##VIDEO ID:uXaQvZPFi2E## e e friend this regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday August 20th 2024 in room 137 of the Edison building the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are sit 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 member superintendent Kent pel a non- voting ex officio member and assistant school board clerk Miss Lorie Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role here here here here here at this time we offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance jice item 2.1 is approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda move approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all those in favor say I I I and opposed the agenda has been approved the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assmbly comments to the board it is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our students staff families and schools we welcome communication via email phone call or Community engagement listening sessions and here during comments to the board the purpose of comments to the board is to give community members an opportunity to provide input directly to the school board about about issues that fall within our Authority the board and superintendent do not respond directly to the speaker's comments during the meeting but may follow up with the speaker if requested and appropriate people who want to make comments to the board must fill out the online form by 5:00 pm on the Monday before the school board meeting to sign up for a time slot the form is available on the RPS website and on the symbl main page a reminder that policy 206 and procedure 206a set the time place and manner procedures and restrictions on comments to the board by participating in the public comment period each speaker agrees to abide by this public comment procedure tonight's speakers when your name is called please come to the table if you have written materials for the board please provide them to the assistant school board clerk prior to your remarks and she will distribute them to board members choose a microphone to speak into and be seated please direct your remarks to the school board you will have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed in front of me please begin your remarks by stating your name our speaker tonight is kalpa Patel e e e members will make sure you have com copies of this after the meeting our next item is 4.1 information and Outreach uh for uh board member committee updates does any board member have updates from their committee since the last meeting or any information to share director Marin just briefly the um youth voice in leadership is is a really important Initiative for this year and uh the student School Board team um has met now a couple of times uh looking at the model that we'll be using going forward to uh work with our students as we uh help uh teach them leadership skills as we uh impress upon them about how important student voice is and so that they can learn that they can really become the change makers uh that are going to make uh this place and every place they go better so we're excited about the opportunities we're looking at a slightly different models for this next year but we have great kids um who will be working with us um and who will be working for and we're excited to see um the progress we make in terms of really empowering student voice I think um I'll invite any other board members who were there who'd like to speak but a number of us were at the back to school block party on Saturday and we were uh Staffing a table providing information about the referendum and I don't know what the actual count was but I know that they were planning to give out a thousand backpacks and probably did um but it was just a a lovely uh community Gathering to kick off the school year lots of kids there we had great conversations with parents and kids someone from our Early Childhood Program was also there and I know that she was able to connect with parents who hadn't yet registered their kids for preschool so she was able to give them information and connect them to that human resources was there and connected with some people who were looking for some positions so it was just a really good opportunity to to uh get on board with people who are starting to think about school anybody else who was there got wet got rained on off on yeah and and just that um there it was raining kind of on and off but the spirit was amazing and with one exception every single child we talked to and there were hundreds of them that came to our booth um they were excited to get back to school and you kept count of that pardon you kept count I did Count yes I have names all right moving on to our consent agenda items 5.1 1 through 5.2 are agenda uh consent agenda items would any board member like any item removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration move approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say I I I any opposed the consent agenda has been approved item 6.1 is a focused topic rethinking funding options overview part two superintendent P thank you chair Nathan and we we have uh John Carlson Andy crockstead coming up uh and joining us uh a third member of the triumverate that's helping to coordinate this Denise Moody our director of innovation is uh uh away um and so thanks to John and Andy for the leadership that they've been providing as board members we'll recall this discussion today is part two of laying the groundwork for an important set of recommendations that we will bring you later in the fall to modify the way we fund and staff our schools in the previous um overview we talked about the distinction between uh funding strategies that are largely centralized and create a uniform and another Paradigm that has been implemented in some us school districts often called student-based B uh budgeting or per puple formula we are going to delve a bit more deeply tonight into that Paradigm of student-based budgeting because we focused on our current state more heavily last time but then equally importantly we are going to also lay the groundwork tonight for a discussion of how we budget our central office functions because that is an component of this funding redesign called for in our strategic plan that is also critical to achieving the other aspects of our strategic plan and so we want to lay the groundwork tonight with some of the issues that we need to think through and that we will be bringing you recommendations on regarding how we fund for instance our office of academics or our office of equity and engagement and the functions that those offices perform in addition to digging a bit more deeply into how we fund and staff our schools so John and Andy thank you and um take it away very good thank you superintendent pcal and shair Nathan school board members it's our pleasure here to give you a second installment of a six uh part Series so just a refresher a strategic Plan called for uh back when we uh came up with the words modify funding formulas we've relabeled that as rethinking funding and it's the core work of uh figuring out how we allocate the resources that we do have uh to fund our schools and our central office departments uh the seven characteristics that you voted to approve um when we started this journey was to come back with a funding policy that would be effective efficient Equitable coherent predictable transparent and responsive and we've certainly kept all of these in mind as we've done um a lot of conversations with our community budget Advisory Group as well as um some feedback sessions with uh staff just a quick refresher there's kind of a Continuum here of uh styles of budgeting you can have a highly guaranteed budgeting system or you could have a highly autonomous budgeting system or in the school district World a student-based budgeting system where a lot of the autonomy and a lot of the uh decisions are made at the school level by either the school leader or the school leader with their staff uh RPS is not all the way over till fully centralized decision making system we are just a little bit to the left of that on the uh Continuum and we covered these last time I'll just uh quickly uh run through them but a student-based budgeting system is going to allocate dollars more than uh fulltime equivalents it's going to use enrollment projections as the basis for funding um we are going to come up with or if we were to do this we would come up with an objective and measurable student characteristics that could waight our formula um it can can be a less predictable option if schools have declining enrollment we'll talk about that in a moment a little deeper it utilizes a formula to calculate the funding for each school again it makes our principles become our um primary decision makers uh with uh some input uh from their teams uh central office will manage all the calculations weights and total dollars that are allocated very similar to how we do it today uh and it can be seen as more Equitable and responsive to fund our students based on the needs and the characteristics um but it really can be dependent or should be dependent on our policy that we write down uh before we uh roll out the dollars and then again the transparency will depend on the actual budget process so we just wanted to go a little bit deeper we wanted to share a few more of the uh potential benefits of a student-based budgeting system that we've um unraveled as we've been having a lot of uh learning time around this subject on the next slide I'll share some of the uh potential um issues that we've have noticed so again it empowers our principles to address the unique challenges uh within their buildings so uh principles rather than saying You must have this and you must have that you must have this and uh feeling like maybe there's not a lot of flexibility uh the principles would say or we would give the principles a certain amount of money and they would come up with a staffing pattern that um solves the issues or puts the staff in the positions that uh they think will best um deal with the challenges um in their building it will or could encourage our schools to improve their programming and outcomes so more students enroll and their funding increases um we removed a barrier if you remember during attendance option redesign and made all of our schools basically uh minus the high schools uh self transport schools meaning you can apply if we have space available to bring your student to any um School within our district and uh that's been a very successful process so far um I will talk to you about that in in a minute um but this would uh encourage um uh competition because you would want uh students to come to your building because every student that comes to your building would bring more funding with them uh targeted funding so uh we would have to come up with the formulas and figure out how to uh weight uh different student characteristics that are measurable um but common ones would be students living at poverty might be weighted more than students not living in poverty students needing multilingual uh learning Services uh could be weighted higher than uh students who uh English is their first language and students with special education is another common way to uh wait the funding formula and then the thought being that that gives the principle more money to deal with characteristics within their students that would um need more supports and then it increases the participation in the annual budgeting process again uh we have a very highly um centralized system right now where um our principles by and large know exactly what they're getting before they even sit down and go through their budgeting process this would put a lot of autonomy back to the buildings back to our principles uh to work with their staff to uh uh come up with the plan for their building I wanted to just go into some of the challenges uh that we've also um been talking about as we've been working through this uh one challenge that comes up is related to something I said in the previous one but it might be difficult to find the best student-based budgeting formula out there um we uh know that we need to do more um thinking and more uh discussions about how to come up with the best formula for Rochester Public Schools given the constraints and the amount of resources that we will have when we roll this out it could increase workload on our central office staff uh in our finance department if there are a lot of different budgeting um unique budgeting ideas out there in our our school buildings uh our principles are very creative and um very educated and have great ideas uh that could be taxing on us as we try to sort that out and try to figure out the best way to code um all the staff um with the uh systems that were required to report back to Minnesota Department of Education uh it could as I was saying earlier it could increase um um funding for a school if they get increased enrollment but it also could create competition amongst our schools that we haven't necessarily seen before which could also lead to undermining some of our collaboration our efforts to actually work as a system pointed um in the same direction it could lead to different programming at schools we could get um different ideas out there and um for example somebody could come up with we want this to be our Focus to be Arts and Music and uh that could come at the expense of some other subject area and that could um start to craft some of our buildings looking slightly different from other buildings in our smaller schools uh something that could happen if we don't provide maybe a small school subsidy and if we're just rolling out dollars based on the literal number of kids in the building they may not be able to adhere to the district's class- siiz Targets in the same way um there is a size to a school that um if there isn't a certain amount of funding it can't fully cover the base operations like the princip ipal and the office and the maintenance staff so on and so forth so um right now in a highly centralized uh system where we roll out those resources no matter what the size of the building is that could become a challenge um uh to fully staff the way we're used to uh it might be difficult to provide extra supports in some of our schools so if how we come up with our formula and how we wait our students and how we uh divvy up the dollars that are available some of our schools have been used to having certain supports in the high highly centralized uh environment that operate might not be able to afford to pay for those Services based with the dollars that they are given uh based on the characteristics of their students when we get to budget reductions a lot of the pressure is likely going to um and if this were to happen not saying that this is going to happen because uh with the referendum uh in play uh we are hoping that we um obain um funding for the next 10 years but if there were a need to uh have some sort of budget reductions say labor costs were going up much faster than uh funding in the future it would push the or put the pressure on the uh School principal to make those decisions versus uh getting a manual from the central office that says this is exactly how you're going to make budget reductions in your building um and it could uh create an incentive for the principal to favor lower cost staff with less experience to gain more Staffing numbers and that would only be concerned if we decided to um allocate or charge to our principles the actual cost of the staff we haven't made that decision yet um and of I think we talked about last time we are bound by Union contracts so um we would follow all those and we would honor those um as they are written today um but it could cause um some interesting situations there where um uh certain leaders might want to staff it differently depending on the actual cost of Staff again if we charge than the actual cost of the staff on or in their building could if I might Madam let me just make really clear what John just walked us through is not a recommendation for RPS it's an overview of one approach to budgeting that we are learning from and thinking about a lot um as you could tell there are some benefits to it but there are some issues and we're grappling with it really um carefully what we're about to turn to now with the central office is is kind of pivoting to a what is really happening in RPS so I know we're we're this is part of a multi- meeting dialogue that we know uh is going to be sustained over a number of months but I want to be really clear both for board members and for anybody watching that um the Paradigm uh John just walked us through is something we are learning from and thinking about um but not necessarily uh will be the substance of a recommendation to you uh in the fall thank you very much for pointing that out you said it but I just want to be really clear about it because it's a very different reality from the one that we're in and I just want to be super clear that this is a this is part of a a learning uh process that will result in a recommendation to this board before the end of the calendar year but we're still in that learning phase absolutely thank you so then as we shift to central office budgeting um we've focused a lot of our time a lot of our meetings so far a lot of our learning has been on how do we allocate the money appropriately in the best way to our school sites the other reality we need to deal with something that's long overdue in the way we budget at Rochester Public Schools is the funding of our central office departments and the functions that we provide um I'm a supervisor over the technology the facilities the transportation um and we're provided budgets that include funds for the staffing the contracted services or the purchased services and our supply budgets but we haven't done for a long time is really um looked at that system in depth and made sure are these appropriate budgets are they um are are they too much probably not too much but are they too little and then what functions do we say go to the school building and what functions actually go to the central office budgeting system and so there's a lot of conversations a lot of things that need to happen uh before we can get to a recommendation on that but we just we wanted to name this as an issue that we're also grappling with at the same time here is a list uh a bulleted list that we came up with uh very quickly of some of the things that we uh don't have sustained budget allocation ations um currently within our current budget models um for example we recently bought um a large dollar amount of curriculum for uh reading and that came because we had money from federal covid funding that we could Target towards that as well as money specifically named to us in the read act what we don't have though is that same kind of robust budgeting to do a regular uh rigorous review of all of our curriculums like science and math and and on on and so uh the challenge there or that you know that's that's it's the thing we need to solve is if we're going to properly resource those things what are we not going to Resource then at the school level um and so that's where um some of the tough uh work is ahead of us and trying to figure what's the right amount and where does that money come from um just some other uh things on there family engagement process uh we don't have a robust budget for that we've added a couple software products that you've heard a lot about in some of your presentations by my colleagues recently Zell and fastbridge as uh examples uh we funded those with covid funding they're perfectly legitimate uses but we need to uh likely find an ongoing continuous funding source for them uh recruitment of new staff upgrade to our playgrounds is a common one that comes up in my world um being having oversight of finance and Facilities there are a lot of Aging School Playgrounds out there that um need some uh upgrading and we would like to find a dedicated funding source to be able to do that but again it's going to come at the cost of something else in the system employee support and wellbeing purchases for staff technology and devices we've said this over and over I hear in um when superintendent explains referendum but we we do we pass on student devices that are generally three years old to our staff unless that building or that department can find it within their budget to buy their staff uh new technology devices so we give our our staff um hand me- down devices and then translation of materials into languages other than English uh and there's a whole list like this that we could go on on couple big issues that we also need to address as we come to thinking about maybe going back to the school budgeting um staff development um should that be managed and budgeted at the centralized uh central office level or should that be rolled out uh more uh to our school site right now it's a hybrid where there's some money that's reserved and rolled out and the teachers at that building um actually plan and decide how to spend that money but a good chunk of the staff development funding is still um managed and budgeted here at the central office level another um and this really comes down to allocating the appropriate amount of funds for our high schools but currently we don't do a deduct or we don't subtract money out of the high school budget formula for students that are leaving the high school building to go to PSO classes ctech classes or ptech classes um and so we know that that's an issue that we need to um make an adjustment for and um figure out how we're going to do that and how we're going to come I think that gets me to the end of the prepared remarks um again none of what you have heard tonight is an absolute recommendation we're catching you up on the learning and the conversations we've had so now as we spend the next couple months um we we will be sharpening um our focus on some of these issues we've named uh so that superintendent can come back and give you uh the recommendation board members any questions observations comments director mclan um Mr Carlson this might be a question for you or for superintendent pel and I've been kind of thinking about this for a while and also sit on the uh Community budget advisory committee so I've kind of been thinking through that concept do you have enough information at this point to answer a question about how drastically this impacts the work of a principal on a day-to-day basis um that it seems like their jobs would be quite different at least for periods of time during the year do you have enough information to be able to speak to that um I I it's a fantastic question so thank you Dr mlin for it I lived through a version of this in St Paul public schools during the years that I worked there and we got it to the point where principles controlled about 51% of their budget they didn't want all of that budget um special education they didn't want to have multilingual learning what we called e they didn't want but we got it to about 51% they wanted those things they didn't want the budget they want right they wanted thank you they wanted the services they wanted the kids they didn't want the budgets they want the authority and it was a six-year process of actually both expanding their Authority but building their capacity as well and it was a tension because a it was being pulled by against other other things but they also actually had to learn to allocate resources in a way that right now is not on their to-do list they needed to think about those Staffing ratios and so um it is a significant um increase um we also had a structure which I believe I would also recommend here in Rochester where the principal was not just the enlightened dictator and could control of so you replace us with the principal there was a school Improvement team and and the co-chairs uh one of which had to be a teacher their signature was required on the plan and the budget to move it forward so the principal had Authority but they had to have some consensus building and we worked very hard to have those become teams that represented perspectives of the school but but the principal was key and ultimately that was a critical decision maker and um it was a drag on the time and other things that said um it was tremendously empowering for those principles as well because St Paul like Rochester was a incredibly diverse School District at the time and principles went from needing to accept the uh allocations they were given by the district to not complete at all but increased flexibility for Designing programming and things and just one example that will always stick in my mind um there was one Elementary School um uh where the principal went to a conference it was in an urban area of almost all low-income kids and he went to a conference and discovered a program program that NASA was creating to prepare elementary kids to educate them around the theme of space and he came back and he said I he introduced it to his school community and he said we want to become a space school Aerospace and everybody what in the world is this school on the east side of St Paul going to do with their they built the consensus and then they had the authority to build the programming and the classes and it was really quite an extraordinary uh period and that to me was the most like visible uh example of a school taking the kind of autonomy the there was still approval of that process to be sure they were going to meet the curricular requirements and things uh but I remember when the principal who was one of those Troy Vincent for anybody out there who's he's now retired but he was one of those sort of uh big personalities and when he got passionate about something you heard about it a lot and I remember when this Farnsworth Elementary becomes Farnsworth Aerospace came up people kind of laughed and then three years later they were winning Awards um but they had the flexibility to they had to change their schedule their Staffing model and all those kinds of things um and there were other schools that made smaller changes that was particularly Vivid because it became a schoolwide uh focus and boy he lived it for those years I mean it was a passion uh in that case so thank you an important question that you don't want to decentralize Authority ahead of capacity because then you just get more more bad decisions being made in more places like we want to actually not that we have bad decisions being made now but you want to make sure that you're you're building that capacity to think in terms of resources thank you Dr Workman yeah I I had some similar um thoughts along that line as well but um and once again perhaps this is outside of your wheelhouse right now because you're just in the early stages but when you talk about competing for schools are we talking about competition among schools are competition to bring school you know students into the district and I could see some problems with that but one would be might be um the reallocation of how we do our attendance boundaries is every school going to be a choice school um and then what do we do about the neighborhood kids do they get you know how how would that work in and I know this is I'm really getting ahead of thee of my skis here but I think something to keep in mind as you move forward with this I would say it's a both and I'm looking for our schools to um be attractive to our families within our district and as part of our enrollment strategy just like other districts um want our students to open enroll into their District I would love to see students wanting to choose ratest or public schools from outside our boundaries as well you know I mean when I talk about competition then it's to sort of the well-being of you know what's happening at that school and just to not have the idea that some people do that we have good schools in Rochester and we have bad schools in Rochester that I mean there has to be some kind of guard rail around that again I think um with some of the decisions we made last year in becoming a self- transport as an option to any school so long as you can get your child there uh we put up a new Lottery system and I've seen applications come in for all of our schools so all of our schools are sought after um by people um obviously there are some that like a Lincoln that only has the option of you know you need to go through the self- transport application process because they don't have a boundary but I've seen people wanting to get into all of our schools and I'm sure there's a whole variety of reasons behind that so oh Dr brother did you have uh yes thank you and perhaps your uh last statement is an opening to my initial statement and that is um for those families who are able to provide self transport uh then they're fully able to potentially take advantage of the uh new offerings that are available U across town s to speak um is there for the viewing uh public um what's the driving need uh to even engage if you will in uh this particular um and I want to make sure I get the name correct uh rethinking funding okay uh at this particular point in time I would I would say that focuses on a couple main areas one we want to make sure that we have the proper allocations to our school building so that they're getting the resources they need to run a school building and school programming uh but just as much we need to figure out the central office budgets and um and the funding for them as well um at times it might seem like we should cut our budget primarily at the central office level but when we do that we sometimes forget that at the central office level we also are Staffing services that are being provided and pushed into our schools like our special education services I'd say are centrally budgeted and centrally managed but they're in the schools and they're providing services to the kids so we do need um to address both sides of the issue and then um finally um where we are or and this is just uh step two of a six-step process um the fact that we um have a um we'll be voting on a referendum this this fall is there any direct correlation again for those who may be wondering or considering the timing is there any direct correlation between the two or they separate or I think I superintendent would you want to manage that question uh uh thank you Dr B it's a very very very timely question I find it hard to imagine bringing you a recommendation for extensive change if we are also were faced with cutting $1 19.4 million for the next year following the failure of a referendum I think that to director mclin's point about our capacity of our leaders that would be too much to ask we're going to cut 19.4 million for year and we're going to change our budget and Staffing model I think we would have to defer this change to subsequent years because simply cutting that level of funding as we will also be talking about in coming meetings in a Humane and smart way would more than absorb our time here and at the school level I I would not say that should take it off the table in perpetuity I think we still need to think this through I think uh your question and I saw director crockstead wanted to jump in so I'm just going to give him a chance a minute when you say why do this I regularly have principles and teachers uh and counselors and bring innovative ideas to me and say this would be great it's good for kids we need you to give us more money to do it and we don't have that more money to do it and so I think part of the core question is how do we get a funding system where they have resources that enable them to allocate to priorities because right now in our system they come down and ask for additional funding here and uh when we don't have that funding the answer is too often no and it's not the answer we often want to give I don't know Andy if you wanted to go back I was going was going to say I was also going to just mention you know it is the basis it's the it's one of the base building blocks of the Strategic plan and in order to work the Strategic plan and deliver on the expected outcomes of the Strategic plan we need to make sure that the funding is in place and strategically to to use that word in place to uh support everything in that plan and I think it's fair to say right now things aren't quite lined up necessarily in the way that will deliver on all of those outcomes in that strategic plan and this is this is moving in that direction and then finally if I may chair um no one should interpret this as if you will a fair mongering uh attempt on the part of the district to try to get go the taxpayers into I appreciate the fact that you have provided uh examples of um unfunded if well mandates uh so important for that to be uh heard and understood and and realized um there just are some things we uh will be unable to uh do uh with our current funding uh and uh ultimately even if I shouldn't say even if uh when the referendum passes there still will be a need for uh this 3 if you will and and so I'm I'm glad to hear and realize that uh you know this is true regardless of but the Dynamics of uh will po potentially change either way with the approval or disapproval Thank You tror Marvin to me this is a little bit of the horse in the cart kind of thing um I think it's really smart to be looking at how we're funding things I think you know if we could keep doing things the way we've been doing them but I think questioning um periodically is is important and and exploring different ideas I guess my uh my concern right now is that how buildings will prioritize uh what they think is important for their kids so for instance I think you gave the example that if one school thinks music is really important for this group of kids in this community Community um what gets lost then at that school that kids and certain kids attending that school then won't have the opportunity to have the same experiences as kids at another school uh I mean we already have buildings we only have one building that's K8 we only have one building with the planetarium um but it it seems I mean this could evolve into like a magnet school system where each school has a specialty and people get to choose and it that's been used in different districts at different times but um I I guess that's my concern and my question as we go forward about what kind of a district do we want to be what kind of offerings do we want to provide and what kinds of how careful do we want to be that most kids can get most experiences at their school wherever that one is director Garcia um I appreciate also that you're bringing this to us I think this is incredible and I love the graphs because it helps somebody who's not a finance person understand what we're looking at um and I also appreciate uh Dr pel you mentioning that you know the the management of like the resources and the capacity to do this will come before you know a decision would have to be made because in a time like this my my initial got reaction was to protect the principles because we're looking at such a significant deficit that I wouldn't want them to have to have that responsibility um at least not in the chaos of kind of what we're looking at right now and I recognize that staff know their neighborhoods and they know their kids and so they would know what is supposed to be happening or what should be happening or could benefit their neighborhood best um and so I would love the idea of giving them that respect and some of autonomy or maybe doing a little bit of a shared thing like we take the brunt of the responsibility for difficult decisions but when we do have the ability and the authority to allow that to be shared among schools I think that would be phenomenal because we just heard from uh one of our speakers that to have more predictability across schools would likely make their family feel more comfortable whereas some families in schools would like the idea of the magnet like yes I would love to go to the Aerospace school or I would love to go to the fine arts school and so I think after hearing all of the discussion now I I feel a little bit more balanced in knowing all of this offers like a different set of Promise than I had expected before because you sort of just assume like this is how our budget Works therefore it will always be that way um but it's I suppose based on this it doesn't necessarily have to be and there are ways that we could potentially be creative because we are an incredibly unique District so I appreciate you both bringing this forward and I can see I still feel the protectiveness of principles in in times like this and recognize that like down the line when we have happy happy budget talks to be leaning into that maybe starting to build that capacity would make a little bit of sense and it if we're really doing you know this like culturally responsive education allowing schools to make those decisions which they know would positively affect the neighborhoods where their schools are I think would be an excellent opportunity director Workman um yeah I think I'd be really interested not today because this is way in the future of um delving into the idea of magnet schools which director Marvin has just mentioned an issue with music and director Garcia did the same is that from my experience teaching High School is that a lot of my a large percent percentage of my students were also interested and wanted to do the NASA space program or whatever you know they were taking all of the really tough AP classes so once you pull those things apart I think it not only makes it difficult for students and parents to figure out which way they're going but also um eliminates the opportunity for a student to have that well-rounded education that I think is really important so um like I said I know I'm into the weeds and you know probably five years ahead of myself here but I just thought I'd throw it out and I I hear the conversation about this the specialization or concentration or um certain focuses of the school but I think as I as I think about where this is going to go um I see embedded in this a responsibility to adhere to a core um set of standards and offerings that will um allow all of our students to get the education that they need to fulfill our mission statement but I've also seen in a number of our schools both neighborhood and districtwide options they've chosen to deliver that core differently so um I don't see that you know you're not going to not learn how to read at any of our schools you're not going to not learn science but you might have a more Outdoors based science program at one school if they're able to structure it this way and you might have a more engineering based wanted another school similar to that the NASA program but if we don't give our principles and our Educators the option to innovate um things are changing faster than the state is changing standards and curriculum instruction um opportunities are changing faster than then they're changing our textbooks and that they're changing the curriculum that that they buy I mean we're on a what buying new curriculum every how many years 10 years when the standards change most to be 10 so we don't it's not funded right but to to have to wait even 10 years before you innovate curriculum and it takes money to innovate curriculum so I I'm excited to hear about how we'll do both how we how we will ensure and communicate to everyone the expectations for the high quality education for our students but give our Educators that flexibility to innovate not only is the curriculum changes as our kids change because I think our kids are changing way faster than uh you know on a 10-year period so thanks for that if I sure might brief you madam chair to director baros Point earlier about the connection between this and the referendum and Dr Garcia mentioned it too of course the referendum is uh the fifth of November we will be bringing you a proposal on the 19th intentionally a couple weeks after so we will calibrate based on what we find out that will be a regular board meeting where I'll give an overview of The Proposal then in the the 3D of uh December we will you will hear it in a prep for Action format um the beginning of a process the 10th of December you will have a study session to dig in deep and then should you so choose you would vote on a proposal by the 17th of December and the logic of the timeline is as board members know well we start our budgeting process in the very beginning of the new calendar year and so should you choose to move in one of these directions uh for the 25 26 school year we would need your decision if the end of the calendar year and so that timeline is um not far away and thank you again very much for laying the groundwork thank you thank you our next item is a monitoring item summer of Discovery 2024 superintendent Fel thank you chair Nathan I'm going to um invite our executive director of community uh Partnerships and education Amy Ike to come up Amy is going to uh choose to drive our ship from the podium up there and uh we can still of course engage her in conversation I want to thank Amy and everybody on the team that has done an amazing job in the three years that I've been here in managing what we have come to call Summer Discovery and let's just say this is not your grandfather or grandmother's summer school so Amy here we go thank you the reason I'm standing here is to keep moving because uh we know this is monitoring and I could talk forever about summer um so thank you board for hearing a monitoring report on summer of Discovery uh you'll notice in the small print at the bottom that I have this marked as our final year and I don't say that as an absolute but as a final year of funding and we'll talk a little bit about that by the way this picture happens to have some male clinic folks in it that came to work with our summer of Discovery students at John Adams and what they're using there is an ultrasound machine to find the buried items under the the jelly that they brought with them so um summer of Discovery is truly about experiences and then tying the academic knowledge to those experiences so very quickly we had very similar enrollment this year to our last couple of years at the elementary little bit different arrangement of sites due to construction projects that were going on at the middle and high school uh we did see fewer Kellogg students and I think you noticed that when a building is not available due to construction and so that's kind of a natural um lower number this year they combined over at John Adams and so we had some Kell students there but not quite as many as last year and then our high school is down slightly from previous years we did make one major change this year to the schedule and that was moving all of the credit recovery into June and having a morning and afternoon session I don't know if that was a direct um causation of the lower um registration but it's just down slightly not a lot I will go quickly through these next few slides you've seen these before these are the background goals of Summer of discovery that were established by the task force originally that said if we want to do summer learning correctly what does it need to look like and then the second step of their work was to say okay if we want it to look like that what do we need to change what are the shifts in practice and again you've seen these before but just to kind of set those in your mind so this year as I said we're coming to a transition for a number of reasons one is the end of the federal covid funding uh that was earmarked for summer so there were all different sources of covid funding but this one was specifically on summer we did actually get a fourth summer out of that money we were thinking it would last us three it lasted us four so that's a plus uh but that is done this September and so we have concluded use of the those dollars we've expended them all so we didn't leave any on the table um and we've used them with our students uh this is also a time then that I'll be working with my new friend Mona Perkins on uh what does summer look like going forward so we'll tie this back to the office of academics uh so that our strategic work in reading math and other academic areas has a really close tie with Summer efforts and then uh the idea of the model will have to think about as we are going into a different Financial picture what pieces of the model can we keep and where do we need to reduce so as always as a staff Leed program we turned to our staff who were working in the program teachers and others and said help us reflect in this uh moment in time at the turning point that we face so we've asked them how they would describe the value to students the value to staff and where we could make shifts in our practice and adjustments we could make to the model so what you see in the slides and you had these ahead so I won't read all these to you um but we had many many comments that were summarized into these eight points I will admit at the lower right hand corner that uh we did use chat GPT to help summarize before I did however I read every comment and I was pretty impressed with how it did the summary and so I feel like these are an accurate um presentation of those but you can see the many things the staff felt were uh positive for our students and then we've always felt along the way that summer of Discovery was also a positive for the staff involved they told us they ReDiscover discovered their passion for Education through some of their experiences the autonomy to create the learning environment uh the small classes all of that so we asked them about that and then finally we asked them another question I'll get to in just a moment as we're facing this transition I wanted to dig a little deeper into one area and that is this financial picture and I know that as a supportive board you always ask what can you do for us so I'm anticipating that question and letting you know that there is a structural issue in Minnesota funding specifically an EXT extended time Revenue which includes after school and summer at the same time we have the ends of these covid dollars and I would say the normal inflationary increases in salaries and things like that that you're seeing so I'm calling that a perfect storm at my be a little too over the top but I like that term so we've got the blend of covid funds expiring we have a Minnesota statute that establishes funding for extended day that really hasn't kept up over time so I'm going to show you three things one is the statute itself so this is 126 c. uh 10 or 10 this is the same statute that has both the general education formula base which is how we fund our general fund and then it also has a paragraph on extended time Revenue so you see those two numbers circled in red the general school day formula is the 7,000 number and the extended day base is the 5,000 this is a historical picture of those numbers so what you see down the left are the years you'll see back in 2005 those numbers were identical 4501 nope 4601 and 4601 identical numbers in the two parts of the statute not since then have they matched and if you look down the third column which is the extended time Revenue not since 2015 has the base for extended time changed so as the formula base increases although not totally keeping up with inflation does keep up better than the extended time Revenue base the extended time revenue is intended to fund 02 extra times so if we say one average daily member or ADM is a school day after school is supposed to fund 02 more So 20% more um however right now it's it's funding 0.14 so it's not keeping up with where summer funding needs to go and right now there's um a 30% difference there if we look at the gened base versus the extended time base so in the bullets here I've kind of tried to summarize so the last time it's adjusted or last time they matched was 2005 last time it was adjusted 2015 so 10 years ago were staying at that same level and I would say since 2005 any guesses on how much total inflation I can figure it out we've had I happen to Google it this afternoon 61% so what cost you $20 in 2005 would cost you 3220 today or a salary that cost you 50,000 back then would cost you 80,500 so just to give you an idea how much the expenses have changed since that time when they were last equal so today you see the graph on the right the blue line is our general Ed base and you've seen a similar graph to this except it's the inflation graph so the inflation line would actually be even higher than this blue line here that's actual for our general Ed formula the orange line is where the after school or extended time uh formula summer formula is so it's been flat for many many many years so I would say if there's anything that we could do about this um this would be an area to look at and I know the board has a legislative um planning conversation and so I'm just dropping that little tip in there for you so what can we do we asked our staff again what were the most impactful pieces of the model overwhelmingly 96.1% said the smaller classes were the most impactful thing so we set about a 15 to1 ratio for summer that matches the Rand study on what works in summer learning and small class sizes for relationship building more differentiation of instruction and then that ability for kids to be in an identity affirming environment 82.4 told us the Community Partnerships and expanded experiences were the second highest of the model components and finally three quarters said the investment in design and prep time for teachers was critical to the model you see down below what some of the other parts of the model were uh those were those shifts of practice that we offered so we asked the staff okay if you have to make some hard choices what are your suggestions so the Orange is their suggested ideas partner with those organizations who can maybe provide free experiences um we do see on the challenge side that businesses and organizations have to cover their cost too so we don't often find um totally free experiences but there's an option that we can go for eliminating our intern our paid intern positions at the high school level of course many of our high schoolers do need to work over the summer either to help with family expenses or to save funds uh consolidating multiple sites into fewer this is a definitely an idea that we can follow up on um one on the other side of that of course is you may see a reduction in interest if it's not in my building right as a teacher and a student um eliminating some of the support positions and the site director positions likely we'll have to do that um what we don't want to do is go back to the old model where people weren't excited to come kids weren't excited staff weren't excited so we want to try and keep what we can um and of course increasing class sizes is an option as well so those hard choices are in front of us and we'll be working together closely on that um behind the scenes with our staff and so what's next office of academics will be taking over summer learning uh going forward I'll I'll be helping in the transition we've talked about that um we will continue to seek substantial funding so that we don't have to cut so deeply and so anyone listening out there who happens to have some money available for summer learning we'd love to talk with you um we'll be working with the leadership from the last four years to really continue that thinking this was truly a teacher-led initiative and we don't want to lose that and then working with our fellow Minnesota school districts that are all part of the Wallace Foundation District summer Learning Network uh we are talking about this uh funding chall through the formula to see if we can make some Headway on that so I just want to thank you you've been very supportive of Summer of Discovery for these last four years it's been a joy and we'll we'll see what we can do to maintain as much of it as we can thank you am director Workman so I guess what I'm hearing you say is it would be really helpful if the pandemic funding Call It by a different name could be sustained yes and another example I'd like to give I think of funding that would help certainly in after school programs as well as generally is the funding that was provided that Prov that um provided a 40% reduction in child poverty you know so all of those things have really I think have borne out some really important things to support some really important things and then every loves it and then the funding goes away but you're still kind of well why aren't you doing this anymore right so the needs don't go away right well I can say uh Dr Marvin and I were fortunate enough to attend the Olympics the end of summer of Discovery Olympics um at Elton Hills and um not only did we see the students we saw the parents there but we also had a chance to talk to some of the staff and they expressed um a lot of this feedback um their energy on a hot summer day in the middle of summer was I think really inspiring and it's interesting we're doing this presentation right after we did the rethinking funding because it's that kind of creativity and Innovation that they were able to do through summer discovery that we were just talking about that you know different funding might might allow so um thank you for all you and your your team have done because in person you can see the results of of what's happened with these kids Dr mclin um thank you for putting this on the legislative committee radar um I didn't see that in your final point on your last slide that that was probably speaking to that point that it is a Statewide issue and that um I think the legislative I like your idea that the legislative committee is probably a good place to take a look at this great thank you thank you thank you our next monitoring topic is back to school 2024 425 it's here superintendent pel it's here um I would like to ask uh Jackie Peterson our chief of schools and uh John Carlson our chief administrative officer to come up and give you an overview of the preparations for the new school year that we are about to start next week so John and Jackie got Carl coming Carl you added we should be standing up too because this is also a focused topic but we'll be quick right back to school 2024 it happens before you know it I I I know we're all very excited to be back we've had some great energy in our buildings today um that we'll talk about um today actually was the first day staff was back in building in their buildings yesterday was a flexible day they we did have teachers working but they had the ability to work uh offsite if they needed to so our buildings were were partially full of staff and a lot of energy today uh we had great welcome back activities across the district I had the opportunity to stop um I I kind of covered the southeast quadrant this morning focusing on buildings that have had changes like uh Riverside where there's two staff uh two staffs coming together you remember with Spanish Immersion and then um I was at Longfellow um this morning as well as Pinewood has U has joined that staff um at Riverside they were doing a really fun activity in the cafeteria while I was there the the staff had all provided a fun fact or a strange fact about themselves and uh the administrators had put together a PowerPoint and in teams they had to guess who this person was who's deathly afraid of Taxidermy for example and um they had five choices for each one the five people that were named in that as choices were required to stand so it was a great opportunity for the Riverside staff to get to know uh the names of the people that were were standing as possible choices um there were a lot of fun things going on I found out that we have a teacher there who's also an attorney or is a licensed attorney there were a lot of really interesting things that came came from that but mostly super fun super engaging and it's clear that that staff is ready to work together um Long Fellow the the Longfellow teachers provided a trail mix bar for the Pinewood staff and they had some sort of a sign I think it said something like we're excited to be on this trail with with you so nice to see these uh welcoming activities happening where we have staffs coming together um today there were uh also staff meetings and kind of business uh taking care of business and then then in the afternoon uh the buildings uh were were sharing information from what they learned at leadership last week about the referendum and other topics that we wanted them to principles to share um tomorrow looks a lot like today in terms of format I should say yesterday or today and tomorrow esps are included in uh in the training and opportunities to be together in the building uh and Thursday will then just be licensed staff Friday is a non-duty day uh for all licensed staff and esps but I would imagine our our buildings will still be buzzing with uh with work and preparation I wanted to give you a brief update on enrollment so uh as we were preparing this for you about 8 days ago we pulled our current enrollment it's sitting at 17,36 and probably has ticked up a little bit since then uh one year ago we just wanted to pull where were we one year ago as close as we could be we were at 17,50 3 registered at that point uh this is a small decline of 134 students but it actually is better than what we uh had budgeted and predicted uh which you remember from budgeting season was a decline of 271 so we're feeling optimistic that uh we will meet or exceed our enrollment uh goal or Target for the year um and uh be on track for Budget I I didn't put this in here but I just have a data point on the uh self transport I was looking over there a few moments ago we've had 663 students accept uh a position at a school that is not their um attendance area school we have uh seven families right now that have a text or an email to them that they need to respond to by a deadline to accept an offer and then we have 53 students uh still on waiting lists uh We've really worked that down over the summer and I guess I would encourage if anyone is paying attention uh we will continue to process those um as we go so there is still opportunity if a family needs to make a last minute uh decision that's best for their child this is a late breaking slide about school age child care as our colleague Amy Ike shared with us at cabinet yesterday that uh they have uh passed the goal of an additional 25% % or 300 spots for uh school age child care and they have not stopped working uh to to uh add additional spots uh we're really excited about the fact that a lot of our high school students are working in the sac program um and and our high schools have made that possible through uh scheduling and and some kids are earning credit for that work this is also a a late add to the slide deck we wanted to provide you with an update on sta Staffing and our vacancies if you look at that slide we are and this is a snapshot in time this was late last week early this week it it has changed since then I know there's been a a busy push for hiring um with principes and um other hiring managers so as of late last week slash early this week we had um 34 openings for f um FTE for esps that's actually lower than the last couple of years we've we've been running in the 70s and 80s during the summer as far as vacancies so that that's a trend in the right direction um maintenance that very surprised by that that's a very low number um one one one as of the running of that report no we could have had some resignations since then and so I won't or we could have hired one one that's very possible that's glass half full approach yes I'm working on that we've had one day of Full Employment in maintenance one day in the last uh like four or five years so we're hoping to we're almost there and I think and if anyone's watching another day and you could double it we could double um Food Service seven again that's lower than we we probably would see this time of year it's it's encouraging and I know we had a hiring event a couple of weeks ago and they probably were 15 people that Sher interviewed that day alone um our general Ed teachers were at 12.8 FTE and a lot of those are partial FTE that will be picked up as overloads a lot of 0.1 point tws that will be picked up um especially at the secondary um our challenge continues to be special ed related Services as of the writing uh running of this report is 25.5 that is that's a number that's been typical the last couple of years um and we as I dug a little deeper into that one I mean we're Social Work LD openings licensed School nurses intensive area teachers um so that that will be a continued Challenge and again I know our hiring managers our directors and coordinators are still interviewing people and working very hard to fill these positions but I was talking to Rob when I before the Rob CN in our office and even today I noticed the Staffing sheet when I when he was leaving and I just said it looks like people have been entering he said he would have estimated 10 10 positions added today alone so we we never stop we'll just keep on working to hire great people all right we thought you might be interested in where we're at with communicating our cell phone uh procedures uh before I go into that I will say we hosted a uh a round table on Thursday last week in this room um chair Nathan was part of that group we had a number of teachers administrators a couple parents we had a student in the room and um we had a really good a hearty 90minut discussion about um implementing the procedures and being um a standard on how we implement ment those and how important that is and I was really pleased to hear um teachers really behind this change and excited for it um um some some of the folks that were in the room have been through the pilot and were able to share some really good information and um really Senator man was looking to see whether we felt it would be helpful to have a Statewide policy um or uh uh uh legislation around um no cell phones and that uh was an interesting convers ation with um fairly similar opinions on that and I think overall the group agreed that if the state could do something to help it would be to educate our parents on how addictive and um concerning cell phones can be if they're not U monitored uh at home too so our communication so far we had an email right after you approved the procedures that night maybe even within a few minutes an email went out to the staff and to uh parents and caregivers about the procedures um we've emailed the high school students although they'll tell you they don't really read email they send it um they do know about it apparently somehow they've heard um and uh we've been doing social media posts about uh the change we've also gotten some press um across the state about these changes at the school level U well obviously the changes in the handbook that also went into effect a few minutes after you approved the procedures at our last meeting um those handbooks remember are um part of uh orientation with students so that we'll pay particular attention to that change we want to make sure all students understand the expectations um we'll be talking about those changes in advisory and Home Room I was particularly excited last week during leadership we had a chance to meet with the secondary principles and assistant principles on implementation we wanted to be sure we didn't just kind of have this and we think we know what we're doing we wanted to be very clear we all know what we're doing and we're being uh we're being systematic in our approach and I will tell you the high school uh principles all had already communicated with their student groups and the the students were already preparing how they would teach their peers about the changes there's some video work going on um there's some PBIS lessons being produced and some newsletter items so I don't think it's going to be a problem that people won't know about the changes we'll just uh need to make sure that we're monitoring and supporting as those changes go Place uh you are aware of the btime study uh btime changes we thought we would just put put that in the slide as well and that has also been well publicized and then finally uh we so appreciate the opportunity the board has provided our all of our schools for a chance to orient our students to really spend some time um at elementary with our kids and step into learning this is uh We've that's been in place a number number of years now and has been very successful will continue on with meet me in the middle uh where sixth graders attend the first day with some of their um seventh and eighth grade peers and all of the staff helping to in uh introduce Middle School to the sixth graders and then High School same thing with the ninth grade orientation um those are very very um fun days to watch the kids get acclimated and to see all the staff um joining in whether they work with sixth or nth grade or not uh they're part of making sure kids feel uh comfortable and welcome so that is our presentation tonight board members any questions comments enthusiasms I was gonna make a joke about B times but I do have a question on the last slide too if and we're you know talking about referendum to some degree tonight are things like um having these welcome days particularly the step into learning is that resource heavy that that would be something we'd have to look at cutting next year if the referendum doesn't pass or is that just kind of a standard different just different way to spread those resources around um it's a great thing to think about there's not an immediate resource savings from cutting that though if other reductions reduced learning time we would need to think about the fact that most kids are not in school all kids except when you're there with your teacher um so it might be a secondary uh reduction ction that if we needed to make other cuts that reduced instructional minutes we might have to look at that as well um there's not a separate cost for those days but um uh that could be a domino that might might need to fall thank you Dr brother and um in speaking with one of my uh daughters who is a um parent of both a middle schooler and well two middle schoolers and one Elementary uh she was thankful to hear he about the cell phone procedure and thought it was going to be of great value want to pass that on uh a little less though Inus about realizing that uh she'd have to have her daughter out there at 7:15 for the school bu pickup but um you guys are doing a great job communicating everything in advance and everything should go off without a hitch uh is it possible if we wanted to observe um uh uh the uh welcoming students and family events could we would it be okay with you to observe that absolutely I know the schools would welcome you coming in I've spent time uh my great memory of ninth grade orientation was being at uh Mayo high school last year and a few kids that probably I would have looked like in high school too kind of hanging back and not sure they wanted to participate but we I just kind of hung in there with them and participated with the kids that were reluctant and I I know that that that is is appreciated if it's just a an opportunity to connect with kids and see what's happening and thank the staff there's a lot of energy that goes into it and uh and um it's kind of fun to see um teachers that are normally very reserved you know doing the uh welcome cheer for the kids and leading some really fun crazy activities that um gets everybody ready for the year so I know they welcome you to see that and I think if we do want to be their board members remember that those Bel times that are listed are the times that they move into the building so if we want to be there we're probably going to need to be there 20 or 30 minutes earlier to uh see those welcome cheers and some of those other activities so director Workman I I was getting really confused trying to reconcile with calendars between slides two and six or two and eight um and I think slide two should read Wednesday August 21st Thursday August 22nd because I was trying to think are they doing this during their workday how does this work is it on the weekend so I'll be honest and say I used last year last year's calendar updated it and Kathy you should have CAU that can't do I wanted I wanted to mention to on the bus thank you for saying that so those all should have been received in the mail I got mine on Saturday and new this year we did put the estimated drop off time we've never really wanted to commit to that because it can Flex just a couple minutes depend on traffic and stuff uh but we wanted to really alert parents that you're going to have different pickup times and different drop off times this year and is the bus app still available yes uh the first view app um will be working and how would parents access that if they don't have it yes they can go to the App Store of their um phone and look for first view is what it's called and then they can track their students yes you have to do a little setup but if you had set it up last year it's going to carry forward and you can um you might you have to pair it up with your sheet and look up your bus number because your bus number might have changed but great well we'll be looking forward to seeing everybody back in the buildings next week thank you thank you our next item 8.1 is an action item superintendent goals for 20242 I will read the resolution and ask for a motion and second and we can follow with information and discussion be it resolved that the RPS School Board sets the following two goals for the work of the superintendent during the 2024 2025 school year both of which will be utilized to evaluate the superintendent's performance at the conclusion of the school year leadership component school board members rate the superintendent as effective or highly effective on at least 75% of the elements of the goals and standards-based superintendent evaluation framework developed by the Minnesota school board's Association and the Minnesota Association of school administrators and outcomes component at least one one third of the schools in RPS make statistically significant gains in the aggregate achievement in reading of all students in at least one grade level on the 2025 Minnesota comprehensive assessments when compared to the scores achieved on the 2024 Minnesota comprehensive assessments move approval second it has been moved and seconded any questions or discussion I just maybe a more processed question it seems to me and maybe I just have this wrong that um when we did this assessment um recently the superintendent did his own rating or did we do that is that a is that a change um the superintendent did the self assessment and then we discussed his evaluation and made our own determination internally of how we would rate him okay will that be the same then or are we doing it as the primary step I I think we'll talk about it when we get to that point of how we'll use the tool got it um whether we'll fill it out individually or or have the discussion jointly that's sort of how we've done it every year got it YK you thanks for the question though any other all right all those in favor of the resolution say I I opposed the resolution has been approved item 9.1 are there Business board questions and responses there were no questions submitted by board members before the meeting the updated ABCD is available in agenda item 9.2 for a future reference of agenda items are there any agenda items board members would like to raise for consideration for a future agenda hearing none our upcoming board meeting dates are September 10th at 5:30 a regular meeting September 17th at 5:30 a study session September 24th at 5:30 a regular meeting and October 8th 24 at 5:30 p.m. a regular meeting and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 6:52 p.m. way it go e e for