##VIDEO ID:XSd-VJb7tFo## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e this study session of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday October 15th 2024 in room 137 of the Edison building the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting are school board members superintendent Kent pel a non voting ex officio member and assistant Schoolboard clerk Miss Lori Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role here here here here here here here at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to United States of America stands andice item 2.1 is approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all those in favor say I I any opposed the agenda has been approved the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assembly this meeting is being live streamed on youtube.com isd535 and the recording of the meeting will also be posted following completion of the meeting our Focus topic tonight is how Money Matters for schools review of recent research superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan and uh board members and colleagues this is really a genuine study session in so far as there is no immediate decision before us but I think the subject is relevant for two uh issues that I know are much on our minds one of course is the referendum that is about resources for for our school district and our students the second though is that um at the second half of November this board will take up some recommendations around what we've been calling rethinking funding which is how we utilize the dollars that are entrusted to us from across the school district tied to uh what works for kids and the priorities of our strategic plan and so as I was talking with the chair and vice chair we thought we ought to schedule an opportunity to dig in to some of the not voluminous but sufficiently large body of research on the connections between funding and student outcomes before we get into uh of course the uh final weeks of the referendum uh decision that the voters will make and then especially as we look to the discussion about how we use our resources in Rochester Public Schools beyond that point and so I looked for a number of different resources that we could utilize that were sufficiently detailed and recent and grounded in the research but not so detailed that everybody's eyes would glaze over and that we would need to read um multiple papers to deal with the fact that as is always the case there are contradictions among the researchers who look at these things and so I would suggest that probably the country's preeminent organization right now that puts together research on education that is got a policy and a practice focus is the learning policy Institute they're based in California and they uh work with a network of researchers the vast majority of whom are based at universities to look at a wide array of issues we've looked at their work on restorative practice we've looked at their work on student engagement and and in this instance they contracted with Dr Bruce Baker to put together a a practical synthesis of the research as board members uh know from some of our previous studies um in the research World there are individual studies that individual researchers do and then periodically someone does what's called called a metaanalysis where they look at the conclusions from all of the studies and they statistically try and draw some broad conclusions the report that we're using for tonight's study session by Dr Baker is is not a metanalysis but it draws on several of them so it's almost a a summary of the summaries of the studies so what I want to try and do is give a brief overview of what I saw as some key points and then our subject tonight really is just to spend some time uh in what you saw both in this review of the research and especially what are the issues that board members would like us to be attentive to as we go into the work that we'll be doing together on resource allocation this fall and for those who are watching I do think it's relevant for the decision that the community will be making in the weeks ahead on November 5th so with that um there you have the uh the report how Money Matters for schools I should add that another reason I chose this is because it's free and it's available on the web a lot of studies uh are behind a pay wall which is very frustrating to those of those of us who have done peer reviewed research um because you want to get it out there but the way that they pay for those journals is by making people pay for Access and so one of the missions of the learning policy Institute is to not do that but to make it widely available so anybody who's out there and interested in this report not only can download the long report but they also usually do a brief summary of the research for people who don't have time to delve into the details so I wanted to start with a a couple additional quotes and then one from another researcher that's very important to Dr Baker's analysis that really gets it this idea that money doesn't matter in K12 education and this is actually an idea that I've encountered frequently over the several decades of my career um it is often made when people show uh a chart that shows funding increasing and maybe test scores declining and they draw a conclusion that therefore money doesn't work and in fact as Dr Baker describes in this report those are often completely separate data sets they're often uh connecting dots that simply don't connect in practice we know that causation is very different than correlation just because two things go together uh or move in opposite directions at the same Pace doesn't mean one causes the other it would be like saying um the sun rises because the rooster gets up and crows in the morning as opposed to those two things go together and the causation actually likely works the other way around so here you have a quote from former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura um I want our Educators to convince me that more money is going to mean a better education for kids and I don't think they can do that and I picked Governor Ventura's quote from the dust bin of History because as many of the res the referendum presentations I've been doing around the community have noted in 2003 Minnesota made a very big decision which was to move the great majority of funding for K12 education to the state level the premise of that was that it would be more Equitable across school districts and that the state would ensure adequacy as we know the general fund the main source of funding for K12 has not inre increased at the rate of inflation if it had we'd have 18.6% more per student than we do today and I'm not sure our referendum would be on the ballot but going back to the years that was a point Jesse Ventura made it was a point that um a secretary of education Betsy DeVos made when she said the notion that spending more money is going to bring about different results is ill placed and Ill advised hasn't worked in the past and then as Bruce Baker uh really uses as a Lynch pin for the report that board members read a very prominent researcher at the Hoover institution at Stanford University Eric hesek whose work I've used in other contexts did a a metanalysis uh of the research about 20 years ago and and this was an important step on his uh uh Dr hk's uh side because nobody had really done that and there was a very famous report in the 1960s called the Coleman report that really suggested schools can do very little to influence student learning and everything is in the home and that started really a couple of Decades of almost suggesting that it is purely socioeconomic and family factors that influence student learning not what's happening in the home and so that's been a robust debate and what Eric hesk did was he synthesized that research and he reached that conclusion that if you actually read it he doesn't say that uh money doesn't matter in a simplistic way that there appears to be no strong or systematic relationship between school expenditures and student performance performance so he was actually quite qualified 20 years ago well as Bruce Baker outlines in this report and is if you if you dig into the research there were several much more rigorous reviews of the research including a reanalysis of Dr hk's data that found that that conclusion is simply not correct that in fact there are very strong associations been between increases in school funding and student outcomes in an array of uh areas so Bruce Baker's key conclusion in this report and again I chose this because I think it's representative broadly of the field was this for decades some politicians and pundits have argued that money does not make a difference for school outcomes while it is certainly possible to spend money poorly this Viewpoint is strongly contradicted by a large body of evidence from rigorous Empirical research a thorough review of research on the role of money in determining School quality leads to the following three conclusions and these are the main Lynch pins of uh Dr Baker's argument in this paper first on balance in direct tests of the relationship between financial resources and student outcomes Money Matters we see that there is a strong statistically significant Association if not strong at least moderate second schooling resources that cost money are are positively associated with school outcomes that things that work aren't free and then finally sustained improvements to the level and of that excuse me sustained improvements to the level and distribution of funding across local public school districts lead to improvements in the level and distribution of student outcomes there's a side of the analysis in this paper that really is about state level funding but I think the arguments hold true for school districts and there are many studies that he cites that are District level studies here too another thing that I liked about this report which is why I chose it is that he has a very simple but I don't think incorrect theory of action um oh I'm getting one step ahead I pulled one study from the many studies that are reviewed in this report to highlight um kiru Jackson and two other economists in 2015 did a major analysis of the impact of state finance reforms because States over the last several decades have periodically made big investments in K12 education and when they looked at the impact of those reforms they found that increasing per pupil spending by 10% from kindergarten through 12th grades and so meaning you do this across the age Spectrum increases the probability of high school graduation by seven point percentage points increases that for low-income kids by 10 percentage points actually is sustained into the workforce during young adulthood and translates into a 99.6% % increase in hourly wages and then a substantial decrease in adult poverty rates and that was an important uh rigorous uh large data set um study that looked at the impact of money on graduation rates and employment so as I was just going to say um I pulled this study also because it has um a very simple but I think uh broadly correct theory of action that underg gurs this and this may be something that we actually want to pull out as we get into to the rethinking funding work and other things and and the reason you do a theory like this is that when you're dealing with really complex decisions as this board will ultimately do when we think about rethinking funding it helps to have a guiding um uh what we'd call a schematic a way to organize all of that information into something that is comprehensible and so here you can see in Bruce Baker's conceptual map you've got your state and local wealth and income how much money you have have at the school district level or the community level and your state level then on the bottom you've got the fiscal effort how much you decide to spend on education and those two things can be very different you could have a very affluent community that doesn't spend much you could have a low-income community that spends a lot proportionally and many everything in between and so from those two things the the the level of uh income that you have at the state or local level and the effort that you decide to dedicate to education you get your Revenue the funding that you have available and so the revenue then as we shift into the expenditure side um gives you first your current operating expenditure what your actual expenses are and that of course is what John Carlson and his colleagues give the board uh every meeting and what you look at in a very deep way every spring and summer as you approve the budget at the top and again this is really unique to education if you were in a manufacturing business this side of the graph would look very different we are a people Enterprise 85% of our expenditures are people and so you look at the top and you can see those Staffing quantities and that is your uh pupil to teacher ratio and your class size how you organize your biggest resource which in education as I mentioned are your people in particular your number of people and then there at the bottom is your Staffing quality the caliber of the people and because these are economic studies the primary determinant in in their view is the wage um and he talks about that at some length how teacher compensation is tied to the caliber of teachers and I think the really important thing in this theory is that there are trade-offs there between those two and I think this is something certainly in Rochester that we have seen as the board put us on a path to financial sustainability that has cost uh uh caused the district to cut 21 million on 156 positions you did that while also making prudent investments in compensation and benefits for our employee groups and so I think this board has been trying to get that balance right we know class size we know the number of esps we know the number of our maintenance staff matters a lot we also know the level of compensation we can provide for them determines our recruitment our retention our job satisfaction and then it is from there that in this theory of action comes student outcomes so getting the right number of people compensated in the right ways so of course I I'm sure even as you're hearing me describe that you're thinking oh my gosh there's so many other factors yes there are but I think at its at its heart that's a pretty compelling way to think about the core mechanisms that drive um the connection between how we're funded and what outcomes students achieve so a few of the outcomes that uh the learning policy Institute some of the research highlights as shown to be effective in the research but that also don't come for free our smaller class sizes now I know every teacher myself uh included um who's experienced high class sizes will say yep that matters one really important finding from the research though is to have it show up in student achievement you got to get the class size really low so even though one size reduction in class size uh costs a lot of money um that doesn't begin to produce the demonstration ated benefit in student achievement um at 15 to 18 kids in the early grades is what I think Bruce Baker highlights as the most beneficial from the research there was a there was a Heyday of class siiz research where there was studies after studies that's kind of cooled off lately it would be interesting to see if people look now at class size in the age of digital technology and uh hybrid learning and e-learning because a lot of those studies are back when kids were pretty much uniformly in bricks and mortar schools um additional instructural supports the kind that we're putting in place through our multi-tier systems of support work early childhood programs which of course we know are uh shown to have returns many many more times their cost if they're effective competitive teacher compensation intensive tutoring uh now this is kind of the the Heyday of tutoring research and more and more studies are coming out about the power of one toone or especially small group uh tutoring and then our Extended Learning Time programs or extended day and extended year programs and I highlighted bold that point down there the Investments matter most for students from low-income families and students who've been lower achieving so what's the bottom line um I picked this quote and I do think it's particularly relevant for us here in Rochester um from the learning policy Institute study given the preponderance of evidence that resources do matter and that state school Finance reforms can affect changes in student outcomes it seems surprising that doubt has persisted in many cases direct assertion are made that schools can do more with less money that money is not a necessary underlying condition for school Improvement and that in the most extreme cases cuts to funding might actually stimulate improvements that past funding increases have failed to accomplish I have heard that in my many presentations around the community in recent months there is no evidence for these claims on the contrary there is evidence that money does matter schools and districts with more money clearly have a greater ability to provide higher quality broader and deeper educational opportunities to the children they serve furthermore in the absence of adequate funding or in the aftermath of deep cuts to existing funding schools are unable to do many of the things necessarily to develop or maintain the key elements of quality education and achievement ultimately declines so what are some of the implications for Rochester Public Schools just to get us started in the discussion and there are Kent's kind of uh First Impressions or Impressions from looking at the report um first of all obviously the referendum uh was much on my mind as I was reviewing this and several other studies I considered making the focus of this study session um uh that last quote I think is illustrative if we have to cut the minimum of 16.7 million as you approved in the resolution last week there is absolutely uh no reason not to think that that will show up uh in student achievement which we're starting to see uh headed in the right direction um we also I think need to be aware that there's only so many hours in the day and so many things people can pay attention to and so if we are engaged in that level of budget reduction many of the other priorities even if they aren't eliminated financially we'll suffer there are many uh times in the referendum presentations I've done over the community where someone says you know thank you this has been useful I have another issue issue I want to raise and it it can be anything from literacy to transportation to extracurriculars to facilities and very often I I say you know what that's a that's a problem or that's an issue it's complex but we can solve that we can get in that I don't know how we do it while we are engaging in Draconian cuts um to our core funding there's there's just only so much change and attention that the system can manage to uh successfully handle the rethinking funding work uh is uh impending John and the team have been working with our national technical assistance consultant to bring you uh some uh ideas to take a look at there's a board vote scheduled on that at the end of December of course you would have the latitude to shift some of those timelines depending on what you see but I think this discussion will certainly be relevant as we get into that question of how we staff and fund our schools um one of the things that as we are working with uh our labor unions in our various negotiations has come up and many of them have raised this is this question between number of employees and compensation and so there as the Bruce Baker uh conceptual map showed there's a trade-off between number of employees and compensation for employees and I think too often we haven't been really explicit about that um in not just negotiations but in our budgeting process not in Rochester but in education in general and then um finally uh I know it's premature we uh the current strategic plan doesn't end until 2025 but 2025 is not that far away um and so what might the financial strategies need to be to to empower our schools to even more fundamentally put in place some of the strategies that will really um ignite student learning as it were and so those are some of the thoughts that were on my mind as I was looking at this and so finally the question that uh we talked about in our executive committee was simply what stood out for you in this report um what are some of the issues you'd like to have us uh continue to think about um tracking and bringing to the board for conversation and with that I'll turn it back to you Kathy and and join in the discussion thank you for putting this together and for selecting these uh studies board members I'm going to open it up to you anybody want to offer some observations to director Marvin in in reading through the information you provided and in lots of other studies I I know we've discussed this before was AR rolnick I think University of Minnesota maybe 20 years ago longer than that he did a a lot of studying about early childhood education and he I think he was an economist not an educator still around oh good is good guy okay not fun reading but good guy um but for me it was so interesting that he was talking about how investing in early childhood education was not only good for the kids but it was good for the economy and the return on investment you get from putting money early on into those kids that it continued and um and it made uh for a better community and I think this is what for me stood out so much in in looking at this kind of information is that investing in our kids is good for them and their future but it's also smart for a community because we end up saving money later on um when more students do better when they need fewer Services when they graduate on time and when they come prepared to do um the jobs that we need them to do um and then in the information you provided I Linda darling Hammond uh who wrote A propess to one of the reports there she said a society that invests in its children a a society that invests in its children reaps real and Lasting economic and social benefits so we do this for the kids but even those of us who don't have kids in school we do it for the community we live in I mean it's better for everybody and I think it's a win-win um all of the writers all the research re researchers though say as you pointed out it makes a difference where you invest the money in education it has to be thoughtful investment and I know that we are um you have been for quite some time U Mr Carlson's been very involved in this looking at where the best in Investments would be um but I I just think this is really timely and really important Dr work um so a a long time ago years decades ago I remember my father saying to me you know money solve all of your problems but not having money will make your problems worse and you know he was a a child and a young man during the Depression so that I mean that was particularly hard hitting to hear that but um when I really start to think about partly with what jean just said um is that it you know when we all better we all do better and the whole boat and Rising ties and all of that but um on one of those slides you showed earlier Kent it was what was it 99.6% higher wages you know and so once you have the means to um make things better than you can but the caveat to that of course is are we doing it wisely and how do we know if we're doing wisely um we have to evaluate is this working is this are we getting these outcomes and I think this is this is something um that we've really seen with your your our strategic plan is that we're getting to that stage where we can really have a deep dive into is our money spent better here or here and I really Echo what jean said about early childhood education you know I mean you know um that life is is so critically important and um we all need to be involved in that I as a society Dr um Dr M I actually have a question that it kind of related to something you said earlier um in the summary that you gave us the brief um talks about the best evidence shows that money spent wisely has a significant impact on positive student outcomes how are you addressing that in a in the referendum discussions or more broadly how how do we establish for our community that we are I'm very confident we're spending it wisely but how do we share that with the broad of community yeah thank you director glofin it's a it's a great question um somewhat to my surprise there's nothing in statute or law that requires a school district to tell the community or name the specific expenditures that would be in an operating referendum you could simply say we need x amount of money and see if the voters will approve it I think what this board has put before the voters on November 5th is the opposite of that it is a very very specific plan that is tied to four key areas of our work many of which track with some of the initiatives that were highlighted in the report um the first being support for our kids that are struggling like our reading Specialists the second being uh support for academic enrichment and academic acceleration for our kids the third being uh mental health and well-being are the critical role counselors play in getting kids ready to learn in the fourth being Career and Technical education and we have named specific uh percentages and dollar amounts of the 19.4 million that would be allocated to those four areas and we've committed to Crea dashboard and a separate segment of our budget book that will track dollars to those outcomes and I think over time why we have a research director we can and should be as uh director Workman was just saying tracking those Investments to student outcomes but at minimum we will be very transparent in how those dollars are flowing um so I think that's uh a critical way the the larger point of how we um make sure those dollars are used um effectively is that we continue to do what this district has been doing for a number of years which is being scrupulous and how we maintain our financial uh processes in general because while the referendum is a significant amount of money uh the larger amount of money is the general fund and uh the compensatory education Revenue we get and the special education Revenue we get and so we need to treat all of our dollars with that level of scrutiny I think it's one reason why this board's creation of our community budget advisory committee is a really important step they really spent their first year learning K12 uh finance and I think that um going forward will be another effort as you probably remember one of the rethinking funding principles that you approved is to allocate resources toward what's uh meeting student needs in a very direct way and I think that's the work that's ahead of us is really understanding with Precision kids educational needs needs and allocating uh Staffing and resources toward those identified needs and so that will be I think a key aspect not just of evaluating how the referendum goes but how the rest of our funding uh Works going forward so does that start to get at some of the issues I think it does but I think what and I appreciate what you're talking about but that seems to be talking about if the referendum passes a moving forward I'm more concerned about what people have a perception of of past fiscal management okay can you talk about how you would respond to that and like we I see comments sometimes or when I'm talking to people that we're wasting money or we're not using it effectively up until now so like why should they give us more money um so I can speak to the three years I've been here and the three years I've been here we've C $21 million 156 uh positions we would have continued that had mail Clinic not stepped in and had we not given ourselves the time to develop the plan that's before the voters November 5th with stability and so I think our money is where our mouth is or our mouth is where our money is whichever it should go we have shown that we have put the district on that path we've um uh continued to look at uh hard issues like school capacity one of the questions that we're we thought about last year during the attendance options we designed and that we need to continue to think about is what where do enrollments need to be in our schools to make sure that they are viable and can offer a high high quality educational program to kids there are school districts all over the country and in the state that end up subsidizing schools that simply don't have enough kids to pay for the programming that exists there we do not have that in Rochester and so another way that we'll be building that in is that we will make sure in our rethinking funding proposals to you we have got um uh school capacity measures that would allow the board quite clearly to monitor if that's happening and take steps to avoid what happens which is where you dilute the resources that are available to educate all kids to keep open schools that uh don't have enough students to actually um cover their costs that's that's a going forward strategy I think uh the the audits that we have had uh make very clear that there is no unseen pot of money that is not there uh we regularly get very detailed emails from citizens who've looked at our budget book which is great um I got one the other day from a Middle School student who was at Dakota Middle School asking a strikingly specific question about our budget book and I love that and so we're very transparent in those efforts I I I do hear some of the same things that you are hearing about um uh decisions prior to you know when I was here and it's frustrating as a leader to not be able to speak to those things in a more direct way I do feel very confident about and about the decisions that we're making now and I welcome being held accountable for those decisions thank you well I somewhat intrigued by the U theory of action in particular student outcomes um certainly we have uh well rather than me make a statement let me ask the question uh do you think we have been properly re resourced in the three years you've been here uh to um address the uh student outcomes and in particularly because there was a I think you highlighted that note on that slide or the following one that uh uh these Investments matter most for students from low-income families and students who have been lower achieving so um have we been properly resourced since you've been here to posit positively address um students from lowincome families and students who have been lower achieving uh where I'm going with this question is um certainly we're having the discussion in part because of the um reality uh driven by the need for a referendum okay uh and it's tough to suggest that if that uh if we were rolling in the money would we still be looking at uh loow income uh uh lower achieving students uh at the numbers that we have been and not suggesting that uh we're not making progress because recently we have been informed that we are uh so in part um for members of the community who may uh and you indicated that there are those and even within the baker report those who think that well uh more money does not necessarily change the outcome uh how would having more money positively affect the outcome so two parts you know in the three years that you've been here uh how has the meter moved positively or negatively for these low-income families and those students have been uh low achieving and then secondly how do you envision and I do know we're looking at two Dynamics rethinking funding strategic plan and some additional things we would be able to do sh the referendum pass and if you could just kind of if you want thank you yeah that's fantastic thank you director Barlo I would say since I've been here no we have not been adequately resourced to give the community the kind of schools it wants and that it needs um now part of that is on us on the district and we have taken very serious steps cutting 7 million my first year 14 million my second year there was an increase and this is a little bit I think to Dr mclin's question but I wasn't tracking it there was an increase uh in staff that far exceeded the growth in student enrollment and you Bo the board has seen that picture multiple times and you've seen where we're bending it down in the last few years even though those are all good people doing good things the revenue all comes from the students and so the number of Staff cannot outpace the growth in students as it did for a period um if if I had that updated chart John and I have just looked at it the first two years here it went like this this year it's flat by Design we intended that um so part of it is that and part of it of course is that discrepancy in the state general fund another is the fact that we are mandated to provide services to students with disabilities and students whose first language is not English and we are pleased to provide those services but they are chronically underfunded from the state we take $15 million every year from our general fund to pay for under unfunded underfunded special education services and the reason I say the kind of schools not just Rochester like needs to improve student Lear but that it wants we are not a barebone school district and that's what's at the heart of the ref the referendum proposal there are school districts and I talked to their superintendents around the state where they basically have uh a teacher student ratio that allows them to cover the state standards provide the requir IR ired services to kids with disabilities and multi language learning and not much else they don't have the kind of cerent technical programs we have the advanced learning programs we have the uh supports for struggling kids there was a moment in the last referendum which was focused on technology where we were working with our Communications advisers who mostly had worked in many of those kinds of school districts and they were trying to help us get our messaging about the last referendum uh straight and they were kept saying in Rochester isn't it great that you have advanced placement classes in your high schools it's fantastic you should be trumpeting that to your community and I would say if I went out and told Rochester that it's great we have AP they would say you better have AP we that's basic for this community that's not a unique thing to trumpet in this community uh I think appropriately now when it comes to the question of uh adequately resourcing our most uh Learners to face the biggest challenges which is a huge issue going forward and I'm I'm generalizing here but I but I don't think it's incorrectly in Minnesota there is there are several but there is one very large funding stream that follows kids based upon family income and it's called compensatory education Aid and since I've been in education since I was a teacher there have always been discussions about changing it getting rid of it and it has survived it has survived Democratic Governors Republican Governors an independent governor and the dollars follow the kids as identified for free and reduced price lunch and very different than in many states there's a concentration Factor so the higher percentage of kids you have in your school who are lowincome who qualify for free free and reduced price lunch you get a multiplier so if you're 80% poverty you get eight times as much as a school with 10% poverty it's a very Progressive policy that Minnesota's had for many years and I think on the whole it's a good policy some of our schools and I'm just going to name one that I know many board members think of Riverside because of the percentage of students who meet that qualification has I Believe been adequately funded to serve the students that they've had now there are some enrollment challenges that anyone from that school would would say have you know been an issue and that's one reason why we've moved the Spanish Immersion program into that building so if you are in the relatively small small number of Rochester schools that have a lot of compensatory revenue from the state of Minnesota and a lot of title Revenue because we use our Title One funding in Rochester FK schools in a small subset of our elementary schools we on the whole except if it's uh 75% poverty or higher uh where the feds require it we don't spend it at middle school or high school so to your question Dr bar and I said this was going to be a long answer way down in the weeds in the small subset of our schools that have a lot of compensatory revenue and a lot of title Revenue I do think we've been adequately resourced to serve our highest need kids now whether we have been always using those resources really effectively is the work ahead of us that's why we're doing mtss that's why we're doing fast Bridge the challenge is we have got far beyond that subset of our schools that receive a lot of those categorical dollars the same high need kids we have those kids in our other schools where they're they in much lower percentages I'm very concerned about our ability to Resource programming for those kids because we don't have those large uh categorical dollars going into those schools so I think that is an area in which uh through the rethinking funding work we need to look hard at saying if you are in a school that is not 60 70 uh plus perent free and reduced and you have a smaller number of those students in your school are we resourcing you so that you can provide interventions small group tutoring the kind of social emotional you know counseling mentoring supports that those kids need um so that's an issue that we're grappling with a lot I don't know if John there's anything I don't mean to put you on the spot in terms of either correcting or jumping in but I say that to all the other cabinet folks here but that we have a concentration of schools a subset that I think have had the money and now the work is to be sure the strategies are are adequately uh addressing those kids needs a lot of them have bought down class size and that's been kind of a favored use of those additional dollars and we were're just talking about class size can be a great thing to do but the curriculum and instruction and student supports you're using in that smaller class have got to be really effective to meeting those kids' needs so thank you for chance to kind of go down that rabbit hole what you're talking about there in those schools that don't get that extra funding but still have the challenges do and I know you weren't here then but did does the data show that that predates the pandemic yes okay so it's not a p like younger kids are coming in struggling and that the like the fourth and fifth graders who were already in school are not having those same issues um we've seen an increase in academic Challenge and in uh uh impulse control and um attention and all of those things and we're seeing right now as really the last group of kids that were infants and toddlers during the pandemic are coming into our kindergarteners first grades we are absolutely seeing the impact of that but the funding stream besides the federal covid money that was with us for a period and now is gone the funding stream was constant in Minnesota across those years okay thank you well when I looked at this study of course like most everything I thought about it in terms of the referendum uh proposal and the Investments that we've talked about um putting the referendum money toward um I found it interesting that the um 10% uh increase in per pupil spending was 10% that was studied and what we're asking for in the referendum is less than 10% it's more like 7.8 in our per student funding and that um another part of the study said that if you could do a 21 increase in a a 21% increase in spending you could close the achievement Gap so in terms of proportionality or adequacy of what we're asking for we're asking for what we need to close our budget deficit it's in the range slightly lower than what the studies are saying can really have an impact it's not in the range of that which I think is our goal which is to close the achievement Gap entirely so that's some perspective about um where the r the reality of RPS is in line with these studies I also thought it was interesting um that in the Jackson study it it talked about um the investment being in all grades K through 12 but it wasn't good enough to just put money into Early Childhood or kindergarten or third grade or sixth grade or 10th grade it had to be an investment across k12 and that's why I think um the plan that the superintendent brought to us that we've brought to the voters um is Investments across K12 but we are able to tell our community it would be for 10 years because it would not get us any outcome improvements if we were just to ask for 19 .4 million for one year because the second year through the 10th year we would still be looking for that 19.4 million so that sustainability across time the research shows that that's important but I think we're also making that case to our community with the referendum um the class sizes that would be maintained in our referendum aren't 15 to 18 students um but to increase our current targets by three get us much farther away from that 15 to 18 students and I don't think um I mean we know how much it costs to reduce class size by one we've talked about that over the years that's not what we're able to accomplish with this money but it would be going in the wrong direction if we had to increase class sizes and get farther away from that 15 to 18 um ideal I also thought that the um the last slide um the bottom line um if Bruce Baker were speaking to our community about our referendum we could just send him out with with that slide um and and I appreciate what you said superintendent about the school district that this community wants and needs and what we consider to be basic what we consider consider to be um foundational and it's not Bare Bones um and I'm just going to read it again because I think it's really impactful schools and districts with more money clearly have a greater ability to provide higher higher quality broader and deeper educational opportunities to the children they serve furthermore in the absence of adequate funding or in the aftermath of deep cuts to existing funding schools are unable to do many of the things necessary to develop or maintain the key elements of quality education and achievement ultimately declines and I know I've mentioned this before it's my soapbox that I've seen the history of this District make reductions when we faced budget def deficits before and uh we are because of those cuts we are unable to do not just many of the things necessary but many of the things this community has wanted us to have in our school schools um and we are no longer able to do those and they don't come back just like at this referendum I think it's fair to say that if it doesn't pass and we make the cuts that we've directed you to prepare and some additional cuts to get to the 19.4 million they're not going to come back unless we find a funding source and go through this whole cycle of again of either getting funding from the state which is unlikely are asking our community again for a referendum so this tale that that um Chris Baker puts together when he looks at all these studies is the story of the past budget cuts and RPS and I don't want it to be the story of the future um so I really appreciate having this uh academic foundation in seeing uh what other districts have experienced and the stud from other districts and to really have it validate where we're at today and the kinds of decisions our community can make director HCK I really appreciated this uh framework um and I I uh I kind of went down a uh um some tangents I guess thinking about what the implications are for our RPS and what the takeaways are here and I and and for a while it was actually Dr hesek went on and you're probably aware um 10 years after that uh quote that you provided um he looked at the next question of aside from how does money influence student outcomes how do student outcomes influence the economic fortunes of a community and came up with an astounding projection of uh $76 trillion in latent economic potential Nationwide just by the modest goal of getting every student in the country to achieve at the same level as the highest state which at that time was Minesota interestingly but and I and I thought wow that's you know that and and and also the the full economic potential represented there was more than the entirety of all state and local um spending on education so the return on investment um uh kind of speaks for itself but school boards or at least this school board is not really in the business of trying to optimize the future human capital of the workforce of our community or our state or our nation or whatever um I think it's an important consideration to keep in mind of you know how much our investments here will influence the future of our community and what way um but our policies and really state law um instructs us to meet the needs of every single student our literacy policy says that the school district must adopt a local literacy plan to have every child reading at or above grade level every year beginning in kindergarten similarly I you know we have uh similar responsibilities for students with special education and so art and and multilanguage Learners and um and on and on so the the the tradeoffs that we're trying to optimize for aren't the ones that lead to the greatest economic growth or even that move the academic achievement in some aggregate way for the entire District I don't think um our goal is to direct to director Barlo point I think think to optimize our resources in ways that meet the needs of every single student and we know from research and from our own District that the greatest opportunities is often for the students with um socioeconomic disadvantages um and who have been behind for one reason or another and are in need of those additional services so um there isn't really a question in there but I think in the spirit of this uh study session um I just wanted to share the way I was reflecting on this and um I'm not entirely sure yet how it is going to influence the way I think about the redesigning funding um or some of the other topics that you mentioned but it's really it was thought-provoking it was really helpful um and uh this has been a good discussion yeah personally I'm with you and in being out in particular over the last six months since the last you know uh referendum didn't pass well since we've been dealing with the what next um I've realized though that there are a significant share in our community who need to know how funding our schools is in their enlightened self-interest um and I I don't begrudge them that you know but I you know so some of us uh come to this work maybe for passion about kids or passion about subject areas math science you know um and then some folks who are dealing with you know inflation in their families and other pressures which I know you know um they're saying what's in it for me and I don't think they're saying it with a narrow-minded pettiness in a sense um and that's why tonight's discussion was well first of all uh student learning really matters to you and you know when you mention the later hesek studies that was a reference to where I've used and appreciated his work he and other economists have shown that the best investment today is in human capital it's in people and that is what produces uh Community prosperity and we're better than Rochester can we see that and not just people with the letters PhD and MD behind them at male clinic but all of us who are you know part of that so there is that need to say and in particular to people who don't have kids in our schools like when you're there I I was at with a bunch of them this morning at 7: am and it was a great discussion of why would we raise our taxes you know for this and they asked hard questions they want to know uh that we're using the resources appropriately they want to know it's going to uh produce improved learning um but there is the need to to connect those dots you know that people with higher levels of Education are not only going to make higher incomes and contribute to economic growth but they are uh more likely to be physically healthy and therefore require less medical care they're more likely to vote and volunteer they're more likely to have stable families they're much less likely to commit crimes they're much less likely to be on public assistance and and all of those things you know start to add up and when we look at the study tonight we see that um those investments in learning learning appropriately allocated monitored I hope are an answer to those folks who are saying what's in it for me um so I'm with you and I like working for a board that has it about the kids we serve today um but for those people out there who are are are asking that other side of the question I've kind of learned we got to we got to answer their concerns as well which I know the board understands and shares also it's not to go too far off in the conceptual thing but like is education a private commodity or a public good is this something that there's a finite amount of and there's only so much we can get and we want to get as much as we can for our kids and anything another kid gets is probably coming from our our approach well the good news is there's not only so much math kids can learn there's not only so much science kids can do it is an inexhaustible resource if we do it right and in American history there is an extraordinary tradition of seeing education as a Central Public good like building roads or fighting fires are fighting crime and nobody want to live in a community where the fire department could only put out houses in one subset of the community and the United States was the first in the 1800s to create the common school and to say every little kid needs to get to a certain level of education and that had gigantic benefits for the American economy and then in the 20th century we created the modern high school and in 1900s 6% of Americans went to high school and by the 1980s it was 80% and that was every race every socioeconomic status and and communities built their high schools on the top of the biggest hill in the city to look like a castle to sort of say this is this is where everyone needs 12 years of education and and I think there is some evidence today that there this idea that education is a public good is breaking down um and that I think what you see in this paper from uh Bruce Baker and many other things is we will see a consequence to that in student achievement which does over time affect our community prosperity and our stability as a community and so I do believe that's why when I say that Rochester Public Schools educates more than 3ars of the kids in this community which is not the case in the other largest cities in this state um it's an extraordinary uh responsibility that those families are trusting us with but it also means that what happens in our classrooms is going to have a big impact on the stability and and prosperity of our community in the future I'd like to build on what Dr Cook said because the you you said it so succinctly that we're instructed to meet the need of every student and I know that uh sometimes members of the Community start paying attention to the work that we're doing only when it hits them in the pocketbook so prior to us us uh putting a referendum on the ballot and and doing our our information sharing they may not have been part of the conversation on the Strategic plan but if I could have everyone in the community rewatch that mtss presentation where um for the first time since I was a parent in this District or on the board we had an outside organization take a look at precisely that how are we structured to meet the needs of every student and we saw some data that was hard to see um in terms of the gaps of our ability to do that but we also saw a path forward and I look at some of the things that the referendum would fund like the reading Specialists and our community schools coordinators and our Advanced learning teachers and thect Ally the way of the music positions and our school counselor positions and our postsecondary education and I think about all the different students whose needs some might some students needs might have multiple needs met by multiple of those things but I picture across the spectrum of all of our students all of those people because we're talking about people are meeting the needs the different needs of the different students in various ways and I I can't say it enough we have a plan and we have people who are committed to the plan in a way that again I've never seen before in this District we just had a meeting yesterday where we heard some feedback from teachers about how difficult it was to start implementing the literacy curriculum how many more hours it was taking them because they're starting from scratch they're building their lessons they're looking for their resources but even with all that feedback coupled with it was but I'm really excited about this I'm really excited about the material I'm excited what we can do for kids this is going to be great we've got to keep the this is going to be great and the support for the people who are in those class classrooms with those kids every day um at the front of our minds because they're the ones meeting the needs of the students and we're the ones making the decision to get them those resources and the Community is going to make the decision as to what um kind of money we have to do that um so I I think that's a great thing you know in addition to our mission statement I think that's a nice add-on tagline so if every decision we make we're always thinking about how does this meet the needs of students we're going to be making right decision just Dr this is more a reaction to What was written but um on one of the pages of the I think it's page 18 of the main report it says as common sense would suggest it takes more money to get a more ambitious job done and it takes more when students have greater needs and I think the the reality of the referendum is that you know we've had ambitious goals this entire time but the the money that we're asking for is to help us maintain not to ultimately reach these ambitious needs and so I think that in order to get to the place where we would ultimately like to go this needs to happen first and I think that what people really have a difficult time wrapping their head around is like how could you know like like we as individuals cannot conceive probably of like what would it mean to cut $19 million out of my personal finances um and so like you must have been doing something wrong all this time to like to have that not be uh like an issue or something nefarious happening in the background um and it you know and there isn't a an instance in which we were like whoopsies we were using $4 million in this area where we probably should have used like maybe $100,000 it's we're always using that money to serve like exactly the thing that is needed in that space and so so when all of those costs the cost of those things are going up like the cost of the people offering that service is going up the services we're trying to bring in to our students is going up the things that our students need in order to complete assignments as part of that service is going up um you know we we need this to to sustain us in a way that um we need this to sustain us and I'm hoping that it will will because I would love for the district for at least one year to not have to have a conversation about budget cuts um that also affects the mental health of the people who are doing this like I can see how it affects the people at this table and we are probably the most resource to manage that um and so I can imagine how it feels um you know all the way down and so I just want to say too uh you know over the last four years I've watched kind of an awe this uh this it almost it kind of reminds me of like a a rubber band ball and all the rubber bands are different colors of like School finance and watching Everybody sort of like figure out how to you know explain that to other people and explain why we need this money and why we're asking them to show up for us um and maybe to to director mclin's point is like you know how do we show them that we are being good stewards of our money and I think you know we literally show them the receipts and I think we do have uh a number of awards that we've or I guess Awards and also grades that we've been given about us being good stewards of that money um and I just I I appreciate the opportunity to kind of explain to people over and over again why it matters and I can understand why it's confusing and I think that that just compounds the problem like if it was an easy Finance question to answer then people would be like oh yeah here's your pocketbook you know for example let me write you that check um or let's figure this out or like have a bake sale but it's it's not it's beyond that and so I I can appreciate why people are nervous um and why people are sort of wanting to hold on to their money because they know how they they know how they specifically will spend that funds not how we would spend it um but I've always found it to be in direct service of of our students and they are what is most important and I I can feel this ambitious job or jobs that we want to bring into this District like I can feel it sort of bubbling under the service like we're just waiting for that moment of like the finances and the ambition to be one and so that we can do all of the things that that we would love to do and I look forward to that day and I'm sorry that it didn't happen in my time on the board um but I think we are in very good hands and that a lot of the things that came out of the the studies that were reviewed in Massachusetts in particular because that was the state that I was most um familiar with that to me that shows like how Community show up for their schools um and sometimes it's like you volunt them because it's it's something that you make happen and that even it says in here too even like the people that were really upset about it can also say like but also it was really beneficial um we maybe didn't like it in the outset but it the outcomes were what we were hoping that they would be and I I hope that we can um reestablish or mend or repair whatever uh Community tensions there are and be again still good stewards of the money that potentially will come to us so that the trust is there every time thereafter that we might have to ask for this because the funding is a multicolored rubber band ball that doesn't make sense so I guess the Massachusetts study also intrigued me um from a number of ways because they completely redid their education funding and I know Minnesota has a very complex and it seems like it's always well we have a problem here so we're going to fix this and then you know that sets off The Dominoes for something somewhere else but um you know so there's there's what we do here with education but we also have to realize that students spend the majority of their time what is it 85% of their time outside of school and so um from the Massachusetts study um added money for students in poverty English Learners and those identified for special education coupled with investments in new standards assessments and extensive teacher training and I can see just in this last bium that Minnesota's taken on a lot of that uh kind of thing which would result in higher student achievement um as measured by standardized test oh maybe but the state also provided Universal Health Care and preschool for students from lowincome families and I think that's critical um which leads me to think about you know the continued partnership we have with different organizations in this in this community that can do a lot of that work so that we can focus on what our mission is which is educating all students um you you know and I I guess I understand why some people might feel like well you know you're providing more for this kid than you are for for my kid um but it's like your kid already has what they need and we're trying to bring all kids up to that but they're um seems to be more of a well I've got mine but who cares about you mentality that I I hope we can you know that in this community that we're we're working to change that um kind of attitude um so I think our Partnerships are really important I think the work that we're doing here is really important um that what chair Nathan said a few minutes ago about yeah the literacy work is really hard it's all new stuff but my gosh we're excited about it so that you know it's hard work but it's also good work and people can get excited about good work that's hard as opposed to hard work that's not good um you know those those two things kind of hang together so I'm moving forward I mean I would like to see more um I don't know if it's more reporting of you know some of those Community Partnerships and what they're what they're doing specifically that helps the community but that also helps our kids you know if if kids are coming to school hungry they're not going to learn oh guess what we feed kids breakfast and lunch now you know that's going to have an impact but well it's not fair I'm not sure what's not fair about that but um it's something we we needed to do it it it is and just super briefly Madam chair um the what Massachusetts accomplished in the '90s was absolutely stunning and they sustained it through Republican and Dem Democratic Governors four of them and they the report says they became the highest performing state in the US from a place that was very similar to Minnesota they left us in the dust they became one of the highest performing systems in the world uh so and now they've fallen off like nothing's nothing's forever but I I'm glad you know Dr Garcia that you highlighted that because um Massachusetts is a lot like Minnesota in a lot of ways we're not here to talk about State policy as much as it influences us but um it is really stunning what they achieved because it wasn't just the money it was their testing system their standards um their their supports that they did it really was a a quite extraordinary tenure so so we can do that here I'm focused onetts Massachusetts you know Massachusetts and Minnesota they're both M States and they both have four syllables so I mean you know we're we're golden if only um I want to go back to that that need the need word again because one of the quotes in the article was the system it costs more to achieve higher outcomes and the system must provide sufficiently higher resources to ensure adequacy and equity and higher need EG higher poverty settings than in lower need settings and superintendent you said that we want to be able to give Rochester the school district they want and that they need and I think that there is some um lack of understanding in our community about the level of need in our students and I don't know how it would play into the rethinking funding but it may just play into our decision making if we um had the data uh I don't know how more much more specific we could get other than by school but on those categories of need that are more closely tied to um how we spend our money and maybe uh maybe it's in the traditional categories we look at of our um rational and ethnic groups and our special education and English learners but I think it would just be good for us to have that data with us and for the community to know because when I looked at the top 15 districts we've been comparing ourselves to and our statistics on English learner and special education we're in the top half or quarter of need so our percentages in those areas are in the top half or even the top two or three so when we say we're getting the lowest funding from our our voters but we have students with among the highest needs of those 15 districts and I think that's important to keep in mind when we're talking about how we're allocating money yeah we're not near the top um so you know I think it's true and I don't want I don't want to um I don't I don't want to take us too far into the rethinking funding uh point and what I'm going to say might be I know it would be in some urban areas controversial for us and Rochester is urban we don't think of ourselves as Urban we're a city I am obsessively passionately committed to serve advantaged families in this district there is nothing wrong with being middle or upper income and we want your children in this District you are going to go somewhere else if we don't give you what you need for your kids we're nobody's well maybe there's a few people I wouldn't be one of them who would sacrifice the education of their kids to some kind of a a a ideological belief you're going to do what you need to do for your kids now we must serve those kids who need more we know we have an urgent priority it's educational moral but we want to serve those families who have options as well and we do they're all here we provide provide 75% of the school district we are yes serving some kids who have extraordinary needs and we need to continue to better but we absolutely want to and must continue to serve those you know families who do have uh other options and that's why I love being in this District because we have both challenges and time and time and time again in American Education in recent decades we've seen that as an either or you can serve really high need kids and or you can serve really you know advantaged and I don't say advantaged like it's a like it's a curse word um and I we want to do both and we want to we want to build integration we want to have our how often do our society uh across those two divides how often do we interact with each other well it happens in Rochester schools all the time and we need to do more of it and not evenly across our schools for sure so yes and we certainly contract that data and yes we do have the needs that any increasingly diverse Community has I think it's a strength they re requires additional investment the quote Dr Garcia was just reading but I don't want anyone out there listening to think that we are not equally committed to be certain of those because the research is actually pretty clear it's better for kids with huge needs to be in schools with kids from a wide range of backgrounds yes that is a pretty conclusive finding that that is good for the kids who need the most to be in settings where there are uh kids who have less intensive needs for lots of different reasons so yes an yes can I add to that I'd also say that um kids on the other end of the spectrum also have a need that needs to be met so it's really the same word and when you're looking at when we look at like our mtss model when we're um when we get everything where we need it to be um when you're doing the tier 2 time kids that need enrichment should be receiving enrichment so you're actually looking at the needs of every single kid and meeting those needs so you're not you're not holding anybody back you're just creating a system that that really is responsive to all of the kids in front of you so you've got the grade level standards that everybody's um exposed to and then when we do we call it intervention time but really you're intervening either in an enrichment way or to kind of fill in some gaps um so yes I I think and kids especially like kids that are Advanced Learners they have a very unique need that we do need to really think about and think about how we service them completely differently and I think we and there's there are a many students who receive special ed services that are also Advanced Learners we have and you can have multilingual Learners that are in that like it's not they're not all exclusive there's a lot of overlap there as well and I think how much we bring all that up depends on how we service kids and um how we think about them and what we provide for them thank you yeah I I agree with that so my my brother is what you would consider a twice exceptional student so he was pulled out for some things and uh specifically around ADHD but he was also very bright and I was in what at that time was called gifted programming and I think uh and the at the other end of the spectrum of my my friends were kids that were maybe not as uh High achieving or they wouldn't be getting enrichment they would have been in spaces where the gaps were being filled and for all three of us there was like such a shame and a stigma for us being in the in the place where we were like I didn't want to be too smart so I sort of downplayed that he didn't want to admit that he was either of the things that he was and then our friends on the other end um also were feeling like you know when are we going to get sort of caught up to everybody else and I think it's it's very challenging and I I respect and appreciate Educators like I'm not sure how they deal with like even just th that those three different students in one class um let alone like a group maybe of of each of those three students and all the kids everywhere in between and I appreciate both points that you're or the points that both of you are making in the sense that it's I almost think of it specifically as like time to get what you need regardless of what it is like whether it's enrichment or some additional support or maybe you're somebody who needs to maintain like you need to practice that skill and I like I would I want Rochester to be a place I mean we already are doing that but I want us to be known I think for that um known that we have the compassion and the awareness and the capability of helping students that need that little extra and also that we have the caliber of Educators in which they can offer that enrichment or whatever it is on the other end of that spectrum and everywhere in between and I think that this report also makes a lot of points as to like why that would be helpful because it you know it talks about the Massachusetts schools in particular that they struck the right balance between funding and accountability reforms and the accountability pieces also so it was like student learning teacher preparation um creating expectations and systems to support Improvement and responses uh in response to data about student outcomes and then there was some information I think later about you know if even if you can't uh basically or increasing or increases in teacher wages have been found in several studies to be associated with increased student achievement presumably because more capable teachers can be recruited and retained and it and it says somewhere else in there too like and if you can't necessarily increase the amount of Educators increasing the the um I don't think it exactly says wages but like the thing that you're giving to the Educators that you do have so that you do retain them is also good for students and I think that that was another thing too that we struggle with in like explaining like yes we're looking at a budget deficit and we want to give teachers exactly what they're worth and then some um but it's not just because they are being greedy and asking for more money we are giving them something that is going to benefit students um and also if you can keep your English teacher and your math teacher coming back year after year after year we're not having to like replace them all the time and that helps provide continuity for the district and like what I think in like mental health world we call continuity of care it's like continuity of education and so I think if we can provide continuity for educators that offers continuity of education for our students and that makes like our job easier and it's and then we have that um those actionable items and the outcomes of whatever those items are to be able to come back to the community and say like we asked you for money before and like here's our ask again and this is what we did with it last time and this is all the wonderful things that we did um so that there is that that trust and consistency and the stability and we're able to build upon what we've had before instead of having to keep going back to the drawing board because we don't have enough of something whatever that is Dr Marvin very briefly I think um in the study you were talking about Dr gcia uh besides being able to provide staff with better benefits and better um salaries they talked about job satisfaction and conditions and when I mean we're the second largest employer and when we have people who want to come lots of people who want to come to teach here because of the quality of the schools we're we're getting quality people and they're staying here I mean we've got an amazing staff now and I I don't know how much more we can ask them to do how many more students we can ask them to to take on before they're these amazing people are just going to say enough but when we get have the quality of people we have here now and get more coming it makes all of us better including the adults second largest employer in the the city and it's the most important thing for our kids and um we want to keep doing that it's it's just good for our entire Community they get involved with um with other organizations they're great neighbors um their staff is important too um I'll try and be brief but I'm not being too successful with that tonight um but you know going back to the need the needs of the student you know the needs of the patient come first is is the male motto and so if a person comes in with pneumonia and a person comes in with a broken leg and a person comes in with a brain tumor they're not all going to be treated the same but they're going to get what they need and I think even more importantly is you have a team that's working on each of those cases and I see the teamwork that we've developed in Rochester as being really important and really good for meeting the needs of each student um as no matter no matter whether it's you know brain cancer or pneumonia or a broken leg or fractions or fractions fractions fract fractured like fractions any other questions board members any closing comments superintendent um no I just to sum it up Money Matters Money Matters for student learning uh it's it's not an ideological slogan it's a finding from uh rigorous Empirical research and countless studies of many different types uh of many different outcomes and so that's an important thing to keep in mind thanks for bringing this to us board members we have uh no questions that were uh presented before the meeting um our ABCD update is available in our um agenda items are there any other items a board member would like to bring forward for consideration on a future agenda hearing none um we have a meeting on October 22nd at 5:30 pm. and that is a special session on field trip fees immediately following with a regular meeting a meeting on November 12th at 5:30 p.m. which is a regular meeting a meeting on November 19th at 5:30 p.m. which is a special session public hearing formerly known as the world's best Workforce and now called comprehensive achievement and Civic Readiness immediately following that special session will be a regular meeting and then a meeting on December 3rd at 5:30 p.m regular meeting and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 6:56 p.m. e