The Power of Collaboration in Data-Informed School Climate Improvement

Timothy Ojetunde:

I would love to welcome everyone here today to today’s school Climate Data Use webinar titled The Power of Collaboration and Data-Informed School Climate Improvement. We’re really excited to have you here. Just to let you know who’s part of today’s session, today’s session is being hosted by the California Center for School Climate, a California Department of Education initiative led by WestEd that provides free support and trainings on school climate and data use to local education agencies in California. This webinar is in partnership with the CDE and WestEd. We are also joined today by leaders from San Diego County Office of Education and Sweetwater Union High School District. Super excited to have them.

So our plan for today, we’re really focused on taking time to learn about effective data use practices for improving school climate, highlighting the importance of trust, strong communication and mutual regard in cross-sector collaboration, and also considering action steps for moving your collaboration efforts forward. That’s a little bit of a lens and scope of where we’re trying to go today.

These lovely faces and pictures that you see on the screen are our speakers for today. I’ll start with Luis Lopez. He’s an equity and culture teacher on special assignment for Sweetwater Unified, supporting classroom and systemic change in the adoption of equity initiatives, climate and culture improvements, and social-emotional learning within the Sweetwater Union High School District. With 24 years of classroom and central office experience, he’s passionate about innovating programs, practices, and platforms that braid academic rigor, positive behavior strategies, and social-emotional learning to create classrooms in schools where the adults and the whole child thrive.

Next we have Melissa Rains. She’s a teacher on special assignment for Sweetwater Union High School District supporting the district’s Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports framework. Rains was also actually named a 2022/2023 San Diego County Teacher of the Year while she was working at Castle Park Middle School as a science and social-emotional learning resource teacher.

And last but not least, we have Melissa Spadin. She’s the Director of Systems of Supports at the San Diego County Office of Education where she supports LEAs in LCAP development, differentiated assistance, MTSS, social-emotional implementation, assessment literacy, and measurement design. She has worked on the NAEP State assessments, classroom task development, and formative assessments. She currently contributes to the ISTE Assessment Culture Advisory Group and was selected as an inaugural CASEL fellow and served on the National Task Force for Assessment education and the CCSSO FAST SCASS. She began her career in education as a high school English teacher and a theater teacher, forensics coach, and theater director at Gaithersburg High School in Maryland. So with that, I am excited to pass it to Melissa Rains who will be starting us off.

Melissa Rains:

Thank you, Tim. Appreciate that. As we get started today, we’re going to bring up our slides and give you a brief overview of what we are going to be presenting on today, as well as go ahead and start telling the story of how we are at this moment in time.

So beginning with our agenda, we are going to be going over why we started collaborating and what the why was behind it, and specifically how we linked school sites, the county Office of Education and the district. So we’re going to go through how that started and how it actually moved into decision-driven data collection and how we’ve used that in the past, as well as how we’re revising, refining it to today and how we’re going to be looking forward into that.

In order to start that out, I’d like to start by framing a story from a school site perspective. I was, as Tim mentioned, a teacher at Castle Park Middle School. If you can imagine yourself back in the 2021/22 school year, it was a time we were coming back from distance learning, the pandemic was still an issue. What we were realizing as a school site was that we were experiencing increased student need and decreasing staff resources at the time. We had a climate and culture committee and we were invested in trying to figure out what we could do to best support our students and our staff at the time. However, earlier a lot of you contributed to this power of collaboration and how it felt, we were feeling the opposite. We were feeling isolated. We were feeling like we were trying to do this on our own and we’re doing it with limited resources.

So the first step that we did was we reached out to someone that we trusted and we had a relationship with built on in the past. That person is going to speak to now how this collaboration moved forward. And that person is Luis Lopez at the district office. Luis?

Luis Lopez:

Thank you very much, Melissa Rains, and welcome everybody here. I’m so happy that you’re all here joining us on this story so that we can share our narrative with you and hopefully you can see yourself in some of this work and look at the things that aren’t just technical, but look at the things that wrap around effective climate work by not just doing the work but really embodying what the work is. That’s why we start with moving at the speed of trust. We’re only able to be very effective with each other because trust is the bedrock of relationships, and it’s built upon the currency of our promises kept. Our work is only as powerful as the trust that it’s built upon. So we really say that trust is our currency in our culture and climate work that we do together across all levels.

The biggest thing that has helped us move forward is to show up consistently and always be clear on our purpose and the direction that we’re headed. Because that also gives us power to know what we need and ask for help when that’s necessary. Because ultimately, a promise fulfilled creates a ripple effect that extends beyond just the moment. So I’d like to share that this has really been about a five-year journey or so going on to the 6th year of a very purposeful collaboration. I also like to leave you the tip that when you focus on what matters most and you set achievable objectives along the way, we can accomplish very amazing things. It’s like the saying that we usually underestimate what we can accomplish in a year and we overestimate what we can… sorry, we overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and underestimate what we can accomplish in five, right? So it’s just kind of this idea that we can accomplish very big things with that consistency.

So I’m going to ask Melissa to move us to the next slide so we can talk about purposeful collaboration. This is a quote from one of my favorite stories, The Alchemist, and I think it really rings true in a lot of the work that we do in climate. “And so, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you,” a quote from Paulo Coelho. I’m saying this to the audience here with us. I love you because you’re here on a very purposeful intent of giving your time and your energy, two things that aren’t refundable, so that you can further your practice of data-informed school climate improvement. So because of that, we’re in partnership. I’m going to make the assumption that we might share the same purpose together in this room with every participant that’s here because it is powerful to be here and to learn all these wonderful things that we’re going to share together. Because then when we’re clear on that, we can lean into our networks and resources to help each other succeed. So if you’re working on climate work, we’re here, we’re your team, and we can be in partnership with each other.

But in order to do that, I think it’s very important to be clear on our why. So I’d like to start by sharing my why for climate data, and I’m going to invite my partners to join in as well. But if I were to give you my why, and see if this resonates with you, it’s to go above and beyond just looking at academic or instructional data and looking at the conditions for learning so that we can honor, that we don’t just teach content, we teach people, and people have certain needs in order to thrive. But how do we know if those conditions are right? That’s why I love climate data because it helps to understand the learning environment. It helps us assess the atmosphere of the school. Is it positive? Is it supportive? Is it focused on the whole child? It helps to identify areas of improvement to understand perceptions of safety, student engagement, relationships.

We can pinpoint the areas that we need to focus our efforts so we’re not feeling overwhelmed. We can make choices about programs, resource allocation, the overall in-school improvement efforts, and that it’s aligned to those most important things. And it allows us to track progress over time, because at the end of the day, we want to know that we’re effective. Even the small wins are worth measuring because it creates momentum. The saying that success breeds success, it allows schools to see if their efforts are actually improving the climate and if they’re working, and it can help us identify groups that might otherwise be missed and feel unsafe, disengaged, or unsupported. Ultimately, I love climate data because it helps us understand how we’re creating a safe and positive learning environment where all students can thrive. I’m going to ask Melissa Spadin and Melissa Rains to chime in, why is climate data important for you?

Melissa Spadin:

I will share. As you heard from my background, I have an assessment background, a data background, but I also started out as a theater teacher. I’m going to steal from my friend here, Luis, who always says you have to Maslow before you bBloom. And so we are not robots as fascinating as robotics has become these days in AI, and so who we are comes with us to our schools, to our classroom. And so if we want our students and our adults to succeed in the school, in academics, in other areas, we have to know what their needs are and how to support them. And so a lot of the times we end up focusing so much on large scale academic outcomes, but that doesn’t lead us to why we’re getting the results we are.

I care so much about climate data because if a school is not a place where students or adults feel comfortable coming, then they’re probably not going to do well. We’re not going to have great teacher retention. The way that teachers feel trickles down, and so students feel what the adults feel in the school. So for me, the climate data helps us have a better, more holistic view of why we’re getting the results we’re getting and what the system we are currently creating, what those outcomes are of that system, and start to get us to lean in more to why, why are the results what they are, who is experiencing what, and how we can support them on a collective basis, but also on an individual. Because we know that if we don’t ask people how they’re doing, then we’re not going to know. I’m going to let Melissa Rains respond as well.

Melissa Rains:

Absolutely. Thank you. And everything that my colleagues have just said, I would echo in an entirety and add to it. As being a teacher in the classroom, we were seeing it, we were in the trenches, we were experiencing what our students were feeling and what the staff was feeling, but we didn’t have a way to necessarily have people believe us. What I feel climate data can do is it really can shine a spotlight on what the people are doing in the classrooms and have it visible at a level that can trickle all the way up to a site, a district, a county, and beyond in a way that actually validates the lived experiences of what staff and students are experiencing. So I think that is an additional component of it.

Luis Lopez:

I hope the audience here really sees the connection of our purposeful collaboration. We all hold climate data at the heart, and it really drives our work forward. We’re going to get a little bit into some of the technical things that we’ve actually done, and hopefully inspiring some of the work that you can do as well. So I’m going to hand it over to Melissa Spadin to share about how we’ve built networks and the specific work that we’ve been able to do from this foundation of trust.

Melissa Spadin:

Thank you, Luis. I do want to start by saying, my title is System of Supports, and I just want to clarify what that means, because in California we have a lot of different levels from the state to the classroom level. And so I do want to say what our role is and how we can be there as a support for you. So we have the State System of Support, which really is a way of having expertise throughout the state in specific areas. So you’ll see that for us, and this is obviously situated with San Diego County, we are geographic lead agencies for different things. We hold support and expertise in equity and English learners. And then we also are there as a support directly for our LEA. So our districts, our charters to support them directly.

And so a lot of my work is actually summarized in the System of Support from the accountability side, which we know is often seen as punishment, but an accountability to ensuring that we’re seeing equitable opportunities for our students and keeping that mindset of continuous improvement, which is how are we doing now? Where are we trying to go, and how can we ensure that what we’re doing to meet those needs is actually happening? So some of the work that I do is around large scale accountability, like differentiated assistance. Some of my work is also LCAP. That’s a huge piece of what I do, is the Local Control Accountability Plan, which helps people look at data, set goals, and progress monitor and figure out how they’re going to meet those goals. And then the dashboard, so looking at, again, large scale data and thinking about how we’re doing, just aggregating it to call out specific student groups with different needs, and then reviewing that data to think about how can we improve, what are those areas that we need to focus in on and what supports exist.

And so that’s the biggest piece of both my role and who I am as a human, is my goal is always to connect people. I am not a hoarder of knowledge. My goal is to take that information in and help people make those connections. One major role I see of the county office is to make connections between different people, different needs, different organizations like WestEd, our friends here, and help them build networks. So one of the things that we like to do is think about what are the needs that we’re seeing arise across our county, because we’re pretty big, and how can we help people build networks to connect each other and to learn from each other? Because we may be the ones at the county office who are providing that support, but we are not at the school site, we’re not in the district. And so we want to support each other to do what I think is the most important part, is help develop teams and close those loops.

So one of the other things that I do is say, how can we create a team for systematic improvement? If we’re going to focus on climate data, who needs to be part of that conversation? Sometimes when you are at the district office, you see your specific area, your specific lane, and so it helps to have an outside party come in and say, “Have you thought about talking to this person? Have you thought about how this intersects with, say, the people who are in charge of SARB,” like things that don’t seem that appealing at first glance, but they have really strong expertise and a very specific area of focus.

And then I like to call it closing loops. So who else should be part of that conversation? And also, how do you make this work move forward? And so how do you find the people who are those decision-makers, who are the ones who hold the reins of the signatures, the funding, who decide what gets allocated where, who decides what people are going to work on this, and how do we make that work go forward? And so, I will shout-out my mother because she’s the one who raised me to think this way, but the worst response that you can get to a question is no, right? And so if you hear no, you move on. And so we always say, “Who else do you think I should talk to?” Wherever we are, if you’re having a conversation with someone, especially with our friends at WestEd or the district or wherever, always ask, “Who else do you think I should talk to? Who else could give me some more information in this area?”

So one thing that I want to clarify, I call this the meet-cute because I don’t know if there’s really a better term for this, but if you’re looking in the trope of rom-coms, there’s always that point where the two main characters meet and realize that they have this deep connection. And so I do want to take it back because I think it’s important to talk about how this work started in the context of where it is now. As Luis mentioned, we’ve been doing this work for about five years. We happened to meet at an ESSA Plan Development Support Workshop in 2019. I was there to provide support about stages of implementation. So when you’re adopting a new initiative, how do you ensure that it is implemented in a way that is most effective with sustainability in mind?

And so I happened to be there talking about, as an example, social-emotional learning. I cited the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, which I’ll share here, as well as the stages of implementation. So I created basically a mini plan that talked about what are the stages of concern and what does this look like in social-emotional learning. And then I also was there talking through NIRN stage-based approach to implementation. These were two areas that I’d worked in the past with classroom assessment, but it wasn’t something I’d really talked about with social-emotional learning before, so I decided, “Hey, I’ll bring this. This might be useful to have some people come and maybe talk about it with them to see if this is an effective initiative for them to implement.”

At the end of that session, Luis and I started talking, and he reached out afterwards. And from there we ended up collaborating. As was mentioned, I was a CASEL fellow, so I had to have a project for my fellowship, and this is what came out of it. From that first conversation we had in 2019, I developed the implementation stages, a fully-fleshed out plan for implementation for social-emotional learning. And guess who was my support in all of that work as we were thinking through what this looks like at the district and site level? That was Luis. And then Luis can share, from our first conversation, he developed this.

Luis Lopez:

Thank you very much, Melissa. I just can’t share with the audience enough how supportive that was at a time. If you’re in the audience listening and you’re feeling like you’re on that island or siloed, I totally get it. I think that’s what I was feeling up to this point of having all this information and ideas about how we can bring social emotional learning across our district but wasn’t really quite sure how to implement it, right? So I think meeting Melissa really opened the doors in terms of what somebody at the county office and somebody with a similar mindset would be able to accomplish, which really opened the networks. If I could share one thing with you, I think the most helpful thing was to have a mindset that everyone wants to help you succeed. I don’t want to get too woowoo on you, but even as an affirming statement, just saying to yourself, and I remember I used to say to it myself at the moment when I wake up and not knowing what to do, “I am who I am. Everyone wants to help me succeed. I am that I am, and everyone wants to help me succeed.”

And lo and behold, got to meet Melissa Spadin and then she introduced me to the Concerns-Based Adoption Model. It’s important to know that we know what we know, we know what we don’t know, and we don’t know what we don’t know. So how could I possibly have ever had this in my consciousness had I not known that this would help move the work forward? So as Melissa Spadin and I met, one of our first activities was really to deep-dive into the Concerns-Based Adoption Model, which is one of the resources that we’re sharing with you on our thinking all the way from the informational stage, thinking about what kind of information people need, to the personal stage about what personal things will they need to actually help them do this thing, to the management what will it take to manage this thing, and the consequences that can come from it. People wondering if it’s actually improving.

Now, I want to lean in on this stage because there’s seven stages and then the fourth stage of consequence that really helped us think through that. What was really missing to help move our systemic SEL work forward was measurement systems that measure things beyond academics. This is where a crux of our work has really kind of leaned on, is how do we build the railroad so that it’s very easy for people who work in schools to look at climate data and assess whether what they’re doing in social-emotional learning or their climate improvements is actually working. Because from there, we can move on to the next stages in the model, which is collaboration. When we know things are effective, it’s easier to work with colleagues and innovation, and we can then move to the next stage of refocusing and really drilling down on what’s working to its most effective means. And then indefinitely sustainably working on that specific initiative or improvement over time.

This particular tool was extremely helpful, and if you have a chance, it can be applied to any initiative you’re working on. I just know that with Melissa’s mentorship and guidance we were able to do very effective work in terms of what we’re able to implement at Sweetwater in the last five years.

It all stemmed from a regular meeting. We have our Wednesday 11:00 AM meeting, which was built on the following agreements. I’m going to bring in Melissa Spadin, please, to share about how we came up with these agreements and how we shifted these along the way.

Melissa Spadin:

The biggest thing that we noted was we need a consistent time to meet. And it’s the hardest thing because, again, time is such a valuable resource, but we found it’s the most important. And so some of our meetings, I’ll be honest, were not about what we had put on the agenda because we keep humans at the center. So sometimes we would come together and just share what was going on in our lives. This started during the pandemic, so there was a lot happening. We wanted to always keep humans at the center, so how can we do the best work possible for all of the students, teachers, and humans in the system. We always have the mindset, if you’re an ED camper, the smartest person in the room is the room, so we all have valuable expertise. And it’s different, and that’s what makes it powerful, is bringing together a group of people who have had different backgrounds, different experiences, that is so helpful.

Put it on the agenda. If it needs to be talked about, it needs to go on that agenda, even if we’re totally off-topic, if it’s tangentially related, then it will happen. It’s like the idea, if it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t get done. So we always put it on the agenda. Even if we don’t get to it that week, it’s there, it’s documented. We always stay solutions-focused, but we always ask how people are doing. And that’s really important, is making sure that we’re all here, we’re able to focus because we’ve had a chance to empty our cup, to talk to each other, to share what’s going on in our lives.

Melissa Rains is a newer member of our team. The invitation’s always open, so other people can join whenever they want. Sometimes people come and go, but the topic is always consistent. We’re staying focused. These are the things that we need to accomplish. We’re always looking for coherence. So if we start talking about one area, we stop and say, “Who else needs to be part of this conversation to be coherent across our system?” And then always remain curious. We don’t jump to solutions, we’re always asking questions and always wondering what else can we know, who else can we reach out to for that collective expertise. And then our tip, create shared agreements, keep it consistent, and assign next steps. Man, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a meeting and it felt like, “Well, that was a wasted hour.” We always have next steps. They are assigned, they’re in the calendar. We know who’s going to do what by when, and I think that’s why we’ve accomplished so much in our short or long time together.

So we’re going to shift the conversation a little bit into the actual data part because I know that’s probably one of the things that you’re focused on. If you are not a street data acolyte, we’re just using this terminology so you can understand it, we use the book street data as a way of discussing the different levels of data and types of data that we collect, as well as how it should be used. So a lot of my work ends up being at the satellite level, which is that large scale data that you get on the dashboard. It’s summative. It can be disaggregated, but it still doesn’t tell you a ton, but it’s a way of starting to look at where you need to go for further investigation. So I talk about it as a starting point.

And then we have map data, which gets us a little more focused, is typically closer to the student. It might be school level. And so some of the data that we’ll share is most likely school level map data. And then we’re really, really concerned with street data, which is those one-on-one conversations. How do I know how things are going at an individual level or even at a school level if I’m not talking to the people experiencing it? And so that’s also part of our implementation work is talking to those users, talking to those implementers and understanding what it’s like to be them experiencing this. So with social emotional-learning specifically, how is it being implemented, how is the person teaching it, feeling about it, how is the person learning it feeling about it? And so we keep our work really focused on what do we need to know to get to that next level of data. This part is Luis.

Luis Lopez:

And so for a concrete example, when we came back from the pandemic to in-person learning, we had a noticing. We started with our satellite data that really showed that our suspensions and referrals were on uptick. There was an increase in challenging behavior. This we knew, and I think our intuition was also telling us a couple of things. But this is what’s great about satellite map and street data, it helps either affirm or get to a root cause of what really the issue is. So because we’re able to see that these suspensions and referrals were at an all-time high, which looking back it all made sense with everything that’s been happening and what we’ve learned about what happened to our students during the pandemic and their needs, we wanted to know a little bit more about the specifics of what was happening. So that’s where we leaned into our map data, which was our California Healthy Kids Surveys and our California School Staff Survey.

We wanted to know what were our students experiencing and what were our staff experiencing. We were lucky here in Sweetwater to have these put together by our psychologist on special assignment. Dr. Margaret Sidor was able to make it so that we do these regularly once every year. And from there we got to learn that students were reporting a decrease in school connectedness and staff were reporting higher rates of behavior concerns. So again, we had this inkling that there could be something to this. And this is where it gets to the site level to our street data. This is our opportunity where we got to work with Melissa Rains who was an SEL lead and leading their culture and climate team, among many other great things that she was doing at Castle Park Middle, to really drill down on what was staff saying by incorporating staff listening circles.

Going back to the theme of this whole webinar, we leaned into our networks, the National Conflict Resolution Center, leaned into some more help and support from Melissa Spadin at the county, and then drilled down on the expertise that Melissa Rains had at the site to really do these really impactful, really well-designed staff listening circles based on the map and satellite data to learn what was at the root. What we learned was that teachers were experiencing burnout related to the lack of resources to address behavior and inconsistency in behavior policies.

So that in turn allowed us then to focus on one specific area: what are we all doing at this school to specifically work on improving the resources available to address behavior and to have consistent behavior policies? Which then in turn led to improvements. Because what we love about climate work is that even 1% improvement is an improvement, and 1% improvement over time consistently is a big improvement. So we’re going to go ahead and go to the next slide because we’re going to go into a little bit more of some of the details of this work by introducing Melissa Rains, again, about how this partnership was able to link to the resources.

Melissa Rains:

Absolutely. And to bring some of the themes together that we talked about is, when you have partnerships and you are using data in an intentional way, you can create really clear asks. And so what you see outlined on the screen were actionable items that came out of those three data resources that you saw previously that Luis walked us through. So for example, we identified at the site level we actually need to increase our staff expertise in how to deal with student behavior and reframing it as not what’s wrong with the student, but what’s going on with the student, and have alternatives to address that challenging behavior. We also realized there needed to be skill development with both students and staff within regards to SEL instruction and support. And we needed to have a system to continue progress monitoring anything we put in place.

If we move forward here to the next slide, we’ll see how the partnerships came in to affect this. So we allowed multiple partners to come and work with us so that we weren’t working in isolation. And you can see here our local SELPA came in. We started implementing PBIS as an approach to behavior, and, as Luis referenced earlier, partnership with National Conflict Resolution Center to both train and implement restorative justice practices, but also provide direct support to students and staff. We were very fortunate to then become a focal school in the CalHOPE grant in the support of SEL and well-being across the campus. And now we had these established partnerships with our district, our county, and outside agencies who could support us in making these actionable items come to fruition.

So the big learning point here is our ask was clear, “We need help with this,” and the support came. And so what we’re going to do is give you an overview of this was a starting point that we learned a lot from and how it evolved to a process that was decision-based with data. Melissa?

Melissa Spadin:

I’ll share our connection. This is how the California Center for School Climate comes into the work. We were trying to figure this out for quite a while. What is climate data? How can we know how it’s going at the school? There’s so many different data points. I love research, and so I came across this resource that they had put together called the School Climate Data Profile, and I thought, “Oh wow. So this is a really good way for us to start organizing all of our data so that we can have a better understanding of what school climate really is.” Because a question on the Healthy Kids Survey and suspensions is not enough information. And so thinking about what are all of the components when we talk about school climate.

So we started with this idea of this organizer, and we did basically an inventory process, if you’ve ever done a data inventory process. We realized that, and speaking to their research director, they have so much data. There’s so much data, so much out there, but that doesn’t translate into information that you can make actionable decisions about. And so I’m going to share one of my favorite researchers. He helped reframe the way we thought about data and what we were going to do with the information we had. And fingers crossed, it worked in the rehearsal.

Speaker 5:

Right now we focus on the data and decision-making. The trouble is people who focus on data-driven decision-making end up hoarding vast amounts of data and have very little idea what to do with it. We need to focus on decision-driven data collection. We need to start from the decisions we need to make and then collect just enough data to make those decisions. If we start from the decisions, we’ll always know what to do with the data we collect. Testing, regular traditional testing on what students have learned.

Melissa Spadin:

So that is in a very assessment-related context we talked about.

Melissa Spadin:But we like to think about this holistically about all data. So we shifted our mindset to data-driven decision-making, which is looking at a whole mess of data and trying to make decisions from it to decision-driven data collection. So what decisions are we trying to make? Let’s start there. What do we need to know? What data is necessary to make these decisions? Do we have these data? And if not, how do we get it? Once we started thinking that way, that truly changed not only the way we work together, but also how we thought about our climate data collection. What I like to do is aggregate research, share it with others, and then let them run with it because they’re the practitioners. And so this is where we have gotten to now. Luis?

Luis Lopez:

And so this is where we’re at now. Again, Melissa sharing something I didn’t know that I didn’t know here at the district level because Melissa Spadin likes research, so does Melissa Rains, able to look at it and then what does this tool look like in practical use. So we were able to go with that starting point, which we have provided in the resource document template, by looking at what is the data within our district here at Sweetwater and where is it and what is it asking and what does it say?

For a school administrator or somebody at the site level to go in and dig through all our data systems for making better decisions at their sites, it’s kind of a daunting task. It is something that we could do here in the district office. And again, the countless different people who helped us create this, including our tech department and our MTSS leadership team, to really drill down in finding all of the data and what we wanted to know. So what you’re looking at is at an example of our climate data profile that we have available for each of our sites here in Sweetwater. It’s auto-generated, and what we can do is when the raw data is imported for California Healthy Kids into our information system, which is data insights, we can actually have it all pulled from all the different areas within our data systems. So California Healthy Kids, the core SEL, our suspension referral data, our risk indicators, our different areas that we can, so we have generated this four to five page report which would otherwise take hours and hours of work for somebody to compile.

And then we also have a flag for areas of concern or interest or celebration. So we have green to really show when there’s a deviation at a site and the positive from the district average and yellow if it’s something that might be looking at, if it’s starting to trend towards the negative, and red if there’s a big disparity in between the district average and the school. And not that this is what is the most important because it’s just a starting point to start making decisions about what data you want to collect, what you want to focus on.

Because the most important thing that this tool provides is a dialogue between school leadership to look at, as Melissa Spadin had mentioned, what data’s missing? Do we need more street data, map data, or satellite data? Which area do we want to focus on? Because if we try to improve everything, we can’t improve anything. We try to look at these specific things as we go along. So if you have the tool that we provide in the link, one way that we would recommend you starting at is fill it in with your own data system. What data do you have in your current system, and how can you make it more accessible to your people? Again, thanks to our ed tech department that was able to compile this and now is available on the fly.

Melissa Spadin:

I’ll also share, because of this work, the way it started, it’s now been integrated into some of the accountability work, because this profile helps us have an understanding of areas like suspension, referral, what are some indicators and early warning signs that suspensions are starting to creep up and how can that be a starting point for us to start leaning into what are the things that are happening. How can we address the student needs that are arising? And as Melissa shared earlier, the adult needs that are obviously coming up as well.

We do have a question in the chat and we keep forgetting to refer to some of those props, but if you’d like to share, and this might be helpful with the Q&A because I think we will have time, what decisions are you trying to make with climate data? And then one other piece I will say is that what’s been really helpful about moving this from… we start with the template, moving this into their tech systems, is that some of our folks in different areas like our foster youth… their foster youth… I think of their as ours… their foster youth liaison has been able to look at this data for her specific students and think about what are some of those indicators that keep popping up and how are they feeling about school, because we know that there tends to be disparities for very specific student groups, especially our foster youth.

Luis Lopez:

This also reminds me of a recent comment from one of our principals who said, because this was non-identifiable data, this was a really great thing that they could share with their community so that their community could have a transparent look at what’s happening with the school’s climate for their students, their parents, and their staff. So just another added bonus of having this in one place.

Melissa Spadin:

I believe this is Melissa Rains.

Melissa Rains:

Absolutely. And Luis segued into that perfectly, where the idea that this climate data profile takes mountains of data and makes it very accessible for different stakeholders. So copy with the principal meetings with parents and caregivers, the principal was able to present this, and those people were very appreciative of it because they could make sense of it in a way that was just accessible. And so this climate data profile leaned into both transparency and accessibility. And in the past year that we’ve been using it at our sites, it’s been that starting point to help them determine whether it’s their Climate and Culture teams or any other leadership teams, where do we need to dive deeper? And so it gives you that first lift towards discernment of what data means.

And we want to give you a brief preview of where we’re going with this because earlier Melissa Spadin was referencing what is the decisions we’re trying to make. Where we are right now as a district, if we move forward to the next slide, is we are trying to make sure that the decisions we’re making are student outcome-based. And so this whole child concept that is referenced in SEL, it’s referenced in MTSS, community schools and beyond in our district, we have outlined a series of student outcomes. And where our current work is making sure that what we measure in the district is inclusive of this. Do we have the capability to measure if our students are academically, behaviorally, and supported in their SEL and mental wellbeing? And where we don’t have the ability to measure that, what do we need to add in? So this is where our outcomes are aligning with our data systems, and we’re excited about where this work is going to head in the coming year as we do this. Luis, Melissa, I don’t know if you want to comment on this any further.

Luis Lopez:

Yeah, just the last thing I would add to this one too, and thank you Melissa Rains, that this work exists in many pockets. I also want to reference, there’s a question in the chat right now that does kind of address this concern is alignment. For the future of Sweetwater is, in order for this to matter, we need to make sure we can measure it. So one thing that we’re piloting right now is we’re going to look into Kelvin, which was provided to us by CalHOPE, to see if we can progress monitor these outcomes at sites that we’re working with to develop these student outcomes resource map and see the improvements once we start looking at these things. So it’s an idea that we have, and hopefully we’ll be able to share more in the future how that has worked out.

Related to the question here in the chat about being a counselor and a need for this lens on school climate assessments and really getting people on board. I think Melissa Rains and I can speak to this in our work with making sure that our whole child outcomes are enforced or supported within the conditions for learning. So there’s a lot of focus on literacy for our district, which is important. We want students to learn. We have academic outcomes. We want them to improve their literacy skills. And I think the way that we’re addressing the school climate component is and we need these conditions for learning to occur. So we want to measure those conditions as well. Melissa Rains, I don’t know if you want to maybe add to that as well in response to the question.

Melissa Rains:

Absolutely. I’m hearing in there a couple of words in the question. The first is advocacy. And that is always a first step, is you need to have champions for this work, and we need to link those champions together. It goes back to this messaging that we were talking about. I remember at the school site being an advocate like you are Ruby, for this is important work, we need to lean into this. This is important. But I felt like I was paddling upstream a lot. And that’s where I reached out to Luis who then gave these connections. And suddenly we were coming in as a team that was supported by data, that had clear actionable items. And that’s where we got a lot of people to get on board with it as opposed to just having individual champions for it.

And so steps that enforce the focus on school climate data, I would say is make sure that there is a collaborative team that is doing that work rather than an individual champion and know who the allies are within those organizations. So who are the people that are pushing for whole child design, who are the people that are doing that? And in creating those alliances, for lack of a better word, that messaging, it gets heard across more spaces within the system as opposed to just one voice trying to speak into the site. So I would just add that as well.

Melissa Spadin:

I’ll say from the accountability lens, look at your district level data, look at any of those requirements that exist. It always seems surprising that someone who taught theater and English is so big on data and accountability, but I have a passion for accountability because it’s ensuring that all students get what they need. And so while sometimes it may feel punitive, it’s a way to start the conversation. So I often come in through the lens of, this is what the data says, these are the requirements for your work that has to happen according to ED code. According to the law, this is what you need to do. Now let’s take that as a starting point and do that further investigation, because I don’t want people to do surface level work and have the same outcomes each year. And so specifically with differentiated assistance as level two technical assistance, it’s a state requirement. I’ve been with Sweetwater for the past several years supporting their work in many different ways. And so there’s a number of different ways in which you can enter the conversation, and I encourage you to look at some of the requirements that exist, whether it’s your SPSA or your site-level SIPSA, the requirements for that, the requirements for your district’s level LCAP, the requirements for differentiated assistance.

But I see accountability as an entry point to do the things that are necessary to support students and by extension the adults in the system. So while you should look around and definitely look for your internal advocates, see who some of those external folks are as well. We have an amazing team at our county who works with school-based mental health professionals, social workers, counselors. They’re also a resource, and we partner with them on the rolling out of some of this work.

So as my mother says, always ask the question. The worst thing someone can say is no. Always reach out, because I will say at the county level, we are always happy to help. I’m thrilled when I get a question. I talk to so many different people in so many different contexts, and when they reach out, I always answer. So I encourage you to find who those people are, whether it’s at your school, your district, the county, or any other SELPA support provider and just say, “I would love some support. Can you talk me through this?” We often know the ED code that you don’t have to know and can point you in the direction of how you can get that work started.

I think this is our intentional close before we open it for Q&A. Our team is very action-oriented. Because while it’s so wonderful to talk for an hour each week about climate, about MTSS, about SEL, academics, student outcomes, we are very action-oriented. So in the chat, if you have something you’d like to share, what’s something you’ve learned, something that you plan to do with the first next step, either for investigation or action. And then once we’ve done that, I’m happy to open it up for Q&A. We’re happy to answer any questions. Timothy Ojetunde:

So as people are putting just in the chat or some potential things that they can do or things that they’ve learned, I do have a couple of questions for you, and we have about three minutes for questions if that’s okay. This is to whoever wants to answer them. And if there are other people who have questions, definitely feel free to put them in the chat or the Q&A. There’s one here in Q&A and it says, “Did you develop accountability measures for district and county level supports to provide the supports, policies, and guidance that allows for effective implementation and sustainability of this work district-wide and also county-wide?”

Melissa Spadin:

So one of my many connections with Sweetwater is I’m their LCAP support person. And really, the Local Control Accountability Plan is where a lot of that lies. They have to talk about their suspension data and what they’re going to be doing to reduce suspensions. And so a lot of the data that Luis and Melissa have been so careful to curate is where some of that will show up as an accountability measure. We definitely have a lot of resources on effective implementation, and that’s our goal. But one of the biggest pieces for ensuring accountability for that improvement will show up, that’s our one place, is the LCAP. Luis?

Luis Lopez:

Yeah, and I would just like to add that internally, our accountability measures is that everything that our district MTSS leadership team does is aligned to our four LCAP goals. So we’ve created a SMARTIE goal template that outlines our work for the year. That’s a living document. We hold ourselves accountable to the highest measure that whatever we do are in support from the county and district-wide, that it does align with it. Melissa Rains, if you’d like to add.

Melissa Rains:

I was going to add exactly what you did Luis as far as built-in accountability measures within the team. We always say LCAP is what we do. How we do it is based on those procedures that we put in place as our team.

Melissa Spadin:

And they’re really great about their SPSAs, their site level plans are directly aligned to the LCAP. They’re one of the districts that really follows through on that. So I will say that as a point to say good job about Sweetwater doing that because that’s how it’s supposed to be, but that’s not always the case.

Timothy Ojetunde:

All right. I’m going to ask one more question, and I’m going to have one person answer and you have 30 seconds to answer. So all the stipulations. So you mentioned many great steps that helped you along the way in getting to where you are now, knowing who allies are, working in teams, looking at district level data. Are there any other recommendations for people who are beginning this work? 30 seconds, no pressure.

Luis Lopez:

Love yourself. Give yourself love. Give yourself grace. You’re a champion because you’re doing this work. And I had mentioned before, starting from that place, people love you too and they really, really want to help you. So don’t be afraid to reach out. If you are working alone, our contact information we’re happy to share with you and answer any additional questions.

Timothy Ojetunde:

Perfect. I mean, I think that’s the perfect way to wrap this up. So I’m going to give a virtual round of applause to our presenters and speakers today. Thank you all so much for your time, your dedication, your commitment to this work. So once again, we really appreciate you and thank you for attending. And then also I want to extend gratitude again to our presenters Melissa Spadin and Melissa Rains and Luis Lopez for all of their working contribution and also to our CCSC team on the background who put in a lot of work here as well. Again, thank you all so much for coming and attending.