Board Report - July 13

Board Reports

2023-2028 Strategic Plan Update 

Dr. Todd Nelson, senior executive director of Research, Design and Assessment, presented the Board of Education with an update on Union’s 2023-2028 Strategic Plan. 

He highlighted some of the accomplishments related to district objectives and showed some of the trends related to indicators being used to track progress.  

Departmental Accomplishments 

• Child Nutrition 

• Dietitians taught 423 nutrition education classes ranging from Elementary to Secondary from 2023 to 2025.  

• All 13 elementary schools participated in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program grant, valued at about $500,000 annually. Child Nutrition continues to provide locally grown foods as a part of all menus – local beef, lettuces, tomatoes, potatoes, watermelon and more.  

• Communications: In developing a campaign to address chronic absenteeism, the Communications department won two Silver Link awards from the Tulsa Chapter Public Relations Society of America: One for the overall campaign and another for “Creative Collateral” for the campaign posters.  

• Finance: Continued to receive national recognition for financial reporting excellence recognized by:  

• GFOA Certificate of Achievement 

• ASBO Certificate of Excellence 

• ASBO Meritorious Budget Award; and 

• For receiving unmodified (“clean”) audit opinions annually. 

• Human Resources 

• Increased student teachers by 14% over the past two years 

• Increased number of loan forgiveness approvals every year; and 

• Maximized the tuition reimbursement program for the past three years. 

• Information Technology 

• IT employee Billy Roe was named the Employee of the Year 

• Installed a next-generation firewall and reconfigured security profiles for the district 

• Operations 

• Core America: the third-party custodial assessment firm graded the district at a 93% average. Following the evaluation, recommended practices for improvement were immediately implemented. 

• More than 60 construction projects have been completed during the past five years. 

• Transportation 

• Transported about 9,500 students each day to and from school with 66 routes. 

• In addition, there were 19 afterschool routes and 21 families were transported as part of the McKinney-Vento program.  

Measuring District Progress 

According to Nelson, the district tracks several indicators to measure the district’s progress.  

• School Health Indicators: “These are measured through our school capacity surveys and are scored on a scale from one to six,” said Nelson, and are an indicator of the overall trend of school health. “The scores generally show a positive trend, especially when compared to 2022.”  

• Graduation and College Matriculation 

• The primary indicator of progress is the district’s graduation rate.  “While the gains have been significant since 2021, there remains some work to do as we climb back to the pre-pandemic level of nearly 93%,” said Nelson. In 2024 and 2025, the graduation rate has been 88.7% and 87.5%, respectively.  

• The percentage of students enrolling in college has dropped but has “leveled off with a slight increase to 54% with the 2025 cohort,” according to Nelson. 

• Attendance: “While the results aren’t dramatic, the downward trend has ceased and the tide is turning,” said Nelson. Chronic absenteeism has dropped from 29.7% in 2023 to 27.5% in 2026.  

• Reading and Math on Grade Level (K-9 Math and K-12 Reading): Nelson said we are seeing steady growth in math and significant gains in reading. He attributed much of the success to Early Release Fridays and the work of professional learning teams.  

• College Readiness Course Completion 

• Middle School: Several years ago, Union began systematically assigning 5th grade students to advanced classes in 6th grade. “By assigning students who showed potential on assessments in math and reading to advanced classes   (with the option for parents to change it back), it resulted in increased enrollment in advanced classes (from about 3,500 to about 6,000, in grades 6-8),” said Nelson.  

• Grades 9-12: The long-term effect of that consistent action has led to the growth in college readiness course participation by high school students — over 13,000 semester courses in 2026. 

Teaching & Learning Accomplishments 

• The Learn to Read “100 Percent Proficiency by First Grade” Goal is getting primary focus as the implementation continues. 
• On the elementary math state tests, Union had the highest percentage point increase of all large districts in the state in 2025. 
• To support our Community Schools philosophy, parent liaisons were added to several secondary grade levels. 
• After school programming in elementary schools has expanded to 543 program opportunities serving over 3,500 students. 
• The expansion of elementary robotics programs included hosting the regional competition which led to four teams qualifying for the state tournament. This is fueling the further growth of the STEM pathways in middle school.  
• The Hope Department developed the Educational Leadership course. 
• About six million points of communication occurred on TalkingPoints, the texting software that translates messages into the 60+ languages that our families speak.  (About one million were direct messages to parents.  90% of our parents engaged in 2-way communication, well above the 55% that is typical of districts our size.) 
• New STEM course offerings with Paxton-Patterson learning modules were added at the middle schools levels. 
• Using the NoRedInk software, the number of secondary student writing samples submitted has grown to more than12,000. 
• There is large growth in in enrollment in AP and Advanced Science courses. 
• Affirming the work of the Reach Program staff, the student pregnancy rate hit an all-time low of just 4 students in 2024-25.  In 2014-15, there were 38. 
• Special Services established the Redhawks RISE Transition Program. 
• Union received a 6-million-dollar federal grant called Project Inspire that is a cooperative with OSU and two other school districts to provide mental health support and address the national shortage of school psychologists. 
• The College and Career Center had over 16,000 students in attendance at CCC events in one year alone. During the 2024-25 school year - over 50 organizations hosted 125 student interns who earned 740 certifications. 
• Career pathways were expanded by launching new career academies (e.g. Aerospace, Construction, Medical). 
• New industry partnerships were forged in healthcare, aerospace, and construction to enrich the career pathways – bringing more career panels, internships, and partner-driven programs. 
• We established Guiding Coalitions of teacher-leaders at every school to enhance the focus on student learning as they lead the work of the professional learning community. 
• Union was honored with the Breakthrough School Award from the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center as the state’s top district in our category when evaluated on a variety of achievement indicators. 

“While we press on knowing there is more work to be done, we are encouraged that the intentional and systematic efforts to create opportunities and cause learning are making a difference,” said Nelson. “We will keep our foot on the gas until all students experience high levels of growth in learning, resulting in graduation and a promising future.”  

Board Approves Agreement with Tulsa Tech  

The Board of Education approved an agreement for Tulsa Technology Center to provide an instructor for construction and trade programs at the High School for the upcoming school year. 

The agreement with Tulsa Tech replaces one previously arranged through Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology at a cost of $110,000 for an instructor and curriculum needs in the areas of electrical construction and HVAC. The Union Schools Education Foundation has agreed to provide $55,000 of the funding, with the rest to come from Union’s general funds. All books, materials and equipment shall be provided by Union. 

Union hopes to renew the program for two additional years. The agreement now provides time to hire a qualified instructor; the Board will consider terms and conditions at its next meeting in August. 

In a separate matter, the Board approved the purchase of Nearpod online student engagement software covering grades 6-12 for two years in the amount of $103,527.60 from bond funds. Gart Morris, executive director of Instruction Technology, stated in the memo: “Nearpod’s online student engagement platform provides an interactive lesson delivery that can be used both in-person or as an individual assignment. This engagement platform integrates directly into Union’s Canvas system and provides a library of editable lessons and video content.” 

Board Approves Purchases for Capital Improvements at Freshman Academy, High School 

The Board of Education approved the purchase of a new evaporator coil for the Freshman Academy from Harrison Energy Partners for $209,030, using bond funds. 

Dr. Josh Robinson, director of Operations, said the new condensing unit with evaporator coil will be used in the second gym. “This is a very large 60-ton RTU and the outside condensing unit has failed,” Robinson said. “It is an outdated model and must be replaced with a new system.” 

Board members also approved Robinson’s request to approve an agreement with Henderson Engineers for commissioning services for the High School HVAC replacement phase 1 project for$173,420. Robinson said the agreement will ensure all HVAC equipment operates correctly as well as validate the sequence of operation instruction is programmed correctly for the BAS control system. 

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