##VIDEO ID:98f4rEm54Kg## well rise for the pledge please iedge Al to the FL of the United States of America all right I'm filling in for Kim today I will uh entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented all right is there a second all right Bruce you got in there quick thank you sir all in favor opposed okay we'll move right into study session and the first item is School Board appreciation month so chair directors and Community it's it's with great honor and humility that um I bring this forward the uh Minnesota School Board Association has declared September as public school board school boards month and it is public school boards have a heart and you want to go to the next slide please Dar and that is a true statement when you think of strong schools strong Community it's centered of of the work that goes on here much of the work that goes on behind the scenes many may not have an understand standing but there's a lot of work and when we think through the governance level to really support our students our families our caregivers our staff I just want to say thank you on behalf of each one of them uh that walk through our doors each and every day as well as the community in general so we were going to do a group picture but with Madame chair Kim not here this evening we're going to pause on on our group picture and wait for her to be present then we'll do a group picture but I just want to say uh on behalf of everyone thank you very much for all your work all right Ron thank you very much go on to item 5.2 athletic department uh overview good day oh there we go see that's teamwork and so I've gotten through one year I'm very excited my wife and I made the the decision to come down to Albert Lee we had some other choices but after looking at all the things that we thought were good things down here we decided on albertly and so here we are and so we're so thankful that we're here and so thankful for you and uh for all the support all these people behind me too have been amazing support to us and my admin at our high school and and our staff but I'm going to go through a few slides um superintendent Wagner said I had two and a half hours so I know that board members like to stick around as long as possible so so one of the things I did when I first got here is that I started to build a team and it was really important for me and and this is my team at this point in our activities uh Megan is my Administrative Assistant Holly is our coord coordinator and then we just got uh from what you guys have done for us as well as the the superintendent Wagner is that we've gotten Harrison as our middle school activities director and he's spending most of his day teaching till about about one o'clock and then the rest of the time he's working working on Middle School programming and we were really missing that and we wanted to try to build that and so that's we were thankful to get Harrison our next slide I just wanted to give you a quick overview what I did the first year my first year was to listen and learn I wanted to find out what was going on here I didn't want to come in and just turn the ship completely around I wanted to find out what was working and what we could do I evaluated all of our programs our coaches and we wanted to make sure that we were doing the right things for kids and we wanted to make sure that everybody was on the same page the other thing I did was build relationships with the the school the community and we really with all the coaches here's the culture change that I tried to make this first year I wanted to build trust with my team I wanted them to trust me and I wanted to trust them and we collaborated every day their voices were really important to me hearing what they had to say what was working what wasn't and how we're going to do that but bigger than that I wanted a commitment from them that they were going to work as hard as they could to make this the greatest activities Department in Minnesota so that's what they've been doing and we've been doing every day we've been trying to do that uh even uh today Harrison is sick was home sick all day and he was sending me text messages make sure to say this make sure to do this I was doing this in middle school that's commitment and that's what I that's what I'm looking for all right year one initiatives we've done a lot in in this first year we have a new registration process what I wanted to do was set up something that was going to be very easy for our uh customers our families we wanted to make sure if they put their last name in and their their lunch number or their student number it filled out everything else for them so they didn't have to fill it out themselves and it came right out of the Synergy software which is our student centered um software that we use and so that's something that was really really important to me but we also wanted to have translation options we wanted to make sure that we could translate this into any language we have 23 different languages here I believe and we wanted to make sure that everybody had an opportunity to register without having to to call us or come in we still have people come in and we want them to we want to support them as well as we can we also wanted to help with physicals and any roadblocks participation for all of our students and I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a little bit we also went um with the new ticketing solution which is called Gan this is an online ticketing where we're hopefully someday we'll go cashless but we we know that there's going to be people that come in that can't either do the technology or just have the cash don't have a credit card those kind of things but we do take uh credit cards on site now but this is a way for them to buy tickets up beforehand and at other schools all of the big nine has gone to Gan except for Winona so we will have this ability to cross uh buy tickets to events through the big nine the other thing that we did which is really important to me was the the live streaming one of the things that we struggled with last year was getting good quality live streaming out so I developed uh a relationship so we could do Albert Lee live and Albert Lee live is going to carry all of our activities it's not going to be just sporting but it's going to be chire it's going to be any type of activity I actually also bought a remote camera so if I have internet access I can go anywhere and I can remote uh live stream anything that we do and it's high quality we also have broadcasting that that's part of that and so I'm going to talk a little bit um about how our kids are going to be involved in that broadcasting and our live streaming we also uh started a spirit store one of the things that's really important to me is teamwork being part of a team and you guys are all part of my team so for a little bit of fun what I did is because say you're my teammates there's some important things that you get first of all you all get one of the other thing is is what's part of a team I spend a lot of time buying uniforms and I don't think that we can be a part of a team until I buy you guys a uniform so I decided to buy you guys uniforms so that's why I brought my wife with me Lori who is now in El she's really really important um when we talk about uh taking roadblocks away especially for our elll um students uh that was something I was very passionate about wanting to make sure that they had every opportunity to be an activities so she and I have been working on something called the spirit store it's called the Tigers layer and it was a store that was used to be here but we reopening it so Lori if you could come up and she's going to tell you a little bit about what we're doing and what my vision was for the spirit store so you can see how we're going to uh integrate our kids into that well first of all thank you for letting me kind of stick my nose in um but like superintendent Wagner said this happens to be the appreciation month for school board and so this ties in perfectly with what we do um some we Dave and I agree not to talk shop when we are home at least we try very hard not to talk shop when we are home um but I was struggling to come up with other ways to get my El students to speak comfortably in public um one of the biggest um roadblocks we see in them testing out of e through access is that speaking portion of the access test it's intimidating to be to know that you're saying it wrong to have the chance of you Miss saying something um to not be sure that your tenses are correct and so we really do a lot of practicing we do Bingo cards with our entire um staff uh where they go and they talk to our administrators and our secretaries and our janitors so that they feel comfortable with them and officer con but you put them in a situation and they get nervous so I had said Dave give me an idea on how I can get my kids to talk and he was like well do you want to run the spirit store and I was like yes yes I do um so the spirit store is designed for a few things first we have three groups that are joining us so this is just isn't an e Adventure um instead we also will have sped joining us they are going to be doing some of the um learning how to do the cleaning and the recycling and all of that the way they do in other parts of the building but also any maintenance types of things that we need we also are looking at we can they will be doing the coffee cart out of the spirit store for school every morning and that allows us to do cappuccinos and they had this fabulous new fangled machine that they had gotten through another department or through another uh I don't know it's long before mine because it was in the annex so when I found it I was like let's go talk to these people um and in addition we're also connecting with our business classes the entrepreneurial teams so that they can do marketing and they can learn to do things using our Wei video and our tiger vision and our alass and all of those pieces that get our kids fired up about seeing something in addition to that we're going to be doing a lot of our fundraisers based at the school store so that there's always this Hub you know as our students wander around before school in the morning that's a lot of the spot that they're going to find where there's something going on and that it will always be supported by an educator so whether it's me or someone from Spud there will always be somebody in that so that we aren't you know so that our kids are getting direction and positive reinforcement um my El students will be required to do a certain number of hours in the school store learning how to talk and gaining all of those skills so when they also need to job you know job hunt and look for some after school or summertime employment they can say yes I've worked with customers or I've used a POS system or all of those things so I'm super excited about it um I'm excited about us also then having merchandise for our community it's great if you can take a picture and you see on a QR code and you get comfortable but not everybody is they need to be able to look at it and see it and try it on and we'll be able to do that with the school store so be working with the activities department but everybody deserves some teamwork so if you do your I will [Music] yourp passes excited um anytime that um the store is open it'll be before school lunch 8th hour and till 3:30 after school um and then we'll try and support some of those larger events like the musical and make sure that there are flowers for parents to you know to purchase and those kinds of things so that we can think a little bit outside of the box for some of those so thank you so much we're excited I'm excited so you know the greatest thing is she doesn't cost us anything she she does it for free yeah unfortunately she didn't have a choice but but no we're excited we wanted you guys to feel like a team and be part of a team and and having uniforms I think is is is that part and so and also with the uh appreciation month that's awesome that it works out all right so the Middle School ad I'll go a little faster here so we can get I know that you guys don't you have a lot to cover so Middle School 0 we're starting new programming we're getting more kids involved um we're ALS Alo going down to the sixth grade level uh we're doing some inventory control uh some things that were um concerning to me is that we don't know what all of our technology and all of our equipment is so I'm having every coach go through inventory making sure that we get that equipment in and we're making it safe and that we're taking care of the stuff that you've allowed us to buy um new Partnerships I've been working really hard with the YMCA the community ed uh and parks and wreck uh we've been working really hard to get to fields and other kids and youth and have our kids go in and help uh coach some of that or ref some of that for the YMCA we have kids will go down for basketball and help with the basketball teams down at the Y with the little kids and so that shows them some leadership it gives them some coaching experience but it also uh helps the YMCA because it's hard to find people to help them next uh this is small I'm sorry uh we have 54 current activities that I manage um and of course you can have this uh we'll send this PowerPoint out to you but these are all the ones that we we currently have from on the left being our activities that uh are extracurricular and on the right are all of our Sports and I just wanted you to quick see that that's what we're currently managing again you probably have seen this be before so next one so the other thing I wanted to do is that I did a deep dive into our participation numbers and I went back five years but I only did a couple years here because there was so much data and also I was unable to find some of the data that I wanted to get to which was this is number of registrations that we have but it doesn't take into consideration those multiport athletes so if I have like a NAA wles who is in three activities she's actually counted three times do I want to count her once or do I want to count her in each sport so that that's the uh you know conundra conundra of finding out what our percentage of participation is you can see here in the 2022 23 those are the numbers 312 221 for each season starting with fall then winter and then spring those are the total number of registrations and then the red number is the percentage uh based on the number of kids we have in the high school so at that point we look at 23 24 those numbers and then the next set of numbers the next slide does 23 24 and then this year and our goal is obviously to try to build as much as we can for participation we'd like to get to that 50% um range is where I'd like to be and so right here you will see there's the 2425 fall we've we've gone from 326 to 343 this year so we've gained a little bit um and um lost in a few but we have a few of our activities that we really need to work on one of the things for like a boy swimming what we ended up doing the spr uh the summer is that Anna Anderson and Angel Welsh uh got together and we opened up along with tiger sharks a u a swim program and we got to use our pool and we got a lot of kids to come there and we're trying to build that from whatever age all the way up and try to get uh kids to go out for swimming so we're trying to do those different types of things to to make things happen for um participation numbers this next one is Middle School numbers again 23 24 you can see that we have football volleyball we have the three and we this is where we want to get a little bit uh broader we want to start to add volleyball or um cross country into the sixth grade um into 20 um probably 25 26 year we also want to be able to bring in um soccer because we have a lot of kids that want to play soccer in the Middle School area and um so we're trying to broaden that uh those types of things but we're going to have to get coaches we're gonna have to get equipment and there's cost to all those things and those are cost analysis that I have to do and make sure that that they makes sense uh to spend the money on for the number of kids we have so the extracurricular activities this is what our numbers were last year and I haven't got all the numbers for this year of course because some of them haven't started but you can see out of 1200 kids we had 682 that participated in an activity that was outside of uh Sports so we about 56% of our kids were participating in something and so this year we hope that it's going to be even more okay now the live streaming and website um some of the things that we've done and um Albert Le live is our new live streaming website every if you go to that albertly live.com you'll be able to see any activity that's going to be live streamed we have a new activities website that's going to to um be a One-Stop shop for all of our customers our families and our students and and our staff to be able to go and register buy tickets see any uh rosters look at any of the game highlights those kind of things will be on that there's always still the art school's big nine calendar that people are probably used to going into uh that will always still be there but we want to try to push everybody to the new Albert Lee activities website so they can see uh action things and can go and also it pushes out to all of our media so if a Coach goes in there and puts uh what happened the night before it pushes out to all of our media so that that gets updated for the next morning um I've been trying to get stuff out to all of our our um staff as much as I can but the time is not always there then the activity schedule I'm not sure if you guys know on your phones that you're able to get the activity scheduler on your phones whether it's uh go to the App Store and and download that that's from our schools it says rst with a little hat that gives you your all of our schedules as well and you can use that on your phone to to see what's going on with activities and then I talked a little bit about fan ticketing which is all of our online ticketing as well as we use it in concessions uh so people can start buying concessions with credit cards um and it keeps track of all that inventory for us instead of us having to hand count everything which we do uh on a monthly basis it also keeps track of that inventory so we can see what we've lost or or the pricing um if we need to change any of that my year two goals um and initiatives uh we're starting a a student leadership uh class and training is going to be a requirement that we have 9th grade through 12th grade and uh Harrison and I are going to be running that we want to start getting leadership and building leadership within our kids um concessions in spirit store we talked about the concession we're also collaborating with our special ed department and we're having some of those kids that are uh putting all of our inventory in and keeping track of that so they can get some life skills um and so that's been really great uh really something that's really important to me is the the diversity and inclusion initiative that I have this is this is just really just knocking down the walls for any of our kids doesn't matter who it is so they can have opportuni to be in activities whether that's price whether that's equipment whether that's Transportation uh which I'll talk about in just a second with Transportation just to put a a bug in your ear um the student live streaming participation we actually are going to have kids being in production broadcasting and they're going to be actually taking photography and they're going to do marketing for this so they're going to have a whole class that's going to work around our live streaming so we're going to have kids kind of like the AL ESPN desk they're going to have those where the kids can actually do some of the live streaming themselves I've already had probably 15 kids come in and say that they're interested some in wrestling that love wrestling they want to come and do that some in basketball uh but we want to get them involved we want we don't want just just to have a live streaming but we want a place that kids can learn uh we're starting a new strength and conditioning program uh I'm hiring someone that's coming to run programming and we're going to have strength and conditioning uh this is my um change in culture of not just only being uh in an activity but being competitive and getting better and what's it going to take for us to get better and strength and condition is one of the key things that we we have to do with our our kids um last year we had 100 kids sign up for uh strength and conditioning for the summer and only 25 showed up we've got to get we got it to get it has to be cool it's got to be the thing to do and we really want to do that so getting someone in there that knows what they're doing is really important and then finally this is something um that superintend that Wagner and I have talked a lot about um is the alumni engagement and mentorship we want to find out where our alumni are and get them engaged and we want to make sure that we're taking care of them when they're here and showing them um that we appreciate them and that we want them back and we want their help um at my last school at St Cloud Tech we had 10,000 members and at any point I could call up and say we need help and we got help and so that's what I want to build here is I want to build a network of of these alumni that can help us and and do things for us this one is is something I just wanted to put a bug in your ears is transportation after activities one of the biggest uh stop gaps for our kids for not going out for activities is getting a ride home after school if they don't take the bus right after school and and they go to an activity mom and dad might work at night they don't have a ride so 5:30 what these are some ideas that I've had what we did in my last school we spent $9,000 a a semester and that was a bus that left at 5:30 and dropped off in three different locations within St Cloud and those kids then would walk home from there but in Albert Lee might be a little bit easier because it's not as big um but these are some ideas that I had whether the school provides a shuttle service public transportation Partnerships we used to buy tokens for the kids and give them to them so they get on those uh ride sharing programs car pooling after school program extensions so we'd have somebody there to watch them until their parents could come and get them maybe uh help them with their homework and stuff uh Community Based Solutions you know talking to the community and see see if there's any other ideas and then of course the school district paying for just pay Straight for it is another option but this is just the more just to think about um next um and then I have a handout for you guys um I'm done with the presentation but this is for the next time if you want me back these are the initiative what we're doing how we're going to do it [Music] that's us to make sure that we're doing all we can for kids and activities um and I've got some really good people working on that board for me too other than that I think we're all on This Together any questions or comments for Dave activity you said there's an a separate app for that yep so it's a it's a ball cap with rst on it it's our schools so if you go on to either mobile you know whether it's iPhone or Android you'll find it in the the store can we get that in board update on Friday a link to that yeah yeah if um yeah it'll just be on your phones I don't know if I can grab a link to it but it'll I can show you a picture of it when you okay so you see the little hat any other questions comments for Dave I just want to make a BRI so I want to thank you and your wife specifically but thank you for all that you do there's definitely a correlation to our students being involved and engaged in particular in in the activities after and before school and attendance so the more that we can offer students opportunities open those doors and engage our students that that increases their visibility in our schools so so thank you for that and continue to think outside the box greatly appreciate Dave I just a couple things came to mind for me the G fan ticket system our seniors in the past have had free admission can they go in and access a free ticket through gofan or so the ticket that I gave you the VIP I made special ones for senior citizens that they walk in we give them a ticket they don't even have to do anything they get that put it in their pocket and they can come to events and um so they'll have one and and our veterans as well um the other thing that came to my mind too when it came comes to recording participation I know the department of Ed and National Junior College Athletic Association allow for duplicate counting so I don't to me they've set a standard that you can for students in multiple Sports I don't know you couldn't do the same there um the last thing I want to say I just appreciate your presence in the community um your professionalism and the positive attitude it just been really good to see and definitely appreciate your efforts it's my pleasure yeah yeah y yeah I I don't think anybody can sit more than an hour so it's an hour but I I did that just thank you for that is that that we went over the what I want that to be a positive thing I don't want it to it always was a negative thing about if you do something wrong you're in trouble I want this to be this is the greatest time of your life let's get in activities and and with that you know we're going to talk about football a little bit maybe you could share with um what's going to happen on Friday but what some of the different things that we're trying to accomplish to get people to come to games um I've been working with Dave a little bit about getting uh one of the Vikings here so you know more about that than I do so y come y and also with with super Wagner we have the uh Fieldhouse we're going to be set up for people to go up there alumni and and our elderly and and people just we're going to copy and cookies and make sure that they have a great time and they have a comfortable place to sit so have an atmosphere for those people too all right thanks Dave appreciate that a great deal yeah thanks too Mr CL for the Viking connection okay our next uh item is uh 5.3 that would be an update on student services hey good evening Vice chair Schoolboard director superintendent Wagner first first of all to see student services update um I know I did have a couple people mention why isn't it special services um last year I really I pondered it for quite a while with cabinet and superintendent Wagner just looking at the title of executive director of special services versus executive director of student services um often the word special can carry a stigma we do will never Escape it will always be special education I mean we we have criteria it falls under law with special education but when we hear the word special used with our students with special needs or we hear special Transportation um I listened to one young lady with disabilities who made the comment I don't have special needs I have human needs and all of our students have needs and all of our students are extremely special um but the same for for our transportation even going so far to to identify it as a sped bus a sped teacher so looking more student services in in student services you we do have special education but we have mental health services we have health and nursing we have academic interventions counseling so so many things fall under student services so the why behind the name change in the name um before I get to some of our amazing spaces in the district I do want to talk about the addition of a due process lead in every building this year last year in October at the end of the first quarter we made the um adjustment with staff to place due process leads at our four Elementary buildings to support our teams not only with due process but um compliance to federal and state law but supporting our building teams and students this year we now have seven due process leads in the district from Early Learning focusing on Early Childhood special education our four Elementary buildings and then all of our secondary from grade six through adult includes Transitions and our ALC the primary role due process but due process is more it's compliance and that's more than paperwork when you hear due process you think paperwork because a lot of that that's what it is but it is also ensuring that our students have the appropriate setting that they have the appropriate supports including the accommodations and modifications within their setting that the IEP plan is being implemented students are not underserved they're not over served we're not under identifying we're not overidentifying I have had already in our short eight days two parents reach out um in conversation because their um student was working some with some outside agencies grateful when I call Southwest I know who I can go to and if I don't have my question answered right away I know I will within a day so lot of support not only in the building but with our our parents and caregivers as well so looking at some of our spaces a lot of our buildings made some moves this year especially all of Brookside Lake you and sibl also had um some significant room changes this is one of our early learning classrooms that downstairs on first floor we had three three classrooms for early learning and it was a large space for our littlest people ceilings were quite tall the room was very broken up a lot of exits within the building or within the classroom this year now our early learning all of our students are on on the second floor we can see in the in the two pictures there's a lot of little walls to separate the areas designated workstations areas for if it is academic whether it is a calming Corner whether is a activity or a little sensory space clearly identified and if anyone ever viewed some of our early learning spaces very free of visual clutter so they did an excellent job of really going through and determining what our students students need at elementary one of our spaces this is at Hawthorne the new furniture is just beautiful but some some things in these two pictures are the soft lighting the use of the lamp window or not window light covers over the fluorescent lights students can work together at a table there's a table if they want to work separately flexible seating another space set off to the side by the window allowing that natural light the rug soft seating and then again organization of the materials and what that space is designated for another Elementary space this is helverson our setting three classrooms at helverson again different seating to meet the students needs on the left and then that feeling of belonging by the visuals on the bulletin board displayed in the classroom with students names birthdays this is an Elementary classroom at Hawthorne the use of visuals individual workstations have the visuals for each student and off to the left the bigger picture is the classroom all of the visuals for the classroom schedule our setting three classrooms will have a visual schedule posted and then an a an agenda or an individualized schedule based on where their work is being done if that's individual if it's with the adult they then breaks down that schedule into that time frame that they are working with the adult and then another classroom at Hawthorne identifying that that calm Corner the corners of the classroom to use for a regulation space a reading space again we have the flexible soft comfortable seating little tent tucked away in the corner to read pillows moving up to secondary at Southwest again our our our teams our teachers and support staff did an amazing job at reducing the visual this the um visual clutter or so much Vis visual that is really sensory over load for our students and and I think some of our adults as well looking at different seating options standing desks this is at the high school again I think the majority of our teachers use the light covers over the florescent lights just different options for for seating and space to move the picture on the left has a teacher area in the middle of the classroom which we FOC fused on when a teacher sits in the middle they can see what is happening around them and then those teachers who do have support staff within their classroom where are they going to be placed so they can see the entrance of the classroom and can see all corners and ensuring that students needs are met and that the students know who that manager of the space is spent this afternoon at Sibly redesigning a space and and what you can easily do by by flipping a teacher's desk into the middle and allowing the students accessing the four corners and allowing them different stations within the classroom yeah any questions on our on our spaces or any questions or comments for Sheila see none we appreciate the good work I like that teacher in the middle of the room teacher in the middle time a lot of sense our eyes were open in with some of that and and how when a student enters the room they see you know what's the first thing they see that they belong in the space they know who the manager of the space is and and and I think about some of our setting three classrooms our most restrictive settings where the support staff is so then again that teacher in the middle the student knows you're the manager it's it's your space and what what's expected it's predictable and they know what to expect I just want to give a a shout out to all the work that was done behind the scenes for their custodians to transform Brookside into more of accommodating uh atmosphere for our students it was just truly amazing and then the work at our sites as well and you can see our our rooms are just pristine but also as we think about the supports for each and every student as we look at the individual needs of every student you we think of our students our general education students first and then what are we providing the supports and the services for our students and giving that sense of belonging and that visibility from prek to our early Learners to our students here at Brookside now through um ourc so it's important that we see each student for the gifts that they bring and like as you said each student is special so thank you thank you um any other questions comments from the board I just do have an update for you our next meeting is September 30th so last uh Monday of the month um so you don't show up and nobody's here which you don't want that experience so I'll entertain a motion to adjourn second second thanks Davey all in favor opposed all right thanks everybody