual academic & social needs of students: 1

o Parents (in addition to teachers) are seeing the positive impact of the opportunities for

engagement & challenge with advanced academics. Parents are also more focused on

college & university experiences than teachers.



o Extremely well: 2

o Very good: 4

o Somewhat: 1

o Not much at all: 0

o Parent knowledge is polling well – much higher than the teachers. There is still room for

improvement.


o Extremely well: 0

o Very good: 2

o Okay: 5

o Poorly: 0

o Although parents are aware of the opportunities & see a positive benefit, they still feel

their child’s needs are not being met. The next two questions provide further insight into

best next steps.


o Testing & identification of gifted/talented/advanced students: 1

o Communication about programs & service options: 1

o Quality of the program: 0

o Expanding advanced academic opportunities (such as more student interaction with

advanced academic specialists): 5

o Parents are focused on expanding opportunities. No one selected program quality as the

area for most improvement, so it seems as if parents are pleased with the quality of the

programming, but not the quantity when comparing their answer to the question above on

how we best meet the needs. Parents want more opportunities & time for advanced

academics.


(choose one)?

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o Advanced content courses in 5-8 (such as advanced ELA & accelerated math): 3

o More training for classroom teachers for advanced differentiation strategies (such as

better strategies for daily enrichment): 3

o Full-time gifted specialist in every school building: 1

o Increasing AP/IB/Cambridge program options: 0

o Parents are looking for additional course opportunities to build on the current program.

They are also interested in classroom teachers receiving additional instruction on how to

best meet the needs of their advanced children throughout the day – echoing teacher

desire for this capacity as well.

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ADVANCED ACADEMICS (NOV.1)

Meeting Date: November 1

Meeting Location: Carter-Lawrence Elementary School



NOTE:

The Advanced Academics team hosted this second round of Voice Sessions

because their first meetings on October 10 were on a teacher professional

development day when there was no school. The notes from their first sessions

can be found beginning on Page 2.

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DATE: Nov. 1

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Encore teachers (10)

Classroom teachers (1)

IB teachers (2)

Principal (1)

Cambridge teachers (1)

PRESENTATION:

Matt & Schunn: Both acknowledged most people seem to know the advanced academic offerings

based on the posters, so they skimmed over the program overview sections

Schunn: Connected most important benefit poster responses as engaging & challenging to

Encore curriculum

Schunn: Connected most needed improvement poster responses as identifying high ability

students with Working Together: Teachers slide

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well?

Universal screener for second grade is something going well

Collaboration is going well with classroom teachers & advanced academics within that building

Vertical planning days have been very helpful in the past to align content areas, want to see more ability to do that

What could be improved?

Continuum of IB throughout the cluster, that alignment from ES up to HS, common language & common ideas is beneficial, vertical alignment has been really good over the last 5 years

Well pleased with the conversation going on in MNPS to address the needs of the gifted and the need for advanced academics, that conversation has been in the forefront with the media and in conversations at meetings and in school and with teachers

Ways to retain IB teachers? Put 1-3 years in, expensive training, then teachers go off somewhere else to a non-IB school. Ways to retain advanced academic teachers overall.

Hook for parents in 4th/5th grade – new advanced math offerings, etc. – hook & a reason for parents to keep children in the district during ES/MS/HS transitions

Outside of the magnet schools, what is there? Unsure of options for families & how to best communicate what is available to keep children in the district for MS/HS if families do not get into the competitive magnet schools?

Echo retaining teachers – spend a lot of money training teachers

In HS, having at least more schools with academic pathways instead of/in addition to career pathways – significant numbers of kids who want to go to college, take college prep courses, not

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interested in career/technical pathways – if we could have more academic pathway options for these students – Hillsboro is the only one that has an academic academy

There’s sometimes too much emphasis on the number game – times we didn’t offer a class because it didn’t have enough kids to fill it – needs to be more about what’s best for the kids, encourage kids to keep excelling

Teachers are leaving because they’re not getting appropriate compensation, not retaining the teachers who are geared towards being in the profession for the long haul – recent bumps focused only on bachelor levels of salary scale – we’re not investing teachers with the teaching degree, biology degree – the level of expertise that we want from our teachers is not being rewarded – focused only on retaining new teachers

Educating administrators/leadership on the same page with the numbers game – MNPS is emphasizing equality over equity, least restrictive environment should be available for all students, advanced academics – equality language, same for all students, can make teachers feel ignored and not respected

In the absence of value, people see cost – if we value it, cost should not be a factor

Offering AP classes at every HS level or provide opportunities for students to go somewhere else – some HS have just a few advanced classes

o Matt: We see this in the MS mostly. Because only 2-3 kids qualify for high math, not offered, those kids aren’t set up for calculus for early college credit

Consider mandating that these math classes are still offered because Encore is offered if only 1-2 students qualify

Additional universal screener at the beginning of fifth grade

Encore teachers should be assigned no more than two schools – one would be nice – but then still be assigned to the Encore faculty – worried Encore teachers would end up subbing, etc. if added to school faculty


Hope for screeners throughout but not just second grade o Matt: New MAP assessment, we are excited about, the

new assessment that is being available to schools now gives students the opportunity to test above grade level, adaptive scored test, no ceiling, so a second grade could be testing into tenth grade material, clearer picture of the child’s possibility, in the past it’s only been grade level academic screeners

Teacher & family retention – we can help respect teacher’s professions by designing our schools to be more fluid – if all of our ES that feed into our MS were IB and we had a full pathway – then kids/families/teachers would speak language & teachers would feel valued because of their responsibility to buy into this pathway – whole cluster Cambridge/IB, etc. would be helpful

Offer a gifted elementary school

Offer more trainings for advanced academics in Nashville (AP, IB, Cambridge, etc.) so less travel cost for training

More opportunities for teachers across schools to come together o That is one of the great things about Encore, can

collaborate

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o Encore teacher wants to collaborate with IB teachers, etc.

More opportunities to go out & see some of the training – when we bring someone in & they’re talking about IB/gifted/etc. – see the teachers interacting with the students in action – teacher field trips for observations

As a mother of a kindergartener (and also a teacher) – what options are available beyond ES? If you don’t get into specialty or magnet school, your choices are limited – don’t fully understand what all of the options are – feels stressed if son doesn’t get into one of the “good” programs, my child is doomed

o Concerns addressed by Matt

OTHER REMARKS:

From AP teacher e-mail who could not attend the session: “Block scheduling should die. Hume-

Fogg and MLK have an adjusted block that lets teachers see kids 4 days every week. M,Th, & F

are 50 minute periods. T & W are 90 minute blocks, so there's time to do labs, etc. Every

teacher sees every kid 4 days a week. I wrote a bunch more and just deleted it. If I could have

one point of emphasis, that's it. Put all those self-inflated principals back into classrooms so we

can see kids 4 days a week.”

Middle school IB teacher: (1) The Encore pull-out design is disruptive to middle school classes

because there are so many Encore students, would rather see a push-in model; (2) The students

have too much make-up work when they miss class for Encore (school not currently following

Encore Make-Up Work Policy due to amount of work missed); and, (3) Would prefer that Encore

teacher was on-board with IB curriculum/theme to integrate IB into the Encore curriculum.

Additional remarks from a teacher via e-mail:

Why aren’t ENCORE teachers who work in IB schools required to “buy in?” Can we do a mass training for them? Can they at the very least use IB rubrics? It confuses families when we have outliers.

Can we create a common list of “what you might see in an IB school that would be different from a traditional school in MNPS” for the lead principals? I know our district lead principal is Jon Hubble, and he’s super supportive of IB from what I’ve seen, but he’s also over WEMS and Bellevue. One common message to him could help boost his IB knowledge and therefore support.

Is anyone other than David Williams officially trained in IB at the district central office level? Might this be a good investment? Or, invite them to visit our schools and talk with coordinators to see what we’re doing in person?

Ideally, at district-wide coaches’/content update meetings, IB schools would be grouped together, and there would be a.) differentiated messages, and b.) time for us to collaborate. We’re spending a lot of time away from our buildings having to filter and adapt to district messages. We could do a better job if we worked collaboratively instead of as islands.

How is central office celebrating schools and programs that are growing and implementing positive change?

There are district lead coaches for elementary, middle, and high schools in many content areas. Why doesn’t Emily Munn attend those meetings and collaborate with that team? It seems like a very large missed opportunity for her to get IB schools what they need.

Educating parents is a huge lever of change that we’re employing at our school. We’ve taught parents to look for and ask for certain things (like assessment criteria, concepts, etc.). Can we design a big parent night for MYP schools to help parents understand the hallmarks of IB? Like, help them understand how IB asks us to assess students with specific criteria, teach them the Approaches to Learning, etc. Essentially, break out sessions for an IB boot camp.

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I would love for other IB folks to be able to visit our school and help us score our 8th grade projects. I’d love to go to other schools & help them, too. With coordinators having varying levels of release time and so many other things piled upon us, I wonder how we could become more singularly focused on excellence, rather than just compliance with so many initiatives. How can coordinators get the release time they need?

What IB-specific criteria is considered in staffing the leadership of each school? We’ve seen first hand that administration buy-in makes a huge difference in the quality of the IB program.

As a member of the PBL steering committee, I see opportunities for us to streamline the scoring rubric with IB’s project rubrics.

Highlight our DP/CP successes and our MYP projects and PYP exhibitions in newsletters. I don’t think central office administration understands the creative service learning that’s happening in these programs. Our kids are accomplishing awesome feats!

How can HR help us attract IB-minded and/or IB trained teachers?

How can HR help us recover training expenses for employees who leave before their required 3 year tenure after training?

Can we have IB walk throughs that pair coordinators and central office administrators to visit our colleagues and learn from one another while we decipher and point out IB-ish culture to central office administration? Our coordinators are knowledgeable folks, and I think showcasing our schools and allowing central office to have that personalized tour could help IB become more real to them, rather than an expensive budget item.

We need funding committees to understand the staffing demands on IB schools: Language Acquisition, Design, and the Arts are not superfluous — they’re an integral part of our programs, and forcing principals to make no-win decisions deflates our programs. Just looking at numbers of bodies in each classroom each period doesn’t give the whole picture. IB schools don’t fit into a formula.

Require administrators in schools to attend HOS training WITH their coordinator. That collaborative time can be instrumental in sparking life into a program.

If TEAM rubrics are going to be used for the foreseeable future, highlight the overlaps with each of the IB programs (crosswalks?). This helps administrators have growth-oriented conversations with teachers, coordinators, and one another that are anchored in district accountability systems.

Could our monthly/quarterly meetings be held at schools, instead of Martin? This would allow us to see other schools in action and learn from one another, as well as provide support for growth.



academic programs?

o Teachers are clearly seeing the impact of advanced academics exciting, engaging, &

challenging students

o Surprised to see no teacher valued the programs for their ability to be tailored to

individual student need because we expected classroom teachers to appreciate this

focus



o Teachers in attendance were extremely familiar with the advanced academic pathways

which was very beneficial to the discussion


o The majority of teachers feel the district is doing very good to okay at meeting the needs

of these students. It was good to see that no teacher feels we are doing poorly, yet only

one teacher felt things were going extremely well.


o Teachers were almost evenly split on these ideas. Many want to see testing/identification

improved, but others think communication needs to improve – it must be communication

Page | 16

to families, because they said they were themselves very well educated on the

opportunities in another question.


(choose one)?

o Teachers felt most strongly towards desiring a full-time gifted specialist in every building.

This was echoed during the notes from the discussion above. Teachers were clear that if

gifted specialists were in every building, it would still be desirable for them to meet as

their own faculty weekly and not be “on the school’s roster.”

Page | 17


SESSION: Parents/Community Members

DATE: Nov. 1

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



2 parents

1 MNPS principal

1 interpreter – left after 15 minutes, not needed

1 MNPS employee

PRESENTATION:

Note: Entire parent discussion occurred during the presentation, three

guiding discussion questions were addressed, but all in the small group

format. Full parent discussion annotated below.

If I look at my kids in MS, the scale is wide, some students performing very low to middle to very

high, but the rigor is not there & that’s a concern – McGavock cluster at MS, the Cambridge

school is Donelson

Bellevue is IB, but Hillwood isn’t IB, you would have to go to Hillsborough

The opportunity is there, but it’s not fair – luck of the draw if you get to go to Hume-Fogg –

nothing about that is ok – I see the need to figure out quickly how do you start making some

changes at the school level, but how do you do that? When I listed to my kids talk in their classes,

“yeah all the bad kids… etc.” you don’t want to hear that but it’s true – handful of kids are

interfering with the learning process

I’ve been whining and complaining for six years – my second youngest at Bellevue now & other

two are in magnet – a group of moms and I about two years ago when Bellevue had three

principals in one year, etc. – it’s about dropping the pride & trying to learn from what works – no

reason that an advanced/proficient child at Harpeth Valley, that academic opportunities are

decided by a lottery – so this is what we’ve come up with – we’re using very magnet-y language –

magnet satellites at the other schools (aka “school within a school”) – started Encore parents

group at Bellevue – there are people that miss Encore by one point, it’s about academically

ambitious kids that are willing to work – we get together every Tuesday morning at City Limits and

look at what other schools are doing (Meigs, etc.) – the waitlists tell you what people want –

we’ve run out of steam a little bit – I want to get a group of just academically ambitious families to

meet at Bellevue library and have Amy Froggue and Mr. Pittman and an Encore representative –

Bellevue knows how to hire good teachers & nothing wrong, but not connecting the dots – answer

is not to break apart what’s working but the dots haven’t been connected – different schools, silly

to say we want to do exactly what Meigs is doing, but added drama club based on want, trying to

start a Latin club, reaching out to education schools, with no budget to get things paid for –

Hillwood means Latin if they’re doing all this healthcare stuff – magnet satellites

We all need to connect – MLK and HF and Meigs are all awesome – I sent my oldest to private

school, my child is at MLK and is on fire intellectually, Model UN – we have models that are

Page | 18

working if we would just get over our resentment and share ideas – extracurricular, packaging,

the traffic is impossible with magnets

The curriculums are great in the magnets – why isn’t it acceptable that you can’t get that in your

community? It’s not acceptable – grew up in a very small town, we got a quality education

because everybody went to the same school – why can’t our kids have access to this kind of

curriculum? This is old school, we don’t have to come up with something new – hope that we’re

lucky enough to drive downtown through hellacious traffic – parts of the county that can’t get to

these schools

Part of that is marketing, that’s where we’re coming at it – yes, it shows commitment that you

want to drive to those schools but you shouldn’t have to do that

My oldest graduated and I went to Brentwood HS graduation & MLK graduation & MBA & CPA

graduation & after going through all the financial part of the getting him through and looking at the

graduates and where they were going – more impressed with magnets than the private – even

close to middle class, college not as available as you think it is – wish we could just, every school

is different and principals need autonomy, even if you did PD with a great English teacher at

these magnets that would come teach at other schools, swapping and more planning/PD

together, just more stuff like that and selling it – the waitlist shows what people want and no one

is listening to us – I think there is stuff to be learned from the charter thing too

I want to make sure that we capture that bullet on talent development – there are other kids,

those kids have to be in school some place, you can’t structure everything around them – every

kids should be met with an appropriate level of rigor so it’s pushing them 1-2 grade levels – I care

about all kids, not just my kid, I don’t want to discount that – when I’m looking schools for my kids,

I’m looking at test scores but I understand that this is a pooled score and my kids are always

going to be on the high end to balance out the pool – important that we grow over all and address

the needs of all the kids – even special ed, we don’t want to discount that either – very important

that we begin to, right away start to implement at the micro level in the schools until we can catch

up at this district wide… otherwise instead of private school, I pay more for a house to get my kids

into a better school – you shouldn’t even have to think that way and it should be available in the

community

Went to the Dr. Joseph Listen & Learn at Hillsboro – too big, couldn’t get my voice heard

It needs to be heard, I know it’s everywhere, if we can implement something in the school right

now, there’s opportunity, who has the authority to start making some decisions down there?

At first asking for homogenous classes, then there has to be real differentiation

That is unacceptable, it’s old school – go tutor your friend if you’re done – if someone was

advanced and finished in two seconds, they didn’t get to go do something, they had the next thing

– those are basic, there are so many little old school things, it shouldn’t be happening – that may

be a matter of less the structure of advanced academics and just the educators in the classrooms

– don’t just meet the standards, it should just happen, give the kids these challenges, have

teachers show measures and outcomes of pushing these students

If you’ll listen to the Malcolm Gladwell podcast, private school in Beverly Hills, there are so many

opportunities and colleges for kids that don’t have any money, all kids lost in the middle, my big

thing is I want every 8th grader at Bellevue to take the PSAT and track through MS – find money

for summer programs, getting grants, etc. – two years of three national merit scholars back to

back – people look, that shallowly, people look easily as that when deciding to leave the county –

Williamson does have these things

I think that it takes like identifying the smart/advanced kids and the ones that do reasonably well

on the PSAT – Encore is great but it misses people – if they were like ok we’ve got a plan to

follow these kids all the way through we send them to MIT for summer programming – I think that

would bring everything up – sat in the room at pathway talks, bunch of magnet and zoned parents

– families want to stay in MNPS, but the people that could afford the private school is draining –

big opportunity for MNPS if what seems obvious, what people want

Page | 19

And maybe you don’t have the details or you’re not able to share, in today’s world, so if this has

been the fire of the parents and it’s been expressed over and over, then why no activity, why no

movement? Who do we talk to about that? You can sit us in a room with no teachers and we’ll

talk to the administrators.

o Schunn: We know parents want more magnets. We’ve shared this with administrators.

There is a fear if we group all high achieving kids in one area…

As long as the challenging rigorous curriculum is available in a cluster & a school & I look at a

pooled average number and my kid has access then I’m less concerned, but is that there… I

would prefer to have that & I don’t want to be the parent that says my kid can only be at a magnet

– I believe that all students have to be met with the right educations – you pull all the smart kids

out and people will immediately say discrimination and other schools won’t get support – the

socioeconomic lines are different – I’m not saying just create more magnets, I’m saying in the

community we need to have more access to challenging curriculum in all schools

o Schunn: Connecting to equity in Encore

o Matt: What can we do to leverage what’s working well at magnets, etc. to all other

schools?

Does MNPS have a Six Sigma? Organizational effectiveness? Tease out what we see in the

business world, another opportunity to reach out to the universities & get people to come in

It took everything in me when biting my tongue – seventh graders over at McGavock HS taking

about academies – don’t want to take away from what schools have built, but don’t want my son

to be there

Back with my oldest when we decided not to do Hillwood – last year of IB, six IB students, went in

& talked to them – teacher then said they were doing away with it due to money – sat down with

guidance counselor about new academies – what if I just want a liberal arts education for my kid?

You don’t get to decide that for me – AP track now and people I know are happy – but I just think

if there’s six people, there is so much benefit to having really highly achieving kids on the front

page of the paper – MNPS does a terrible job of publishing the successes of students – schools

are only going to be respected as much as their highest students are performing

The education, expectations, and rigor were all there for people to see

I told my kids that we’re going to have to start doing a little more challenging work at home,

maybe find a program so you don’t have to tolerate me, but that’s not what you should have to

say to your kids – needing more advanced academics

Kids lucky to have you as an advocate, many families are working two jobs, etc. – when 100 days

over, hopefully there will be information on this incorporated into their decisions

Overtime MLK, HF, & Meigs are lost tribes of the Amazon – the district leaves you alone and the

schools just grow on their own – people buy into autonomy, lesson of the charters

When good things are happening certainly

With supervision

Certainly we want to be left alone if we’re doing well, but it’s only – there are other educators out

there who are better than we are – we can all learn from each other – often because we have a

different clientele, we are perhaps not considered as a true colleague, more of a cousin – district

lacks understanding on how magnets and non-magnets can collaborate

I’m glad to hear it, but a lot of the parents get a little bit arrogant about it – magnet schools want

own PAC cluster meetings – our days are different – whatever discussion may benefit a larger

group is now pulled away – the parents get really cocky about it

Such a toxic environment, incredibly toxic (with parents)

MNPS needs family counseling, all schools treated differently – high income and magnet families

have attitude & don’t buy into the system – made a decision to let my kid transition from magnet

back to Bellevue and people would stop me in the grocery store judging me – I can’t afford private

school – conventional wisdom & pressure is super toxic – you mentally prepare yourself – easier

to talk about politics than school stuff as a parent, especially in fourth grade

Page | 20

The soccer field discussion around what’s going to happen next year with middle school…

Very toxic environment

o Matt: It’s a community perception that I’ve never seen before. Even in Memphis, similar

school set up

Nerve-wrecking as a parent – buying into private school is buying peace of mind

Are the principals more collegial with each other or competitive?

o Principal: We are kind, compassionate, caring. I can speak to the HS. I am closer to

some than others. I feel like that we are willing to help one another. I do think that I’ve felt

that be better more recently, maybe in the last year or two – tighten up a little bit

o Matt: And there’s been stability at the HS level with principals, not much turnover

o Principal: We work together, our next step, maybe what’s coming on, tomorrow I have an

ELP meeting and so my supervisor is bringing in her network of principals and we come

together to meet all day and we meet at one school in the morning and examine best

practice there while embedding our normal business in that meeting and then we leave

and go to another school in the afternoon – this is the first time we’ve done that outside of

the Martin Center – our last meeting was at Hillsboro & the actual Virtual School building

– I saw some amazing things going on at Hillsboro & new practices & some students

came and spoke to us – we listened to them & their perspective, same thing learned with

Virtual School – tomorrow East Lit & Stratford – hoping that this new way of meeting with

my colleagues at their schools and I was shocked and amazed if we have meetings off

site, normally is not a magnet school, but they have a slotted time in the spring where my

magnet school will be visited – celebrating that inclusion of us

I think a well-advertised collaboration between the zoned middle schools and the academic

magnets from 5th – 8th where you make a big show of we’re doing the same curriculum, same

projects, etc. because I remember that made an impression – one year Encore kid came in &

talked about PBL—if we could replicate that kind of – more motivation grouping than ability

grouping – kind of what I’ve heard about Cambridge – if your parent signs on that you will work

hard, but there’s an out if a child acts out/has a lot going on, then they can go to a standard class

– copying that rigor and curriculum in zoned schools for a few years – I think that would sell, I

know it’s gimecky

Market it for a few years, but then make that opportunity permanently available

Get the Tennesseean to discuss magnet & zoned schools shared in-service, etc. – that’s what we

want and it’s not that hard – we don’t need a new tennis court or extravagant stuff

Have the educational opportunity available in the community schools – that’s all I’m looking for –

give our kids in their communities opportunities to excel and be competitive with any kid coming

out of a magnet or private school

As a former Bellevue MS principal, I have them now at the magnet HS & there was another

handful who were in those same classes – all students in the same class together at one point in

MS – I can’t tell you what happened when those kids split up? What is happening to the 10 at

HF? What is happening to the other 10? Are they doing just as well at their ACT/AP/EOC exams

at the community schools? If not, what is the gap & what is/isn’t happening at the other place? I

wonder… Students are coming from the same place. If they had the same potential are we

pushing one group further or are we not & we just don’t know because we’re not marketing well…

Community group is interested in tracking this as well

We may not even see the difference that we expect, but it would be worth looking at… We lose

the greatness that is happening to the children with exceptional potential

HF & MLK to survey parents to find out where their child went/siblings are, how many kids that

would’ve otherwise gone private end up staying in the system if they won the lottery – but if you

look at that they way you get the city to be more generous with money is if more people us the

service – but if the magnet is drawing a disproportionate number of people, then this could

Page | 21

indicate that magnets might warrant more support (monetary & otherwise) – the more people in

Nashville that have students enrolled in MNPS then the more voice will impact funding, etc.

The voice is out there – collect everyone – we’re all on the same page

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? See responses embedded in discussion above

What could be improved? See responses embedded in discussion above


See responses embedded in discussion above

OTHER REMARKS:

No additional remarks



academic programs?

o Families were very split – desiring engagement, higher education, & interaction with like-

minded peers

o Exciting to see families value the program for different reasons to best meet their child’s

needs



o Families felt very good to extremely well about their knowledge of the pathways available.

Teachers in the previous session felt communication needed to be increased to families,

so it is interesting to see that families themselves feel confident.


o Families only felt okay on this question. They rated this question lower than teachers. It

would be intriguing to know more about what the district is or is not doing that could

better meet the needs of these students? Several ideas were discussed in the notes

above.


o Families want to see expanded advanced academic opportunities. Parents above

expressed frustration with the lack of magnet schools and/or advanced coursework

available within some clusters. Traffic was mentioned continuously as one of the biggest

barriers to attending a magnet – growing traffic is preventing families in outer clusters to

bring their children into the core to attend Hume-Fogg, Meigs, & MLK.


(choose one)?

o Families are very content focused. They want to see an increase in advanced content

course availability within the schools, in addition to increase AP/IB/Cambridge options. It

should be noted that the parent discussion was focused mostly on middle and high

school. We wonder if elementary school families would have different responses.

Page | 22

HIGH SCHOOL


Meeting Location: East Nashville Magnet High School

Presenter: Aimee Wyatt



Page | 23

TOPIC: High School


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



6 – East Nashville Magnet School Teachers (one was a School Counselor) 1 – Academy of Old Cockrill 3 – Comprehensive High School Teachers 1 – Principal (Cane Ridge) Central Office Staff: Aimee Wyatt, Executive Officer (Presenter) Kathleen Dawson, ELP Dennis Queen, Executive Officer of Charter Schools Donna Gilley, Directors of the Academies of Nashville

PRESENTATION:

No remarks were made during the presentation.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? East Nashville Magnet School ACT scores have gone up from 17 to 18.2 over the past year. ACT prep is going well.

East Nashville Magnet School has expanded their AP course offerings, and they have increased their scores.

At McGavock High School, dual enrollment accreditations have increased.

At Overton, there is a new partnership with TPAC. Overton also added a new academy this year, which means Metro Schools continues to look at our workforce data to re-evaluate if we’re preparing students for the workforce.

ENMS provides good access to technology for students and teachers.

There are high quality teachers in Metro Schools high schools.

High schools are preparing students for multiple post-secondary options. Students have access to great job shadowing opportunities.

Students are prepared when schools offer more ACT and Cambridge courses.

What could be improved? There should be improved access to job shadowing opportunities, not just the highest performing students.

o Aimee: Recommendations have been made to address this. We’re considering the best timeline.

Start times could be adjusted to better accommodate high school students. 7:05 a.m. is too early, and students lose the first two hours of learning because they’re not alert. A later start time would help students.

o Aimee: The Alignment Nashville team is looking at this issue and is working on recommendations for start times.

Page | 24

High schools are struggling to meet the technology needs of their students and teachers, especially large high schools like Overton. If there was a stronger push for computer literacy that would benefit students. Computer literacy is something that needs to start in middle school, and it needs to be continuous. It shouldn’t just be a semester-long class. Students don’t know basic computer functions like including an attachment to an e-mail. This is a college and career readiness issue.

Cane Ridge High School has addressed this issue by offering a computer applications course. They also integrated some components of computer literacy into their required courses. For example, English teachers would teach students how to use Word, and math teachers would teach students how to use Excel.

Until middle school makes computer application courses mandatory, high school staff would like to see a required course offering for computer applications for ninth graders, possibly part of the freshman seminar.

Attendees agreed that computer literacy skills are not as valuable unless students are taught about professionalism. Students need to understand the importance of being on time, a hand shake, looking someone in the eye, and other basic soft skills that are critical to the workplace.

o Aimee: This is an especially important topic because we are working with the mayor’s office to place 7,500 students in jobs over the summer. Our students need to demonstrate that they are ready for these opportunities, so we can continue to provide these placements for additional students next year.

Cane Ridge High School has used the college and career readiness rubric that the district provides. Every staff member’s grade book looks the same: it is 90% formative and 10% college and career readiness. This ensures that students are constantly exposed to career readiness in every class and getting a lot of feedback from teachers in this area.

Aimee: With everything on your plate, how should we support you in embedding professionalism training into your teaching and learning?

o Teachers will be receptive if they know how to incorporate these practices. It should be modeled for them. It would be most helpful if teachers could see other teachers in action.

o Could this be incorporated into some of the freshman seminars?

Donna: Yes, that is a great place, but this needs to be reinforced constantly for students that these are important skills.

Which schools do A/B, and which schools don’t? How are scheduling decisions made?

o Aimee: All zoned high schools do A/B scheduling because of high mobility rate and to allow for more planning for teachers, and to allow for students who are on the advanced track to take more courses and for students who are behind to catch up. MNPS works with non-zoned schools on a one-on-one basis to create their schedules.

Sometimes it seems like magnet and high performing schools have a schedule that’s more conducive to learning than the

Page | 25

schedule of zoned schools.

Allow students to borrow laptops so they can do homework and complete projects at home.

o Aimee: It’s possible for schools to use a check-out system with their laptops and technology, so students can have a device available for homework. Some schools already do this. Staff should check with their principal first to make sure this doesn’t exist in their school, and if not, they can reach out to Aimee to talk about implementing this system.

Are we going back to a one-on-one system? o Aimee: We’re still looking at that with the new director.


Infinite Campus. Gradespeed was an easier system to navigate and use. It is not user friendly. Part of it is the tool rights and the permissions staff members have to student profiles. A school counselor reported that she cannot access the same student data that she could with Gradespeed.

o Aimee: We were in a meeting with Dr. Joseph and we said that teachers are struggling with Infinite Campus, and we need help. If you have specific things that are inhibiting your work, e-mail it to me.

In Infinite Campus, users can’t see the total grade and grades on individual assignments at once. The gradebook is not user friendly.

At McGavock, the ACT prep is embedded in the critical thinking elective class, and it is treated as an elective by the students.

o Aimee: We always offer critical thinking as an elective because the state didn’t have an official class but we know it is important for students to develop these skills. The state passed critical thinking this year with a syllabus and curriculum. It’s being piloted in schools this year, and will be open to schools next year. We have 15 schools participating in an ACT class and the data will be analyzed, so students get very specific feedback on their scores. We know ACT prep is important, and we are looking at ways to prepare students through instruction.

In the math department at East Nashville Magnet School, they do a lot of assessments. But students struggle the most with the district benchmarks. It feels like there are “gotcha” questions. The report also doesn’t provide a breakdown of the data for individual students, so it is hard for teachers to know how to help their students grow.

o Aimee: Let’s talk after you take this next benchmark because the question types have changed.


All responses were as expected and the results are as follows. The teacher majority answers are in bold.

1. How can MNPS assist students in integrating technology in the curriculum?

* Provide Additional laptops to students in the classroom

* Provide internet access at home or locations closer to home

* Provide more courses in a blended technology environment

Page | 26

* Provide more online courses for students to work on individually

2. How can MNPS increase course offering and successful completion of college coursework and

nationally recognized professional certifications?

* Offer tutorials that prepare students for advanced course testing and professional

Certifications (tie)

* Increase communication with parents about course and test offerings (tie)

*`Provide increase training for teachers in advance coursework

* Refund test fees for students who score proficient or better on advances course certification testing

3. How can MNPS assist students in preparing for the ACT?

* Provide online support

* Provide practice testing and test analysis data to the students and parents (tie)

* Provide business and community mentors to students (tie)

* Provide high school elective courses for ACT preparation

4. How can MNPS assist student in post-secondary planning?

* Additional opportunities to meet with school counselor (tie)

* Additional training for teachers on college/career advising

* Additional opportunities to visit colleges and/or training institutions (tie)

* Add college/career planning opportunities to 8th grade

5. How can MNPS assist students in preparing for work-based, service learning, and capstone research

projects?

* Provide professionalism training for students

* Provide more opportunities for work-based learning/internships

* Provide additional training for teachers to facilitate the research process.

Page | 27

TOPIC: High School

SESSION: Parent/Community

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



2 – Middle School parents 2 – High School parents MNPS State PAC representative Parent outreach translator and former parent Representatives from the Tennessee Department of Education Central Office Staff: Aimee Wyatt, Executive Officer and Presenter Kathleen Dawson, ELP Donna Gilley, Director of the Academies of Nashville

PRESENTATION:

No remarks were made during the presentation.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? High schools overall are safe. Many parents send their kids to private schools because of safety, but MNPS schools are safe. When any incidents come up, they are addressed quickly and appropriately.

Spanish parent outreach translator has noticed a lot of change in high schools. There is more access to computers and there is an attitude shift in teachers. They are more willing to talk with students and work through problems. Her son attended Maplewood 10+ years ago, and he didn’t feel safe. Now when she works in that school, she doesn’t see the same incidents among students. Students are also proud of their school and want to spend time there. Schools are also doing more to accommodate EL students, like having Spanish books available or translating school materials into other languages so families are aware of what is happening in schools. Teachers offer more help at schools.

A representative from the Tennessee Department of Education said that in the department’s evaluation of post-secondary initiatives, MNPS high schools are providing more post-secondary opportunities than other districts.

The five characteristics of a student is a good model to work from. It sets clear expectations for students.

High schools that are using the pathways and partnering with middle and elementary schools are benefitting their students. Students are well prepared for high school and there is consistency in their school experience.

What could be improved? As we are taking a deliberate look at the budget, MNPS should

Page | 28

consider adding back clerk positions for school counselors because it has been mandated for school counselors to spend 80% of their time with students. School counselors need more admin support so they can truly spend quality time with students.

Teaching high school students how to study to prepare them for college and career. Even if students are going to college, they will still have to take tests for industry certifications and need to know how to prepare for those tests.

The Family Portal is not yet available, so families can’t yet log into to see their children’s grades. As a parent, it’s important to get that communication before progress reports and grade cards come out.

o Kathleen: The Family Portal is coming, but we’re being careful with the rollout so it is smooth transition and ensure student data isn’t improperly released. We’re working on all of the details to be strategic and mindful of all of the details so we don’t want to frustrate parents.

o Meeting attendee: MNPS should communicate that to parents. MNPS Communications staff came to PAC to introduce the new system, and we were told that it would be ready by the first day of school with no issues or problems. Parents need to know how the system isn’t available, and why the district has delayed the opening to make sure it is the best user experience.

Magnet school students may be missing out on the opportunities that students in zoned schools get in the academies program. Can something be done to expose magnet school students to academies?

o Aimee: At East Nashville Magnet School, they’ve implemented a freshman seminar to help bring that exposure to students. Hume-Fogg is doing a capstone over several years and built it into their social studies programming. They are doing specific programs in regards to CTE.

o Donna: The thing that sets Nashville apart with its academies is its business and community engagement. One thing we can work on is continue to help magnet school teachers, staff, administrators understand the benefit of their business partners and how to take full advantage of that partnership. What really makes a difference is the relevance piece, which is what the business partner can bring to the table. It may be pockets of work, but I’m hoping over the next few years that the magnet schools will embrace the business partner engagement.

o Aimee: One challenge that magnet schools face is that they don’t have a defined community because they pull students district-wide.

Hume Fogg puts a strong focus on their clubs. That may be a natural entry point for business engagement.


Many Hispanic and other non-English speaking students are treated very poorly at school. Some of them are coming to America as a teenager, and they are immediately put into high school, but no one is there to help them. They get bullied or don’t have anyone to rely on. They could be paired with a mentor student or receive special tutoring. The EL Office provides some

Page | 29

support, but they can’t be with every student. Sometimes the principal tries to support these students, but they don’t always have the resources to help students. Parents want to put their students in magnet schools because they think their student will get more help, but their student may not have the grades or the parent has difficulty accessing the application. This is happening in middle schools, too.

Schools with resources don’t have these problems. At JT Moore, things like this don’t happen.

In our materials about enrollment, school choice application, etc., our EL families need to know who they should call when they face a problem. Right now, they do not know who to contact, so they do not try to get help.

The problem is two-fold: on the business and community side, you have bilingual adults and students that we could be using in a constructive way to address these issues. There could be a mentorship with the business community.

I would like to see teachers with websites. Most teachers do not have websites, and if you want to prepare kids for tomorrow, all the professors have their own sites and kids check those sites. Teachers do not have a syllabus. That makes it easier for the parent to follow up with their child. All of that information should be on a website.

All of that information was on Gradespeed. When Infinite Campus does roll out, what will be the requirement for teachers entering grades?


All responses were as expected and the results are as follows. The parental majority answers are in bold.

1. How can MNPS assist students in post-secondary planning?

* Additional opportunities to meet with the school counselor

* Additional training for teachers on college/career advising

* Additional opportunities to visit colleges and/or training institutions

* Add college/career planning opportunities to 8th grade

2. How can MNPS assist students in preparing for the ACT?

* Provide online support

* Provide practice testing and test analysis data to the students and parents

* Provide business and community mentors to students

* Provide high school elective courses for ACT preparation

3. How can MNPS assist students in preparing for work-based, service learning, and capstone research

projects?

* Provide professionalism training for students

* Provide more opportunities for work-based learning internships

Page | 30

* Provide additional training for teachers to facilitate the research process

4. How can MNPS assist students in integrating technology in the curriculum?

* Provide additional laptops to students in the classroom

* Provide internet access at home or locations closer to home

* Provide more courses in a blended technology environment

* Provide more online courses for students to work on individually

5. How can MNPS increase course offerings and successful completion of college coursework and

national recognized professional certifications?

* Offer tutorials that prepare students for advanced course testing and professional certifications

* Increase communication with parents about course and test offerings (tie)

* Provide increased training for teachers in advanced coursework (tie)

* Refund test fees for students who score proficient or better on advanced course or certification tests

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TRANSPORTATION


Meeting Location: Glenview Elementary School

Presenters: Taffy Marsh, Tamara Fentress



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TOPIC: Transportation

SESSION: Combined – Teacher/Staff + Parent/Community

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:

Number of Attendees: 6 total – 3 in each session


Bus drivers

Parents

One parent was involved with a walk/bike study to explore other options for students to get to school

PRESENTATION:

No remarks

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well?

What could be improved? Communication between department and parents o New bus driver called parent at 6:45 for a 7:00 (approx.)

pickup of his 3/4year old. o NOTE: This is part of our exceptional education routes

which makes personalized phone calls to the parents. o Based on the information provided: It sounds like this

occurrence was due to a late route change requiring coverage in the morning.

Parent shared experience with regards to his four-year-old pre-k child.

o Parent promotes biking to school (Cyclist – Walk/Bike Nashville) as a way to improve student attention, health of community by decreasing pollution, etc.

o Shared that the buses have always driven safely around he and his child in riding their bikes to school. He shared that the cars have actually presented more of a safety concern.

Parent is interested in learning more about a sidewalk study done with MNPS approximately five years ago. Transportation will look for this information and email it to the parent.

o The enhanced coordinator role discussed earlier will be focused on providing options. We will look at how this might be incorporated into the options offered when it appears viable. We realize that many things will need to be taken into consideration.


Parent also wanted to discuss: Transportation promoting biking vs. Transportation by bus.

o How do we get more people cycling? (Walk, fit, Nashville) o Maybe changing the parent responsibility zone (PRZ) to 2

miles vs 1.25 o Encourage more people to walk and cyclist o Offers his or others professional assistance with regards

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to teaching children how to ride their bikes to school and/or walking.

Additional Concern with Route and Driver Changes o Routing changed and another new driver called o Driver said they would be there in 10 mins and were

actually 45 mins late. Driver didn’t pick up daughter until 8:15 and student missed breakfast.

o Also, one afternoon his child was late getting home, but no communication was received informing of this delay.

OTHER REMARKS:

Parent shared: What you are doing is helping so much. What may assist as technology evolves is allowing drivers to text parents. Transportation shared the laws which govern driver’s use of technology on a school bus and how it’s all intended to keep everyone safe.

Teacher shared in response to another parent: I’m glad to hear that the yellow limo came to pick your child up. We do hold the breakfast line open for students when there is a delay or situation occurring on the part of the district.

It was also shared that even when Transportation is able to provide additional information to them regarding their child’s transportation it will be in a secure environment.

Parent also wanted to discuss: o Transportation promoting biking vs. Transportation by bus. o How do we get more people cycling? (Walk, fit, Nashville) o Maybe changing the parent responsibility zone (PRZ) to 2 miles vs 1.25 o Encourage more people to walk and cyclist o Offered his or others professional assistance with regards to teaching children how to

ride their bikes to school and/or walking.


The session participant polling question responses were in line with Transportation’s

departmental mission to provide safe and on time transportation for every student every day. We

asked participants to provide their number one and number two concerns.

o The reoccurring theme in participant responses highlighted safety and timeliness as the

core areas for the department to always maintain as a focus.

o The safety component covered everything from safety at the bus stop to safety while

riding the school bus and the impact of other student’s behavior driving parent’s decisions

to allow student to ride.

o Out of the four sheets we received back, the selections were as follows:

Student safety while riding bus (bus rider behavior)

Student safety at bus stop

Timely student pick-up and/or drop off for school/events

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MIDDLE SCHOOLS


Meeting Location: Madison Middle Prep

Presenter: Antoinette Williams



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TOPIC: Middle Schools


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Teacher, principals, support staff

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? No comments.

What could be improved? No comments.


Elementary IEPs (4th grade) do not address needs at the middle school level (hours, staffing): transition meetings.

Students with IEPs need supports in science and social studies classes: mapping services.

Resources for EE services and EL services are needed at middle school level (RTI, Adaptive Skills services).

At the middle school level, most participants believe that there be advanced courses at every grade in middle school.

Most participants believe that the dress code should be the same across the district.

All participants believe the school day should NOT be extended.

Most participants believe that the ideal grades for middle school are 6-8. Discussion about fiscal impact and high school grades was included.

Most participants believe that the ideal school day for middle school is 8:00 am – 3:00 pm. Discussion about PD schedule needs, transportation, athletics, research and release time to address needs were included.

OTHER REMARKS:

No comments.

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The responses to the polling questions are as follows:

The ideal school day for middle school is:

8:00 am – 3:00 pm 15

8:55 am – 3:55 pm 2

8:30 am – 3:30 pm 1

7:30 am - 2:30 pm 1

Should there be advanced course offerings at every grade in middle school?

Yes 19

No 3

Should before and after care be available at every school?

Yes, at the expense of parents 13

4 undecided/on the fence

Yes, at the expense of MNPS 6

Not necessary none

Should middle school dress codes be the same across the district?

Yes 19

No 4

Should the school day be extended?

No 23

Yes, by 15 minutes None



The idea grades for middle schools are:

5-8 None

6-8 15

7-8 1

7-9 4

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TOPIC: Middle Schools


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



parents

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Opportunity to listen learn and speak

What could be improved? More time need for parents to voice their concerns


Academic Rigor

Student Safety

Providing parents with more information about what teachers are teaching/students are learning: example would be virtual school.

Provide more opportunities for parents to receive information about resources, school practices: marketing, newsletter, news stories.

Families are leaving the district instead of attending zoned school.

Participants selected ideal school start times as 8:00am - 3:00 pm and 8:30 am – 3:30 pm (time for extracurricular activities, homework, dinner are a consideration).

Transitions from 4th to 5th grade are helpful when 5th graders are housed away from other grade levels.

All participants believe that after/before school care should be available (most believe at the parents expense).

Academic framework is concerning for parents.

Most participants believe that ideal grades or middle schools should be 6-8.

Most participants believe that dress codes should be the same across the district.

All participants believe that advance offerings should be offered in every middle school.

Most of the participants believe that the school day should not be extended.

Most participants state that they leave MNPS schools due to safety and academic rigor.

Restorative Practices - number of schools trained, classes to teach restorative practices (morning meeting, advisory).

16. Parent Focus Group - restorative practices

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OTHER REMARKS:

Parent would like to know more about what looks different with the districts focus on literacy and ways the community can support to fill literacy gaps


Responses to polling questions are as follows:

Why do most parents decide to leave Metro Schools middle schools?

Safety 4 (2 undecided/on the fence)

Academics/Rigor 4

Extracurricular Activities None

other 2

Should before and after care be available at every school?

Yes, at the expense of parents 7 (1 undecided/on the fence)

Yes, at the expense of MNPS 4

Not necessary None

The idea school day for middle school is:

8:00 am – 3:00 pm 8

8:55 am – 3:55 pm None

8:30 am – 3:30 pm 5

7:30 am – 2:30 pm None

The idea grades for middle schools are:

5-8 None

6-8 8 (1 undecided/on the fence)

7-8 1 undecided/on the fence

7-9 1

Should middle school dress codes be the same across the district?

Yes 12

No 1

Should there be advanced course offerings at every grade in middle school?

Yes 12 (1 undecided/on the fence)

No none

Should the school day be extended?

No 10


Yes, by 25 minutes 1


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NUTRITION SERVICES


Meeting Location: Meigs Academic Magnet School

Presenters: Spencer Taylor, Braina Corke



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TOPIC: Nutrition Services


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Nutrition Services staff members (Café Managers and employees)

PRESENTATION:

Challenges with communication/notification of event

o Some stated not being aware of event until yesterday

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Online record keeping system (production records, ordering)

Employee stated our program is all about the students of MNPS

What could be improved? Number of planned clean up days could be increased

Menu options – variety in themes

Signage for teachers to understand “Offer Versus Serve”


Managers requested for either themselves or Field Managers to have authority to send employees home without pay when there are repetitive issues with employees related to behavior/insubordination

Many menus include black beans, repetitive sides

OTHER REMARKS:

Employee salary concern

o Been employed for 21 years, has topped out, concerned about new employees who start

are close to the same pay scale as this individual

o Executive Director explained how cost of living increases affects employee salaries; will

inquire about providing salary increases to employees who have maxed out the pay scale

although it is not up to Nutrition Services to make this determination

Employee disciplinary system concern

o Employees who receive multiple written warnings for insubordination, poor work

performance, high absenteeism given too many opportunities to improve before being

terminated or moved from site to site while behavior still continues

o Employee stated you must treat people with respect in order to receive respect,

communication is important between all employees

o Executive Director explained difference between progressive discipline process and

situations that are direct policy violations that warrant immediate termination

Employee salary concern based on experience

o Came from hospital food service background and feels that experience should be

considered in salary

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Employee concern with number of days off without pay/extended time off during holidays

o Assistant Director explained how employee calendar is set up based on total number of

paid work days and is not necessarily planned based on school breaks

Executive Director stated appreciation for employees who participated tonight and understands

their concerns and will follow up with all topics discussed

Menu concerns

o Costly

o Time to prepare

o Names of menu items

Employee concerned about serving times not being adhered to by teachers

o Some students are sent to the café early and some later than planned serving times

o Assistant Director stated we have an obligation to feed all students


The majority of attendees responded in the manner anticipated by Nutrition Services.

o Responses indicated that employees feel they receive adequate training and proper

resources to be successful in their positions.

o Staff members agreed they feel as though the work environment encourages a team

setting and they are treated professionally.

Concerns regarding the preparation time and student acceptability of menu options were

discussed during the meeting.

o The Executive Director explained the obligation Nutrition Services has to introduce food

items to students, some of which they may be unfamiliar with, and how it is the

responsibility of Nutrition Services staff to encourage students to try these items.

o Nutrition Services will continue to review menu pairings to determine the most efficient

use of time and available equipment.

More attendees responded in a neutral or negative manner than expected to the poll question

regarding their supervisors’ ability to address questions/concerns.

o These responses related to concerns about the employee disciplinary process and being

able to send employees home for insubordination/poor performance. It was addressed

as much as possible during the meeting.

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TOPIC: Nutrition Services


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Parent – Ross Pre-K student

PRESENTATION:

Use this space to record if any discussion items were raised during the opening presentation.

Each discussion item should get its own bullet.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Friendly staff

School garden

What could be improved? Breakfast at Ross


Limit food options to only healthier options (only cheerios vs. fruity cheerios)

REMARKS:

Cereal, yogurt, juice, grain products – generally same items rotated through

o Sugar part was the concern

o Fruity cheerios – 9 g sugar

o Waffles – high sugar grams

o Trix yogurt -13 g sugar

o Suggested items such as hard-boiled egg and whole wheat toast with honey

Industry pressure to develop products with lower levels of sodium, sugar, fat

o Executive Director stated Nutrition Services Program (nationwide) is searching for

healthy brand options such as Kashi however these brands don’t market to school

nutrition

Suggestion for centralized kitchen made by parent

o Executive Director stated we have researched constructing a test kitchen and will

continue to pursue this option

Parent would be interested in participating in anything nutrition related

o Suggested to join Alignment Nashville meetings

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The parent responded to 5 out of 6 questions.

o The majority of the responses were expected and any concerns were addressed in detail

during the discussion.

The parent’s primary concern was the menu options available to students at breakfast.

o Through discussion with the parent, it was explained the challenges Nutrition Services

faces with industry availability of desired products and how the department is actively

seeking products to add to our menu to enhance our program.

o It was also explained that some of the food items suggested by the parent have been on

breakfast menus previously and removed due to significantly low student acceptability

rates.

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PRIORITY SCHOOLS


Meeting Location: Pearl-Cohn High School

Presenter: Mo Carrasco


Parent/Community Session Attendance:11

Page | 45

TOPIC: Priority Schools


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Teachers, Principals, and Support Staff

PRESENTATION:

Discussion questions regarding the name of the office were brought into question

o Many posted their responses that the name “Priority Schools” had a negative

connotation.

o Mo heard and understood the concerns and announced that the name was being

changed (Office of L5 Innovation Schools) and the School Board supported this change.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? No comments.


Mobility of Teachers

Mobility of Students

Mobility of Principals

Mobility of Central Office Staff

We are finding that there is a mobility of all positions within MNPS. o It is the Office of L5 Innovations Schools goal to

implement structures and processes so that student achievement can occur in a reliable, consistent, and predictable manner.

Staff raised concerns about student mobility, it’s difficult to remain the consistent when students are coming and going so often.

The Culture Shift model was presented to teachers and staff o The “Boss” Teacher vs The L5 Teacher

*see PowerPoint

Four Pillars of Literacy

U’ACE it Model The importance of literacy was discussed, ties into implementing

structures and processes throughout the L5 Schools. o Understanding Meaning o Applying Meaning o Communicating Meaning o Extending Meaning

OTHER REMARKS:

What will be done about the lack of Substitute teachers in schools?


No comment.

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TOPIC: Priority Schools


There were no notes from this session.

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ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS


Meeting Location: Fall-Hamilton Enhanced Option School

Presenter: Vanessa Garcia



Page | 48

TOPIC: Elementary Schools


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:


PRESENTATION:

No remarks

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Push for social emotional learning and having a dedicated time for morning meetings

Building teacher leaders with an emphasis on their strengths and sharing them with others. I think it will help with promoting student achievement

No cost breakfast for all students

SEL

Martin Center to have a professional learning environment for PD

The array of PD opportunities at the Martin Center

Direction with professional learning communities

Principal Budgeting-principals have autonomy to purchase and hire based on their school needs. Principals have more flexibility

What could be improved? Providing housing, food clothing, and mental health services. Not every school has the same access. Family supports so children can be children

More social workers to work with students due to sharing with the cluster

Equal/More fair funding throughout the district

Too many transitions (RTI), look at the basics first-where are kids coming from and how we can be responsive so support all students

What does 5th grade expect? Should instructional leaders or teams be having conversations with feeder schools?

Lack of substitutes

Substitute application process is very cumbersome.

A higher standard needs to be set for substitute teachers.


We need to stay focused on our vision.

SBB has been a struggle for teacher coverage in small schools especially with recess and RTII.

More planning time is needed.

People need to think about how long the expectations/mandates will take within the span of the school day.

The rollout for Infinite Campus was too close to the start of school. The expectations for using it are unfair to teachers/staff. Timing and support are issues.

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Belief and ambitious goals are needed. Negativity needs to be squashed. There is a stereotype out there in the district and it needs to be dispelled.

OTHER REMARKS:

A few more ideas on potential changes:

o Make more teacher leadership roles stipend positions (new initiative trainers, Fast Bridge

Manager, PTO liaison, testing coordinator, etc.)

o Allow schools to offer summer PD for a stipend or SWAP day

o Rethink the requirements for the reading and math block to make scheduling more

flexible. Give opportunities for teachers across schools to collaborate/communicate on

common issues to share strategies/techniques (RTI scheduling, arrival/dismissal

logistics, etc.)


No comment.

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TOPIC: Elementary Schools

SESSION: Parent/Community Member

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:


PRESENTATION:

No remarks

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Emphasis on literacy and school culture. It is being heard in the schools, elementary team and in the community.

Principals and teachers know what good instruction looks like-through TEAM evaluations raising the bar. TEAM evaluation system for teachers and principals.

Culture in the school that daughter attends; students well behaved (walking in a straight line, respectful, principal-students will go to college), Music programs and performances in front of parents and students, rigorous curriculum for students SEL


Specials-grading is very objective (think she meant subjective). Daughter received an S/90 on every assignment, but there were no rubrics.

Communicating behavior concerns early with parents

Intervention-lack of challenge for tier I/enrichment students, we do a good job of the lower kids and the bubble kids, but what are we doing for the higher achieving kids.

Not enough of a knowledge base to programs to Encore to the general population. Equitable advanced programs for minority students.

Catching students early before gaps are developed; more emphasis on the early grades.

Early childhood education

Testing-too much testing pushing down on academics.

Extra effort to ensure all students are on grade level.

Do we need more of community achieves to deal with the non-academic issues?

Social emotional supports

How are we addressing the teachers who have not bought in to SEL supports?

PTA-providing opportunities like numeracy nights; providing dinner. PTA meetings being held during the school day. How are we partnering with parents? How are we communicating with parents? District parent email list????

Record each response thoroughly.


No comments.

OTHER REMARKS:

No remarks.


No comment.

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SPECIAL EDUCATION


Meeting Location: Gra-Mar Middle Prep

Presenter: Debbie McAdams

Board Member Co-Host: Tyese Hunter



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TOPIC: Special Education


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Special education teachers

Speech pathologists

Autism team teachers

Special education coaches

Homebound teachers

General Education Teacher

Board Member- Tyese Hunter

PRESENTATION:

Not applicable.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? If inclusion has increased at a school, and scores are going down, is there a correlation?

o Presenters discussed changes with the Alternative Assessment, TCAP, and accommodations. Shared that the state no longer had a modified assessment for 2% of the population. They also discussed the state department changes and aligning accommodations and the statewide drop in scores.

Gra-Mar staff reported that inclusive services are going well

What could be improved? Paraprofessionals do not get paid enough. We see a decline in the amount of applicants and an increase in the amount of individuals quitting. Teachers can’t do their jobs without them, and we are not paying them as professionals. Why are we not investing in them? They work so hard and are needed.

o Presenters explained they are trying to get pay increases for paraprofessionals and increase the amount of days that they are allowed to work. They need to be in the building when teachers are in the building. The Department of Exceptional Education has communicated this need to HR (Human Resources) and executive staff.

Can the district provide computer apps for assessments? o Presenters explained that there will be paper tests and the

various accommodations that will be available. Assistive technology consult process was also shared.

Are there any plans to have someone to sit in on the review board before students are sent to an alternative school? Teacher reports that she works in an alternative school and she sees students coming in with IEPs. Teacher states that for some of these students this is not an appropriate setting. The teacher wanted to know if

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anyone at the school level is reviewing the IEPs prior to this occurring. Presenters explained that they are reviewed during the manifestation.

A teacher reported that special education coaches sit in manifestation meetings.

A general education teacher asked when a child has a behavioral issue, when is enough? How does it work when it impacts other children? Schools should go through the LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) process. Federal law clearly states that IEP team must consider Least Restrictive Environments. School must exhaust all interventions and supports.

Special Ed teacher stated the Multi-State Alternate Assessment (MSAA) is inappropriate for the students who are highly involved and makes the work that we have put in seem meaningless.

o Presenters explained the state mandates and the expectation to raise standards, and they discussed federal mandates.

Can MNPS be an advocate to change the actual MSAA? o Yes, presenters shared information about other states who

use a MASA alternative assessment and students who cannot access the assessment. Presenters explained that information had been shared with state officials, and MNPS is watching the pilots in other states and collaborating with state officials.

MNPS does not have enough curriculum resources for SWD’s. Presenters explained to teachers that special ed teachers provide the most intensive intervention. Intervention materials are available and so is training so that special education teachers are providing the most intensive intervention.

o Presenters shared resources that are available, such as specific curriculums, interventions, and professional development opportunities.

A general education teacher asked if the interventions are available for general education teachers.

o Presenters explained that department of Exceptional Education provides intervention for special education teachers. General Education teachers are the content experts.

Requested that exceptional education teachers receive a raise. It is important for Dr. Joseph to understand their work load.

Having more than 6-8 students in the most intensive group is not best practice. A teacher reported she is only allowed to use intervention time to provide special education services. Presenter explained that service hours are not dictated by the master schedule. IEP teams determine service hours. This school only has one intervention time schedule, and this teacher does not have enough time to teach kids to read. She was told that it is illegal to work with kids outside of intervention time.

o Presenters explained the responsibility and legal requirements of following the IEP and scheduling to ensure students receive all components of their IEPs.

The master schedule is determining service times, even when we may have 12 kids in one group and then two in the next. It does not work well and is not the best way to support students.

o Presenters discussed the mapping process and staggered

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scheduled of intervention. Services are determined by IEP.


The TEAM rubric is evaluating a traditional classroom teacher role. o Presenters shared that the state has a task force and a

special education interventionist rubric/document is being developed. Until that is rolled out there is a guidance document on how to use the TEAM rubric to evaluate a special education teacher.

Is there communication happening at the district level about English Language Learners and Exceptional Education students? At the school level, those services are so divided.

o Presenters shared how they collaborate with the EL Office and correspondence has been provided through the weekly email that is sent out to all teachers.

Can teachers receive updates about state- and district-level changes, such as state or district mandates?

o Presenters shared how this kind of information is distributed and said they will continue to think of ways to improve communication.

Can teachers have professional development on teacher in-service days that apply to special education instead of participating in school level PD that may not apply to these teachers?

o Presenters shared various ways this could be accomplished, such as summer sessions, meetings during the first days of school, among others.

OTHER REMARKS:

Not applicable.


If additional professional development was provided to support you in meeting the needs of the

struggling learners and students with disabilities which opportunities would best meet your

needs?

o Answers were equally distributed.

o Aligned with what we are rolling out to teachers

Teachers reported that the majority of the progress monitoring information is sent to parents via

email and phone calls in addition to the 9 week progress reports. This was surprising to us

because this is definitely an area of growth for our teachers so I was surprised they were

communicating to parents via email and phone calls. We were pleased to see that the

communication is NOT only happening at IEP meetings.

Teachers reported through the poll that they prefer direct site visit training and professional

learning communicates. Smaller interest in online modules.

Teachers reported in order to better support making sure all students with disabilities have

access to quality instruction with the general education teacher we need to provide additional

trainings on data based decision making and how to improve accommodations for students. We

were glad to see that data based decision making is seen as a priority for teachers.

When polling about behavior supports the majority of teachers reported that multi-tiered levels of

support (RTI-B) are occurring in schools. This did surprise us because we are not seeing this in

practice but it could be that the schools that were represented are utilizing RTI-B. They also

reported that SEL practices are occurring and we are seeing that in many of our schools.

Nothing major came as a surprise to the polling questions. The teachers really wanted other

topics addressed during their time with us.

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TOPIC: Special Education

SESSION: Parent/Community

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Parents

Students

1 EL family

Advocates- Kids Right Program from Juvenile Court

PRESENTATION:

Not applicable.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Parents acknowledged work happening at Shayne, especially Morgan Kettler and Heather Grinage who did a great evaluation for sensory processing that alleviated behaviors.

Parents also recognized Mrs. Wilson, the social worker for Overton cluster, who has gone over and above to spend time students with special needs.

Thanked for the help for converting the 504 to the IEP for a child that needs it.

We have a lot do and appreciate the collaboration. Parents want to know how they can better partner with the school to share information because sometimes the teachers do not know and it, and it is too much to put in an IEP.

o Recommended to call a meeting outside of the IEP process to talk about what is working and how to collaborate.

o Also suggested parents make a book that describes their child’s interests (photos, interests, videos) so school staff can get to know their child better.

Another parent shared that she created a profile that she shares with information about her child.

Another parent said she was pleased to see the effort to reach out to families of students with disabilities. Sees more meetings occurring.

The autism group is awesome and dedicated to helping children.

Thanked Jackie Clark as a wonderful special education coach. Recognized how her team cares and she wishes more families had the same experiences she has had.

Board Member Tyese Hunter shared her personal experience with her daughter and how she volunteers in the building.

What could be improved? Sometimes we need to communicate and protect the health information of students. We need a secure (HIPPA) protected network to share that information.

Socialization and the opportunity for SWD’s to interact with typical

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peers. Elementary school worked but when we went to middle school things stopped. There does not seem to be a system in place to help with the transition to different tiers. The interventions do not seem to be the same tier-to-tier.

Middle school parent who is transitioning into high school was told that his zone school does not have the track that he needs. Is this legal? He is concerned that he does not get to stay with his friends.

o Presenters clarified that his student has the choice to attend his school of zone and cluster sites were dissolved a long time ago. Will follow up after this.

The communication between the Exceptional Education teacher and general education teacher is off. I was ready to pull my child out of MNPS and homeschool. The parent had to always tell the Exceptional Education that she was there to help. They had to hold their IEP meeting when the general education teacher could come and that was not necessarily best for her family. Her husband has never been able to attend an IEP meeting. I do not like that when the bell rings the general education teacher says she has to leave. Parents are missing critical information.

A parent had a concern that when she e-mails or calls the general education teacher, she does not get responses. She just wants feedback to support her child. She does not like when teachers respond that they have too many students or too much going on to discuss her child. I cannot tell my students that as a teacher, why can they tell me as a parent of a child with a disability.

Parents have concern with the transition out of high school. Families need more support and information.

o Presenters shared how the department is trying to improve our transition services. Shared information about a grant that added three new positions. District 6 is requesting a high school transition teacher.

The IEP is an instructional tool. Who checks if teachers are following the IEP. Parents want to know their children are receiving instruction the way they should be

o Presenters shared information about fidelity checks and the role of coaches.

Is it okay if I am in the IEP meeting to ask gen ed teachers if they have had training on special education?

o Presenters explained that general education teachers deliver core instruction and special education teachers provide intensive interventions.

I am MNPS staff, regular MNPS student. Sometimes parents have to move their child where they will excel. Parents have to continue to do their part as well to find the right place for their child.


The student to teacher ratio needs to be addressed. It is impossible to address all the students needs when the class is to large. Do we have a right to request pulling students out of the inclusive setting and requesting intervention time instead?

Parent requests a district level parent meeting for all parents of students with disabilities. She believes the first day of school would be an ideal time for this to occur. The Department is doing a lot of things for parents and students and everyone needs to hear

Page | 57

it together.

Parents would like to have the SLP(Speech and Language Pathologist) who does the direct service also attend the meeting with the SLP who completes the assessment.

A parent talked about a time when she had an IEP meeting and there were people who were 50 miles away and we had to wait to get a code to conference call the virtual participants into the meetings.

General education teachers should read through a child’s IEP before their IEP meeting, so they come to the meeting prepared and ready with questions for the families and other professionals in the room.

A parent was concerned that she was just now hearing about a functional behavioral assessment for her daughter who is in high school, but her daughter has had an IEP since third grade. Teachers do not seem to know she has issues or it is not a concern.

o Presenters said they will follow-up with the parent. o Another parent in the room mentioned there are advocates

for parents going through this process.

OTHER REMARKS:

Not applicable.


Parents reported that general education teacher’s needs additional professional development on

how to serve students with disabilities. We agree with this statement which is why we are

continuing to roll out additional training for general education teachers.

Parents responded that additional training also needs to occur regarding diversity and different

needs of individual students at the school level.

Overall parents want more information about para professionals; training requirements,

professional development, why are there shortages, goal of para-professional support.

Parents reported as well as teachers that they are informed about their child’s progress through

emails, phone calls, and 9 week progress reports. Glad to see a match in the way parents and

teachers responded.

Parents would like additional district level communication through parent meetings.

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LITERACY


Meeting Location: Rose Park Middle

Presenters: Tammy Lipsey, Jill Petty

Board Member Co-Host: Jill Speering



Page | 59

TOPIC: Literacy


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:


Type of Attendees: e.g.

Teachers, reading recovery teachers, one middle school coach, and elementary school coaches

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? (Coach) Seeing more Guided Reading in the schools. Still have work to do, but seeing more teachers at table with books and kids.

(Coach) More intentionality with text selection. Conversations around it are growing.

(Coach) Teachers choosing engaging texts and finding the complex texts that are high-interest. Struggling readers more willing to grapple with it.

(RR Teacher) Didn’t know what I truly didn’t know until Reading Recovery. We haven’t been teaching them the way they need to be taught.

(Coach) The capacity built with coaches over the last several years – see the shift with administrators becoming more instructionally-centered.

(RR Teacher) Disconnect between RR and classroom instruction has shifted with curriculum updates.

(Coach) Seeing colleagues understand more fully what TLAs mean along with universal screeners and DSA, observations to truly understand using multiple data points – “Now we’re getting it!” – Growing in ability to see meaning behind data.

What could be improved? (Teacher) Lot of teacher who don’t know what is going on and need to be on same page – ELA days at beginning of year

(Coach-middle school) All classes being 50 minutes long in schedules. Need more than 50 minutes to meet their literacy needs. There used to be a separate 50 minute reading class and a 50 minute language arts class—these have been combined and together the class is only 50 min. Need a longer block.

Don’t see the 120 minutes at elementary level either because of other things (breakfast in classroom, morning meetings, etc.)

At secondary level, teachers not having the expertise to teach foundational reading skills.

What is the district approach to writing? o Not a clear district vision for what model, but hedge the

bets that it is coming o More teacher discretion? Contingencies of schools doing

different things, but need more conversation around what people are doing; Have the 6 traits

(Coach) Culture needs to be improved on adult level – lack of buy-in, disengagement, shifts in upper levels leads to insecurities.

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Culture with adults impacts students o (Coach) Rollouts need to be intentional. o (Coach) Teachers need more stability and continuity.

Simply feel confused.

(RR Teacher Leader) Students sometimes get the mixed message, too. We are confused so they are confused. Students hearing different prompts between classroom, intervention, reading clinic, reading recovery. They are confused. Need continuity of messaging.


(RR Teacher) Being vulnerable with adults to say “I don’t know” and need training. Creating culture where teachers and schools can be vulnerable because there is a wide spectrum in the district.

(Teacher Leader) In some ways we need to come to agreement around the theory of how students become literate because it is the root of everything. That is the strongest piece in my mind, that we all have a similar focus and ground in this theory. Urgent need for comprehensive model for how we schedule, time in buildings to be effective & share.

(Teacher) Better assessments for knowing if students are on level or not. We don’t have that in middle and high bc they are on a computer. Nothing is lining up. Also conflicts with behaviors seeing in classrooms. Elementary is blessed with TLAs but many teachers don’t know about it.

(Coach) Empowering teachers with assessment decisions.

(Teacher) Goes back to culture.

(Coach) Maybe we need an inventory of what schools have. We still have the BRI and “the box” (F&P).

OTHER REMARKS:

Teachers need to feel confident in their rationales instead of checklists. Conversations with

coaches and principals should support this with a mindset of growth.

Things to change or stop:

o With teacher and team-created formative and summative assessments designed to

“produce weekly and 9-week period grades” along with benchmark universal screening,

weekly RTI progress monitoring, SCHOOLNET district benchmark assessments and

informal running records – to give key examples most teacher literally feel smothered

with assessment expectations – which undercuts the planning and implementation of

sound instruction.


More time to process pd- this was somewhat surprising but also refreshing to know they are

giving the work some time to process and try.

More interventionists - This was not surprising. We know we do not have enough interventionists

in light of the demand of RTI and literacy needs.

Home activities – We are working on home to school strategies so this is good to know and we

can include them in the work.

No teachers mentioned reviewing formative weekly- this was very surprising since this was such

a push last year for common formative assessments.

Need for more parent workshops- was what surprising was that the most stated face to face is

better than a website. Research shows that students benefit greatly when parents are involved in

their children’s education. By recognizing parents’ strengths and involving parents deeply in their

children’s education, we will have the opportunity to ensure that students have the best of both

worlds.

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TOPIC: Literacy


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Parents, sales rep and community liaison

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? (Parent @ Dupont-Hadley) Focus on literacy as a district – Students have been encouraged to write everyday. You can’t write if you don’t read. My biggest complaint is, 12 weeks in, neither of my sons have read a book in its entirety. I believe that is inexcusable. I am nervous about when they get to college and they are taking Shakespeare and don’t know what to do. Don’t understand the method of only getting a chapter...It’s confusing them. It is essential that they know how to read a book start to finish.

(Community Member) Battle of the Books competition. Would love to see more kids involved. I don’t see our kids in our afterschool programs participating in BoB.

(Parent) The diversity of reading. Was very pleased that we are branching out past the books that have been on the list for 80 years.

(Community Member) I would like to see more of that, too.

(College Professor/Parent) My perspective is having my students write literacy narratives. I am watching my son go through the same. They don’t need to just get it, but enjoy it. See reading and writing as punishment. This is not in keeping with what is going to make them readers. Need intellectual inquiry. I am just seeing that a child is not reading at grade level so they go to intervention and are labeled. I am seeing that in my students’ narratives. How are we structuring this in our district?

(Rose Park Admin) Not about what we are exposing but how to go about teaching how to teach. If a teacher has done the work on the front end and have gone through it, then can help them access the text and motivate them. That is a big shift we have to make. Learning process happens with teachers then kids.

What could be improved? (Community Member) Focus on motivation and student-centered choice, student interests. Getting teachers excited about new books.

(Community Member) Giving teachers more access to great

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books. Building classroom libraries is expensive. It’s should be a priority for the district.

Technology and reading? o Not all kids need it. o Technology should focus on the whole texts. o (Instructional Spc) Doing reviews on Amazon. Can see

when a new book is coming out to motivate and excite them.

o (Parent of former MNPS student) Research says that a teacher only has 2-3 minutes a day one-on-one. Technology can help it.

What are you planning to do to change the needle from 30% and up?

(Dr. Felder) Focusing on building master teachers. Should stop not putting enough emphasis on the adults in the classrooms. Building teachers’ capacity around literacy. We have put in some structures but still a lot more to do.

(Jill P) We are emphasizing a few things, rather than a lot of initiatives.


(Parent) Our kids have got to read beyond what they read in schools. Not punitive but creating a culture of reading so they want to read. Each school can develop a plan around this.

o (Tammy) What about taking this to the community? Billboards, put together the Balanced Literacy frames. Balanced Literacy has been around for 13 years but it has become different things to different people. Our new admin has said that we are going back to the basics and focus on guided reading.

o (Parent/College Professor) A resource is the Middle Tennessee Writing Project.

(Tammy) We are bringing that back. Also, rigor can backfire. Also, think creatively

about assessment.

(Parent to Jill Speering) Extending the day – Is that something we can look at?

o In meetings, so many parents who want to spend time with kids. We are going to see a community school in Knoxville to see how they extend the day for kids that need it.

o (Community Member) We would love to learn what you are learning.

OTHER REMARKS:

No comments.


There were not enough responses to the polling questions to make observations.

Page | 63

VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS


Meeting Location: John Early Museum Magnet Middle Prep

Presenters: Laurie Schell, Nola Jones



Page | 64

TOPIC: Visual & Performing Arts


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



All teachers.

PRESENTATION:

Laurie introduced Voice Sessions

PPT presentation

o Programs Provided

Music – Anna Maria Miller shared student responses to the question, “Why Is

Music Important?” Some responses included:

Music is a universal language. They can express themselves through

music without a language barrier. A creative outlet and way to connect

with others.

Music gives me a place I belong. No matter what I look like, I don’t feel

awkward.

Music can cut through the numbness of our society and allows us to slow

down and feel.

Theatre –Caroline Sharp spoke about theatre at Oliver Middle School. Disney

Music In The Schools is a game changer. It is magical for students. Kids and

parents get engaged and build a community. Our programs fill a hole in students’

hearts.

Dance – Debra Perry spoke about dance programs in MNPS and at NSA. There

are two middle school programs, and most high schools have programs. Each

teacher creates their program based on their expertise. Teachers often bring in

guests to the classroom. NSA has two full-time dance teachers. Classes offered

include ballet, tap, modern dance with guests that teacher African dance and

pilates. Lots of students have received scholarships and continue on to be

professional dancers. Those that don’t continue in dance take with them many

great skills like hard work, perseverance, problem-solving, and lots of experience

working in groups.

Visual Arts – Janet Malone shared these comments about art education: Art

teaches students how to think out of the box. There is no right or wrong; they are

all learning opportunities. Art is the place where students can participate no matter

what their skill levels is and despite any language barriers

PPT – Slides

How do we work together? (Teachers) Dr. Nola Jones addressed this slide

with these comments: Our job is to support your efforts. We are here to make

your job easier. Please let us know what you need, and we will be there to

help you. There is a lift in teacher voices because the administration is

Page | 65

interested in teacher voices. Take advantage of this opportunity to speak and

be heard. You are going to see changes.

Side-By-Side coaching is funded by CMA and is to support teachers

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Professional Development (targeted)

Instrument inventory and maintenance

Grants for private lessons

H.O.T. and Art Institute Integration at TPAC

TN Arts Academy @ Belmont U.

Lots of support from different places

Don’t feel alone anymore

Seeing the payoff of elementary music returning to schools

Growing programs

All the opportunities for students to do perform in the community

Kids know that instruments are available and are willing to try

Grateful for portfolio student growth evaluations that better reflect their work.

What could be improved? Equity across the board for all arts programs. Visual arts, dance, theatre do not have the same opportunities or support as music.

Art should have the opportunity to be full year programs at middle school, like music.

Shouldn’t have to choose music or visual arts at middle and high

Staffing level for visual arts classes should be based on enrollment; too many students in each classroom and longer rotation between meetings. Negatively impacts student learning.

Funding for classroom supplies in visual arts is VERY inconsistent from school to school; with some teachers getting $0 beyond BEP funds.

Middle school class sizes (34 – 37 kids) not conducive to learning. Also, classes shouldn’t be stuck at the end of the day with tired kids.

Arts teachers working beyond their content area, often beyond what other classroom teachers are asked to do.. They are asked to help with PE, lunch, RTI, etc.

Master scheduling issues. Students are not getting what they signed up for. Students are placed in arts classes without their consent/choice.

Differentiated levels are ignored; students are placed in Art 2 without having taken Art 1.Make sure everyone is on the same level. Ensure proper placement in arts classes.

Need in-service day for all Arts Teachers to be together. Also teacher planning days with other arts teachers in their cluster.

OTHER REMARKS:

No comments.

Page | 66


The responses to the polling questions were as follows:

What role do the arts play in a student’s education? Enrichment 0 Enables classroom teacher planning time 0 Essential to a well-rounded education 25

The visual and performing arts, which include dance, drama, music and visual arts, should be taught in:

Elementary grades only 0 Grades 5 – 12 only 0 Pre-K through Grade 12 25

The benefits of studying the arts include: Increased school attendance 0 Lower incidence of discipline referrals 0 Perseverance, focus, creative mindset 0 All the above 25

Students say they study the arts because it makes them feel: Engaged 0 Happy 0 Included 0 All the above 25

The creative industries (graphic design, fashion design, art and technology, music-related business)in Nashville are:

Stagnant 0

Growing 25 Declining 0

Page | 67

TOPIC: Visual & Performing Arts


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



9 – parents 2 - students 3 – VAPA Staff 6 – Arts Teachers 1 – translator 2 – community support 1 – HR staff

PRESENTATION:

Laurie welcomed everyone and introduced VAPA staff

Thank you for coming

Introduction to Voice Sessions

Begins PPT Presentation

o Lots of support from the community. Thanks to Anne Henderson from the Frist and Ali

Tonn from the Country Music Hall of Fame for their support.

o Programs Provided

Music – Anna Maria Miller shared student responses to the question, “Why Is

Music Important?” Some responses included:

Music is a universal language. They can express themselves through

music without a language barrier. A creative outlet and way to connect

with others.

Music gives me a place I belong. No matter what I look like, I don’t feel

awkward.

Music can cut through the numbness of our society and allows us to slow

down and feel.

Theatre –Caroline Sharp spoke about theatre at Oliver Middle School. Disney

Music In The Schools is a game changer. It is magical for students. Kids and

parents get engaged and build a community. One student said he “had a hole in

his heart” when the production was over. Our programs fill a hole in students’

hearts.

Dance – Debra Perry spoke about dance programs in MNPS and at NSA. There

are two middle school programs, and most high schools have programs. Each

teacher creates their program based on their expertise. Teachers often bring in

guests to the classroom. NSA has two full-time dance teachers. Classes offered

include ballet, tap, modern dance with guests that teacher African dance and

pilates. Lots of students have received scholarships and continue on to be

professional dancers. Those that don’t continue in dance take with them many

great skills like hard work, perseverance, problem-solving, and lots of experience

working in groups.

Page | 68

Visual Arts – Janet Malone shared these comments about art education: Art

teaches students how to think out of the box. There is no right or wrong; students

learn from failure. All experience is an opportunity for learning. Art is the place

where students can participate no matter what their skill levels is and despite any

language barriers

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? A parent from Oliver & NSA said they were thrilled with the quality of education their children are receiving.

Students are given a wide range of experiences and a richness of experience.

Student loves to participate in band and after-school drama programs.

Students come out of their shell because of exposure to the arts.

Our community partners can tell that the quality of instruction is improving.

Our community partners are working to align their programs with MNPS curriculum.

What could be improved? Students should be able to participate in 2 different art classes.

Parents need help providing basic needs (food/snacks) to students when they stay after school.

We need more music and art teachers.

Lower staffing levels negatively effect student experience.

What should we stop doing or change?

No comments.

OTHER REMARKS:

Arts are an important part of our community. Our community partners want to engage.

We need to make sure our voices are heard. We need to fight to make sure we are heard.


Responses to polling questions are as follows:

What role do the arts play in a student’s education? Enrichment 2 Enables classroom teacher planning time 0 Essential to a well-rounded education 10

The visual and performing arts, which include dance, drama, music and visual arts, should be taught in:

Elementary grades only 0 Grades 5 – 12 only 0

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Pre-K through Grade 12 11

The benefits of studying the arts include: Increased school attendance 0 Lower incidence of discipline referrals 0 Perseverance, focus, creative mindset 0 All the above 11

Students say they study the arts because it makes them feel: Engaged 1 Happy 0 Included 0 All the above 10

The creative industries (graphic design, fashion design, art and technology, music-related business) in Nashville are:

Stagnant 0

Growing 11 Declining 0

Page | 70

PRE-K


Meeting Location: Hull-Jackson Montessori School

Presenter: Phyllis Phillips, Dana Eckman, Robin Cayce



Page | 71

TOPIC: Pre-K

SESSION: Teachers/Staff

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:

Number of Attendees: 40 total

13 Pre-k Leadership Staff

27 teachers, EA’s, Coaches and Support


Pre-K Teachers, Pre-K Educational Assistants, Pre-K Coaches, Pre-K Administrative Team, Exceptional Ed. Staff, School support staff, Federal Programs staff

PRESENTATION:

No questions raised during Pre-K presentation

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Nice having a universal curriculum for more consistent, project-based approach

‘I like the books’ –enjoys using teacher discretion to pull certain components from books

Really helpful to have a pre-k coach

Pre-K Director reflected on the significance of Pre-K coaches in supporting the implementation of the new curriculum

Curriculum structured so that children are able to play

Opportunities for professional development

Differentiated PD

Reviewed feedback from corresponding poster question (see below)

What could be improved? Would like increased pay for Educational Assistants. Increased pay will attract more qualified EA’s (this was echoed by two EA’s present in the session)

Request for different cut-off date for 3-years olds served within Pre-K programs. Teacher reflected challenge with appropriately serving 3-years in her classroom.

Question raised about whether or not it is best to co-mingle the 3 and 4 year olds in the same classroom

EA’s are off payroll for teacher planning days and professional development days. Would be really helpful to have EA’s present for PD and planning on those days.

Would like to see stronger Encore presence at Pre-K sites. Leadership team responded that this has been started at ELC’s, but hope to expand this to more elementary sites

Would like more support in strategies to support EL students. Leadership acknowledged need for more EL Professional Development and shared plans to collaborate with EL Office to develop plans to support Pre-K teachers with EL strategies.

Would like to see more support from school counselors in school-

Page | 72

based sites to support social-emotional learning.

Pre-K Director gave feedback about current collaboration with Director of Counseling to improve counselor support for Pre-K classrooms. Discussed the process of shifting counselor’s job responsibilities (less time administering tests to allow for more counseling and classroom support)

Discussed corresponding poster question on what could be done to improve Pre-K. (See notes below)


Curriculum feels overwhelming with all the documentation reports. Teacher has received feedback from families that Family Conference Forms are too lengthy and complicated. Teacher feels that many teachers do not like Creative Curriculum but wondered if that impacts district decisions. Does not feel like there is enough time to bring in own activities with students.

Pre-K Professional Development Director reflected on strategies to blend curriculum with teacher’s own strategies and adapting schedule to allow time for creativity within curriculum.

ELC Principal reflected on awareness that there is flexibility within curriculum, but acknowledged that school-based administrators may not have received adequate training on the flexibility permitted within curriculum.

Families were confused by ‘Family Conference Form’ and/or felt that the report was too lengthy (this was echoed by several teachers)

Pre-K Professional Development Director shared that the district is currently exploring options for aligning ‘report card’ options within Pre-K -3.

Gold Plus is very rigid and it is taking teachers 3-4 hours to complete lesson plans for TEAM requirements using GOLD. Asked about possibility of uploading TN-ELDS into GOLD Plus.

OTHER REMARKS:

Teacher asked--What will be sustained beyond the life of the Pre-K Expansion Grant?

o PD Director reflected that it is unknown at this time what components will be sustained

but strategizing to sustain many components.

Take away Gold. The iPad takes a large portion of my time with my students away. The color

band continuum is great, just not the time spent on documenting.

I feel that teachers who “don’t like” the curriculum should teach another grade! If you talk to any

K-4 grade teacher, what we are doing now is what they have been doing for years! I truly believe

that there should be an in-depth look at whose teaching Pre-K. those who don’t want to teach

developmentally appropriate practices should move on!


What is going really well in Metro Schools Pre-K?

o Quality of curriculum in classrooms (9)

o Quality of Instruction in our Classrooms (2)

o Gold Assessment and Parents reports (1)

o Other

Pre-K Instructional Coaches who support our teachers and MCL’s (3)

Page | 73

Increased support in PreK (leadership/coaches (1)

“The only thing I feel is going good is parent communication and having a coach

that listens to me”

What could be improved to support student well-being and achievement?

o Social Emotional Supports (4)

o Family Involvement (3)

o Curriculum and Assessment Support (3)

o Other

Lower class size (16 max) (3)

More planning time for teachers—uninterrupted planning time (1)

More streamlined focus on pyramid model (1)

Better pay for para-pros in Early Learning Centers (and other classrooms too) (2)

How should a pre-k teacher spend most of his/her time?

o Planning instruction (1)

o Building relationships with students and families (10)

o Differentiating Instruction (4)

o Working one-on-one or in small groups with children (11)

I believe the following person has the most responsibility in increasing a student’s achievement?

o Teacher (3)

o Both Teacher & Parent (6)

o Parent (10)

o Principal (0)

o Director of Schools (0)

What would you like to see as next steps in Metro Schools Pre-K?

o More Classrooms (2)

o Increased Family Involvement (2)

o Increased Wrapround Services (mental health, social work, aligned with pyramid model)

(13)

o Other:

Consistency across systems (3)

Go back to the old way (1)

Page | 74

TOPIC: Pre-K

SESSION: Parents/community members

BASIC OBSERVATIONS:

Number of Attendees: 23 Total

2 parents

2 community members

14 Pre-K District Staff

5 teachers


Pre-K Parents, Pre-K teachers, Pre-K District staff, interpreter, community members

PRESENTATION:

No questions raised during the presentation

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Mother shared that Pre-K has been an awesome experience for her daughter. Shared that her daughter comes home reflecting many things she has learned at school. This has been her first school experience and it has exceeded her expectations…”except the playground”.

Father shared that he started with Pre-K in MNPS many years ago, and initially it was not a great experience, but in recent years, with his younger children, it has been a much more positive experience. He had a Pre-K child at Hull Jackson 2 years ago and saw significant improvement and now has a child at Hull Jackson and feels that it’s been a very positive experience.

Hull Jackson Principal reflected the student experiences are so rich because parents are involved.

Reviewed corresponding poster question feedback (see responses below)

What could be improved? Playground at Joelton

Pre-K Director shared that limited funding has prevented playground installment, but is advocating for more funds from state.

Reviewed poster question feedback (see responses below)


Put the best teachers in the early childhood classrooms

Page | 75

OTHER REMARKS:

Community Member/grandmother who works for Early Childhood research company shared

recent research which reveals 7 characteristics that are given when a baby is born:

o 1). Temperament

o 2.) Introvert/Extrovert

o 3.) How much grit it has

o 4.) How much resilience it has

o 5.) Confidence

o 6.) Competence

o 7.) Showing emotion

o Up until age 5, those characteristics can be altered which lends itself to the significance

of parent/adult involvement during early childhood. Investing in our young children should

be top priority.

Discussed enrollment process. Parent said that dates for enrollment process were confusing in

the past but process was better this past year.

Attendance: There is a need for policy around Pre-K attendance to avoid having chronically

absent families hold Pre-K seats that should be given to other families on waitlist.

Discussed: How do you know about what is happening with your child at school?

Daily Folders, automated calls. Generally feels informed about what is happening at

school.

Parent expressed schools’ need to determine best mode of communication and

connect with parent through the avenue, whether it be call outs, emails, online portal,

etc. Parent wondered whether Infinite Campus could track and utilize data and

parent’s preferred method of feedback

District staff shared about new MNPS app that serves as a helpful source of

communication from the district.

Discussed parents’ opportunities to get plugged in. Parent shared about past

experience coming to child’s school to volunteer and being underutilized. “We have to

be intentional about creating meaningful opportunities for parents to be engaged.”

Community member shared about family she heard about from Head Start conference who’s

child had received significant support during Head Start Pre-k but what not able to continue

receiving same level of support in Kindergarten. Discussed need for more resources to continue

supportive resources in K-4.


The responses to the polling questions were as follows.

I believe the following person has the most responsibility in increasing a student’s achievement:

o The Teacher (0)

o Teacher/Parent (1)

o Parent (2)

o The Principal (0)

o The Director of Schools (0)

What could be improved to support student well-being and achievement?

o Social Emotional Supports (1)

o Family Involvement (0)

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o Curriculum and Assessment Support (0)

o Other

Playground (1)

What would you like to see as next steps in Metro Schools Pre-K

o More Classrooms (1)

o Increased Family Involvement (2)

o Increased Wrap around services (1)

o Other (0)

What is going really well in Metro Schools Pre-K?

o The Quality of curriculum in classrooms (3)

o The quality of instruction in our classrooms (0)

o Gold Assessment and Parent Reports (0)

o Other (0)

How should a pre-k teacher spend most of his/her time?

o Planning Instruction (0)

o Building relationships with students and families (0)

o Differentiating Instruction (0)

o Working one-on-one or in small groups with children (3)

Page | 77

MAINTENANCE SERVICES


Meeting Location: West End Middle School

Presenter: Dennis Neal

Teacher/Staff Session Attendance:16


Page | 78

TOPIC: Maintenance Services


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



14 Facility & Grounds Maintenance technicians 2 school faculty administrators


School staff that I’ve worked with clearly understand the protocols to report any maintenance issues.

o 10/10 respondents selected “Disagree” o Audience Comments:

One person from each school should have SchoolDude access, and they should be responsible for knowing what the work order is about and signing off when it is complete.

When technicians go to the school, no one knows what the problem really is or they are incapable of communicating the problem (e.g.: don’t speak English).

School faculty/staff direct work orders to wrong trade. Facility & Grounds Maintenance staff often leave the “requestor” field on

SchoolDude work orders blank.

The most helpful resource I have to do my job is: o 7/11 respondents selected “My Supervisor”; 3/11 respondents selected “Access to

Facility & Grounds Maintenance Management; 1/11 respondents selected “SchoolDude Work Order Management Online Program”

o Audience Comments: This is not a good or bad thing – it just so happens that technicians interact more

frequently with their supervisors than Facility & Grounds Maintenance office or school staff; and, spend more time addressing work orders than training.

The honest answer would be lead technicians, not zone or shop managers. Managers are not knowledgeable in most or even any tradecraft – they were hired to manage people and resources, not to supervise technicalities.

Technicians don’t know how to reset SchoolDude password.

The Facility & Grounds Maintenance Office Manager can perform this action.

Technicians have a hard time accessing computers for other purposes because the MNPS Help Desk isn’t responsive.

Technicians see a need for smart phones (because flip phones don’t work with Internet browsers). They don’t feel that iPads would not be helpful because they would be Wi-Fi only nor would they have capability to place or receive calls.

I see my role in student achievement as: o 7/9 respondents selected “Providing a clean and comfortable environment, so students

and faculty can focus on learning”; 2/9 respondents selected “Serving as a positive adult role model for the students in my building”

o Audience Comments: Technicians understand the importance of their job. Faculty want the school to be clean and working in the morning because it

creates an environment conducive to the desire to learn.

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There is good communication with school staff to resolve facility and grounds maintenance issues.

o 6/8 respondents selected “Neutral”; 2/8 respondents selected “Disagree” o Audience Comments:

Technicians feel they very seldom actually get to resolve the issue. They are often pulled off jobs to go to other jobs. Teachers notice that they often leave to pick up parts or address emergencies and it takes a while – sometimes days – for the technicians to return.

Teachers are happy when jobs are completed – but, surprised that they actually got done.

Need extra helpers just to pick up parts and respond to emergency work orders so that progress can be made on existing problems.

Fire alarm issues are so frequent that electronics technicians don’t even have time to resolve non-emergency issues.

Schools communicate that everything is an emergency, spreading technicians too thin just to hurriedly respond to issues that aren’t actually critical.

Building engineers would help with these issues in high schools and large middle schools. They could determine if something really is an emergency and what trade it should be submitted as.

My supervisor most supports me in my role by: o 5/7 respondents selected “Reinforcing the importance of our work to helping students be

successful”; 2/7 respondents selected “Providing me with regular feedback on my performance”

o Audience Comments: Zone Managers trust their technicians to complete jobs correctly. The Zone

Managers are hired to manage – not to be experts in tradecraft – but they have faith that their lead technicians are experts in their field.

It seems that it takes an accident before safety training is provided.

OTHER REMARKS:

There are supposed to be 209 Facility & Grounds Maintenance employees, yet only 14 (and 2 school faculty) attended. One employee asked if they should they have invited a union representative or recorded the session.

o Everyone was welcome to attend. The Voice Session was intended to be an open discussion format where information would be solicited from staff. Retaliation will not occur nor be condoned.

MNPS’ budget is $810 million dollars, and Nutritional Services employees get 11 uniforms, yet Facility & Grounds Maintenance employees only get 4 uniforms. Additionally, if a technician is assigned fire-resistant uniforms, they are not provided an allowance to purchase accessories such as jackets.

o The Facility & Grounds Maintenance uniform budget has increased from $60,000 to $85,000; and, we will continue to review.

Employees are held to a standard of having to work 15 days out-of-class before being paid for it. o This is a district policy.

Work occurring between 6:00 PM & 6:00 AM shall receive a $0.50 differential. Why don’t on-call employees receive this.

o We will look into this.

Do you feel that electricians are underpaid based upon the hazards they face daily? o The MNPS Compensation Manager (not the Facility & Grounds Maintenance

department) determines pay rates.

Do you feel that a painter or locksmith should get paid more than an electrician or an HVAC technician working on high-voltage electricity?

o We don’t make these decisions.

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Do you feel that new employees should be brought in at higher steps than employees with more longevity? Shouldn’t annual evaluations pay a role in existing employee raises?

o New employee pay is based on skills/experience.

Productivity question o We are not comparing employee’s productivity to other employees’ productivity. We are

comparing employee’s productivity to their own historical productivity. Comparing employee productivity to their own historical productivity is not good

because the better they do in their zone the less new problems there will be and then their apparent productivity can’t increase.

We can show that the productivity of employees has increased by 15% this year over last. This is a very positive thing for our department and its employees.

The safety videos describe things electricians do as hazardous; why don’t they receive hazard pay?

o Hazard pay is not a standard for electricians. The market drives hourly wages for different trades.

Lead technicians are performing outside lighting audit work while their helpers are not on the clock, yet there are high voltage ballasts that should be repaired alone.

o Although electricians identify outdoor lighting issues at night, we wait until daylight and for helper availability before dispatching any hazardous jobs. Additionally, GCA is helping to identify outdoor lighting issues.

Most people don’t want to do menial work or dangerous work, so they don’t volunteer to do so occasionally because they don’t want to become the go-to-guy for hazardous work.

We don’t allow people to work on high-voltage ballasts by themselves.

School faculty appreciates GCA going above and beyond to setup for events. However, at MLK HS, they are a custodian down due to a new hire no-show and another is out due to medical leave. How can GCA hire more reliable people? Why do custodians work fewer hours during school breaks and holidays? The zone concept was resulting in more immediate response to work order requests. However, that time is increasing. Summer requests aren’t getting responded to in a timely manner (signs not framed until fall break). If the system worked well, faculty administrators wouldn’t have to stalk Zone Managers.

o During the summer, we focus on larger projects. Therefore, the backlog for non-emergency work orders begins growing during the beginning of July. The speed of growth increases the week before school begins and the size of the backlog peaks the Friday at the end of the first full week of school. This year, the backlog grew from 2,000 to 5,000 just between the last two weeks of July and the first week of August. It takes months for this peak to level off. In the past two and a half months, the backlog has decreased from 5,000 to 3,000. We need to improve when teachers submit summer work requests so that they don’t all come in at the same time during the last two weeks of summer break. We will analyze and consider reprioritizing the work we focus on during summer break; but, we need teacher requests for start-of-school needs submitted at the end of the previous academic year. For non-emergencies, we work through work orders by date submitted – from oldest to newest – so it may sometimes take a while before a resolution is realized.

We should have an outside agency audit the actions of the past 20 years to improve efficiency; just because something has been done the same way for a long time doesn’t mean it’s being done the correct way.

o Our internal cost for service is benchmarked against other school districts and outside contractor cost. We are competitive against the Council of Great City Schools average. We are having a tough time finding qualified technicians – due to the growth in the metropolitan area they can make more money in the private sector.

o There was a performance audit commissioned by the Metro Council that included the Facility & Grounds Maintenance department. We have implemented all of their recommendations as of March of 2016: a zone concept, a preventative maintenance program, etc.

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o In the past, there were no maintenance standards. The new Executive Director of Facility & Grounds Maintenance brings three years of experience at Vanderbilt and twenty years at United Parcel Service. With this experience comes first-hand knowledge of practices that do and don’t work. For example, the district now has a preventative maintenance program. Another example is that fire alarm certifications have increased from 6-7% annually to 100% every year.

Can we bring back building engineers? o We are looking into it. In the past there were shops responsible for 155 schools. Now,

under the zone concept, there are zones responsible for only 25 or so schools each. This is a far more manageable concept. We will continue looking at smaller levels, perhaps down to single facilities (building engineers).

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SCHOOL COUNSELORS & SOCIAL

EMOTIONAL SUPPORT


Meeting Location: Waverly-Belmont Elementary School

Presenters: Kyla Krengel, Nicole Cobb



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TOPIC: School Counselors & Social Emotional Support


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



School Counselors, Social Workers, Behavior Analysts, Other Central Office Staff

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Teachers are on board with SEL and supporting in the classrooms and hallways.

Morning meetings going well.

Appreciate that family and community have been added to CASEL wheel.

Some administrators are choosing to recognize SEL and counseling in their budget.

o Hiring testing coordinators or others to teach SEL in rotation.

School Counselor SMART Goals. o Connecting work to student outcomes.

Tier Level leaders for ES, MS and HS counseling. o Yvette Carter - ES Lead Counselor o Joe Gordon - MS Lead Counselor

Implementing restorative practices at high school level.

What could be improved? Adopting new state standards to clarify roles and responsibilities. o No laws around school counseling regarding counselors

other than schools must hire school counselors. o No specifics laws on counselor ratios or

roles/responsibilities. o Administrators aren’t sure how to shift inappropriate

responsibilities or ratios without appropriate funding.

Counselors need resources to allow them to implement comprehensive programs.

School counselors being used for academic RTII. o Having to be a disciplinarian in RTII group destroys

counseling relationship. o Forcing referrals to outside service providers. o No training for academic interventions.

Need adequate counselor professional development, mentoring for new counselors, etc.

o Trainings on theoretical best practices or techniques. o Crisis response

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o Interventions o Space/time for counselors to share best practices. o Ethics o ACES/Trauma training

Improve morning/community meetings. o Little district wide accountability. o Need time and training. o Communication of expectations from top down.

Series of School Counselor PD series to address counselor training needs

o Time o $$$ o Organization

How to schedule School Counselor PD? o Need buy in from administration.

Non-negotiable from central office. o School Counselors in rotation don't get subs.

Need lead time to plan ahead for absence. Need plenty of time to plan for schedule. All day trainings are easier

Don't have school level resources do deal with high level mental health concerns.

o Conversations at central office level regarding those concerns.

o Incremental investments. o Conversations about revamping ALC. o Need Tier I behavior interventions with fidelity.

Communication regarding appropriate roles of Student Service Providers (SC, SW, BA, etc.).

How can we improve CRF process to reduce cumbersome nature? o People may be reading too much into the process. o Brief assessment of situation to determine appropriate

response. o Collaborate with SW, BA, and others to assist w/ process.

How can we apply restorative practices in ES? o Contact Lorraine Stallworth. o ID what RP looks like for your school.


Did not get to Question #3.

OTHER REMARKS:

What is transition going to look like with new TN Comprehensive Standards?

o When is that going to come into effect in MNPS?

Currently working with central office leadership.

Not sure if that model will be adopted by MNPS.

What does 80/20% commitment from Dr. Joseph and central office mean?

o Looking at ASCA model.

o Administrators are having conversations about what this looks like.

o No concrete directives at this point.

Hopeful for more direction by end of the year or by budget time.

Have district wide data now need school specific data.

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Where are counselors being used appropriately, and what are those best

practices?

o All decisions based on data.

What are perceptions of school counselors’ roles and responsibilities?

o How do we change incorrect perceptions?

o Confusing based on the many layers of school counseling.

o Similar confusion for behavior analyst.


Responses and observations to polling questions are as follows:

My school administration provides (its staff) time and resources to support me in addressing the

social and emotional development of my students.

o Strongly Agree – 6%

o Agree – 56%

o Neutral – 25%

o Disagree – 13%

Did not expect to see that the majority of faculty and staff believe that they receive adequate time and resources to address the social and emotional development of students.

I believe the following person has the most responsibility in ensuring a successful school-wide

approach to students mastering SEL competencies.

o Teachers – 5%

o Principals – 55%

o School Counselors – 40%

Would have expected the responses for teachers to be greater than principals.

How do school counselors contribute to increasing academic achievement?

o School counselors do not have a responsibility to increase academic achievement – 11%

We didn’t expect to see any faculty members respond that school counselors are not connected to student achievement.

How would you like your school counselor to spend the majority of his/her time?

o Working directly with students on developing social-emotional learning competencies –

77%

o Coordinating and facilitating testing, S-Teams, IEP meetings, 504 meetings – 0%

o Advising students in academic, college and career planning – 23%

We hope that we continue to see movement towards removal of test coordinator as a school counselor assigned duty.

Interested that more faculty and staff didn’t feel advising students in academic, college and career planning was where school counselors should spend the majority of their time.

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TOPIC: School Counselors & Social Emotional Support


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



School Counselors, Social Workers, Community Agencies, TNDOE Coordinator of School Counseling

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Partnerships between school counselors and service providers.

Introduction of restorative practices and push for buy in.

Conversation from central office leadership re: 80% of direct services to students.

What could be improved? Increase capacity for services.

Increase buy in from all stakeholders. o High level turn over decreases ability to increase buy in.

Collaborating with community resources.

Increased funding to decrease student/counselor ratio.

Align school counselor evaluation model to reflect what they should be doing.

SEL state standards. o Not Social Personal Standards.

Provide resources for new hires on SEL initiatives.


No comments.

OTHER REMARKS:

Are administrators given a common language regarding school counseling and SEL? o Presented to Executive Lead Principals.

Next move to present to all admins.

ID best practices & how did they make shift.

What other SEL practices beyond restorative practices? o PBIS/RTII-B o COMP o Responsive Classroom o Olweus o Second Step o SEL Foundations

When will assessments (i.e. walkthroughs) move to action?

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o Complete walkthroughs and share with admin and ELP.

Having to adjust PD implementation based on needs of school.

How do we include parents in the SEL process? o Psycho-ed training for parents. o First step is to train faculty.

Next step is parent component. Structure parent meetings as morning meetings.

o Community Achieves o Parent involvement is consistently low in certain areas.

Community Partners want to be an advocate, but we need to make sure that we have a common language.

Parenting groups have been well received in Stratford Cluster and schools have been very supportive.

How can we replicate work at Fall-Hamilton in regards to ACES and trauma informed schools? o Received grant to create coordinator position for trauma informed schools.


Parent/Community

How do school counselors contribute to increasing academic achievement?

o School counselors should teach at least one RTI academic intervention group –25%

We found it interesting that some felt counselors were responsible for RTI academic intervention groups.

How would you like your school counselor to spend the majority of his/her time?

o Coordinating and facilitating testing, S-Teams, IEP meetings, 504 meetings – 0%

We hope that we continue to see movement towards removal of test coordinator as a school counselor assigned duty.

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ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS


Meeting Location: Glencliff High School

Presenter: Martiza Gonzalez, Kevin Stacy



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TOPIC: English Language Learners


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



Teachers, EL Coaches, International Student Registration Team, Community and Family Engagement, Translation Specialists, Parent Outreach Translators, EL Office Staff

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Customer service

Definite support from EL office- coming out, being there and listening

Felt great support from ELD Coach, Carol Irwin

Reading club at Haywood is helping students, student that barely spoke at the beginning and is communicating more

Collaboration the EL Office has done with literacy, Jan has helped with guided reading

Overall thank you to the office in general, WIDA conference ahead of the game and heading in the right direction, shout out to Megan Trcka helps to push them on to better understand how to best service ELs

Doing a great job differentiation strategies used across the board, content area teachers are using the strategies, excellent professional development

Thank you for responses and for your responsiveness

From an administrative standpoint, no other department in MNPS does what you all do, thank you for the innovation of SIFE and allowing them the time they need

Community LEAF nights, summer school, and ELD Coach

EL itinerant PD monthly to make sure we have what we need

Incredible teaching at our school (Antioch HS) I see other teachers in the room that are doing the same, fabulous opportunity, class sizes being smaller, it is great to be here

Literacy at secondary level

What could be improved? High school level, coming in late in the semester, may need a little more in the beginning ELD class before going to the intermediate

Because of the progression plan, getting students in the English class that are unprepared, must go to Algebra II, Chemistry, met with math department, departments feel awful that they cannot get the information across. What can we do?

Page | 90

Difficult to differentiate for Algebra II, depression, negative behaviors and dropouts. Teachers are struggling because they are wanting to do the right thing. It has to do with graduation requirements. We need different graduation requirements.

Students should not be entering in Integrated Math. Why are they taking away our basic math classes? It is not right. What can we do as teachers?

Maybe this needs to be exposed. The kids are failing these classes. Teachers are struggling. Same with Eng. They can take two years of ELD and then English I. How do we name the course?

20-year high school teacher-does not like SIFE their first year of high school. Wants them to be 8th graders and then 9th. They are leaving and dropping out.

Cultural background about students and who these students are. What it is like coming from that background? Cultural differences in addition to the academics

If we hit on diversity and teachers being diverse, that could help. Diverse teachers in the school.

Same thing is happening at the middle schools in math- content areas. Pushing 8th graders on to high school and feels so bad.

Technology struggle-not enough in the classrooms

Technology related-need more information in Infinite Campus about ELs-I would like to know what language the students speak

High school teacher at Glencliff- ELD 1a, 1 level above SIFE, research and collaborating with other high school teachers are not exactly what these students need. Some of the elementary strategies

Full-time ELD Coaches coming from the district assigned school full-time

Wonderful social worker assigned to Haywood, well educated in cultures and background, really love to see trainings for counselors

School social worker in the district, 1 of 3 bilingual social workers in the district, similar concerns about counselors to be better equipped. Need more support for social emotional, mental, acculturation complex, culturally sensitive interventions and trauma

MNPS does not have any incentives for bilingual employees

Dually identified students and is hard to schedule them…better communication about law and what is expected

The other social worker…social emotional by supporting their families from a systematic approach better support for their families as well as the students. More communication from the support services department. It is almost too late.

More supports for undocumented students- do not qualify for TN scholarship-undocumented families cannot access resources here

Map out EL students like we do EE students better communication during the summer about their schedules

Native language assessments- literate in their native language they can take more core classes, students are not aware

More co-teaching opportunities in the building

Credit recovery program that MNPS purchased- it offers content

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recovery in many languages. Could have access to it while enrolled in regular HS content classes as an accommodation?

Why were translators taken out of classes- students could have this as an elective instead of the office worker like peer tutors in EE

Patterning with Meharry medical college about EL Interpretation license

Personnel—huge pay raise for translators, partnership with university- why are teachers coming out of universities without an EL certification (Partnership with HR)

More translators in front office??


Is there a way to start paying for teachers to get endorsements again?

Everyone needs an hour of service—up to one hour of service- can this be more flexible?

Students spread out across all classes

Little flexibility for the hour-may only need ½ hour

Content area teachers going to PD- advertisement? Right days for them? PD at school that is faculty, differentiate to EL teachers at school level-push principals

OTHER REMARKS:

I should have shared this during the session, but thought of it afterwards. I would love to see

more awareness on the citizenship process, especially for our families. More supports for them. I

say this because they reality is in the long run, our undocumented students will have a limited

opportunity to attend college. (Elizabeth Colón)

Please bring back Basic Math for students who are just entering in U.S. that have interrupted

education. Every student cannot do Integrated Math I/Algebra I. Who are we really trying to help?

Students or statistic?

Continue coaches – great leadership and professional development. Consider reducing service #

of minutes depending upon student need. I question the value of continuing EL services for some

of EE students.

Infinite Campus needs to be larger print.

I wanted to voice that the EL co-teaching model is really working and teachers and staff are

seeing tremendous gains in ELA scores! We’d love more of them so all classes would get the 60

min of extra time! I have one for 1hr and my kids are soaring academically!


How do ELs need more support in your schools?

We anticipated that teachers would answer that more training was needed for teachers to provide support

for ELs. EL teachers are seeing the benefits of co-teachers; therefore, we also predicted that they would

request more co-teachers to provide small groups. In the past, teachers have said that ELs needed more

service time. We are pleased to see that no teachers indicated there was a need for more direct EL

services.

What type of professional development needs do you have?

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The majority of teachers indicated that they wanted more time in PLCs. We also saw this need and added

PLCs as an initiative this year. We knew that compensating EL teachers would also be important, so we

requested local funding for PLCs after school.

A few teachers indicated that they need Saturday PD with a stipend to not be away from students and the

same indicated they needed more learning strategies. Both were significantly fewer responses than the

PLC request. This validates our plan to have face-to-face PD followed by PLCs to go deeper with the

work.

How do you promote student ownership of language and content learning in your classroom?

The majority of teachers reported that they differentiated instruction in classes, but were not reviewing

district formative assessments weekly. About a fourth of the teachers that responded said they were

having student conferences where students discuss goal setting. This aligns to what we observe in

classrooms. Teachers are implementing scaffolds and language supports, but these are not based on

student achievement data. Teachers are sometimes not able to explain why they have chosen a specific

strategy or scaffold.

How do you connect language learning activities to school and home environments?

There were fewer responses on this question than the others. The majority of teachers that responded

split between giving homework most nights and providing families with comprehension questions to ask

their child about what they are learning during the day. A few teachers said they are providing home

activities to extend the learning. We need to do more work in this area to help teachers feel comfortable

working with families and providing language support at home.

What is an effective way to help EL parents become more involved with their child’s academic and

language needs?

The majority of teachers reported that translated parent workshops are the most effective way to get

parents involved over translated parent letters and callouts. A teacher added the comment that parents

must feel welcome at the school. Teachers are more comfortable with workshops and translated

calls/letters home. It is interesting to note the lack of response to have more parent teacher conferences

and more family outreach trainings. This poses questions as to why they feel they are effective and raises

the questions as to whether the trainings that we do have in these areas are effective or not.

Page | 93

TOPIC: English Language Learners


BASIC OBSERVATIONS:



In addition to the many EL Office staff members that stayed after the teacher session, we had several families that spoke several different languages for which we provided interpretation. (Burmese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Somali)

PRESENTATION:

No comments.

GUIDED DISCUSSION:

What is working well? Student was not doing well and after his EL classes he is doing well now

When we came here, my daughter did not know anything, now she is a translator for me when I go to the hospital

We have seen a lot of progress in our families and they can now help

I have 2nd grade son and he got a D on his report card and now he has all 8

EL Office helps family and we can help you

K and 2nd grader at Cole- summer school last year she was improving a lot from the summer school. Pre-k son did not want to go to school, but after the EL teachers helped him. He is doing well and interested. For my 2nd grade daughter, that a parent can get help from school at home. At the beginning, I did not know what to ask. Now I want to help my child at home. How can I help my child at home? o Answer: I think that is a great question and one that all moms

and dads have. A quick answer, reading is really important. When your child brings home books, reading in English and home language as well. It doesn’t matter if you can speak English or not in order to help your child. It is about the questions that you ask your child. What are you reading? What is the story about? How do you know it is about this? Tell me some details. What are the characters doing? Keep asking questions and go deeper and deeper with the questions. When you come across a problem that they don’t know and you don’t know, help your child advocate with the teacher. You are always welcome to our schools and we would be happy to translate for that


Participate with parents and teachers-more involved

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Dr. G- what kind of things would you like to have? What would be helpful for you to help your child?

Parent- more meetings and conferences

We would like our child to receive more books at home to help them

Can the students get together so the students can teach each other?

Kevin-We have some after school clubs. Is there something different that you would like?

Student is at Cane Ridge HS

Kevin- we are going to improve. We have a lot to do. We want to make sure that your children have the best possible education that they can receive.

Child is having a hard time in Science and Math. Can we have a teacher in science and math too?

Someone to go to if they need help. What can they do to get that help?

Kevin-our children are doing well in EL services, but are lost in other classes. Where can they get help? It is the responsibility of every child to make sure that your child has access to the content. Some teachers have a good understanding of ELs in their classroom and others do not. The goal of our office is to bridge that gap so they can help all students. If your child is struggling, you need to go to the teacher. You can always call us if you want us at the meeting as well.


There were no responses to this question.

OTHER REMARKS:

No comments


(After the meeting, please carefully review the responses you got to the polling questions. Assess if there

were any differences in how attendees responded vs. how you expected them to respond. You can also

include any remarks you heard during the sessions that address these differences in expectations here in

this section. Please write-up this section in bulleted form.)

Parent Session:

The questions were translated in 9 languages. The languages translated on posters were Spanish,

Kurdish, Swahili, Arabic, Somali, and Vietnamese while Karen, Burmese and Nepali were printed on

hand-outs. The majority of our families were Burmese speakers. We had 1 Spanish speaking family, 1

Vietnamese family and 2 Somali families.

We gave the families time to mark their responses, but we got limited responses. In hindsight, it would be

better to print the surveys in different languages and have the families return them before they leave. We

hoped that more families would have responded.

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What is the most important question to ask at parent teacher conferences?

We had 2 responses indicating that parents want to know their child’s language level and how to use

assessments to support language growth. Both answers were Vietnamese speakers. We expected the

parents to ask about their child’s level in comparison to others and they went deeper in concerning how

assessments support their child’s learning. This does indicate that parents want more meaningful

conversations around their child’s assessments and the how information is used.

How do you connect language learning activities to school and home environments?

We had 5 responses on having their child read and write about what they are learning at school, and 3

responses on making learning at home by playing educational games. This shows that families are

working with their students at home and looking for technological ways to practice the learning.

In what ways would you like to learn more about family engagement opportunities?

We had one response for learning more through the website. Some families are busy and want to be

involved and access information other than traditional means of providing information.

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