##VIDEO ID:v85hacbkW8U## good evening everyone I would like to call the regular business meeting of the Rockford area school district to order we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all thank you very much uh we'll go on your board roll call Madam clerk will you please call the rooll Jessica Johnson here Eric here Amy Edwards here Jenny NE here Jamie hilstrom here beasa is absent we have a excellent thank you so much we have for of the board uh item number two just checking Dr Ryle Hoover no uh changes or anything tonight's agenda no okay thank you I would like a a motion to approve tonight's agenda I'll make that motion thank you Miss Johnson there is an a motion on the floor I'd like a second second thank you Miss Edwards there is a first and a second any further discussion on tonight's [Music] agenda seeing none all those in favor signify by I I oppose agenda carries manly uh item number three public comments is there any comment public comment this evening seeing none thank you Courtney so much item number four is the consent agenda the consent agenda has been provided for your review already and I would appreciate a motion for the approval of tonight's consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda thank you Miss nean there is a first can I have a second I'll I'll second it thank you Miss Johnson there is a first and a second any discussion about tonight's consent agenda I did raise a couple questions to uh Dr Ryle Hoover about the FFA field trip to be sure that uh all of the te's are crossed and all of that stuff and and that the the of that trip would be coming either through the FFA or 21 and no additional expenses incurred and and and we're in good shape so I just wanted to share that conversation that we had um as well so seeing no other discussion all those in favor signify by I I oppos tonight's consent agenda carries uh superintendent's report Dr ridle Hoover thank you chair Gordy and here we are September 16th I'm moving into our first meeting official meeting of the school year uh now that we're two weeks into the start of the school year I am pleased to report um this has been a successful start of the school year with only a few exceptions in the area of support Personnel we are fully staffed in both our local bus routes as well as our Northwest Suburban Transportation routes have been running on time and as scheduled a little bit of a couple of uh first aid Jitters but I'm working with the principls and with Mike mcon we worked out those Kinks and it's been a successful start there um I would like to thank each of our principles and program leads as well as our custodial crew for preparing for the return of our students and staff I'd also like to thank our incredible teachers and support Personnel for their work in welcoming students and families uh to the 2425 school year uh we do have several presentations to share this evening which include presentations connected to our annual assessment report an update on the status of our technology infrastructure a report detailing the work of our learning and Innovation Department paining to the start of the school year and a summer report of our summer academic programming uh before we progress uh into the agenda just mentioned along with several other items I'd like to thank our Middle School principal POA for attending tonight um and he will present in a few moments about the wonderful happenings at uh Rockford Middle School Center for Environmental Studies before we get to principal wara I'd like to share some of the goings on at both Reams and Rockford high school as shared by their principal so Mr Menard wanted me to share that uh they have been busy implementing Avid strategies and research-based findings regarding note taking uh the teachers have begun an intentional analysis to their approach of instructing guiding monitoring and interacting with note taking in all of their classrooms this work will continue throughout the year in an effort to more closely monitor formative learning in real time um the high school began the school year following the protocol from the state to reduce to reduce personal technology use I.E cell phones in K12 school schools only allowing phones during passing time and lunch the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive which I'm not sure we all expected um as teachers feel students are more present and engaged and our students are interacting more with one another Mr Menard's favorite Exchange took place during lunch when a group of young women were walking and said see Mr Bernard we are choosing to talk instead of being on our phones even when we can be on our phones a so we're winning there um in respon respon to this protocol um the teachers at the high school developed a list of dozens of Engagement strategies to help students attention keep their attention instead of reverting to their phones um as as usual uh these strategies include writing work inquiry collaborative activities organizational tools and structures reading strategies and relational capacity building exercises uh the high school leadership team the student leadership team is already brainstorming ways to make a positive impact and keep student morale and culture High their latest Venture is to place encouraging message around the building including restrooms to boost Spirits uh the high school has created a new collaborative space for classroom breakout opportunities in the West Commons area underutilized lockers are removed and teachers are already using that space to bring their curriculum to life in a larger more spacious environment Student Activities are well underway as our students are making positive memories both on and off the field in court going to the elementary school assessment days were a huge success students and families returned to meet and greet with their uh teachers fast testing occurred individual reading testing eye and ear and health assessments Fall pictures and bus safety training fourth grade students will be participating in the kindness retreat with youth Frontiers on Thursday September 19th new staff will receive art arts training in September with Darren Eliason who trains new Step annually so they can utilize art strategies in their classroom staff will continue to participate in literacy training and best practices led by racial yakish throughout the school year re staff is also providing ongoing support to students and one another surrounding the sudden death of our second grade student Seth Davis principal nyus would like the board to know that the outpour outpouring of care concern and assistance for the staff and students during this difficult time has been incredible from both inside and outside of the district the re School Community will continue to heal and take care of each other's Hearts um connected to the tragedy I would like to share my heartfelt thanks for the work of our school crisis team our district crisis team as you know the incident and the accident occurred on a Friday evening the crisis team convened that very next morning in addition uh the team had a template for the purpose of supporting our students and staff as well as respectfully sharing the incredibly sad news uh this was a group effort but the efforts of Samantha Bloom Jill Gordy Jeff kenit and Crystal Larson were instrumental and I'm grateful for their work over a very busy weekend in addition to the wonderful things that have already taken place or on intermediate Horizon our schools there are several other exciting things to share with the board and listening audience this evening I'm happy to report that rock area schools hired our first American Indian parent advisory committee lison that is a mouthful uh this position was part-time and was filled by Dr Perry Buffy a longtime Rockford resident and strong supporter of our schools and the children and the family in the areas uh Dr Buffy began working with us in late August and he's already connected with the APAC students and families it helped that he knew them all pretty much ahead of time anyway um I'm happy to report that we are well on our way to a very successful year in supporting our indigenous students and families we also have a new Transportation manager through our contracted partner 4.0 his name is Nate uh Nate has been learning the ropes from veteran Transportation manager Barb Meyers who has come out of the retirement not once but twice um to help us with the logistics um Barb does share with Mike and I that we are in very good hands and I want to thank Mike melty who oversees District transportation has been in contact with Nate and is feeling good about the process in the area of activities Rockford High School act activities director Dan Pratt and his assistant Stacy Larsson have done their usual outstanding job in getting our fall activities off and running and in addition to their normal duties and new this year um they have been passed the Baton of running concessions as the booster club is moving their fundraising efforts to other areas along with this transition Dan has hired a two to four hour a week concessions manager to assist with ordering and stocking the concession stands um overall this new structure provide us uh with stability as and continuity as Dan and Stacy will have a direct role in overseeing concessions by the way this person that's helping us was a who was hopeful and glad to take over a couple extra hours in their schedule so wasn't like we wouldn't hired somebody off the street for that it was somebody in our building already um outside of new Personnel we've been busy in other areas based on our findings of our semiannual fire inspection which occurred this past spring local fire marshall met recently with our team of operational leaders to review and correct any potential shortcomings after this meeting I'm happy to report that we are currently up to cod in all areas of fire safety in terms of other preparations for year during Workshop week we had our all staff breakfast and state of the district presentation and our teachers also use this time to meet in their professional learning communities reviewing data and preparing instruction materials for the school year we also convened the full adsis team to review and plan for the school year which is especially important this year as we'll be drafting a new plan for submission to mde in early 2025 as mentioned in a previous meeting I submitted a proposal recently um to our state approved Alternative Program fiscal host who is Right Tech uh to add targeted services and after school Intervention Program at the elementary school this appro proposal was approved and we'll be working on plans to potentially Implement in the coming weeks I also participated in MD's react webinar where MD provide additional Clarity on the funding provided as well as plans for additional training on a local and personal level I am proud to share that of the 40 plus science of reading core cohort participants the three Educators who successfully completed the 50 plus hours of training first were all from Rockford the individuals were Kathy Matson Brendon ihus and me um the training was outstanding and we're all better informed and prepared to assist in leading our literacy initiatives a second round of training will begin soon and while almost all of our Reams teachers were wavered in previously we do have additional staff to train in this all important area of instruction as our district Title 9 coordinator I recently participated in the annual Title 9 training which did include some modifications to current practices mostly regarding notifications and Reporting while this topic is one that has generated some debate nationally we were in good standing before I'm happy to report that we are also currently compliant with State Statute and federal law uh since we last met I attended meetings with our partners from Northwest Suburban amsd the Executive Board of sff formerly C where we recently hired a new lobbyist our maso advisory committee Masa region 6 and um as I also do prior to every monthly board meeting I met with our representative of um Education Minnesota Rockford to discuss ways in which we can partner and best serve and support our teachers I also wish to share that enrollment numbers across the district appear to be higher than projected and we are appreciative of both our resident families as well as those who chose to open enroll here in Rockford for trusting us to provide a great experience for their children finally and in closing of this report my absolute favorite part of the first two weeks involveed visiting our schools uh seeing the smiling faces of our kids and watching and having the opportunity to see our Educators in their element and those are the things that make my job truly rewarded that concludes my report thank you very much any questions for Dr R ho or comments or congratulations or anything for Dr I truly appreciate all the work and and and also the updates from your buildings and appreciative of them for for leading us not only to start the school year it's always tough but also the difficulties that they had with the tragedy that occurred in our in our community so thank you so much for your welome excellent as of that we'll move on to 5B board recognition and back to you Dr Ido yeah this is I don't take this lightly and I've shared with you guys before so I'm not going to embarrass you or anything like that but I I do want to share how appreciative I am and I know our staff and this entire Community is of your service as members of the board and as this is uh School uh board appreciation month we have some certificates which we will hand out that you can probably justplay in your homes and or your offices or walk around the street with them if you'd like um but I do want to thank you you uh from the bottom of my heart for your service uh to our students and families here in Rockford thank you so much we'll have lanyards and strings so we can all wear them for the next meeting please just thank you so much appreciate it and I do appreciate the rest of my board my board our board the board my colleagues I meant to say um my brain just racing but your work is just amazing so thank you for everything that you're doing to support us all um moving on to letter six student achievement of growth uh growth celebrations uh we'll move this on to re celebration cover page with Mr Paul wara middle school or middle school sorry what did I says perfect thank thank you all right well h [Music] on no Sor bra can you hear me now all right ladies and gentlemen of the board um Mr Roa here with a brief update uh so good to see all of you thank you for all your hard work much like it is a lot of work to get a school up and running I know the same would be true about a district and we appreciate all your efforts um so first and foremost as we start our school year uh I think we're going to do so with a little um student celebration so um what you're looking at in the screen are four uh leaders uh that were selected um from the web advisors who were uh were described as Leaders of leaders so uh just to point out um um I'll read their names quick jatu mohammd Stone Walker Alexis Johnson and McKenzie Lockwood just a point out um in the audience today is McKenzie's mom and stone rock away I would ask Stone to stand up uh however um he is officially taller than me so I'm not going to stand by you just to be clear wearn that one today as you see you can't see our feet reveal that I am on the absolute most of my [Applause] so so um these uh these four were selected for very of varying reasons but um I thought it was a testament to their leadership ability um because the advisers didn't just noticed that how they interacted with our fifth grade um new students who came in but also how they interact with the other uh eth grade web leaders to encourage them uh to um activate engage as well as the ability to spot all the new students we have On Any Given first day that are not fifth graders um was also noted in uh the reasons why they were selected I did ask them a couple questions just want to share with you um I asked why why they joined um a couple need opportunities um one of them said I want to uh show my younger sibling uh what it's like to take on opportunities uh another said I I remember being uh that web was really fun and I wanted to make it as fun as possible for kids um uh I'm just going to point out Sten hope you don't mind um St said that uh so that I have uh something to include on the leadership section of my college application and then proceeded to inform the rest of the group that uh he uh is absolutely that we get to register for high school classes props to you good job um very soon so um what went well the first day uh is just hearing um hearing students connect to one another um as they went through all the activities in groups as web leaders um I asked a tricky question I said how do you know that kids felt welcomed um they paused and then they gave a thought for answer of because everyone was laughing having fun and smiling um because they talked to us and told us so um so it was great to hear them um think through their response um and the biggest question they had is when is lunch so that's a little bit of our web program um we intentionally welcome all students uh especially the fifth grade though um as a transition over um any questions can we thanks for showing Round of Applause thank you so [Applause] having all right um moving on with the principal up updated if that's okay yes please um so in addition to the web overview uh I get a chance to meet with every single grade level uh we pulled each grade level down to the media center and I am impressed uh you could hear a up uh in any single um Group which is pretty impressive for the first week of school uh it's a huge Testament to our kids um to the point where um I was pretty confident that we could teachers could go plan and get ready um and that to have that on the first and second week of school is unbelievable uh kudos to um our teachers who prepared them as well as just our kids we are lucky to have some awesome kids um way Vibes uh just from uh staff one of our focus is interacting with kids promoting relationship a lot of smiles a lot of reconnection we love that coming back um the occasional music song learned a couple dance moves the whole thing um one thing that's new this year is an intentional new student orientation as students come in throughout the course of the year we have uh formal list that we go through to make sure that we're not missing anything um and that just helps and one big change is we have Boost our boost class is in the beginning of the day to promote student connectedness as well as a variety of different factors so we are all adjusting to the microcosms of that but uh have had a lot of really good feedback um let's see uh one thing that is new and a direct result of the efforts of our building operation leadership team which I'll get to in a second is safety day so on Friday we conducted our bus evacuation day we conducted all of our Al drills and we conducted two fire drills now you might say why are you do a couple reasons one we know that uh kids learn best when they can connect ideas to each other uh another reason is we know that anytime we do a drill there's a uh there's a impact on learning and so by consolidating in one um we can actually minimize that long run um and the other component is I wait till March I wait till February to teach our kids and train our kids and so um basically we had some schoolwide activities and then every class they had a mini lesson um where they went through 10 minute um and we had a lot of really positive feedback um and it's something that uh we will consider doing again in the future we know that these drills are necessary we also know they can be disruptive but we want to be as strategic um now just so you know uh we will um redo a shorten version of this uh for anybody who's absent that day and then we will also include this in our new student process um so that we are uh ready to go and everybody knows what to do um in these situations um built-in bolt this has been the fun part um there's a lot of fun Parts but i' seeing these uh leaders at work um I put the names on the screen but as we know instructions an operation um General feedback and updates I'll start with bolt so bolt uh was really the driving course behind our new cell phones off and Away um for from first Bell to last bell um the I think I I think I may have jinxed it on the uh end of the first week I had said do you know how many cell phones we've dealt with and the answer was zero in sixth hour one our first one came in but the gist is uh that is a huge Testament to our parents to our students um they're being responsive to what we're asking them over the cell phones and they're rising to that occasion um kudos to Bol for putting all the pieces and um taking a look at that the guidelines and making that our own um the we also looked at Boost uh of what that looks like for the first nine days and that includes push in lessons uh for both me as well as uh we have our counseling doing some bullying um lessons for all students we talk about safety day Chromebook rolling out and then just responding to uh starting up the school year and all the logistical things that happen so kudos to Bol and those numbers on the screen built uh just a recap as we know U we're really focused on defining our work around standards learning targets and assessments um with some action steps um we had built Institute was amazing uh they kickstarted all of our work and really started a sense of collaboration um and then Workshop planning this is a creative bunch and so um they actually came up with a beginning of the year checklist that kind of guided all of our work to make sure we're getting it all done uh it's feedback driven so it's the first time I've seen a workshop week that uh uh later sessions were dependent on uh how well uh the the group grasped the first sessions so that we can be responsive and make sure that if it's the things that we need to get home that everybody's on on the page same page and then uh we did a station rotation with technology built and bolt so everybody got a chance to go around um and be mindful to not overwhelm with all the details of the new year um separately the last thing I'll say about this group I I knew these leaders would do what they do and lead the part that I severely underestimated is their to understand the vision and be able to kick the work back and forth between the teams and leverage each others um both Vision as well as um uh just expertise so that's really fun to be able to see these these Works in action so that's a little bit of the RMS update any questions thank you any questions I don't have a question I just wanted to share um thank you for your leadership on this and it it is has been really fun when you let others lead you can really see what the power of the group is I want to just Paul Shar him with me today that I hadn't seen before and um I don't mean to bring it up on the spot but it's an absolutely incredible document you titled it Mion control can you talk about that a little bit in terms of the organization and all of those things um it it's it's pretty awesome so yeah would love to um so Mission Control was born of a place I'll just real U for me to be able to find everything I'm looking for quicker um but it really was a way to communicate um transparency within our system of the work that still needed to be done um if it was linked it was done and you can find it and if it wasn't linked I'm working uh and so what it has morphed into is now trying to align instruction and operations so if there's any document or process uh that you are looking for um it's a transparent document that it's linked in variety of different places so you can find it and it's really meant to help everybody in our school and organization teachers as we create the thing uh to be able to be a little bit declarative of what built and Bol own so there's an instructional side and an operation side um and that helps us not only find things quicker uh but it also um helps to find those rules a little bit um and as we've learned to start this year there is times where like boost for example can be both and so you have to be able to um go back and forth um on those matters but yeah it is if there's any question if there's anything you're looking for there any anything at all you're going to find it somehow linked on that so um and it's just a a quick reference and a play on um Lifetime and space camp y um so I took a kids space camp and we trained um on the old NASA and so to see a room full of those computer modules uh you just realize the importance of making sure the people in the room are all knowing their roles and knowing where everything is on any given moment so that was the was the rocket driven name for any other questions other questions thank you Mr Wasa the only thing that we're going to ask is get a real picture with you and stone Courtney could go do that right now do right now thank you so much and appreciate the family showing up as well uh moving on then to the assessments report uh Dr R thank you CH I'm going to walk through a presentation here with respect to to uh the Rockford area school's Northstar report and all accountability that's a fancy word for saying how we've been doing um a as you know um we have a lot of metrics within schools to demonstrate how our students are performing um and only one of them is really public facing and that is the the data that comes from the state via the MCAS I I can tell you um and I have told you that I'm not a huge fan of a one-day assessment defining um you know our students however that's what's out there and so I'm going to share that because I also would say that the data does still matter uh and we're going to use it to improve and to get better um and we've already started um just want to share a little bit because this is all information that's coming uh via the report our district demographics this is our profile um some of you have seen this on the state of the district already so I'm just going to be brief on this and here's our special education breakdown um as a system educational benefits or what used to be called free and reduced priced lunch the number of English Learners in our system and now I'm going to get into um what is called the Northstar report or um Essa or every student succeeds act and talk about the different components that exist within this U particular report um there are five indicators um as you can see their academic achievement progress towards English language proficiency academic progress graduation rates and consistent attendance so those are the five indicators used and they're also those are the ones that are shared via the department of education's website first one is accountability and this one really uh comes down to um the achievement ratings via the MCAS and the mtas which are used in some cases for students with special education services whether they're meeting or exceeding standards of achievement um these are our numbers here uh the state averages you'll see for math reading and science um are there um these are averages across all of Rockford area schools so it's not grade dependent although we do have grade dependent uh data as well um some of the things I'd like to point out here um is that as we've worked on the science of reading at the elementary level um our scores there increased um almost six points um to that level there where we are still slightly below the state average but right around there and again I'll say some grade levels are above and some are just slightly below little literacy will remain a focus for us um with math also taking equal priority because we are seeing that an area of um of Need for us as well along the line of the English language proficiency you'll see here that um right now we are um our students of English language proficiency are making average gain or gains that are slightly above the state average I do want to point out a few things here that number one um the chart on the left we have 90 students considered English language learners here in Rockford of that 90 over half 47 of them are at the elementary school that that tells us a lot but one of the things I I I do notice there and I want to point out is if you look at that blue graph bar graph at the very end um those students are achieving at rates significantly higher than the state average um here in our system so we're doing some really good things at the elementary school with our English language Learners and that's important because that's where the majority of them are currently located academic progress this one is relatively new and instead of reading that paragraph I'll show you what they use and we have not yet had a chance to calculate all of those numbers but this chart is really interesting so I'll share with you here you have to go back to see what kids scored previously so then what they scored again their their next assessment they're all given a number and then you average that out so where this gets complicated is if you're taking the the math assessment the MCA and say 8th grade and let's say in eth grade um you um did not meet those standards then we'll say that in the 11th grade which is the next time they take the math MCA they partially met those standards they would have eight points associated with them okay so you kind of go down and across for for these numbers then you take all of these numbers you add them up and divide by the number of students who are in that mix for an average score um or your um progress ranking if you will um so that that is very complicated and so um both Kevin NE and I are looking at that right now because you do have to go back in some cases um up to three years to see what their progress has been on the assessment graduation rates um describe the percentage of students again who graduate school we utiliz um four years which is what the state uses you'll see there are numbers there um we are right around the state average I will share with you this that if one student um is or is not in this mix of of graduating it significantly changes us when we only have a graduating class of a little over 100 students so um you'll see that we of the students that have not um some three of them are still working on that three have dropped out over time that could have been several years AO ago and five we just don't know um so again you throw those five back in there which they may have graduated from somewhere um we just haven't been able to figure that out um according to the data that was submitted by the way this data is from two years ago that's how far back they go on this data it's 2022 graduation data from the department and you'll see here that we are um right around slightly over 90% graduation rate um with a few students there um this this data was sent to them um at the conclusion of the school year so um I'm quite certain those three that were continuing have past the Finish Line consistent attendance um this is defined as 90% of the school days attended which again is the flip side or the opposite of chronic absenteeism which is you miss 10% or more and these are what our numbers look like for that uh so Statewide um consistent attendance is at 74 and a half we are slightly above that at 74.7 I did break this down by um school um the elementary school is at 77.4 the middle school 77.1 and our high school is on the lower end here of 69.6 this is a trend that is seen throughout the state and I've looked at many schools around us and these numbers are fairly typical to those places as well as I say there's always more to the story and this is something that I I really think is important to talk about because you know what the public doesn't always know is if a student for example had a bad day or if a student um for one reason other decided they weren't interested in taking the test or their family opted them out they are scored as non-proficient I can tell you not making excuses those students of ours who opt out at the high school level I can tell you their their average G GPA is 3.5 and higher likely to be very proficient on these exams they just didn't take them um so I wanted to share that but there's always more of the story and I want to share this that number on the left is not individual students but we had 273 students and it might be you know Jeff R took three of these classes but 273 students were enrolled in college classes okay on the far right they earned over a thousand college credits this is last year alone and utilizing um the average cost per credit um across the Minnesota state system that is saving the students and families of our school district just our graduating seniors last year only um $858,000 they're finding incredible success in these areas I want to share this slide as well this one is is really interesting because I hadn't seen this before for um and I'll without having to go through all of it I'll say this that um within the a 16-month period postgraduation uh 70% of our students um who graduated were enrolled in highered and it's okay if they're not I mean some students might have done something different with their lives and are quite successful but we are significantly above the state average in enrollment and I really want to point out the next slide after a 16-month period 71% 71% has earned at least one year full of college credit that number again is significantly higher than the state average and this is also right there on the MD website on that report this would have been the class of 2022 so again as I always say there's more to the story and and what I say to this um is first of all again saying we do have work to do there's no doubt we're going to be doing that like a lot of schools across the country and in our state and we're doing that work and we're committed to it in a very strong way but I also want to say this that the kids here that graduate from Rockford area schools in our high school they persevere they have grit and they are motivated and they're finding success in a wide variety of ways this just happens to be academic and so there's a lot to be proud of um with that group of students and those that came before will be coming after um again we have work to do so we already working to convene our instructional cabinet to talk about ways in which we can still improve all of these areas um whether it be attendance English proficiency um and our math or reading or science scores um that will then filter down into our work with our built the plcs and then the implementation stage any questions about the assessment com yes please J um just seeing your last slide there um the plan moving forward um however we can support to make sure that we're you know keeping all this at the Forefront because this is what's important um I'm thank I am so very thankful to see all of the instructional Focus that we have in our district um now it's amazing to me and I'm thank I'm very very thankful for it um this winter I believe we apply again for adess M um so looking at those scores and everything I want to make sure that we are tapping into everything we possibly can and how we can support that and how we budget for that because it does cost but how do we make sure that our kids are getting the support that we need and how can we um use those dollars in a uh creative way to make sure that we're helping as many students as possible um so these are just thoughts that are going through my head and I just want to verbalize that after seeing this because um we do have a lot of work ahead of us um and I know we're doing work and we're doing a lot of great work but making sure that we are able to support um to help continue to move move the need thankful who you say that because the wheels are already turning and there will be stuff we'll be talking about so good thank you co please um so just reflecting on the tuition savings slide I've seen this once before so thank you for that additional Clarity on the students and whatnot I think um one thing that I'm really grateful for is you know as we were going down the path of becoming an IB diploma school this is before you um we had a healthy debate at a board about what do we do with our CIS programs and is there a path where we can have CIS and IB credit because there's different paths to achieve the credit right some you get by getting a good grade in the course and it happens right some you have to take an additional test like the IV does and so when I look at these numbers I would imagine that some of these kiddos took the IB test and got their credits that way and others went to the course in the in the school and got their credits that way too so um I'm just really grateful that we have that path for all students that are taking those higher level courses to do it one or the other way and they don't have to have that test in the moment on that one day in order to get that college credit whereas they were there all year they got a good grade and they can bring that forward so I'm super grateful for that and I just wanted to call that out so I hope um that that path continues uh in the future um because I won't have a say in that so I'm gonna say that right now um and then the other just like fact that I would love to you know start to look at over time and I love the board's look at over time is you know so this is one really awesome thing and then if we look at our um career Readiness program in the high school we know that we've got a a group of kids that like for example took the CNA test and received it it' be awesome to understand um how many of those are using that to you know have a summer job or have something you know and those sort of things so they can actually do those things because of what they did in school and I know that as we continue to add more career Readiness programs it would be phenomal to start to see how that's playing out um with our student body in the high school as well so those are just a couple of Reflections that I have but thank you for the update that's wonder you I'll share that that slide with the tuition savings I didn't have in the state of the the district last month um Julie Marill came up to me and just hey do you know about this and I said well say more so later that day um we talked and that information was sent to me and while we were talking you know I get chill's thinking about this and she says you know the key for us as teachers is we have an opportunity to provide a safety net for these kids while they're taking these courses here in our schools so that if they stumble um we can help them we have that support it's not going to happen like that as they leave us so why don't we give them the best opportunity for Success while they're here and it springboards them so you know as I'm listening to I'm like God our teachers are great I mean because they really are thinking about these kids because they could say I did my job you know they got their diploma good luck we'll see at the reunions but it's not that they what can they do to help these kids open doors when they leave and they're doing just that um so I I was very um appreciative of Julie coming to talk to me about that um and very proud once I saw the information and and so forth so thanks for for raising that up excellent pleas ask a question um the under the academic Pro progress that Matrix that you put up there that is basically how they come up with the number for us right that's not none of those numbers on that are are numbers that's the state Matrix to utilize to come up with the number okay do you know what our number is I don't yet I don't yet okay because we have and I talked with Kevin NE yesterday um in the assessment office we have to go kid by Kid and analyze all that and we haven't had the time to do that this information was just left the Embargo as they call it from the state um about a week and a half ago and and know some districts don't share it right so I I think um you know regardless of whether I love MCA testing or not we're going to own our data and we're going to say this is work we have to do and we're going to work with our kids and um and I don't think for me there's nothing anyone who's been in our meetings knows that we don't hide much or nothing for that matter so here's where we are and and uh and we can improve and we can really improve so um our teachers are on board um and it is it's a delicate balancing act because when you see things whether they're good or they're bad and you're and there's always again more to the story is you know um there's no finger pointing there's no any of that it's it's um we're in this together we're in this for kids um let's let's work together to be the best that we can be and uh something else you've probably known from me in my year and a half here is I'm not a fan of average so um and I'm very competitive so game on let's go let's see what we can do to improve and I'm hoping that um over the next couple of years um we're going to be sitting in a place that we say we did the right work just one more comment I know you already mentioned it that postsecondary success the the amount of students that once enrolled at College got college credits that's that's a good number I mean that just says that we're kids who want to go to college are doing well once they get there and so that's that's good to and to me that's the biggest indicator thank you for sharing that and in Clarity on that that's not just fouryear hire that's any postsecondary um I believe it's two or four years it's wherever they can pull the sled data I believe good yeah public yes yes thank you so much can I have one more thing absolutely you um the other I love to dub tail on that too just like setting the kids up for success and we've talked about this before starting in elementary school and with that well-rounded experience middle school and then into the high school um just pulling on what um Miss Mera said to you you know the other thing that you've had on different slides is the number of activities that are our kids are involved with so there's a there's a thing there that they also do in the high school of yeah yeah yeah you you can be in all these things and you can take all of the courses that you want to to whatever rigor makes sense for you and we're going to help you balance all of those things that you want to do and reach those goals and be successful so like there's this time management element thing that starts to come in that High School space and I think by having all of the different activities um that the that we're known for um and kids in multiple activities and the academic rigor I think that there's and the career Readiness and all the things there's just this um there's like a this sweet spot where it's it's about how you get all of your work done and how you get all of the things that matter to you done in a given day a time management component that starts to come in that high school and I'm very appreciative of that too as that comes to together so thank you and thanks to the team thank you Edwards that's all I got and in you and I think same path a lot of times right in the very beginning with um start of college credit we all know that the CIS courses are more and more difficult to staff based on the requirements and the restrictions that the post secondary institutions put on your staff so I'm I'm grateful that you have staff members that are continuing and able to even though it's even harder and harder to do it and those May reduce I'm also very very happy that the IB has afforded many students that opportunity to take that assessment as well as some of the AP exams that go on so thank you um I know that in Mr uh Menard's presentations last year there was a focus on attendance with some um hopefully we'll see the results of that uh you know second areas is very difficult so thank you for for sharing that and lifting that up and and and move forward so very good thank you so we will move on then to the next item which is our technology report and I'd like to call Mr Jeff kemit to the table please thank you for having me this evening awesome conversation technology so I'm going to jump right into it if you have questions feel free to interrupt so I'm I am changing up my format just a little bit and I'm moving into Safety and Security classroom learning essential Support Services virtual learning and then inter agency uh highlights so one of the bigger projects that we accomplish this summer was our phone system installation uh we had no choice we had to convert from A system that was outdated and my tell uh basically said they're not renewing the contract that they were done uh because they could no longer support their old product so it was I don't want to say it was difficult but it was certainly challenging uh because we didn't have a lot of funds to to put into a phone system so we did find a local company that was work willing to work with us so that we could utilize our own phones because that's really the biggest cost of a phone system is replacing all of the phones that we have out there so we found a company a local company uh whose kids go to school here and they helped us greatly in building the servers we needed to support our the local infrastructure that we had however once we did convert over we did have 20 phones that just simply didn't work because they were just to old and they didn't take the firmware updates properly so we did have to replace 20 phones but we were able to get them off the used market and uh so we're able to purchase the phones for a couple hundred each versus over $1,000 each so that help keep our costs down uh currently we are in the process of depl deploying an application called my collab to uh about 50 different people uh the idea with the my collab is that you can put it on your cell phone or on your computer or your home computer the bigger idea is if we have to bolt and leave the district and start up in another location uh we can transfer the phones to those cell phones so we can have continuity of services uh the other nice thing is that I'll be out of the office tomorrow at a meeting and I'll be able to move my office phone to my cell phone and it gives me the Privacy so I make a return a phone call using that app uh I don't have to give out my personal phone number which everybody kind of has already but still um 911 we are currently in the process of deploying different phases of 911 uh currently we do have it by the building which isn't totally to the standard our goal is to get it by the room hopefully by Christmas I'm working on now that we have staff in place and all the classrooms are set we are now starting to build the the U the programming to start going room by room so when somebody does call um 911 like today uh that will connect directly to the 911 dispatch and with our Direct in word dial numbers they will have a phone number an external phone number that's connected to the classroom or office that will the exact location of where that Call's coming from we did Institute a new program this year where somebody does call 911 um it rings at about a dozen different stations and it tells you the extension where that ring is coming from and one person who's in that area will pick it up it'll tell them exactly who it is they send a team or a person to ensure that everything is okay and then we clear the call or not in today's case uh we cleared the call it was a mistake but we had a group of people there uh very very soon ordered uh to take care of it um lastly uh one thing that I was going to do this summer but I did not because we had uh some farm marshall concerns that I didn't want to uh compound is that we have to change our analog phone lines the old we call it pots lines plain old telephone service we have to change those lines out on our fire panels our fax machines our elevators the utility meters and then I call piggy back phones uh back in the day we would save money uh we have at least two phone lines per fire panel and we would move one phone line off to like a fax machine or like in the bus garage they have some office phones that piggy back off the fire panel and we have to move all those lines to digital which means I have to pull new cable put in some converters and Etc we're hoping to start working on that project before Christmas and and get that down uh the FCC wanted us to move over a couple of years ago but our system just going to handle it cameras and door alarms we are working with enen County Sheriff's operations center to Port about 35 to 50 of our cameras into the hen County operations center uh we have worked out a verbal agreement with us in the state of Minnesota in the data Administration to maintain privacy of our students and privacy of our cameras where if we have an emergency or if there's an alert or something then henen County would be able to view our cameras uh quickly and uh but during the day they can't because that would be a privacy measure you know data privacy uh because it shows people who might just be coming to school or it might show staff's routine or students routines or if there is an incident we have to be cognizant of the students that are around that incent because that would be a data privacy issue oh understand we went through legal on that want to ask about that so they need our permission to access the also our cameras we had a partial switch replacement we invested about $775,000 in our switching conance throughout our Network and that was because some of our cameras and the the network traffic was such that our cameras weren't coming through as well as they should and they were becoming intermittent because our switch capacity just couldn't handle the traffic so we did take care of that and we have a grant that uh the bills are completely paid we should get about 60 some per of the funds back from the federal government so all in all I think it'll end up costing us about $225,000 uh for something that was around $80,000 so uh we repaired and added cameras to the high school and middle school uh this summer and uh we were able to attack that onto some bonding fund that was left over so that we didn't have a capital outlay cost and then we do have planned additions for the middle school high uh Elementary the elementary is the building that has the least amount of campas and we've earmarked about $100,000 of need and now we're working with the powers to be uh to find funding for those needs and hopefully the levy will help us as well uh because like say it's tough to find that kind of funding at this time um I I just and you guys know this but I just want to share this um there's no one I know that can find and stretch a dollar as far as this gentleman right here um and we are super lucky as a school system because uh something that's going to cost us a dollar Jeff can usually find some way around something to get for for 50 cents so um we're appreciative of that I just wanted to point that out um I know I have a little game that I play with myself in the sense that I work for free so every year I try and at least get enough funds to cover myself it's just I love that um one of the things we're doing in crisis management is that today I had conversation with Sandy H promise uh based on a suggestion from the superintendent and uh we are in the process of a week not this Wednesday but a week from Wednesday we're going to meet with the principles and the superintendent with Sandy Hook promise and they've agreed to meet with us to Institute a program of uh mental health and the ability for people to call uh if they feel threatened or if they've heard of something that might threaten the school district or if they just simply need help themselves and the Sandy Hook promise of course you know about the Sandy Hook school incident and and it derived from there and they are welcoming our school district into their program and and this program uh would be have no cost to us so it would give us an extra level of support uh and then I also spoke with the sro's regarding it and they are on board with because Sandy Hook uh they feel the call but they'll also vet the call to make sure it's not prank so uh staff mandatory training oh and if we're totally on board with the sand would promise uh I've already built the websites on the back side and our school website but I have it hidden and there's about an six to8 week um boarding period in which they do training with staff and Leadership so hopefully by Christmas we will see something P out uh staff manag to our training we've been really ramping this up the last couple years I hopefully youve all received your mandatory training and uh reminders if you haven't gotten them will'll be going out uh this week to the staff who haven't started their training yet and uh we've got a committee that ear marks the training that is that is needed by staff most of it is driven by Statute and uh the superintendent has a responsibility to report to mde in November this year on the status of our training so um so far that's going quite well the other little part of that is that this year um we worked with Mike mcy and Courtney and others and we had all of the crisis management books out before school started this year and they were in the hands of the classrooms and ready to go and if you've been into the staff Training Site you'll also notice that we put the staff handbook and the crisis management plan in the training as well to acknowledge that every staff received it so uh the last part is the Fire Marshall even though we weren't written up for it because we were being proactive he suggested that we needed some fire extinguisher training so we've included that and we're going to be putting that into our crisis management plan cyber security uh we've got over a dozen close to 18 different protocols that we follow that we've written those have to be reviewed in the next month or so Safety Committee we've uh have created a schedule for the Safety Committee and we're going to start meeting formally and putting out more safety news to the staff so that they can provide feedback to make sure that we have a safe and secure uh environment and of course uh Dr riddle over already mentioned about the crisis management teams and we'll be meeting at that group starting Wednesday and uh working out a training plan on different parts of the crisis management plan that we need to reinforce like pal for example um of myself go Infinite Campus on Campus Learning or classroom learning uh this year I added a bunch of additional permissions to campus which will give teachers a lot more ability to send uh information or or classroom work to Google and have it returned to them so they can grade it and put it into campus so instead of sending a worksheet out by hand and passing it out teachers can now put it into a document send it out to their students in their classroom the kids can do it it goes back electronically they can grade it send it back do whatever they want and push it back we've been doing this for since before Co but we've added some additional permissions to them that them some more freedom or leverage uh responsive scheduling we've been doing it in the high school for a couple years now it's been quite successful it's where they do their rocket blocks and they're able to schedule students and do additional blocks of time uh so if they can take a rocket block time or another class period they can break that into like a lysium or other thing students can sign up for C going the rocket B um stud in staff credentials as you know we have updated our domain name to Rockford 83.org and in the next month or so we are going to complete that conversion with changing the rest of the students so a lot of the 10th 11th and 12th grade if you can realize they've been here for a while and some of those students were still using the Rockford 12.mn.us themselves whereas students are on student 83.org so we're finally moved all those students out into the correct domain and now we're changing the domain name structure so that it'll be there three and three in their grad year so in that way when a staff person or somebody sees that we'll know what grade they're in and and where they're at and it'll be much easier because in the past you have all these names but you don't know where they belong so in terms of managing data this will certainly help so we're going to be finishing that up I'm hoping before November 1st when one program uh I updated the plan that I'm not going to go through it but you have a copy of it and I also posted it up online for people to view and basically the only change was I changed the prices I think on page five or six of the plan the new pricing models for inflation are in there so this year we improve our cost controls by starting to charge parents for the repairs to the Chromebooks as we've discussed before in conversations and we're in the process of building that system so and we have online forms we have two forms for every parent or person uh one is a general code of conduct and then the other one is agreeing to the one to one and paying for U costs if that need be Tableau uh we have increased the amount of uh data that we have in Tableau to and I've covered some things that Mr riddle hover has worked on with this last presentation that that will give teachers realtime information regarding attendance and we've added uh fast Bridge testing MCA testing ACT Testing and some other testing so the teachers can see this in real time or close to it as soon as we upload the data and that includes the early data and when I checked it before uh this presentation that was all operational now uh the one little thing that we're adding is Special Ed has requested that they want to see at least three years worth of attendance data going back uh for student for IEP so they can analyze how the students are doing over that time so we're building that into campus so that they can see it on the flly and they won't have to bother the offices for they can do it themselves new things were working on behavioral updates and coding updates uh I was hoping to get this done before school started but time ran out so at the state level there's a thing called dur discipline reporting system and we're going to take those quotes from the state of Minnesota and review them with what we have online and so that they match better and then I'm also going to add in behavioral codes for Chromebooks or Chromebook disciplin Chromebook breakage and the principls and myself we've worked out a plan to work on that end of it online attendance we are going to be opening up online attendance to the portal for parents in the very near future uh so that parents can say their kids are absent online off their phones and that should save a phone call and it should also maybe save a little time on the office Hall Pass um again in the high school and most likely in the Middle School we're going to Institute the Pass Program where students will take their ID batch with their barcode and they'll be able to scan out if they need to go to the bathroom or stand back in uh because there's apparently a limit of time that they're supposed to be out and this would send the alerts out to people the other part of the hall pass is if we're able to pass the levy and work towards the enhanced 911 if we had an incident a fire drill whatever uh the progr would pick it up so we would know where those children are supposed to be at that time so if we have to clear a part of the building we would be able to know both where visitors are from the Raptor system and we know where the students are from the HTH system uh to help manage that chaos and of course for moving MCCC is due by October 1st uh Minnesota Common Core catalog is due by October 1st and I've been working on that uh because this year we'll be doing it ed5 conversion instead of the oldfashioned uploads and again I already mentioned we're going to do username usernames and password changes for all students 5 through 12 hopefully by November 1st uh part of the services that we have to start is we're going to begin an archive scanning service in the very near future uh We've run out of room the records room we have records for 100 Years of students so we're going to scan them and make them digital and put them up in the cloud uh in a secure Manner and start having space again point of sale we got a grant from mde through the help of Mike and melting back there uh and we purchased four point of sale machines to replace the uh cafeterias and then we have one for the food truck that was portable so that we can connect them the wireless which we do now and sell so those hopefully they're supposed to show before school started but the main reason for those point of saale machines is because the Windows operating system that you're currently using expires this year reaches its end of life end of service so we have to replace the Windows operating system everybody's laptops and these point of sale machines uh aren't compatible so we're stuck but we got to they were able to achieve a grant so uh that keeps our costs down and the data we've been putting up Perkins Early Childhood uh The Graduate uh act Perkins all those have been going up uh smoothly and on time like say MCC is dueing October 1st next one up is crdc uh anyway moving right along virtual learning Services again I I'm kind of showing these things because technology so many people think technology is just that or one device but that's just scratching the surface so uh one of the new things that we're trying to work on this year's applications we have a lot of applications where uh schools have bought the books but we have the online apps to go with it or we have other applications and our department is now trying to get those user accounts built before school starts or before the quarter so that the teacher can just jump in and start working with their students so we're trying to reduce that downtime of students and the same with Athletics this year we were able to get Athletics up and running uh in July August so that students could register for all their sporting activities online and pay for it so we're pretty successful with that and we've been moving uh Early Childhood into Infinite Campus so that we can get the reporting done uh via EDI soon uh we've been doing a lot of coordination with teaching and learning to accomplish those goals um and then of course our Google uh and our integration to the campus and then finally just a lot of inter agency support highlights we have been working hard at building trust relationships uh tomorrow I'll be at St Cloud with educational resources at a tech coordination meeting uh we also been pulling our our staff training from them the online staff training and some of our safety stuff e which is up near BR Minnesota uh we contract them to do our security audits because they can they're able to perform our security audits at about a third of the cost of secure and it's the same exact audit so we're able to achieve that longterm goal and we're also been able to work with them with integration and Kevin for example this summer was able to go up and have a couple few days of integration training and the cost was I think it's like 20 bucks or something like that so it was very they do it at a very reasonable cost and it's very uh it's very robust train you mentioned about the deputy Fire Marshal here I'm not going to cover that too much we were able to take care of the issues that were there and uh the new thing that is of concern to me is the Minnesota incident reporting the SF 4874 that was enacted that by around December Thanksgiving we are going to have to report the majority of the incidences that occur so if a student comes in and says oh my password was hacked my account was hacked we may have to report that to the state of Minnesota and um and then that would then be reported to Insurance in a backend way so um the reason why we're changing all the usernames and passwords to comply with uh regulations for example cisa uh which is the cyber security infrastructure Security Agency uh today we I had a meeting with them and we reviewed data analysis and how to review our data for bad things later this week uh or next week they've actually invited our school district to uh work with them agencies and actually mitigating attacks so we're going to go through practice drills and and like we're being attacked and so that we can refres our skills and to know what to do how to counter those attacks and grab my notes real quick for example with the the next one the ISAC uh the mdbr reporting is something I put into play about a year or so ago and the first week of school from 91 to 97 we had 513 attempts of malware infections where people were trying to break in to infect our computers and this week we had 377 and we had three known uh fishing attacks that were uh for real actual and they were trying to Cur in so once we were able to find out exactly what it was we were to go in and prevent our systems from letting people see those attempts but um and that was just our first level of Defense our second level of defenses are firewalls and the state of Minnesota and they caught some more so you can imagine that the battle the cyber attacks that we do receive are real and um we have to be diligent and hopefully we will not get attacked but there's always that possibility sadly and then finally um tomorrow the window opens for a cyber security pilot program um that I'm going to apply for chances of getting it but if you don't apply you don't knock on the door if that holds true that cyber security pilot program will allow us to use our Category 2 funding from the federal government to apply it to cyber security because currently there is no dedicated fing for category for cyber security in schools so we've been drawing from our general budget to cover those costs and and those costs are pretty high so we're hoping that if we can get on the pilot program then we can at least get a reduction in those costs any questions any questions yes go for it I have one really quick question and it might not be for you sh um and what you what you've mentioned around the attendance you know portal triggered something in my head from a technology perspective so there's the attendance keeping system within the schools and then parents are notified that their kids's not in class and typically that notification if I believe Fires at the end of the school day that your child is absent from one or more classes and I don't need an answer right now but it's puzzled me as to like why would we notify a parent at the end of the day that their kid missed a class that might have been at the beginning of the day and that could be a thing you know what I mean like how does that work and why why is that there a delayed response and why do we have it set up that way and it I don't need an answer right now it's just like a my answer triggered me past practice oh okay because the systems can be um changed a little bit to increase those notifications or a parent has a concern a lot of the attendance is in real time and if they go into the portal they can see totally you can see it actively but you know if you're not expecting your kid to not show up at school then you find out eight hours later that they were gone all day like that would be a thing like oh but part of it depending on the school is like in the school for example they take attendance for each course right in other schools they M only take attendance twice a day based on their walks so and then a lot of the attendance goes into a queue and the secretaries then have to process that queue to post it and after it's posted is when the messaging will go out later but and you can correct me Eric if you if you want to but we should be able to to manipulate that posting time to put the messaging out yeah so a preference on for each individual about how often they get it could be for every single one or it could just be one a day so it' be up to the parent to also identify their I'll share as both a user as a parent um yes it can be set up any you want to and secondly as an administrator um either people call me and say I know my kids's absent I don't need five calls today and so it really um there's a preference then it depends on when they take attendance Elementary School takes attendance at the end of the school day secondary and primarily the high school is where it's really most useful so and isn't there a difference between a planned absence like if you call the school and say my kid's going to be absent today you don't get notified but if you're if it's an unplanned absence and then you're notified at the end of the day like that it just I feel like I was notified when I didn't call in yeah I don't know anyway but just something it triggered me and I just if it's a gap it would just be an interesting Gap to close and part of my a little bit of my hope is that when we move of online for parents to do parents would be able to see it as well so a personal my many years ago when my daughter was in school I used her account one night to show parents how it worked and I was shocked at the number of tties because I never looked at she walked to school every day she was there she ate lunch with me all of that I pulled it up and was like just tardies and I go why and her answer is because I can that was her thing so the school allowed like two tardies per class per semester or something and she did it was her challenge something like you know free tiies and then finally in your packet I put in a list I sat down and this isn't all inclusive but I wanted to share with you the regulations that's around technology in schools or at least some of them so that as we go through the levy process or as you just go through the process of understanding some things that I say up here you'll see that the bulk of them are rooted in uh rule or law or regulation so a lot of the stuff we do even though I and sadly 90% or more of this is unfunded but we still have to do it so any else good thank you much more than uh overhead light bulbs thank you Jeff truly appreciate all that work and I like the work for free so get more grants all right moving on to 8C oh sorry 8B the election ballot question update Dr rle Hoover yeah I alluded to this in our work session but again for the public who may be listening or or arrive after the work session um the election uh questions we have two one is the capital um Capital Levy question um that question has been it's been out there already it's on our website as well but that has been proofed and submitted to both hanpen and Wright County uh for uh for their use and as well as the school board candidate election question that is out there as well um so I wanted to share with u the public at large that those items that will be on the uh ballot for the general election on November 5th but early voting does open on the 20th of September excellent thank you so much so we did have this conversation during our work session any other board questions before we move on very good thank you so much we'll move on then to 8C capital projects and a levy update another item that we discussed at our work session so I won't be labor to the point but I want to remind folks that we do have a capital Levy uh for um consideration here on November 5th and we will be sharing information um in the most transparent way possible uh via the website uh through video through literature uh through presentations Q&A and any other way people want to get it so whether it's Morris code or homing pigeon let me know and um and I'm always willing to sit down with anyone uh and everyone at almost any given time to discuss the rationale for it and um one thing that will be coming shortly is um both the signature uh mailer as well as your video um that'll detail some information and also Point people in the correct direction to find other um points of information that they may have questions about any other board questions very good we'll move on and we will call up Miss Peterson for our annual certify the proposed 24 a25 Levy good evening feel like it's been forever um I'm here this evening to present um to all of you um the request to certify your proposed Levy 2024 payable 2025 talk about mold gra that is a mouthful so this proposed uh Levy certification is for taxes payable in calendar year 25 is revenue for the 2526 school year so next school year so this process is a long process where we certify this in calendar year 24 taxpayers pay in 25 and it's Revenue to us in 25 26 so it's kind of three calendar years that we talk about so I even always have to pause when I'm doing the accounting around this so um I'm recommending this evening that we approve this proposed L at the maximum um and so what is the maximum the maximum um allows us to continue to have access to all revenue streams that are available to us so what's going to happen is from here on out mde will continue to run um data and um as new data comes available and so we want to just be sure that we have access to all of those revenue streams and any adjustments that fluctuate up or down and so that's why we certify the maximum we're not certifying a dollar a month this evening even though I have um in the packet behind you and I will discuss what that proposed Levy looks like um I've yet to really see a lot of fluctuations always in what MBE puts out for proposed but it can happen uh this proposed Levy does not include the tech Levy that Dr R just talk to vote because techers haven't voted on that that would be Revenue to you in the next year after that once they um would have proove that it were successful so um if we did certif which we are allowed to a specific dollar amount that would limit us if Revenue numbers were to increase so that there's there's two ways we can certify this Levy this proposed Levy maximum or by dollar amount I'm recommending there's everybody um I'm not being unique or anything but I I'm asking the board this evening to certify at the maxim so um I'm going to draw your attention now to that comparison spreadsheet that is included in your packet this evening where you will see I've listed for you your um Levy that you certified last year in December of 23 that's that first column on the far left of um numbers and then um the new middle column is the the number that we're certifying tonight or the numbers that we are certifying that is your proposed payable 2025 Levy and then you can see I have a dollar change col that um is showing us the changes and so I won't go into all of the details rather I want to just kind of speak to these high level fund categories for you so we have three funds that we Lev in the general fund the community service fund and a Debt Service fund and you can see there when we look at the general fund our proposed Levy is actually decreased the main reason for that decrease from your last year Levy is enrollment numbers remember when we talked about projections and we talked about enrollment decreasing it is still a little lower than where we were last year so that's where you're seeing these numbers go down so I'm showing in total about $194,000 decrease from the last Levy I also want to draw attention um down in the adjustment column there's a new large adjustment that Rockford has a negative adjustment it looks bad couple rows from the bottom and I labeled it Tiff tax increment financing adjustment that is a city within your district and sorry I don't know which one it is but many of you may know um that had a usually it's a blighted piece of property that the city has chosen to certify as a tiff district and they're making improvements to make that parcel of land more appealing and yes they they they do hold the taxes free for a while while they build up that parcel of land and then they eventually go back and collect but what happens is the the city decertify it as complete once it's beautified and and then the taxes start flowing on that piece of property and then they they give out to all the cities um and school districts this money that they've kind of been holding and so so it's given to you by your county and then the state takes it away through Levy process and then gives it back to you sometimes where you can keep $25,000 of this number so it looks like we got a tax adjustment but we didn't we really already received the cash from the county and our tax settlements so it's kind of confusing how they shift that but it is a revenue gain to you to the tune of $25,000 that's it that's all we can keep of the Tiff District kind of Revenue um we'll eventually see it flowing in now but while they're building and fixing it there's a new lesson for you guys and sorry I don't that's about as good as I can do because I I don't work in a city um but those numbers are sometimes large and can be scary so I I did want to highlight that because it is a rather big number so that is playing into some of these shifts too but as you go down individually um know that most of those decreases are related to some where the formula if you will the tax ly formula is based on enrollment some areas you can see there's increases you know where enrollment isn't always a factor like a debt payment or something like that um the community service fund there's a slight decrease in that fund as well um this is one where I have some emails into mde to try to double triple check and things and so um but for now they're propos Levy does show a tiny tiny decrease and then you can see there that The Debt Service Levy is actually increasing a tiny bit um much of that increas is misleading it is really kind of flat if you will but there so abatements our tax um things again that we don't get to control that adjustment went up for us so favorable but um again we don't get to to Really control that one so overall all of Rockford's Levy is going down about 1.89% so basically it is flat so when as I was talking to Jeff this morning when for residents in our district um Rockford School District's tax levy as of right now is not really going up so if your property taxes are going up you probably have some other factors that are happening whether it be your market value your county your city other individuals that can Levy their Levy has increased because Rockford is definitely going down or I would probably say it's it's just relatively flat any questions on any of these numbers do any of these numbers to jump out at anybody or do you have any questions on that before I kind of say a couple closing statements so just to clarify because you know in the past I had no clue what was going on um this is not this is not when you say a proposed ly this is not anything new this these are things that have already like been passed and we're just saying we're going to collect the money so that we have funding for next year things that have already been approved by voters or our other already already St standard levies correct yes there are no new levies including here we haven't asked voters for anything um this is all standard stuff that yes still like in the service fund the voters have already approved all those Debt Service payments Community Ed again those are State authorized statute legislative authorized so yes you are absolutely correct any other questions all right so we are required to certify this proposed Levy as well as we will be required in December to certify a um final one but this Levy this proposed Levy we have to get it to our County Auditors by September 30th uh then this information is submitted to them and they use this information to mail out those lovely proposed property tax statements to um all of our our taxpayers in November so hence the reason that the new request canot make it on to what taxpayers will see um the other thing that is required by us is to hold the truth and Taxation hearing it is required to be conducted during a regular school board meeting um also requires us to state that date and time at a regular Schoolboard meeting when that hearing is scheduled so I'm announcing that to everyone this evening that Rockford uh area schools truth and Taxation hearing will be held during our regular school board meeting on December 16th 2024 at 5:30 right here any more questions um with that I would ask the board um to approve this proposed Levy 2024 pable 2025 excellent thank you so much Miss Peterson so as you heard through the presentation and also that our truth and Taxation meeting on December 16th will occur the recommendation and the ask from District Jessica yep I was going to ask the time as well the time I think for truth and Taxation we have to have at after 6 o' after 6 o' the meeting will still start meting will be at 5:30 but we will do truth and Taxation we set it for 6:30 6:30 630 we set it for 6:30 can't believe I remember that yes perf good job no I I was checking it because we had conversation that it had to happen after 6 and we did 6:30 so all right so the recommendation is to approve the 24 payable 25 proposed Levy as presented uh no other questions or comment I would appreciate a motion as such I'll make a motion to approve the proposed thank you Miss Johnson there's approve there is a motion to approve the 24 payable 25 proposed Levy as presented is there a second second thank you Miss Neil and there's a first and a second any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please signify by I I opposed this Levy does pass unanimously thank you so much appreciate your time and just for the record again for clarity that to truth and Taxation will be December 16th in the boardroom at 6:30 p.m. and then just a point a clarification to you from a process perspective that's also the meeting where we do the formal resolution yes yes thank you yes Miss Edwards and I were having a little checking email to make sure that this wasn't the resolution and that one is so so thank you so much all right we will then um move continue on Check Yes who's going to sit next to I know right well who's going to have to sit here is the question right both of them um so as we continue on learning an innovation report 9A Dr rle Hoover thank you this is actually a report that was put together by uh learning Innovation specialist uh Kathy Matson but she couldn't be here this evening so I'm going to run through it for you um because she's she and I have worked on this together and it's really a compilation of what we've been working on thus far um and I know it's kind of been a night of reports and there's one more after this so I'll try to be brief um some updates from U most recent the professional development um we had built Institute that took place here um at the beginning of August this was a wonderful day uh the primary feedback on that was we need more time so we've worked on that as well and we have plans for that going forward um but it was a very successful that you heard principal wara mentioned and you'll probably hear others as well um but that was a wonderful day for us um it was our first ever built Institute and of first of many uh to come um this is something that came out of the Home Run leadership training some of you were in attendance for that and I'm just going to read the quote a team that's too busy to reflect as a team that's too busy to improve I think that's true this is teacher voices that came out of the work in built Institute I'm not going to read them all for you but if you want to them quickly or come back to them later you certainly can you'll see the one thing I will point out is that third bullet uh first two words there shared leadership and this is and has become a Hallmark of our system and will be as long as I'm here and um and hopefully well past that because we have great people in the system um who have been eager to share their wisdom and their expertise and um it's been pretty cool so far I will share something that I don't think is in the slides but I'll share um as a teacher started working this is day one and the idea is to rotate you know and build capacity in people and I share with them I said you know when I was in a previous District the teachers we got through the first three quarters of the year and they said you we're getting ready to post for the next year they said can we please call this year zero we're just getting our feet wet and so we brought that up and they said can we just ask for that right now so Kath and I said is that what you want and they all said 100% so this current group of built members will stay on for two years um we have to build the foundation of the work that we're doing and they really wanted to to do that and not have to be saying you know a third of us are going to be off in a year and so that's something that we're really proud that they they said not even really getting into after spending a couple hours that they said they wanted to make sure that they had that stability so I'm all sure that would you as well um Kathy put this here the street continues this is the format of our professional development during the with respect to the floating day that the teachers were were provided in August if you remember the calendar was kind of goofy this year and so what we did from calendar committee is okay we're going to give our teachers um an8 hour chunk of time to do what they need to do to get ready um prior to school starting and um they worked really hard in fact I think you know in talking to some of them they probably did more than they've ever done before because they felt good about um having the ability to have that flexibility so they'd come in for a few hours here a few hours here they somewhere working you know you know nonstop for weeks on certain things because they they felt good about having that flexibility so um 100% liked that format whether we'll do that again we'll see what the calendar committee comes up with down the road um again this is just about the PD work during that week and workshop week Kathy and I really changed the historical I guess agenda for Workshop week and did things differently and these were the the comments and some of the feedback one of the things that that talked about with Kathy quite a bit is um when we do something or we try something we have to ask for feedback it's really important and then the second thing that I've really been um pushing is that if you ask for feedback you need to share that feedback right it can't go into the abyss um I think we've all been placed where they've asked is our opinion and no one ever hears what came of that um and then the third thing is once you get information and you share share with people that you have action steps with respect to those things and so we have all of those things going so there's feedback that's come to us saying could you do this a little bit different can you do that a little bit different so we're learning from that and we're going to make it um so that you know our staff has all of the support they need as they enter a school here this was just a survey question that um where they were they give the information they needed in the time with their teams and by and large um you'll see those top two were the majority I'm not sure who answer the one on the left but that's okay there's one in every place that's okay um this next one is um again we mentioned the format was different um meetings were back to back and in the morning to the extent possible um was it better or worse most of them thought it was better some thought it was the same um very few thought it was worse um so we've gone to that model of the morning is going to be really heavily with site and District PB and the afternoon is team time and individual work time again the the teacher voic is out of that they liked having the option they like knowing when they could have their time to work um again I think from a standpoint of district and school leadership is to really provide the the the direction and the vision of the work then let your folks do it you know I can share with you you know I happen to live with a teacher in another worked in another District and um they had 30 minutes of time to work on their own during worksh week um that's not a lot which caused most of them to come in after hours on the weekends our teachers felt good about what um was provided to them again um constructive feedback um trusting the process and as we reflect we grow and what's next you've seen this slide before our work in built our instructional road map one thing I do want to mention is year two of the road map we're probably going to cheat a little bit and slide some of it into year one because it's really around utilizing the data that we're accumulating we have a lot of data and from talking to you know our staff really never used it and and not to a constructive way and so when when Jessica said you know what do you need for support we're likely going to come back and ask the board for some things in terms of how can we do some things differently and structure things differently for our teachers to have time to do this and I got lots of ideas um you've seen these slides before we talk about purpose processing product working buildt this is going on right now and just some cool pictures any questions on the work that took place during pre Workshop that week any questions for Dr ID Hoover Dr ID Hoover I know you probably had help putting this together I did K put most of this together I know because you would not have put in there that Jeff cares about staff and what's best for staff to be successful but that was in there and those were probably the best words that I took out of the whole thing that you care about your people and and what's best so she St in there yeah I just wanted to call that out is is an important part that and I appreciate you doing that and as I'm sure some of you here do as well so excellent any other comments or questions or congratulations for not yet all right we'll move on to the next item 9B approval of the school board handbook revisions and first read but I will hand this over to Dr Ral Hoover and our two handbook People Jessica and final read final read final final read not first read final final read again I've said this at the work session I've said it prior to that I want to thank this board for um their their efforts and their attention to this really important document um it is thorough and it is a living breathing document that will be revised over time and there's already still um edits in the works um additions I should say and I'm very very um proud to share that um the work the board has done in this so I'll pass it to anyone else that might want to make any mentions of this prior to approval I think Amy and I can both say how thankful we are that this was um put us a priority and we appreciate it tremendously this has been something that the two of us since we've been on the board um have kind of dreamed about having and felt the that there is such an importance for this and we appreciate having leadership that sees it the same way so thank you for making it happen um thank you to everybody on the board for being a part of this and making sure that we're we're all involved in making sure that this handbook is going to be valuable moving forward I love that it's a living document and we can always make changes and um adjustments and additions and I liked hearing that you know msba has one and we're going to maybe pull some stuff from that because yeah you know we do need to put that in there but I agree with you I think it's better so um I think we've done a a wonderful job on this and very thankful the only other comment I'll add really quick to that is I Echo Jessica sentiments and just what we've always talked about as a board is like we um we honor debate and we honor each other and conversations and operating norms and all of those sort of things and but yet we've never had anything like really written like this that say like how we do our work and how we work the work but we just it's just kind of worked and in good times and we talked about this as a board like it you don't always need like it's it's helpful when you Orient and all that kind of stuff but what now this will be is something to reflect back on so like it's like oh that didn't feel quite right in oh yeah we should have maybe done it a different way or it it will also force a really important conversation if the operating Norms need to change you know so like if there's something that we're like hey it's not working really well we want to talk about it having a document me like this is going to force the conversation to happen and board um Alliance and agreement to come around whatever might change um which that part is just as important as what's written in the document so I'm super excited um that it's here and I again like it's it's a living breathing thing that should reflect how the board is operating so thank you to all that have read it with a fine tooth com and I'm very excited to have it to this spot so thank you thank you for your comments and all your work on this and flexibility any others with that uh this is the final read and we do need a motion to approve the board handbook I would love to make a motion to approve the board handbook thank you m John Johnson there is a motion I need a second let a second that motion thank you Miss Edwards there is a first and a second for the board handbook any further discussion see no further discussion all those in favor signify by I I oppose and thank you so much for your work board handbook has been approved excellent we will then move on to our next item summer school report Dr Idaho thank you CH gry and I'm going to go through this relatively quickly because I think a lot of times the the board has been shared hey here's we're doing summer school and and here's where they we're going to be teaching it here's the calendar all that stuff matters um but being new to the system I I really wanted to dig a little bit deeper and see you know what's happening with credits being earned and then also um the financial component behind it because that also matters so I'll remind uh the board that um we are not a state approved um alternative services provider um because we don't have an ALC in house and that's okay not a lot of districts our sides do um but we do partner with right Tech because they do have that when we do that they are fiscal host and when revenues come in we um put our agreement in order to do this um 10% of the revenues go to them for assisting with the process so um so I want to give a final report of summer school 2024 um purpose to serve at risk students again um that's a strange term sometimes but um it's K8 targeted services for identified students and 912 is credit recovery and again at risk is determined and defined by data um below lever Mastery and or credit deficiency how it works they're identified they're invited um by State Statute we have to have continual learning plans developed and signed by the families and we have to house those things if we are audited for our Sumer program we have of those and happy to say they're electronic Joe gy put those together for us this year and I'm really proud of that um there are two types of intervention again there's Credit Recovery 9 through 12 and target of services K8 as I mentioned and we do have that partnership as I shared earlier with right Tech we had a total of 55 students um and that were Rising 9th 10th and 11th graders participating in this of those 76 earned and um 76 credits were earned or recovered 42 via edmentum which is a online platform um that is utilized and 34 were um in person direct instruction we were going to be completely um dependent on ad mum which a lot of places are they'll use an online platform such as that um the recommendations from our teaching faculty at the high school because a lot of these as you can see um towards the bottom botom involved mathematics math is hard enough to learn in person we were very concerned that our kids would not be able recover the credits without some inperson assistance and so I'm very um happy to report that our students did really really well with the math um and we did use most mostly iners direct instruction for that of those credits that were um recovered and earned um you can see the breakdown in those four core areas um you might ask what's going on in social studies I don't quite know that yet but that's something we're going to be looking at in the future I also would like to share that um generally speaking um Credit Recovery um a kid doesn't um have success in a class it's retake the whole class um we're moving to a different way of doing that by really being cognizant of identifying standards in which students weren't successful for example if a student didn't pass a class didn't have the credit yet and they had you know 55% and they needed 60% to pass I don't think anyone in the right mind would say they need to take the whole thing over again what parts didn't they Master how do we know they didn't Master those parts so that we can focus that edmentum actually does that and we can also do that um with iners and direct instruction as well U for targeted Services we had 83 students grades 1 through eight that includes our students that were involved in in the Target service program at our partner Maple Hill and total hours of intervention were just over 2,000 this is one that I don't know if you guys have seen before but I want to make sure that I shared it with you because it is relevant um students generate seat time so it's not like if a kid gets a credit we get paid by the credit we don't that doesn't happen um they generate seat time regardless of whether they earn credit or not um but in K8 it's a different number it's uh you can see it's 547 there per hour and then 912 it's 602 um we do um move uh 10% of that to WR Tech so those numbers are reflected in the parentheses there so that is what we see when we allocate funding by the way this funding hasn't come in yet it won't come in until next year um but I didn't want to wait so I pulled all the data and I figured it out and then I also pulled the data from what we spent on Staffing for the summer so I could find expenses versus Revenue I didn't want to wait because Jill and I were talking and by the way Jill um assisted with Summer uh leadership this year organizing this this work and she's been here to present early on in the spring here um we wanted to know how much it actually cost us to run summer school because we didn't know and so I don't want to wait till next year to figure it out um so we did that um oops um what I did find that find out is that um the state revenue again which will be paid later um is around 16,7 71 and the Staffing expenses were a little over 23,000 so a net loss of us to run summer school a little over $6,000 this is not um special ed but just general Ed only and you know some might say well how do we change that well it's it's actually pretty simple to change you just raise your class size in summer school and you have less staff and then you can do that but um that that is primarily you know have then also when we don't receive 100 % of the revenue like other districts do because they have the in own in-house ALC that affects the the bottom line there as well um I did want to share that um in targeted Services I mean we don't have to do any of this by the way it's not required um we do think it's the right thing to do and we can lower that that number of a loss there I'm not too concerned about that um but what one of the things that that comes up is you know we want to make sure that we Equitable across our system for all kids and so for example right now um anyone who qualifies can can attend targeted services and they can attend summer school doesn't cost them anything um show up we'll get you there um right now we have not had targeted Services during the the school year um technically we're supposed to if we're going to have summer school targeting Services um I don't think the state's going to slap our hand but to be upstanding in that regard we really should so I did submit a proposal as as mentioned earlier in my report and it was approved um and I say potentially we might do it we got to see if there's kids that want to be involved in this Andor staff that want to be involved in teaching it uh might be a day or so after school it has to be different instruction in need it's not tutoring it's not homework help it's different instruction um but what I like about this as at least a potential option um for school year is that it doesn't um separate the Hales from the Have Nots we do have a a uh tutoring program we have one um through Community Ed that is you know driven by uh parents paying for that or Guardians paying for that this would be something that would be for all who qualify um and we'd still generate Revenue can we provide through that like out at um yeah yeah you can do it anywhere you want to um it's just something that that I mean we have to find staffing and we have to find staffing is the big question because um you know we'd have to negotiate what the the contractor rate of pay would be for something like that and you want to make sure it's at least cost neutral for you so um I just wanted to share that with with all of you we may or may not do it depending on interest both in students and in staff but we do have an approved proposal so we can run it and I'm going to be looking at the next you know couple of weeks can you just cross Che it has to be after school yeah because of otherwise is that the financial side of it otherwise double dipping so you can't double dip correct correct so you can't in fact you can't not that schools don't do it I think we actually do some of it here too and I've done other places you can do credit recovery during the school day you just don't get any revenue for it sure sure because dep yeah and you can do intervention work during the day but you don't get any unless it's through title or if it's through you know Addis or something like that um but to do to generate Revenue via this stream it has to be outside of the normal school hours either summer or after school thank you and I happen to lead all of this in mie when I was assistant superintendent so I have a pretty good background on this and I was able to dig in a little bit more than maybe somebody who hadn't looked at it before and I just want to think this is a big thank you because I was on a call the other day you know and it really comes down Employment Insurance to be honest with you and then the the concern Statewide of people saying I don't want to work because I'm getting paid during the summer anyway these folks said all work regardless now the teachers aren't eligible for unemployment but any of the Paras that were involved with our work um you know they're not up here with they they all said they're coming in and they did work um and that was very much appreciated so we saw a lot of um a lot of assistance there and that is that thank you any questions for Dr R over excellent thank you so much so we then will move on to our next item and I got to close out the PowerPoint because I was following along that way as well donations so as we look forward Community number 10A resolution of acknowledgement of contributions and donations Dr rber all right well we have our our usual suspect at the top of this list Rockford Education Foundation and they've donated um several several items this time and every other time but so I want to thank them I also want to thank our rocket boosters Cole sandine an anonymous donation and a donation from an entity called we can for their donations this month excellent thank you so much so the list is presented for you I would like a motion to approve the resolution Sam Edwards I'll make that motion thank you Miss Edwards there and a second I'll second thank you m Johnson there is a first and a section second any discussion this is a resolution Madam clerk please call the role Amy Edwards hi Jessica Johnson hi Eric Gordy Al stain Jen I Jamie HRM I pres absent unan unanimous yep yep thank you so much for that call we will then continue to move on to our next item number 10B negotiations committee meeting Wednesday September 18th 5:00 p.m. in the r lower conference room 11 Board of Education work session Monday October 7 5:30 in the district office room board member 101 Monday October 21 4:15 Reams lower conference room number 11 and regular meeting of the Board of Ed Monday October 21st 5 30 district office boardroom those appear to be all in thank you Miss nean there is also re for the board 101 I think you meant RMS RMS that's all thank you Middle School that one on uh Thursday October 10th at 8 a.m. there's a finance committee meeting here in the boardroom thank you thank you for that can you repeat that again on Thursday October 10th there's the finance committee meeting at 8:00 a.m. here in the boardroom thank you so much so that is a good addition any others thank you for all the checking and we'll move on to 10c board committee updates anyone wish to provide their updates to the rest of the board I'll go first thank you Miss Johnson uh back to school I was able to go to the back School breakfast and um also in the auditorium the um to it was wonderful it was awesome super cool I am so proud to be a part of this district and um nicely done fun to I I do like here everybody lines up from their years of experience and education all around the entire Auditorium and then the microphone goes around the entire Auditorium and he does this and surrounds your new employees who are at the very front and so you know for them to realize that they have all these years of experience around them and to make sure you tap into them and you have this support system surrounding you and I just think that that's pretty darn cool so fun to be there for that um maso meeting um and then I did attend the funeral last Thursday excent thank you Miss Johnson any other I'll go thank you um none of the Committees that I'm on have met in the last month um I am uh back in Action volunteering with safe routes to school getting our kidos across Highway 55 um and I also attended uh s funeral thank you Miss HR would you shair uh yeah none of my committees met either um a couple msba um coping conversations or webinars but um nothing else um I did also all right uh so for me uh board prep on the 5th um and that is all my committee work and then just working with ER on some of the ad hoc things for the board meting appreciate appreciate all your work uh as I had gone through I had missed the previous uh board meeting for a personal commitment um so going back into August uh amsd uh August board of directors meeting as well as uh board chair chats with msba and regular uh board chats with msba uh those meetings and conversations um a facilities committee meeting uh in August on the 27th able to reunite myself with the garbage can and pick up trash from tables at breakfast love that job the most um then continue uh prep work for these meetings as well as um working with Amy on our uh additions for some of the board handbook Northwest Suburban uh board prep meeting uh we just had we have our first meeting coming up this week coffee of conversations and then at the last amsd meeting um they went over the survey from the state about how the state is feeling about education and politics and all sorts of other things uh very interesting I think they're publishing that very soon um so it's just not out for view yet disappointing thing I think there were only 800 respondents on the survey if I remember right so kind of a small group but anyway that that's about it so any questions for anyone here oh I should also say that I was able to volunteer to do uh Vision testing uh at the elementary school for um for for assessment day which is always a fun thing all right with that there is no other items and number 11 the hardest one to get through is adjournment I'd appreciate emotion I'll make that thank you Eric Gordy will second in the discussion all those in favor by I iOS we are adjourned 8:35 not bad was a long agenda I was later yeah for those aspiring School members were normally not the