#20 Standards Institute, Staff Hiring Goal, Principal Partners

Every time we "jump into the mouths of children." we have disrespected their intellect.

Every time we reduce rigor (or reduce the language) to make a task easier, we have widened the gap.

Every educator has "instructional power" - we have a choice in what is put in front of students.

Low expectations with love still equals low expectations. 

I have been processing all that I learned at the Standards Institute, and I highlight the notions above because when it comes right down to our every day work, it's about our students and the instructional decisions/choices we make that have an impact on student outcomes. I left the institute with the challenge to have the will/resolve to be a threat to the existence of inequity within my sphere of influence. I will save the technical learning about standards, content, and instruction for times when we meet or observe in classrooms. That technical work is important, but will not address disparities that exist without believing in the intellect of every student.

Several keynotes challenged my thinking - especially Paul Gorski, author of a great resource: Avoiding Racial Equity Detours (Educational Leadership, April 2019) and Dr. Tanji Reed Marshall, from EdTrust Why Classroom Assignments Matter

School Staffing Profiles <Set a goal for hiring diverse staff> <Establish Personnel Subcommittee>

The week before vacation, you received an email from Jonathan Barrows with a link to your school's staffing profile. Please use this report to formulate a plan to hire a staff reflective of your community. All school personnel subcommittees shall have ethnic, language, and role representation and be trained in bias. If your ethnicity/language gap is wide, plan to attend OHC recruitment events. All superintendents will be asking school leaders to establish a plan and target for this hiring season.

If you have not yet done so, please submit your School Site Council roster and Personnel Subcommittee members to our Engagement Facilitator Lori Greenwood at lgreenwood@bostonpublicschools.org, Lori can also provide technical support and training.

3/16: BPS Recruitment Info Session
3/19: BPS Internal Educators Interview Fair
3/25: Sixth Annual Boston Diversity Fair for Teachers
4/9: Multilingual & ESL Educator Career Fair
4/30: BPS Recruitment Info Session
5/16: Priority Candidate Demonstration Day
5/19: BPS Recruitment Info Session

RSVP here.

For more info: 2020 Recruitment, Cultivation, and Diversity Program Information

Hiring Tips:

• Create a diverse hiring committee: race, age, gender, culture
• Share your vision about diversity with the committee, and explicitly ask them to help in your endeavors
• Provide members of the hiring committee with an awareness/ information of how unconscious biases impact hiring diverse candidates
• Ensure your interview questions include questions about candidate views on culturally and linguistically sustaining practices
• Use standardized rubrics and interview questions to mitigate unconscious bias
• Be aware of language and word choice on job descriptions and your marketing materials to encourage diverse candidates to be interested in your school

Annual Principal Partners Event <Sign-up>

This event, co-hosted by BPS, BPE and Bank of America, is taking place on March 30, 2020. On this day, BPS opens our doors to business and civic leaders to give them an inside look at the joys and complexities of leading a public school. This is a great opportunity for them to learn more about the valuable role partners play in helping us create learning environments that help our students learn, grow, and thrive.

Upon your registration, we will thoughtfully match you with a business or civic leader based on your needs and their interests and expertise. We hope that the day will allow you to develop deeper partnerships that amplify the great work happening in your school.

After hosting your partner in the morning of March 30, you are invited to a luncheon to network and hear from city and district leadership.

Please register for the event here.

For more information, please contact Russell Hansen, Sr. Manager of Foundation and Corporate Relations at rhansen@bostonpublicschools.org. 

Incident Response Framework <Review & Act>

Sam DePina distributed a memorandum with protocols for recording and communicating incidents depending upon its severity Level 1 to Level 4. Please review the memorandum and accompanying slides. According to this memo, all incidents need to be recorded in SIS. This is not something schools do consistently, but my read of this memo is that all schools should be recording incidents in SIS. 

Climate Survey - Students, Parents, Staff

Annual student, teacher, and parent climate surveys are launching soon:

Student: March 2 – April 3
Teacher: March 16 – May 1
Parent: March 16 – June 5

You will receive individual reports detailing your school’s historic participation rates in the student, parent, and teacher climate surveys. During the survey window, teachers will receive a direct link to the teacher survey via email, and families will be contacted centrally via email, phone messages, and text messages.

Dates:

• February 26, 2020    School Committee, 6:00 PM 
• February 27. 2020    PLC
• February 27, 2020    Transformation Plan Meeting, 3:30 PM @ OG
• February 29, 2020    Citywide Science Fair, 8-3 @ Northeastern
• March 10, 2020        School Committee Budget Hearing, 6:00 PM @ King K-8
• March 12, 2020        All Leader PD
• March 18, 2020        School Leader Screening Day
• March 18, 2020        Schl Committee Budget Hearing 5 PM & Schl Committee, 6:00 PM 
• March 19, 2020        School Leader Conference Call w/Superintendent, 10:00 AM

#19 Data, Targets, QSP Reflection, OEL Compliance, etc...

                                        via GIPHY

Budget Collabs and Probable Org meetings are complete! Woot, woot! The "minimum quality guarantee" and additional investments for schools in the lowest percentiles were very helpful for schools with deficits. I appreciate the preparation you have done to create a budget/schedule/staffing plan that reflects the school's vision and sets up your school for success in 2020-21. 👏👏👏

Probable Org Follow-up

You will receive an email with directions on reasonable assurance, license flags, and postings. You may still have decisions to make about staffing as well; if you do, please notify OHC before March 1 when openings are posted. One of the hardest things you do this during this season is have conversations with staff who are either being excessed or non-renewed. I am happy to talk through these discussions with you - don't hesitate to write/call. I'll get back to you.

During the next few months, you will be recruiting for openings. Recruitment days are coming soon. Additionally, please put together your personnel subcommittee, if you have not done so yet, and make sure its make-up is reflective of the racial and linguistic characteristics of your school community. More will be shared on hiring in another post...

Illuminate 2019-20 Interims and 2019 MCAS Report is now available and color-coded.

Many thanks to ODA! Here is the direct link to the report, which looks like this:

ELA Interim 2 Reports

Here is the link to a folder to ELA Interim 2 Reports in our group by grade level and region. I will add mathematics reports after the window closes.

Direct link to Matrix Report 

Direct link to Subgroup Overview for your school compared to the district. 

Accountability Targets 

MCAS, Chronic Abs, and ACCESS targets are available in the DESE Security Portal - DropBox > Log-in >select 'DropBox' > 'Accountability 2020 Data'.  ESE Security Portal

Information about the Students Who Performed in the Lowest 25% on MCAS

The lowest performing students group is comprised of students who performed in the bottom 25% on MCAS last year at the school. Each school will be held accountable for their performance in 2020, with the performance of the lowest performing students group weighted equally against the performance of all students when determining accountability status. 

Regardless of methodology, results for the lowest performing students group include only those students who have been enrolled in the same school for two consecutive years.

For most schools, DESE can use the cohort model to measure the performance of the lowest performing students in each school. However, the cohort model does not work in schools with certain grade configurations, since students are not tested in two consecutive years (for example, schools serving only one tested grade). In those cases, a year-to-year comparison of data is used to measure the change in performance for the lowest performing students group. This group is composed of students that have been enrolled in the school for more than one year, and is established by ranking each student’s average ELA and mathematics scaled scores; however, performance can only be evaluated using one year of data since these schools typically consist of a single tested grade. In the year-to-year model, data from the current year will be compared to data from the previous year, which may mean comparing data from two different groups of students. This is similar to the approach used when comparing aggregate school results over time, and still provides valuable information about school performance. In the year-to-year model, the lowest performing students group is established using MCAS data from the current school year. As a result, DESE cannot identify these students until after MCAS testing is complete, using the results from the most recent spring tests. 

Data Digest

January 2020 Data Digest files with updated data are now available in your school's Google Data Folder (sub-folder: Data Digest). The new reports include the following data:

• Updated chronic absenteeism
• Updated student Conduct
• BIMAS: Fall
• Course grades (6-12): Term 1
• MAP Growth and Fluency: Fall, Winter
• Interim Assessments (ELA & Math): Fall
• Special Education Referrals

OEL Compliance <Action Needed>

Thank you for all you and your teams do to serve our students who are English learners.

Here is the latest update on OEL compliance for our group of schools.
Please update all of your students' minutes in Aspen no later than February 14th. OEL will run the reports again during the week of break (2/18-21) and rerun the data. There will then be a small window of opportunity for corrections before we pull the data for the Department of Justice. For those who need to revise or submit the FY21 Title Budget plan please attend to this by 2/14 as well. 

These data will go to the Department of Justice on March 1, and we want to get to 100% as a district. Please let me know if you need technical assistance to meet these deadlines.

Quality School Plan Reflection/Revision <Action Needed>

As we finish the first semester, it is  time to revisit your Quality School Plan and adjust (not rewrite) the 90 day action plan based on progress thus far. Schools with transformation plans have built-in systems to check progress and others have built-in reflection points within their Instructional Leadership Team agendas. Best practice is for you to meet with your ILT to reflect and adjust your plan. Please use this Reflection Template and fill out the survey included in the template by March 6 to tweak your plans and measurable goals. Remember, you are not writing a new QSP! During the next four to six weeks, I will review QSP reflections with you in order to support the school’s progress. The reflection and your adjusted plan can be submitted as artifacts for indicators I-B, IV-B and IV-D.

Email from OHC regarding formatives

Many of you received an email regarding missing formatives. Please know this was not supposed to be anxiety-provoking. The purpose was more to check-in and learn why. We discovered that in most instances, the person was hired or returned from a leave recently or the teacher was assigned the wrong plan, so they did not show up on your dashboard. With your feedback, the performance management team made corrections. We will get better in year two implementation of TeachPoint - thank you!

Provide Input to the Strategic Vision 

Underneath each numbered commitment of the draft vision, there is an embedded survey question where you can provide input/feedback at this link.
Note on language: We will use Commitments and Priorities. Our 2020-21 QSPs will need to demonstrate alignment to this emerging strategic vision.

Two More Public Input Sessions

• February 6 at Condon Community Center, 200 D St, South Boston
• February 11 at Thelma D. Burns Building, 575 Warren St, Dorchester

Standards Institute - February 10-14

I am attending the Standards Institute next week with district leaders and school leaders from the schools in the percentiles below 10. Principals from our region are Carolyn Allston (Clap), Megan Webb (Orchard Gardens), Lauretta Lewis-Medley (Mason), and Jason Meland (Timilty). I am excited about this leadership and learning opportunity for the district, but I am anxious about being away. Most likely I'll only be able to phone/text during breaks and respond to emails at night. We are working on a plan for emergencies - TBD.

Budget Hearings Scheduled

• February 13, 2020   FY21 Budget Hearing, Curley K-8, 6 pm
• March 10, 2020       FY21 Budget Hearing, King K-8, 6 pm
• March 18, 2020       FY21 Budget Hearing, Bolling, 5 pm

Dates: 

February 7, 2020     ACCESS & Math Interim 2 Windows Close

February 20, 2020   School Leader Screening/Selection Day

February 26, 2020   School Committee, 6:00 PM

February 27, 2020   PLCs

February 29, 2020   Citywide Science Fair, 8:00-3:00, Northeastern

March 12, 2020       All Administrators