CHUFSD Board of Education Work Session - November 21, 2024

one action good evening everyone I would like to call to order the November 21st 2024 work session of the cro environment Union fre School District Board of Education item 1 point two approval of the agenda be it resoled the Board of Education hereby approves the agenda as presented so second oh please on the question all in favor opposed obain motion carries item 2.1 work session is our work session on math and science curriculum thank you Anna good evening everybody we have some fantastic content but I did want to say just briefly before we start congratulations to Isabelle and the entire cast of High School Musical on a phenomenal performance as I just wanted to thank so much our tiger faculty and administrators who are here tonight of course but also for all of your work and such an important topic and I'm happy now to turn it over to John to kick us off thank you so much Steve it's an honor to be here today discuss our plans for enhancing two Core Curriculum areas Science and Mathematics as Steve said we put together a dedicated team of Educators to walk through our planned improvements and explain how they're going to directly benefit our students and to this team I also just want to say thank you we really appreciate you taking the time to be here tonight your departments have been doing a fantastic job keeping up with all of the changes that are happening in education and your commitment to reflection to Improvement is essential in preparing all of our kids for future success so thank you for that so let's begin tonight we're going to first dive into the exciting advancements plan for our secondary Science Program following that we'll explore the future of mathematics education at both the middle school and high school levels our team from both PBC and the high school are eager to share the details of these transformative changes when we think about making changes we always make sure that they fit with our District's core values as laid out in our vision map and with the state's expectations for Education we're really proud recently to recognize how the blue ribbons commission's recommendations match up with our District's plant there is an alignment so back there is an alignment between our vision and the state's plans for the future of Education and croen Harmon as we know is at the Leading Edge of that change in the same way the New York State's science standards align perfectly with our big picture vision for what school can be sometimes probably gone by since this board has had a real opportunity to think about how the new science standards impact our curriculum decisions so I'd like to begin by giving a brief refresher the New York State science learning standards often refer to us acronym loving Educators as nissus are based on the Next Generation science standards which was a nationwide framework developed by 26 States in collaboration with experts from the national research Council the National Science Teachers Association the American Association for the advancement of Science and these standards have been guiding science instruction for many years and three-dimensional learning is key to understanding modern Science Education as depicted in the visual to the right it requires a balanced approach of disciplinary core ideas science and engineering practices and cross-cutting Concepts and only by integrating these three dimensions can we effectively prepare students for higher education careers and responsible citizenship in a technology driven world when we take a look at the First Dimension the disciplinary core ideas it's basically what we used to call science it's the stuff we learn the content and a long time ago if we memorized this stuff we did well in science now these content areas life science Earth and space science physical science and engineering and Technology are the backdrop of a new way of learning called phenomena based learning is all about using real world events or problems to spark learning instead of just memorizing facts students investigate and explain these real world things whether in biology or chemistry or astronomy to help them really understand the science behind them an exploring phenomena produces a strong intellectual and emotional reaction in Learners especially at the middle school level as we keep thinking about what we want for our middle school science students we really believe that these kids should be able to explore and revisit the Big Ideas in science all four years of Middle School how can we help these kids develop and follow their passions if we only introduce a topic once and never come back to it for example last year I worked with fourth graders who were Amazed by the solar eclipse a breathtaking real world phenomenon and I'm sure that sparked a lot of interest in Earth and space science for many of them these kids would really benefit actually deserve having a science curriculum that keeps building on that Curiosity and interest every single year of the middle school the next dimension in 3D learning is science and engineering practices K12 science is all about teaching and building on these eight ways that scientists think and work this is how real scientists figure things out they ask questions that can be tested they build models to understanding complex things they design experiments collect data and analyze results they use math and computers to make sense of data they explain science ideas design solutions to problems they use evidence to back up their ideas and evaluate the ideas of others they find information check its reliability and share their findings and our world today this is science these are the skills that students need to be successful in science and Beyond and if you think about what these skills help our students to become it's exactly what croen Harmon has always valued real world problem solving critical thinking and Innovation collaboration and communication these skills spark a love of learning and curiosity they help students to truly become lifelong Learners and the last part of 3D learning is called crosscutting Concepts these concepts are super important because they help us connect different ideas and science they help us to see the big picture they help us to understand complex systems they help us to appreciate the interconnected interconnectedness of the world and they use what we learn to solve real world problem solving and crosscutting concepts are not just applicable to The Sciences they are the overarching ideas that apply across multiple disciplines they provide a unifying framework for learning helping students see connections between different subject areas cross cutting Concepts often require collaboration between different disciplines requiring that students bring together information from different subjects and consider how they work together with this understanding of three-dimensional learning we decided last year to reflect on our current state of science instruction to help us recognize on how to best strengthen the scope and sequence of our middle school science curriculum we conducted a unit analysis last winter every science standard was placed on an individual slip of paper and the slip were colorcoded so that each disciplinary core ID had its own color sixth seventh and eth grade science teachers put these papers on a timeline to see when we teach each standard during the year this helped us find gaps in our teaching and see how our students learn science throughout their time at PVC although you might not be able to see the minute details on this Slide the overall impact of the analysis is clearly visible in these three years of PVC exposure to the physical Sciences the pinkish purple color is minimal Earth and space Sciences the orange are heavily covered in sixth grade and never Revisited the latter half of seventh grade science curriculum is dedicated to building foundational life science knowledge for the purpose of building Readiness for an eighth grade region course this represents that 38% of middle school science instruction from grades 5ifth through 8 are devoted to Preparing students for one Region's exam since last winter the middle school science team has undergone an impressive amount of discussion and work to consider what curriculum revision these data should inform and here to take you through their thinking is M Gallagher and Michael plot no thank you for having us tonight we're excited at the middle school because over the last couple years we worked to better align the middle school science standards with the outdated 1996 standards and now we feel like we have a pretty good grasp on where we're headed fifth grade is working with a program called Mystery Science which is widely accepted and aligns directly with New York State learning standards and the sixth seventh and eighth grade is working now to align their curriculums to make sure that we cover the entire spectrum of standards in the Middle School while also engaging students in real world phenomena based learning so as mentioned before I I won't really go over every one of these but it will come up in the demo we do these are the cross cutting Concepts and we really want students to see these words and make these connections throughout Middle School constantly being referenced in every lesson every subject and we're even speaking with social studies about using this language in class there as well next slide these are the science science and engineering practices essentially these are the skills the tools that students need to be successful in science and the goal again is to constantly revisit these throughout the year different demonstrations projects lessons and one specifically I'm going to show for you in a second so these are pretty essential and we kind of tell the students it's exactly the same skills your parents and every citizen needs when they go into the real world to be successful no matter what you do so one of the one of the chief differentiating factors between this and the approach that we were adhering to Prior is this puts greater emphasis on on skills over content obviously content is still important but as John said I know a lot of our experiences in the science setting in school was about us memorizing certain terms and understanding those this is about students practicing those Concepts practicing investigation and allowing science to be more inquiry based around the phenomenon as Noah has said we also see that this is possesses various connections to other subjects allowing itself to be more easily LED itself to transdisciplinary interdisciplinary learning and I think that's also important but basically which class would you rather be in one in which you're encouraged to ask questions experiment build your own models or one where you're asked to remember remember many dozens of terms and that's where we are that's what what we're redesigning of course we want students to know lots of terms lots of academic vocabulary but all of that seems pale in comparison to having students being able to do and behave and find success like a scientist next slide please oh can I just do the demonstration do you mind sure do the okay so just to take you through a very simple exercise traditionally it has been pretty common practice to give students the problem or question and from that they develop an investigatory plan or experimental design so to do a really quick demonstration I just want to show you one way in which our teaching has kind of changed over time so if you wouldn't mind passing this down superintendent in charge of our curriculum feel free to engage in a little exercise of them this is just a really quick demonstration in how we teach students to wonder and question ideally this slide had different animations and different sections of it came up at different times but I'll do it the same way so I'm just going to conduct a really simple demonstration and it's going to prompt wondering we said that student wondering is amazing but not all student questions are amazing like asking if you can go to the bathroom when I say out of your notebook so I think a lot of students have been told their whole life every there's no such thing as a bad question I tell them that is like a nice way it's not true so we try to find some of these questions but also allow them to ask questions about the actual fundamental concepts they're observing so I'm just going to perform a really simp simple demonstration and I want you to write down any question that comes to mind right away you can put those on that little or you can ask them as need B so does anyone mind thinking about the questions that come to mind immediately the first thing we traditionally emphasize is students wonder the big questions these are ones that are page longs to explain they typically start with why or how anyone have one of those questions that popped into their mind when watching why did one die and one B great question why did the ball in your right hand towards you interesting so these questions are excellent and they're wonderful hook but often times they can't really be tested in science and they need to be broken down further next fin question I'm sure came to mind these are more specific and they're about Gathering little bits of evidence that help us understand the system these questions typically start with is are or what and they traditionally have a one-word answer or a number answer how tall is Mr Gallagher anyone have one of those questions after watching the demo these questions help understand the pieces of the components in the system what is are they the same weight great question I what might be the difference in their composition okay and the last what we push students to ask when they observe phenomena is questioning the system the causation and basically the relationship between the components in the system these question these questions can be moved on to investigations they typically start with how would this change if what is the relationship between or what is the effect of blank on blank anyone want to take a step at these upper level questions think of these as questions I could then give you the equipment to go home and you can conduct your own trial these are difficult like what would happen if you didn't if the boss didn't start at the same height from the tape so relationship between the dropping height and the bouncing height great question what would happen if the material that they fell on was harder or softer great question repeating the same trial different circumstances so this has been fantastic we take a little more time there's a little self- discussion but this was just a quick demonstration to why we're not giving students the question anymore we want them to look at everything as a relationship a pattern and causation and just wonder and preferably Wonder towards something they can investigate through experimentation next side can I ask a question or can I make a comment no you can't ask question question it in perspective so like historically when I was in school we would have been like what you're going to do is you're going to drop these two balls and what we're looking for is like X and Y we're looking for like the height or the buoyancy or the content of like the things right so now you're starting with this and it's you're starting and you're adding another dimension is that essentially it yeah we feel it allows the students to pay more ownership because they're the ones that wondered that idea in the first place and now essentially we would give them the materials and say okay repeat the trial but change it under your conditions and then tell us what you notice what what relationship can you pull from that experiment I would also add another component that so much of Education that we had was about teachers texts ining knowledge to us and I'm not so sure it left us as good question creators and the questions of what guide the inquiry not only in the science classroom but in our lives and so having students develop the questions that they then therefore Drive exploration and Pursuits that's what's most important but then is it student directed like does the experiment go to whatever the student wants or is there still like a a base lesson that great question if you could flip to the very back of the packet that I gave you typically if we try to have students do another science and engineering practice is planning and conducting scientific investigations so with this what I would send the students home to plan out and this is aligned with the investigations they experience they have to be able to elaborate and describe how they would investigate this isolating variables showing constants and even planning out a relevant data table to collect data so for an example a follow-up activity to this would be having students write that systems question what is the relationship between the drop height and the bounce height and show me how you would test it then at that point we could maybe strategize and figure out how some students could test that While others could test this I only have one set but I this is an example of just one demo but the idea is they would each get a chance to then pursue that investigation and then report back on the relationship I guess my my bigger question is with respect to like what and I hate to use this word but like what they should be learning right like you should be learning like all of the theorems in math or something like that is there is there that still in the lesson is that like this the backbone to the lesson for this particular lesson this is a skills lesson specifically on science and engineering it's a boot camp lesson I used the beginning of the semester to prompt the students to generate different questions then we go into more content specific standards and they use the same questions to look at phenomena we had a slide about bird migration and it was a GPS and it was beautiful it shows all these like birds moving on planet Earth and the changes in the the snow and the grass that would be an example of it then gets more content specific and students will ask investigatory questions using more content driven ideas this is more of a really just a skill in teaching students to ask good questions they haven't had this and they haven't been taught how to ask questions before so this is really just an introductory lesson into simply asking questions thank you questions that can be tested exactly with inter aits yeah thank you Noah John next slide so we just want to make the board aware of how the changes in science the Middle School were brought about so as starting next year living environment will not be offered in the eth grade so what we did is we got our science colleagues together and we redesigning in the process of the curriculum and five through eight so we've had for instance if you look we start on this timeline with the examination of the trends that John basically showed you and then we establish goals to plan the transition to say what are the most important things about science that we want to make sure that are in a new approach to this we began already modifying the units and diversifying science and saying where are these different concepts and these different genres or subdisciplines of Science and how do we make sure that children are exposed to a nice variety of scientific disciplines and then finally in September we will be ready to launch and so starting in the fifth grade sixth grade seventh grade e8th grade students will have a much more Diversified science experience at the middle school and one that is focused on investigation and the cross cutting skills and Concepts that you heard about thus far this season all right hi I'm Mrs Bernie or D Bernie I on science teacher at the high school so coming up to the high school now we've got everyone taking biolog a life science course a common experience so sorry we actually have a board question sorry yeah sorry I didn't realize we were done I guess I I do have I I have a couple of questions just about the the what what you both just talked about before we move on so I guess one of the things I'd like to understand is with with the the sort of this new framework or new improved framework starting next September are there any gaps or any consider I think to me this sort of makes sense about launching sort of like a new General view of Science and definitely when you're entering it as a fifth grader there's sort of like a sense of what the trajectory will be over the four years but let's say for for kids who are already sort of like partway through middle school or starting eighth grade where you know if this was this year they would be right they are taking environment this year so can you tell us a little bit about what the differences would be specifically for eighth grade students next year and then also just what what what this sort of change over means for kids who who are already in sixth and seventh grade rather than starting sort of from the beginning is there anything sort of tangible that you could pull out or just sort of just to give us a little context for it yeah I mean I think our fifth sixth and seventh grade teachers again have spent a lot of time over the years trying to transition science towards this end all right that that basically we've always been concerned about practice of of of skills and skills that are applicable but I think the difference is that now it's not going to be focused so much on just life sciences from mid seventh grade all the way through eth so I think that's an important piece that kids are going to be able to see how those skills and those cross cutting Concepts apply to areas in physics Sun Life Science of course we're not throwing at all out earth science space science and engineering and I think that gives us license to not only this year but in the Years to follow to really broaden our Horizons for our students on what they can experience in the science classroom as well as through other disciplines that are willing and able to partner with the science people so for instance with this approach obviously the Indie lab and the Indie teachers have a A Renewed sense of that their need and their role as well does that answer your question I think it I think it does I guess my followup would be I think because I'm just sort of I think I'm trying to understand a little bit better but I think there'll be time to sort of see this is sort of like as it comes together for for parents and families who want to sort of understand what is changing sort of concretely there will still of course as there always have been be like Curriculum maps and things like that that that people can look at if they have questions about this speak just to answer that more directly yeah not necessarily so much that what students are being taught is Shifting but rather the lens through which they're being taught and the way through which they're engaging in the content is changing yeah we didn't traditionally teach through things like cross cutting Concepts right or I mean science engineering practices have always been there but they weren't the Center focus of teaching science rather memorization than being able to fill in diagrams so now we are shipping things slightly but you'll see a lot of topics remain where they are in certain grade levels it's more about the way we're assessing students we feel it's more cognitively engaging through demonstrations through phenomena they watch and alog together just teaching through crossfitting Concepts and Engineering practices we feel gives the students just a better grasp of the world around them the content isn't shifting dramatically from I mean it is a little bit we' worked recently on that but I would say 60 to 70% of the content in each grade will remain taught in that grade it's the way through which it's being taught and assessed yeah I know I think that sounds great I think for me the what I was most excited here was this idea of the goal being that students should find success like a scientist because it's like that you know that as an entry point of to science in general feels very exciting so again not that this hasn't been there all along but sort of to articulate it in a different way I feel like is that feels really promising and cool and I also want to say like just just even this example of looking at how you carry out an investigation another thing that's really standing out for me is exactly what you're talking about which is you can apply these same modes of thinking to any subject area or really anything that you study ever so it it feels it does feel very exciting to me so thank you I was so sorry to interrupt your yeah I'm sorry Start thank you so much for being here we're so interested in what you were saying all right just to go next SL okay so ninth grade science experience for all is going to be a biology life science students still need three credits of science to Gra graduate so they would get one life science in that ninth grade experience after that it's sort of a little bit more open we've got I we kind of put our courses the high school there's some new ones there's one new one you're going to see there that's coming so in the life science end we have biology that ninth grade biology class we still have our St AP biology we still have EP environmental science conservation Civics is our new course coming in it's interdisciplinary with social studies animal physiology is still there it's been of course we've had for many years bioethics is new this year between science and English and then we still have forensics and psychology that can be taken as an elective or done as a Core Credit typically we've had students who will do those as their Core Credit so forensics is a half year and then they take site the other half and then they get one full year of science credit or we have many students that will double and triple up in the years the physical science side is Earth and space science so you'll see that Earth Science changes next year to Earth and space so so much much more emphasis on space and it's now in the title while like I've talked to students and like yeah there's a lot of astronomy and Earth Science they're like really I'm like yeah yes like some down kind of highlights in the title chemistry AP Chemistry physics options which we've been having again environmental science is on the other side AP Physics C and then again the electives you can see at the bottom the electives are done again and then science research which starts stop more year and continues to see to senior year if the student chooses to is the science elective that one is not for Core Credit so in the high school we've been making like small changes to all of our courses as these standards have been coming in but we are putting a lot more emphasis on work coming up especially with that biology life science class and we're looking to to do some modifications to our chemistry class as well and then future stem engineering courses is kind of to be determined right now we we feel the need to continue on what the middle school is doing in terms of the Indie lab and some of those like experiences up until the high school we are just working lot to work on up here I'm not sure the next slide sorry can I ask a quick question one of our board members who isn't here had sent a question question regarding biochemistry bio okay the question directly was regarding pursuit of careers and life sciences and their need for chemistry and physics is there a plan for that is that I mean I mean you have students that will double double up now they'll double up yeah biology and then you can chemistry the following year physics the following year yeah just double science yeah I mean yeah you have students to all all fun as long as it fits their schedule they they're welcome to do it and part of our work for the future stem and Engineering courses So Jamie had mentioned bringing up some of the indiab conexs but we're also researching what's out there in the world of higher education and what the Virginia Industries are as we develop whatever that next set of courses are so for example if biochemistry is a specific need or a specific interest those are things that we can look at to we know that engineering an engineering pathway is definitely one of them but that's just one slice what's possible and we know that one of the questions that would probably be swi people's mind is wait if you're moving biology up to the high school does that reduce the science offerings in the high school and the answer is no there's a couple reasons for that one mentioned that we're relooking at how we approach chemistry in the high school so right now you have to take sort of what we call Regions chemistry but it will no longer be regions chemistry kind of like a basic chemistry before you take a chemistry and that's sort of just a choice sort of the way things have always been at the high school so that's something that we're going to look at and change so that you can have multiple Pathways in chemistry so you could take your sort of intro level chemistry if that's what you want to do but if you're a student who's really Advanced or just really interested in AP Chemistry you're going to be able to go right into AP Chemistry now as your first chemistry course no we don't anticipate that that's going to be hundreds of students who want to do that but we want to leave that as a pathway for those students who are really interested in that field so so that sort of so you still have this same opportunity to take the same number of advanced science courses if that's what you're particularly interested in and we're also see Earth and space science there as an option but we're as we as our eighth graders no longer have the living environment eighth grade and as that cohort moves up earth science is not going to be a nth a nth 10th grade course anymore we're going to be redesigning our Earth and space science to be more of like an 11th and 12th grade elective choice to add to that list of choices and this is also sort of part of a bigger we're talking about this as science changes math changes but for the high school this is also part of the bigger picture of creating a common experience for all of our ninth graders before they Branch out into specialization so they'll have this common experience in science they'll have a common experience in the humanities in English social studies in the Connections course and they'll also have a more aligned common experience in math that you'll hear about so most of their experience will be a lot more aligned than it is now thank you and then here's just the timeline of how we're approaching it because this is a lot of curriculum work in a pretty short amount of time so starting now we've already started obviously as you heard examining the new standards looking at teacher and student interest for future courses we are just about to start developing that new ninth grade course and we're starting that this January we've just identified a consultant that we are going to work with for pretty long period of time on all of this particular change so that's sort of step two then in step three which runs simultaneously we are incorporating the thinking of the graduation measures for what they're now calling New York inspires which we've known about is coming down the pipe but now we really have a we have a timeline and knowledge of when the regions are suns setting so that we can plan in really exciting manner we are not planning around regions based courses because now we know be free from thinking in that very limited way and then next step four which will be starting this spring is to start revamping that those chemistry forces and building that sort of intal level chemistry and that F Track the AP Chemistry course and then finally we'll be working on developing a fiveyear in the a fiveyear plan for our future stud courses thanks Jamie and lur it's good time to pause and see if there's any questions regarding basically everything we've been discussing in the world of science I have a question regarding this transition period because while while I think we're very Progressive and I think that we're very student focused in terms of curriculum development the world around us perhaps isn't right like colleges are still looking at AP credits or GPA and and different things so if you could just speak to how you're ensuring that our students are still presenting themselves and the content still allows them to present themselves in a way that the systems that exist right now need them to like there's still schools where AP credits and and all of this yeah absolutely right matters yeah that's very colleges I mean that's very intentional and all this so you'll notice that there's no loss of any of our AP and uper level courses here everything that we're talking about is all in addition to so there's no change to we still have our Sunni AP Bio AP environmental both AP Physics AP environmental and AP Chemistry so our students will still have all of that and then for those that want or need to do all of those but there are also students like we have students right now who double up and say AP Sunni bio and bioethics because they just love science and that's what they choose to do so they're we think that there will be students who continue to follow the traditional track of AP Sciences we think there will be students who will take a mixture of all the different opportunities and we think just like there are now there will be students who might take none of those because that's just not what their interest is but I think the the bottom line is that all of advanced options are still here and do we see that there's room as we look to develop that that year course plan and I imagine work with the the concent like the stem concentration and things like that to increase some of those like dual enrollment courses and AP courses that we maybe don't have the opport the ability to offer right now definitely I mean there's dual enrollment opportunities in things like of course is similar to conservation Civics for example like once we got that course up and learning that we can look at there are courses similar to bioethics too where we can add to that and we already have it and we already have it in physics and biology now so we're in a pretty decent place CH chemistry is a little bit harder to get college credit for sophomores in that particular field so and that's who mostly takes AP Chemistry I hope that answer the question I have one additional question with respect to the dual enrollment classes is there anything that's being done for students who can't afford those fees yes yes good question so there's actually through the colleges there's a tuition assist a reduced rate for students who might need that significantly reduced and then we also support students through our like a GRS when they need it as well so we don't have we have not had a situation where a student has not been able to pay for college credits that's amazing I have a couple questions too so one of the things that I'd like to understand a little bit better is this idea of I understand that AP courses aren't going away we're not reducing the number of them but I'm curious about this idea of for students who want to take Advanced science classes during their High School careers this idea of bypassing the sort of introductory based level course before going into the AP is that conventional yeah there are a number of schools that do and you'll notice that we don't have a baseline requirement for any of our other AP Sciences typically it's a choice that's made historically by a teacher who's been at a school for a long time and things just stay the way they are so it's not atypical to have a FastTrack to APK we just have not had it before so the consultant we were working with for example she decades ago was the pioneer of that at Harrison High School so it's it's not atypical we just haven't done yet okay and then in terms of this idea also of of doubling up how realistic is that right now even thinking about the fact that it's a smaller School District we're not offering multiple sections of some of these classes of course just because of the size of our student population what percentage of of students right now are doubling up on Sciences for example I don't have the exact number but I could definitely yeah I think that would be helpful to understand my last question is just about the the this idea of also of like common experiences so sort of from a pedagogical point of view is there sort of like a rationale for that specifically for for having all ninth grade students take sort of like the same course I think the the common experience is more about kind of alignment to our vision map than a specific a specific pedagogical reasoning so obviously part of a big part of our vision maap is making sure that all of our students get access to interdisciplinary courses so for example with our nth graders all taking in starting next year all taking the Connections course that all have a core foundational interdisciplinary experience we're also think we've spent a lot of time with our Middle School colleagues a few years ago we did some interv visitations looking at kind of the really Stark transition from that can happen between middle school and high school where you're in a really successful team model where you have this sort of cohort feel and then all of a sudden you enter the tracked world the high school and it's a very different experience there's also a Developmental and social emotional reasoning behind some of this so we'll have sort of it won't be a teaming model but it will be sort of a a step in between a teaming model in PVC and complete specialization Choose Your Own Adventure in high school which is important in high school still have just one year down the road right so I think what you're saying is it's sort of like that same idea of when you come from like Elementary School to middle school when you're in fifth grade you're still with like your core group for all those core classes while you get used to being in that environment and that's sort of the thing in here is that you have that practice of like I'm in a different environment I'm a really big big kid now right that sort of thing and you have you still have this huge amount of choice but one of the things particularly that you hear when we get to the math section is you're making some pretty significant choices when you're very young right now right that really determine your trajectory and what courses you have access to and what choices you have and that we don't as you'll hear we don't want to perpetuate any longer so now you get to high school you get another chance to explore all different things and then everyone gets this chance to go as high up the track as they want to or not rather than not being sort of determined you know when you're 11 or 12 years old that makes sense thank you I just have one additional question so I know that you in the past of represented that you working with colleges and and you're getting feedback and input regarding these changes we're making to our curriculum could you just share a little bit about that with specifically with respect to these science and math changes I mean the math in you'll hear to the math in particular take like fun a math presentation but from a college perspective one of the things that you're going to hear is that all of our students will have the ability to get to the highest level of math in the high school which is very far from the case right now doesn't mean they have to but they can so that's a huge added benefit from a college perspective but from a college perspective increasing our course offerings is always a benefit we hear that right so we're a small school with many course offerings that's a value ad where students can tell the story of what they're choosing and why not sure how much more I'm not sure if that answers your question it does but we have we have good ongoing relationships with our College reps and anytime we're making these choices we speak to them connect with them by phone email and their compter and we get really positive feedback from them I think that just reassures the community think that you're like also thinking of the end result on the on the on on the end the college end of that and that's realistic and we would never do something to harm our students chances of anything we what we're doing we're VI to by colleges is actually helping to differentiate our students and that's something you hear over and over again in the college process how do you differentiate yourself how do you differentiate yourself and what we hear is differentiating yourself isn't taking 11 AP classes because many students do that right many students across Westchester County generally all regional admissions in colleges which a lot of people also don't always realize you're typically compared to others in your region right so if you think about what you see in other high schools in Westchester you see very similar course offerings kids who take those types of courses so things like interdisciplinary courses academic concentration these things that we're building in are ways that our students can differentiate themselves it's not the only reason but it's certainly a benefit especially in a small District yeah thank you you yes I just had a clarify question and then a follow question of what I think so every student in nth grade is going to take biology yes right so and I love the bridging between middle school and high school but what happens if a student comes in from a different district is there like a plan for that or they required to take the same stats we're actually just talking about yeah I mean typically now when we have a student that like that comes in without living environment every couple of years when we feel like we have enough kind fruit we offer living environment if a student comes in with living environment we usually just kind of look at their profile and what they have taken what they need and then try to fix figure out what the best placement for them usually to talk with u me and and the guidance counselors and with the teachers usually try to figure out we've had cases you before but and it's it's such a mind shift though because you're so used to knowing you need a region that particular Reon science to graduate from high school and that's no longer the case well it is for you for the students who are coming in and most likely not even for our current freshman so that need to take the biology while always want all of our freshmen to take that common experience if they come in as a 10th grader they don't need that unless they want that good question all right so we're about to switch over to secondary mathematics but I'd like to keep this slide up for a moment because as you hear the thinking of our team you you may interpret that a difference between our approaches to science and math as we're moving into the future so I'd like to just Begin by exploring two visual models so this one that we've been looking at should now be more a little more understandable because you recall all those colorful rectangles in the middle of the visual those are those core disciplines in science and they're being Amplified by all the science and engineering practices all the crust cutting Concepts and you see that there's a complexity there's a complexity and interconnectedness to how the brain starts to learn and think about science throughout the elementary school and middle school years what this visual depicts is the progression of learning required from kindergarten through seventh grade for student to have the foundational skills and Concepts to be successful in eth grade algebra now what I'm not saying is that science is more complex than math but Math and Science are very very different math education is fundamentally sequential this means that each Concepts builds upon the previous one form in the logical progression it's like building a house you can't build a second floor without a strong foundation not only does building a strong foundation and math help students understand more complex ideas later but it also makes it easier to identify and address gaps in a students math knowledge remediate those learning gaps and prepare students for future success uccess and part of the success we're discussing tonight is something we've been calling algebra for all Research indicates that offering algebra for all in eth grade can significantly increase students likelihood of taking advanced math courses in high school particularly for underrepresented groups like female students of color and English language Learners algebra develops critical thinking and problem solving skills that are valuable in various academic and real world context early success in algebra can boost a students confidence in their math and their overall abilities motivating them to take on more challenging courses in all academic areas and a strong foundation in algebra is essential for pursuing higher education as well as careers in stem and before passing on to Phil and Tracy at PVC I want to emphasize a current reality that Laura mentioned just a short while ago imagine seventh grader equ Harmon who need to decide what to take next year and the choices are eighth grade math or regions algebra and they decide on eth grade math maybe they they don't think that they're good at math maybe they just don't want to do the extra work but right now in cro and Harmon this decision has some big consequences it means that they can't take calculus means they can't get to Advanced physics in high school it means that they might be limiting their options for college the potential for studying engineering all because of a choice that they made when they were 12 years old this is the current reality and it's one that we want to immediately address Phil and Tracy your leadership and rethinking the progression of mathematic learning at PVC has been really really impressive and thanks for taking the board through this next part of the even so before I hand it over to them we're just going to talk about the timeline first on the front end inste to the back end so basically over the summer and going back into last year we had conversations about what it would take to help students find success in algebra in eth grade this led to a redesign of math in the eth grade and lending itself to this label algebra for all so that curriculum was developed this summer and then we took that and we kind of used it to do some backward plan plan when you're looking at the seventh grade sixth grade and fifth grade what are some of the things again these spiraling Concepts that we could use to ensure that students are stronger in math have more confidence by the time they reach to the eighth grade so what we started since the start of the school year is redesigning the 5 through eight curriculum with the entire math department we introduced the goals which we'll share with you in a bit and to look at the scope and sequence of things we also did a an analysis of the curriculum and made some other modifications and the last piece was that we convened math and SC Math teachers from the high school as well as sub teachers from the elementary school as well as our district colleagues to review our work with them in a critical friends protocol that I read about in detail in the board report this week so I won't waste all your time on that and then finally we will do a final analysis and overhaul of the curriculum and have it in a published form not just for our teachers but also for the public and then be ready to to launch in SE in September with the current seventh graders being our first group to not have to make the choice that John spoke about and one of the things I would like to say is there are kids now at PBC Middle School who could be in algebra but chose not to be there are kids in math 8 right now who don't think they're good enough to be an algeb and that's one of the things that we want to overcome through this move and what Phil and Tracy you're going to talk about is just some of the observations they have the research behind this and so forth so handing it off to you hi pH secondary math teacher at PV I want to start with the summer that Michael was just talking to us about we had worked with special colleagues and when we were creating this this this curriculum we saw that was very sequential and we were thinking instead of this rot memorization as we were just talking about even during the science program that we should have more practice that we should have more of these questions that that students not only ask the teacher but ask themselves and have almost like a dialogue so that they can come or arrive to their thinking their critical thinking skills so when we were discussing this during the summer we had two main themes and that was behaviors that promote learning which is a very big a piece as well as profiles of a graduate and so this slide has a lot of those buzzwords that profile of graduate and behaviors that promote learning a lot of you know what we want to see from our students but as we were making this curriculum we saw that we should be thinking more laterally instead of sequentially so in algebra for all it's the story of functions and usually traditionally we teach it so that it's linear functions exponential functions quadratic functions somewhere along that that linear scope and so we were discussing how it would be better for all or Equitable for all students we taught that all at the same time all functions at the same time so they can so we can you can put in these world real real world applications and they can collaborate they can discuss and so now the topics or the units of what we consider in that sequence would be are actually little topics or subtopics of each of those functions so they are able to identify each function through real world applications and apply applications and critical critically think laterally deductively and then throughout the course of the year because they've seen all the functions in the beginning of the year they've been having practice with each of the function throughout the year becomes less of memorization more of practice more of that deeper understanding if we can kind of think about Plum's taxonomy getting to a point where they're asking questions and they're synthesizing and and with problem based and Project based assessments we are going to accomplish an increas in confidence and the idea that not only will they learn individually but also collaboratively and also working towards that interdisplinary connection making those connections so just wanted to share with the board our goals in this all and these are goals that we came up with at the beginning of our work obviously we want to provide students with instruction that results in them developing skills skills that will help them participate successfully not only in algebra in the Middle School level but beyond that we also like I've already told you in the timeline we wanted to design and modify the curriculum and focus that on skill development we also wanted to take a good hard look at the spiraling of Concepts so that we're making sure that topics are covered but skills developed through and through the 5 through eight experience and that's also brings us to the crosscutting concepts that will allow students to develop a deeper understanding of overall math concepts and the foundational skills that they'll need and finally identify and provide students with supports we when we discuss this we understand that some of our students don't think they're good at math so we have designed in in our conversations identifi all kinds of supports that we're going to put in place 5 through 8 just one to mention is a course that runs over the summer prior to algebra and eighth grade that students can take advantage of we also been thinking about other things that are again course neutral but can have a massive impact on students and I'd be happy to include all those and maybe a board report if was to your liking and last but not least we want to also make sure that we don't miss opportunities even though this is a Region's class right now to engage in interdisciplinary learning when the opportunities present itself and I know some people might have the question well what if the New York State doesn't put that much emphasis on the regions and so forth and so on or whatever happens to the regions in the future I just think that makes this this much more powerful because will give our Educators the ability to do things that students want to do address weaknesses not feel any crunch of time as much as maybe they have in the past next slide please yeah so when we're thinking about our redesign of the curriculum we're concentrating always on the strands of mathematic proficiency so in the five strands we have multiple representations of mathematics that we want students to know like s equations tables words all representing a problem we are having students formulate problems represent those problems solve those problems we are looking for students to understand the usefulness and worthwhile of mathematics and to find some enjoyment in being those problem solvers and and see the beauty in mathematics to represent the real world we want them to see the logic and understand the logic of mathematics it's not just about numbers it's understanding like proofs logically and also just explaining their thinking and lastly being fluent so being able to play with their mathematics so seeing something like 98 plus 37 can be represented as 100 plus 35 and then move through their math more quickly that's what we're looking for another thing that we've talked about is the order of our units and in the redesign of the algebra for all course starting with statistics ICS that has a heavy concentration on the calculator use because if they get that formal understanding of how to use their ti84 calculator and the power of that calculator they'll be off to a better start for the whole year so we're going to put the statistics unit at the end of our seventh grade course because that's where the calculator is going to be taught at the beginning of the output for all course so speaking about some of the C of aspects that I brought up already you go to the next slide please thank you obviously we want to offer that pre-algebra summer cost we also have discussed and identified digital tools that we use and continue to use to help students Bill mentioned Project based assessments we also talked about the role of the teacher as the coach but not just stopping there obviously we would love to have some high school mentors that come down regularly and work with some of maybe are struggling students or students who need extra support and that's that now what you see on this slide is the x's and checks the checks are things that we've already done and the X's are things that we're working on so you can take a look at that so we'll have learning supports which is represented in column A is to the left and in column B we have the logistical supports how do we help kids access materials that will enhance the success rate for them and when I say success I'm not just talking that they could do Algebra but that we didn't do something that made them math adversive and quite the contrary that we did something in the 5 through eight experience that made them love math find the confidence that transcends math what I believe is I believe that if we could get kids who think they're not good at math to realize that they can be what other areas of their lives will they be willing to challenge and perceptions and Notions and assumptions will they be willing to challenge and eventually overcome and for me in Middle School it was math and for a lot of our kids it is math and so I'm really happy that this is the the the path that we're taking and that there will be no small class or quote unquote dumb class at PVC middle school and moment to me that feels like a really significant change to to to have our students not feel at the end of seventh grade that they're already being tracked in a way so I think that was I mean having had one student go through it is a source of anxiety to feel like you're being directed to one or the other or not even necessarily being able to pursue what you think you might be ready for I know you pointed to examples of people who sort of opt out of what they might be ready for but I think there are other kids who who also have that sort of fear of taking it on so this to me feels very exciting congratulations I'm sure it was a lot of hard work to sort of put it together one of the questions I have is just sort of to understand when you looked at sort of like reviewing scope and sequence for grades 5 through eight does it feel like it's a major overhaul or is it just sort of like tweaking things in that same sort of way of like because you talked about how it's there's a build of skills as in math in a different way than what we talked about for science did you feel like it was a major overhaul or is it just sort of like small tweaks to each grade just in terms of what you all have to do to get that together yeah I guess I'll I'll start M it's I wouldn't say it's just small tweaks but there is where we teach beyond the standards always right so like I'm already teaching irrational numbers when I talk about rational numbers in seventh grade so like there really wasn't much adjustment in that topic but other ones like slope I don't get into slope but we do do proportional relationships so we are looking for some shifts like maybe the three dimensional solids we don't have to get into as deeply because when they take the geometry course they're going to get into that deeply so there is some shifting there is some bigger moves like moving the units around so that does take more work but it's worthwhile that's the other thing is is I think our fifth and sixth grade teachers who aren't here this evening I think they always their aspirations were always to get kids as many kids at the algebra again like I told you with this year over 80% of the kids in algebra in the past having similar numbers and also having the success on the region exam that the kids have had whether would be 99% passing 100% passing 85% with Mastery and so forth and so on it wasn't that much of a massive shift what it was a good thing to take a look at the curriculum and I think that's the thing that we've all realized that after this year we're not we're not done we want to have those yearly or a couple times a year sitting down as a department saying okay what other changes need to be made and not only because changes need to be made but because the kids change too the coords change and so when you have kids coming up and you have a fifth grade group that shows really great number sense but it's lacking in maybe another foundational skill how are we going to respond to that and I think that's the piece that our teachers are really aware of and willing to do that they want to be responsive to the cohort's needs they also want to teach in a way that fun and engaging and they also want kids walking away with skills and and aing I mean you don't go on vacation just because to see something go there because you had a feeling that this was a great place great people to be with we want kids leaving math with a feeling of accomplishment of a feeling of certainty for their future and we want them to know about right triangles add also just addressing hostile gaps yeah I know that but from Seventh going into eth or going into alha we used to have things called M at your own debt and some did that very diligently maybe some did not either which way we allow a program to expose to them certain Concepts that they were supposed to that doesn't mean that they need to have them learned and not go over in the outro we still do that even now so those gaps are always filled even in the traditional sense so now that we're doing something where it's everybody out for all and we're all lock step as well as teachers and as a as a being together this and and kind of learning from each other learning our each of our curriculums as well even the fifth grade we're recognizing that those SCS can be absolutely shown in any way there's some things that Tracy's going to be doing I think you did 19 19 concepts of eighth grade math and we're going to make sure that the kids have the other Concepts some of those Concepts will be in GE as Trac said but those that we need for algebra they're we're going to have to review things that they're either really good at or they need some help before we actually learn the new algebra concept so it sounds like you have a good plan for the kids in seventh grade this year so that they're going to even though this is just this is all sounding a little bit new it's really not new because you did talk to parents about this previously so seventh grade parents know that there's an expectation of change and I think also it's it's just great to hear that there's thinking about how to sort of communicate this especially for that 20% of right it's like approximately 20% of kids that perhaps in the past weren't necessarily includ included in that so so there there's a there's a plan sort of to make sure that they are going to be in the same place as their peers so that everyone's ready to be there and of course they'll have supports in eth grade algebra if they need it right yeah look I think we also have to continue to communicate with parents and we're going to order t-shirts and say AFA algebra fall and we're GNA start the chance I'm in I'm in favor of it thank you thank you for answering all the questions sounds really good I have one followup question to all all of the conversations what do doing to track whether this is successful right like we're making big changes so how are we going to are we what what point what are the plans to evaluate it to look at it any new plan kind of needs to be Revisited I think is there a plan for that to track the success the try the success sure I mean look we know what the numbers are now kids that find success in Algebra I also think that we have to go beyond that and we have to have maybe some exit information from students and families to see what their take was what were the hardships what were the what were the glows and and go from there I mean obviously we have assessment data that goes beyond the regions whether it be the the ren star or the teacher created assessments and also we have other measures that are really important like for instance our academic intervention services and Mathematics and how how are those applied early on in a child's Middle School experience to ensure that they get to take advantage of this as much as possible so I think that is a couple different metrics that we could use to ensure the Su the success I also think there's another piece to this that's really important which is that we're making a really serious statement to students that they need to take their lives and their roles in this seriously as well and I think that sometimes our biggest enemy is apathy in this society and this is a direct response to saying to students this is important this is your life the daily decisions you make have an impact on the rest of your life and this is one of those opportunities for you but I don't think we're done in that regard either so I think we still have some more work to do there again I want to stay away from another big traditional test to say is but to put the pieces together the data pieces together on student performance and also the qualitative pieces of data like how was your experience in this class what made it good what made it bad what could we do differently I think that's going to be important does that answer your question it does thank you what about the science changes at the high school I start I think our students just general success in their post-secondary planning is one big piece of evidence consistently been pretty success very successful with here and plan to continue with that but also I that anecdotal experience of our students like for those of us that got to visit bioethics today I think you could palpably feel what student engagement and interest looks like and sort of a just a day-to-day class and it's probably just as important if not more important than any sort of more traditional data so one of those pieces would do we do focus groups with students get student feedback get counselor feedback College feedback think yeah I think we we still have teacher created assessments you know that align between if there's two or three teacher teaching a course L we kind of do now in our regions courses I think just kind of tell I mean engagement piece is a big part of high school student enrollment is also a really good metric for us of where students are engaged passionate and interest and interested what really drives our schedule is what students want to take we don't with the exception of the few required courses that kids have to take most of our courses are choices so you see it pretty clearly when courses run and don't run what kids want to take and what they value and just to say like I I I teach EP environmental science and this is my second year doing it Project based and so my enrollment has gone so I've been doing it for three years my second time doing a project base and my enrollment has in increased students are very interested in parent feedback at parent teacher conferences where that parents were really excited that I have been doing this as Project based and it like the the projects like we're currently in our farming project which is is to tell you about her farming project in in my class but and then we had a biodiversity project was the first one where the students had to come up of the proposal and how to increase biodiversity around the school campus so it's very much like solving a problem having different metrics metrics and they d drove in and was looking at different crops for their Farms I mean it was kind of very interesting and and I like it because every every group is different and and every time we I do this it's different and I think the students really like that as well so looking at our biology of course we're ALS looking at being more like a field B having some more field-based experiences and more Project based with that as well other like minor data but like my first year here we had one section of AP biology now we have three so the student interest and engagement tells us what we need to do exes it hard on our teachers we have to learn new courses all the time and get prepared for it but obviously if we're willing to do that two pretty big sections of a college physics too so our students sort of vote with their course registration hope they're interested we've referenced a couple times just the communication to parents and how that's getting out and I was wondering I mean besides the parent teacher conferences are there other way we had a whole whole meeting at the end of last year for our s for our sixth grade parents going into seventh grade right it was all about this and then followed up with written communication now I think we should have another such meeting and we've also discussed some other you call asynchronous opportunities create a video something that kind of outlines everything I was going to say I think the video would be a really good I know I want to say it in front of Mr Cavalier asked for too many videos already this year so but yes I think that would be a really a really good thing but the other thing is you know when we think about assessment and gauging success I I know there's going to be some someone that says what if my kid doesn't do well and that is always a possibility we have kids who have all different types of dispositions their effort level can Wayne and flow e and flow but let's be really honest if you're going to stumble somewhere what's a safer place to stumble then it PV seem soul and to understand what that stumbling and what that setback means to you then and not when you're 18 or later in life I think that's a very valuable lesson also so that's why we're really happy to be doing this I think the piggy back off of like you said when you stumble it doesn't always have to mean that you go into a lower level class and that's something that we're trying to really and you'll hear in the high school version of these changes that we're really trying to culturally push against do it in many other content are is and math is one of the last one standing where that hasn't been happening and so I think pushing that envelope is really important and also in terms of communication we already we we took over Gregs life for a little while with video we're working on a sort of digital course catalog that parents will have access to also we already have a written course catalog but our students learn about courses through what we used to call round robin here which was like an in-person event where they learn from their teachers about courses so this year for the first time we're trying a digital version where there'll be video intros and overviews of all the options that then parents they'll watch them here with us but then parents will also be able to watch them with their kids at home that'll help to go I just want to say thank you for EXC right get move on to secondary mathematics basically so we were really excited to hear about this algebra for all in the e8th grade and we knew that our current scope in sequence might not be the best to support those students and really align with our mission and vision so this first slide shows what our current scope and sequence looks like so if you picture it's kind of like looking at four typical students right so if a student chooses not to take Algebra 1 as an eighth grader they come in as either taking pre-algebra or Algebra 1 and again this is a typical sequence not all students do this but you can see where they end up in 12th grade if they stick with our core courses right prealgebra will end in Algebra 2 algebra one will end in trigonometry for those that 80% who do take Algebra 1 as an eighth grader you'll come in taking an a geometry course and there's still two Pathways so you can either end up in calculus or pre-calculus so our higher level math courses so just note that this is not all students choose to take the core classes we do offer personal finance and AP Statistics statistics as a math credit along with other electives but we want to show you what it looks like now and to show you how limiting it could be if you know if you're 12 years old and you really don't even know what engineering is and all of a sudden you get to 10th grade and it Sparks an interest you're kind of limited in you really need to get to a pre-calculus or calculus to be you know where other students are to are pursuing engineering just as an example so we want to take away that limited access so just to show you what we currently offer in terms of electives on the next slide right so we offer computer science AP Computer Science those count as a general elective and then we have personal finance and statistics and AP Statistics which some students May opt not to take one of those core courses that you saw and they'll use that as their math credit with the new scope and sequence that we're proposing that you're going to see we're hopeful that it's going to open opportunities for students not only to reach Calculus if they want to but also offer more electives to meet their needs and their interests so we just spit B some ideas here nothing's definitive yet but this is where we started with maybe a discreet math or our logic course linear algebra and a second AP Computer Science board okay all right so this is our proposed amendments to our existing curriculum so as you can see we have two Pathways where students can choose where they would like to go so we have the applied pathway and theoretical Pathways of the courses that we wish to offer so a little bit about the applied pathway right because we're moving for algebra for all and kids May stumble right as much as we're trying to support as much as we're trying to help the biggest elephant in the room with the math department is talking about these shifts is what about the lower students right what about the students that may fall short and they still entering High School expected to perform on a high level so right there we have the analytic geometry course to help those students so like sorry I'm a little freaking out right now right thank you so those students may take some more time to mature and so the analytic geometry course is designed to help those students grub now in the curriculum of yesterday or our current rendition those students are hamping by their options right with this pathway we allow students to mature at their own rate while giving them a chance to advance at their own wish or say for example a student comes in on a theoretical pathway and they're taking the conceptual geometry course but say their sophomore year they want to take more challenging science courses and they don't want to have the demand of having a challenging science course a challenging Math course so they have a chance chance to laterally move without losing Tempo on getting to those advanced mathematics courses another thing that I was always critical about other math curriculums in the schools I worked in is that math electives to me always felt like a I don't say a Dumping Ground of students but like courses like personal finance and stuff is usually viewed as getting a third or fourth math credit get getting out of the way having a senior oh I don't know what to take so I going take personal finance fill it out right with this rendition of things we're starting to introduce more math electives younger right when they're sophomore just just encouraging students to take more and more math electives that make Peak their interest okay and another thing that our current sh our ship will help with is offering more advanced math courses AP calculus and AP Statistics have always been this Holy Grail in high school mathematics but it's not the only high-end mathematics courses that exist so by introducing things like linear algebra which other schools around the area are starting to introduce my Scaro has a course in linear algebra and other schools have courses in linear algebra and discret Mathematics we can expose students to high level mathematics at a younger age that isn't just about getting a solution but it's about understanding the ideas and the connectedness that these courses provide next SL there we go yeah so this our proposed scope and SE sequence will align with that goal of having a similar experience for incoming students where now we're all in some sort of geometry course and it eliminates that invert tracking that happens because of the decision they made as a seventh grader right and then it's what Derek was saying that we're going to increase this horizontal mobility one of the barriers in our current scoping sequence is our albra 2 trigonometry course so here you're going to take an Algebra 2 course that's not going to limit you to get to pre-calculus and that's one of the issues we see pretty often at the high school and again it gives everyone an opportunity to reach Calculus if that's something they want to do regardless of what courses they choose to take along the way you actually just go back to the Chart just for the horizontal Mobility pie just to make it really concrete so if you take analytic geometry in nth grade you can pick anything from the 10th grade brow whether it's in the applied pathway or theoretical pathway and move back and forth and that's what allows all the students to get to the to the highest level if that's where they want to go and I think I mean you guys are talking about it very humbly but that's not something that I think exists in any other high school that we've seen to allow that that level of flexibility to do that and to ensure that the kids are prepared at each movement level so I just wanted to give our team props for that very exciting and then just going back to our timeline very similar to the science timeline we're just taking a measured approach over the time that we have to develop each of these new courses in a thoughtful way so we've obviously worked on and are still continuing to refine our new trajectory the next step is to create and revise those two geometry pathway courses and then continue to revise our pre-calculus course step four is some really big work around Algebra 2 say you heard that sort of one of the biggest most intense courses in our current math curriculum and really parsing at what that looks like and then step five is sort of looking at those other potential advanced math opportunities for our students that's you T I do you have a question regarding what our guidance department is doing to prepare in both schools to inform our students regarding all of these changes because it sounds like it's a lot of choice and different options and can at every level right like to the extent that students were trct at a certain point the absence of that creates the need for yearly reassessment and repositioning or evaluating like where students are with respect to the different courses they've taken what they want to do which is now a wonderful option that they will have so that's my question yeah and and for the Middle School response to that would be that obviously we wouldn't want to put this solely on the backs of our counselors right this is about a team approach that includes the teachers includes the school administration for the grades that this is most applicable the first day of school we basically told kids in now welcome back assemblies this is what we're working towards this is what you can expect but aside from that obviously the counselors play a big role and it's not just speaking with the kids and having those meetings with individual students or small groups it's also at the mtss meetings and at risk meetings that we're keeping an eye on kids and looking at the implications of that on their academics and from the high school perspective a lot of the Court's recommendation process all really starts with individual conversations with teachers and students and then our all of our students have an individual meeting with their counselor where the counselor has the teachers course recommendations and that's where they talk through okay you you think this is where you are this is what your teacher recommends based on your interests what are your college interests where are you at now and they triangulate all that data but one of the things we've been really excited about in this process is when you have fewer total sort of levels or Tracks Of course choices if I as a student say know in January I'm going to making my course request that I want to be in applied algebra to it's not as big of a deal to change in May or June or even September because you'll have so many more sections of the other courses so that's another kind of hidden added benefit to all of this too often right now because we're a small school there's only X number of sections of anything to make that kind of level change can blow up your entire schedule make you have to choose between your language class and something else and those are really hard choices for kids and we'll have kids who might just completely drop a math class instead of changing a level right now because they don't want to give up Mandarin or something else that's a Singleton so while we'll still have to have students make a selection at a certain point there's going to be a lot more flexibility to change and adapt in this process too how are we able to sort of expand into these applied this range of courses like with our current Staffing is it going to be that teachers are going to have to be learning new sort of ways of teaching the same material different approaches or like what's the plan for that yeah there's a lot of so to speak about at least the algebra 2 trigonometry course we're probably one of the only schools that still offer Algebra 2 Tri Algebra 2 trigonometry so we're kind of like we took the summer to re look at our pre-calculus course and we kind of reexamined our curriculum to see where are their overlaps because to be honest like the math doesn't really change itself it's just where it's located and how in depth you really go so it's just a matter of looking and scaling back and adding to these curriculums so no one really has to learn anything new right yeah and to pigy back off that when it comes to like the geometry course is you saw that you had an analytic geometry course and a conceptual geometry course the analytic geometry course would just be a revisiting our applied geometry course so that's already existing so just taking a chance to revisit that and revamp it to include a lot more algebra based problems because that's that the the design of that course is going to be catch the students who may have fallen short in Al for all may want to have a stronger foundation in mathematic May want something to be a little more tailored to their stress levels so that's already there and when it comes to the conceptual geometry course we already teach that that is our current region geometry course the kind of follow on my question in the like the the changes that we're making in both the the science and the math curriculum are really exciting for our right for the this this current group of cohort of seventh graders that are moving through and going to experience all these does do the realignments and the timing the timelines for these realignments open up some opportunities or some shifting for say the eighth graders and and up that are that are currently in this current old system I'll s they're definitely going to be possibilities at the high school particularly in science where we don't really have it's not so sequential in science so a lot of these opportunities will be open to those students anyway in math we're going to have a little bit of overlap time where so like if you're an eighth grader now who's not taking algebra right you're going to you're going to have an overlap period with the current seventh graders who are coming up so there will be a point where we might have a little bit of sort of mixed grade classes in that regard and where we're going have to still run some of our old our old courses to still allow those students to have courses that need their needs so we're going to be I think a little bit packed for about two years before things even out again and I don't mean to speak for the high school but I don't think is any such implication in science of someone because it's not trapped right yeah yeah it seemed like there was more flexibility math side of things ma like for the kids who are in like wops and the kids so like they're still following on that right so there'll be one more year of poops and then after this next year of poops then pops will phase out to make space for some of these other classes so and any other question questions about science I'll have Noah get back to CU he left her thanks for your time have been very very very busy and thank you we appreciate you all coming tonight to to thanks everybody that concludes our work session moving into item 3.1 of the agenda donations be it resolved that the Board of Education greatly accepts a donation of camera equipment from Jason title to support the pro envirment High School Camera Club thank you so much for your generous donation on behalf of the board and our students so moved second on a question all in favor I I opposed abstain motion carries item 3.2 donation recommended action be resol the Board of Education gratefully accepts a donation of $500 from Barbara Kinsey as a contribution to the leas of car scholarship at cro and Harmon High School thank you very much for your generous donation on behalf of the board so moved second common question all in favor I I opposed abstain motion carries item four is our consent agenda item 4.1 consent agenda approval recommended action be it resolved the Board of Education hereby approves all items on the consent agenda I'll take a moment for just give that a second look that then question all in favor I I opposed abstain motion carries that will bring us to our closing of our meeting 5.1 recommended action be resolved the Board of Education hereby adjourned the meeting at 911 p.m. second on the question all in favor I oppos abstain motion carries thank you everyone evening e