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okay good afternoon everyone welcome to the riches Career Academy state of the school address today is Tuesday November 24th 2020 and this session is being recorded and at this time so that it can be shared and posted on our social media and website for those who are not able to participate with us today over those joining us together in the space and run please understand that this and is being recorded today's date of the school session will be delivered by Me Yours Truly Ellen Kennedy the principal at Richard's Career Academy this presentation will be an english-language presentation only and we do the slides available in the Spanish language which will be posted on our website and we will also make a Spanish language translation of this presentation send a recording available in the coming days are today's live presentation that is also being recorded this is an English only presentation so let's dig in this state of the school address is intended to be an annual practice at all Chicago Public Schools so that we can report out to our stakeholders how things are going with outcome metrics and where we are at towards working together to ensure that all schools are moving in the direction to support the overall vision and mission of the district in Chicago Public Schools so as you may know of the vision five your vision for Chicago Public Schools was recently released in 2019 and the mission of the Chicago Public Schools is to provide a high-quality public education for every child and every neighborhood that prepares each one for success in college career and Civic life The Five-Year vision for CPS is focused on three main commitments around academic progress ensuring that the young people we serve across the district are exposed to haiku construction that we have the best teachers and Educators in front of them and that we are creating on safe and supportive Schools Financial stability is also a commitment of the five your vision to ensure that there is operational excellence we're managing our funds in a way that are fiscally responsible and provide Equity across the district and then finally with Integrity is the third commitment that's a part of the five-year Vision around I'm entering the transparency and processes it with the district and our collective in practic Ross all over 300,000 students that are served by Chicago public schools in the five-year Mission there is also a commitment to equity and you can that word Equity that is surrounded by the apple and that is a new piece of the 5-year vision of this year's iteration of the five of this iteration of the 5-year vision Chicago Public Schools is adding in that Equity layer around the apple and the core values are here on this next slide there are six core values that drive the work across the dish ensuring that everything that we do a student-centered we're addressing the needs of the whole entire child that we eliminate barriers to ensure that all students have the opportunities for 6. We're always about academic X that we know we can't do this alone and that way of Community Partnerships with stakeholders in all the neighborhoods in which we serve and so that we are continuously supporting the schools through commute Partnerships and that we have a commitment to being lifelong Learners so I always say that a continuous learning is a big core value for me cuz I was set up it's my responsibility to be the lead Learner in the building and that I am that that I have a learner stands and all that I do we as a district are wanting to make sure that we are moving to an equity stands and in operate from an equity lens and so this graphic shows you a little bit of a difference between the word equality vs. equity and so we are all about making sure that every student has the right bicycle that will help them be successful as opposed to giving every student the same exact bicycle regardless of what their needs at their strengths maybe and so this graphic when we talk about Equity this kind of Define what we mean by that do it graphic in the equity portion of this slide at the bottom you can see that each one of these individuals has been provided the type of bike that he she or they need in order to be successful as at the top on equality would be just everybody getting the same exact bike so we are all about making sure that each young person that that is served at Richard's that they need to be successful CPS defiant Equity is championing the individual cultures identities talents abilities language is an interest of each student by ensuring they receive the necessary opportunities and resources to meet their unique needs and aspirations as part of the five-year Vision we always set goals and always working towards those North Star of those goals so these are the five-year goals of the district has four Elementary early childhood and high school so the right-hand portion of this graphic is where we live and breathe as being a high school setting and here at Richards I'll tell you a little bit more in a moment about how we're doing towards some of these particular goals but these are the goals for the district around 90% freshman on track 90% of students graduating within five years I'm increasing our College enrollment and College prudential's that students can earn before they leave high school and making sure that our young people are academically prepared for college I'm through the SAT metric we are at Richard's are all about that we position the school as a thriving viable and sought-after neighborhood high school so that's a big piece of our vision in the other part of our Vision Care Richards is to create a community of shared leadership in order to collect set the course and pass forward so I was talking saying that like I can't do this work on my own and the trajectory of the school does not just rely on what I think or what I want and so it's all about the collective leadership that we build here as a community to determine where we're going to take Richard make it an even better school so normally the school quality rating policy is released the school quality rating report is released every you know October or November 1st and this is a big part of why we give the state of the school address in November and as you can see here we are last rating as a school with a level 2 rating and we are we are trying to kind of blow up that level 2 rating and make sure that we're moving to new heights of the school community and we also are in a position right now if there is not a new rating for the school was unable to be rated last year because of covid and so we are all schools across the district identified as inability to rate but just know that I'm most previous rating on the school quality rating it was a level 2 and we have been working really hard to just do things differently blow things up and make the school better so that we up to like level 2 plus level one Tom and Anna an upward trajectory regardless of the fact that we do not have a school quality rating policy in order to be measured against right now we continue to focus on what's important and we know while there are some things about the sqrp that I take a lot of issue with in terms of How It's structured and the ways in which it doesn't work well for small neighborhood ice we do know that there are people's lives young people's lives are behind those numbers and it's really important that regardless of an sqrp policy we need to be thinking about how we are working collectively to improve people's lives without a rating policy doesn't matter we're still going to focus on what's important as it relates to attendants School climate and make sure making sure that our young people from the time they enter our doors the time they graduate that they have made some great Act make personal and social growth so some of the key metrics that we look at together regarding how our school is performing relate to attendance and graduation in college enrollment and college readiness so this graphic that you see in front of you is a a positioning of where the school is at at least of the the light blue bar on the graph represents the school year 2018-2019 and then the darker blue represents the 2019-2020 school year the gold bar represents the the gold that CPS has for us as a school to try to grow towards in a in support of this Collective effort to meet the district-wide goals do CPS give me these big Ambitions all they have is part of the 5-year Vision what does each School need to do in order to help move collectively forward and so the gold-colored bars that you see where we are striving towards as a relates to these are where we have been positioned to say this is the North Star we want you to focus on do I agree with what the North Star goal is based on what you see this graphic I don't I mean I want all of our young people to succeed at high levels but I also want to be realistic about the growth that were able to make the time frame because this is suggesting but then three years we would make some really tremendous Frozen a few areas which would be quite lovely but we also have to be realistic about the pace of our growth this graphic shows you the same information on the previous slide which is little bit differently about looking at what have we improved upon and what are we sort of got off track with and so we're really excited about the even the small incremental improvements we've made with it with the tendency to know that being a school like is sometimes half the battle and it really matters so we put a lot of energy into attendance our graduation rate from a four-year perspective has made some nice Improvement in the past couple of years and we're excited about that college enrollment rate has like fluctuated up down a little bit and he had a game last year over the previous year but we know that that is a number that we are continuing to work on with her school community and our young people and then there's some things that we have you know where you had to decline and that we need to get a little bit better at and so that is something at the school Community we are focused on freshman and track is a big metric for us here at Richards and across the school community and this is one of the things that we can Pat ourselves on the back to say it's been a success for us in the past couple of years is iron freshman attract rate is exceeded the expectations at all so you can see places the blue bar is higher than the gold bar so that showing that like we're already pacing towards meeting or exceeding the goals that we had four different populations of young people and that track rates we know that a fresh is there AmTrak during their freshman year they are much more likely to graduate from high school in four years with just you know big part of why our work matter so much as ensuring that not all you are young people graduate in four years but that they leave here are prepared for post-secondary life in a successful way this is an area we have to do a lot of work on so when our young people take the SAT assessment is Junior there is a metric that shows us which percentage of the students were meeting college readiness benchmarks and college readiness benchmarks essentially translate into the capacity to have a life earning a c or better in college so the percent of students here at Richards who are meeting their college readiness benchmarks is not where we want it to be as far below the the goals that the district has that for us he is still in need of a lot of work so we are working on this collectively as a faculty and staff to help move our work for it in this area but we know that it is a place for girls are 4-year graduation rate a mention earlier has been improving over time and we are proud of the work that's been done to really help ensure that our students who have been off track with their credit deficiencies that we work to get them back on track either throughout schedule for the usage of of Apex credit recovery options has really helped improve our four-year graduation rates are 5-year graduation rates are not as strong and you know ideally all of our young people to graduate 4 years but in some cases, that's not always the case when I can take away from this graphic is that we have some work to do we are losing a lot of our black boys that we need to help support our young black men and ensuring that they are graduating at higher rates than they currently are college enrollment rates in some places have been in Irving and other places are off track or falling behind the goals that we have and is part of the the goals of the district has for us around ensuring that when our young people leave Austin graduated college so this is also that's a work in progress but some places to celebrate so what's next for Richard so right now we are in the heart and Tents with remote learning and we have been very focused on ensuring young people are in attendance in the remote lighting setting we know that it's not an ideal situation for remote learning and we're trying to make the best of it and so we have put a team together that is really focused on following up with all of our young people monitoring attendance every student is assigned to an attendance case manager these are the the graphic are shows you a little bit about where we're at as it relates to remote learning attendance who took the first five weeks of the school year to try to figure out and get a little bit of a baseline of how my tenants was playing out across the grade levels and then we set some goals normally in school would be for attendance to be 85 enter higher and while that would be quite lovely to have right now as well we are still has set her sights on targets for 75% or higher based on what we see what we saw on the first right week so this gives you a little bit of a Snapchat of how are doing our seniors have been doing really well with holding together they've had consistently I've had the best attendance across all grade levels are freshmen are also improving we have some work to do with our Juniors I'm in supporting our sophomores as well we also have been taking a take a look at the percentage of students who have a GPA of 3.0 or higher this is another metric that's really important as a GPA of 3.0 at least is a predictor of ability to do well in college and so my goal is for us to be with at least 40% of students in each grade level or higher in in any given sin So within the four forces that they have in those that current semester so this chart shows you a little bit about where we're at with that and the sophomores and the seniors are the closest in range to that goal we have some work to do with our junior class are freshmen are just getting acclimated to high school life and learning a little bit more about credit acquisition and what GPA means and so we're looking forward to doing that learning together with them in support of their being able to understand what GPA means why it matters and why it's so important to focus on it even started with the freshman year this is our freshman on track sequence over the past three years CPS not provide an official freshman and track calculation for last school year due to the Copa situation in the school closure internally our calculation for freshman track from last year land at at 81% call that we had set pretty good given the circumstances we were under during the third and fourth quarter of the school year so for this current school year our goal is 92% now we are below that at this point depression success team is working together to identify the students who are off track and needs supports and took put interventions in place to help support those young people so that 71 is low now but I anticipate it will climb the other thing that we are trying to make sure we focus on this year is providing more Early College and Career career opportunities for our young people so currently most of our students when they earn a free college credential but it comes from their CTE program and a primarily comes from culinary arts so there are some certifications and assessments that our Culinary Arts students can take them which will give them an early college when they graduate so it either help with can help with job Readiness right away when you leave high school or can I count towards a credit acquisition in and city colleges with articulation agreements and we want to provide more opportunities for our students to earn college credentials either through a dual credit or a dual enrollment lens and so we're working this year Mr washer and principal is really focused this year in expanding our portfolio of options so that we can increase the percentage of students who have earned at least one credential that last school year we had 37.8 students earn an early college credential. graphic here and as I mentioned is all coming from CTE program and that is all coming from our culinary arts our continuous improvement work plan priorities as a school community use to be curriculum instruction assessment our support of inequitable approaches to discipline and family community engagement so these are the five priorities that is centered around for the 20 22:20 22 Square Cycles we also have a fabulous group of young people who are working to be the the main student voice committee for the school we called them are changemakers the changemakers are currently working on a variety of projects and activist groups to help support the work that's important for the school community and the work that's important to them so you can see some of the activist groups that have formed as part of makers this group is led by Miss Jennings and they are getting ready to put together some implementation plans for these different activist groups they've been using court at 1 to research a lot Identify some staff members who can support them in their topic area and there really isn't getting ready to hit the ground running and quarter to 3 and 4 to Implements of great plans as a school community in general particular our faculty we've really been focused during quarter one and I'm just figuring our way out like finding our way with remote learning how am I going to teach you on a computer what are all the technology tools that I could use to help increase engagement of my classroom so we were kind of say we were getting our sea legs together and on the second thing was about making sure we were working on building relationships with young people in the remote LED setting we've had some successes and challenges with that but we continue to constantly work at that with r so that was a big focus of quarter one and quarter to a big part of our work is about figuring out now thinking about okay so all those efforts we made quarter 1/2 to get our sea legs together and to find our way with room learning what's happening for students of the results of those efforts what kind of experiences are young people having in their classes are they are they having after tunity to think critically what is to negate look like how can we improve soon engagement in a remote and then as a school Community were continuing to our journey with leading for equity and are culturally responsive and anti-racist teaching we at the school community faculty we are reading is culturally responsive teaching and the Brain book and that is a great place that is Center of great text that is centering our work around thinking about critical thinking and creating independent learners and how to best serve culturally and linguistically linguistically diverse young people we continue to strive towards working on our targeted instructional area which is all about critical thinking we want to the critical thinking skills of our young people and so we as a faculty are constantly working on learning about how we can best Implement practices in the classrooms are young people are really thinking critically about themselves about the world around them about the text that is that that gets put in front of them when in their classes and that they are constantly using those critical thinking skills in their classes in their lives we can does work without our other stakeholders and so if there are any parents who are joining today for the slide presentation or if you are a parent who is watching this recording at this time we really really really need some parent support to make this all work and we have two opportunities for that be our parent advisory Council and our bilingual advisory Council and these are the meeting dates of when these groups connect and Mirella Valdivia repair engage Coordinator would love to hear from some parents who would say I want to be a part of these initiatives we are looking till I really build up our parent crew so that we can work collaboratively to ensure that we are moving in the right direction and that's the end I thank you for participating and joining the presentation if you're here lives or if you have watched the recording that's been posted on our web I'm in social media please field free to reach out to me I think my stereo you can reach out to me via email at 8 a.m. Kennedy at cps.edu you can also speak with me so that I can tell you a little bit more about Richards and have an opportunity to answer any questions I'm going to stop the recording at this time and for anyone who's here lives that would like to answer a question I can do so at this time don't thank you for joining me this afternoon be while everyone stay safe I can't wait till you're all back here in the building with us together and until then let us just really keep our Warrior Nation a whole and safe and healthy and will see you soon thank you

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