We have 104 schools, and i think its interesting to see the 104 schools. Later, youll see a breakdown of what administrators look like and a demographic of our School District. I need a cue, right . And well talk about per pupil funding. We need finances to do amazing things. Our per pupil funding is 5,780 per kid. And when we look at what that looks like across the nation, i see some of your faces going whoa, right . We have to compete with everybody else, but this would be our per pupil funding. It does present some challenges for us as a School District. But we started off with the board of trustees and myself having a Building Block of successes. One of the things we talked about is the importance of teamwork as a superintendent with your board. Right . Because you have to go out with a United Vision and tell the story together. And the board of trustees and myself committed to each other that thats what we were going to do, and of course, like everyone else talked about, we have a strategic plan, a guiding document, how were going to get to the end line. One of the things we talk about is every child by name and by face to graduation. But were going to get into a little bit of that. Everybody knew that, every child by name and face to graduation. It sounds good, but what does that mean if you start looking at a return on investment . Also, stay right there. Stay right there. As you look alt this piece, were going to talk about what do we do to get there . One of the things we did is we came out with four fundamentals and our guiding practices around what we believe would get us to the finish line. And these four fundamentals are core instructions. Every child in this district should have peer one instruction and be able to get to the finish line. The other piece we talk about includes practices, this idea around special education and isolation or gifted and talented in isolation. The very best should be included in our School District and not isolated. We also talk about climate and engagement. What is it going to take to move the district . What we came to is this called 90 by 20. Its our belief by the year 2020, we should be able to get to a 90 Graduation Rate. I can tell you when i came out and we talked about 90 by 20, a lot of skeptics said dont you think thats a little too high . What happens if you dont get there. I would be in meetings and Community Meetings and they would challenge it. I said, well, who has low expectations for any kid who walks through a door in Washoe CountySchool District . We started changing that as a culture, as a community. When you go around, people say whats the expectation. By 2020, we want to get to 90 . Its going to take the whole community to get there. The challenges we face as educators, whether its around poverty, whether its around these issues around social and emotional learning, issues that children have with transgender, all these things that happen that prohibit kids from getting to the finish line. We want to get to the finish line of 90 by 20. The last fundamental is around multitier systems of support. Im going to highlight a few things. Click. And one of the things i want to highlight is around social and emotional learning. This is where this is a true story, mort and i began to talk. We didnt know we had a love around this work and did some amazing work. Washoe county School District is a handful of districts that are part of castle and collaborating districts around social and emotional learning. What this is, as you can see this, im going to talk about everything, but not only do we want kids academically ready for society, we need them to be ready in a sense of how they behave socially and emotionally. You have to marry those two, because they can be successful, but if they dont know how to perform, dont have self awareness, have the essential skills to be part of the workforce, we didnt do our Due Diligence in building the entire child. But with that, there should be some data on correlation. So as we have been doing this work, we have been really looking at correlating the data to see if that work is working. I can tell you what we see is that we have higher gpas with our students who are involved in this. Fewer suspensions, and better attendance. I can also tell you that when we look at disproportionality, and we all know what that is about, we have seen a 50 decrease in some of those data points around disproportionality for our students who are underserved, whether theyre free and reduced lunch, special education, or minority students. Another big highlight for us was when president obama and his administration cited that we were the district to follow in the transgender policy. We had no idea that was coming. So you know what happened after they posted it, right . The policy had been in place for a while. And then there became an uproar in our district. I have to say, i have sawonderful board. We talked about kids, and every kid, right, our job is to educate kids, and the policy was designed to insure a safe environment for all kids. We had rich discussions, but i can tell you that the policy was not written in isolation of just the district. We took this out to our community leaders, to our parents, and vetted it so it wasnt just a district decision. It was a Community Decision for kids. And on that note, as you know, when the president was elected, one of the things we had in our community was we have a Large Population of hispanic students. So you know what the scare was around people and Border Patrol and what was happening in our country. And we had an incidence where we had a few kids dress up as Border Patrol go to a school and say hey, were going to put you out of the country. We dont look any different from the United States of america. The same issues you have, we have, but our board came up with a resolution, and we agreed that we were going to declare our School District a safe place for all kids so they can get a free and appropriate education. I have to commend our board on that transgender policy and the policy and resolution around safe school environments. One of the other Building Blocks we talk about is community. And one of the things i do is i really try to get in the community, have Community Breakfasts with our faithbased leaders, with our legislators. Have conversation corners where people get to come and ask those questions where you dont know what theyre going to ask and you have to be ready. I think thats part of the job. The part of the job around being trance psparent with the commun making sure they have access to you, and also not that we as a district just give information out. We have to listen and receive information so we understand how the Community Feels so we can adjust accordingly. We have town hall meetings. We have listen and learns. We have a variety of activities to engage our community. But one of the big things we are on is sharing information. At an age when we have to be transparent, our district embarked on this opportunity to share information and be completely transparent. And that sounds like, oh, we all do that, but i can tell you if you go online right now, you can see how much money i spend on my district credit card this morning, which was zero, thank you very much, but what that means to the community about the money and the taxes that they raised, right . Can you see how much your school is spending on money. If you go to our website, not only will you see the piece around transparency around salary, how schools spend their money, you actually can see how much money were spending on our buildings, and we choose to make data driven decisions. I put this slide up here because theres a plethora of information, whether its about the schools, whether its about the superintendents office, about the board office. We share everything. Theres nothing thats not a secret for our community. As a result, remember, were trying to continue to build this trust with our community. We put data up around our schools. We have something called the data gallery, the data gallery will insure that you look at whats happening with construction sites. I am proud to say, and mort kind of alluded to it, how we raise money for taxes. Its not like what happens on the east coast. That was a learning opportunity for me as part of the cohorts, but we use data to make good decisions for our 64,000 kids, and keep in mind, we are saying we want to have a 90 Graduation Rate by 2020. Most people dont understand in nevada, you can park cars without a High School Diploma and make 80,000. You can be a cocktail waitress, make 75,000. So think about the nature of the work. You can work in a mine and make 80,000. So when you think about the value of a diploma, right, sometimes its hard to get kids to own that and get to the finish line. So our challenges in nevada are a little bit different than other states, and i know every state has its own challenges. But we have some serious challenges as we move forward to get this. Now, when we look at opportunities around s. T. E. M. , we are having Companies Move to nevada. Tesla is the way, tesla is entering northern nevada and were super excited about that. Beyond tesla, we have twitch, apple, microsoft. How we are building these richs with these companies, such that when our kids graduate, they have opportunities, right, to work in these companies and they can be employed for our future of our community. We have expanded our signature academies, our signature academies are cte career Technical Education academies. And let me give you such an example. I believe every child should have an opportunity to go to college. Every child is not going to choose to go to college. There will be children who choose to go to highly skilled careers. There will be children who choose to go to the military. We have to insure that they have the opportunity to go to college, but we also have the insure if they dont have those opportunities, do they have these pathways . And were building pathways such that if you choose you want to go to college, great, but if you want to go to tesla and graduate with certifications, you can graduate in high school and start making 50,000. We have to make sure the workforce is ready to go. As mort spoke about earlier, he talked about how we raised ta s taxes. What i can tell you, in 2016, we had a ballot question for capital funding. And i am so grateful for our Washoe Community because for 15 years, we hadnt passed a ballot measure. Why this is important, i dont know how many of you know about year round schools and double sessions. We were going to have to put our high schools on double sessions. What does that mean . School day is a Normal School day, say 8 00 to 3 00. Were going to cut the day in half. Half the kids start at 5 00 in the morning and end at 12 00, then the next half come at 12 30 and get out at 6 00 because we were beyond capacity because of growth. We had to go out and tell our story about this, but we were blessed, and we were blessed with a huge, huge 1. 1 billion bond to build schools and renovations, and take care of existing schools. Because now we have to talk about equity and access. We can build all the new schools, right, but what about the old schools . Our Community Came together and after 15 years we had a bond passed for 1. 1 billion, and were going to take care of our repairs to our older schools. One of the things we actually do which i didnt put in this slide is every time we follow the blueprint for the plan, we actually go live on facebook, and you can actually go see everything we said we were going to do with the money that the taxpayers gave us. We put it up, so were going to put our money, our mouths, and the trust and show you that we are so happy you trusted us as the district. Heres what we said we were going to do, and here is evidence of it, because we have to build that trust in the community where there have been lacking trust. It its great because you get to see the superintendent in a balkcat, but its so great for a community to go online and look at their schools and see their renovations live as they happen. But as we begin to talk, we talk about every child by name and face to graduation. This is one of our cornerstones and what we talk about with everything we do, whether its capital, whether its raising money, whether its creating partnerships. The basis is every child by name and face to graduation. So in 2016, theres a slide. We had a history recordbreaking Graduation Rate of 77 . Im going to talk about this a little because this is going into my fourth year of officially third year interim, some turbulent things happened, but we got there. As you can see, we have serious achievement gaps. Think about this. What is the result of raising the Graduation Rate if you dont close gaps for kids . That means the sail kids are excelling and the kids you need to get to where they need to be are not growing. We have to have a real internal look at the organization to see, how can we become better as leaders for the children we serve. Theres a graph around, when we look at groups around english language learners, children in transition and free and reduced lunch. I started with a recordbreaking 77 Graduation Rate. When you look at that slide, theres some evidence that something isnt happening in our district as fast as it should for all children. And we keep saying every child by name and face to graduation. I want to kind of look at the student diversity. And when you look at this slide and you look at these colors, this is kind of the makeup of our district. Pay attention to what it looks like for children who may look like me. Pay attention what it might look like for children who may be asian. Pay attention for what it would look like for our hispanic and other brown children. Interesting enough, this happens across the country in a variety of districts, but if you look at our districts, were going to look at who services our students. Does anybody see anything thats a stark difference . Right. The people who serve the kids dont look like the kids. And sometimes that can be a gap in how we provide services for our students. When we look at our administrators in our district, you can see the breakdown. Heres one of the things that mort said he was wowed by when i told the story. And then here are our past superintendents. And then came along me. Right . And ill tell you something historic happened in Washoe CountySchool District before i became the superintendent. Another thing that happened is we appointed our first ever africanamerican trustee on the board, the community did. So within a months span, two historical things happened. The first historic africanamerican woman was appointed to the board, and they hired the first africanamerican superintendent in Washoe CountySchool District. Think about what that says about the community. What they entrust to me to do. And in spite of what some might feel might be the color of my skin or gender or other things, right, i had a large task at hand. But today, i can talk about my district really for a long time. I can really talk if i get into it, but i want to talk about we know what the what is. Some of you may have seen this video, but i think its worth sharing with you because its part of my story and part of who we are as a district. Theres the video, not the one they sent you. Theres the link. As the doctor brings up the video the key really isnt to know what. The key is to know why. When you know your why, you have options on what your what is. For instance, my why has inspired me my what is writing books, my what is going out with friends to eat. In fact, another what moving towards my why is a what series we have out now called break time. So every wednesday at 3 00, you should subscribe to this channel. We do a series called break time on youtube. So 3 00, a new episode. One episode in particular im about to show you the clip to, we were in winston, salem. Break time, i travel out here. Probably an hour, hour and a half. And in the middle of my show, im sitting down and talking to the audience. And funny just happens. Or ill meet somebody, i met this one guy and he says he teaches music at school. Im like, all right. You teach music. Im going to show you a clip. So let me get a couple bars of amazing grace. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me wow. That guy can sing. All right. Now im going to give you the version, your uncle just got out of jail. You got shot in the back when you were a kid. Let me give you a quick version. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me now im found was blind but now i see the reason i shared this video with you, because whether youre the superintendent, the trustee, the mayor, we know what the what is. When we get up in the morning, especially in the job as a superintendent, the moral compass has to be about your why. Ha there have been times i wake up, ill talk about challenges. Being on the front of the paper. Somebody said sometimes you dont want to be in the paper and youre in the paper. We had an opportunity to share those experiences with the things that were happening. I remember we were doing some work with mort, and mort says traci, what are you doing . Tell me what it is . And i said, its my life, right . Because there are children we need to impact and we need to know what our what is. There are days where you have to have the grit and resiliency and pull your why forward, right . So you can get to the finish line. So one of the things that i incorporated as a superintendent in 90 by 20, two things. One, we dont graduate kids their senior year, and we have to stop being reactive. When theyre in the 12th grade, you need to take seven classes so you can get your diploma. I didnt take seven classes in my junior year, thats why im here now. Can we be proactive about the work. We start gradu