##VIDEO ID:X7530dxb_tc## live streamed via our district YouTube channel and viewing information can be found on the district website the meeting is now called to order it is October 2nd 2024 and the time is 6:31 p.m. our mission is to provide a safe and caring climate and culture in which we engage Inspire educate prepare and Empower all Learners in partnership with their surrounding Community to be successful in today's and tomorrow's Society Zach can you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag to the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and then can you please call roll the following board members are present at the District administration office Scott andron here Natalie Copeland here Al doen here Zach oral is here Shannon hos here Monica shagara Schwarz here and Heather Williams here and the following cabinet members and staff are present at the District administration office superintendent Dr Lori putam assistant superintendent of secondary education Dr Jason Harris assistant superintendent of prek through grade five education Nikki Hansen assistant superintendent of special educ education and student services Shannon avenson executive director of Community Education Adam Holm executive director of finance and business services Amy scal executive director of operations Joel height Camp executive director of partnership programs Gary gangji executive director of research enrollment and assessment St roer director of community engagement and Communications Tammy Dand media technicians Paul Novak and Gordy Scott and custodian on site is Aiden oner thank you Zach then I need a motion to approve tonight's Board of Education meeting and work session agenda so move thank you as usual I have a motion by Scott and a second by Natalie uh Zach can you please call vote uh Monica Shar Schwarz yes Heather Williams yes Scot and Drayson yes Natalie Copeland yes El do yes Zach D Holz yes Shannon H yes then I have uh the consent agenda the consent agenda consists of non-controversial items that the board adopts routinely without debate any single member May remove an item from the consent agenda by requesting removal at the time the consent agenda is moved for adoption on tonight's consent agenda agenda item a approval of personal staff changes Item B McKinley addition and renovation change order totaling $2,075 and item C approval of board policy 2011 legal status of school board minor change at this time does any board member wish to remove an item from the consent agenda okay looking for a motion to approve approve the consent agenda as read Move Motion by Scott a second by Natalie Zach can you call vote Natalie coplant yes Scott and Dron yes Heather Williams yes Monica Sara Schwarz yes Shannon H yes Zach orol yes El dogran yes thank you moving on to our information items tonight we have two first up we have the review of the Minnesota multi-tier systems of support MN mtss presented tonight by song Maxwell director of Partnerships for Student Success e dedication to our students our school district and our superintendent it has been a pleasure working in this school district where everyone from top to bottom is invested in the advancement of our students so thank you for um modeling this for our district and our community okay can you hear me now okay if you didn't hear me that was an introduction with a thank you for your commitment to our students and our community so thank you I am a little nervous so everything is written down and I apologize if I read from my script but I don't want to miss anything um I will be just because you said you che check okay this is making it really better thanks Joel okay oh my gosh okay I will be Pro I will be providing a brief overview on mnm TSS and how it streamlines with what we are already doing in the district um while memn MTS may be new for for some of us it is not new to education in 2004 the reauthorization of individuals with disability Education Act introduced the concept of response to intervention as an alternative way to identify students with specific learning disabilities and around 2009 RTI was replaced with the term mtss to use a more systems focused framework and because no two brains are like this is the road map for tonight this is how we're going to go um talking about what what m& mtss is why we use it the five pillars of it uh the district semi survey our results and our goals for our district for this year and how we will achieve those goals MN mtss in the long form is Minnesota multi-tiered systems of support and it's in its most basic application it is a model of continu Improvement specifically in Five Pillars why we use mnm TSS is because it provides a baseline for commonality a structure and a framework for our district there are five pillars and while they might look separate they are truly interwoven in application um it also creates probably one of the most important things is a reciprocal relationship between the district office and the school sites creating vertical and horizont Al communication uh mnm TSS ensures that we comply with several federal and state laws and local policies and guidance so MN mtss is based on Five Pillars and they are truly interwoven and guided by the foundation of the database decision making which is sort of Illustrated here in this picture um each pillar is composed of subcomponents which help us helps us f focus into their respective areas infrastructure for continuous Improvement these are our sips our continuous Improvement plans that our school sites already um conduct it will help us communicate vertically and horizontally as I already mentioned the multi-layered practices and supports allows every student to receive the support they need and to reach meaningful and rigorous um learning standards family and Community engagement amplifies the voice of marginalized and disadvantaged populations and here I would like to point out this is not just engaging our families and community in activities like family nights or conferences but this is truly um making sure that they understand the processes and we're communicating in a way that is culturally responsive to them assessment is another pillar which is communicating why we're doing assessments with the students and family that's what MN mtss directs us um to try and do and then data informed decision-making is using all of our knowledge and measurements for the advancement of our students so how do we incorporate these five pillars into our work um mde provided the semi which is a self- evaluation of Minnesota multi-tiered system of supports for the district this was 101 question survey for the schools it ranges from 117 to 123 questions it provides a baseline of self-evaluation for strategic planning and to further reciprocal relationships between the district office and the school sites we conducted this in August to use as a as a Baseline and the district leadership team uh we broke it up into four groups and evaluated the 101 questions we rated it we self-rated ourself between zero being never one being partial and two being frequently so these are our results in um from the semi from the district level so this takes 101 question and distills it down into something that we can actually understand creating a visual representation right we can see if we're in red or if we're in green um kind of makes it easy to see however this still needs to be measured against School site scores regarding um questions as to whether or not you you know we're in alignment or not as you can see our multi-layered practices and supports is our lowest um measurement here and we will look at this in regards to what the schools feel and see where we can allocate our resources the same goes for assessment which is only a tenth of a point higher um you know but that again might be a question of measuring whether our communication channels are open and clear enough um furthermore we'll do analysis will be conducted to make data informed decisions to allocation of resources and which pillars that we chose to choose choose to procceed with first and this helps us establish a dialogue and ensure systematic change across our district so our goals for the 2425 school year is about learning and collaborating for systems of implementation for next year so this year we're going to ensure that we have a common procedures and shared understanding in our district about the five areas the Five Pillars we just discussed um this will be a collaborative effort the assistant superintendents are helping us with this and we're doing this on um professional development days and it'll help us align our resources and sports and our procedures we will be creating a communication tool to house the MN mtss system information which will be an internal website for our schools in our district the process that we we follow to ensure that these goals are met we'll be selecting one area of mnm TSS to focus on each month and then we will then review our current system practices and identify current barriers to success and refine any areas in need of improvement so thank you for your time and if you have any questions anybody have any questions comments we Qui group today Al go back a few screens for me if you would to the oh let's just stop right there I guess I I I listened to this and I don't know what you said um mtss explain to me what it's used for and how it's used in a classroom and I don't you know I see INF infrastructure I would assume that's talking about do what is this is the structure of the support structure there from Administration and School administration is that what that's going on and then the practices and support I tell me what goes on there um I I in the one of the reasons I'm asking this is that especially this election season I don't know why but I'm getting more questions and more feedback about student Behavior staff safety and classroom disruption than I've ever heard and when we say multi-layered practices and support it doesn't really mean anything to me family and Community engagement I I guess yeah there are different ways to engage the community but are we engaging families immediately when there's an issue in or if one of the if if there's a student Who's involved in this practice or involved in the mtss uh prti practice are we engaging the family at that point an assessment I have no idea what what the assessment is what you're looking at what you're looking for and the bottom one I can't read so uh data databased decision making um but I guess i' like to hear a little bit more about mtss tell me tell me what's our goal what do we do with it how does it how how do we Incorporated in and how is this helping or not helping in a classroom situation because it seems like things I I know we've been doing this for a long time and mtss is not new as far as what what we hear on the board and stuff but I it just seems like the feedback that I'm getting is that things are getting not not getting better but they're get there's getting to be less more more chaos than the classrooms and I I guess I'd just like to hear from somebody what a little more detailed explanation my apologies if I was speaking too quickly on this um so again uh you asked a lot of questions I'm going to try and hit all of them but um you know in its broadest form it is continuous Improvement meant for the district and the school sites the way it comes down to the classrooms is specifically like you said in multi-layered practices and support because that's tier one tier two and tier three can I stop there when you say multi um continuous Improvement are you talking behavioral Improvement or are you talking continuous grades uh performance Improvement or is it a combination of that are you okay if I step in some sure okay so one of the ways that we look at the framework and one of the most confusing points right now is mnm TSS is Five Pillars but we have also use the the acronym mtss to talk about our problemsolving meetings and where we seek solutions for individual student situations so that right there in the name creates some confusion for us um when we look at the overall m& mtss structure it involves these five pillars that first purple pillar of continuous Improvement is your site continuous improvement process that we leverage with our leadership teams annually so yep is that education or is that Behavior Uh it can be both so our continuous Improvement plans are leveraged off the Strategic plan and so you'll see those five areas producing positive outcomes the the positive engagement all of those areas are encompassed within our continuous Improvement plans our site leadership team then selects their goals for their site data to set annually each school year so that's kind of that purple pillar piece of it um where you got into blue and started talking about classroom engagement ale is where we see kind of two sides of a triangle you see the social emotional side of the triangle where we're meeting some of those disregulation needs and mental health needs and you see the academic side of the triangle and that is really when we engage in those site problem solving meetings to help support and intervene with students at various levels of need we talk tier one which is core academic instruction that all students receive in their classro off of those Minnesota State Standards tier two which we technically do progress monitoring interventions with within classrooms sometimes there's out of classroom supports and then you get into more special education supports within that tier three layer so it kind of works up from the ground up there but that's where some of those problem solving meetings happen within our school teams to identify individual student concerns the family community engagement tie into connections conferences conferencing with families family engagement nights all of those different events as well as partnering with our families and hearing authentic feedback on how we can continue to work together and improve and then assessment is our overall assessment plan for the district how are we using those Universal screeners as well as progress monitoring when needed and then within all of those areas it's critical that we use data to drive our decisions and so that's why it's across the bottom there just to clarify you said mtss is also it's also so this is like site based and mtss is really student based where there's different levels of support that we give to an individual student correct yep and when s talked a little sorry therein kind of lives my confusion yes and yeah and it is confusing when they're both mtss it is and and to be honest Al we have our first uh 742 leader PD where we get our district leadership team team together next Tuesday and one of our survey questions is do we need to rename this work for our district because we don't want it to be confusing we want it to be clear and as we identify our systems Within These areas we don't want to confuse mtss with what we knew to where we're going so that is one question on the feedback survey is what do we name it what do we call this the state does call It M&M TSS right and Nikki just hit on the point that I want to really reinforce that that s mentioned um is that this is a a new state requirement and expectation of all school districts so you will see and we talked one in our 101 a lot of this already mirrors much of what we do in our strategic plan and our continuous Improvement but the state has said um in their attempt right I think a fair attempt um to to create alignment across the state they have now said this right and and so um it is it is confusing I was very confused and still sung will sometimes correct me say no no this is MN mtss right and so um you know we are great ful for the for the guidance from the state but it also creates a new layer of administrative um obligations um so we want that's why we want to make sure you guys are aware of it um as well so when you talk about this and it's a state requirement though all of the acronyms I agree get really confusing like when so this being more site-based you're not necessarily when you're talking to students talking about Minnesota mtss You're simply implementing these things as part of what you do and so you all as experts are clear on it but it's not required understanding for families or for that sort of thing yes um they talked about a survey that was done in August and I was thinking there's no students in August but uh apparently this survey is for administration or for teachers or midlevel or what is it for there's a district survey that was done with the district cabinet and then the survey is conducted with the school leadership teams thank you these are the district scores yes so this is the what the superintendent's cabinet says yes and then we haven't yet seen what the um site leadership says no we're not quite done with that okay so this was step one basically yes and then am I understanding this correctly that this is supposed to improve or enhance the way that the district and the sites work together is that what the hope is behind this yeah so the the questions to the district and the sites are similar not exactly the same but they're all within you know one of these pillars and things and so we can drill down and see if there's similar self- evaluation or if we're really off if a site you know if the district says oh we're doing great on assessment and a site says I don't know what going on then maybe that's a communication issue and we can identify that and rectify it really quickly yeah that's the part of it that seems really good actually that it's like you know when when people will say well the district did this it's like well who does that mean exactly we are all the district but like usually they mean people in this building you know versus School sites so um seems like a lot of work number one um another unfunded mandate possibly but also um smart thanks s thanks I think the only thing that I would add to the part of the work is what superintendent putam talked about it's tied right to our strategic plan right we're already there when you look across the whole state everybody's not there and so it's really fine-tune in what we do and making sure kids get everything they need and good experiences around learning it and so I think for us this what we're doing our already how do you even get better at it and you look at your strategic plan and the five objectives it aligns right to the five components of uh M mtss and so with the guidance we're we're we're there and we just need to continuously improve it might be have been less confusing to us if you guys weren't so good at your job because it just be like what would we do a sip what is that but we've talked about that for years so good on yall okay anybody else thank you very much appreciate your time thanks okay one more informational item up tonight we have the Minnesota Safe Water Plan update presented by Joel Hamp executive director of operations [Music] all right good evening chair HW superintendent putam and members of the board I'm here tonight to give you just a brief update on the um Safe Water plan for 742 as outlined by the state of Minnesota through statute just some overarching history here quickly um much of this work was done before uh I rolled into this position uh but in 200 8 um testing became required um every 5 years and that is in all water sources in all sites that serve prek through 12th grade students the last tests that were completed in St Cloud um were done in 2023 and again that continues every every 5 years so our next round of testing would happen in 2028 embedded within that statute is a um a requirement of notification and so we require or excuse me we notify all of our families uh annually uh of this uh specific piece as well as many other pieces required through the state that was done this September through our September newsletter um and that notification directs families to a link on our website which has uh just a beautiful um layout of all the different things that we need to notice our families um and it provides all the required information there regarding safe water in our schools um some history in 2023 24 um we had 7 72 water sources through all of our sites um each one of them was hand tested um by uh individuals within our system uh those go off to the Department of Health I'm specifically looking for traces of lead and uh the threshold that was used uh up until 2023 was uh 20 parts per billion um I didn't put it in here but I did a little research on my own and uh the uh piece of information I was given that says that 20 parts per billion would be one drop of water out of an it dropper in a 10,000g pool um so it's not a lot but that is the threshold that is currently used um of the 772 faucets that we have here in our system um 19 um water sources were found to have a threshold that was too high and uh those are all water sources those include um sinks and restrooms and sinks in work rooms and uh custodial rooms we test them all um so that prompts a retest of those 19 uh all of the all of the sites and all the individual uh water sources are linked on the District web page um which I Prov provided a link to here um but again is public to everyone uh that would like to look and they're laid out by building so uh when it comes to mitigation of those 19 um we do a water flush of of that system uh they give some guidelines as to how much water needs to go through them and then a second round of testing happens on those 19 uh faucets that were out of range on a second time through only five uh of the 19 we're still um at a at a level that was um too high and so um we did we do a couple of things after we do the water flush um we can do whatever we can to replace um whether it's the um the faucet uh the spout um as much of the piping as we can access um through the wall um we through those mitigation processes um four of the five were still out of range um which we ended up capping so they're no longer in use they were also deemed very unnecessary um again we're talking about none of these were drinking fountains um they were all in sinks and workrooms in places that weren't um ever being accessed by students and that were not again necessary to day-to-day operations um one of them that we replaced is now functioning and well within range and then we did have one sync that wasn't working at all through the testing and that was uh replaced and is now functioning well as uh good as well the big part of this evening is that in 2024 after our round of testing was done done uh the legislature made some changes and they lowered the threshold um to five parts per billion and um we do have a number of um water sources that would fall now in in that middle range of uh 5 to 20 and although the the statute States we don't have to do anything until our next round in 2028 um we are going to begin mitigating all of those um we already actually have uh I Got a notification just the other day that one of those is already taken care of and so in the next 5 years our plan is to tackle um a handful of the the ones that would be closest to 20 um and then work down to closer to five in the next handful of years so that by the time we come to our next round of testing we're going to have to hopefully do very little mitigation and just that testing to confirm that we have fixed those uh individual uh individual situations and that's what I have this evening any questions okay anybody have any questions Scott yeah how many are in the mid-range between 5 and 20 uh I believe we had between 75 and 80 no our plan is to tackle uh about 15 to 20 a year and and be done before 2028 okay it's a great plan thank you Al does this apply to only schools uh the statute that I looked at is is specific to schools I guess I didn't dig any deeper than if it applies to more than schools but the way the statute is written it only applies to schools okay I I'm asking I just kids are in school part of the day part of the year but they drink water every day yeah uh at home and and there are other public places such as community centers or fire stations or and I'm wondering but there there's no testing requirements for any other public buildings or I didn't dig any deeper into this any any other statutes other than what applied to schools I have one other question for you that's not on that subject how how was how was the time plan or the time frame on um McKinley uh as a of right now we're still on Pace still on schedu still on schedule and when was that expected to be completed sometime in November I believe okay yep so we we're about six weeks out okay yep great okay thank you okay moving on to our action discussion and action items uh they're all action items first up we have approval of the superintendent contract presented tonight by Monica sigir Schwarz chair of board personnel and negotiations committee hello everybody so we have met in the H personal committee to to um evaluate the so I canot just remind you about the cycle and what we have talked about it so given to the contract to the superintendent we have to uh renew the contract by the end of this year uh so she has enough time that's given to the contract so in the personal committee we establish a um review of a performance review cyle starting in the first year of the superintendent and we um Define that in three years that now are in in the second year but since the last year was is is is going to be given for the contract and evaluated earlier so we have taken all that into consideration so I believe that everybody has what we have proposed as a as as a contract for for her and um I think that is pretty self-explanatory it just um follows the contracts with leadership um what we have done for leadership and um and updated and we ask to be approved um today right okay thank you um does anybody have any questions or comments about this Scott uh I was curious about the $3,000 doctorial stien do we do that for other people too or or is it just a superintendent um Tracy's not here but I'm yeah I'm going to say yes but yes doesn't look does I think we just didn't have it on here before that so now we're adding it it's not called the stipend for the administration but it is some allocation right I do know that the stipend is in those contracts I don't know if the amount is the same or different but we did add that to those contracts um last round of negotiations for both principes and executive directors there's there's also a doal lane isn't there for teachers yeah there uh the teachers contract also has a one it's a one-time payment it's not a separate Lane for a doctorate but there's a similar provision in the teachers contract um where they they receive additional pay when they get that doctorate um in well I'm just going to say I'm I'm happy to vote for for this um I appreciate the work that Lor's done over the last few years I in I've worked with a few different superintendents I find Lori to be um one of the most I'm not going to say the easiest to work with and I don't want to say that wrong either now now I'm getting myself in trouble but I I didn't want to say the easiest to work with because that's not what I'm trying to stage she's she's a hardworking very demanding um she she looks at she she recognizes problems and takes them head on and if she makes a mistake or something she's the first to admit it and I mean I've just found her when I say easy to work with it's easy to work with because there's a lot of trust there and I can I know that I can trust her we've developed that trust and I think we were very lucky to be able to find a person of Lor's caliber without having to go through a full super superintendent search and the cost of that and the uncertainty of hiring someone who you really don't know just based off of a few interviews so I'm more than happy to vote for this this contract I I think it's right in line with where she should be if not at the low end of where she should be for a district our size when you look at comparable contracts and especially around the Twin Cities if you look at comparable contracts there's a lot of them that are much richer contracts than this so I'm happy to keep her here anybody else have any questions or anything okay so we're looking for a motion to approve the superintendent contract renewal for the 2025 to 2028 years school years so move I have a motion by Monica a second by Natalie Zach can you please call vote Shannon Hans yes Zach doorold CS El delren yes Natalie Copeland yes Scott andreon yes Heather Williams yes Monica SAR Schwarz yes all right having you for another three years thank you yeah just GNA not okay next action item we have the girls Alpine Ski Co-op and boy Alpine Ski Co-op presented by Dr Jason Harris assistant superintendent of secondary education well it's going to be hard to go after that right so and so in the sense uh good evening Sher superintendent putam uh board members uh We've uh are back at the table around uh Co-op for our Alpine boys and girls uh ski program I have executive director uh excuse me director uh Eric rusa come on up Eric uh and one of the things around our Co-op is we've been looking at numbers and how our activities are going and just some of the things and alpie ski is one that everybody's not coming out to take part in it you have a special person that wants to we give the opportunity around that and so with where we are currently right now we initially started as the majority in the in the co-op with the most uh uh skiers now is probably two from each School in our Co-op and Eric will just kind of talk about the process of how this came about and what our next steps are looking for and how we want to keep opportunity for our students yep sounds good um our current Alpine Ski program is an independent provided program so it's a kind of independent of our school district offered outside of that in partnership with all the schools that are involved in the co-op uh it's Unique to a couple different sports in the mshs L um currently our boys program has seven um seven schools that are part of our Alpine Ski program um and our girls have eight so this will bring the total we're asking to um two more schools to to join on board would bring it to nine and 10 so um that's kind of where we're at uh right now as Dr Harris had said we have um every school has a couple different skar every year it fluctuates on who has the most uh but I think over the last two years it's been pretty even across the board some having um zero some years and some having you know up to three or four and that's been about as big as any school has been there uh we think it's a valuable um to have our our kids have this a chance to downhill ski um there there's a state tournament that goes along with it um they do have to travel they do have to pick up their own uh expenses um School District doesn't um support that part we just support the kids being able to to do the the activity so we're just asking them for two more schools to be a part of it you want to share what two schools uh St Cloud Christian and Becker are the two new schools and they're they've all been approved by their school boards as well Al what are the barriers to participation in this sport uh travel um cost I mean it's a it's a it's a sport that definitely is um filled with those barriers and and very because the the they practice down a poter ridge which is down in Kimble um they transport themselves um they trans the meats are you know there and across the state um so there's some travel there um cost of equipment cost of um you know they pick up with all the all the coaches and and whatever else so um and and for the most part the skiers that ski are are fully aware of what that look look like and I guess that's part of the their sport so how many teams are there that we would compete with oh oh like I'm not sure if it would be in the conference how many they are how many in the conference and how many in the no conference there's no conference so just in the state you know how many there are in the St I don't um I'm going to guess there's probably is it mainly is it mainly Metro or is it and outstate there there there's plenty outstate as well [Laughter] okay well yeah um Alpine I'm familiar with cross country I'm familiar with downhill is Alpine downhill Alpine's downhill yeah it's mostly uh slom type so it's coming downhill between G oh is this going to be a crush program then it's already in existence they call it the breakaways because uh and I don't know all the history to it um but because of the amount of schools that came together at one one uh instance that's the way they they did this was pre obviously this is pre Crush so I guess we have two of the two of the nine or 10 schools in is it going to become a crush program um that's something that we haven't discussed uh mainly because it's we have partic it's so little parti participants and they're on their it's an independent provided so it's kind of separate than the school we just support our kids to go to those programs and we just and we because we are the whole school because we're the biggest of the schools in the co-op or were're the biggest school in the co-op we uh we get to control the rules that go along along with it as well so um that's I think why it's always been maintained in our district thank you just wanted thank you for doing that um as a ski patroller who might be picking some of them up off the hill when they crash um and it's it is a sport that fluctuates a lot I say time is the biggest right I mean it's 25 minutes from here to Kimbo um but it the trends are going upwards and most of these teams are kind of regional right so you know we got we got this side of Powder Ridge and then there's more south side annendale Buffalo they have their teams and um I think there's about 30 teams overall Statewide and most them have a home Hill and might have one or two teams per Hill thankfully we we got our own which is kind of luxury even though it is um 25 minutes down the road so yeah still trying to tuck my girls into doing it they're not quite at that age yet hey any other questions so this is a action item um recommending looking for a motion to approve the new girls Alpine Ski Co-op employees Alpine Ski Co-op between Tech High School Apollo High School rori and sck Rapids rice schools district makes a a recommendation to approve the the co-op oh okay there is and that's all that's on my sheet so um High School league formo allows you to put four on each sheet so there's multiple sheets that are my apologies but okay no that's okay so the motion is just going tell me what the schools are again it's big Becker Cathedral the new the new schools are gonna be St Cloud Christian and Becker okay join the the current breakway School the current ones okay so looking for a motion to approve um the girls Alpine Ski Co-op and Boys Alpine Ski Co-op new relationship no move second okay a motion by Scott a second by Heather Zach can you call vote Zack dorol yes Shannon H yes Monica Shira Schwarz yes Heather Williams yes Scott and Dron yes Natalie Copland yes Al dogran yes okay thank you very much okay then we have um a third reading up tonight the proposed revised board policy 520 um it is the student surveys as revised presented by Shannon Aon assistant superintendent of e through2 Educational Services let's try this again good evening all right as we said before our third reading I think we've gone through some of the language last couple of um at the last couple of board meetings um so there are some minor language changes throughout the student surveys uh policy however uh one area that I want to note that we went kind of beyond the legal requirement is uh we changed a language from and I'll scroll down so that you are able to see this piece um there is some language around uh physical examinations that led us to do some investigating on that piece and what I found out about that was that um it's only included in the student survey piece because it's part of a a legal requirement and it was determined that it was simpler to keep the notice Al together through that Federal requirement and in the same policy um so what we have done is we have required an opt in for that at last uh part C you'll see um activities one and two are still in opt out that includes those survey pieces um however opt in now for physical examination piece and I I want to be clear that as someone who has worked with the nursing team for a number of years um this makes sense that it's an opt-in I don't have any good examples of of when we would do this procedure it because it allows us to do do what we need to do in an emergency situation um and then it also doesn't include um vision and hearing screenings which which we also do um the only thing I can point to in that physical examination piece might be um something with perhaps an an individualized education health plan right where we have um students who have some specific needs around that physical piece um and and those are of course have always been an opin for us as well it takes a lot of parent communication um and they have to agree to to the ihp so um that opt-in piece when we changed it in recommending a change in the policy for that um then we would also change that in our notice to families which is included in the policy as well any questions El just want to say I know we went around around on that one for being flexible and working with us on that I appreciate it I learned a lot actually it was uh it was one of those that even msba and our legal council said you know keep it in but certainly the clarification is good for us to have I think the other AD was we really understand that we offer limited surveys we don't offer a lot of surveys and you remember when executive director rer came up to talk about it this policy helped just to really look at how do we give surveys what information is given to Families how do they have a consent and opt out and so it was really good because we were starting at the beginning of the year so it really helped us all and how we look at it now in surveys I think it was helpful okay thank you then looking for um motion to approve proposed revised board policy 520 so move second motion by Al second by Scott Zach can you call vote Natalie Copeland yes Scott and Drayson yes Heather Williams Monica Shar Schwarz yes Shannon hods yes Zach Doral yes El dgr yes okay I I was looking at this action item saying wait it's not an action item but yes it is an action item so next up we have a first reading that is a um proposal to um request to approve it to make it an action item it is the proposed revised board policy 522 which is the title 9 sex non-discrimination policy and grievance procedure presented by Shannon Aon assistant superintendent of E12 education Educational Services all right thank you um I just want to clarify it is it's an action item because if if policies come for us at the committee level that that are the changes that are being made are statutory in nature uh we can bring it forward with one reading rather than the three reading process so that's why it's coming for action item on on the first reading thank you and I actually am presenting this on behalf of Tracy Bo she has worked really hard on this so um I'm going to go through a couple of the pieces that she wanted to make sure I noted with you tonight um board policy 5 22 is um the policy that prohibits sex discrimination under Title 9 uh this policy has been reviewed by our Personnel committee and the board development committee it was last revised in 2021 following 2020 changes in the Federal Regulations by the Department of Education uh the department issued new regulations again this summer and those took effect on August 1st which is what Al is uh pointing to is that it's it's a new legislation that required to do this policy includes the changes in the regulations that are required to be in our policy and there are also grievance procedures um which have been updated to reflect the changes in those regulations as well uh those are not part of our policy but will be posted as required by the regulations on the title 9 page um that is on our district website and that page also provides contact information for our district Title 9 officers and our assistant Title 9 officers who are located across all of our schools and the most significant change in the regulation is to relieve school districts of really that intensive grievance process um and procedures that were required under the former regulations and those really um substantially hindered our ability to respond to conduct in a really in a timely manner uh because the policy is a restatement of the new regulations that are already in effect as of August one and required by law the board can review and approve this policy in in one meeting as Al pointed out and we recommend that this to ensure we are in compliance with the new regulations okay does anybody have any questions or comments so we're looking to approve uh for policy 522 and would like to move to approve second under a motion by Monica second by Natalie Zach can you call vote Scot and Dron yes Heather Willams yes Monica SAR Schwarz yes Shannon hos yes Zach door holds yes El doen yes Natalie Copeland yes thank you Shannon okay then we have reports we have the Board of Education standing committee reports achievement integration and Equity committee CH Natalie Copeland thank you chair hos we met on the 21st of September um we talked about two things first was our ongoing discussion of portrait of a graduate so to let you all know um a 742 leadership brought a timeline for action steps and outcomes around this topic and the current timeline has the rollout of this project happening during the 2526 school year and then um we had a a very deep and interesting conversation about our 2324 discipline data we talked about disproportionality conscious discipline and restorative practices um a few things that we talked about uh specifically one was that black and African-American students with IEPs um in our district are still approximately 3.5 times more likely to be suspended so we still have some work to do on on that disproportionality um the sub um a couple things the September suspension data for the school year is looking better uh and by better meaning more proportional and less overall suspensions than this time last year in the beginning of our 2324 school year we had 82 total out of school and in school suspensions um and uh 56 of those were in the out of school and then beginning of this school year we went from 82 last year to 31 total um OSS and ISS with 23 of those being OSS so that is a marked change um we also currently have a pilot going for our African I say we like I'm doing it but y'all are doing it um for African-American black student outcomes to Target this disproportionality data that still is lingering um there's multiple programs there's reactive measures there's proactive measures being taken including Consultants Community Partnerships and new and improved District practices um and we are suggesting from the this committee that we have a board presentation um on the exciting things that are going on in this pilot so we can learn a little bit more um and our next meeting will be sometime in October October 16th thank you thank you and then we have board development policy and governance committee chair Scott andreason uh the board development committee met on September 26 2024 executive director of Human Resources uh Tracy Flynn B brought forward uh proposed board policy 522 uh Title 9 sex non-discrimination policy and grievance procedure which we talked about already tonight uh assistant superintendent Harris and avenson uh shared revised propo proposed board policy 520 um student surveys and proposed board policy 2011 legal status of the school board uh the three policies were reviewed with recommendations to move forward with proposed policy 522 for a first read proposed policy 520 for a third and final reading along with proposed policy 2011 recommended for the consent agenda at the tonight's board meeting we've done it all already [Music] thank you uh next is future agenda items the October 16 2024 board meeting and work session topics will include the North School presentation approval of the 2024 uh to 2027 strategic plan and some policy readings at this time does any board member wish to suggest a future agenda item Monica yes I like the the to suggest that we have a retreat this year and I know it's a year of Elections and I would like to suggest the retreat by the end of November by that time we will know who are the board members that are going to be in here and I think that it will be a good idea to have a retreat with um incoming board members and also the outgoing board members together so I wanted to suggest that topic thank you for that reminder do we usually do it in in before we switch over I can't remember when we do this I don't think that we have a usual so I don't think that we have a usual when I was the first time in the board I was I went to a retreat with the outgoing board members the aling ones too okay I do remember that but it was the only time that happened since I had been here that way but I think that is a good idea and I would like I would like us to to do that so to schedule it after we know the results of election okay and before December because December is crazy are you talking about a half a day a full day um is it are there agenda topics that we want to talk about and should we lots of questions here I think um board policy kind of tked that on if I remember but I don't remember yeah that's a task for Board of coordinance and I think that they can run with the task and suggest topics and suggest topics did you have anything in particular that you wanted discussed we do like an uh an overview of the um different executive directors and it's kind of a state of the district state of the district state of the Departments okay and that usually takes half of the meeting right yeah three probably two two hours I wouldn't mind if we're going to do a retreat and spend some additional time I wouldn't mind uh taking on the topic of I'm not saying finding solutions for necessarily but taking on the topic of uh student and staff safety and classroom disruptions okay I also would like ask to have some time as a board kind of award session that we are able to brainstorm ourselves and work ourselves into um concerns that we all share about the district I don't think that we have ever an opportunity to really talk um to each other um as a group about what are concerns and what things we would like to improve and having some um so it's not free time but it's it's it's it's less a structured time that I would like to propose that we have um one of the things that I that I like to figure out better is um uh I don't know other ways to get input from people in the district for board members for example how would that look like um what things had been done in the past what had been the problems that those things have happened um I mean I have brought up several ideas um during my time here and these ideas have been answered by one or two people with the one or two people perspective of how the ideas had been are good or bad or have issues or not and I think that it will be nice to maybe discuss them on ourselves all that but um again we can suggest topics as a I I I'm not pretending to structure The Retreat right now my agenda topic is to have this workout yeah I just kind of thinking we should give this a shot in the arm here because it is October and we're talking probably November we are hitting the holidays and that's probably hard for people when do you meet next Scott do you know one coming up the end of this month I think yeah it's really short notice we have done it in December before like right around the 10th or 11th or somewhere right in there okay um well and and it really think it really the importance of having it in December with new board members would depend on if and who I mean who the new board members are and if it's new board members um if there if if it's all incumbents reelected then there really isn't the introductory piece of it if it isn't all incumbents elected I know one of the candidates running has been on the board for several years before and is very familiar with board work so I think you know we can commit to it we can commit I don't I don't I'm never doing anything anyway but we can commit to a December board meeting or a retreat if it's in early December but okay the the uh the piece on state of the district and state of the Departments has really been an introductory to new candidates or to candidates that are new in office and I don't know if that piece is really missing from current board members so it really depends on the results of the election okay really good points there and then um you know if we have some change and then we set a date and then they can't even come well may maybe we don't want to set a date until after the election to make sure that new people can come Natalie could I don't know the protocol for this but could we let everybody know that if you're elected this is would be your first thing just because that time of the year and even now like by Fall calendar is woo so to get that scheduled now and get it out to everybody I don't think that there's anything wrong with that necessarily I don't have an issue with that except they aren't being paid until the first of the year and they aren't employees of the district until the first of the year so we can't really require them to come it would be voluntary I think when that happened in my year I was invited I wasn't request yeah strongly encouraged to attend yes I was there okay most yeah oh absolutely yeah okay thanks Monica great idea okay um then I'm looking for a motion to adjourn the board meeting part of our night I move to adour second I have a motion by Monica and a second by Scott all in favor say I I I closed okay so board meeting is adjourned at 7:36 p.m. and we are opening up the Board of Education work session we have two items on our work session tonight first up we have the 2023 to 2026 strategic plan review presented by superintendent Lori putam as well as Donna Rober executive director of research enrollments and assessments good evening superintendent putam chair Haw members of the board and listening community um I am happy to be here tonight um to share with you our strategic plan um our review I should say of our strategic plan for the 23 through 26 as you know this is a rolling strategic plan and um this year we did it a little differently in that we did take some dedicated time to kind of review the structure of it in light of um some new legislation and as you heard heard tonight the Minnesota mtss framework um and so you're going to hear a very brief update on the development of the 2024 27 strategic plan as well as how we um analyzed our current plan so of course we always start with our mission and um you can see that here I won't read it um but just leave it up there for a short second um grounded in our strategic plan and are our core values um and of course these are really good core values the team felt these were um very solid um making sure that you know we are committing to Equitable access to the highest quality of learning embracing multiple perspectives so that we are making informed decisions building strong Community collaborations supporting lifelong learning and fostering shared ownership for Success among individual family schools and the broader community so um we felt very very good about the core values in our strategic plan and I don't know that those would change for 2427 um we also noted um our strategic plan does have a delimiter which we think is important to pay attention to because it's basically saying that we won't get distracted we will try to make sure that things that we do Implement through our strategic plan are aligned to the Strategic plan um of of course at the foundation of our plan are those expectations that we're going to have high achievement for all or that we're going to expect that for all of our Learners and this is very aligned to um requirements that are put upon us from the state with um for example with the world's best Workforce and other legislation coming in like the um reading to ensure academic development the read act um and as you can see here those um components around systems being ready which is the all systems ready for kindergarteners really promotes ready schools um ready programs ready families ready communities and essentially you know making sure our systems are um ready to receive them we also want um to keep the idea of growth in math and reading um having uh all students achieving proficiency those foundational literacy and numeracy skills because we know those are very very important to um learning um and acquiring deeper knowledge as kids age up um committed to closing achievement gaps um making sure that we are paying attention to career in college readiness and then of course our ultimate penultimate goal of graduating Learners so that their life career and college ready um are at the foundation and then of course we have all these additional considerations you heard um board member um Natalie mentioned the portrait of a learner and these are things that we are looking to tackle in the next iteration of our strategic rolling plan if you will um and this will include things like looking at those competencies that are really needed um by all Learners to be successful not only in their next level of learning in whether they're going from third grade to fourth grade or sixth grade to 7eventh grade or 9th grade or whatever but leaving the system onto a post secondary option or a career or a profession whatever um the next um few slides that you're going to see are an evalue sort of a an analysis I won't call it evaluation but it's kind of an impact evaluation of our current Focus areas their objectives and the Strategic initiatives and we used what we call a sore analysis to review each of these we looked at the strengths the opportunities what we felt were aspirations and then some results and I'm going to highlight some of the results tonight of course I want to just frontload that with we have so many other things too that we could highlight but in you know light of we have one evening to do this um I'm just picking and choosing a few and I want you to know that you know as we go through the year we do additional presentations to you around programming whether it's the district literacy plan or whether it's the math review or if it's something like you know um Athletics or even the school information reports we will be sharing lots more details as we go um okay so Focus area one positive climate and culture um the strengths that we really identified as as as being things we think we would keep are related to our commitment to restored practices um our focus on student empowerment which allows our students to actively contribute to their school experience and the um work that we've done around clarifying response protocols to ensure consistency in both staff and student behaviors um those have definitely contributed to positive outcomes and so we see those as really really good um strengths of this Focus area some of the opportunities we identified had to do with just more systemic implementation of those restorative practices um and just really much more collaboration and teaming and emphasis on the power of teams and how we might um you know we say we always say well it only takes one adult connected to a child for the child to succeed but what if we had teams of people um how much more likely would we see kids Thrive um the aspirations that we found in this Focus area included things like just really um aspiring to create a school culture where students feel heard and supported and envisioning a system where student leadership plays a really Central role in shaping school policies and so um there is a lot of work being done in that space um with assistant superintendent Harris and director Ian Omar who are out there working with kids and trying to get more voice and Leadership um at the table when we're making decisions that affect them um when it comes to the results we did observe improvements and behavior across the system um we were able to see that students in many cases were showing up more engaged and um again that their voices um um feeling that their voices are heard and so here's a little bit of the data that I was able to pull around some of the identified results and these include um results from our climate survey at the end of the year these are just some of the questions and then you'll see it's broken down by grade band the elementary middle and high school and I'm not going to read every single one of those but I think from you know the feedback that we're getting from students around whether or not they are feeling safe or like they belong we have we have lots of good data here we have a few data points that we think we would want to pay a little bit more attention to um for example in middle school and it looks like I have it a little bit covered up with that that uh that yellow thing there but we have about 32% of our middle school students reporting that students at school respect each other and we kind of heard this last year that there's that peerto peer um piece going on and we continue to work at that um one of the big um things that came up in the review was just the number of schools that are implementing these recognition programs for kids and how great those are and how well they're working along with just looking at the data and you heard Natalie speak to a little bit of the behavior data but overall when we looked at incidents last year we did see a 10% decline in the number of reported incidents um for the for the 23 24 year over 22 23 so that was a celebration um so going to the next Focus area instruction that produces positive outcomes when we reviewed this area um we see some of our strengths and how we are committed to moving research based um data informed practices more closely to the classroom and also just in our own work is uh as a district as a system in our at our department levels at our building levels being more committed to really following kind of the the lead of what the data and the information is telling us um we see opportunities for structuring more personalized supports for students and then we also highlighted the um the learning that so many people have been doing around letters for example and those research aligned reading strategies um some of the opportunities that we identified were around classroom assessment practices um again helping people understand what personalized learning paths could look like expanding our seal supports and then continuing our science of reading um literacy instruction um and expanding that to more and more professionals um some of the aspirational things in this area were that we are really aspiring to understand where high impact learning is occurring um and again growing our monitoring muscles with that data and really trying to contextualize it in a way that um is Meaningful and allows us to do some really good need meeting for students um we you know obviously aspire to have more Equitable outcomes in closing that Gap in learning and then again focusing on knowing um more about performance-based assessment assessment that is as learning so those growing those metacognitive reflective skills that we know students are going to need um to be successful and so some of the results that were ident ified were around some improved academic performance around strong systems of support and enhanced teacher capacity and so I have a few slides on the data to kind of speak to those things um what you're seeing here are our internal interim standardized test scores and this year we had a lot of Baseline data being collected because implemented new measures um fast Bridge primarily I ready for math we continued with star in sixth through 8th grade but we're repositioning that tool um to be used for the purpose it was intended so it's less about informing instruction more about understanding how the system is doing um so lots of work being done in the area of assessment and um again K1 they're measuring those early foundational literacy skills and the early numeracy skills and obviously a majority of our kindergarteners need a lot more support in reading this is not um not going to happen alone just by us we have to make sure everybody knows our kindergarten students need more reading and math support in and out of school this is going to require a lot lots of arms um put around all those kids but we are seeing progress and we are seeing um our instructional staff feeling more um equipped to address um some of the reading challenges um not you know the goal is really getting our K12 three staff to a place where they they know what might be breaking down in some of the reading for kids as a way to kind of move these scores um we had very high participation on all of these assessments which is great um we know that using some of these standardized measures consistently will help us track where we need to put resources and then I just want to say that the persistence in Services um how we're building out more support for those who who maybe are not in the the Deep red but like in the yellow um is something that these measures are going to help us get better at so I kind of I call them the cusp kids I call them the kids that sort of fly under the radar but but we never really catch them so having these really good practices set up and in place we want to be catching um catching kids um to do those supports and then um I wanted to also make sure I spoke to the you know number of special education students that we are supporting you know we serve over 2,265 sped Learners um and um in any given year so when you think about all of the individualized learning plans that we are producing and supporting and anywhere from 84 to 87% of the students are meeting their math and reading goals on those learning plans that is aett big deal um because that's a that is a that is a very heavy lift in St Cloud area schools is a district that has a really large um number of students receiving these kinds of really specialized Services um when it comes to our multilingual Learners what I think is really um important to share while our proficiency rates tell us you know we're performing below the state average when we really dig in and we look at the scale scores and we look at the mean scale scores we're able to see that our our students are right on par with their state counterparts um and so this this is just a is showing that you know we we are close to performing at what a language learner anywhere in the state um would would be performing it and again I think we need to see this as a celebration in some ways because our students you know there's there's so many more kids in St Cloud and so many languages and the supports are um the supports that are needed here are greater than in many other districts so I just think that's really an important thing for us to understand is that we are um serving the a very large population in comparison to many other districts and we're doing a really good job the other thing I share in terms of data here is just our exiting data and the reason why I want you to see that is because while we are exiting at I would say these are very commendable rates it is still really important to note that these children being exited while they have mastered the English language they're still learning they're learning the content language and so they're still on our radar and we still have to pay attention to the supports and the needs that they have as well um and so then the other important thing we wanted to share was that we we really are proud of the amount of effort and um time that our professionals are putting into growing their learning around these research-based practices um this is not easy stuff it's intense and it it requires them to really um make some pretty large commitments to Growing you know their tools and their toolkit um and lots of times it's it's um it's even beyond what they would normally normally do so we're really appreciative and proud of our Professionals for all that they've been doing to try and get um better outcomes going on to focus area three under Innovation um we have a very strong commitment to innovation in our district our focus on um collabor of problem solving is um is very strong and we also are um dedicated to Res um doing strategic resource allocation to ensure that we are um supporting programs and Innovations in ways that um maximize impact uh opportunities that we identified were around just really what what kind of Gap analysis might we need to be doing in order to um you know do more strategic resource allocation for example um what ways can we strengthen teacher voice and student Voice through Innovation um and then what other again enhanced resource allocation and efficiencies for better impact could we do when we think of innovation and part of why this was coming up just to give you some context is when we look at the number of um new tools and applications that are out there that are being pushed by vendors or that are just that we're finding there's so many and so having ways to understand which ones really have impact um is something that we are really committed to trying to figure out um some aspirational items under this Focus area and just included you know making sure that we um are embracing that culture of continuous learning um you know we are a learning in organization and so how are we making time um in space for people to do that is going to be important going forward um and then just Equitable and effective programming and inclusive and authentic Solutions um as we aim to solve for this really wicked challenge of closing achievement gaps we may find sometime that Innovations which maybe don't show up in the research as a best practice work and that's that that's okay that that's what we we want we may find new and novel ways to meet learning needs when we innovate and although it may not fall under a quote Best practice that was researched I think that's something that we have to be open to because because the populations we serve deserve that they deserve us to be be open and looking for some of those Innovations um and then under results we we wanted to just highlight um the work of Katie herbolt and Katie clug and that team they're doing phenomenal work with the modern classroom um as well as um you know the students because you know just as the teachers are taking on this new thing the students are taking on a new thing too so we're really um excited about the progress that they report um when we think about um the results that they they talk about they promote agency um they they're about intrinsic motivation they're about making the learning relevant um helping kids grow their their reflection skills and thinking skills peer assessment you know giving them choice and agency which are all skills that they they will need to be successful so we think this is a really um a really good program for the district to toep to support and then the other thing we identified was just how the um Minnesota thought leaders um Summit did bring to our system um so many things that we are yet to uncover even because we are now working together with so many other people across the state really um and many many District staff have jumped on and said hey I'm interested in this we are currently in the process of building a toolkit that teachers can explore and use we're working with um msba reached out they're they have members on the committee they want they want us to come and present in January to speak about what what is happening with this work um and I am just ever so grateful to the staff in the schools um principal scaller and free and many others I who I'm drawing a blank on names but I'm just grateful to their interest in this because on top of everything that they're already doing this is just really a big uh another one um focus area four is a big one as well and this we could spend an entire night on because there's so many great things happening around career and post-secondary education options um but some of the strengths obviously are that we offer a comprehensive career preparation program for many different areas that span our our um high schools we aim to ensure that students are prepared for a variety of career paths um students and grades 8 through 12 have been working on personalized learning plans that connect their coursework to their post-secondary goals um we're doing lots of collaboration with Community Partners and then we have the new one with direct admissions and that's the office of higher ed um we also have get ready which I didn't list on there but again this this is such a huge area um so I only had space for four things you can see we kind of ran out of space there opportunities for this area include just continuing to expand those career related courses um increasing um encouraging kids to um take those College um credit classes and certifications giving kids opportunities for more work experience and then just PSO as well um and again the aspirations in this area are pretty obvious we want kids to be ready we want we want strong industry connections locally Statewide nationally and yeah globally because we we're we're a very Global District in the ter in terms of who we have in our system our kids are ready for that so um our aspirations are really high in that area um and again the goals are to successfully matriculate to these um these successful opportunities um results for this area some of the results that I want to share with you just are around for example in CTE we have what we call concentrator um courses or if a if a student takes more than two or three of these they can get a concentration and what we know is that when kids concentrate in a certain area that they're more likely to graduate so when we find career Pathways that kids are really interested in and they take two or three of the the classes in those areas they're much more likely to graduate and go on to successful careers um we also wanted to highlight the number of students earning those bilingual seals because of course those are just amazing assets that our kids leave leave us with and um companies all over the place are looking for uh students to have some of those and then finally the work experiences I was able to kind of get this at the last minute but I know that there's so much more to tell so many stories around work experiences for kids these are just the numbers um that principes reported um for students from last year our College and Career um pathway kiddos we had about 329 last year who um took AP courses and you can see the breakout of students by racis ethnicity and also for the number of students who participated on the ACT I take that back this is the 2020 2023 data that's right 2023 so um the goal is to really increase these numbers and we're working on that um trying to find ways to get more students into these um classes and more students um taking the college readiness exam and then this uh slide here is just really showing you it's kind of hard to see but it's um a graph that is displaying three years worth of college enrollment trends for Apollo and Tech the blue bar are uh is white students enrolling in college and the green bar is our students of color and as you can see those those numbers are going up which is a good thing the Gap is closing on this um particular measure um of college enrollment which is really great and um so that's that was that we're going to move on to family and Community engagement Focus area five and again strengths on that is just the school-based connections that we are building that are providing very welcoming um spaces for families um we continue to work on access to information and programming um whether it's um supporting with our Equity Department um or through um ways that we might translate information those sorts of things we see opportunities and just expanding this and strengthening Partnerships um we know that this is really an important area it's called out in our Minnesota mtss framework so how do we partner and um really aspire to that inclusive connected um School sorry and Community um and then as far as results in this area we did look at um some of those uh connection conferences and family engagement nights were called out as being really high well participated in um we also looked at some of our climate survey data to just see where family's perceptions of safety and belonging um you know meeting our expectations and so there's a little bit of data there for you to look at and see um we we probably had a response rate of about 11% on the family survey so not super high but if you were conducting a survey in the community that would can be considered valid and reliable so I think we can look to these results to say we think we think they are meaningful um but I will tell you we are committed to doing doing even more getting even more feedback on this um so those those are the five Focus areas in review kind of what we looked at for the 23 to 26 um and then just going forward in terms of the 2427 plan development we are taking that sore analysis and our data we're going to um look at the legislative changes that are coming well that have been adopted really the react and then the world's best Workforce has changed from world's best Workforce to comprehensive achievement and Civic Readiness report and there's a new requirement that districts figure out how they're going to measure um students who are prepared learners for life so um we have a little bit of work to do on that and we have a team that is meeting we also you know our continuous Improvement um framework is really one of as you heard earlier from S one of reciprocal responsibility and so helping our leaders understand um what the Minnesota mtss which is I I like to call it a multi-tiered system to of success it's it's meant to support success for all um and so um we're we're going to be looking at how do we build in that robust feedback needed to have to truly have responsive reciprocal things happening between the district leadership the school leadership the school leadership the teacher leadership the teacher leadership the student leadership it's just those cycles of feedback that we have to make sure we're we're developing and that they're robust and that they're responded to and they're authentic um the next steps include in gathering data and um again looking at all this input um talking with leaders creating a timeline and um of course incorporating what our priorities are for 2425 and those are safety belonging collaboration and Excellence so in conclusion um I'm happy to take any questions uh that you might have thank you Al and then Natalie um thank you for putting this one together I I want to talk about a couple of different things um FR some frustrations and some things that I find very satisfying in there I'm really happy that you brought the section showing us compared to the state of Minnesota when it comes to say English it was the English language Learners and how how our Els perform compared to other that's what I got on that slide correct yes and we do very well um same with special ad we have very good programs very good and our and our students are achieving at a level that is equal to or better than other people in the state right so a real frustration of mine is how do we measure that and we measure that with MCAS and we turn around and say your district is really bad bad you're really low and the correlation between high levels of e high levels of special ad high levels of poverty high levels of uh homelessness those those challenges we are doing exceptional an exceptional job with the students that need those supports in comparison with the state and in comparison with other districts we're doing a really really really good job but MCAS are comparing how we're doing with those students compared to how other districts that don't have those students they're doing with their students and it's a really unfair comparison and I I know I talk about maso's pyramid all the time because I'm a big believer in the the concepts of that but I really wish that instead of saying hey stcloud we're going to look at your students and we're going to compare you to Sock Rapids or Sartell orina or whoever and we're going to rate your District based on that I wish that they would look at first before they before they make any kind of comparison look at look at our students and break them into four groups based on maso's Pyramid those students that are in the very bottom level where they they their basic needs haven't been met and we know how when a student's basic needs haven't been met in life we know how that affects their learning correct so if we have 10% of our students that are in the bottom level of maso's pyramid we would have 10% of our students that we would not expect to learn at a high level but we would expect them to learn and we would expect them to have the ability to learn but they are distracted with trying to figure out how they're going to get through the next day not focused on how they they going to get through the exam at the end of the week in their math class um and then also how many students are at the very top of the pyramid where they have all their basic needs met they feel loved they feel supported they feel like they belong they they go to school every day and they're worried more about the football game coming on Friday than they are about where their next meal is going to come from or if they have a place to sleep that night and those students can really focus in on learning they're wondering what college they're going to go to they're not wondering if they're going to be alive when they get to College um it's just it's an entirely different uh experience for a student who is living with that type of stability in their life and there's so if you took it into and broke students into the four levels of maso's pyramid and you said where do we expect your students who are in the bottom level to perform and how are you performing against that that would be a fair comparison how do we how do students in the St Cloud School District who are in the top level of that pyramid they have safety they have all the safe and secure feelings their love supported they've they've got everything going for them in life and they're going to our schools how are they performing against or compared to other kids who are in that similar situation that would be a fair comparison but it's completely unfair to take districts who have high levels of students that are in the lower half of the pyramid and compare them to to districts who have high levels of student who have almost all of their students in the top of the pyramid and so I think something something at the state level has to happen where we don't compare students in districts that way and I also will say I absolutely and I know I've said it before and I I get criticized for it but I hate it I hate when we compare or pull out and say students of color or our black students do this I I mean I don't care if if a person is black or if a person is white I don't care they have a they they have the ability to learn the what causes large racial demographic differences is where they're in in maso's pyramid there's a higher level of there's there's a higher prep the preponderance of a black person to live in the in a situation of poverty is higher than the average white family and I think that has a lot to do with the the academic outcomes and if you want to raise the level of learning for black students black students can learn at the exact same rate as white students there's no genetic um reason that they can't learn at the same levels but if they were living in the same life situations and they had all of those needs met at home that would be how you would see our our um OPP our learning gaps begin to close and when we just take and say black students are here and white students are here we're we're in a way I think quietly saying that we don't believe that black students can learn at the same level as white students and I don't think that's the case I I think that any student of color can learn at the same rate as any student any white student or any any any student anywhere and I just hate measuring that way when I look at on the first Slide the foundation slide [Music] way back at the beginning of this it this one here close gaps all academic and opportunity gaps based on race culture gender identity and the and ability are closed and as we I think that our slides in the middle did a really good job of showing how we are doing a good job of giving excellent supports to students say and let's take special education students and IEPs we are doing a really good job as good as anywhere in the state of giving students who are on an IEP um education and supports at the level that they need but we are never going to close the gap on special education students and and completely close that opportunity Gap so that everybody that graduates is at the same level and we're we're all going off to college that isn't going to happen and even if we're doing a great job much much better than any other District out there and our students on IEPs are achieving uh let's go to the star data and that their growth is much higher every year than other districts we're doing just a phenomenal job we still aren't going to close that Gap because every year we get new special education students we're bringing new students into the system that we have to bring up and we're the ones that were graduating we pushing off it's kind of like a college team it's hard to keep a team a championship team together because after a few years you lose your Superstar students and I I just I have a real problem when we make statements like that in our strategic plan because it's not it's not it's not based in reality and then on the next page the climate slide I had a comment on yeah it might be one more uh there we go I don't remember what I'll come back to this one because I don't remember what I was going to say on this one and it's not important but anyway I just I wish I wish that somehow the state would change their report card to something that measured students based on on life circum ances and the and the challenges that are before them uh that that affect their ability to their ability to learn and it's not I don't believe that it's a genetic ability to learn I think that it's a uh environmental ability to learn there's there's so many strikes going on against them in their in their life that they just can't focus give 100% of their focus to learning like students who are living in the very top of that maslo pyramid that's all I have to say yeah I have a couple things to say on on this the first thing I want to say is holy crap the amount of data that you presented to us there like I need to take that and read it for some nighttime reading because like I just like well wait a minute let me just put this one part and let's just talk about that for like 3 hours so um you know you're doing what you say you want to do in in those five pillars that we said right that we're basing what we're doing on data and so I really appreciate that um Al to kind of talk about your point of why do we why are we talking about where there's disparities why do we do this was your question and I just want to say that you know you said black families live in poverty more than white families do and that's that's true and the the question we have to ask ourselves is why is that and I bring it back to this this point all the time on this board but that's our history of our nation certain people with my skin colar got free land um that was that used to be indigenous land and it wasn't it was people only with my skin color and this is the reality that we live in now that we're we're tackling hundreds of years of disparity at a at a federal level so says our government and now what we're when we're saying that what definitely nobody's saying right what what uh you're not saying either is that based on your skin color you know you are you can learn or you can't learn but by talking about it we put the elephant in the room on the table and say there's a reality of who we've been a nation that has set some people up for more success than others and we see that all the time here in in our schools so um I know you've all heard that from me before but I just wanted to point that out again the focus area one that I wanted to talk about I 94% listen y'all of our high schoolers have at least one adult that they can talk to if they have a problem we're talking about teenagers I have three of them well one's 20 now but like that is um that is so intentional the work that yall have done about that is so intentional my kids had multiple people who still ask about them today you know and that's the reason that they're successful as as they leave 742 and when they're here as well um the one question I have I have so many questions but I'm just going to stick with one um uh Focus area 2 I guess maybe have maybe I've seen it before but I it didn't hit me like it did today kindergarten scores that the majority of kids don't come to us at grade level 24% for reading and so what is the um what percentage of our students have at least one year of preschool do we know that when they come to us I know that that's just data to pull out of your head so sorry but I wish I had it in there I I don't but I can get it okay I'm just wondering the correlation between that but and I think that um director Flynn Kate Flynn is looking at the um the goals that she wants to set and I believe one of them is in participation in like growing participation in those pre school programs but I think that's another like that that is disparity right there between some you know because we don't have free prek for all that that can probably come in the world's best Workforce update or the comprehensive when we bring it because that'll be that component all children ready that will be part of it but some sometimes I think our community wrongly asserts that like there's these kids coming all of our kids coming into kindergarten at 100% And then somehow they just that's not the reality of it and it's not just that our it's a nationwide problem you know so I know I'm not saying anything that nobody here um is going to argue with but I think it's some of those things that when I just thank you for that specific data because when I'm talking to community members and they're like what is what can we even do um it has I mean obviously we all know it has to start at the beginning but yeah thank you so much for how comprehensive this was I really appreciate it Donna thank you Donna I'm going to go with um this is over mean so um that that I I do appreciate that there is a lot of information here that I don't know that I have been able to digest yet and process myself because of that I have a question for um Nikki and Jason and Jan how do you bring this the strategic planning how do you bring this to the stuff how how do how how do you bring it there and how does it get there so they don't feel like I am feeling right now yeah I think we hit hit on that a little earlier tonight when we talked about continuous improvement work so we leverage our building leaders as we go through our learning together and then we leverage our site leadership teams around that continuous Improvement cycle that directly ties to this strategic plan and so it is all working in alignment and then our sites set those goals off of their personal site data on what they want to accomplish as a school community and so it's all in alignment but each step is very important maybe you guys can spound on that on the retreat that we're going to do I also um I I I I was also looking at the at the description that you were giving us in terms of how do we compare with other districts and that we're doing very similar to others um in proficiency then then I hear um I when I hear the the the the description or how do we talk about our students I hear that we have a students that have greater needs than other students is that correct that other students in I don't around the state I don't know if I'm maybe I misspoke if I said students have greater needs our system I think has greater challenges because we have greater volume of needs does that make sense so if you look at the percentage of um language Learners and while I wouldn't view that as a deficit I actually think it's an asset in a Traditional School System it's you know it's a challenge to so so we're trying to meet um The Challenge in the same way that other districts are also trying to do it we just have more volume so again our cross subsidies are greater than other districts cross subsidies why because we have a lot more students with those um learning needs that we aren't funded for you know so that's all I'm meaning Monica I'm not trying to say we have different Learners necessarily we just have a we have different challenges within our system because the volume is so what I want to say to Lori we were talking about communication last last session and when Donna said it that way and when I hear for example all what's referring to the students as we have which is true we have a a like 7% of um free and rce launch so so we so so what I am hearing is that we have students with greater needs than other students and when I hear Donna explain it that way makes sense but but we still don't have like the I don't know like the punch message like I mean after a lot of analysis we have to understand this and I think that that goes into the the core of how do we speak about our district um so I I also have a question regarding to this and I have a question for Heather Zak and Natalie Shannon maybe think that Shannon is not mom anymore why do you have kids here I'm I'm I'm I I honestly want to ask you I honestly want to I mean with the right of saying not responding right now but if you may why do you have kids on the district cuz I am assuming that your kids have less needs than what I'm hearing that we speak completely and and my point about that is that I want to know how to if I'm a parent that I have a choice to make about where my kid goes to school where am I going to go why do I want my kid and with all my social conscious why do I want my kid to go to an School with a student that I know has a lot more challenges that that that my my kid so if I if I if I said okay this school is great because it has support for uh English Learners or because it has support for kids with disabilities or because it has support with people that have dyslexia if my kid doesn't have any of those and I think that I'm a parent that can be enough involved with that why would I want my kid to go to that school and that's that's my question to you guys if you want to respond is that a rhetorical question no but they have the right to say whatever they want to say because I think that um regardless of where there's this child this child this child this child this child each one of them has a very wonderful path at District 742 we have so many great things you can't look at it as a whole but individually all all of each of my children all of our students have great opportunities in the district and but when you lump it together it gets confused individually we're doing great things for each one of these students Natalie um I didn't yeah my kids weren't always in this district and we chose this District we moved into the district in order for my kids to go here and um it's it's not altruistic I'm just going to to be super honest it was because I knew my kids needed to be challenged and I knew that they were going to need more AP classes than sck Rapids offers than Sartell offers and so I was thinking longterm because we moved into the district when when the boys were in uh middle school and that's what I was thinking about was I'm thinking College because unfortunately for our kids you have to start thinking college and middle school and um I know our uh my economic situation was these kids better get some college in them before they go to college cuz good night is expensive so um that I can say uh that plus feeling like when I graduated from sck Rapids in the 90s I wasn't prepared for the world because we didn't look like the world um and then I went out on the world and I was like oh my gosh the world um so it was those two things that um I wanted my kids to be better prepared than I was and I wanted them to have a running start at college and uh with two in college both could graduate in three years I'd say uh check and check and one more I'm sure will'll be check in three years so thank you for asking that happy to talk about my kids any day I would say the breadth of proam I mean part of it probably at the heart of it um it's where we lived and we believe in public education so philosophically um that made a lot of sense that said I think that the district is extremely attractive in terms of the range of programs that are offered um you know in whether it is the AP sorts of of of programs whether it's immersion opportunities um whether it is activities and and the gamut of of the full gamut of opport of of just experiences that are available to students I'm not going to be polyanic though and say that there aren't times um where I haven't said I wonder if my son because I only have boys would have done better because it's very individual I mean it's no different than College like there is no perfect college for any kid there there's a place that that can fit and meet their needs and each of the kids is different I I I think that um 742 offers a a very wide breath that hopefully every student can find a place but that doesn't mean that it's without Problems by any stretch of the imagination and and I think there are kids who who flourish better um I think that there are kids who can get lost and I mean even that I graduated from a small school you know 93 in my high school class I will tell you that I think there are times that at least one if not a couple of my kids may have done better in a in a smaller school where um and in St Cloud isn't hug huge but if it's 350 that's very different than a class of 100 or 120 and so how do you find yourself but overwhelmingly the bread and then as Natalie said the opportunity to know that the world looks very different all over the place and you have to be able to adjust and you have to be able to manage yourself and become independent and and figure out your pathway in a place that isn't prescriptive for you and doesn't do everything for you um so in that way I think it's been really positive short and sweet opportunity this District had everything they needed and then some um I grew up in what I call a very perfect uh Suburban life graduated from Maple Grove Senior High 1999 little over 600 kids I feel like I met more of them in college than high school cuz it was so strange but everything was growing I mean we had I think maybe it was less than 10% the students I graduated with were of color um and it was a great education they treated us like in high school much different than the other high schools in the district and because most of my friends went to oio and we'd always compare and ours was treated like every teacher every teacher I swear said when you go to college to the point where it bugged some people that my friends who knew they weren't weren't or they had jobs or military um but it was also very do I dare use the word vanilla in plain um I had other opportunities about that but um the opportunities just saw here in this District are so much more than the the perfect District I graduated from so that's it was I mean immense and know a lot of that of course again location we have a university a tech college right here in the heart of the district um a little bit of everything um everything you need and then some so go ahead yeah thank you for that and thank you for allowing me to De a little bit of the questions here I did have a one last question and it was uh when you were presenting the part about the the generative a um so one of the and by now to be honest I don't remember what you were saying but but I have a note on myself about the the they interested in AI education so so so you're talking there about the collaborations with the with the Department of fed and you're talking about um how this is important and I do remember the presentation that we had after the the conference that we have here or whatever we call it it um that's huge and I I'm what I'm I see it that OBC is one and two create a culture of innovation um it it it comes to think about in in in AI comes with a lot of an steep learning curve for a stuff um so what are expectations about how are we going to innovate in this area and maybe I don't know if it's you the question or it's for Lori but what are our expectations how that we going to innovate in this area and how are we going to respond to the needs of a staff with everything that we have every this everything that is here is I mean I'm overwhelmed I already said that I can try to answer that and I don't know superintendent butam would have additions but I think um you bring up a really valid point right this is a steep learning curve for for all of us and yet it is one we cannot afford to go down or around so the idea of collaborating with others is really to Aid Us in going around this learning curve in a way that um that we can be successful because if we try to go It Alone we're we're going to be really far behind so we need to collaborate across districts and the consensus of this group that's working on the how of IIA AI sorry is um that you know districts are out there doing so many things on their own everything from curriculum review Cycles to choosing assessments to building you know all kinds of things individually in districts and it's a lot of effort and a lot of work and we're realizing that if we come together to try to do this and Leverage The Brilliance of multiple people we're going to get there faster better products better better information better better learning tools um does that help now you got to go back to the slide you were on before NOP uh yeah Yep this one here this is the one I said I had something that I was going to say on this one but I couldn't remember um I look at this in the the commitment to restorative pract so strengths commitment to restorative practices student empowerment clarification of protocols opportunities systemwide implementation restorative practices and increased collaboration what I when I when I look at this one I see a lot of things for okay something happened how are we going to fix it or how are we going to restore things what I don't see on this slide is any kind of reference to uh IM imp improving the student ownership within the district and and where I'm going with this is when we had that uh presentation from Lincoln last year and we talked about giving the students jobs within the schools and how the students who had these jobs were so proud of them and they were showing up to school because they wanted to be there and they were they had the pride in front of their other students and everyone knew who everyone was and what they did and what their role was in the school that's what I'm referring to when I say increasing ownership within the district increasing not this this is like a a road map to things that have happened but how do we get the Buy in from students to make them want to come to school to make them want to learn to that's that's a positive culture and and climate and culture is when you have that so I just said just that was my comment on that slide um and then the other piece as as Natalie said when I saw the 20 20 something per ready for kindergarten yeah I sit here and that number is kind of shocking cuz I don't think that it's you it's ready for kindergarten as I would understand it and maybe I'm way off but bathroom skills social interaction know your numbers and letters and be able to read it's gotten I mean they've pushed a little bit on reading haven't they to where they want you to be able to read at a very rudimentary level and those are kind of the things that you look at for a student ready for kindergarten when when you see that it's 20% number one I want to know do the residents of our district know that because that is in the schools folks that's that's the people in the district that's that's the reality of our school district and I think it makes my uh M's pyramid argument pretty good because so many of our students are in that those levels of the pyramid in in their home life and if you're not getting read to if you're not being taught at home and if you're parents aren't aren't giving you that type of support when you're growing up you're probably not going to be ready for kindergarten when you get there the other side of that we have 30% of our students 30% of our district enrollment that open en rolls out of this district and I'm I I would go out on a limb and say that I would guess that 70 to 80% of those students are ready for kindergarten when they get to kindergarten and if you added those numbers in to our district enrollment we would actually be up in probably the 60% range which again I'm going to go out on limb I have no idea but I'm going to guess that 60% probably isn't far off of the state average so I mean that I was shocked when I saw that number but it's kind of like yeah it's reality that's reality and yet we don't our graduation rate isn't 20% our graduation rate is way higher than that so that's right that's all I got one one last piece of context on kindergarten so people just um we're measuring early literacy and early numeracy in English and you know in the last 3 years the percent of students enrolling in kindergarten with a home home language other than English is in the 40 to 50% range so just I would say we I would caution us to make too many you know I I think part of why our number is as low as it is has to do a little bit with that though and those kids will get there I'm confident that our English language Learners they get there quickly it's a 2 to threee um Journey usually but we're we're we're getting when they come that early to us they are picking it up quickly so um you talk about a rolling plan I'm trying to roll backward and try to think back to when we didn't used to have a strategic plan at all uh I think Willie jet uh initiated the process maybe the first or second year that he was on the job and he gathered a large group of people a lot of folks and they weren't all Educators they were people from all over the place and he divided us into into two groups and one was C of the the Creative Group and the other was the Action Group I was in the action group but we got all these wonderful ideas from wonderful people and then we tried to find a way to to make it happen but now is this rolling plan is there any resemblance to the original um and also who is on the the planning committee now compared to back when we had such a variety of Partners from all over the the city or District I mean it's changed a lot anybody remember from way back [Music] when I don't know the answer to that okay but we don't have the partners that we used to I remember we had the architect one of the members of our group when when the Strategic plan was put together we hired an outside Consulting Group that came in and put together a group of Comm of the community to ask the community what they wanted from their education uh from the from the district and a strategic plan was put together and yes it's kept as far as I can see it's kept the same Foundation throughout uh it's been updated some every year because the year one goals were different than the year two goals which were different from the year three goals every year there's it's not a complete new set of goals it's just some of the year one goals we we achieve them and so then from that we move to the second priority and the third priority and the fourth priority and the fifth priority and we're in probably year seven or eight of the Strategic plan it hasn't I don't think has it been no it's probably probably been 10 years probably in the 10th year now of this but I I don't think it's changed a whole lot from the is it all Educators nowadays or do we actually have some outsiders with some input I we I don't think no I don't think that we've been forming a an out an outside group every year I mean I say we I'm not involved in it but I think it's been the administration along with this the principles and staff that have been developing the new strategic plan every year but it's not starting over is my point it's still the same if you go back to the very first strategic plan the focus areas were all the same it's just identifying new uh Focus areas within that strategic area that the community was asking us to work on that's that's my thoughts on it I would just add in a in a strategic plan of any sort um I mean once you have a general framework you're continuing it it's dat it's still databased because you're you're taking in you know surveys or input that you get from various it's not done in a vacuum it's just I mean in most Industries the Strategic plan itself whether it's a consultant or it's the experts in the room are developing it but they're doing it based upon data that they're collecting from all different sorts of places so when when Donna is putting it together she's using data that they're getting from family surveys she's using I mean everybody is it's not just Donna but it's it's not isolated from all of the other information that is being gathered continuously in the form of family engagement in the form of testing in the form of uh conversations that are had with community members um you know career preparation all of those sorts of things it's it's not in a vacuum or isolated from everything that's going on it just maybe and even when the Strate I mean when the first strategic plan was developed the the group that was maybe part of it still wasn't writing the Strategic plan they were providing data to to write the Strategic plan I mean even if you were on a group you weren't writing the Strategic plan you were simply a group that was discussing things to provide information which is the same as what they've got now Monica thank you yep so I want take a shot to answer the question from the Scott so the the we you and I were part of that team that you're describing and much like Heather was talking about that team was a team task with the with the rethinking of the district right it was it was it was a little bit of a creative effort and that's that's what has been asked by the board to the superintendent about getting enough inut from the community to develop the Strategic plan there was a lot of data brought to that team as Heather is pointing out and then the team had the task to kind of create and recreate a set of goals um and set of objectives that we had and including our mission that we still have today that was approved by the board so if you think about it that way what we had after that is the strategy per se was developed by the stuff so that was very inspirational very very a um I don't know how to describe it it's we didn't tell the staff this is the number of trainings that you have to do we didn't tell them this is the number of thing that we we told them this is what we want would like that you support the students with and then after that the staff came together to tell us and in the in the in the years to come they came and said okay in the year one this is what we think that we can address and then they they had a time and a period of creating that strategy and they presented that strategy to the board they were presenting each each year they were presenting this is what we're going to do for a specific Focus and I think that at this point we actually finish with those with those specific Focus like four areas I think that we finish with them and and and Lori I think that you can tell us that because those because after we finished with them we had accomplishments about them in in terms of um what the things that we said to do um there are things that are very much aspirational because I think that we want 100% graduation right didn't we so so we we and we might still dis debating between ourselves if that is a goal that we need to put there and how and and that's that's those are things that that that we may discuss and we spend a lot of time discussing as community members but in terms of a strategy those goals were developed in in terms of professional development in terms of what the professional development that we wanted to have for staff in terms of culture and the import the important of climate um how do we want to measure everything how we wanted this to be a district data driven District that has been all implemented um so those does does that but there is unless we wanted to re Inspire ourself again and and and do the whole exercise all over again and it start all over then there is that the Partnerships are not going to look the way that that they look at that moment that's that exercise it was done at that point and now the Partnerships go pretty much with the stuff and looking in how do we continue to develop those but I'm pretty sure that Lori has um reports of how those goals were um reached at that point and she might be able to give it to you sorry Heather I didn't mean to interrupt you I just knew that she was at the same meeting so I don't know where we're go ahead Heather this is probably more for my CU curiosity anything we talk a lot about the Readiness of students what is your perception of the Readiness of teachers and staff when they come in um are are the our College Programs our our preparation programs preparing teachers to walk in and be ready I mean obviously you have the the slide about um letters and everything else that you is continuous Improvement so to speak for teachers what is your perception of of who's graduating and becoming available and their Readiness for the challenges that exist today in education and you know I would have to say director stebner and um maybe even Shen and or Nikki or Jason would be better suited to the answer that my own personal perception of what we're seeing kind of nationally is that teacher preparedness programs are lacking in a lot of ways in the areas of assessment reading strategies like all those things are changing and so um you know we're a learning organization and we need to promote that at every level we all even even an assessment I was just at a consequential uses of assessment conference unlearning what I have been taught for 25 years about assessment so things are constantly changing and so that's a good good observation yeah and I would just add it's kind of like our students they come in at different points and they have different needs needs um and we have a really good new teacher Academy program to support them and then an evaluation and support process at sites with our building leaders that entire onboarding process came out of the original strategic plan and and it continued and continues on to this day and it gets changed and that's the type of thing that I'm talking about as it gets changed as new needs arise um to try to meet those needs but it continues to be a port a part of the Strategic plan I was going to one thing that I was going to say too is that uh something that I think has changed substantially since we first did the Strategic plan and strategic planning is this the the state and the legislature has gotten much more involved in directing schools in what you can and can't do and aligning different uh things just like you are showing the MN M mtss today that that is that's a state program that is being pushed out into the schools um and we it we are ahead of the curve in that we've implemented a lot of those things through our strategic plan but there's a lot of school districts that don't have a strategic plan and that's probably why Minnesota is doing that but there's been a lot more government or uh legislative intrusion into every school district in the state any other questions comments Don I really like this template or how you put this Al together and what you included on it um it was really nicely done thank you okay thank you last up tonight we have the schools updates we have Nikki Hansen assistant superintendent of prek through five education Dr Jason Harris assistant superintendent of secondary education and Shannon Aon assistant superintendent of E12 Educational Services all right good evening toer H superintendent putam members of the board this year for our school's update you will hear from an elementary site a secondary site and a student services program or site each month highlighting our four pillars um this school year around our Focus priorities of safety belonging collaborations and Excellence through high expectations and high support and so here in the month of October we get to highlight our Madison Mustangs here is a photo of their very first day of school some first grade students practicing how to line up and model safe hallway expectations encompassing safety uh we see belonging on the first day AP nagorski out in front with our Madison Mustang families eager and ready for that first day of school in collaboration we see them working on an all about me mural in class art class together and for high expectations High supports we see some second grade students participating in a PBIS lesson with Dean fritzler about cafeteria expectations and routines so that is how our Madison Mustangs onboarded our students at the beginning of the school year at secondary we got a chance to celebrate the Apollo Eagles last week was homecoming and they they had a shout out to the staff at Apollo the administration the parents the students it was a a great week uh just being out in the schools and so you see it they got a chance to just show school spirit you got visibility out and just really that environment we're building community and we know when we do that you create safe environment so uh you see it there uh just the sense of belong you got the eagle out checking in with students having some fun and then just students enjoying the moment and so uh just creating that sense of belonging and then I got a chance to at the bottom uh coronation for homecoming I got a chance to see that and the students all dressed up and the collaboration came with the students ran the whole show I sat and just watched the students do pull the strings they were the media and they just did a great job and then you see uh the connection with the north side Southside principles and then just our staff uh just out uh celebrating school spirit and then just uh that high expectations High support you see the superintendent uh with principal scholar rude and then you see some young ladies repping their hijabs and blue and red and then our students down at the bottom so just creating that environment of uh it was a great week last week and I know we hear some of the things about behavior and safety but as a person in I'm in all the schools it feels good I see Smiles I know we have situations most schools do but when you really see and feel what's going on you see it here and it it it feels in the building all right and from a student services perspective on the safety side uh we have had o well over 66 staff trained in Crisis Prevention intervention CPI um and we're we have a schedule throughout the whole school year where we'll continue to train staff additionally we added a new onboarding process with all staff that are coming in will have at least kind of a mini lesson in deescalation strategies um so that's an exciting ad to our um uh to our training and we have gotten just amazing feedback on that so far so that's that feels good uh belonging uh that that's our special education directors uh Fischer and mayor supporting our Special Education team for an outstanding new teacher Academy approximately 20 some uh new special education teachers there collaboration immediately when this came to mind I thought of uh special education director Danny Mayer uh supervisor Jill Murphy and director of Early Childhood Kate Flynn um I work a lot this summer because I'm new to my role um those ladies worked so hard over the summer to make sure that we had the absolute best start to the year for our littlest Learners um I just an incredible amount of collaboration um and effort on their behalf it was really quite amazing and then high expectations High support um our department also supports Dean and AP assistant principal training um we this was one of our trainings right before school started some of our uh admin are new so we went through our Edge climber process uh student Management systems for Skyward um what our student uh support response looks like and then some Comm uh parent communication pieces and then that training will continue throughout the year as well for Deans and APS thank you all right any questions on that at all Heather maybe just an observation and I might have my weeks wrong but I believe the tech homecoming was the first week of school um and given that it was highlighted as Apollo having a homecoming and the importance of that to safety collaboration um belonging I feel like um the the Southside got CH changed I don't know how when you're coming into a new school year you can celebrate homecoming and do dress up days when and and activities and assemblies or whatever those celebrations are or even collaboration with teken South when you are onboarding students simply to help them understand how they get off the bus and into the into the space right so it just it felt really off it felt extremely uncel at least from a parent perspective and I would just incourage us to think more um intentionally about how you celebrate home coming at our in at at both of our schools can I just share Tech had the homecoming the first week of school Paulo was just recent but we have a treat for you you have the tech presentation coming up in November and you have all the information coming up in in that I know it wasn't as close but you do have that celebration coming up around around that and I was still I would just say observationally from my kids who go to that school I I just I'm I'm sure you can get pictures it I just didn't feel any excitement around it because there really wasn't time I mean they were literally figuring out how to get to school and what their expectations were yeah I think you hit the key it was the first week of school y thank you um that's everything up for tonight so looking for a motion to adjourn our works uh motion by Heather second by Natalie all in favor say I I opposed excellent work session is adjourned it is 9:03 p.m. have a good night thanks for watching we'll be back October 16th depends on I feel like