MISSOULA COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD of TRUSTEES TEACHING & LEARNING COMMITTEE MINUTES Monday, January 5, 2015, 12:00 P.M

MISSOULA COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS BOARD OF TRUSTEES TEACHING & LEARNING COMMITTEE MINUTES Monday, January 5, 2015, 12:00 p.m. (noon)

Business Building Boardroom 915 South Avenue West

Committee Members: Trustees Michael Beers, Marcia Holland, Jim Sadler-Chair, Heidi Kendall, Jennifer Newbold

Other MCPS Trustees: Debbie Dupree, Joe Knapp (Board Chair), Diane Lorenzen, Mike Smith, Julie Tompkins, Ann Wake

Trustees present: Michael Beers, Jim Sadler-Chair, Heidi Kendall, Jennifer Newbold, Mike Smith.

Minutes

The meeting was called to order at 12:01 p.m. Quorum was established with Trustees Jennifer Newbold, Heidi Kendall, Jim Sadler & Mike Smith not a committee member.

Others present: Hatton Littman, Trevor Laboski, Heather Davis Schmidt, Karen Allen, Alex Apostle via polycom, Ted Fuller, Shirley Lindberg, Michael Beers arrived at 12:02 p.m.

1. Public Comment – Committee Chair Background Information: Public comment will be allowed at the beginning of the meeting to accommodate those members of the public who are unable to wait until the end of the meeting to comment. Notes: No public comment.

2. Approve December 1, 2014 T&L Committee Meeting Minutes – Committee Chair (Discussion/Action)(Elem/Sec) Background Information: In accordance with BP1230 – Committees, at each monthly meeting of the Committee, minutes from the previous month’s Committee meeting will be reviewed, revised if need be, and approved by the Committee. Notes: Sadler: asks for any changes Summary/Direction: The December 1, 2014 minutes are approved and submitted. The minutes are accepted as published.

3. Approve Sentinel High School Digital Media Academy Grant Application Summaries – Ted Fuller, Principal, Sentinel High School, Jenn Keintz, Journalism Teacher and Cindy Schultz, Media Arts Teacher (Discussion/Action)(Sec)  The Anthony Robins Foundation  Missoula Community Foundation  Rieman Foundation  The O.P. and W.E. Edwards Foundation  Dorsey & Whitney Foundation  IECA Foundation (Independent Educational Consultants Association) 1

Background Information: Ted Fuller, Sentinel High School principal, Jenn Keintz, Journalism teacher, and Cindy Schultz, Media Arts teacher will discuss approval of various grants to the support of the Digital Media Youth Leadership Program through the Digital Media Academy. This project is orchestrated by Missoula County Public School (MCPS) in collaboration with MCAT and creates opportunities for our community’s underserved youth to achieve skills in digital media arts and journalism while gaining college credit. The grant application summaries are attached. Administrative Recommendation: Administration recommends that the Committee approve the grant application summaries and forward to the January 13, 2015 regular Board meeting on the Consent Agenda. Notes: Ted Fuller: Ms. Keintz couldn’t make it so I apologize on her behalf. We have an addition to our team from Sentinel High School, Ms. Jessie Rogers who is from MCAT, is the grant writer that has submitted these grant applications. While we are on the topic of MCAT I cannot say enough in terms of MCAT’s efforts to support the digital media work at Sentinel both in terms of providing expertise and guidance but also resources. If you haven’t had a chance to get over to Sentinel and out in the 500 building and see what MCAT has made possible in terms of journalism, broadcast journalism in particular, television studio, editing equipment, it’s really extraordinary. That would not be possible without the technology provided by MCAT so we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. I just wanted to take a second and thank them publicly for that. So the six grants that we’re hoping to have approved today, a couple of them I should note, Jessie received a “not at this time response.” Not an outright no but a not at this time response, that would be the Anthony Robbins Foundation and Ryman Foundation. A $20,000 grant and a $25,000 grant those are currently on hold. But the other four are all still in the queue waiting whether or not those get approved by the various granting organizations. All of these grants are specific to something called the Digital Media Youth Leadership Program. The mission of that program is to take high school kids who are learning digital media skills at Sentinel High School in either media arts or in our AV broadcasting program and have them in middle schools providing education, leadership and mentoring for middle school students around topics of digital media, social media, internet awareness and all of those really important issues. Digital media literacy is something that gets established at that foundational, very young level. That is the mission of the Digital Media Youth Leadership Program and that is what these particular grants are intended to support. If there are any questions Cindy Shultz is here, she is the chair of our business department and media arts teacher. Then Jessie is here from MCAT. One other thing that I should mention, this is exciting news for us at Sentinel; Jenn Keintz teaches all of our journalism courses, broadcast as well as digital and print. She was just granted her CTE endorsement from OPI through all of her many many hours. Fuller: Asks Trevor if it was 15,000 hours? Fuller: 15,000 hours of work in the field of broadcast journalism in particular, working with PBS news hour. Now students in her courses are actually able to earn practical art credit for those courses rather than just general elective credit. Which has been the case in the past, those courses have existed outside of particular required credit for graduation and now it also provides a CTE anchor for our career academy in digital media by having her endorsed in CTE through OPI. Kendall: Congratulations Ted on your promotion. Can one of you explain what exactly is included in the term digital media? Fuller: Right now under the umbrella of digital media we have two primary strands; the media arts strand which Cindy can talk a little bit more about and within that strand, courses in a variety of media arts including four courses with which students can earn dual credit. The second strand being a focus on digital print media in our case that being our yearbook and newspaper. Both which come out in print but require a pretty high level of skill regarding digital publishing and then the broadcast element. The broadcast element is three levels of coursework; Introduction to Broadcasting, Broadcasting II and then an upper level broadcast class which produces what we call Spartan TV. That group produces an episode weekly, which has generally some video announcements, two serious pieces and then two more pop culture pieces. These are kids who are involved in producing anywhere from a 20 to 30 minute weekly episode that contains a variety of stories. They also work as I mentioned with PBS News Hour. They won an Emmy last year for their work. Also included in digital media, though we’re not exactly sure how these will fit, will be our two Project Lead The Way strands which include engineering and computer science and software engineering. The computer science is probably a better fit under the digital media umbrella. Those are the academy strands or the major courses of

study and then once the academy is fully implemented we’ll add rigorous core classes that are taught through the lens of digital media and media in general. Kendall: Is the Sentinel student newspaper online? Fuller: The newspaper is not online. Kendall: The Hellgate Lance is not either I’ve noticed. Is that something they might learn at some point? Fuller: Yes, definitely that’s the direction we’re headed with that for sure. Smith: I just had a question about the digital media academy and its availability to students not at Sentinel. Are there any programs or any ways, I’ve been to building 500 and it’s an awesome set up that MCAT has set up there for us and I know obviously not all classes can be for everyone across at all places. But can you talk a little bit about the availability for other students? Fuller: In terms of it working kind of like the Agricultural Ed program does where kids would stay enrolled in their home high schools? At this point, I know we have some Hellgate students in our computer science class in the mornings and I’m not sure about Big Sky students. That class is scheduled as such that it could accommodate students from other schools. Trevor you might be able to answer this a little more clearly, I’m not sure what the future might hold for opening those programs up to students from other high schools. We certainly are open to it and I know MCAT’s partnership is intended to be something that is made available for all MCPS students. Laboski: We have a number of courses that kids take from various schools. We have kids taking music technology at Big Sky for example that are Sentinel students. As Mr. Fuller said, there are students at Sentinel that are from Hellgate. To take the full academy package really you need to go to that school and that’s where the open enrollment is a real positive for us. And at the Health Science Academy for example there are lots of kids from other schools that are attending Big Sky. In terms of cherry picking classes it happens when the kids’ schedules allow it. Shultz: One of our original goals was to open it up to all schools, all teachers so that they do have it. And maybe even do some professional development training for teachers to bring it into their classrooms. That was one of our ultimate goals we just haven’t gotten there yet. Allen: My thought was that the equipment would be available or the facility would be available to teachers from other schools. Shultz: That is our long-term goal. Allen: And that would be a way that all teachers across the district and then students could participate. Sadler: I noticed that this requires no matching funds. Would you describe where the funds are actually going to land? Are they paying for time on MCAT or equipment or where are these funds going to be used? Rogers: Right now what we have is through the umbrella of MCAT. We’re able to write a grant specifically in partnership with the Missoula County Public Schools and Digital Media Project. The funds would land here. There is no matching fund on the grant that I’ve written thus far. If I find some that you all approve then we could go that way but the funds come say if the IECA came through with their $5,000 or $10,000 dollars those funds would go straight to the Digital Media Youth Leadership Project to buy equipment, to help with curriculum development, to offset some of the teachers costs and spending time to create the program and also pay for stipend for the youth to travel to the different middle schools and stuff like that. The funds would come specifically to the project through the umbrella of MCAT. Sadler: Well that’s nice to know. Summary/Direction: The Committee supports Administrations’ recommendation that Trustees approve the grant application summary and forward to the January 13, 2015 regular Board meeting on the Consent Agenda.

4. Approve Hellgate High School’s Participation in IBO Honesty Study – Lisa Hendrix, Principal, Hellgate High School, Jenni Frizzell-Fuller, English Teacher, Hellgate High School (Discussion/Action)(Sec) Background Information: Lisa Hendrix, Principal, Hellgate High School and Jenni Frizzell-Fuller English Teacher, Hellgate High School will discuss a request to allow the participation of Hellgate High School in an IB Assessment research study about the Academic Honesty Policies in IB schools. This study will take place between February and May 2015. The study will consist of three online surveys, one each for DP coordinators, DP teachers and DP candidates in their final year. Administrative Recommendation: Administration recommends that the Committee approves Hellgate High School’s participation in the Academic Honesty Policies in IB Schools Assessment Study and forward to the January 13, 2015 regular Board meeting on the Consent Agenda. Notes: Hendrix: Jenni Frizzell is my IB Coordinator and she is presenting in classrooms, student recruiting for next year’s IB candidates. We received this request last week from the International Baccalaureate Organization 3 but I’ll just say IBO in the future because it’s long. They are conducting a study this fall of the Diploma Program Academic Honesty Survey. In our district we are in the process of implementing three programs from the IB; the PYP Principle Years Program, the Middle Years Program and the Diploma Program. This is just pertaining to the Diploma Program that students are in their junior and senior year of high school. For this study IB is collecting survey responses from DP Coordinators that would be Jenni Frizzell, the teachers and DP candidates. That would be all senior candidates as well as all junior candidates. It would be an online survey. The aim of this study is to get a better understanding for how schools implement academic honesty. They go on to say in their information that this study will be used to improve our procedures and practices to help schools, teachers and students to better understand the rules for academic honesty within the IB DP Program. In total about 600 schools world-wide are being asked to participate in this study. This study will run through the first half of this year, 2015. Starting with the online survey of the students in February and then for teachers and coordinators it will follow up in March and April. They do have an outline of the steps for this survey; the first one that I wanted you to be aware of is that dual consent will be needed for students to participate. The other one I wanted to make sure and outline for you is that the participation in the study is entirely voluntary. Respondents can stop at any time in the middle of the survey if they become uncomfortable with it. Kendall: Just out of curiosity, why does this come to the Board? Davis Schmidt: All research studies are required to have Board approval in order for us to grant access to students and staff. Sadler: Ok let me get this straight, you’re going to ask students online if they’re honest? Hendrix: The students will take an online survey and I haven’t seen the survey questions but that’s the gist of my understanding. IBO highly recommends that each Diploma school uses software called Turn It In. We have a license to use Turn It In at all three high schools. Students actually turn their written work in electronically. This software will go through and highlight for teachers and students if they have wording that is similar or exact copies of any other wording that you can find on the internet. Teachers can use it in a variety of ways not just for seeing how much students cut, pasted and copied. But also for students to reflect on how much when you were trying to reword that did you do enough rewording to paraphrase what the other author said. With the use of the internet exploding in education, academic honesty and really teaching students the difference between translating or paraphrasing the work of someone else is important. Teachers also use Turn It In to help students learn the correct way to cite sources they’re using. My understanding from reading the emails is that IBO is trying to update their Academic Honesty Policy. At the same time ensuring that the student outcomes; the exams the students pass, the student work and that the quality of the work is to the quality of their Diploma candidates. Sadler: So if I understand it, using this program Turn It In, teachers answer whether it has been successful and if they’ve had experience with students showing these problems and their success rates at it. When talking to the students it sounds like some sort of teaching aid to gather this information to form some sort of research opinions as to whether or not this is going to be a valid way when their writing policies. Hendrix: We do as participants get a copy of the research. They also routinely in their monthly publications publish research that they’re doing. The most recent edition had research on Diploma candidates and their success or averages on ACT/ SAT and compares it to non-diploma students. Sadler: Are these surveys done anonymously? Hendrix: Yes. Kendall: How many Diploma candidates are there? Hendrix: Currently in my senior class I have 8 and in my junior class I have 16. Kendall: So the universe of the students in this anonymous study would be 8. So it’s kind of small. Hendrix: 24, both the junior and the senior candidates. Kendall: It says DP candidates in their final year. Hendrix: Ok, that’s not what I highlighted, ok. Kendall: Either way, although 8 is pretty small for an anonymous survey. But I suppose the IBO is the one that decides whether that makes sense or not as far as getting accurate information. Hendrix: They will be getting candidates from 600 schools. Our 8 will be added in. Kendall: Will be added to the whole pool and won’t be distinguishable? Ok. Hendrix: No. Sadler: Dr. Apostle do you have any questions? Apostle: No, I don’t. I think it’s a good endeavor to be involved with. We’ll just learn a little bit more about the program. I think it’s a good way to go. 4

Summary/Direction: The Committee supports Administrations’ recommendation that Trustees approve Hellgate High School’s participation in the Academic Honesty Policies in IB Schools Assessment Study and forward to the January 13, 2015 regular Board meeting on the Consent Agenda.

5. Approve Grant Application Summary – Karen Allen, Executive Regional Director (Discussion/Action) (Elem)  Amanda Kekich Memorial Children’s Fund Background Information: Karen Allen, Executive Regional Director will be present to discuss this grant application summary. Amy Shattuck, Franklin Elementary principal has applied for a $1000 grant from the Amanda Kekich Memorial Children’s Fund to purchase a book for each child in the building. The books focus on kindness in support of the Kindness Campaign. Administrative Recommendation: Administration recommends that the Committee approve the grant application summary and forward to the January 13, 2015 regular Board meeting on the Consent Agenda. Notes: Allen: This is for Franklin Elementary. It’s the Amanda Kekich Memorial Children’s Fund. Amanda was a graduate of Sentinel High School and unfortunately she died in a car accident and her family has developed a fund in her honor to support special activities for children. Amy Shattuck, the principal at Franklin, applied for the grant. I think it’s a pretty unique thing in Missoula so far anyway. It’s making available a book for every child on a topic that is a focus of learning for the month. It did happen in December and I’m sorry, we didn’t have a meeting so we couldn’t come. But all the books were on the topic of kindness. The kids all got their books at the same time and took them home for their holiday. Sadler: That sounds great. Allen: The one thing I would say on this is that I would imagine you’re going to see some more of these around this project at Franklin. It’s made to happen monthly on a different topic. This ties directly back to the Montana Behavioral Initiative; in other words the social emotional development for children. Sadler: And these are all books approved by the school? Allen: Absolutely. We had hoped to be able to partner with a book store. We didn’t get to on this one but may be able to in the future. Summary/Direction: The Committee supports Administrations’ recommendation that Trustees approve the grant application summary and forward to the January 13, 2015 regular Board meeting on the Consent Agenda.

6. CoGat Update – Shirley Lindburg, COMPASS/Gifted Education Coordinator (Information Only) Background Information: Shirley Lindburg, COMPASS/Gifted Education Coordinator will provide an overview of CoGat and demonstrate ways that the data can be used by teachers. Notes: Lindburg: I’m giving you an update on the CoGat. It’s the cognitive abilities test and assesses reasoning and problem solving abilities based on experiences in and out of school. I will give an example of what we give to grade level PLCs. It measures reasoning ability in 3 areas: verbal is the ability to understand and reason using words, quantitative is the ability to use mathematical concepts and skills to solve real world problems and non-verbal is often the one we work on least in school and is the ability to understand and analyze visual information and solve problems using visual reasoning. Think about building with Legos and understanding how to get around with using signs instead of using words. Some kids can understand pictures better than they can understand words. That’s what non-verbal is all about. Currently we assess all second graders, 650 students and this is the fifth year we have been doing this. Throughout the month of October teachers give that test themselves. We also use it for individual identification of COMPASS gifted education services. That test is available because we do hand score some of those. Not the 650, those go off for machine scoring. CoGat Two replaced the Wisk, the intelligence test which cost $60 per student and we only tested kids that were referred. The CoGat is about finding out information on all students in second grade and finding out so much information about them. With those results from the CoGat we can understand students’ strengths and weaknesses and it gives information to help teachers adapt their instructional goals and their methods and materials. All of that can be found on the website. It gives instructional suggestions for students who have had the CoGat and have an ability profile score. It’s very useful that way, you can also look at the students in your class and really see discrepancies; see who’s high see who’s low, see who surprises you. 5

The results come in three different ways. There’s the Standard Age Score which is like an IQ score, comparing kids of the same age with 100 being average and 85-115 being the average range. Percentile Rank is out of the highest you can get is 99 and how many kids would fall below that number. Stanine is a nine point standard scale ranging from one to nine with five being average and four, five and six being the average range. The Ability Profile Score highlights both the level and pattern of a student’s ability, ex. 7c (V+N-). First I want to take a look at the sheet that you have in front of you. Lindburg: Demonstrates how to read the CoGat score sheet. Says there is no test that is perfect but it starts to paint the picture of what the student needs and gives us a direction to go as far as support. Newbold: Are any similar assessments done at any other grade level similar to this? Lindburg: This is just second grade and then specific kids. This is an ability test. We had the MAPS achievement test for all our kids from grades two to ten. We don’t have an ability test across one grade level except for this test. Newbold: It seems like that kind of information is extremely valuable and would maybe be valuable at more than just second grade. Lindburg: I would love to see it at fifth grade as they go into middle school. When you realize intellect is not static, it’s based on experiences in and out of school. What experiences can we give him in order to move him up and then to be able to see where those strengths were improved or those weaknesses were improved once they hit the end of fifth grade and are going into middle school? I think would be extremely valuable. Newbold: I’m not a proponent of standardized testing in general but that learner profile seems very helpful. Do teachers use that quite a bit or just looking up the ones on the extremes? Lindburg: Some use it, we’re not getting out of it what we could but I think to it’s a time thing. Each teacher gets the CoGat Score Sheet for their class so it’s really easy to look at that. I agree with you, standardized tests, there’s a question mark on that. But if you’re looking at this as something that can be changed than a standardized test is a good thing. Then we can look at those and figure out where they’re at and where can we take them and not just think this is it. The same thing though with kids with really high scores, if they’re identified as gifted doesn’t mean we just leave them there. We have to still show growth and realize we need to really work on what we can do to strengthen these strengths even. Sadler: Do the tests stay with the student or is it just in the second grade only? Lindburg: No, what I showed you is just a class summary. For each student there’s also a one page summary that isn’t being sent home but it goes into their file for the long-term. Sadler: Now you spoke that you would like to have it done in the fifth grade, is this a matter of money? Is that why we don’t do it? Lindburg: Yes, it would be less expensive to do it in the fifth grade because in second grade we use consumables so we all have booklets, 650 booklets that get sent in and they’re machine scored. COMPASS Gifted Education pays for that right now. It would be less expensive with fifth grade because you don’t use a consumable; you have a score sheet and the book that’s reusable. It would be much less expensive; it’s about $17 per student right now in second grade for 650 kids. Sadler: I suggest you advocate for that in your department. Apostle: Very well presented and much appreciated. Littman: I’m really thankful for this presentation as well and I know there’s a lot of conversation around how this helps both the teacher in the classroom and the parent fine tune an understanding of their individual child’s needs and abilities. I’m really curious because as motivated parents in our community and statewide will look at where’s the best place for my kid to be? How does that sort of fall into this? Do you have insights into how parents find that they’re able to get what they need for their kids at Missoula County Public Schools versus other schools in the community? Lindburg: That’s a great question. I was at a meeting this morning at one of our schools and the student is struggling immensely. The student is also gifted, really struggling in the classroom and has in different schools. The choice of the parents right now is to put him into a private school, that’s what they feel is best. What was interesting was that the private school came back to them and said we don’t think we can serve your child well so we don’t recommend that you apply for our private school. That came from the parents. I sat there with five different other professionals talking about what we could do for this student. Even though he has struggled for multiple years and because of my position in Gifted Education I have followed him from grade to grade and school to school. What I see are teachers continually striving; what can we do for this student? Here we have other professionals saying I think this is what we must do. I think we need to do some more academic testing in this way. His parents are also choosing to do some 6

private testing. But what can we do to paint a broader picture of this because our goal is student success, student achievement so what can we do about that? I don’t know if you see that in private schools, where you have such a large group of professionals from a variety of different specialties sitting down looking at those results saying, what are we going to do about this? Let’s move forward. Sadler: Smaller schools usually depend upon smaller class sizes and more individual intuition from the teacher. Lindburg: Teachers really get an understanding of their students but at the same time there are plenty of times when I bring these results to teachers and they’re like, “wow I didn’t realize this.” Sadler: I think we do an excellent job for students within our district. The private schools that we’re in competition with, they’re usually there for other reasons other than academic in my opinion. Beers: As far as from a student’s perspective how much dialogue is there pre and post as far as what is this going to be used for? Once they get the results is there a dialogue with them to say, remember that test you took? This is what happened and this is what we’re using it for. Lindburg: Because we’re doing this with second grade, we don’t have that conversation with the students. I do know that when we used MAPS teachers definitely had those conversations. That’s a good question that I think they should bring up with the coaches and the teachers and say, would you find that valuable? One thing that I wouldn’t want to see is the kids to look at that score and think this is it, this is who I am and I can’t change it.

7. District STEM Update – Karen Allen, Executive Regional Director (Informational Only) page 24 Background Information: Karen Allen, Executive Regional Director will provide and update of the STEM programs in the District. Administrative Recommendation: Informational Only. Notes: Allen: Shares information regarding the STEM innovations going on in the different Missoula County Public Schools over the last three years. STEM is the integration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in a trans-disciplinary subject. The STEM PowerPoint presentation can be viewed at MCPS STEM Initiative PowerPoint. Apostle: As you’ve indicated we’ve been involved in this effort for really just three years but we’ve made tremendous progress. Karen your presentation was eloquent and it clearly presented what STEM is all about. I feel we have a better understanding of where we are as a school district in relation to STEM and how important this program is in relation to our students and to the ongoing vision of our school district and our educational community. The community is very excited about the things that are happening in our school district and I really feel that there’s tremendous enthusiasm as it relates to STEM. But I feel we’re just starting. We’ve accomplished a lot but there’s just a lot more to do. Making sure that we continue our success is of the upmost importance especially as it relates to our students and then providing our staff the opportunity for professional development in the real world as it relates to STEM and the Health Science Academy and our other academies. I believe we’re heading in the right direction but we have a lot of work to do. Allen: I have been totally impressed with the engagement of staff and people wanting to be involved in this work. Hawthorne Elementary took on Project Lead The Way in every class and all teachers and all kids participated without complaint. It is amazing how it pushes teachers forward into feeling themselves as learners. I think you heard that from the two guys that were here when they talked about engineering and computer science. They’re seeing themselves as learners. This starts with professional learning by the teacher. Every teacher involved in this work that I talked about today has had very organized, structured, purposeful, positive professional opportunities for learning. They’ve taken advantage of it and it’s hard. They haven’t worked as hard as they have worked in learning these modules probably since they left college because it’s not something that we routinely ask people to do. But once they get in and once they get over being worried and frustrated that they may not figure out how to do it then they’re pretty proud of themselves because it’s very successful with kids. Kendall: I think all of this sounds fantastic. It’s a really great evolution of our school district. The one nagging question that I have is related to my own personal experience with my kids. We live in the area of Hellgate High School so my kids go there but I think as you imagine this kind of taking hold in the community and people understanding that Big Sky is the school for this, Sentinel is the school for this and Hellgate is the 7 school for this. Which to some degree does exist now, I think Hellgate is seen as being the artsy school and has been for some time. But ten years from now if I were placing my high schoolers I would say, I think my older son should probably go to Sentinel so he can do the visual media academy because he’s really interested in journalism and my other kid would want to go to Big Sky because he’s more interested in math and science. Is this something that we’re thinking about ten, twenty years out? How people are going to decide what to do with their own individual kids? How families are going to think about this based on their own children’s’ strengths and weaknesses and what they’re interested in? Is that part of the vision here, or do we imagine that it will continue the way it has been where for the most part people go to the high school closest to where they live? Sadler: We do have open enrollment in which you can go to any high school that you choose. There are school boundaries and folks live in certain areas and I don’t know if we can really change all that by having specialization of high schools because the curriculums are offered the same across, with certain specialties. Apostle: One of the things progressive school districts are doing and have established across the country is trying to develop as many options for students as possible because all kids are different they all learn differently, they have different interests and different abilities. In the direction we’re moving, Heidi, I think it’s really beginning to deal with that particular issue to capture the imagination and the interests of students so that what they do at school is relevant and at the same time rigorous in an integrated fashion. Your question is right on target. Where this will take us I’m not quite sure in 20 years, or 15 years? But I can tell you that philosophically trying to capture the interests of students and creating options in relations to those interests is extremely important. One of the biggest reasons that kids drop out of schools across the country is that they don’t see the relevancy in what they’re doing at school. What academies and these types of programs are doing is that they’re capturing the interests of students so they want to be in school. It’s one thing to say that the Missoula County Public Schools want to keep kids in school, Graduation Matters Missoula. We’ve been very fortunate with our success in relation to GMM. Part of our success I believe even though it’s in its infancy is the fact that we have initiated the creation of these programs. That excites kids, it excites parents. I talk to so many parents about the Health Science Academy, IB, dual language immersion, robotics, electronics. What we’re trying to do is just to capture the interest, the varied interest that students have. I think that Trustee Sadler mentioned something about the fact that we have open enrollment. We do have open enrollment and students have choices to make. In some of the most progressive districts that I’m aware of there are 15 to 20 different academies that students can choose from at various high schools and programs. Again, we’re just beginning but I believe strongly that time will tell that we are heading in the right direction. Laboski: Everything we obviously do is for kids but with some of these programs it’s about the teachers as well. They come to work every day and they need to feel fulfilled. When we talked about initiating an academy at Big Sky High School the team of teachers that I was with actually prior to my contract, they were talking about the strengths at Big Sky. One of the strengths that they saw was the science department. They saw that as a group that had always been innovative and changed and wanted new things. Then we saw regular Ed teachers really being excited about not just working in their content areas and actually teaming up together. They share offices, English teachers and social studies teachers and math teachers. I think that’s a big piece of this. It’s not like some districts do that Dr. Apostle was alluding to by saying we’re going to have 15 academies in this school district starting next year and all the teachers have to deal with that reality. This has been homegrown; there are pilots that come up. The Digital Media Academy, Cindy Shultz & Jennifer Keintz don’t grow on trees. They are really unique people who have shown interest in moving a program forward. It happens to align with the District vision and it happens to align with what’s best in education. Also we’ve had programs like the Ag Program that have really done amazing things over the years and have been a pilot for our district in being a district housed program. We now as of this school year, have an Automotive Program at Sentinel that’s open to all students as well. We’re starting to see things like that. Engineering, there was a slide that Karen had where they showed the third year of engineering. The first two years are common then you get to choose an emphasis for the third year and then you have a capstone year. That’s an area where if we really wanted to expand it district wide we’d have the first two years at every school and then you could have a focus at each high school for those particular areas. The same thing sort of exists with biomedicine and there are other programs that are growing. The best thing I can say about the approach 8 we’ve taken is that we’ve started with peoples strengths and what people are interested in and now we’re starting to see the possibilities for some of the things that you’re talking about. But also, that we don’t have to go down that road. We have options as we move into the future; computer science, engineering, Ag, automotive, welding is another one. We talk about this with CTE programs all the time. Not re-creating three programs throughout the district because it’s very expensive equipment wise, staffing. But having intro courses at all schools and then beginning to have focus areas in different schools. Apostle: Heidi, I just want to add something that more directly answers your question. The fact that we have free transportation now in our community, that possibly could come into play to transport students from one school to the other based on their interests. I think that’s coming. I’ve mentioned that to a few people, how important that would be in terms of this transportation issue and program issue and they’re open for discussion. Then again with the high school schedule it could change in the future which would allow students to move more freely from one school to the other. There’s a lot of unanswered questions but plenty of opportunity for creativity and innovation in relation to the question that you asked Heidi. Smith: I think Heidi touches on an important way to view this. Kind of the way I view it is that what we’re doing here and Karen had this on one of her slides, is that if it permeates the entire school I think of the entire education system as a rising tide kind of lifts all boats but also that the skills and the things that the kids are learning in the engineering program, they’re transferable. It’s making better learners. It’s not necessarily creating engineers or creating scientists, it’s creating better learners. I always tell people the most important thing I learned in college was how to learn, how to find the answer. They didn’t teach me the answer but they told me how to find it. That’s an important skill that our kids need to learn. Trevor touched on this a little bit and I’ll refer to another slide of Karen’s that said do we have to educate for the future? Now we don’t know 10 years down the line 20 years down the line what schools are going to look like especially with regard to the structure of the day, whether it be an eight hour day seven day week 24 hour online learning opportunities. The world’s getting smaller and as the world gets smaller so does our community and so does our district, in a good way I think. These are the things that as we go through this process of learning and selecting and as Trevor said the homegrown, making it fit our community just as each school has its own characteristics, that we learn and we move forward to be ready for those things that we can’t see right now. Kendall: This is a crazy idea but sometimes crazy ideas lead to things. As I was listening to this presentation it occurred to me that we talk about the needs of the community in terms of employment and I had this thought, Early Childhood Education Academy. We know that childcare is a hugely important issue for so many families. It’s a fascinating field; it is so interesting to learn about brain development in small children. I think there would be a lot of high school students who would be interested in that area of academic interest. I’d love to just throw that out to see if it hatches. Laboski: I would just expand that to education in general. Those do exist around the country. A focus on early childhood is definitely something that could become a pathway that aligns with post-secondary education which is what you need. Apostle: There’s no question early childhood education would be a field interest. I’m very anxious to see where early childhood education is going to go in terms of the state of Montana. That may influence what was just mentioned. I believe there would be tremendous interest on the part of our students in that area. Beers: I really like PLTW and STEM, what specific instruction or access to STEM curriculums are special Ed teachers having right now and I’m thinking even para educators? What kind of process are they going through? Allen: They’re learning by doing. You’re bringing up a very important point. Right now the training for all of our PLTW, except for the elementary teachers that are trained here, is away and it’s two weeks in length and its quite intensive. That has been the most wonderful opportunity for our staff but as your pointing out it hasn’t broadened enough yet. But that’s one of the things we’re going to look at and I appreciate you bringing it up. My other thing and I think you’re going to find this interesting is; how do kids in a class that has a label of Extended Resource have PLTW? I have some ideas about it but it’s really not happening around the country yet. So I think we’ll be able to make that happen both probably at the high school, middle school and elementary but we do have to help teachers think differently. Beers: I would love to be a part of that conversation. An idea that came to me when we were talking about responding to the business community saying we need more employees with this skill set. Could there be any overlapping with Any Given Child? Bringing in the art curriculums to these STEM projects? 9

Allen: I’m glad you brought that up. Trevor, do you want to go into that? Laboski: When we started Any Given Child with the Kennedy Center one of the first things we had to do was a profile on Missoula. The arts economy in Missoula is a $40 million economy. It’s huge and it was one of the ways that we got the arts community together. They saw themselves as a force essentially. That’s partly what Any Given Child is about. Allen: We’re not going to get into the STEM/STEAM discussion today. I do think there’s lots of art in solving the kinds of problems that we’re talking about. Even in measuring how high the bean stalk is. But just to get your thinking going we’re sponsoring/supporting, Fire On The land which includes dance, science, fire ecology and Native American traditions. That integration, that’s a normal natural integration. I think that Missoula is an absolutely fabulous place for that kind of thing. I wouldn’t want to have it, Oh you have to do this because it didn’t have any art in it today. I think we want to be very supportive of that so I think it comes from the process. Beers: I like that Dr. Apostle brought up the free transportation. This may have changed, there’s currently no Mountain Line service to Big Sky High School. The closest route is the hospital and there’s no sidewalk to speak of. So on a day like today it’d be very cold. If we could look at that it’d be great. Sadler: I do know a bus passes by my house which passes right by Big Sky High School. It’s not as frequent as some of the others. Apostle: We have an opportunity to work with Mountain Line to make sure that they are fulfilling their responsibilities with the District. And I will bring it up to the company to be reaching out to every single one of our students. We need to make sure that the accessibility of the program is available to all students. Practically speaking that’s where we’re at. Newbold: I like hearing that the administration sounds like their thinking creatively about ways to include all students and transportation was the first thing that came to mind for me. Another thing that comes to mind as we’re talking about this; I just want to express that it’s very important to me that these types of programs are available to all students in the district. Like Heidi’s saying if ten years from now my son is passionate about engineering I would love for him to have the opportunity to do an engineering academy at wherever it shows up. But the other thing that occurred to me is that at least it seems like we tend to recruit students into these academies from a feeder school or I’m not sure exactly how the recruitment process works. It would be interesting to see if we were reaching out to all students in the district and recruiting all students in the district. I know that’s probably not happening right now because it’s not feasible right now. If this were something that was advertised to students at Washington Middle School, the Health Science Academy, would there be more students involved? My guess is that as the programs take root and become more established and more well-known that there are going to be parents very interested in maybe having their student go beyond their boundary to participate. That’s just a comment and then a quick question and this one I guess is for Karen. Can you briefly give us a snapshot of how these modules work at the elementary level? Are they like a one day project that they engage in? Allen: It’s a unit that happens over ten hours typically. It’s two units a year and then you would see reading integrated with it. There’s an eBook that the kids have, they have their logs that we talked about where they keep their data. It weaves in and out but that’s one of the places where it’s flexible. Shirley’s talking about our PLC teams. It would be at each grade level that the teachers would get together and figure out how they’re going to utilize the materials and over how long. There’s sharing involved and things like that. One thing, we do go to every school and talk about the Health Science Academy and we do go to all of the feeder schools. We do go to even the one way down the road that only has 46 kids in it, Woodman. That has been an interesting process and I’ll let Trevor speak to it because he did it. Laboski: It takes a lot of time. We have a lot of feeder schools. Obviously we will go to the schools if we’re asked to go to the schools for instance some of the schools I would go and speak to all the eighth graders and other schools I would talk to the eighth grade teachers and some schools it was just the counselors. It was really up to the schools to decide what they wanted to do. We also bring in all of the counselors and principals from the feeder schools with the high school principals as we get ready for scheduling, showcase events and school visits. That’s where they get to hear about the specifics. But I have to say that the real strength in reaching out is the counselors and the teachers and getting them to advocate for students. We do parent nights and information nights for IB or for academies or whatever it is. You get people there that have resources and you get people who have their own individual champion and their parents. When we look at the rosters of kids who are signing up for classes we were very intentional to call other schools and say we really would like a diverse population here. Do you have kids that maybe don’t have advocates at home that 10

might be good for this? We found lots of kids through IEP meetings at the middle school level, through parent contact, through counselor contact, that got into the program because of really what Mr. Sadler said was the real strength, the smaller learning community. The K-8 students coming to us from very small schools are really looking for a smaller learning community where they share the same teachers and the same students within their community. There’s a lot of information that’s put out, there’s always a competitive piece. We try not to recruit from other schools. There’s a delicate balance that exists. You want to put it out and make it known how the schools are slightly different but at the same time be cognoscente of the fact that we don’t want to step on toes. The Health Science Academy has kids from all over, Washington included. Allen: It’s also important, academies are by nature small. You really don’t want more than 100 kids from any cohort because it adds up to 400 kids. It’s not a matter of needing to recruit; the recruiting is to have diversity. The recruiting is to make sure that kids get an opportunity that might not have known about it otherwise. This is the third year. The first year was who is going to do it? The second year it ballooned way up, really more kids than we wished. One of the things we say is if you apply and if we have resources you don’t get turned away, we’re not cherry picking kids. We’re not cherry picking 4.0 kids. We have kids with significant challenges that are part of the academy and doing very well. Part of it is to be able to show that part of creating a learning environment where all kids or a close to all kids .99 can be successful. Mike Smith left 2:00pm. Sadler: It’s refreshing to listen to discussions on this type of curriculum development. It started by us saying, why are students not staying in school? That led to, it’s because they’re not interested and it’s not relevant to them. Then that led us into the programs of the academies and so forth. All of this could not have been happening if we didn’t have a visionary leadership that went out and raised money outside of the tax payer base to allow us to do the studying and teacher training. Without that we couldn’t have all of these wonderful programs. Apostle: First, I appreciate the questions that the Trustees brought forward. They were very important questions to ask. Second, I highly recommend that this presentation goes before the entire Board. It relates to the vision of our school district. Public Comment: Sadler: Right now the Missoula County Public Schools and the schools in western Montana are all involved in the NAEP testing process. The testing starts the last two weeks of January and goes through February. Parents should be aware of the importance of this test.

8. Other –Committee Chair (Information Only) The next T&L Committee meeting is scheduled for 12:00 p.m., Monday, February 2, 2015, in the Business Building Boardroom, 915 South Avenue West.

Meeting adjourned at 2:04 p.m. by Trustee Sadler.

As recording secretary for this Board meeting, I certify these minutes to be a true and correct copy of what was taken at the meeting.

______Brittany Gross, Secretary

______James Sadler, Committee Chair Trevor Laboski, Executive Regional Director