The Appleton Area School District Board of Education held a work session on 09/30/2021. One of the things during this work session was review the district score card for the 2020-21 school year and see where they met their goals and where they fell short.
This recap is focused on the reports and discussions regarding the District’s Pillar 1 goals. AASD’s aim with Pillar 1 is have an Inclusive & Engaging Culture To Support Teaching and Learning and to ensure a safe, healthy and welcoming school environment for ALL. Therefore, all of the measures and action steps in this part of the scorecard were focused on this aim.
The administrative team color coded the score card. Items highlighted in green were targets that they achieved and items highlighted in red/pink were targets they may have partially met but did not fully meet.
Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Polly Vanden Boogaard reviewed Pillar 1 scorecard items.
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AASD wanted to create an inclusive and engaging culture to support teaching and learning out of a belief that if students don’t feel safe and connected then achievement lags behind. Per Polly, “The intentionality of making sure that that safe, healthy, welcoming environment was first and foremost, was important to us.” In light of the pandemic, she stressed the importance of social emotional learning and the need to make sure students felt safe in all realms of the school. “I know achievement is critical and the work that we do, but so is building relationships and making sure that social emotional learning needs are met as well.”
- Measure 1: Increase the Staff Engagement Survey mean score: 3.81 (2019) to 3.71 (2021) (goal was 3.91% from 19-20 with no survey given in 2020.) – Not Met
They had wanted to move the staff engagement score up by 0.1% but instead it decreased by 0.1%. They didn’t even give the survey during 2020 due to the pandemic. - Measure 2: Deploy Panorama Staff and Student Surveys in all schools to determine baseline and add question sets specific to equity and inclusion. – Met
Per Polly, after piloting Panorama surveys in some of the district’s buildings, they wanted to deploy it across all schools and determine a baseline from which to measure future surveys. They also wanted to add a question set specifically about equity and inclusion. Future scorecards would follow up on this rollout and they also created goals as a result of the survey. - Measure 3: Increase the total number of students who miss 10 or fewer days of school from 73% (18-19) to 75% (20-21). *WISE Dash – 75.4%. – Met
They had no data for the 2019-20 school year due to the pandemic, so based their target on the 2018-19 school year. They are using the figures from the Department of Public Instruction’s WISEdash portal so that they consistently use data from the same source from year to year. Per WISEdash, 75.4% of students missed 10 or fewer days so that goal was met. [That didn’t seem like a particularly relevant measurement given that students spent at least half of the year fully virtual.] - Measure 4: Maintain the overall district out of school suspension (OSS) rate of 3.4% (19-20) during the 20-21 school year. – Met [but not necessarily due to district efforts]
They felt it was important to look at student discipline and how they were using out of school suspensions. Was the district using it correctly and was it resulting in changed behavior? They wanted to maintain the district overall out of school suspension rate of 3.49% from the 2019-20 school year during the 2020-21 school year. It actually dropped down to 0.8%, but she also noted that they were in-person for only part of the year which would have impacted their rates. - Measure 5: Reduce the district out of school suspensions (OSS) for Black/African American students from 21% (19-20) to 18% (20-21) of the total number of incidents. – Met [but not necessarily due to district efforts]
They wanted to have create a measure that spoke specifically to some of gaps they have noticed between demographic groups, and one of those gaps was the percentage of Black student who received Out of School Suspensions. During the 2019-20 school year they accounted for 21% of OSS. The goal was to reduce that percentage of 18%, a goal they did meet. [If I’ve done my math correctly, it looks like they only made up 13.4% of Out of School Suspensions during the 2020-21 school year (20 out of 149 total students suspended), but, again, the lack of in-person school for half the year probably had some influence on those numbers. We’ll have to see what they are next year.]
She then reviewed the action steps that the district had planned to take during the 2020-21 school year.
- Action Step 1: Departments and sites implementing rounding and scorecards with roll-out meetings to share staff engagement survey results and action steps (Rollout meetings not held as there was no survey 2020; meetings are scheduled for Fall 2021) – Not Met
“Rounding” is a Studer strategy for engaging with employees. The district did not perform any of these planned actions due to the District’s pandemic response and those planned rollout meetings were rescheduled for fall of 2021, and it sounded like they were in the process of conducting them.
- Action Step 2: Deploy the “pulse” survey for staff. – Met
Pulse surveys are another Studer strategy. - Action Step 3: Implement Panorama staff and student surveys at all sites and process to review data to supports students – Root Cause Analysis. – Met
They did implement Panorama surveys and have Panorama staff come in and show AASD how to use the results to drive action steps. - Action Step 4: Develop a systematic process for K-12 attendance, in – person and virtual, including letter nudging. – Met
“Letter nudging” was a technique of checking in with families who had attendance issues, trying to find out how things were going, and finding out if there was anything AASD could do. - Action Step 5: Develop and implement the CLR Coaching Champions Framework. – Met
They did do this. - Action Step 6: Train and coach administrators and deans in Restorative Practices as an alternative to Out of School Suspensions (OSS). – Not Met
They did not accomplish this. When they created the initial scorecard, they didn’t know what the upcoming year would look like. Given how it turned out, they didn’t feel that administrators and deans would be able to take on new learning, so the district leadership intentionally decided to not go ahead with that training. - Action Step 7: Create and maintain Employee Affinity Groups for support – Not Met
Per Polly, “That was under the direction of Miss Pa Lee Moua who really worked to support our students that have–that may be of different color, have some different needs. And they started the year, and they had some work together in terms of I might have been an employee and wanted to be in the African American/Black affinity group and they did meet a couple times, but that was something that over time we were unable to maintain, so that’s why that’s colored red meaning it did not meet its goal.” [She didn’t elaborate as to why they were unable to maintain these groups.]
She then opened things up for questions.
Board Member Jim Bowman asked her to remind him where they got the Pulse Survey and the Panorama Survey.
Polly told him the pulse survey came from Studer and Panorama is a nation-wide norm-referenced survey tool that many districts use to look at Social Emotional Learning practices as well as other things.
Superintendent Judy Baseman said that they only used the pulse survey last year due to the pandemic and that they did not intend to repeat that in the upcoming year.
Board Member Deb Truyman asked for more information about employee affinity groups.
Per Polly, “Employee affinity groups were created out of trying to support our employees who—you know, that same concept of ‘we want to be supported by people that may look like me, think like me, have unique needs like me’ and so just trying to support our employees to say we recognize that we have some—I would say—some gaps in terms of trying to grow our employee base around diversity. And so those employees that are in the Appleton Area School District that maybe are African American/Black, they certainly need to and want to connect with folks that look like them and that have that same need. And so how can we meet the needs of all of our employees to connect and feel safe and respected in a group to be able to share kind of where they are at. So, it’s creating groups like the—like I said Black/African American. We did have—I believe we tried a Hmong support group as well, for employees who identify or whose race is of the Hmong culture and so just trying to, again, build communities within a larger community to really make sure people feel safe and have a—have a group of people that they really feel connected to and supported by.”
Deb thought that might be a reason someone would choose to work in AASD vs a smaller district.
Superintendent Baseman added that it was a technique used in businesses to create connection where people might feel somewhat isolated. Julie King had been working with Pa Lee Moua to keep these meetings going in a more organized way. “We got a couple in last year but we didn’t sustain it, so our hope is to do that this year.”
Deb asked about the Out of School Suspension rates for Black students and why that specifically was being focused on. If they were the area of most concern, she wanted them focused on but she also didn’t want anyone to be ignored.
Polly said that no one was being ignored but that they had seen a trend over the last handful of years of Black students and Black students with disabilities receiving Out of School Suspensions. They were targeting that specific area, but absolutely not ignoring the rest. “Just know that that is our biggest area of growth and so wanted to specifically point it out and put some action steps towards that so we can hopefully close that gap.”
Board Member James Bacon asked if they had a sense of how the current OSS rate compared to prior years when students were in school. He wondered if possibly the second semester data could be compared to the first semester data from a previous year, given that the second semester of 2020-21 had essentially been their first in-person semester. “I just was wondering if there was any indication where we’d believe we’d be likely to meet it moving forward based on things we’ve already been putting in place or if we need to potentially have cause to be concerned about our ability to do that moving forward?”
Unfortunately, there just wasn’t a good way to compare given the very different situations. Inappropriate student behavior was minimal in part due to the Honeymoon period of being back in school.
Board Member Kristine Sauter asked if either of the Studer or the Panorama surveys included opportunities for open comments.
Per Polly the Panorama survey is a scale-based survey with very limited place for comments; however, Julie King noted that the Studer surveys did allow comments and were very open-ended at the end.
There were no further comments or questions regarding Pillar 1 goals.
View full meeting details here: http://go.boarddocs.com/wi/aasd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C6WNT461183D
View full meeting video here: https://youtu.be/XW1wjFFAVSw
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