Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Music playing
26:29 students who said do I treat my teacher with respect do students
26:33 in this school
26:34 treat my teachers with respect we scored better than 35% of the
26:38 other schools and
26:39 when we get down to secondary it goes a little lower than that
26:43 at 19% and 21% I
26:45 think what’s really important with both the insight data and the
26:50 youth truth data
26:51 is that it’s telling you that while we’re a high achieving
26:57 district I mean
26:58 we’re you know we’re number one two three in the state across
27:03 many of the of the
27:04 tests that we take behaviorally what dr. Mullins heard on his
27:09 tour is is how
27:11 we’re perceiving ourself it’s how students perceive it it’s how
27:16 teachers
27:17 perceive it so then we wanted to get out of the realm of
27:21 perception and we wanted
27:23 to look at some of the DOE discipline data so remember we put
27:27 the discipline
27:27 plan in place and it was to get consistent fair discipline one
27:32 of the
27:33 biggest worries was our suspension rates going to go down in
27:37 fact suspension rate
27:39 didn’t go down
27:42 so let’s look at some of our state standing discipline data so
27:46 all of the
27:47 data I’m about to present to you right now is straight numbers
27:50 none of them are
27:51 percentages so this data was from 1819 because desk discipline
27:57 data is lagged
27:58 and so we were number 11th in the state in size at that time so
28:03 we were in at
28:04 about 73,000 kids at that time to keep it in perspective the top
28:10 six districts the
28:12 top three are over 200,000 230 210 and the next grouping is in
28:18 the 150 160,000 range I
28:21 think the I think the lowest of that large group is I think it’s
28:26 one 120 and
28:28 we’re at 73 so these are straight numbers statistics we’re
28:31 number 11 size of
28:33 district by enrollment in the state we’re number seven in expelling
28:38 our students
28:39 with disabilities that’s what that means expelling students with
28:42 continuing
28:42 services
28:44 um and again it’s straight number not percentage not per capita
28:48 it is straight
28:49 number
28:51 we’re number two in the state for expelling students without
28:56 continuing
28:56 services so these are our gen ed kids
29:02 we’re number three at placing students in alternative learning
29:05 centers so I think
29:08 it’s important that we we see that because some people might
29:11 look at this and
29:12 say well you know it’s because other other places just put all
29:16 their kids in
29:17 alternative learning centers and they don’t actually expel them
29:20 and and we do in
29:22 in fact we’re we’re number three in the realm of putting kids in
29:27 ALCs as well
29:28 we’re number six for out-of-school suspensions and I think what’s
29:34 really
29:34 important about that number six is it kind of gives you the
29:39 indication that
29:41 we’re not really suspending our way to good behavior discipline
29:46 is not is is not
29:48 the research-backed way to change students behavior and in fact
29:55 what we can
29:56 tell you about the research on suspension is that it actually
29:59 lowers
29:59 achievement it lowers graduation rate it lowers needless to say
30:04 it lowers
30:05 attendance but nowhere does it impact behavior and this this
30:11 last one I think
30:12 was was kind of hurtful to to all of us we’re number two in the
30:19 state for
30:19 suspending kindergarten students and so all of that data
30:26 combined showed us that our
30:30 discipline plan did what it was supposed to do we were asked to
30:35 develop a plan for
30:36 consistent fare we did that nowhere did it address changing
30:43 student behavior and so I
30:45 think it was really important that dr. Mullins came to us and
30:52 said this this
30:52 needs to be our next step this is unconscionable that this is
30:55 what I’m
30:56 hearing at such a high-performing district district across the
31:01 board so I’m gonna stop
31:04 there because that was a lot of data before I move into kind of
31:07 next step and
31:08 just see if anybody has any questions before I go into the next
31:13 steps do you
31:14 have I’m sure you have could you get us the actual numbers
31:17 because number two for
31:19 kindergarten I can’t school suspension sounds horrible but if we
31:22 only had one
31:23 and other districts have zero maybe it’s not as horrible as we
31:28 let me we I will
31:29 assure you we don’t just have one but I will get that those
31:32 actual numbers to you
31:33 thank you you’re welcome I I’ve got a question I know it’s not
31:38 gonna affect the
31:39 kindergarten stats which are gonna be number two either way but
31:42 we have talked
31:43 before about the fact that Brevard handles our drug-related
31:48 offenses
31:49 differently from many many other counties so I’d be here you
31:53 know I don’t know how
31:55 specific you can get but if we you know if we were to do that
31:58 differently if we
31:59 were to have the dream of you know the like the movie the film
32:02 that you sent us the
32:04 recovery high school yes yeah what would what would this look
32:07 like you know would
32:08 we how much farther down on the list would be would we be
32:13 clearly there’s work to
32:14 be done no matter what because like I said our kindergarten
32:17 students aren’t being
32:17 suspended because of drug possession so right but I hope I hope
32:25 I don’t I think
32:26 I’ve looked at all the data that is not in our data okay good
32:29 good good good but
32:30 our alts are we also don’t usually send them to alternative
32:32 school and I know
32:33 that’s been a problem that we we send more for drug-related
32:36 offenses and others
32:37 school districts do so I’m just be curious to see where would we
32:41 fall if we did that a
32:42 little differently yeah and one of the things that we’re looking
32:44 at and I’ll
32:45 I’ll just be frank we’ve been we’ve been slammed a little bit
32:49 but we want to we
32:51 want to do a survey of the large and the extra-large districts
32:55 to see what they
32:57 act what they actually do consider an expellable offense
33:00 compared to us and and
33:02 kind of do that crosswalk but it just we just haven’t been able
33:06 to get it done and
33:09 part of that is because as we were working on this we started
33:12 going down those paths and
33:13 we just kept finding ourselves in reactive mode and that wasn’t
33:17 the charge the charge
33:19 was to be proactive to get a handle on this to figure out a way
33:22 to fix it so so we kind
33:24 of set that aside to focus on the proactive charge
33:27 so we found ourselves wrestling with a couple of questions and
33:36 before I get in
33:37 the question I’m just for people who might be listening I I’m
33:40 gonna use three
33:41 turns I’m gonna say tier 1 I’m gonna say tier 2 and I’m gonna
33:44 say tier 3 and just
33:46 so that we’re all on the same page with what those are a tier 1
33:49 means it’s good for
33:50 everybody in academic circles it might be the 90-minute reading
33:54 block every kid gets the 90-minute
33:56 reading block in behavioral circles it might be social emotional
34:00 curriculum every kid should
34:01 have access to social emotional curriculum so when I start
34:05 talking about tier 2 tier 2 means there
34:08 are gonna be small groups or pockets that need a little bit more
34:13 so we’re gonna have our kids in
34:14 in everybody in the 90-minute reading block but there are gonna
34:18 be some kids that need a
34:19 more intense intervention and they might be pulled in small
34:22 groups for that right
34:23 so when we talk about behavior we might be talking about kids
34:26 that maybe need small
34:29 group mediation may need small group instruction in replacement
34:34 behaviors so
34:36 that’s what I mean by tier 2 small groups and tier 3 is
34:40 basically one-on-one a
34:42 student who really needs intensive academic instruction or in
34:46 the in the case of behavior
34:47 it might be intensive like mental mental health intervention so
34:52 just know that when
34:54 I use those terms that’s what we’re talking about so we looked
34:57 at a couple of questions a couple
34:59 of questions and we were very fortunate the year before to have
35:02 visited every school our
35:03 student support team went in and asked some of these questions
35:06 so we kind of knew some of the
35:07 answers already and the questions were is every school in Brevard
35:11 County implementing
35:12 some kind of multi-tiered system of supports for behaviors do
35:17 they have a tier 1 support for all
35:19 kids do they have a tier 2 support for small groups of pockets
35:23 of kids who may need extra intervention and
35:25 do they have a tier 3 support for students who need one-on-one
35:30 intensive intervention for behaviors the answer is is no we have
35:34 some schools that do an excellent job we have some schools that
35:37 have an amazing tier 1 support system but it’s not consistent it’s
35:40 not across the district and it’s and it’s not everywhere
35:43 the second question we asked is in the classrooms do all schools
35:49 implement some focused tier 1 behavior support in all of our
35:54 classrooms the answer is no there as well
35:57 again some schools amazing jobs some classrooms amazing jobs and
36:00 when I work went through this with the principles I said please
36:00 in your head and if you’re listening out there in your head if
36:00 you know you’re one of those schools or one of those classrooms
36:00 please feel free to put my voice in your head saying but I don’t
36:06 mean you because we know there are some pockets of amazing out
36:07 there
36:07 then we kind of turned the mirror around and looked at ourselves
36:13 and we said has the district done everything they can to ensure
36:14 that there’s a unified understanding of what a behavior support
36:15 program should be
36:15 emphatically we said no again the district has done everything
36:21 they can to ensure that there’s a unified understanding of what
36:21 a behavior support program should be
36:21 the district has done everything they can to ensure that there’s
36:23 a unified understanding of what a behavior support program
36:24 should be
36:25 emphatically we said no again we have pockets where we have
36:32 worked with schools but we haven’t done anything consistent
36:41 across the district by history
36:44 Brevard County has been a site-based managed district so
36:47 oftentimes all of those decisions we leave in our principals
36:52 hands
36:52 but it but in terms of consistent that that leaves us a little
36:56 bit wanting in the consistent realm
36:59 and finally have we as a district provided schools with the
37:03 training the coaching the feedback the support they need for a
37:06 multi-tiered system of support for behavior
37:08 and the answer was no there as well so so what we did is we
37:14 started as a team and we probably met I’m gonna say for I’m
37:20 gonna say 12 hours
37:21 putting up all of the behavior issues that we saw across the
37:25 district from psychologists to behavior analysts to classroom
37:29 teachers to support specialists to every behavior problem we saw
37:32 in the district and then we started categorizing them to see if
37:36 we could at least narrow our focus to start building what then
37:40 became our framework for our plan
37:40 we made sure to add this into our strategic plan it’s under
37:47 objective A3 and its strategy S1 develop and implement a multi-tiered
37:52 framework to support social emotional learning behavior and
37:56 mental health across this across the school community
37:59 so these were the big four broad categories that we divided our
38:05 plan into it narrowed down to positive classroom behaviors
38:09 social emotional learning positive school culture and mental
38:13 health
38:14 and I will tell you my my younger sister is a behave a business
38:20 analyst and whenever I do a PowerPoint I always make sure to go
38:24 over it with her and the first thing she said is you need an
38:27 icon for each of those so that’s what the icon is so if you lose
38:32 track in the PowerPoint you can go oh positive classroom
38:34 practices it was the teacher
38:36 so then under each of those categories we started looking at
38:37 research based programs and we were we were looking at all the
38:45 support we could give a school all the support we could give a
38:48 classroom what are the programs out there that we already know
38:51 work and I think we ended up somewhere with about 24 25
38:56 different programs and we just started narrowing it down from
39:00 there number one the the limited resources we have in personnel
39:04 alone can’t support that much
39:04 that many programs across 80 schools but number two the schools
39:11 themselves can’t administer 25 different programs at one time so
39:17 we narrowed it down to nine so just that you know you don’t have
39:25 to land on this slide for very long because I’m going to go
39:28 through each of these nine with you and tell you kind of what’s
39:32 going on in each
39:33 what’s going on in each of the realms and give a brief
39:36 description of what they are but what you should know is that we
39:40 finished this framework I want to say back in January and we
39:47 were working on a matrix how many of these were already at each
39:51 of our schools and from the matrix we were planning out five
39:55 years of training
39:58 what’s going on and I smile because it was an ambitious we were
40:01 going to train all 80 schools in all nine of these programs in
40:04 five years it was beautiful on paper we were rallying our
40:11 resources
40:12 and then Covid happened so you know it went to the back burner
40:16 very quickly we all got into survival mode and as we began
40:22 creeping up on to 2020 2021
40:26 it was not an initiative that we could just let go because we
40:31 knew the data and we knew we couldn’t discipline ourselves to
40:38 good behavior and so what we did is we took a step back and we
40:42 said what is the smallest limited most controlled amount we can
40:48 roll out to our schools
40:50 and it would be successful and be successful and estimate
40:53 forward progress on a district-wide behavior plan so as I go
40:57 through each of these segments I’m going to stop and tell you
41:01 exactly where we are implementing something in 2021 so you guys
41:05 kind of get a feeling for it and it really narrows down to three
41:10 pieces so we’ll take you through them
41:12 so one of our first pieces is the positive classroom practices
41:16 and we have adopted champs
41:18 and it’s secondary sister discipline in the secondary classroom
41:22 and this really is all about giving teachers the tools to show
41:26 the behavioral expectations of a lesson so just like a teacher
41:30 might put up today we’re learning this and this is how you’re
41:33 going to demonstrate you’ve learned that to me we also put up
41:36 and this is how we’re going to work together with one another
41:39 this is how you’re going to ask for help this is the
41:42 the volume of the volume of language the volume of voice you’re
41:44 going to use in this classroom and for the most part you know
41:50 for most lessons it’s just a routine that’s established
41:54 um there are going to be some lessons that are more interactive
41:56 and you need to do a different champs chart um but this really
42:00 just gives teachers the structure and the boundaries to let
42:05 students know their expectations
42:08 and when students students who know what you expect from them
42:12 are much more likely to to comply with it
42:16 so where are we at with champs in 2020 2021 we have no whole
42:21 school expectation uh we do have several schools that are
42:24 already champ schools we’re going to continue with with our
42:28 training um in blackboard we have added training to it uh we are
42:32 training all of our interns we are training all of our beginning
42:35 teachers
42:36 um and we are working with all of our teachers who are
42:39 struggling in the area of classroom discipline but we’re not
42:42 going to go all holds barred and do training in champs in 2021
42:51 the second area under positive classroom practices is conscious
42:55 discipline uh conscious discipline is well known in fact uh
42:59 every time i say it to somebody who teaches in that pre-k to two
43:03 range um they say the same thing to me
43:06 oh my gosh i would love to have that in brevard it’s just so
43:08 expensive
43:09 well we got one time use mental health dollars and we had to
43:13 tell them what we wanted to use it for
43:15 and because i knew what our discipline data was for our our
43:18 youngest group and because dr mullins had shared
43:21 with me the anecdotal data that he got from our our pre-k and
43:24 kindergarten uh students and because i have sat
43:27 in enough meetings with my elementary leading and learning
43:30 friends to hear that pre-k and kindergarten um kids
43:33 are just displaying some behaviors that um are are challenging
43:38 and and increasingly so um we wrote our
43:43 plan to show that um if students learn self-regulation at four
43:49 at five at six they don’t choose to turn to other
43:53 more self-harming uh tools at 12 and 13 and 14. and so the state
44:00 allowed us to use our one-time use mental health dollars
44:02 to bring conscious discipline in um we are going this is one of
44:06 our initiatives that we’re going to do across
44:10 all elementary and we have been working with them all summer
44:13 long they’re they are creating online training
44:16 for us you know our first goal was to get it all in person we
44:19 knew back in uh probably beginning of april
44:22 that wasn’t gonna that wasn’t gonna work not only did we not
44:25 want to pull teachers out of buildings but i knew we
44:28 didn’t want them to get together in large groups of people so i
44:32 just want this is about five minutes um
44:36 this is um the founder of conscious discipline she’s going to
44:40 explain it far better than i can
44:42 um so if we can just and i and i just think a foundation of
44:44 understanding is going to be good for
44:46 everybody as as we go into this initiative
44:52 welcome to conscious clips and our time together conscious clips
45:08 is a series of videos to introduce to you
45:08 the skills and powers of conscious discipline so what is
45:10 conscious discipline conscious discipline is an
45:16 emotional intelligence program to help adults and children
45:20 respond from the higher centers of their
45:22 brain instead of react from the lower centers of the brain to
45:26 conflict in life situations so basically what it is
45:30 it’s a shift from a very traditional compliant obedient model of
45:35 discipline to one that’s a relationship
45:38 based model of discipline and each of these have different core
45:42 beliefs in the traditional model
45:44 the goal is to make children behave based on the notion we can
45:50 make children mine we can make our
45:52 spouse change we can make co-workers work be more productive now
45:57 i don’t know about you but i’ve lived
45:59 long enough to know that you can’t make anybody else change you
46:02 can’t and maybe you’ve tried maybe you’ve
46:04 tried maybe you’ve tried to have a smoker quit smoking a drinker
46:07 quit drinking or an eight month old eat
46:08 those peas it’s impossible to make others change now the
46:13 conscious discipline says since that is impossible what is
46:17 possible it’s possible to change ourselves and because we’re in
46:21 dynamic relationships with each other
46:23 if i change myself and the dance we do with each other then you
46:28 in turn will change how you respond to me
46:30 the second difference between traditional discipline and
46:34 conscious discipline is traditional discipline
46:37 relies on rules and consequences as its foundation and it says
46:41 if it could just find the right rule
46:44 or the right consequence this behavior would go away now if you
46:47 go from jail cell to jail cell in america
46:51 you could ask almost everyone in jail say do you know the rule
46:54 about killing and they all could say yes
46:57 so obviously rules and consequences aren’t going to get perfect
47:02 behavior because we’re not short on
47:04 rules we’d all have a wonderful society so conscious discipline
47:07 says what governs behavior what’s the foundation
47:10 is a relationship with one another and our relationship with
47:14 each other gives us the willingness
47:17 to want to solve our conflicts and everybody knows this everyone’s
47:21 experienced this when you feel
47:23 close to someone when your relationship is going well and you
47:26 say well could you get me something out of
47:28 the fridge they’ll go okay but when your relationship is severed
47:32 when you’re mad at them when you haven’t been
47:33 talking for years and you say could you get me something out of
47:36 fridge they’ll go get it yourself so that
47:38 relationship gives us the willingness to solve our conflicts so
47:42 the third difference between
47:45 traditional discipline and conscious discipline is in
47:48 traditional discipline we’re trying to get rid of
47:51 conflict we don’t like conflict we grew up in conflict was a
47:54 painful thing it hurt all we knew that conflict
47:56 represented hurtful things screaming yelling days of intense
48:02 silence so when we group up we want to do
48:07 anything to avoid conflict and so what we’ve done to try to
48:11 avoid conflict is usually rewards and punishment
48:15 if you have no conflict this morning i’ll give you a little
48:18 gummy bear or we’ll take you to mcdonald’s
48:21 if you just straighten up act right or if you do these things
48:24 wrong we’re going to take away
48:26 things we’re going to take away recess if you’re a teacher we’re
48:29 going to take
48:29 away TV privileges if you’re a child so it’s based on these
48:35 external models
48:38 external reinforcers external punishes punishers governing your
48:43 behavior a
48:44 stimulus response here’s the stimulus you respond differently
48:48 conscious
48:49 discipline views conflict very very differently and what it does
48:53 is help you
48:53 it helps you perceive conflict differently it helps you see
48:57 conflict
48:58 as missing social and emotional skills and then it teaches you
49:02 the skills of how
49:03 to replace those skills in yourself and in your children so that
49:08 you can build
49:09 healthy relationships and in those healthy relationships you can
49:13 have
49:14 connection coexisting with conflict in a very healthy growth
49:18 orientated way the
49:20 conscious discipline asked us to rely on internal resources it
49:24 teaches us to think
49:26 through things it teaches us to reflect on what’s the best
49:31 decision for us it’s not
49:33 based on what stimulus is going to trigger a certain reaction
49:37 from me it says let’s
49:38 think it through let’s think what might be my best choice in
49:44 this situation so if
49:45 you found these ideas I share with you intriguing and you’re
49:48 ready to move
49:48 further and shifting from a traditional discipline model to a
49:52 more conscious
49:53 conscious discipline model conscious clips will be a tool that
49:56 will be helpful to
49:57 you until next time I wish you
49:59 so what they have done for us is they have created six two-hour
50:09 webinars and just so
50:12 that you know our expectation is that every pre-k through second
50:16 grade teacher
50:17 participate in these six this 12 hours of training the schools
50:21 will be able to set
50:22 up their their schedule how they want to set it up we have a
50:26 recommended schedule
50:28 but you know that’s not going to fit every culture and I have
50:33 been working with some
50:34 principals already who who have come to me and say Chris I want
50:37 to do it this way or
50:37 that way and however it works for that school is fine conscious
50:42 discipline has
50:43 also agreed to come in and do some intense training for any
50:46 school that wants to be
50:48 basically a you know the gold standard schools and so we asked
50:54 our elementary
50:55 schools if you want additional training it’s required for all of
50:59 your team it’s
51:01 additional training for your administrative staff it involves
51:04 walkthroughs on your
51:05 campus email us and we’ll make sure that we we put you in the
51:10 running we were
51:10 hoping we would get three or four schools that would want to be
51:13 that gold
51:14 standard I had 12 requests so the schools very very much want
51:18 conscious
51:19 discipline in their sites the other thing because we went to
51:22 webinar
51:22 originally our budget was set up for pre-k through two mostly
51:26 because that’s all we
51:27 could afford to have trained now that we have it on webinar any
51:30 school that wants
51:31 to do pre-k through six can actually do this across their whole
51:34 school our
51:35 expectation is pre-k through two our standard is pre-k through
51:40 two so I just
51:42 want to stop and and answer any questions that you guys might
51:45 have about
51:46 conscious discipline because this is going to be implemented in
51:50 2020 2021
51:53 when when you say thank you so for it to be implemented this
52:10 school year then then
52:12 these training hours that you have listed on the slide that’s
52:15 going to happen
52:15 before before August 11th no it’s not no it’s not going to
52:22 happen before August
52:23 actually the training model that’s been recommended to us by
52:26 conscious discipline
52:27 is to do the two hours and then wait a month let it sink in try
52:31 some of the
52:32 practices and get together collaborate talk and then do another
52:37 two hours so
52:38 you’re building understanding and knowledge throughout the year
52:41 now a couple of
52:42 principals I spoke to said you know I want to do three and pre-planning
52:45 and and
52:45 then build from there that’s that’s their choice we’re waiting
52:50 for them to be
52:51 sent down to us because we actually don’t have we don’t have
52:53 physical hold of them
52:54 yet and so as soon as that happens I think principals are going
52:58 to want to
52:59 review them and and set out their plan for the year but no the
53:02 intention isn’t to do
53:04 like 12 hours straight through and then you’re ready it really
53:07 should be something
53:08 where they do they do to they do some practice they have some
53:13 conversation about
53:14 how did it go for you this is how it went for me and then they
53:17 add they add on to
53:19 that and of course in the meantime we’re going to be working
53:21 more intensely with
53:22 the schools that we we select as those those gold standard
53:25 schools so as schools
53:27 need more reinforcement or you know more coaching or mentoring
53:32 we’re building that
53:33 group as well one of the things that was a non-negotiable for us
53:37 is that we
53:38 weren’t going to do any training that we couldn’t guarantee we
53:41 could we could not
53:44 guarantee that we couldn’t that’s double negative in there
53:46 someplace we would
53:48 guarantee that we would come in there and do some coaching and
53:51 do walkthroughs
53:52 because we didn’t I mean what’s the point of the one-shot
53:55 training and walk away
53:56 so so our goal is to do it right and to slow it down and to give
54:02 teachers some
54:03 opportunity to practice and get feedback thank you for doing
54:06 that because I think
54:07 we’ve heard from our teachers that the the follow-up on the
54:10 professional
54:11 development in every area not just this area is so important and
54:13 that’s sometimes
54:14 what is lacking I I’m I’m getting excited about this I mean as
54:20 as a former
54:21 teacher I’ll say yeah it’s one of the things your classroom
54:24 management and how
54:25 to deal with all that is one of the things your is the smallest
54:28 you spend so
54:29 much time on pedagogy and everything that’s the smallest and
54:31 even if you’re
54:32 trained really well it just doesn’t prepare you for stepping
54:35 into the
54:35 classroom and having your own group and having this continued
54:39 learning while you
54:40 have your group of kids and so that you can daily implement
54:43 things and daily see
54:44 the changes and the interactions it it makes such a difference
54:48 and I’m glad we’re
54:49 gonna be able to support our our schools in this way this year
54:52 thank you I’ll tell
54:54 you there’s you know there’s two frames of thought one is that
54:56 you know if
54:57 you’re engaging kids will behave and the second frame of thought
55:00 is if kids were
55:01 behaving I could be more engaging and so you know I’ve seen it
55:05 work both ways of
55:07 not paying her the least little bit of attention so I think I
55:17 think you’re right
55:19 I think we spent a lot of time on pedagogy and it’s important
55:22 but we got to
55:24 have some tools in our toolbox as well miss McDougall I think
55:28 you indicated you had
55:30 another question I do and I don’t know if Chris can share this
55:33 information but Chris
55:34 who are the schools that wanted to be you’re gonna use a scope
55:39 standard and are
55:40 they if you can’t answer the school’s name are they across the
55:44 district I can’t I
55:47 don’t remember because they were coming at me fast and furious
55:50 and to be frank I
55:51 was sending them on to Melissa Braun who’s organizing this
55:54 initiative for us and so I
55:56 don’t but I can get them for you and they were they were across
55:59 the district they
56:00 were title one schools and and non title one schools so I can
56:05 get that list to you we
56:06 haven’t narrowed down the selection yet I would love to work
56:10 with all of them I
56:11 just don’t know if financially we can do that but we’ll make
56:14 sure it’s across across representation
56:16 for our district thank you mm-hmm so I have a couple of
56:23 questions slash concerns one
56:25 and maybe these are not issues but I just need a little clarity
56:32 concerns I hear from employees and
56:35 teachers in our schools is we have a program that works for us
56:38 and then the district makes us change
56:40 great question and and so I want to know how this especially and
56:45 now I see if we’re
56:46 only going to do this for pre-k through two potentially a school
56:50 could be really
56:51 doing a great job with a different program right now and we’re
56:55 going to say part of
56:56 your school you know some of our schools you go in and whatever
56:58 program they’ve
56:59 adopted or is everywhere it’s on every classroom that it’s it’s
57:02 it’s integrated on
57:04 the hallways it’s and there it seems like it’s really working
57:08 and they’ve embraced
57:09 it and now you’re going to take part of that school and give
57:12 them a different program so
57:14 can you sure yeah yeah why that’s a good idea yeah we had long
57:17 conversations about
57:18 that there’s two things the programs that we all that we picked
57:23 all come together like
57:24 this so for example in conscious discipline you have circles in
57:28 PBIS you have circles in
57:30 restorative practices you have circles it is all about getting
57:32 your group together and
57:33 having that and leading that conversation with them so all of
57:36 the programs we pick they they
57:38 fit together like a puzzle the second thing and I and I had this
57:40 conversation with the
57:42 principals is that what we’re mandating is the training because
57:47 we don’t know what we don’t
57:49 know and if you have a school that doesn’t have a risk ratio in
57:55 in the danger zone if you are not
57:58 suspending 12 15 18 kindergarten students a year if you are not
58:04 if you are not one of those schools
58:06 that’s contributing to the seven out of school suspensions then
58:09 I don’t want to fix what’s not broken but I’m
58:12 going to give you more information what you do with that
58:15 information is on you but we have two
58:18 concerns there number one is something’s broken our data shows
58:22 us something’s broken and so if you
58:25 have a school that maybe thinks that what they’re doing is
58:27 working and it’s not we need to be able to
58:30 point that out and the second thing is that you know sometimes
58:35 things are brought into school because
58:37 it is what the principal is passionate about and if that
58:41 principal leaves and the next principal is not
58:45 so passionate about sometimes that falls away and so we needed
58:49 to pick a couple of a couple of very
58:52 strong research-backed programs that no matter who the principal
58:56 is no matter what happens in that
58:58 school I have a team that can go in and support that
59:00 implementation so these are the programs that
59:03 we’re supporting this is the program that we’re training it is
59:07 not our expectation that you scrap
59:09 what you’re doing and use them but it is our expectation that
59:12 you look at your data to see if what you’re
59:14 doing is working and if it’s not change needs to happen okay I
59:19 think that that’s a solid fair response
59:22 so my next question is I like what she said I understand I think
59:27 especially for our youngest
59:30 learners I think it’s important to try to fix the problem at the
59:33 root before you know punishment is
59:35 put in but what came to mind was me standing in one of our title
59:39 one schools this past year and I just
59:41 couldn’t even believe what I was watching it was a think she was
59:45 pre-k I don’t even think she was
59:46 kindergarten having a fit beyond fits and literally four grown
59:52 adults standing
59:54 around her trying this approach trying to say this to her they
1:00:00 had no control
1:00:01 of the situation and say they take all these classes and these
1:00:06 four grown adults
1:00:07 are now can’t be with their other classrooms because they’re all
1:00:09 surrounded in the hallway are they still allowed to go to
1:00:16 traditional let me let
1:00:18 me try to clarify that a little bit suspending kindergarten
1:00:21 students sounds
1:00:21 ridiculous but in that situation and I know it was a ten minute
1:00:25 glimpse that I
1:00:26 had and if that child was like that day after day after day and
1:00:29 so disruptive to
1:00:30 the school is is this tool of suspending kindergarten students
1:00:34 still in play or
1:00:35 once we adopt this program that’s off the table and we’re saying
1:00:39 that can never
1:00:39 happen again yeah we’re not changing or taking away the
1:00:42 discipline plan the
1:00:43 discipline plan is still there we are not saying you can’t just
1:00:46 like when we the
1:00:47 big crisis when we put in the discipline plan is they’re gonna
1:00:50 say we can’t
1:00:51 suspend kids anymore that’s that’s never what we said and we’re
1:00:53 not saying it now
1:00:54 I will say you to you that when you have a student in crisis day
1:00:58 in and day out and
1:01:00 that’s a student in crisis what you just described to me and and
1:01:03 our reaction is
1:01:04 the same day in day out we have failed and so again we’re we
1:01:10 need to get tools in the
1:01:10 hands of the people that need them and once we can say remember
1:01:14 I talked about tier 1 tier 2 once we can
1:01:17 establish yes this school has a tier 1 support system for kids
1:01:21 we can then talk
1:01:23 about tier 2 but what is ending up happening now in the data I
1:01:27 didn’t
1:01:27 share is the overwhelming number of behavior referrals that we’re
1:01:31 getting to
1:01:32 our behavior analysts and our behavior techs that all stem from
1:01:36 tier 1 problems
1:01:38 the expectations aren’t in the classroom where they’re needed or
1:01:42 in the school as
1:01:43 they’re needed and it and it brings itself up to the behavior
1:01:47 analysts and
1:01:47 instead of working on the real tier 2 problems they’re going in
1:01:51 to solve tier 1
1:01:52 issues so we really need to get this foundation in place so that
1:01:56 we actually
1:01:56 have the resources to support that kid in crisis who’s who’s
1:02:00 tantruming all day
1:02:01 every day requiring the attention of four different adults on
1:02:05 campus I mean you
1:02:06 know as simply as I can put it that’s a kid in crisis thank you
1:02:09 I appreciate the
1:02:10 approach I think I recently read book someone gave me and it was
1:02:14 talking about
1:02:14 how just as a system we’re constantly at the end of the problem
1:02:19 putting band-aids
1:02:19 and it’s costing us three times as much and people and money if
1:02:23 we would just go in
1:02:24 at the beginning and and set the stage maybe we wouldn’t be
1:02:27 wouldn’t be so
1:02:28 expensive to put the band-aids on in the end so I think that’s
1:02:31 what this is
1:02:31 doing and I appreciate it yeah thank you mr. Susan did you have
1:02:37 questions for
1:02:38 us more on this portion you know I I might wait until in the
1:02:43 board meeting and just
1:02:44 say something I love what this is it’s amazing and I think it’s
1:02:48 a step in the
1:02:49 right direction I truly do like I being you know in the
1:02:52 classroom and seeing best
1:02:55 practices I do but there’s one piece that I think that we’re
1:02:58 missing that I
1:03:00 think that you know I think it’s the one of the causes to each
1:03:03 one of these kids
1:03:04 that are coming into the schools the why they’re acting the way
1:03:07 they are before
1:03:07 they get there and that has to deal with community involvement
1:03:11 along with
1:03:11 clubs and activities and opportunities for our kids to excel in
1:03:15 something that
1:03:16 makes them want to come to school and it was something that I
1:03:19 wanted to speak to
1:03:20 about bringing in the community more often into our schools and
1:03:24 I was going to
1:03:24 talk to that at the board meeting but this is amazing thank you
1:03:26 thank you thank you
1:03:27 thank you miss Moore for the work that you’re doing around this
1:03:31 I know you know
1:03:32 these are our conversations that we’ve been having for some time
1:03:34 and I know it’s
1:03:35 been a significant area of frustration for a lot of our school-based
1:03:38 leaders and
1:03:39 teachers and and staff at the school because we know they all
1:03:43 want want to
1:03:44 support their students to success a couple of questions for you
1:03:48 I love that
1:03:49 you are going that that you are rolling this out in a manner
1:03:51 that allows you to go in
1:03:53 and check for fidelity of implementation because I feel like
1:03:57 that’s really really
1:03:58 important that fidelity piece with all of all of the programs
1:04:03 that you put up
1:04:03 there I feel like fidelity is the make or break on it but
1:04:07 realistically your
1:04:08 capacity to ensure fidelity is limited just because you and your
1:04:14 team are
1:04:15 phenomenal but we keep you very very busy on lots of different
1:04:18 things so that makes
1:04:21 me wonder are we including principals in principals guidance
1:04:27 counselors lead
1:04:27 teachers resource like what is it what are we putting in place
1:04:33 to ensure that
1:04:35 beyond the class the pre-k to two classroom teachers in a school
1:04:40 who else is
1:04:41 going to be on the same page with us yeah each initiative is
1:04:45 just a little bit
1:04:46 different we looked at the right roles to facilitate we looked
1:04:51 at maximizing our
1:04:53 resources outside the school system so for example part of that
1:04:56 contract with
1:04:57 conscious discipline is for them to send their people in just
1:05:00 because we knew we
1:05:02 wouldn’t have have all of those resources so we divided up all
1:05:06 of these
1:05:07 initiatives across our our group so like I said this one is
1:05:11 Melissa Brawn is
1:05:12 heading up this one along with she has a team working behind her
1:05:15 with her I
1:05:16 should say and and they are figuring out who the right people
1:05:21 are to
1:05:21 facilitate it so that we are actually spreading out the the
1:05:26 responsibility and as
1:05:27 much as we can and and I will be frank my team loves to train
1:05:33 they love to train and when I say to
1:05:35 them no pay for a trainer to come in because I need you guys to
1:05:39 do the
1:05:40 walkthroughs and the coaching and so they they begrudgingly they
1:05:45 and they want to do
1:05:46 the walkthroughs and the coaching they want to do it all they
1:05:48 want to do it all but
1:05:49 they begrudgingly give up some of it because I just know the
1:05:52 resources aren’t
1:05:53 there for us to do it all and so in this particular case we’re
1:05:56 paying
1:05:56 facilitators to come in to do the facilitation and to help us
1:05:59 with the
1:05:59 walkthroughs super thank you so much I will do a quick check-in
1:06:05 with you miss
1:06:06 Moore though the board meeting is scheduled to start at 9:30
1:06:09 what time is
1:06:10 it it is 9:20 that ain’t gonna work so I will just make an
1:06:16 announcement now that we
1:06:17 will be starting the board meeting slightly late this morning so
1:06:21 that we
1:06:21 can finish up miss Moore I’ll go quick I’ll try to I’ll try to
1:06:25 pick it up well
1:06:26 this is really important so I I don’t want to shortcut this
1:06:30 conversation okay
1:06:30 because I I mean I I think this has the potential to have a
1:06:34 significant impact on
1:06:36 on our district as a whole so I don’t want to shortcut you okay
1:06:39 but rough idea of
1:06:41 how much longer you think I’m gonna say 30 minutes okay very
1:06:45 good thank you unless
1:06:46 unless you guys ask 30 minutes of questions which we may I’ll go
1:06:52 through to
1:06:53 the end and then we’ll save all questions for the end so the
1:06:55 last one under
1:06:56 positive classroom practices is actually universal design for
1:06:58 learning this is the
1:06:59 engagement piece and this has actually been around a long time
1:07:02 it’s been in
1:07:03 state statute it’s been in the state reading plan it’s been in
1:07:06 the district
1:07:06 reading plan but we’ve really never embraced it in Brevard
1:07:10 County we we offer
1:07:11 individual trainings and it’s something that we know needs to be
1:07:15 embraced across
1:07:16 all of our classrooms as we looked at what our plan was again
1:07:20 next year we said no
1:07:21 school-wide expectation and in fact because it’s been around so
1:07:25 long and
1:07:26 misunderstood so long we decided we were going to take 2021 to
1:07:29 build the
1:07:29 foundation at the district level all district leaders are going
1:07:33 to
1:07:34 participate in a book study dive into UDL or I guess I should
1:07:37 say student services
1:07:39 and leading and learning as well as anybody else who wants to
1:07:42 participate we
1:07:43 offered principals if they would like to dive into UDL with us
1:07:46 and we probably had
1:07:47 I think 10 or 11 principals that want to do the book study with
1:07:50 us and as we go
1:07:51 forward to 21 22 we’re gonna build understanding in into our
1:07:56 principles on some
1:07:58 of you guys may have been around for UBD which is a planning pro
1:08:02 you know
1:08:02 process this is totally different so I don’t want you to confuse
1:08:06 confuse those
1:08:07 two things and what we’re trying to do is not repeat some of our
1:08:12 past mistakes and
1:08:13 build a solid foundation of understanding in our leadership
1:08:17 before we roll it out to
1:08:18 our teachers so that isn’t even look to be rolled out until 22
1:08:24 23
1:08:25 so moving into the social emotional realm we have decided on two
1:08:31 curriculums the first one is Sanford
1:08:34 Harmony for pre-k through 6 and the second one is Lions Quest 7
1:08:38 through 12 as you guys know many schools have great programs and
1:08:44 this goes right to Ms. Deskovich’s question we don’t want to
1:08:47 replace their programs if they have a great SEL program and it’s
1:08:49 working for them we are not asking them to replace it with Sanford
1:08:53 Harmony we are saying you have to have the
1:08:55 Sanford Harmony training because it’s a good companion training
1:09:00 there are going to be things in there that may not be in what
1:09:01 you’re currently doing and you may want to bring it in on the
1:09:04 other hand you know you may look at it and say I’m going to shelve
1:09:07 it but but you’re at least going to know that tool is available
1:09:11 to you
1:09:11 for 2021 we do have a August September October SEL plan as kids
1:09:19 come back into school and we are requiring eight SEL lessons for
1:09:25 elementary and four for secondary as they come back into school
1:09:29 that all revolve around giving kids the opportunity to talk
1:09:32 about the experiences that they had and and where we are in in
1:09:38 the world right now and so
1:09:40 um and giving them a foundation for understanding they’re safe
1:09:44 and we’re here for them and we’re going to take care of them uh
1:09:47 because you know the last they heard they were leaving for
1:09:49 vacation and then they never came back and we were in a lot of
1:09:53 cases the kids most stable stable place um and even if we weren’t
1:09:58 that for them we were at least part of their family you know
1:10:02 parents will say we talk about the teacher more at the dinner
1:10:05 table than we than we talk about anybody else in in many cases
1:10:09 so um those are the two
1:10:10 two curriculums uh we’re adopting what we’re asking schools to
1:10:15 do when they come back is to do a self-assessment and we’re
1:10:18 doing this because we found a lot of schools were having
1:10:20 difficulty finding time in their day for SEL
1:10:23 um for our purposes um Jane Klein and Stephanie Sullivan close
1:10:27 your ears um it is just as important to find time for SEL in
1:10:31 your day as it is for reading and so we want every school to
1:10:35 really do a self-assessment reflect on how they’re making time
1:10:38 in their day and to see if there’s a way to fit in 30
1:10:40 30 minutes a week that’s what we’re asking for 30 minutes a week
1:10:44 for uh SEL and then of course we want them to follow the
1:10:46 recovery plan for august and september and give their students
1:10:49 an opportunity to process through uh their experiences these
1:10:53 past four months
1:10:54 um as we move out of SEL we’re moving into the positive school
1:11:00 culture it’s not going to surprise you to see PBIS on there for
1:11:03 those of you guys who don’t know um positive behavior
1:11:05 interventions and supports it’s a way to set up expectations
1:11:10 school-wide system
1:11:10 give students a way to practice what their expectations are um
1:11:15 and to know that they can meet that outcome every day it is it
1:11:20 is it is the tier one support that most uh if you hear of a of a
1:11:24 district that’s doing phenomenally well uh across all behaviors
1:11:29 i mean across behavior and all discipline they are typically PBIS
1:11:33 districts um we are not looking at adding any new PBIS schools
1:11:40 schools in 2021 except uh we unfortunately have been cited by
1:11:48 the state for uh disproportionate discipline in the area of in-school
1:11:53 suspension uh specifically with black students and students with
1:11:57 disabilities
1:11:57 and we have identified the target schools and our and and and
1:12:03 their answer has been to us but our students are receiving
1:12:06 services and they’re staying in school um and we have identified
1:12:10 the target schools and our and and their answer has been to us
1:12:10 but our students are receiving services and they’re staying in
1:12:10 school um and we have identified the target schools and our
1:12:10 in school suspension in school suspension is still a removal
1:12:12 from the regular school program and it’s still part of what the
1:12:15 state monitors and so when we went to each of those schools to
1:12:19 look at what their tier one behavior system was
1:12:22 um we found that there were there were gaps and so we’re going
1:12:26 to be working with those uh six schools right out of the gate to
1:12:30 add PBIS um in as a tier one support for them
1:12:34 uh we will continue to support the rest of our PBIS schools some
1:12:46 of them want tier two training some of them want uh uh uh um
1:12:46 the booster there’s a booster uh class we’ll continue to support
1:12:50 that but our main focus from uh jason lobley and renee uh roth
1:12:55 and um that team is going to be cceis schools uh and those six
1:13:00 schools are all secondary
1:13:02 i’m sorry all the six schools are secondary schools that is
1:13:09 correct okay and and i can’t name them off the top of my head
1:13:12 but i can send them to you
1:13:16 so also under positive school culture is the concept of restorative
1:13:32 practices restorative practices fits in with PBIS
1:13:34 restorative practices fits in with conscious discipline restorative
1:13:40 practices about is about looking at your behavior owning your
1:13:44 behavior understanding and making a choice of how to resolve the
1:13:48 issue with with the person that you were in a conflict with
1:13:52 and we actually started this initiative um last year uh the way
1:13:56 it was set up was we were going to have uh two days of training
1:13:59 in the fall
1:14:00 uh we were going to give them time to practice then we were
1:14:03 going to give two more trainings uh in the spring
1:14:06 and this is just with a leadership cohort at this at the 10
1:14:09 schools we were working with
1:14:10 and then we were going to have them write their implementation
1:14:13 plan for 2020 2021 we thought oh
1:14:16 we could we could really get this going and and have and give
1:14:19 everybody an opportunity to train practice
1:14:22 implement walk through that was our plan uh needless to say the
1:14:25 two days in spring didn’t happen so we are actually following up
1:14:29 with those 10 schools right now
1:14:30 and we’re going to complete last year’s cycle this year before
1:14:35 we add any new schools to restorative practices we actually have
1:14:41 a waiting list for restorative practices many schools want that
1:14:43 training
1:14:44 um we’re trying to be really uh really uh consistent and and uh
1:14:49 systematic about how we how we do these things so we’re going to
1:14:54 finish up cohort one and we have actually already
1:14:56 identified cohort two and they’ll be put in place uh 21 22.
1:15:02 uh in the next bucket was mental health and this is the last of
1:15:07 the four buckets
1:15:08 um and that was it shouldn’t surprise you to have youth mental
1:15:11 health first aid on there
1:15:12 um we continue that initiative and this year the state added an
1:15:16 online course um
1:15:18 right now i i i’ll be frank i don’t i don’t know if we have the
1:15:22 first online one scheduled the last i heard about two weeks ago
1:15:25 we were having some
1:15:26 technical difficulties with that course um but it’s going to be
1:15:29 a way to get way more
1:15:32 uh teachers through that course than the face-to-face that we
1:15:35 currently offer
1:15:36 so that’s going to continue to be an initiative that’s going to
1:15:39 continue to be initiative
1:15:40 um for we’re never going to be done because every educator in
1:15:44 the state of florida has to have that and we’re just never going
1:15:46 to be done
1:15:46 because once you are three years out you have to have a a one
1:15:50 hour uh booster and so we will continue with that
1:15:54 um but the next one is the one i’m i’m probably most excited
1:15:59 about
1:16:00 uh we have partnered with lifetime counseling for a lot of
1:16:04 things uh they provide some of our mental
1:16:06 health counseling in our schools uh they contract social workers
1:16:10 with us um when we can’t uh when we
1:16:13 can’t hire them ourselves they contract we pay for half of a
1:16:17 social worker and uh medicaid reimbursement
1:16:19 pays for the other half so it’s a it’s a great uh program for us
1:16:22 it’s great for lifetime counseling
1:16:24 and we went to them and said you know we have a course on trauma-informed
1:16:29 classes but it has a limited seat
1:16:30 count and as our teachers come back in we’re going to need two
1:16:34 things we’re going to number one need to
1:16:36 recognize that our kids are coming back from trauma um and i
1:16:40 said this to dr mullins and and and the rest
1:16:44 of the cabinet and i don’t know if i’ve said it to you but this
1:16:47 is a crisis like no crisis we have been
1:16:49 through in our lifetime because this is called a no low point
1:16:54 crisis when we have a hurricane we can
1:16:57 watch it coming toward us we can live through it for 24 to 48
1:17:01 hours and we walk out and it’s at that
1:17:04 point that we’ve hit our low point because we look at our house
1:17:08 we assess the damage we call our friends
1:17:11 we call the electric company and we start making a plan that’s
1:17:15 in our human nature we’re going to start
1:17:18 fixing it because now i have power back because i’m fixing it in
1:17:22 a no low point crisis we don’t get
1:17:25 that power back we don’t get to fix anything because we don’t
1:17:29 know where the bottom is um
1:17:32 if you look at the research there are two things that fall under
1:17:36 low no low point
1:17:38 crises one is a nuclear disaster and the other is a pandemic
1:17:42 because the impact is far reaching
1:17:48 so we wanted to make sure all of our teachers were trauma
1:17:51 informed as students came into school
1:17:54 but more importantly we wanted to point out what compassion
1:17:59 fatigue was and compassion fatigue is
1:18:02 just basically the cost of caring it is the cost of day in and
1:18:07 day out putting other people in front of
1:18:10 yourself and when i worked with the principles to show to go
1:18:13 through this same presentation with them
1:18:15 i said you know you’re in compassion fatigue when you end up um
1:18:20 yelling about something or at somebody
1:18:23 who really isn’t the target of your anger of getting frustrated
1:18:26 over something that normally wouldn’t
1:18:28 frustrate you at crying over something that normally would make
1:18:31 you cry it is because you have put
1:18:33 everything out for other people and you have nothing left for
1:18:37 yourself and so we want to make sure that
1:18:39 that foundation of trauma informed and compassion fatigue are uh
1:18:43 at least shared with our our teachers in
1:18:46 in july august september we we want it done in those first
1:18:50 couple of months and the reason is uh oh i’ll
1:18:56 get to the reason in a second these are the six um these are the
1:19:01 six uh webinars uh we’ve already
1:19:03 trained our social workers and our school counselors um we we
1:19:07 probably have about 20 more that still need
1:19:09 to be trained they are facilitating to your point miss belford
1:19:13 they’re facilitating that webinar so we took
1:19:15 school-based people we put them through three three days of
1:19:19 train the trainer so that they can go through
1:19:21 these webinars that were created for us by lifetime counseling
1:19:24 we at first thought oh we’ll we’ll train a
1:19:26 core group and they can train two or three schools um after the
1:19:30 very first training i got a number of
1:19:32 emails that said that’s not going to work because people are
1:19:36 going to want to talk about their
1:19:37 experiences and they’re going to want to talk with family and we’re
1:19:42 family uh you you strangers are not
1:19:44 family and so um they really felt strongly that they could only
1:19:47 train their school so we we put another
1:19:50 training in place and we were going to try to put another
1:19:53 training in place for july as well these are the six
1:19:56 six areas uh that we’re going to talk about um and i just wanted
1:20:01 to show you this is a two minute clip
1:20:03 of the impact that being in a trauma-informed school with people
1:20:08 that are aware of their limitations
1:20:11 and and and the behaviors that build them can do for a kid um so
1:20:16 this is just really quick
1:20:23 resilience is the result of a highly interactive process between
1:20:28 individual characteristics and
1:20:30 the person and the environment in which that individual has
1:20:34 developed it’s really the counterbalancing
1:20:38 difficult things that may exist in the child’s life with
1:20:43 positive things that occur within the family but
1:20:46 even positive things that may exist in the community an easy way
1:20:50 of thinking about resilience is like
1:20:53 a a scale with a fulcrum in the in the middle of it and there
1:20:58 are things on both sides of that scale
1:21:00 experiences of both bad things or good things our genes shape
1:21:08 where the fulcrum is part
1:21:11 there are certain genes that make a child more sensitive to the
1:21:15 effects of maltreatment or parental
1:21:17 neglect or witnessing violence the fulcrum may start out kind of
1:21:22 more towards one side or more towards
1:21:25 the other side and that’s going to make a big difference how
1:21:29 much these subsequent events
1:21:31 affect things positively or negatively science tells us that
1:21:35 experience moves the fulcrum for better or for
1:21:39 worse even though we are born with genes genes will respond
1:21:45 differently to certain environmental situations as
1:21:50 opposed to others what the genes are actually doing are turning
1:21:54 up or turning down the expression of chemicals
1:21:57 in circuits in the brain three in the entire body that that
1:22:02 govern our responses to stress to anxiety to depressive symptoms
1:22:08 when positive experiences accumulate and children learn coping
1:22:12 skills that help them to manage stress
1:22:16 the fulcrum can scale tilts toward positive outcomes more easily
1:22:21 that’s what resilience is all about
1:22:24 there’s always an adult or more than one adult who is key to
1:22:30 providing that relationship that helps
1:22:32 to build resilience
1:22:41 so we know our kids are coming to us and that fulcrum is going
1:22:48 to be shifted in a way that isn’t going to
1:22:51 give us a learning brain it’s going to give us a surviving brain
1:22:54 and so we need to make sure our teachers are ready for that
1:22:58 and our schools are ready for that because everybody has said to
1:23:02 me you know i’m concerned kids have been
1:23:04 out of school for three months the behaviors that we’re going to
1:23:07 get back um and the behaviors are
1:23:10 just a reaction to what is going on um insecurity anger
1:23:15 frustration uncertainty um all of those are going to
1:23:20 play into the behaviors that our students bring to us so that’s
1:23:23 why we front-loaded conscious discipline
1:23:26 sel that sel plan when they come back those lessons and then
1:23:30 this uh the trauma informed and compassion fatigue
1:23:33 training again that’s six one hour webinars um we want them all
1:23:40 in july august september each school
1:23:43 will have their own trainer if they aren’t able to send us a
1:23:46 social worker or a school counselor we have
1:23:48 trained lifetime counselors to push out to them as well as
1:23:52 district-based social workers to push out to them
1:23:54 um but the information that i’ve gotten is that schools are
1:23:58 going to want their own their own
1:24:00 facilitator um i went ahead and had uh not i uh kelly suria is
1:24:05 leading this initiative along with laurie
1:24:08 parsons over at lifetime counseling um kelly set up a training
1:24:11 yesterday and today for the principals so
1:24:14 they’re getting all six hours yesterday morning and this morning
1:24:18 and i uh we had i want to say 78 either
1:24:21 principals and or assistant principals on the training and i
1:24:25 received probably three or four emails from
1:24:28 principals saying i’m on vacation but i’m going to log in what
1:24:31 do i need to do so uh i i think very
1:24:36 strongly the message is getting out from our school counselors
1:24:38 that this is important in our school
1:24:39 social workers and our principals are going to be working with
1:24:43 them on what the training plan is again
1:24:45 i can’t um one one size this to fit everybody so um they’re
1:24:49 going to have to decide what the right thing
1:24:52 for them is but i needed i needed the principals to see it
1:24:55 themselves to see if its importance and they
1:24:57 did they absolutely 100 percent did we’re going to try to do
1:25:01 another one of those uh three hour and three
1:25:04 hour trainings for any administrators that weren’t able um i was
1:25:07 going to invite you guys to the first one
1:25:09 but then i thought oh they’re not going to have the background
1:25:12 so i waited and if we have another one i’ll
1:25:13 invite you if you’re interested in in participating and finally
1:25:16 the last one under mental health is
1:25:19 sources of strength i think you guys all know sources of
1:25:22 strength is a peer-to-peer suicide prevention
1:25:24 program um we are going to complete all high school and adult
1:25:28 all high school adult and student training
1:25:31 in fact all of our high school adult training is done we have
1:25:34 one student group left so we’re going to do
1:25:36 that in 2020 2021 and we’re going to evaluate all of the
1:25:40 existing high school and middle school programs
1:25:42 you know you put a program out there and it may get off like
1:25:45 gangbusters and two years later it has
1:25:47 withered on the vine so we’re going to go out and evaluate those
1:25:51 programs with the tools from sources of
1:25:52 strength and provide support to those uh programs that need a
1:25:56 need a little help but we’re also going to
1:25:58 create an implementation plan for our middle schools because our
1:26:01 next step is to implement it at all middle schools
1:26:03 um and you will be happy to know i think you will be happy to
1:26:06 know that right now sources of strength
1:26:09 has a pilot program going on in elementary schools uh not here
1:26:12 in brevard county but across across the
1:26:15 country so we’re looking at that with interest but our first
1:26:19 goal is to get it implemented across all of the
1:26:21 the secondary settings so again this is the whole picture you
1:26:25 saw it at the beginning so i hope it makes
1:26:29 more sense now kind of what we’re doing but i want you to know
1:26:35 that this is actually the small picture
1:26:38 in the bigger picture because it’s just that first row that tier
1:26:44 one support because we’ve been doing
1:26:49 a lot of tier two supports and we will continue to do that and
1:26:52 we’re going to do some training on that
1:26:54 after we get a solid tier one implemented so i want you to know
1:26:59 we do have a bigger picture in mind
1:27:01 but we’re going to start with where it needs to start and that’s
1:27:05 what’s good for all kids
1:27:07 okay i did that in 15 minutes you did that was excellent
1:27:13 questions for miss born board members
1:27:15 i have a couple questions uh what did tier one look like before
1:27:19 you put that chart together
1:27:21 this plan together what did tier one look like before i put the
1:27:24 chart together tier one looked
1:27:25 different in every building and some buildings didn’t have any
1:27:29 tier one um so their tier one was reaction
1:27:32 discipline behavior discipline um and if i said and i mean i’ve
1:27:36 had some of these conversations what are
1:27:38 your school-wide um behavior expectations i’ve gotten some
1:27:42 answers like well don’t be late um that’s not
1:27:47 really a school-wide behavior expectation um that’s a rule and
1:27:52 you know as you saw in the video everybody
1:27:56 knows the rules it’s what is it going to take to follow them so
1:28:00 um some schools on on the other
1:28:02 hand have great tier ones tier one supports and many of them are
1:28:05 the supports that are in that presentation
1:28:08 so what we’re really looking at is what are we consistently
1:28:12 doing across all schools
1:28:14 that we can say yeah tier one supports are in place in brevard
1:28:18 public schools um and so
1:28:20 if if the question is what are we consistently doing the answer
1:28:24 is nothing
1:28:24 oh that’s that’s exactly what i was trying to point out just the
1:28:27 amount of work that you’ve put into
1:28:29 you and your team and what you’ve done here and i think we’re
1:28:32 going to see uh it’s going to be
1:28:34 very impactful for us as an organization so i just wanted to
1:28:37 thank you for that i do have
1:28:38 you kind of touched on it i wrote down the question early on or
1:28:43 in this last little segment
1:28:45 the 30 minutes a week that you’re expecting to be given to
1:28:50 students for sel for social emotional
1:28:53 learning yeah right um schools that have social workers and a
1:28:57 guidance counselor i i think they
1:28:59 can pull off probably 30 minutes a week my concern is most of my
1:29:03 elementary schools don’t have social
1:29:05 workers at all and then i’m i’m also how is that going to be
1:29:08 implemented in secondary schools i know
1:29:11 like west shore has power they have the the standard homeroom
1:29:14 where they’ve been doing this for a long
1:29:16 time and it’s been very effective some of my schools have power
1:29:19 hour and i imagine they can maybe
1:29:21 implement it somehow in that time period but who do you see the
1:29:25 guidance counselors are overwhelmed with
1:29:28 scheduling and college applications and things of that nature so
1:29:31 who do you see in secondary making sure this is
1:29:34 getting pushed in and at what time how are they how are they
1:29:36 going to implement that yeah and in
1:29:38 elementary when there’s no social worker and the guidance
1:29:41 counselors knee-deep and can’t hit all 700
1:29:44 students are teachers individually expected to push this in etc
1:29:48 so the first question the first the first
1:29:50 part of it is i don’t expect this to be a school counselor
1:29:53 social worker uh job um could they do it yes
1:29:56 if they if i view them more as the tier two i view them more as
1:30:02 the i’m pulling small group because
1:30:06 remember tier one is for everybody so i view this in the teacher
1:30:09 realm so in elementary when you talk
1:30:11 about morning circle i think many of you guys have seen circle
1:30:14 time that is where most of our teachers
1:30:16 are doing social emotional learning they do more than 30 minutes
1:30:19 a week they do it daily um there are some
1:30:23 schools that haven’t haven’t navigated that so we need to work
1:30:26 with them to figure out how to navigate
1:30:28 it uh but a morning circle is um i i was i’m trying to remember
1:30:33 which principal said it um we were going
1:30:37 through this and we were i just finished the sel and she got on
1:30:41 the skype and said i went from having and
1:30:43 she double digit number of um referrals to having single digit
1:30:48 in a week instead of double digit in a day when we
1:30:51 started morning circles so it just sets the tone for the day
1:30:54 secondary is always going to be a challenge
1:30:57 always a hundred percent always going to be a challenge and so
1:31:00 that’s part of what i said to my team
1:31:02 we don’t go in and dictate we have to understand the challenge
1:31:05 each school is facing and then problem
1:31:07 solve with them as partners um because it’s really easy for us
1:31:10 to sit up here and go well you’re going
1:31:12 to do that and this is the way it’s going to look um but i’ve
1:31:15 made the commitment to the principal that
1:31:16 that’s that’s not where we’re going so we’re going to start with
1:31:19 the assessment we’re going to look at
1:31:21 you know what they already do how they already spend their time
1:31:24 and then we’re going to push in
1:31:25 teams a katherine kathleen erdman is um our sel resource teacher
1:31:30 we paid for her out of mental health
1:31:32 allocation and and will continue to do so because she’s going to
1:31:36 start working with these uh secondary
1:31:39 schools to go in and really understand their uh restrictions to
1:31:43 problem solve and figure out how
1:31:45 we can ensure that our secondary schools are providing sel to
1:31:48 our students i don’t have the
1:31:49 answer for you because the answer could be you know 16 different
1:31:53 ways at 16 different schools
1:31:55 especially because i know that going in we’re probably not going
1:31:59 to start out with power
1:32:00 our first semester in fact i know we’re not so that’s that’s not
1:32:04 an option that we can use thank
1:32:07 you miss campbell any questions or comments no i’m good mr susan
1:32:12 um so the success for this program
1:32:16 the metrics for it would be the original slide that we saw where
1:32:20 our levels are comparative to the other
1:32:22 districts to lower is that so like asking how do we know at the
1:32:26 end of the day the success of this
1:32:28 program and of its implementation um well there’s there are
1:32:31 several metrics that we’re looking at
1:32:33 one is just our overall suspension and out of school suspension
1:32:36 and in school suspension rate
1:32:37 our attendance rate as well because when students um when
1:32:41 students get in trouble at school they
1:32:42 avoid school um point blank we’re also looking at our mental
1:32:46 health referrals um and the kind of
1:32:48 mental health referrals that we’re getting there are absolutely
1:32:52 a need for mental health referrals for
1:32:54 mental health issues but we’re getting a lot that are discipline
1:32:57 based we’re also looking at our
1:32:58 behavior analyst referrals we’d like to see a decrease in tier
1:33:02 one issues coming to them so that they
1:33:03 can focus on tier two issues uh we’re also looking at
1:33:06 disproportionality because it’s not going to
1:33:08 surprise you to find out that those the statistics i showed um
1:33:12 are disproportionately uh students with
1:33:14 disabilities and african-american students and we have been
1:33:17 working tier two with a lot of schools that have had not a lot
1:33:20 of
1:33:20 schools with the schools that have had disproportionality um
1:33:23 warnings and so we we’ve worked with them and
1:33:28 will continue to work with them but we would like to see that
1:33:31 disappear um so we have a we have a lot of
1:33:35 metrics um and it’s going to be different for each group so i
1:33:40 know um you know i i’ve mentioned some
1:33:43 names i don’t think there’s a single member in the student
1:33:46 services department that doesn’t own a piece
1:33:48 of this and then we st we and then we still keep bringing in
1:33:52 people because we’ve we’ve siphoned off
1:33:54 some of patricia fontan’s people we’ve siphoned off some of kim
1:33:56 bias’s people uh and we’ll continue to do so
1:33:59 because the plan is um it i i feel it’s kind of uh i feel it’s
1:34:05 kind of audacious um but i feel like
1:34:08 it’s the right plan so is so the end of the day there’s a a
1:34:12 metric that says if we had 100 expulsions
1:34:14 in kindergarten or whatever the number was we’re trying to
1:34:19 reduce that by 10 percent or are we just
1:34:22 saying we’re hoping to reduce that that’s all yeah oh we’re
1:34:25 hoping to reduce we’re not we’re not setting
1:34:27 metrics i’m not setting right now i’m not setting a percentage
1:34:30 standard um first off i think it’s
1:34:32 unfair to do that to a program that’s being implemented across
1:34:35 five years i think you’re going to see some
1:34:37 ups and downs but i want to see a downward trend across all of
1:34:40 the behaviors and i think it’s unfair
1:34:42 to do that when um our original plan we were forming cohorts of
1:34:46 schools that were going through trainings
1:34:49 together so a school may have gone through uh universal design
1:34:53 for learning but not have gone through
1:34:55 conscious discipline in the original plan um and so we we’re
1:34:59 really just looking at how can we implement
1:35:02 this to show just a solid decrease in all of those numbers that
1:35:06 cause us concern um especially as it
1:35:09 as it revolves around disproportionality i appreciate you taking
1:35:12 this on it’s a massive undertaking and
1:35:14 thank you yeah thank you mcdougall any questions or comments for
1:35:18 miss moore i don’t have any uh
1:35:21 questions but i just again i want to reiterate what mr susan
1:35:24 said thank you very much miss moore this is
1:35:26 i’m excited i’m looking forward to this um we’re on the right
1:35:31 track so thank you thank you thank you
1:35:33 thank you to the ceiling i would echo ms mcdougall’s sentiments
1:35:39 i think this really is going to be game
1:35:41 changing for our teachers for our staff members for our students
1:35:44 obviously where it’s targeted um and i am i could
1:35:48 not be more excited so thank you to you and your team for all of
1:35:51 the work that you’re putting in
1:35:52 please do invite us to any of those opportunities for uh the
1:35:55 webinars or feel free to loop us in on
1:35:58 the book studies or i i think you know this has been an issue
1:36:01 that has been um passionate for all of
1:36:05 us i think so by all means put us to work thank you thank you
1:36:09 all right all right if there are no further
1:36:13 questions for ms moore i am going to adjourn this meeting and we
1:36:16 will reconvene the board meeting
1:36:17 in approximately five or we will convene the board meeting in
1:36:30 approximately five minutes
1:36:43 so you