DIGITAL SIGN-IN FOR FAMILY EVENTS AT ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS IN BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT: A GRANT APPLICATION TO INCREASE HOME-SCHOOL CONNECTIONS by MOLLY ANDERSON A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education June 2020 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Molly Anderson Title: Digital Sign-In for Family Events at Elementary Schools in Beaverton School District: A Grant Application to Increase Home-School Connections This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Education degree in the Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership by: Joanna Smith Chairperson Keith Hollenbeck Core Member Rayna Flye-Fairman Core Member Joanna Goode Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2020. ii © 2020 Molly Anderson iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Molly Anderson Doctor of Education Department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership June 2020 Title: Digital Sign-In for Family Events at Elementary Schools in Beaverton School District: A Grant Application to Increase Home-School Connections This grant application proposes the creation and implementation of a digital sign- in to gather family attendance data during school events at all 34 elementary schools in the Beaverton School District. The sample ranges from high impact Title 1 Spanish Immersion schools, K-8 inclusive, and high socio-economic non Title 1 schools. The goal of using digital sign is for school site staff, district administration, and state agencies to have access to a common database to then sort and gather information as needed for multiple reporting purposes as well as targeted school outreach. This proposed study includes an evaluation plan for an external evaluator, Inflexion, to conduct a usability study. The total budget requested is $3,157,301.01. The project will have implications for practice at the school, district, and state levels as well as areas for future research. iv CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Molly Anderson GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Western Oregon University, Monmouth DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Education, Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership, Spring 2020, University of Oregon Continuing Administrative License, Education, 2020, University of Oregon Initial Administrative License, Education, 2014, University of Oregon Master of Education, Early Childhood/Elementary Education, 2005, Western Oregon University English as a Second Only Language Endorsement, Early Childhood/Elementary Education, 2005, Western Oregon University Undergraduate in Education, Early Childhood/Elementary Education, 2000, Western Oregon University AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Pre-Kindergarten Summer School Parent Events Home Visits Administration PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: English Language Development Teacher (K-5), Scholls Heights Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2017-Present English Language Development Teacher (K-2) and English Language Development School Program Facilitator, Chehalem Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2016-2017 English Language Development Teacher (K-5), Chehalem Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2015-2016 v English Language Development Co-Teacher (K-1), Vose Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2014-2015 English Language Development Co-Teacher (5), William Walker Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2013-2014 English Language Development Co-Teacher (K-5), William Walker Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2011-2013 English Language Development Teacher (K-2) and English Language Development School Program Facilitator, William Walker Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2010-2011 Kindergarten Intensive Intervention Program (AM/PM) and English Language Development Teacher (K only), William Walker Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2003-2010 Kindergarten Teacher (AM), McKinley Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2002- 2003 English Language Development Teacher (2 only), William Walker Elementary School, Beaverton SD, 2002-2003 Kindergarten Teacher (Full Day Bilingual), Highland Elementary, Salem-Keiser SD, 2001-2002 Kindergarten Teacher (AM/PM), Meyers Elementary School, Salem-Keiser SD, 2000-2001 AWARDS, GRANTS, AND HONORS: Honor Society, University of Oregon, 2020 University of Oregon Alumni Association, 2020 Grant, Snack in Hand, Scholls Heights Elementary School, 2018-2019 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express sincere appreciation to Doctors Smith, Hollenbeck, Goode, and Flye-Fairman for their assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. In addition, special thanks are due to Mr. Todd Frimoth whose familiarity with the needs of the community were helpful during the early programming phase of this undertaking. Ultimately, I wish to thank my family with all my heart for their endless support throughout this endeavor. vii Families, students, schools, districts, and the state: I dedicate this dissertation to perpetual change, creation of efficient processes, and use of precious resources. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. PROJECT SIGNIFICANCE……………………………………………...…… 1 Case argument ……………………………………...………….……... 3 Logic Model………………………………...……………………….... 6 Conceptual Framework……………………………………………….. 7 II. DEMONSTRATION OF PROMISING STRATEGIES – PILOTS………..… 11 Pilot 1………………………………………………………………….. 11 Pilot 2………………………………………………………………….. 12 Pilot 3……………………………………………………………….…. 13 Pilot 4……………………………………………………………….…. 13 Pilot 5………………………………………………………………….. 14 Lessons Learned from Pilots………………………...…………........... 15 III. PROJECT DESCRIPTION……………………………………...…………... 18 Milestones and Timelines…………………………………………...… 18 Project Implementation……………………………………………….. 19 Calendar for Professional Development Meetings …….……………. 20 Professional Development Meetings….………………………………. 21 District Language Support for Families………………………………. 21 Ongoing Tasks………………………………………………………… 21 Procedures for Digital Sign-In Set Up for School Site Staff………….. 23 ix Chapter Page IV. EVALUATION PLAN………………………………………………………. 26 Inflexion Project Team………………………………………………... 26 Units of Analysis……….……………………………………………. 27 Setting…………………………………………………………………. 27 Participants……………………………………………………………. 30 Sampling Logic……………………………………………………….. 30 Instrumentation………………………………………………………... 30 Data Collection………………………………………………………... 33 Parent Interviews……………………………………………………… 34 School Site Staff and Administrator Focus Groups…………………... 34 District Executive Staff Interviews…………………………………… 35 District Public Communication Department Interviews……………… 35 District Instructional Technology Staff Interviews…………………… 36 Oregon Department of Education Interviews…………………………. 36 Data Analysis………………………………………………………….. 36 Data Interpretation……………………………………………………. 38 Validity Threats……………………………………………………….. 38 V. BUDGET……………………………………………………………………... 41 School Site Staff………………………………………………………. 43 District Staff…………………………………………………………... 44 Miscellaneous Expenses………………………………………………. 49 x Chapter Page Evaluation Staff……………………………………………………….. 52 VI. IMPLICATIONS…………………………………………………………….. 53 District and State……………………………………………………… 53 Schools………………...…………………………………………...…. 54 Teachers and Support Staff…………………………………………… 54 Dissemination of Findings and Further Research……………..……… 55 APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………… 57 A: LITERATURE SEARCH AND SELECTION……………………. 57 B: EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION AND RESEARCH (EIR) GRANT PROGRAM…………………………………………………. 58 C: REFLECTION OF FEDERAL GRANT WRITING………………. 66 BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT ELEMENTARY GRANT DISCUSSION MEETINGS………………………………………... 67 D: PILOT SCHOOL DEMOGRAPHICS…………………………….. 69 E: PILOT 2……………………………………………………………. 71 F: PILOT 3……………………………………………………………. 75 G: PILOT 4……………………………………………………………. 76 H: ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES DOCUMENT………………. 77 I: PILOT 5……………………………………………………..……… 78 J: QR CODE FOR PILOT #5 SECOND GRADE MUSIC PROGRAM…………………………………………………………… 79 K: FAMILY OUTREACH GOOGLEFORMS – SCHOOL SITE FAMILY LIAISONS………………………………………………….. 80 xi Chapter Page L: BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT CALENDAR 2020-2021….. 87 M: PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MEETING DATES……….. 88 N: USABILITY TEST PLAN TEMPLATE………………………….. 89 O: PARENT FOCUS GROUP SCHEDULE WITH INFLEXION…... 90 P: EVALUATION DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES – PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MEETINGS………………...… 91 Q: DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS…………………………. 93 PARENT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS…………………………….. 93 PARENT GOOGLEFORM SURVEY QUESTIONS……………... 93 BUILDING ADMINISTRATOR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS….... 94 SCHOOL TEAM FOCUS GROUP QUESTIONS……………...…. 96 DISTRICT EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS…………… 98 DISTRICT PUBLIC COMMUNICATION DEPARTMENT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS……………………………………….. 99 DISTRICT INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY DEPARTMENT INTERVIEW QUESTIONS……………………………………….. 100 OREGON DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION INTERVIEW QUESTIONS……………………………………………………….. 102 R: BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEE EXPENSE WORKSHEET…………………………………………………….…... 103 S: BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEE EXPENSE PROCEDURE………………………………………………………… 104 T: SALARY SCHEDULES – CERTIFIED, CLASSIFIED, SUBSTITUTES……………………………………………………….. 113 REFERENCES CITED…………………………………………………………... 115 xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Logic Model for Digital Sign-In…………………………………………. 7 2. Epstein’s Six Types of Parent Involvement……………………………… 9 3. Digital Sign-In Framework………………………………………………. 10 xiii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. Beaverton School District Title 1 Elementary Schools in Oregon 2019- 2020……………………………………………………………………… 28 2. Beaverton School District Non Title 1 Elementary Schools in Oregon 2019-2020………………………………………………………………... 29 3. Research Question Alignment to Instrumentation……………………….. 33 4. Total Budget……………………………...…….……………………..…. 41 5. Year 4 Staffing….………………………………………………………... 42 6. Year 1 Staffing…………………………………………………………… 45 7. Year 2 Staffing…………………………………………………………… 46 8. Year 3 Staffing…………………………………………………………… 46 9. Annual Budget for Year 1, 2, and 3 Stipend Staff..……………………… 48 10. Annual Budget for Year 1, 2, and 3 of Miscellaneous…………………... 50 xiv CHAPTER I PROJECT SIGNIFICANCE Organizations outside of education, such as the medical field, have a history of using technology to gather, sort, and track client data in databases (Black & Mohr 2004; Masters 2015). Medical databases help staff monitor and share patient information among personnel (Cardon, 2018). In addition, digital data input can have greater efficiency and accuracy than handwritten data (Wu et al., 2018). Ali et al. (2010) found that technology can also be used in non-technical situations to support a variety of needs. In schools, for example, a systematic data management plan and online data tracking can help manage and sort data to identify and communicate needs (Anderson & Dexter, 2000; Viega & Eloff, 2007). Building from research on the use of online data systems to track client data outside of education,1 this project proposes to create and implement a digital sign-in for parents attending school events in the Beaverton School District (BSD). The creation of a digital sign-in system addresses three key needs: (a) providing a way for school district staff to better track their efforts to involve parents in school events, (b) improving the efficiency of collecting data about parent and student attendance at events, and (c) enhancing the accuracy and usability of the annual state-mandated parent-involvement reports. 1 See Appendix A for a description of the literature search and selection process that formed the basis for my review of prior research on transitions from paper to digital processes outside of education 1 Beaverton School District (BSD) is the third largest school district in the state of Oregon with a total enrollment of 40,860 K-12 students in 2019. Over 4,000 employees work in the district, serving 34 elementary schools, eight middle schools, six high schools, and six option schools (middle and/or high schools that offer specialized programs for students beyond general grade-level curriculum). Over 10% of the total student population is classified as English Language Learners (ELLs). Ethnicity within the district is 13% Asian, 3% Black, 24% Hispanic or Latino, 1% Native American/Alaskan Native, 1% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 52% White, 7% Other (includes those identifying with more than one category or not identifying with any of the categories). There are 101 languages on record for being spoken in 2019. In 2019, 36% of students across the district qualified for the free and reduced-price lunch program. This grant application2 proposes the creation and implementation of digital sign-in for family events at the 34 elementary schools in BSD. The aim of the project is to better understand how to gather parent involvement data effectively and how to use the gathered data efficiently to meet the needs of various school site groups (e.g., targeting family outreach), district allocation of resources (e.g., parent liaisons), and statewide reporting needs (e.g., Oregon Department of Education binder requirements for Title 1 schools). Data collected via digital sign-in would will be available to teachers, school staff, district staff, and staff at the state level; currently only a select few district and state staff have access. Further, through compiling the data collected digitally, binders sent to ODE can be updated more easily, with clean and legible reports. 2 I plan to submit this application to U.S. Department of Education’s Educational Innovation and Research grant program (see Appendix B) 2 Because some of the low-income populations served in BSD do not have access to technology outside the school setting and may not be comfortable using technology, it is essential that any technology-based solution be designed to be user-friendly and accessible. Implementing a user-friendly digital sign-in for school events can help bridge the gap between technology use at school and the lack of technology at home. A digital sign-in will also build connections across school departments and schools in the district by creating an efficient way to gather and share parent involvement data. Creation of an online database to track parent involvement will help meet reporting requirements for the district and state as well as assist individual schools tailor parent outreach efforts for families who do not attend school events. Case Argument In my role as a school events coordinator and teacher, I have seen a clear need to better track parent involvement at school events. There are many problems with the current practice of having parents sign in on paper when they attend events at school. Illegible signatures cannot be tracked, nor can patterns of attendance across multiple handwritten sign in forms. Also, lines to gain access to parent events become long when only one or two sign-in sheets are available to families (while offering multiple sign-in sheets would further complicate tracking data over multiple events), thus setting the tone for a negative experience instead of a positive one. The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) requires that all Title 1 schools submit a binder of evidence from school events (Oregon Department of Education, n.d.), which includes parent sign-in. Digital sign-in at school events could be used kindergarten through high school to track family attendance and identify patterns of non-attendance, which could then be used for targeted family 3 outreach. The purpose of creating a digital sign-in for school events is to enable greater efficiency and consistency in tracking parent involvement. If successful, each event will provide consistent data with a time and date stamp to make it easy to sort and analyze. Sortable data is critical for tracking family attendance at events and conducting targeted family outreach to ultimately help improve home/school communication. Clear lines of communication can help bridge the gaps in learning, understanding of programs, and home and school expectations. These home/school connections are crucial pieces to building relationships needed for student success. For instance, when there is a need to contact parents about a behavior incident, an established communication base between home and school helps the student and family members feel supported. Although some people might express concern about the mindset shift needed from parents of having schools collect their attendance at school events via a digital sign-in system, families likely have experienced digital sign-in at medical appointments, where their doctor may take chart notes on computers. Adding to the comfort and ease for parents, the digital sign-in system at school events could be completed by the parents with help from their child in terms of filling out the number of family members in attendance and their student ID onto a GoogleFORM. Students already use their ID number at school if they receive school lunch or milk as well as for checking-out library materials and a variety of classroom activities. Possible challenges in moving to a digital sign-in. Some parents may not trust what the digital data will be used for, and may be wary of entering their child’s ID into a system over which they do not have control, 4 making it important to provide clear information during the implementation of a digital sign-in. A shift from paper-pencil sign-in at school events in the Beaverton School District (BSD) to a digital sign-in will need to be user friendly for parents, especially our English Language Learner (ELL) families, to feel comfortable. If successful, a digital sign-in at school events may reduce the time it takes to enter an event, but a digital sign- in with technology glitches could cause longer lines and increased frustration. If technology glitches occur, databases may be unusable, data may not be stored, and there could be no usable record of attendance at the event. If technology glitches occur, BSD would need to find another way to collect parent sign-in data, or revert to pencil and paper sign-in. Before turning to the grant project description, I first describe the Logic Model for this project, as required by the EIR grant program, and the conceptual framework guiding the project. Chapter 2 describes lessons learned from five pilots of the digital sign-in. This is followed by a project description in Chapter 3 where milestones, timelines, project implementation and procedures are discussed. Chapter 4 presents the evaluation plan for the project, describing the research plan for data collection and analysis, as well as identifying validity threats. Chapter 5 provides the budget for the project, including school site staff, district staff, evaluation staff, and miscellaneous expenses. Tables are included to guide the expenditures from year to year as well as totals for each year. Chapter 6 identifies project implications for building administrators, teachers and support staff, as well as for the district and state, and also describes ideas for dissemination of findings and areas for further research. Appendices follow, including Appendix C, which is a personal reflection on the process of preparing a federal grant. 5 Logic Model Creation of this grant application includes a logic model (Figure 1) that describes the features of the proposed project, as required by the Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant program. The logical model first identifies the priorities of implementing a digital sign-in: (a) legible signatures, (b) usage in Title 1 binders, and (c) targeted family outreach from the school site. Next, it lists inputs and investments. These include setting up the GoogleFORM for school events and printing a list of student names and ID numbers for staff to have on hand. The GoogleFORM will include a space to input student ID#, student first and last name, and number of family members attending the event. To help make the process as easy as possible for families, the GoogleFORM will have the event preselected. The school will need to print a list of student names and ID numbers to match the database. The Logic Model also lists the outputs, which include activities and participation. The activities the schools need to prepare in advance are ensuring that the iPads are ready with the GoogleFORM loaded for all school events. Participation and who this program reaches includes: parents, school and district staff, community liaisons, and the Oregon Department of Education (ODE). Short-term outcomes are the data generated from the families who attend the school event, which also allows the school to identify the families who did not attend. Medium-term outcomes are the ability to target families for outreach who do not participate in school events. Long-term outcomes are the ability for Title 1 schools to better document family attendance at school events to meet state reporting requirements. 6 Figure 1. Logic Model for Digital Sign-in. Conceptual Framework Parent involvement theories (Bird, 2006; Epstein, 2001; Epstein et al., 2009) guided this proposed project. Enhancing schools’ ability to track parent involvement at school events is intended to benefit students, parents, and school and district staff. Nelson et al. (2009) discussed the cultural proficiency educators need to effectively work with families of multiple cultures. Identifying families who have a pattern of not attending school events is the first step in enhancing the capacity of teachers and school staff to find avenues to reach all students’ families. 7 Parent perceptions of appropriate involvement at the elementary and middle school level vary (Erdener & Knoeppel, 2018; Fantuzzo et al., 2000; Garbacz et al., 2018). Parent involvement tends to lag in the middle school and high school years. Students are growing up and gaining independence as well as exploring new territory. Parent involvement outside of elementary school has included texting between the school and families (Pakter & Chen, 2012). This alternative use of technology to communicate with schools about their child’s progress has also been a recent shift in paradigm for educators. Involvement may look different for parents, but the need for home/school connections and communication is still a key for student success. Epstein's parent involvement framework (Epstein 2001; Epstein et al., 2009) describes six types of parent involvement (Figure 2) that help educators in developing home/school connections. This framework serves as the connection for the proposed project. The proposed project incorporates several of these types of parent involvement by helping gather data about parent involvement at school events to facilitate targeted outreach to strengthen connections between families and schools. Online parent sign-ins at school events increase school-to-family communication (Type 2) by enabling the school to better track participation at school events (Type 3), tracking PTO participation (Type 5), and ultimately connecting resources with families (Type 6). Epstein’s framework is incorporated into the Digital Sign-In Framework shown in Figure 3. In this framework, the components converge and depend on one another to fully function properly. Epstein’s framework shapes school personnel actions, which support moving from paper sign in to digital sign-in. 8 Figure 2. Epstein’s Six Types of Parent Involvement 9 Figure 3. Digital Sign-In Framework. This project aims to answer the following research questions: RQ1: What are the perceptions of parents, school staff, school district staff, and state leaders about the usability of a digital sign-in at school events? 1a. How do school staff use digital sign-in data to target parent outreach? 1b. How do district staff use digital sign-in data in their reporting to the Oregon Department of Education? 1c. How does the Oregon Department of Education use the reports generated by digital sign-in? RQ2: What are the component parts that need to be in place for a digital sign-in to work? 2a. What are the personnel needs? 2b. What are the procedural needs? 2c. What are the technological needs? 2d. In what ways do the needs vary among schools with different student demographics? 10 CHAPTER II DEMONSTRATION OF PROMISING STRATEGIES - PILOTS As a precursor to writing this grant proposal, I conducted five pilots of digital sign-in at two BSD schools in the last five years. The project being proposed here is intended to help BSD be more efficient with the data that we are gathering from our school events as well as to improve our use of the gathered data by sharing it with staff who will be able to make the most impact with families. The pilot studies provided lessons learned to inform the implementation of a digital sign-in at parent events district- wide. Two research questions guided the pilots: (a) Did the experiences implementing digital sign-in model at school events differ in Title 1 and non-Title 1 schools in the Beaverton School District? and (b) Did the digital sign-in model influence parent outreach and district/state reporting procedures? Each of the pilot studies are described in greater detail, below. Appendix D shows the populations of the two schools included in the pilots, Chehalem Elementary and Scholls Heights Elementary, as well as the numbers of attendees at each event and the type of data gathered during the event. Pilot 1 The initial trial of the digital sign-in was made at an evening pre-kindergarten school event at Chehalem Elementary School in 2015. Chehalem Elementary is a Title 1 school in BSD. In this initial trial, the digital sign-in for this event was modeled after the TeacherSource sign-in format that district staff use. In the TeacherSource program, teachers sign up for meetings and presentations through a web portal. The program keeps 11 track of who has signed up for which event and creates an attendance list. Presenters can pull a sign-in form from this list and have attendees enter their ID number, which marks them as present on the roster at the event. The initial pilot surfaced numerous flaws with the procedure. First, families needed to have an email account to be able to sign in. However, the majority of the parents at this Title 1 school were English Language Learners (ELLs) who did not have technology at home and had not previously set up an email account. School staff helped them, and the parents signed in just for that event. Parents were asked to write down the sign-in and password information during that initial email set up, but retrieval during the next meeting was not possible because parents had not kept the notes, nor did they remember their email, password, or how to access any of information set up at the previous meeting. This pilot highlighted the need to revise the approach being used to increase its accessibility to parents, particularly those without email. Pilot 2 The district’s second pilot of a digital sign-in took place at Back-to-School Night at Scholls Heights Elementary School in 2017. Scholls Heights Elementary is classified as a non-Title 1 school in BSD. Discussions with administration about digital sign-in, the previous pilot, and possibilities of how digital sign-in data could be used led to enthusiastic support for the project. This pilot used GoogleFORMs, iPads were set up in the entryway, and five staff members helped facilitate the digital sign-in (see Appendix E). The five people facilitating the process for this event included building administration, instructional technology (IT) personnel support, building IT support, and 12 myself as an English Language Development (ELD) teacher. It was a smooth process and resulted in usable parent attendance data to use as the year progressed. Pilot 3 The third pilot took place again at Scholls Heights Elementary School in 2018; this time, for the school’s International Festival (see Appendix F). The district research point person reviewed the revised GoogleFORM and granted permission for its use. The intent was to gather a small sample of data from multiple English Language Learner (ELL) families attending a large school event to evaluate the ease with which families could use the GoogleFORM. Unfortunately, due to insufficient help being available for the large school event, no data submissions were collected. The key lesson learned from this failed pilot was the importance of setting up a table with multiple point people assigned to help at the entrance of the event specifically to gather data. Pilot 4 In 2019, I was granted permission to conduct another pilot of a digital sign-in at Scholls Heights Elementary School, this time at a Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) meeting (see Appendix G). I was unable to attend, so the school administrator offered to run the pilot. On the day of the event, the administrator was not able to attend. She suggested another teacher run the pilot at the last minute on the day of the event. This classroom teacher was very technology savvy, so I ran her through the process. We ran a sample test of the GoogleFORM for the event, and each component worked. Even though I did not physically attend the event, I was able to monitor the response rate on the computer near the start time. I watched as no responses were entered and knew right away that something had gone wrong. When I checked in with the teacher the next day, 13 she said she could not figure it out. In the end, no data were collected in the GoogleFORM for the PTO event; when technology failed, they reverted to paper sign-in. This experience led to the drafting of a Roles and Responsibilities document (see Appendix H) to outline expectations and jobs for those involved with running digital sign-ins. Pilot 5 In 2019, the administrator at Scholls Heights Elementary chose the second-grade music program, with the potential to draw up to 120 families, to pilot the digital sign-in again. This pilot’s major challenge was the lack of buy-in and support from school staff. Classroom teachers made it clear that they were not willing to assist, the building administration was hands-off, and secretarial staff reported that nothing about the digital sign-in had been shared with them. It was evident from previous pilots that one person could not run digital sign-in on their own for an entire event, so I reached out to my district Instructional Technology (IT) contact to get support for the event. Set up was easy using a GoogleFORM with the information linked to a GoogleSHEET to manipulate the data after the event (see Appendix I). We incorporated something new at this event, a Quick Response (QR) code (see Appendix J) for easy scanning and access to the GoogleFORM. Families had only minimal issues filling out the form and submitting the information. The QR code scanning was easily used and accessed by parents filling out the form. The QR code also made it easy for event staff to scan and then pass the preloaded GoogleFORM on the iPad to a family as they walked in the door. 14 Issues that did arise included lack of familiarity with digital devices for older attendees and parents and family members not knowing their student’s ID number. A lack of time and the need for efficiency for sign in did not allow us to look up the student ID numbers and help families with that portion, which is why the failsafe of last name and first name of student is an integral piece to have included in the GoogleFORM. It became clear that multiple people needed to be available during the event to help family members with the digital sign-in technology. Despite these challenges, this pilot was able to collect data from 114 families of our total 120 registered students, which tallied 444 total attendance logged using digital sign-in. Lessons Learned from Pilots These five pilots conducted over five years at two BSD elementary schools uncovered several key lessons learned that inform the project proposed under this grant. First, not having a point person at the school site for initial data input should put the launch of the digital sign-in process for school events on hold; it is better to use paper sign-in than have a chaotic digital sign-in process. Second, all documents, files, and digital devices need to be properly set up and tested prior to scheduled events. If iPad devices are not available for the event, other technology needs to be ready for back-up such as QR codes for smart phone usage, desktops, and Chromebooks. Third, students and/or parents may not know their student ID number, which means that staff will need to have a list of student ID numbers available. Fourth, without an appropriate number of staff available to help at the school event (dependent on the size of the event), lines to sign in may be long. Fifth, data may be inaccurate if students or parents input information incorrectly, multiple times, or by-pass the sign-in table all together. Sixth, if 15 the initial database is set up incorrectly, the data that are added to it could be unusable or labor-intensive to sort later on. Similarly, if the GoogleFORM is not linked to the correct EXCEL document, data could be hard to retrieve. Seventh, family events change throughout the school year for a multitude of reasons. If the EXCEL document and GoogleFORM are not updated and maintained, the data could be misplaced and end up in the wrong file. Finally, if school site administration does not support the process, the necessary buy-in for the digital sign-in might hinder its usability. Support for new processes and clear expectations are keys to shifts in practice and effective change. Berger (2020) advises that those implementing change focus on reducing barriers. As the pilot studies have demonstrated, one of the biggest hurdles to implementing digital sign-on is gaining support from administration, staff, and parents. Analyzing the pilot projects through my in response to Research Question 1 lens (Did the experiences implementing digital sign-in model at school events differ in Title 1 and non-Title 1 schools in the Beaverton School District?), the digital sign-in model was similar at both Title 1 and non-Title 1 schools when there was sufficient staff support available and willing to help, as in Pilot #2 and Pilot #5. Digital sign-in did not work in Pilot #1, Pilot #3, and Pilot #4. The lack of success in Pilot #1 can be attributed to parent unfamiliarity with the digital sign-in process at the Title 1 school. The lack of success in Pilot #3 and #4 can be attributed to lack of available trained personnel to support the event, rather than differences based on student demographics at the two schools. Insufficient data from the pilots exist to address Research Question 2 (Did the digital sign-in model influence parent outreach and district/state reporting procedures?). No parent outreach information was collected during the pilots and there has not been any 16 information collected about whether or not ODE accepted or rejected the digital Pre- Kindergarten parent event attendance submissions collected during the pilot from the Title 1 school that participated. This new proposed project would enable this research question to be answered. 17 CHAPTER III PROJECT DESRIPTION Milestones and Timelines Milestones for the proposed four year digital sign-in project are designated below by year. Expectations and responsibilities are listed to provide a framework for staff guidance. Timelines provide a more detailed description of the grant activities. One person per grade level (K-5), one IT support person, and one school administrator will be recruited to serve on each school’s Digital Sign-In Team. These teams will work together to implement the digital sign-in in stages. The first year, the expectation will be for monthly use of a digital sign-in. In subsequent years, the expectation will be that digital sign-in will be used for all parent events. Throughout the project, BSD staff will work with a contracted research team from Inflexion to evaluate the usability of the digital sign-in. Year 1. During Year 1, all elementary schools will use digital sign-in for Back- to-School Night, Fall Conferences, and Spring Conferences, as well as for other events chosen by the individual school teams. All schools will be expected to use digital sign-in at least once a month. School teams will give feedback via GoogleFORM as well as through interviews and focus groups conducted by the Inflexion evaluation team. Each school team will designate a point person to provide family outreach. The family outreach point person will follow up with families using the following approaches: meeting notes, thank you notes, slides, pictures, and other types of outreach such as home visits (See Appendix K). 18 Year 2. During Year 2, all elementary schools will be encouraged to use digital sign-in at all school events, including all Parent Teacher Committee (PTC) meetings. School teams will give feedback at professional development meetings via GoogleFORM as well as through interviews and focus groups conducted by the Inflexion team. Each school team will once again designate a point person to provide family outreach. Year 3. Year 3 will be a refinement of the implementation conducted during Year 2 based on lessons learned across the schools. The Roles and Responsibilities manual will be refined over the summer between Year 2 and 3, and Inflexion will share findings from their data collection from the first two years. Professional Development (PD) will be tailored to share what worked and what challenges surfaced across the district’s elementary schools. Inflexion will continue to conduct focus groups and interviews with staff and families as well as school district and state personnel. Year 4. The focus of Year 4 is Inflexion’s creation and dissemination of a usability report. All data gathered from the district interviews, focus groups, and all of the GoogleFORMs will be analyzed by Inflexion’s evaluation team, who will write up a usability report that will be shared with a range of Beaverton School District stakeholders at the end of Year 4. Project Implementation The following implementation timeline outlines specific tasks to be completed each year. August. To account for attrition, initial meetings will be held in August of each year of the grant to ensure that all involved staff clearly understand the purpose of the grant, roles and responsibilities, and expected outcomes (see Appendix H). At the first 19 meeting, each school group will finalize the composition of the school’s Digital Sign-In Team, and each team will create a schedule of family events for the year, deciding which ones will use digital sign-in for the first year. Instructional technology (IT) staff members at each school site will inventory the technology (e.g., iPads, Chromebooks) that will be used for digital sign-in events. They will also set up the GoogleFORM and QR code for each event; print off and laminate the QR codes; obtain stands for the QR code for events, and create a presentable welcome table display for devices at each of the school events selected to use digital sign-in. September-June. Each school’s Digital Sign-In Team will hold monthly check- in meetings at the school site, facilitated by the school administrator. In addition, all members of the Digital Sign-In Teams will participate in professional development sessions, as outlined below, with all 34 elementary schools scheduled two additional times each year, in January and June, facilitated by the project manager each year. During these PDs, the Inflexion team will conduct interviews and focus groups to collect usability data about the project implementation. Calendar for Professional Development Meetings The Beaverton School District Calendar (See Appendix L) will be used to select specific dates for professional development meeting. The first Thursday of every month will be designated as a consistent day for monthly meetings. The first Professional Development session in August will take place the first Thursday of the first week of school. If a district designated day off is planned that first Thursday of the month, the day will be moved to Thursday of the next week. The Professional Development calendar will be sent out in print at the beginning of the school year as well as a 20 TeacherSource sign up to document attendance (digital sign-in for staff will be used at each meeting) and staff Outlook calendars will be linked for PD meeting reminders. Professional Development Meetings Professional development meetings (See Appendix M) will be held for all 34 school site project teams to collaborate and work on digital sign-in procedures. Each school has unique staff composition and school needs, and is at different entry points in learning how to create and implement successful procedures for their individual school site for parent events. Title 1 schools have had structures in place for parent sign-in at all school events for the Oregon Department of Education binders that need to be submitted for school funding. Non Title 1 schools have not had this ODE requirement for family attendance at school events, so this will be an added layer to the planning and preparation for these schools. District Language Support for Families The Multilingual Department in Beaverton School District will help with translations for digital sign-in prior to events as well as by providing interpreting services during school events. Ongoing Tasks Staff involved in the project will have ongoing tasks within the four-year timeline. Grant manager. The grant manager will oversee the spending of grant funds and will check in monthly with the superintendent, technology staff, and district staff to make adjustments to the budget as needed. The grant manager will distribute a professional development schedule based on the approved district school calendar (See Appendix L 21 and Appendix M) to each school site in August of each year of the grant. More details of the PD meetings are provided below. Project manager. The project manager will check in monthly with the superintendent, school sites, and district technology staff to maintain communication and assess whether the school teams need additional resources and support. The project manager will also facilitate monthly PD meetings to enable schools to share lessons learned, brainstorm solutions to challenges, and learn from each other. Regular check in with each school site. Based on the lessons learned from the five pilots described above, regular check ins at each school site by the project manager, district executives, and building administrator will be crucial to maintain consistency of data collection procedures. Data for monthly check-ins will include anecdotal evidence from digital-sign in events, as well as data from Inflexion’s evaluation and GoogleFORMs. Regular check in for technology with Synergy and Ed-Fi. Monthly meetings will be held for the grant manager and project manager to check in with technology staff about Synergy and Ed-Fi functionality. Synergy is the student database where all basic family information is stored. Ed-Fi is the program that connects multiple databases together to create streamlined reports. These Ed-Fi reports could then be submitted to ODE for Title 1 binders. Check-ins with technology staff will help answer the questions: What has gone well? What could be fixed? Regular check in with elementary administrators. Executive administrators will check-in monthly with their region of administrators to gather information on 22 process, procedure, and implementation at each school site. This data will be informal and will be used to guide conversations at professional development meetings. Meetings with school district superintendent to give updates. The grant manager and project manager will schedule monthly meetings the second Thursday of each month with the superintendent. Timing for this meeting will be after the professional development, which will be held on the first Thursday of each month. Early communication of patterns and progress reports will provide informal data for further development of future grants to support digital sign-in roll-out district wide, in the district’s middle schools and high schools. School site tasks. The school site administrator will work with classroom teachers involved in this grant to secure substitutes for the professional development dates as soon as possible. Each school site team will be attending meetings once a month, for half-a-day district training and focus groups with Inflexion three times a year. Digital Sign-In Teams will be created at each school site which will include: one administrator, one school site IT, and K-5 teacher representation. Each school site Digital Sign-in Team will need to create a check-in schedule which will include upcoming events and set up. Site based check-ins will be completed virtually via Zoom, email, or face-to-face. Monthly reporting of digital sign-in usage at school events will take place during the monthly district PD meetings. Procedures for Digital Sign-in Set Up for School Site Staff The school site technology staff will be tasked with the following procedures to set up, download, and use the data gathered through the GoogleFORM during school events. 23 Data gathering set up. Trained staff and/or instructional technology specialists from the district will download all student identification numbers and student names from the district student information system into an EXCEL spreadsheet. This EXCEL spreadsheet will include tabs for all of the school events for the year. A GoogleFORM will be used to gather the following information at school events: student ID number; student last name; student first name; how many people are attending the event together from that family. The GoogleFORM will be linked to a GoogleSHEET with a tab specifically labeled for the event so that the data immediately feeds into the GoogleSHEET as it is entered. A timestamp marks the entry for that event, and the data can then be sorted for multiple purposes. This same spreadsheet can then be linked to future events using GoogleFORMs. As the year progresses and more data are input into the common spreadsheet, the school teams can sort the data to show patterns in family involvement as student ID number, last name, and first name entries sort together. Data can then be used to identify families who are not attending school events for further follow up with the family by school staff. GoogleFORM data collection might take place on a variety of devices such as iPads, Chromebooks, desktop computers, laptop computers, and/or smart phones. QR codes for the GoogleFORM can also be created to scan for the event, as noted above. Prior to each event, devices will need to be charged and loaded with the proper apps and/or programs. Staff helping attend to the devices and supporting the family sign-in process will need access to the student ID numbers through the district information system or via a printed form for quick reference. Parents may need to be provided the student ID number 24 information. Sign-in questions will be provided in English, Spanish, and other languages as appropriate for each school site. Interpreters will be available for the event to translate as needed. It will be important to plan for situations where student ID numbers are not known, however. If students do not use student ID numbers in any of the listed ways, staff at the event will have access to Synergy, the district’s Student Information System, as well as a printed list to check on student numbers. And, if the student ID number cannot be located through any of the above methods, the system will be set up in such a way that staff will be able to enter the first and last name of the student so the data will not be lost. Data download. Data will be downloaded from the GoogleSHEET into a pre- filled EXCEL document populated with student ID number, student last name, student first name, grade level, English Learner status (if applicable), and homeroom teacher last name. The number of family members in attendance will be a column left blank to be populated by the event data. Data use. Family attendance at events can be sorted and monitored to find patterns, such as whether attendance is greater at certain events, whether some families only attend events at certain times of the day, and so on. These patterns can then be used for further development of future family events as well as targeted family outreach. Sorting for different events will enable attendance report submissions for the Oregon Department of Education Title 1 school binders. 25 CHAPTER IV EVALUATION PLAN Throughout the project, Inflexion will be contracted as an outside evaluator to conduct a usability study to identify needed refinements to the digital sign-in, and to enable the district and state to decide whether to scale-up further implementation in other districts or at middle or high school sites within BSD. The intent of a usability study is to capture patterns that arise to solve a problem of practice (Farrell, 2017). In this case, the usability study will be conducted with the goal of understanding the perceptions of families, school staff and district personnel about the implementation of a digital sign-in at school events. The Usability Test Plan template provided in Appendix N identifies roles for a usability study. Some of these roles have been incorporated into the evaluation plan for this grant. The following sections describe the research approach for the evaluation, including a description of the unit of analysis, timeframe, participants and setting, sampling logic, data collection instruments and procedures, data analysis and interpretation, and anticipated threats to validity. Inflexion Project Team Inflexion (formerly the Educational Policy Improvement Center, EPIC) “partners with districts and schools who are dissatisfied with the status quo and (are) motivated to find what really works in classrooms and across campuses” (https://www.inflexion.org/who-we-are/history/). This nonprofit has experience in grant evaluations of different sizes and scope, including experience with large federal grants. The evaluation will be formalized through a contract with Inflexion and will include two senior researchers and a research team of 20 people. 26 Units of Analysis The what or who being studied is the unit of analysis (Babbie, 1998). Research Question 1 units of analysis are parents, school staff, district staff, and ODE. Grouping parent perceptions across all schools will enable findings to represent parent voice. School staff are also a unit of analysis for Inflexion’s findings to be able to compare school staff perceptions across all 34 elementary schools with the perceptions of other groups. District staff will be the unit of analysis to isolate their perceptions from other stakeholder groups. ODE is the final unit of analysis for RQ1, to gauge whether ODE staff find digital sign-in data presented in the binders useful. Research Question 2 units of analysis are Title 1 and non Title 1 schools so that differences in these schools can be identified (RQ2d) in terms of the component parts of personnel (2a), procedures (2b) and technology (2c). Grouping schools into these two designations (Title 1 and Non Title 1) allows for findings to be at the school level. Setting The evaluation will include data from each of the 34 elementary schools in BSD. Title 1 schools (see Table 1) are required by the state to measure and account for family attendance at school events and to submit these data in a binder to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE), while non-Title 1 schools (see Table 2) do not have this requirement, so it is important to include both Title I and non-Title I schools in the usability study. Examples of the demographic range in Beaverton schools include Vose Elementary, a Title 1 school with 615 students, 82.9% who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program and Scholls Heights Elementary, a non-Title 1 school with 550 students and 15% FRL. All of BSD’s elementary schools will be included to gauge the 27 usability of gathering digital sign-in data from the variety of school settings, with the ultimate goal of helping schools target parent outreach and build home/school connections. Table 1 Beaverton School District Title 1 Elementary Schools in Oregon 2019-2020 School Name Student Population % Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) Aloha-Huber Park K-8 919 75 Barnes 630 64 Beaver Acres 650 52 Chehalem 509 58 Elmonica 704 47 Errol Hassell 485 36 Fir Grove 400 46 Greenway 354 68 Hazeldale 458 48 Kinnaman 688 61 McKay 311 52 McKinley 613 62 Raleigh Hills K-8 556 46 Vose 742 68 William Walker 466 71 Sources: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/ and https://beaverton.k12.or.us/ 28 Table 2 Beaverton School District Non Title 1 Elementary Schools in Oregon 2019-2020 School Name Student Population % Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) Bethany 529 16 Bonny Slope 684 13 Cedar Mill 409 12 Cooper Mountain 480 16 Findley 701 6 Hiteon 664 26 Jacob Wismer 743 6 Montclair 323 19 Nancy Ryles 635 24 Oak Hills 567 17 Raleigh Park 374 42 Ridgewood 420 20 Rock Creek 522 18 Sato 700 14 Scholls Heights 550 14 Sexton Mountain 526 16 Springville K-8 822 13 Terra Linda 385 35 West Tualatin View 370 13 Sources: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/ and https://beaverton.k12.or.us/ 29 Participants Participants include school site staff, district staff, and staff from the Oregon Department of Education. School-based staff include instructional technology staff, teachers, and building administrators. District staff include instructional technology staff, a grant manager, a project manager, teachers on special assignment (TOSAs), district executives, and district communications staff. Multilingual department staff include staff for multiple language support. State staff includes a point person from the Oregon Department of Education Title 1 office. Sampling Logic The sampling logic for including all Beaverton School District elementary schools instead of a subset was determined by the range of types of schools within the district. The 34 elementary schools have diverse needs across Title 1 and non-Title 1 schools. Each school is at a different entry point in learning how to create and implement sign-in processes for their parent events. Title 1 schools have had pen and paper sign-in procedures in place for families at all school events for ODE reporting requirements. Non-Title 1 schools likely have varied approaches to school events since they are not required to submit binders to ODE: some may have parents sign in at some events (e.g., parent teacher conferences), others may only require volunteers to sign in, and some may not use sign-in procedures for any events. Instrumentation Inflexion’s usability study will utilize interview protocols (see Appendix Q) created by the project manager. Instruments are described below and include a parent GoogleFORM survey instrument, administrator interview protocols, school team focus 30 group protocols, district staff interview protocols, instructional technology department interview protocols, and an Oregon Department of Education interview protocol. Table 3 identifies which research questions each instrument is designed to answer. Parent survey. Survey questions will be included on a GoogleFORM for parents to gauge usability of the sign in and gather information to improve the process for future events. These 5-point Likert scale questions will help answer RQ1. Parent interview protocol. Parent interviews will be conducted by Inflexion to gather their perceptions about the digital sign-in process, and their comfort in providing information digitally which will answer RQ1. Building administrator interview protocol. Interview questions will be included in the initial interview with building administrators that cover their experiences with and perceptions of digital sign-in set up, equipment, and staff buy-in. Mid-year check in questions will cover their perceptions about how the implementation is going, skill gaps, observations, and what they have heard from parent feedback. End of year questions will cover lessons learned from the year about implementation, the school site project team, family outreach, and whether they have seen any changes in practice. These questions will answer RQ1, RQ1a, RQ2, RQ2a, RQ2b, RQ2c, RQ2d. School team focus group protocol. Initial questions for school teams include: roles, who to contact, prior usage with GoogleFORMs, and family outreach plan. Mid- year check in questions include: implementation of roles, usage of GoogleFORMs, and parent outreach opportunities. End of year questions include: team roles, workability during workday, usability of GoogleFORMs, and resource needs. These questions will answer RQ1, RQ1a, RQ2, RQ2a, RQ2b, RQ2c, RQ2d. 31 District executive interview protocol. Initial interview questions with district executives include their experiences with their roles and responsibilities for the project and their experience with GoogleFORMs. End of year questions include changes they would like to see the following year based on what worked well and what challenges there were and how they have supported implementation. These questions will answer the following research questions: RQ1, RQ1b, RQ2, RQ2a, RQ2b, and RQ2c. District public communications department interview protocol. Initial questions for the district public communications department include how they have supported schools’ implementation of the digital sign-in and what ongoing support they will provide. These questions will answer research questions: RQ1, RQ1b, RQ2, RQ2a, RQ2b, and RQ2c. District instructional technology department interview protocol. Interview questions for the district instructional technology department include roles and responsibilities of the technology department and how they will support staff with technology resources, such as GoogleFORMs, before, during and after school events. Mid-year questions include revisiting the roles and responsibilities to find out if there need to be changes made. Inflexion will ask for specific examples of the digital sign-in implementations successes and challenges to help guide the fine tuning process during the 3 years of the grant and sustainability once the grant has ended. These questions will answer the following research question: RQ1, RQ1b, RQ2, RQ2a, RQ2b, and RQ2c. Oregon department of education interview protocol. Interviews will be scheduled with key personnel who review Title 1 binders. These interviews will take place at the end of each year of the project (Years 1 to 3) to gauge the ODE’s response to 32 the inclusion of digital sign-in data in the binders. This data will help answer RQ1 and RQ1c. Table 3 Research Question Alignment to Instrumentation Research Parents School District State Questions RQ1 X X X X RQ1a X RQ1b X RQ1c X RQ2 X X RQ2a X X RQ2b X X RQ2c X X RQ2d X Data Collection As noted in the project implementation section above, the initial professional development meeting (See Appendix J and Appendix L) for the digital sign-in with all schools, school administrators, and district staff will occur in August of the first year of the grant. During this initial meeting, the Inflexion team will be introduced and the first round of focus groups with site teams and administrators will be completed. Inflexion will conduct additional focus groups and interviews at the January and June professional 33 development meetings during the first three years of the project. These data collection activities are described below. Recruitment. After completing IRB, Inflexion will recruit participants for their evaluation by sending the approved IRB research plan to the BSD superintendent and grant coordinator and complete the required BSD memorandum of understanding that will outline the evaluation and encourage digital sign-in project staff to participate. Inflexion will email staff who agree to participate with information on the timeline for data collection for the first three years of the grant and will communicate with staff via email to set up meetings. Parent Interviews Parent interviews will be held once a year at each school site in May and will be conducted by the Inflexion team. Interview calendar will be set up in four rounds (See Appendix O) for schedule of schools and dates. Recruitment of parents for interviews will be conducted at each school site by the digital sign-in team. Time during the professional development meetings will be given to contact translators and arrange availability as well as schedule meetings with parents. Interviews will be arranged with the Inflexion research team for an hour once a year in May during the first three years of the project (see Appendix O). Interviews will be recorded to then transcribe and use for data analysis in year 4. School Site Staff and Administrator Focus Groups As shown in Appendix P, Inflexion staff will conduct focus groups with individual school teams (administrator and teachers) during professional development sessions in August, January, and June. The focus groups will be limited to 30 minutes to 34 enable separate focus groups with each school site team during the PD meetings. A GoogleFORM will be available for school site teams to provide additional comments to make sure all voices and ideas are captured. These data will be used to support school team implementation of digital sign-in at school events. Individual administrator interviews will be scheduled during school professional development sessions and during the group professional development sessions in August, January and June to acquire school-specific feedback from each site administrator. These data will inform future efforts to support the individual school needs for a successful digital sign-in process. District Executive Staff Interviews District Executive Staff who oversee the 34 elementary schools in the district will be interviewed in August and June by the Inflexion evaluation team for 60 minutes over the phone after these Professional Development meetings. The interviews will be recorded and transcribed for Inflexion’s data analysis so that findings can contribute to their usability report by helping understand building administrators’ experiences with the digital sign-in rollout. District Public Communication Department Interviews District Public Communication department interviews will be conducted in August by the Inflexion team for 60 minutes over the phone after this Professional Development meeting. The interviews will be recorded and transcribed to understand the digital sign-in roles and responsibilities that come from the district level compared to the school sites. 35 District Instructional Technology Staff Interviews District Instructional Technology Staff interviews will be conducted in August, January, and June by the Inflexion team for 60 minutes over the phone after each Professional Development meeting. The interviews will be recorded and transcribed to understand lessons learned about the successes and challenges of the digital sign-in from the district IT staff perspective. Oregon Department of Education Interviews Oregon Department of Education (ODE) interviews will be conducted once during each of the first three years of the project by the Inflexion team once the Title 1 school binders have been submitted and reviewed by ODE staff. The interview will take place over the phone for 60 minutes with the ODE grant and Title 1 binder review point person in order to answer research question 2c. The interviews will be recorded and transcribed to understand if digital sign-in is an improvement for school event parent sign-in evidence, or if the traditional pen and paper sign-in was sufficient evidence for school event and Title 1 funding. Data Analysis Tesch’s eight steps in the coding process (Creswell, 2018, p. 195) provide an outline for Inflexion’s qualitative analysis of the data they collect during the three years of digital sign-in implementation. The first step is to get a sense of the whole and take notes of ideas that come to mind. During this step, the Inflexion evaluators will gather all of the qualitative data from the interviews and focus groups and the parent survey data from the GoogleFORM together in the qualitative analysis software Dedoose. Tesch’s second step is to pick one document, ask some guiding questions about what the source 36 of data might tell you, and write notes in the margin. The Inflexion team will start with the first interview and instead of writing in the margins, will start to take note of the preliminary themes within Dedoose’s memo function. These notes will accumulate and be used to sort main ideas as Inflexion continues to review the other documents. Tesch’s third step, after looking through a few documents, is to begin to cluster ideas together to form topics. The Inflexion team will begin to move from memos within Dedoose to an initial list of key topics, grouping ideas from the memos into themes to enable them to begin to sort through findings within the data. Tesch’s fourth step is to take this initial list of topics and go back to the data and begin to abbreviate the topics as codes. New topics will emerge as Inflexion starts to review more of the data, which can be added to the code list. Tesch’s fifth step is to collapse codes back into categories. During this step, Inflexion will think about ways to reduce categories, finding interconnected relationships across the data sources. Tesch’s sixth step is to finalize the code list and categories. During this step, the Inflexion team will create child and grandchild codes under the main codes to better organize the data. Tesch’s seventh step is to assemble the coded material into each category and perform a preliminary analysis. During this step, the Inflexion team will run analysis in Dedoose to see if there are patterns within participants groups (e.g., parents, teachers, school administrators), or whether patterns emerge within each school or school type (e.g., Title I, high EL, etc.). The final step of Tesch’s coding process, step eight, is to recode existing data if necessary. The analysis in the seventh step may prompt the Inflexion team to recode for certain similarities or differences across the data that they had not originally considered. 37 Data Interpretation If Inflexion finds that digital sign-in was successful based on data collected and analyzed over the three years of project implementation in BSD, schools will be able to track student and family attendance at all school events, conduct family outreach based on attendance patterns found in digital sign-in data, and produce Title 1 school binders to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) with a printed list of attendees at school events rather than handwritten signatures on forms. Data interpretation from the interviews as well as the GoogleFORMs will be telling of whether or not the digital sign- in is usable at a variety of school sites. Validity Threats Qualitative validity means that the researcher checks for the accuracy of the findings by employing certain procedures (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Potential threats to validity for this usability study are response bias and surprises not anticipated. Inflexion will use triangulation of data gathered from the range of participants involved in the implementation of the digital-sign in to increase the qualitative validity of their evaluation. Response bias. Response bias is defined as the tendency in respondents to answer untruthfully or inaccurately (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; KwikSurveys, 2020). These biases are found in research involving self-reporting such as in surveys or structured interviews and focus groups. Response bias also includes the effect of nonresponses on survey estimates, and it means that if non-respondents had responded, their responses would have substantially changed the overall results of the survey (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Several efforts will be made to mitigate response bias. 38 First, families will be more likely to fill out the GoogleFORM accurately given that there will be familiar school and district personnel standing at the tables handing out iPads to fill out the information versus people they have never seen before. Parents and students may feel comfortable completing the GoogleFORM knowing a familiar person is available to help facilitate the process. Comfort found in asking for help from a familiar person, versus making a best guess to save face in front of a stranger comes from the need for face time with school administration and familiar district staff which helps ease the anxiety of giving personal information at school events. Second, for the PD meeting focus groups conducted by Inflexion, response bias may be avoided by allowing multiple means to communicate: in small site-based groups and via the GoogleFORM using the same focus group questions. Triangulation. Triangulation is when data is collected through multiple sources to include interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis. (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) Triangulation of data from parents, teachers, administration, and the Oregon Department of Education will further strengthen the conclusions made from Inflexion given the many data points from multiple sources. Following up on surprises. “Surprises have more juice than outliers” (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p 270). Surprises for Inflexion may arise during the interviews and focus groups as well as when they code the data. Interviews and focus groups may take side roads from the questions asked which may provide more questions that need to be answered, resulting in inconsistent data across the interviews. Surprises in the coding may lead Inflexion to pose additional research questions to explore not anticipated at the outset of the evaluation. Miles and Huberman (1994) suggest three aspects to include 39 when following up on surprises: reflect on the surprise to surface your violated theory, consider how to revise it, and look for evidence to support your revision. 40 CHAPTER V BUDGET The Educational Innovation and Research (EIR) grant program through the Department of Education (See Appendix B) has a possible total budget of $4,000,000 for up to five years of project activities. The total requested budget for this project is $3,157,301.01 for a four-year project: three years of project implementation, and a final year for data analysis and dissemination of findings (see Tables 4 and Table 5). Participants from BSD at the school sites, district office, and Multilingual Department are included in personnel. BSD will contract with an external evaluator, Inflexion, as required by the funding agency. Miscellaneous expenses such as food, materials, and supplies for meetings are included as allowed budget line items. Travel and food stipends are also included for Inflexion staff. Table 4 Total Budget Year Personnel ($) Miscellaneous ($) Total Amount ($) 1 865,177.00 85,800.00 950,977.00 2 875,524.36 85,800.00 961,324.36 3 886,078.67 85,800.00 971,878.67 4 273,120.98 N/A 273,120.98 Total 3,157,301.01 41 Table 5 Year 4 Staffing Description # of Positions FTE Amount ($) Grant Manager 1 0.25 37,142.28* Project Manager 1 1.0 108,633.74* Inflexion Staff 2 0.5 127,344.96* Sub Total 273,120.98 *2% cost of living increase since previous year. Beaverton School District staff are already paid for their assigned job positions through the district budget. Asking staff to add tasks, attend meetings, and participate in Inflexion’s data collection is above and beyond the regular work day tasks. It is district policy that work completed beyond the work day hours or tasks needs to be compensated. Thus, stipends are proposed for work completed beyond contract hours, meetings attended specifically for the grant, and interviews and focus groups attended for grant evaluation. The budget includes paying classified staff stipends rather than having them submit a monthly pay form for tasks completed outside of their contract work hours to reduce bookkeeping overhead and ensure a consistent expectation for extra work throughout the academic year3. In creating the project budget, BSD’s highest pay scale was used to estimate FTE costs for positions such as Grant Manager and Project Manager that needed a part time 3 Further conversations need to be held with the Beaverton Education Association president, Beaverton School District Human Resources, and payroll to ensure appropriate compensation for project work is within proper contract guidelines prior to submitting this proposal to a funding agency. 42 (PT) or full time (FT) employee to ensure the budget would be sufficient for whatever tier the employees are in. Beaverton School District Administrative pay scales were unavailable, so estimates were made for the budget for district positions. A 2% cost of living scale was used to estimate year 2, 3, and 4 salaried positions. School Site Staff School site staff involved in this project include many levels of personnel: instructional technology support (IT), one teacher per K-5 grade level, and a building administrator at each of BSD’s 34 elementary schools. Instructional technology support (IT). School site staff include one instructional technology support (IT) staff from each school. This IT staff member will be responsible for attending to all IT issues at the school site during events using digital sign-in. Their work will include setting up technology and attending school events for technical support. IT staff members will receive a $1100 stipend for each year. The budget for all three years of the project implementation will be the same for these IT staff. Instructional technology specialists and teachers. In addition to instructional technology support staff, each school in the Beaverton School District has one instructional technology specialist or media specialist who will participate on the school’s project team. Each school will also select one teacher per grade level, kindergarten through fifth grade, who has been involved in a technology cadre or committee at the school site to participate on the Digital Sign-In Project Team. Each staff member on the project team will need to attend one professional development meeting per month (see Appendix J for schedule), arrange to have a substitute for each of the reoccurring 43 monthly professional development meetings, and attend the school events using the digital sign-in each year. Trained staff and/or instructional technology specialists will receive a $275 stipend for their participation each year. The budget for all three years of the project implementation will be the same for these trained staff and/or instructional technology specialists. Building administrator. The budget includes stipends for each of the 34 schools to send one building administrator to attend three professional development meetings (initial, mid, and end of year) per year and attend at least five scheduled school events to assist with the digital sign-in process. Each building administrator will receive a $275 annual stipend. The budget for all three years of the project implementation will be the same for each building administrator. District Staff District personnel includes district instructional technology (IT) staff, a grant manager, a project manager, teachers on special assignment (TOSAs), district executives, district communications department staff, substitutes, and Multilingual Department staff. District instructional technology (IT) staff. BSD’s Instructional Technology (IT) staff currently consists of 10 full time employees. They will have additional tasks with this grant to support technology issues from the district level such as compatibility with other district data gathering programs, creating and submitting reports to the Oregon Department of Education for Title 1 binder requirements, and attending the professional development events related to the project. Compensation for each district instructional technology staff member for time providing staff support, creating data reports, and attending professional development meetings and school events will be a $275 stipend for 44 each year of the grant. Each year of the project implementation (years 1-3 of the grant) will involve all 10 district technology staff members in order to have district team input on problems that may arise. Consistency within conversations in order to problem solve issues from schools will be managed in monthly district IT team meetings. Grant manager. A grant manager will be hired to oversee the grant management tasks including: budget meetings with project manager, payroll (e.g., communication with building principals regarding staff member stipends), creating and managing spreadsheets, meetings with the project manager, coordinating meetings, securing meeting locations, meeting set up including digital sign-in for all staff, miscellaneous purchases for meetings and managing reimbursement for Inflexion (personnel and travel expenses). The grant manager will be budgeted $35,000 for approximately 0.25 FTE including benefits for the first year of the grant in Table 6. A 2% cost of living wage increase for each year of the grant is reflected in Tables 7, 8, and 9. Table 6 Year 1 Staffing* Description # of Positions FTE Amount ($) Grant Manager 1 0.25 35,000.00 Project Manager 1 1.0 102,368.00 Inflexion Staff 2 0.5 120,000.00 Inflexion Research Team 20 0.5 260,000.00 Sub Total 257,368.00 *Based on highest certified salary schedule. (See Appendix T) 45 Table 7 Year 2 Staffing Description # of Positions FTE Amount ($) Grant Manager 1 0.25 35,700.00* Project Manager 1 1.0 104,415.36* Inflexion Staff 2 0.5 122,400.00* Inflexion Research Team 20 0.5 265,200.00* Sub Total 527,715.36 *2% cost of living increase since previous year. Table 8 Year 3 Staffing Description # of Positions FTE Amount ($) Grant Manager 1 0.25 36,414.00* Project Manager 1 1.0 106,503.67* Inflexion Staff 2 0.5 124,848.00* Inflexion Research Team 20 0.5 270,504.00* Sub Total 538,269.67 *2% cost of living increase since previous year. Project manager. A project manager will be hired to oversee all aspects of the four-year grant. The project manager will be responsible for running meetings with district staff and structuring professional development meetings. Attendance at one digital sign-in event per school site per year of the grant would be part of this role to ensure the project manager has a global picture of the project’s implementation across the district. The project manager will receive $102,368 including benefits based on an estimate of full time 1.0 FTE for the first year found in Table 4. Tables 7, 8, and 9 reflect 46 a 2% cost of living wage increase for each year of the grant. Duties would remain the same each year for the project manager. Teacher on special assignment (TOSA). Two teachers on special assignment (TOSAs) in BSD will be included in the budget to provide hands-on support at the school sites during parent events. Compensation for time attending to support staff at the buildings during school events at all 34 schools will be split between the two TOSAs, and both will attend all of the professional development meetings each year. TOSAs will receive a $275 stipend each year for the three years of project implementation, refer to Table 9. District public communications department. The District Public Communications department will play a vital role in spreading the word across the district to all staff about grant activities and support. An appointed staff member will focus on grant communications, such as taking pictures at events to promote digital sign- in usage to staff and families on the district website, sending email to district staff at multiple levels to keep them up to date on school events and meetings, providing website updates to promote using digital sign-in at school events, holding meetings with the project manager, attending three professional development meetings (beginning, middle, and end of year) each year, and attending 34 school events. Year 1 of the grant will include the district public communications department advertising and spreading the word to district staff, students, and families about the shift in practices from paper and pencil sign-in to digital sign-in forms. Year 2 and Year 3 will include advertising districtwide, with more intensity given to involved staff through email and other forms of district communication such as the district website, flyers, and online messenger services. 47 One staff member who will be involved in the grant interview and completing duties listed above will be compensated with a stipend of $925 each year of the three-year grant as you will find in Table 4. Table 9 Annual Budget for Year 1, 2, and 3 Stipend Staff Level Job Title # of Positions Stipend ($) Amount ($) School Instructional Technology (IT) Support 34 1110.00/person 37,400.00 School Trained Staff and/or IT 34 schools Specialists (1 teacher/grade x 6 staff = 275.00/person 56,100.00 K-5) 204 Building Administrators 34 275.00/person 9,350.00 District IT 10 275.00/person 2,750.00 Teachers of Special Assignment (TOSAs) 2 775.00/person 1,550.00 Executives 3 375.00/person 1125.00 District Communications 1 925.00/person 925.00 Substitutes* 204 1033.50/person 210,834.00 Multilingual Department Language Support* 101 275.00/person 27,775.00 Sub Total 347,809.00 *Based on highest certified salary schedule. (See Appendix T) Substitutes. Substitutes for school staff at all 34 elementary schools are included in the budget to cover classes while teaching staff attend professional development meetings. Professional development will be once a month for 11 months for half day 48 sessions, 12:00-4:00PM the first Thursday of each month beginning in August (See Appendix M). Substitute pay is a fixed amount per day (See Appendix T). A total of 204 substitutes will be used across the district which amounts to $210,834.00 each of the first three years of the grant in Table 4. Multilingual department staff. Staff from the district’s Multilingual Department for language interpretation services are included in the budget to translate GoogleFORMs content and attend events beyond their contract time. It is possible that schools will need language interpretation services that are not supported through the Multilingual Department. In such situations, these services will need to be outsourced to an outside agency such as Passport Services Company. With 101 languages represented in the Beaverton School District, some languages are less common and thus will have fewer demands for interpretation or translation needs. Attendance at professional development meetings may be necessary to clarify needs of our English Language Learner families to all schools and staff attending the monthly professional development meetings. A total of 101 staff attending 11 events across the district at $25 at each event/meeting would be $27,775 in stipends each year of the grant in Table 4. Miscellaneous Expenses Refreshments. I have budgeted $300 per meeting, for a total of $3300 each year of the project implementation to purchase light snacks (e.g., granola bars, mixed nuts, water, coffee, tea) for approximately 250 people who will attend the 11 afternoon professional development meetings in Table 10. 49 Table 10 Annual Budget for Year 1, 2, and 3 of Miscellaneous Level Description # of Meetings ($) Total ($) Food for Meeting 11 300.00/meeting 3,300.00 Professional Development Materials and Supplies 11 300.00/meeting 3,300.00 Travel Expenses 45 2250.00/person 49,500.00 Travel Meal Expenses 45 1350.00/person 29,700.00 Sub Total 85,800.00 Materials and supplies. Materials and supplies for staff attending professional development meetings could include: pens, paper, binders, dividers, power cords, baskets, cart, chart paper, and the like. Participants will be asked to bring district technology, which could be an iPad, laptop, or both and are not included in the budget. Presenting staff will be asked to bring a projector, projection screen, laptop, and iPad for each professional development meeting which again are not supplied by the grant, but by the district. Materials needed for set up the first year will be different than year 2 and year 3 because of carryover each year of the grant. Year 2 and year 3 will be supporting the creative needs of each site and could include poster board, markers, stickie notes, etc. Input will be gathered at the last professional development meeting in June for material needs from schools for the following year. Budgeted materials and supplies for three years are set at $300 at each of the 11 meetings for a total of $3300 each year of the grant in Table 5. 50 Travel expenses. Inflexion staff will include two supervisors and an interview team of 20. The budget covers Inflexion’s travel expenses for each of the three professional development meetings as well as for one visit at each of the 34 school sites each year to interview parents. No lodging will be included because professional development meetings will be held in the afternoons. Inflexion staff will be able to commute from Eugene to Beaverton and back for each meeting/event. Travel expenses will be accounted for using the Beaverton School District form and procedures (See Appendix R and Appendix S). Expense of $50 for mileage per meeting/event will be budgeted for three professional development meetings and 34 school site event meetings for 22 staff members for three years of the project implementation, for a total of $49,500 each year in Table 5. No travel will occur in the fourth year of the grant. Food expenses. Inflexion staff will include two supervisors and an interview team of 20. A crew of 22 people will need food expenses covered for each of the 3 professional development meetings as well as one visit at each of the 34 school sites each year to interview parents. Inflexion staff will be able to commute from Eugene to Beaverton and back each trip for meetings, but one meal per person for each meeting date will be allotted. Food expenses will be accounted for using the Beaverton School District form and procedures (See Appendix R and Appendix S). The expense of $50 for food per meeting/event will be allotted for 3 professional development meetings and 34 school site event meetings for 22 staff members for three years of the grant would be $49,500 each year as shown in Table 5. 51 Evaluation Staff The evaluation will be led by two Inflexion senior staff members. Each member will work approximately half time on the usability study for this four-year grant. Tasks for senior staff include overseeing the data collection and analysis of all evaluation study data. I have budgeted $120,000 to cover FTE for this evaluation work in Table 6 for year 1. Tables 7, 8, and 9 reflect a 2% cost of living wage increase for each year of the grant. Inflexion research team. The Inflexion research team of 20 people will conduct 30-minute interviews at the three professional development meetings with multiple school site groups, as described above in the evaluation plan section. They will also conduct focus groups with families each year at each of the 34 school sites. Recruitment of Title 1, non Title 1, and English Language families will be necessary from each school site. GoogleFORMs will be used to gather data from school site staff members and district administration each of the three years. I have budgeted $260,000 to contract with Inflexion for the interview team to collect and analyze evaluation data as shown in Table 6. A 2% cost of living wage increase for years 2 and 3 of the grant is reflected in Tables 7 and 8. 52 CHAPTER VI IMPLICATIONS Implications for this project’s findings have been divided into three sections: (a) district and state, (b) schools, and (c) teachers and support staff. District and State The shift from gathering data via paper and pencil to digital sign-in is a major change for parents, families, and staff to adjust to. However, in the medical field it is commonplace to gather information such as digital signatures and chart notes on computers. The move to digital sign-in would make data from family events available to teachers, school staff, district staff, and designated staff at the state level. This would represent a shift in data access because currently only a select few district and state staff have access. Binders that are submitted to the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) would be easier to update if the digital sign-in is successful. Reports would be clean and legible since they would be printed out rather than hand-written. Another implication for the district and state would be aligning existing district databases with digital sign-in tools. I have had discussions with BSD personnel around the idea of incorporating Synergy, our district student database, as a sorting tool that aligns with the pilot studies. The possibility of creating a new system, Ed-Fi that links up to our student data management system, Synergy, might enable us to track student data across schools for families who change schools. In this scenario, attendance at school events could be readily available to the new school. This next level of implementation would require discussions with programmers to build the structures, links, and capacity for such a tool as well as with district corporate counsel to address issues related to 53 FERPA regulations. This project is definitely in the infancy stages and has the potential to grow much larger and reach more than just one school in one district in one state. Actually submitting the grant and having data from three years to move forward with districtwide implementation would be a major shift in our current practices. Schools Implications for the study’s findings at the school level include access to a common database identifying which families attend school events to help schools conduct targeted home/school outreach of those families that do not attend. Tracking attendance and outreach efforts could be coordinated at each school site. This approach may help reduce the gap between families that are successful with home and school structures, schedules, programs, and systems to the families that need additional supports in order to attend school events. Caring relationships could be built with staff and families due to clear communication efforts. As Epstein (2010) argues, “Linking research and practice can improve programs of family and community involvement and lead to improved student success in school” (p.1). Teachers and Support Staff Implications for the study’s findings for teachers and support staff include better connections, relationships, and trust with families after working with them during digital sign-in at school events. Data access would enable better vertical alignment between kindergarten through fifth grade teachers, and data from the sign-ins from families with children in multiple grade levels could aide in conversations during parent-teacher conferences. Team building and communication among staff may be strengthened as a result of the time and space provided during monthly professional development meetings, 54 enabling school site teams to collaborate on parent outreach efforts. Finally, further experience with technology through this project could inform classroom practices of teachers who resist using technology in their teaching. Technology uses and problem- solving strategies could be distributed throughout grade level teams given that one person per grade level would be involved in the school-wide team at each of the district’s elementary schools. BSD serves many ELL students and their families. To ensure that the digital sign-in is accessible to families of all backgrounds, native language supports, such as translators, will need to be available at school events to make sure the sign-in process runs smoothly. The GoogleFORM was designed to be basic enough for all ages and abilities to access and complete successfully. Thinking about how best to serve our EL populations should be in the forefront of district thinking about how best to create sustainable structures and systems. Dissemination of Findings and Further Research Based on my five years of pilots at two elementary schools, digital sign-in is likely to take time to gain momentum in Beaverton School District. If BSD, the third- largest school district in Oregon, is able to implement digital sign-in effectively, it would provide important evidence to support the viability of using technological tools and digital sign-in to track parent and family attendance at school events in other districts. Copies of finalized GoogleFORMs could be distributed to small school districts to use once the three-year grant is completed as well as a revised Roles and Responsibilities document (See Appendix H) to assist other districts in implementing a digital sign-in. 55 ODE could also be a stakeholder in providing feedback for Title 1 binder requirements and future school submissions. Inflexion’s usability study will undoubtedly point to future research areas. One future research area will be to examine the implementation of a digital sign-in for parent events at middle and high schools. Future research should also take place outside of BSD to see if there are different needs in rural districts. Additional research should also be conducted to understand whether digital sign-in can function without a grant; if stipends are discontinued will staff be willing to spend time on school digital sign-in events? Will digital sign-in be sustainable after the grant is over? Longitudinal studies would be able to assess sustainability of digital-sign in. 56 APPENDIX A. LITERATURE SEARCH AND SELECTION Search engines that I used to search for relevant prior research include: ERIC, SAGE, GoogleSCHOLAR, ResearchGate. Keywords included: digital sign-in, sign in, home school connection, databases, parent involvement, digital transformation, checklists, community involvement, digital signing, educational improvement, electronic signatures, elementary schools, family involvement, family school relationship, government role, information systems, multicultural education, parent attitudes, parent participation, parent school relationship, parenting, parents as teachers, partners in education, policy information, program development, questionnaires, school business relationship, school community relationship, school districts, school organization, social networks, social beliefs, student diversity, teacher attitudes, technical assistance, technology uses in education, volunteers, workshops, and young children. Initial parameters for years were left open because technology has been evolving. After I started searching for resources outside of education, I found a more with each search. Searching through articles’ reference lists also helped guide further connections, leads, and searches. 57 APPENDIX B. EDUCATIONAL INNOVATION AND RESEARCH (EIR) GRANT PROGRAM 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/02/01/2019- 00708/applications-for-new-awards-education-innovation-and-research-eir-program- early-phase-grants 65 APPENDIX C. REFLECTION OF FEDERAL GRANT WRITING The experience of creating a grant application of this size has required me to hold many conversations with multiple departments and staff members across the district. Many staff have been very open to trying pilots at their school sites while others have helped me identify who to talk to or next steps in the process. The table below lists names, number of meetings, and topics that were discussed in each meeting that I had with district and school staff. The majority of the meetings were face-to-face with a few over the phone or via email. I found that to properly launch a project of this size district wide, being able to pitch it as part of my dissertation helped capture the attention of school and district staff in order to begin conversations to start pilots in other departments across the school district. Another lesson learned was that although I identified a grant with a similar submission deadline as my dissertation timeline, the posting of the grant was delayed. In reaching out to the contact that was listed on the U.S. Department of Education website to inquire about the delayed release of the RFP and possible due date adjustment, I was told that they had not yet determined the date by which the RFP would be released. This has taught me that despite all of the planning and conversations with district staff to build momentum for the grant submission in April 2020, plans change and grants disappear. The ground work that has been laid so far in the Beaverton School District has captured the attention of many departments and schools, so perhaps the idea of digital sign-in may continue to grow and progress, but on a much smaller scale if the federal grant is released and funding of this scale is not an option. 66 Beaverton School District Elementary Grant Discussion Meetings Level Job Title # Meetings Topic Pilot at high impact School Principal 5 Dual Language School How to roll out; Chief Information 1 technology support; Officer Synergy connections District Processes in Grant Contact 3 Beaverton School District District Executives 1 Discuss presenting to all administration Technology How to pilot and Support 50 (over 6 years) rollout model at different schools. Teacher on Special Assignment Technology Support technology (TOSAs) Support 3 at pilots Technology GoogleFORM Support 2 support Multilingual Interest in piloting Department Migrant Contacts 1 during migrant meetings Independent Program Developer Company / Product Designer 1 (4 hour meeting) Efficient build and use of resources Oregon Department Grant Contact 1 Procedures for of Education grants Interest in project Evaluation Inflexion Staff 1 and evaluation for grant 67 Several challenges related to this proposed grant submission should be mentioned. Originally, the Educational Innovation and Research (EIR) grant program posting date was projected to be February 28, 2020. However, the grant still had not been posted over two months later, when this manuscript was finished. Finally, an unanticipated lesson learned is that we are currently in the middle of a pandemic with Coronavirus (COVID-19). Schools were closed on March 16, 2020 due to the pandemic. School closures and the challenge of serving students during the pandemic have affected the communication to district staff and reduced the momentum for 2020-2021 implementation of digital sign-in. Communications with district staff about the grant submission have also been put on hold due to additional time efforts and the change in priorities for supporting all district staff through this unprecedented crisis. 68 APPENDIX D. PILOT SCHOOL DEMOGRAPHICS Demographics of Chehalem Elementary School 2019-2020 Students % School Population Total School Population 509 - Free and Reduced Lunch 295 58 (FRL) Active English Language 102 20 Learners (ELs) Families Needing 74 15 Interpretation Services Demographics of Scholls Heights Elementary School 2019-2020 Students % School Population Total School Population 550 - Free and Reduced Lunch 77 14 (FRL) Active English Language 39 7 Learners (ELs) Families Needing 18 3 Interpretation Services 69 Data collected from Pilots Pilot # Digital sign-in Total Pen and Paper Sign in Total 1 0 0 2 281 0 3 0 0 4 1 21 5 114 0 Pilot #1 = Spring 2015 PreKindergarten Parent Event Pilot #2 = September 2017 Back to School Night Pilot #3 = February 2019 International Festival Pilot #4 = May 2019 Parent Teacher Meeting Pilot #5 = May 2019 Second Grade Music Program 70 APPENDIX E. PILOT #2 Pilot #2. GoogleFORM Image Back-To-School Night 2017. Pilot #2 Question 1. 71 Pilot #2 Question 2. 72 Pilot #2 Question 3. Pilot #2 Question 4. 73 Pilot #2 Question 5. Pilot #2 Question 6. (Added by building administrator just before the event.) Pilot #2 Question 7. Pilot #2 Question 8. 74 APPENDIX F. PILOT #3 Pilot #3 GoogleFORM Image International Festival 2018. Pilot #3 Question 1. Pilot #3 Question 2. Pilot #3 Question 3. Pilot #3 Question 4. 75 APPENDIX G. PILOT #4 Pilot #4. GoogleFORM Image Parent Teacher Committee Meeting May 2019. Pilot #4 Question 1. Pilot #4 Question 2. Pilot #4 Question 3. Pilot #4 Question 4. 76 APPENDIX H. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES DOCUMENT Roles and Responsibilities For GoogleFORM Set Up GoogleFORM Site Based Contact • Set up technology o iPads, Chromebooks, desktops, laptops, QR codes for smartphones • Set up GoogleFORMs for data input during school events • Set up GoogleSHEETs for data to be stored • Download all student information from SYNERGY o Student ID#, student last name, student first name, grade level, English Language Status, homeroom teacher. o NOTE: Updates to the whole school download list would need to be made prior to each school event in order to capture all enrolled students. Event Contacts • One or two staff members who know how to run GoogleFORMs • Collaborator access to GoogleFORMs o Should the need arise during data collection during each event • Translators available for families if needed. o GoogleTRANSLATOR could be utilized if personnel not available. Attendees • Completely fill out digital sign-in • Ask questions if clarification needed 77 APPENDIX I. PILOT #5 Pilot #5 GoogleFORM Image Scholls Heights 2nd Grade Program May 2019. Pilot #5 Question 1. Pilot #5 Question 2. Pilot #5 Question 3. Pilot #5 Question 4. 78 APPENDIX J. QR CODE FOR PILOT #5 SECOND GRADE MUSIC PROGRAM Source: https://www.qr-code-generator.com/ 79 APPENDIX K. FAMILY OUTREACH GOOGLEFORMS – SCHOOL SITE FAMILY LIAISONS Home Visit Form 1 Image. Home Visit Form 1 Questions 1, 2, 3, 4. 80 Home Visit Form 1 Questions 5, 6, 7, 8. Home Visit Form 1 Questions 9, 10, 11. 81 Home Visit Form 1 Question 12. Home Visit Form 1 Questions 13, 14, 15, 16. 82 Home Visit 2 Image. Home Visit 2 Questions 1, 2, 3, 4. 83 Home Visit 2 Questions 5, 6, 7, 8. Home Visit 2 Questions 9, 10, 11. 84 Home Visit 2 Question 12. Home Visit 2 Questions 13, 14, 15, 16. 85 Home Visit 2 Questions 17, 18, 19, 20. 86 APPENDIX L. BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT CALENDAR 2020-2021 87 APPENDIX M. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MEETING DATES Calendar dates for Year 2 and Year 3 will need to be listed once Beaverton School District school calendars are available for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. Digital sign-in Meeting Dates (Year 1) (First Thursday of every month.) Time: 12:00-4:00 PM Meeting Location: Multilingual Department Auditorium Subs for teachers attending. (Teachers will need to fill out half day sub notes.) Dates: August 27, 2020: Everyone. Inflexion Interviews and Focus Groups. September 3, 2020 October 1, 2020 November 5, 2020 December 3, 2020 January 7, 2021: Everyone. Inflexion Interviews and Focus Groups. February 4, 2021 March 4, 2021 April 1, 2021 May 6, 2021 June 3, 2021: Everyone. Inflexion Interviews and Focus Groups. 88 APPENDIX N. USABILITY TEST PLAN TEMPLATE Roles The roles involved in a usability test are as follows. An individual may play multiple roles and tests may not require all roles. Trainer • Provide training overview prior to usability testing Facilitator • Provides overview of study to participants • Defines usability and purpose of usability testing to participants • Assists in conduct of participant and observer debriefing sessions • Responds to participant's requests for assistance Data Logger • Records participant’s actions and comments Test Observers • Silent observer • Assists the data logger in identifying problems, concerns, coding bugs, and procedural errors • Serve as note takers. Test Participants • Provides overview of study to participants • Defines usability and purpose of usability testing to participants • Assists in conduct of participant and observer debriefing sessions • Responds to participant's requests for assistance Ethics All persons involved with the usability test are required to adhere to the following ethical guidelines: • The performance of any test participant must not be individually attributable. Individual participant's name should not be used in reference outside the testing session. • A description of the participant's performance should not be reported to his or her manager. Source: https://www.usability.gov/ 89 APPENDIX O. PARENT FOCUS GROUP SCHEDULE WITH INFLEXION Year 1: May 2021, Inflexion team will visit two schools per day to conduct Parent Focus Groups. Year 2 and Year 3: May calendar dates will need to be decided when the district calendar is available for 2021-2022 and 2022-2023. Week 1: May 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Round 1: 11 Title 1 Schools: Beaver Acres, Chehalem, Elmonica, Errol Hassell, Fir Grove, Greenway, Hazeldale, Kinnaman, McKay, McKinley, William Walker Week 2: May 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Round 2: 10 Non Title 1 Schools: Bethany, Bonny Slope, Cedar Mill, Cooper Mountain, Findley, Hiteon, Jacob Wismer, Montclair, Nancy Ryles, Oak Hills Week 3: May 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 Round 3: 8 Non Title 1 Schools: Raleigh Park, Ridgewood, Rock Creek, Sato, Scholls Heights, Sexton Mountain, Terra Linda, West Tualatin View Week 4: May 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 Round 4: 5 Charter, Option, Bilingual, Dual Immersion, and K-8 Schools: Aloha-Huber Park K-8, Barnes, Raleigh Hills K-8, Springville K-8, Vose 90 APPENDIX P. EVALUATION DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURES – PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT MEETINGS Meeting Agenda Date: August 27, 2020 Time: 12:00-4:00 Attendees: Everyone 12:00-12:15 Digital sign-in for Staff; find assigned table with materials; snacks and materials at back table, mingle 12:15-12:30 Welcome: Introductions; House Keeping (restroom and layout of room); run through agenda for the afternoon; materials available. 12:30-1:00 Background: Talk about digital sign-in process and experience for staff as they walked in; background of grant; why are we doing this; Inflexion as evaluators; Interview layout each month. When not in interviews with Inflexion tasks include: 1) Event calendar: Set dates for the year in the school calendar in GoogleSHEETs. Follow protocol for Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3. Share GoogleSHEETs with project manager. Send out emails now if needed to appropriate groups who may need event calendar time, schedule appropriately. Dates should be very firm and not change as the year progresses since many people (executives, communications, Inflexion, project manager, etc.) are creating their attendance schedules around these digital event calendars. Could be whole group, or two point people. 2) GoogleFORM: Create for the year following basic procedures from outline given at beginning of meeting; create paper sign in as back up make sure to have column headings that match the GoogleSHEET you are creating. 3) Interpreters/Translations: Check in with interpreters for language needs if they are at the meeting. Send in HelpDesk tickets for translations and interpreting needs for upcoming digital sign-in events. Assign one person on the team to be the point person to manage. 4) Share: Be prepared to share how it went with other school sites in the room. Ask questions of others in the room. You may find a “like” school to work with to brainstorm and problem solve. 5) Individually: Complete the GoogleFORM from Inflexion before the end of today. This can be completed either before or after you meet with Inflexion for your interview. 6) GoogleSHEET: Complete with names of the point people for each section with the project manager. This GoogleSHEET was set to the administrator to share with the rest of the team. 91 7) Sign up: Executives, Inflexion, interpreters should begin to have conversations about signing up at digital sign-in events at each school. Wander and ask/answer questions while schools are working. Wait to sign up for anything until we have all schedules in from schools, then build schedules from there for the year. 1:00-1:30 Round 1: Administrator Interviews and Staff Focus Groups (11 Title 1 schools) Beaver Acres, Chehalem, Elmonica, Errol Hassell, Fir Grove, Greenway, Hazeldale, Kinnaman, McKay, McKinley, William Walker 1:30-2:00 Round 2: Administrator Interviews and Staff Focus Groups (10 Non Title 1 schools) Bethany, Bonny Slope, Cedar Mill, Cooper Mountain, Findley, Hiteon, Jacob Wismer, Montclair, Nancy Ryles, Oak Hills 2:00-2:30 Break: Refreshed snacks and brain break video for all participants 2:30-3:00 Round 3: Administrator Interviews and Staff Focus Groups (8 Non Title 1 schools) Raleigh Park, Ridgewood, Rock Creek, Sato, Scholls Heights, Sexton Mountain, Terra Linda, West Tualatin View 3:00-3:30 Round 4: Administrator Interviews and Staff Focus Groups (5 Charter, Option, Bilingual, Dual Immersion, and K-8 schools) Aloha-Huber Park K-8, Barnes, Raleigh Hills K-8, Springville K-8, Vose 3:30-4:00 Conclusion: Thank you; agenda for next meeting; do-to for next meeting; agenda reminders 92 APPENDIX Q. DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS Parent Interview Questions Date of Interview: Location of Interview (School site name): Title of School Event: Name of Parent(s) Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: 1) How did you decide to attend this school event? 2) How was the GoogleFORM sign in process at this event? Was there a line to get in the door? a. How did the wait compare with other events you have attended that used a pen and paper sign-in? 3) Were you comfortable giving sign in information? Why or why not? a. Do you have any privacy concerns about completing an online form compared to a pen and paper form? 4) Any other comments? Parent GoogleFORM Survey Questions (Need to be included at end of each GoogleFORM at each school event.) 1) How easy was the form overall? Scale of 1-5 1=easy, 5=difficult 2) Did you need assistance to complete this form? Yes/No 3) Did you know your student's ID#? Yes/No 4) How easy was it to fill out individual student information, especially if you had multiple students in multiple grade levels? Scale of 1-5. 1=easy 5=difficult 5) Comments? Questions? 93 Building Administrator Interview Questions Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of Administrator Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Initial Set Up Questions (August) 1) How did you set up for the digital sign-in? 2) Were you able to accomplish the digital sign-in set up at your school site, or did you reach out to district IT, district staff, other school administrators, etc.? 3) Did you need to make purchases, upgrades or repairs to equipment? 4) How did you communicate the process to school staff? 5) Any other comments? Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of Administrator Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Mid-Year Check-In Questions (January) 1) How did the digital sign-in go? a. What worked well? b. What challenges did you encounter? 2) Tell me about the successes and challenges of the team. a. Did you have the right “roles” for the sign in? 3) Were there skill gaps? 4) Any other observations? 5) Any feedback from parents that you have heard? 94 Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of Administrator Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: End-of-Year Questions (June) 1) How did the digital sign-in go? Are there additional lessons learned now that you’ve implemented it over the whole school year? a. Did any kinks get worked out? b. Any new challenges surface? 2) Did the team implementing the digital sign-in stay intact for the school year? 3) Are you planning to use a digital sign-in again next year? If so, is the same team scheduled to be in the building next year? If not, who will be taking their place? a. Will there need to be additional training? 4) How has the school used the data generated from the sign-ins? a. Has outreach changed? If so, in what ways? b. Has the reporting to the district/state changed? If so, how? 5) Anything else you would like to add? 95 School Team Focus Group Questions These questions will be used in face-to-face focus group as well as GoogleFORM to provide time for more detailed answers from multiple people on the school team. Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name(s) of School Team Members Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Initial Set Up Questions (August) 1) What is your role for the implementation of the digital sign-in? Who can you go to if you have questions? 2) Have you set up GoogleFORMs in the past for sign in at school events? If so, when and how many? How did it go? Any lessons learned that will guide your implementation this year? 3) What is your plan for having the parent outreach person use the data generated from the sign-in? Will the digital sign-in data be used differently than pen and paper sign-in data? If so, how? 4) Any other comments? Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name(s) of School Team Members Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Monthly Check In Questions 1) Have the roles and responsibilities for the team implementing the digital sign- in worked? What has gone well and what the challenges been? 2) How have GoogleFORMs worked at school events so far? What has worked well? What did not go well? 3) How has parent outreach worked this month? Any news to report? Has the school outreach contact communicated any news to the staff? 96 Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name(s) of School Team Members Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Final Meeting Questions (June) 1) How did the team implementing the digital sign-ins work this year? Were the roles clear? Were the tasks doable beyond the workday? Can you give some examples? 2) How did GoogleFORMs work for the sign in process? Did you need to resort to paper and pencil? If so, why? 3) What additional resources (e.g., people, technology) would be helpful? 97 District Executive Interview Questions Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of District Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Initial Set Up Questions (August) 1) Do you know your role and responsibilities for the digital sign-in grant? Do you know who to ask if you have questions? 2) Have you used GoogleFORMs before? If so, in what capacity? How did it serve your purpose? 3) Any other comments? Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of District Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Final Meeting Questions (June) 1) How did the assigned roles and responsibilities work this year? Do you think there need to be changes? Can you give some examples of what worked well and what challenges there were? 2) In what ways have you supported the implementation of the digital sign-in at the schools during this school year? a. Do you feel the district role will be the same (reduced or increased) next year? Why? 3) Any other comments? 98 District Public Communication Department Interview Questions Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of District Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Meeting Questions (August) 1) Have you ever helped with district communications for a grant that was districtwide? If so, please give examples of the district communication support. 2) Do you foresee the need for on-going communication with digital sign-in to district staff and families? 3) Any other comments? 99 District Instructional Technology Department Interview Questions Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of District IT Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Initial Set Up Questions (August) 1) Tell me about your role and responsibilities for the implementation of the digital sign-in? Who will you go to if you have questions? 2) Have you ever supported schools using GoogleFORMs for school events? If so, when? What for? How did it go? a. What worked well? What challenges were there? 3) Any other comments? Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of District IT Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Monthly Check In Questions 1) How has your role and responsibilities with the digital sign-in implementation worked so far? Have you needed to change anything (to be more efficient, effective, etc.)? 2) How have you supported schools with digital sign so far? 3) What’s worked well and what challenges have there been? 4) Any other comments? 100 Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Title of Event: Name of District IT Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: Final Meeting Questions 1) How has the IT department supported digital sign-in with schools this year? Were there any surprises? If so, please explain. a. What has worked well? What challenges have there been? 2) Any other comments? 101 Oregon Department of Education Interview Questions Date of Interview: Location of Interview (Site name): Name of Staff Interviewed: Name of Interviewer: 1) Did you notice any difference in the Title 1 school binders submitted by Beaverton School District this school year? If so, what were they? a. Did the Title 1 binders look more consistent across the schools with family attended school events? If not, why? 2) The submissions for family sign ins were digitally signed by parents at the school events using GoogleFORMs. Is this practice appropriate for binder submissions? If not, do you have advice on what else to use? 3) Does ODE prefer for schools to use a paper and pencil sign in for school events? Why or why not? 102 APPENDIX R. BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEE EXPENSE WORKSHEET 103 APPENDIX S. BEAVERTON SCHOOL DISTRICT EMPLOYEE EXPENSE PROCEDURE 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 APPENDIX T. SALARY SCHEDULES – CERTIFIED, CLASSIFIED, SUBSTITUTES 2019-2020 Certified Salary Schedule (All numbers Truncated) Source: https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/human- resources/applicants/certified-salary-schedule 113 Classified Substitute Rates 2019-2020 Certified Salary Schedule (All numbers Truncated) Source: https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/human- resources/applicants/classified-substitute-pay-rates Licensed Substitute Pay Rates Beaverton School District 2019-2020 Base Rate (daily, up to 10 days) $187.91 Source: https://www.beaverton.k12.or.us/departments/human-resources/licensed- substitute-pay-rate 114 REFERENCES CITED Ali, M., Deen, J. L., Khatib, A., Enwere, G., von Seidlein, L., Reyburn, R., Said, M. A., Chang, N. Y., Perroud, V., Marodon, F., Saleh, A. A., Hashim, R., Lopez, A. L., Beard, J., Ley, B. N., Thriemer, K., Puri M. K., Sah, B., Jiddawi, M. S., & Clemens, J. D. (2010). 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