Penn Valley Union Elementary School DISTzuCT

The failure of the school districts within the County to identify teacher leaders and coordinate teacher collaboration and articulation negatively impacts student opportunity. Resoonse to Findina 1: Disagree wholly as to PVUESD. At PVUESD, teacher collaboration occurs regularly in many forms. Staff meetings are held twice a month at each site where the site principal serves as the teacher leader for all staff who attend. Once a month, while school is in session, we have District Committee Meetings where teachers work with site and District administration to create a focus for the year to support their individual team topics. Teachers throughout the District come together at one site to collaborate. Topics such as curriculum adoption, Response To Invention, STEAM, Common Core Report Card creation, Academic Assessments, and many more have been part of our ongoing discussions and district-wide collaboration time. Also, each Wednesday is an early dismissal for students which allows 90 minutes for formal and informal collaboration and articulation. This release time is consistent across the district making it possible for staff to meet as a site team, as well as teachers across the district to regularly meet as grade level teams. As a school district that continues to decline in enrollment with fewer and fewer teachers, we feel we do an exceptional job working together as a highly functioning, communicative team,

There is an apparent iack of Professional Learning Communities in the areas of English Language Arts and Mathematics in the nine school districts in the County. Response to Finding 2: Disagree wholly as to PVUESD. There is no lack of Professional Learning Communities taking place in the PVUESD. As mentioned in F1, collaboration time is created weekly for all staff. For District Committees, there is a designated teacher leader for each team, They include teachers across grade levels and sites on each team ensuring that each topic has adequate representation for future implementation. Board updates from each District Committee are provided twice throughout the year in order to continue to articulate overall District goals, needs, and progress to Board Members and the overall community. District Committee Meetings for the 2077-201,8 schoolyear are scheduled for the third Wednesday unless there is a conflict. The current schedule is as follows: Sept,20,Oct25, Nov 15, Dec 20,lan1,7,Feb21,,Mar21,AprL9,May 16, and fune 6. Topics for the 201,7-201,8 schoolyear are Curriculum Adoption (Science), Response To Intervention/MTSS, Mind-Up and Technology.

There is lack of communication and collaboration between the two comprehensive high schools and their feeder elementary districts concerning expectations for entering ninth graders. Response to Finding 4: Disagree wholly as to PVUESD and Nevada Union High School District. Each year our 8th grade students travel to Nevada Union High School campus and take a tour of the facilities. They receive an overview of academic and extra- curricular programs offered in order to choose their desired classes for the fall. After the visit, counselors from the high school visit our campuses to answer student and parent questions in order to assist in final course selections. We receive updates on our former students that demonstrates how prepared our students are upon entering high school. For students leaving our sites that have special needs or general academic or social struggles, a meeting including our site administration, the high school site administration, parents and student is completed prior to the end of the Bth grade year in order to properly communicate student needs for their first semester at high school. Our students have been extremely successful entering high school telling us that high school expectations are clear prior to students starting their first day at NU. BOARD OF EDUCATION'S RESPONSE TO GRAND IURY RECOMMENDATIONS