Brent wants to continue diversifying workforce. Has been working on it, but slow, steady progress. Two things he mentioned at retreat: 1. student support team structure (multi-tired systems of support) and improving grading system/how we provide access to students/families. 

Allison -- Student support team and Improve grading system

Loris -- Student support team

Emily -- Student support team

Another goal is around attendance (not changing policy, but making policy more widely known). 

Brent says all of these things has roots in student outcomes, and would have the most measurable positive impact on student achievement.  

Maggie says she looked at the SAP and noticed Goal #3 on School Climate and wondered whether any of the goals could connect to SAP in some way (i.e. student retention). 

Brent says he does think it connects. Mentions speaking to parents at Open House about attendance and cell phone policy and how happy they seemed. Says he sees more waves of students leaving around mid semester and semester grades b/c they aren't as aware how students are doing in school and says that the support team and grading system goals relate to retention in that regard. But Brent says overall PVPA is doing okay with recruitment and retention with students. 

Maggie says that as a parent, the process of enrolling her 7th grader this year was much smoother than her previous child's (during the pandemic). 

Avital asks Brent which goals from last year does he want to keep working on and how many more does he want to add. 

Brent says that the diversifying the workforce is the one goal from last year that he wants to carry over and focus on, have the admin and board focused on it as well. Really stresses new goals of student support team and revised grading system. Gives history/background on how PVPA grades students. 

David proposes that Brent creates a goals document, which will include a list of what evidence will be collected to show accomplishment of goal. It will explain how does each goal connect to SAP. 

Maggie adds that one of the things we discussed last week is the distinction between documentation of outcome vs steps taken. Some goals may not land with an outcome documentation vs certain steps taken. 

Brent says that the Diversifying goal might be tricky re: outcome documentation, and Maggie offers suggestions of more step based evidence. David says he thinks the SAP has more suggestions/information re: process/metrics. 

Davis says that the committee is here for support to Brent and to keep things moving forward, because some things are not simply one-year projects. There is a sense of on-going. Is there a way to continue being supportive of goals that are no longer "official" ones?

Maggie throws out suggestion of adding a goal surrounding communication. That it's an area that nobody is ever satisfied, but it contributes a lot to the family and student experience and like an area where there's always room for dialogue and improvement. 

Brent agrees that there are always criticisms to communication strategies. But, that if we want to include communication as a goal, we should also include internal communication. 

David is in agreement with that, and says that it could be worked into other goals (like grading system improvement, etc...). 

Brent says he's open to having the communication goal (how to communicate student progress, among other aspects) as a separate goal. 

Brent leaves meeting at 7:38

Avi was concerned about too many goals - don't want to forget the ones from last year that still need work on.

Maggie worries about how to find evidence (and how to we evaluate it) for the new goals Brent is proposing. She wonders if there is a way to get a higher level goal/better related to SAP, which might make it easier to get solid documents/evidence. (i.e. retention is part of the SAP). Maggie also points to the diversification goal and how to track in the long term. How can we clearly share snapshots in time (What David refers to as a "data dashboard"). 

David talks about how this committee is a quasi academic oversight committee. The hope being that various committees take on different aspects of SAP connected to their goals and can monitor them. Stresses the support element. We can invite Brent to more of our collective meetings. David meets with him in addition to the meetings that the committee has. So we can have conversations and time together which don't relate to a specific goal. 

Maggie wants to find a way to capture the institutional knowledge and history of PVPA to better help inform the present and future. 

Davis says that student support services goal could fit under retention. But outcomes of diversification is concerning because what happens if we don't make the measure - but also, how easy is to really gather all the demographic information? Is it more about what steps are being taken vs outcome? 

Maggie asks about having staff self identify, and putting that against staff retention, etc... How to discuss diversification without resulting to massive turnover. So if there is a way to see retention/turnover of the whole staff with snapshots of how staff identify, that would help see our patterns. 

David suggests some sort of tracker/spreadsheet that could be a goal, but would be simply a data goal/dump that is reported and grows over the years to develop that historical knowledge of the school. Instead of an official goal, we can work on it collectively with Brent to figure out what information we should be gathering (retention rates, MCAS scores, etc...)

Proposal for Brent bring his goals to the board on the 10th. Davis will reach out to inform him. Then suggests committee to meet either 16th or 23rd. Agreement to meet on the 23rd at 7pm.