January 13, 2025 at 6:00 PM - Board of Education Regular Meeting

See attached PDF

External Team Visit:

• An external team visit in Nebraska focuses on reviewing a school or district’s school improvement process. This process ensures that the school is actively working to improve education for all students by setting goals, implementing strategies, and measuring progress.
• The purpose of the visit is to:
  • Review the Improvement Process: The team examines how the school identifies its goals, plans improvements, and tracks progress to ensure there is a clear and effective process in place.
  • Observe Practices: Team members visit classrooms, observe teaching and learning, and look at how the school functions to see the improvement process in action.
  • Provide Feedback: After the visit, the team shares observations, celebrates the school’s strengths, and offers recommendations to help refine and enhance the school’s improvement efforts.
• This visit is a collaborative effort, not an evaluation of whether the school is meeting specific accreditation standards. Instead, it ensures the school is focused on continuous improvement and making meaningful progress toward better outcomes for students.
• If you are available, we would like board members to be present at our welcome presentation. This presentation will start at 6:00 p.m. and will be held in the Jr. High cafeteria. During the presentation, we will need a board member or two to talk about MPS's school improvement process. 
  • As you are aware, I give a school improvement update most months during the school year. 

• The district's school improvement goal is to directly and significantly impact student learning through the implementation of a comprehensive instructional program approach focused on high-quality teacher training, collaboration, curriculum development, assessment development, and multi-tiered student learning support structures. 
• The Comprehensive Instructional Program (CIP) is a structured approach designed to improve student achievement for all students. It focuses on five key components:
  • Teacher Collaboration: Educators work together to share ideas, strategies, and best practices. Schools where teachers collaborate with and learn from each other are often referred to as a professional learning community (PLC).
  • Professional Development: Teachers participate in ongoing training to enhance their skills and knowledge. 
  • Assessment Development: Schools create and use assessments to measure student learning and guide instruction. The district has invested heavily in developing its own criterion-referenced tests (CRT) to ensure assessments align with local goals.
  • Curriculum Development: A clear, consistent curriculum is designed to meet students’ needs and state standards. The district has worked hard to identify foundational curriculum goals, called essential learning objectives, which are critical learning objectives all students are expected to master.
  • Interventions (MTSS): Support is provided through a multi-tiered system to address the academic and behavioral needs of all students. Locally, this system is known as Pyramidal Response to Intervention (PRtI).
• This approach ensures that every student has the opportunity to succeed by fostering continuous improvement in teaching and learning.

January 20th Teacher In-service

• On January 20, teachers from across the district will be engaged in a professional development training session facilitated by the renowned educational researcher Rick Stiggins. 
• Rick Stiggins' most recent book, "Give Our Students the Gift of Confidence", emphasizes the importance of fostering student confidence as a foundation for learning and academic success. The book explores how traditional assessment practices often undermine students' self-belief and offers strategies for using assessment to empower and motivate students. It advocates for a shift from using assessment solely for grading to focusing on building a supportive learning environment where students see themselves as capable learners.

• NDE along with state legislators, have been working to open up new avenues for individuals to become certified to teach in the state of Nebraska. Below I have listed the changes that are likely to be implemented in the near future. 
• Future Certification Pathways (Proposed Changes):
• Proposed replacement for the current pathways:
  • Requirements:
    • Bachelor’s degree.
    • Teaching job.
    • Enrollment in a program of study.
• Grow Your Own Program:
  • Allows schools to hire:
    • Paraprofessionals who are working toward certification.
    • Undergraduate teachers as paraprofessionals during their student-teaching phase.
  • May result in student teachers transitioning to schools that hire them.
• PRAXIS Content Test Changes (Pending Approval):
  • Elimination of the content test for candidates completing approved programs.
  • Micro-credentials