##VIDEO ID:iNmKzARVEgA## e e e e e e e e that would be so do you want a break in between this one res because you need to set it up and all that yep just because we're moving to the next room and it's going to be close okay good evening the time is now 6:00 the vataa public schools Bo Public Schools Board of Education special regular meeting for Monday September 23rd 2024 will please come to order will the clerk please call the RO Valentina SS here Dan janra here Sarah Johansson here Paris bende here Sheila PRI here Heidi here Milan Sone present we have a quum there's no consent agenda for this meeting the next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda the only item today is approval of the preliminary 2024 payable 2025 Levy limitation and certification is there a recommended action is to approve the agenda is there a motion do we need to add the Clos meeting to that that's separate meeting so we have to call it separately she us it's an agenda item for this meeting and then you go into close session as a part of this meeting is that correct Amy okay all right so then there are two items on the agenda this the one I just mention and then there is also a close meeting followed by this meeting where we will have the annual super and evaluation the rec recommended action is to approve the agenda so moved second moved on seconded will the clerk please take a roll call vote Sarah Johansson yes haris bende yes Sheila PRI yes Heidi ker yes Valentina SS yes Dan janra yes Milan Sone yes we have an agenda thank you okay there is a request for approval of the preliminary 2024 payable 2025 Levy limitation and certification which will be brought to us by the Executive Director of Finance and operations Scott Lage Scott perfect um thank you board chair soney board members and superintendent Anderson so um I was hoping my crowd was going to stick around tonight but it looks uh in normal fashion um especially for the levy and I don't blame people so um it seems like we just went over this Levy stuff um the years seem to go quick it's kind of crazy um that we're in another Levy cycle um and as you can imagine it's a busy time of year for us this is arguably probably the busiest time of year with Levy preparation um the audit the school year kicking off and US starting to watch to see if our projections are are good so um busy time of year um over the last month month and a half our team's been working with mde and the state to enter the necessary information in the levy information system for the components and parts that we control um and then we've also been reviewing um the levy limitation and certification report so um for those of you that don't know um it's an interesting read um the department of Ed puts us together puts it together for us it's a 39 page document um full of numbers formulas and a lot of things referencing back to other pages and the numbers aren't necessarily in order either so um it's a complex document always tell the joke that um when I started in schools my first day at redid area schools my predecessor was really busy with the audit and he handed me the levy limitation certification report and said hey look it over and then let me know what you think um and afterwards once we got to know each other I said John why did he do that and he said I knew what I was doing so um but it was my introduction to that so um you all received in the board packet an in-depth description of this preliminary Levy um and we we tried to include and explain the levy process um with additional graphs and detailed breakdowns so hopefully that was super helpful um and gave the board and the public um a lot of background and detailed information so I probably won't go into the depths of that today um but you have that information as well and we'll touch on that so um before we go into the next slide um I also wanted to thank Jen wel and David draskovich um Jen is still here um and David draskovich has had a busy busy couple of weeks with um audit prep and our Auditors are on site this week and next week so um he has the night off and um Jen I'm sorry this took so long so um but they've been instrumental um it's that team concept that we do in finance and operations you've got Jen who has a huge background in special fundings um in our enrollment which is a huge part of this and then you've got David draskovich involved as the Director of Finance with the budgeting component because this is a huge portion of our budget as well so I just wanted to thank them all right can I control it too Amy okay yes I can okay perfect all right so the presentation of the preliminary Levy um is really the initial or prelim part of a two-part process um this part is done now with the final part being done at our December board meeting um and that will be at our regular board meeting in December uh the reason for this part is we have to have this certified to the um state of Minnesota by September 30th hence the meeting today um December will be and will come to the board and ask him to certify the actual amounts not the not to the maximum um this is the reason for that is this is kind of the in between stage so I think statutorily mde has to have us um the first readout of the levy limitation report I think by September 6th depending on when the weekend Falls I think it was September 8th this year um and then there's several runs of this document I think we're getting a run um every two or three days um and so it's updating and that's where our team reviews this document pretty thoroughly and then we pick a date where we put this presentation together for you um knowing that some things could change as the state um and mde make adjustments to the levy report so um as I mentioned it must be certified by the Board of Education by September 30th um and uh we would recommend the district certify the prelim tax levy at this special meeting um to the maximum so um let me see anything else summarizing so we'll kind of go into a few of the other slides as I mentioned MD calculates the levy the levy limitations and certifications report um is a 39 page a 39 long page document um and so um as I mentioned this is still being updated and it's for property taxes collected in 2025 so you always hear our finance team talk about that we live in three different fiscal years this is like the prime time of that so right now we have Auditors on site that are auditing last fiscal year so David his team um Jen wel behind me here they're still working in last year's and in the current year and then with the levy here um these are for payable 2025 which is for next year's budget which you'll see come to the board in um June of this 2025 so as as you can see there's lots of moving parts and we live in a lot of different years so what are the causes uh what causes increases and decreases in the levies um state law so legislative action can impact all of these pretty tremendously um just like with our state aid and our regular budget um pupil units and the number of students we have are a huge component of the levy um the population for the district can also have a big impact um but as you know with our student population we've experienced some changes over the year especially due to the pandemic but now we're seeing a pretty big um bounce back um as we've talked about the market value or tax capacity which is our tax base um this also impacts the levies pretty tremendously um as the district grows um we'll see more about that coming up um we're in a situation where we've seen that market value and tax capacity increase pretty substantially over the the years um and that has a direct impact on our Levy as well that we'll get into um and finally some of our levies are tied directly to expenditures a notable example would be in our community ed um Child Care Program uh for children with special needs that's based on expenditures so essentially legislative action combined with uh Revenue formulas student enrollment growth and fluctuations in individual taxpayers market value adds complexity to the school district's local property tax revenue I just included this slide this is uh we received this slide from our partners at aers who help us with a lot of this a lot of this area um but this just provides the reader and the board more information on RMV and NTC just because we talk about those acronyms all the time just gives you a background on the definition of each of those um I won't go in too much uh into these but you'll notice from the RMV that it closely aligns with assess market value of the types are properties that PID towards referendum market value levies and represents the market value of those properties the next the net tax Capac capacity is calculated by taking the taxable market value of the property times its property classification rate um you've probably heard in Prior presentations um the classification rates those are determined by the legislature all right so now we'll get into um a little bit of the slides here this one basically just um shows the proposed 2025 payable versus the final payable 2024 um as you can see uh we only get tax levy dollars for our general fund which is fund one which is our bigger one that we come to the board with continuously fund four which is community service and our debt service fund um those are the three areas included on here so you can see what they're proposed for 2025 in comparison to the prior year um the general fund is expected to be around 75 million based on these prelin numbers which is about 3.93% increase um this is right in line with last year which was at 3.84 Community Education is up $95,000 and is expected to be about 2.1 million at about 4.7% um and then Debt Service uh is what we use to pay our principal and interest on our debt payments is expected to be around 18.7 and that's up slightly 5.5% um the most important thing to pay attention to is the overall total change um as that's what impacts the taxpayers and the revenue that the district will receive so we always just like to point to that um bottom right number which is 4.2% um this is slightly down from 4.9% last year um and just kind of a little bit of information over the last seven years the district has averaged an annual Levy increase of 4.36% um while during that same time period we saw the NT NTC increase by 8.49 per. so I know this and all can be a little bit confusing um but and I'll dig into it a little bit before but because our next net tax capacity is increasing even when we're seeing increases what we've been averaging in that 4.36% or 4.26% that we're showing today um the impact of the taxpayers is actually less than the percent that we're showing up there um just because our tax space is growing so much all right um as mentioned at the beginning of the presentation um we included a detailed analysis of the general fund in the board packet but here's uh a description in this description these are Consolidated so I'll hit on kind of each of those numbers and go through each of those four categories um just to give you kind of a better understanding so um overall the general fund Levy increased by 3 93% or 2.8 million um the RMV voter approved levies and that's the Top Line there um we're propos or we are expecting that to be around 32 million um and you'll see a slight negative number in there and then a negative change of um 1.99% um these are voter approved levies um so it would be like our oper operating referenda um this went down slightly this year if you recall this one increased by roughly 6.5 5 million last year but this year we're projecting that it's going to go down by about 660,000 um not diving too deep into the details but um kind of the backdrop on this is that our enrollment increased um for these projections just under 1% um and then our increase in the operating referendum allowance of 2.28% which increased the per pupil amount from 2163 to 2225 um so that increased our Revenue by roughly 1.2 million um but on the same token with adjustments from prior years with our enrollment projections like post pandemic during the pandemic um we have roughly a change of 1.8 million so when you combine the two with the math that's where we get the negative 660 um enrollment continues to be up post pandemic um the district increased those projections as part of the payable 202 2024 Levy um which was reflected in that large larger than typical adjustment that we had last year um that's something our team went in and adjusted last year um obviously when you're putting these in you're putting them in for several years out um when the pandemic happened no one could have predicted that and then that had huge impacts on our levies which you'll even see in our financial statement uh that was finished last year not the current one that we also had to set aside money for these Levy adjustments coming through just because um as you recall if the district would have stayed on the trajectory with the student population it would have been significantly higher right now which then due to those adjustments we would have collected dollars that we necessarily weren't supposed to have so um that's where they take these back and that's where we see these adjustments um RMV uh I won't point out too much on this one but this is where the L sits so um L is just local optional Revenue um and this came about in 2013 when the legislature allowed school boards to pass a $300 operating reference referendum and then in 2014 they followed up with adding an additional $424 uh the primary purpose of this was kind of um to pull money out of operating referenda that districts had um and give the board authority to use that um in case something failed so then it would kind of protect districts for us there's really not an impact it's pulled out of our operating referendum but net it's the same um so it doesn't really impact us but just giving you a little history on that um the NTC voter approved this is where our capital projects Levy lives um so you can see here um that's where that's housed and our Tech Levy that's indexed directly to the NTC and so um I think when we look back last year we approved one of the tech levies one of our two Tech levies and so those Tech levies account for um just under 5% total um overall to the net tax capacity so like I talked about our net tax capacity was increasing well as that increases that percentage is multiplied by that which then increases our Tech Levy or our capital projects Levy all right and then um NTC other that bottom one um majority of this is our ltfm and it's valued also against the NTC this is one area um that our team has come to the board several times this is where ltfm can live and we've seen pretty wild swings in this so we're trying to stabilize this last year we had a huge adjustment um we're expecting some adjustment next year and then we're hoping to level out obviously that was not Our intention that was another impact of the pandemic um where we had wild swings and adjustments uh I think when wal was here or Ka they talked about um John deut mentioned that if we truly wanted to keep up with all the projects with ltfm for all the districts around we would really be spending closer to 21 million a year um but that just has not been feasible so um with John's new person in place um we're excited he's kind of getting ahead of it this year um and with our planning and we're hoping we can um get caught up on those on those projects and then hopefully we don't have the supply chain issues we did and we're also starting to see price kind of normalize I'm scared to say that but um so we're looking to that um the only other notable change in the NTC other is a prior period adjustment um this is something that we knew about last year it was in the tune of 1.5 million we did not take the adjustment last year it was an err on mde side and we took it in the current year so it was a positive adjustment back for the district and that was related to our lease Levy dollars so um we took that in the current year so like I mentioned um there can be es and flows between each of these areas and it gets complicated and confusing um but the big thing to pay attention is the bottom line for the general fund and that's where you'll see there on the bottom um we're proposing roughly 75.4 million an increase of roughly 2.8 and that comes out to 3.9 um% and that is very close with last year's like I mentioned at 3.84 and that increase last year um at this time was projected to be 2.6 million community service um that's the next one we have up here you'll see not a ton of change uh this is our smallest Levy area at 2.1 million um but these dollars are very crucial for the Community Education team and Department as you recall from budget presentations Community data is primarily driven by um being fee based and so these dollars are absolutely critical to the support of that program um the largest component of the Comm community service Levy is the school age care and this is estimated to be at 985 th000 slightly up from last year um otherwise relatively stable figures for this area um and then you just have your normal adjustments um that we had on there that flow through from year to year um some of these as you see the basic Levy and early childhood Levy are based on District population and they're based on District census so as we also see our population grow that increases some of those dollars um but these are primarily used um for like our youth services after school enrichment home visiting adults with disabilities um Early Child early childhood education um and it's staff and gets support these students with special needs supplies and training so on this one you can see um like I mentioned we're looking at 2.1 million so an increase of just 95,000 and that's roughly 4.7% all right next we'll look at Debt Service um like the general fund there's several different categories um but the main thing to look at is the overall percentage on the bottom right there's a lot of EVs and flows in here um but some of the main things I'll point out is we're required to collect 105% for our principal interest payments to make sure that the payments are made um we have a very high percentage paying District so um you'll see the item right below that is a debt excess inside of that debt excess is when the state kind of pulls back from collecting that 105% year-over-year you start to build that up and they basically adjust and take some of those dollars back as we would expect them to do which is the right thing um when you look at um we also have all facility Bonds in there those are prior to when we had um The Authority we do for ltfm we had some Bond issues in there um and then the debt excess with that is related to those alt facility bonds and then the abatements and prior year adjustments those are just normal abs and flows from prior year adjustments um just kind of on a side note I think we're roughly sitting they're finalizing that with the audit right now but we're roughly sitting with about 245 million in bonded debt and then if you add the cops that's roughly around 252 million so um the these dollars that we raised for the levy uh go to make those principal and interest payments as you can see here um it's a slight increase of 984000 which is 5.5% this slide I know this slide is hard to see I didn't know how to make it any bigger um hopefully on your screens you're able to see it but um I know DD and probably Jim had these in her packet the year um the year before um this is another document that we rely on our um Consultants aers to help us with they do a really nice job of putting this together but this kind of gets back to what we talked about where um we're seeing our um referendum market value our net tax capacity they're increasing pretty substantially and so what this does it models basically it looks at residential Homestead commercial industrial and apartments last year they had them broke it out but they put it all in one for us this year so essentially to make it Apples to Apples and show the impact to the tax payers um obviously values change and like we said a referend market value goes up not tax capacity goes up so people's valuations of their homes are also going up but for this practice it's it's showing Apples to Apples so it's like if you take last year and that host us $200,000 last year and let's say it didn't increase in valuation at all that would be the impact to the taxpayer on that so um as you can see basically um if you look over on the right there's one negative on top there's some slight impacts in this um but it's roughly around that 2.3% at the max for residential and Homestead and again that's Apples to Apples to last year but it doesn't account for the increased valuation with it um the same with commercial and IND industrial and then Apartments um and that's where I was getting at earlier that we're going up 4.26% but because those um RMV in our NTC are increasing at such a rapid rate because we're expanding our tax Spas they're not hit with that percent that we're talking about all right um and I just I added this side kind of last minute today this is another one um I started I had to pull myself back um and Dana and Stacy aren't here so they can't be like hurry up um I'm kidding they don't do that um but I like seeing some of this data too because this kind of shows you the breakdown of where our do come in so this shows um 46% of our total Levy is based on the referendum market value so that's the huge one at the 20 billion and then the other 54% is the net tax capacity um and just a reminder the RMV something inside of that would be a referendums the L that I talked about earlier and then the next net tax capacity includes our capital projects lby and the L ltfm component all right I think this is one of our final slides um so the next step is we're asking the board to approve the preliminary Levy to the maximum um as the board's done in the past as I think most districts do um just because of like I mentioned we're still kind of in that in between time so we're asking the board not to um approve a certain amount that you've seen or a percentage tonight um that will come in December when we get those amounts but um leving to the maximum doesn't mean we can just Levy what ever we want it's within the parameters with what the state legislature MD set um it just gives us the flexibility that if there's uh air recognized or something that' be added or removed at a later time it would give um the district and the board that flexibility for the December meeting um so then after that um as I mentioned we'll have a truth and Taxation meeting um at our December regular board meeting on December 9th and that's where um the public will be able to come and make comment and be ask questions about the levy process at that point is where we'll be asking the board to certify um the final numbers for the levy all right um so this final slide is just a summary again of the overall total and percentage we would be recommending that the board approve this to the maximum um same thing that you saw is just kind of a final summary showing that 4.26% um compared to last year's 4.9% and so I think without is that my last one yes it is so um this is the conclusion of the presentation so I would now just turn it back to the board and um recommend the board to approve the preliminary Levy to the maximum thank you Scott um the recommended action is to approve the preliminary 2024 payable 2025 Levy limitation and certification at the max maimum amount Allowed by the state is there a motion I so move second thank you any discussion I have one question on that last slide so last year it was 4.9 yes let's assume this year it stays 4.3 so6 reduction yeah what does that translate to meaning is it the expenses are going down we don't need that revenue or is it it being compensated by the state reimbursement how do we read that 6% or 6% reduction um that's a great question it's a super complex one um because there's so many moving Parts in the background it can be um anywhere from like I talked about that we have um our capital projects Levy tied to our NTC it can be changes in valuation to the NTC to the RMV um we had population or uh student population adjustments from prior years so you get a lot of adjustments um we also saw some leveling because last year if you recall um we went out and issued the 2023a bond which then increased The Debt Service um so that was substantially more last year and we also saw a big adjustment with that student population in the general fund um so I don't know that I'm necessarily answering your question but there's a lot of components in the background I wouldn't say that expenditures are going down because they absolutely are not um as we're a growing organization student population continuing to rise but it's just a makeup of all those adjustments changes and then some of those components are they could shift a little bit from um from State based versus Levy based okay so from the community or from Resident standpoint is that a good thing bad thing neutral thing so for instance if we look at the residential tax rate increase yes there is increase in tax but when you look at the levy it's let's say 6% less yeah so how would you know Community how would they read it like how should they read it yeah just because they're you know tax um is going up but then the actual need in our budget is going down right so how do we how do we comment on that um I think it could be looked at as a positive for both the district and the community and what I mean by that is because our net tax capacity and our referendum Market valuation has increased so substantially um the tax levy portion for the district the school district part of their property tax statement is being spread farther to more people so that it's less of an impact on an individual obviously we recognize that valuations of individual homes are also increasing and that would be pretty impossible to um calculate one you know one by one but um that's what the county does um but essentially long story short I think it's a positive and a win-win for both the district and the community because we are seeing that increase in valuation okay and then within each of those funds those four different line items right and you talked about NTC others for example that's you know the ltfm right or debt services so again do we have the same restriction that within each of those categories you can apply that Revenue only to certain aspects of expenditure or can you move across those categories in general fund or Community Aid or you have to stay within those subcategories um they would have to stay with within those funds absolutely especially the that Community add in the general fund and then um to add more complexity to it just like with our normal general fund budget that we present um some of those dollars that are levied have to be for specific purposes like our ltfm our Pago um our achievement integration several other um funding streams are tied exactly to um the uses of these dollars that are generated okay all right thank you Scott I have one question you did not have a slide in there which I had seen earlier in your deck of slides when that was emailed to the board and it was probably also available on board book it's the it's the graph of the ADM average daily membership versus levies it's one of those column column charts so simple question because I don't understand that what is the significance because you started with if you're looking from left to right you started with ADM up here went di down I think that was during covid probably and then it went up and the levies have all gone up so what is the what is the significance of the gap between the ADM and the highest Levy in each year um that's a great question I apologize I didn't have that in I know that's in the other document that um is in the board packet um available for the board and the public but um that's a great question um something I looked at myself because you would assume that obviously that the pupil is a the pupil unit is a driver of those revenues well as you recall that dip happened during the pandemic and I alluded to in the presentation that um we went in and adjusted those figures so you would just see a lower increase in the prior years and that's where we were getting all these huge swings and adjustments um that you saw in the levy and why we had to hold out some of the dollars Even in our um in our audit last year so um basically because we're projecting out like a year to ahead um you're going to have that and so then it catches up later on okay all right thank you yep any other questions if not okay the again and the recommended action is to I was not quick enough thank you um question I have about uh you mentioned about uh that um taxpayers will see increase in the value of the houses but I I mean uh tell me if I'm wrong but I think that it is also you see because of the obviously how much uh we experience um I'm forgetting the word all the of the um in inflation inflation and obviously um we live to that um I mean for my student years inflation it means you cannot maybe you have bigger numbers but what you can buy with it it's completely it's um what you can buy with it is becoming de it's diminishing so do you mean uh when a tax tax payers uh will see increase in the value in the value of the houses and how will they will see the increase if we know that the inflation is quite High um thank you for the question I think they're kind of two different things the district side of this like all of that like I mentioned is set by state law and then the assessments would be done by the county so this the district would be separate from that we wouldn't have anything to do with the valuations of homes um as for the inflationary aspect that also um wouldn't be anything that would be controlled by the district that would just be the state of the economy that we're living in um that we wouldn't necessarily have any control over I think what I was showing is just um basically looking at the same house um if it was valued at the same price as last year and again we don't have control over how those valuations are that would be more of the county um we're just talking about the school district's portion of that Levy and what that would do to to that individual um home owner home homeowner at that price point so does that make sense they're kind of I I think I understand your question um I think they're two two very different things I does that make sense or because we can't we wouldn't be able to control inflation and the district doesn't deser doesn't determine the like house valuation yeah that part I understand but at the same time I am talking from taxpayer point of view when you mentioned that the value increased the value of uh house yeah of what uh the value of what in that case when you mentioned about where is where is going to be an an increase which uh home and owner um taxpayers will see as a positive side positive side of that valuable house is uh I mean going to be higher um what I was alluding to is the fact that because the referend and Market values increasing and the net tax capacity is increasing what can be new developments it can be um higher uh valuations of current existing homes and businesses what I mean is that's growing so the dollars that we're asking for the school district's portion are spread amongst those so if the reverse was true if the district was Contracting and we were losing businesses and houses were coming offline and we weren't expanding that pressure would go more to those individuals okay if that makes sense yeah they explained us to during Finance Financial Training that uh if big house big house twice uh expensive obviously might uh hit by higher price but others will get uh will have to be less interesting enough I'm sure I'm sure now you can appreciate when my predecessor at Rood area schools gave me the report right away and asked what I thought about it it's a complex document with a lot of and complexities that the district doesn't necessarily have control over all of them but thank you for that question thank thank you questions okay again the recommended action is to approve the preliminary 2024 payable 2025 Levy limitation and certification at the maximum amount Allowed by the state we already had a motion seconded discussion and so will the clerk please take the role call vote Sarah Johansson yes Paris bende yes Sheila prior yes Heidi ker yes Valentina SS yes Dan Jan estra yes Milan soney yes the motion passes thank you this concludes the WIA public school special regular board meeting we the special board meeting is concluded I'm announcing the the recess now yeah um so we'll now take a brief 10 minute recess and Recon for the closed meeting thank you --------- ##VIDEO ID:zCo8EHB4aSk## e School Board Test e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e good afternoon the time is now 4:00 the wiera Public Schools Board of Education work session for Monday September 23rd 20124 will please come to order let's go around the table for introductions starting with my right Heidi ker Sheila prior Dan janra Paris V Valentina Sarah Johansson and Chase Anderson and I am mil so and welcome everyone today we have back to back to back meetings with a small recess between each first the work session which we always have on the fourth Monday then we will have a special regular board meeting and finally a special Clos session for superintendent evaluation so let's begin first we have the superintendent report Dr Anderson will introduce new administrators for the district thank you Mr chair members of the board it's my honor tonight to uh introduce I'm only seeing one here so far but we'll start with Carly Bailey if she would just come forward and maybe uh take a seat here in front of the board I'm going to share a little bit about Carly first and then give her an opportunity to share anything that she might want to and uh we have had a tradition to welcome new administrators to the district at a work session or school board meeting so Carly is our new new um assistant principal at West Middle School and I'll just share a little bit about her background here she comes to us from Eastern Carver County Schools where she's worked as a personalized learning coach sixth grade teacher special education teacher and uh did her internship hours for principal ship and maybe other licenses that's the one I'm aware of I guess and then she did her specialist degree at the University of St Thomas her master at St Mary's University and her undergrad degree at University of Wisconsin o Clair uh with a bachelor's degree in special education and Elementary education Carly welcome thank you not only here today but to the district so I'll give you an opportunity to share a little bit about yourself and your first few days weeks months here absolutely first of all nice to meet you all and thank you for this opportunity not only to be here tonight I was really excited to get this opportunity but to also get to be a part of the wetta public schools I have a little bit of history with the um School District years back my dad was the superintendent from um 1994 to 2004 and so I've always felt a deep connection to the school district and um he was always so proud of it and the history of it and um so I lived here with them for a little while as well so really um this would be the only place um that I was hoping to be a part of someday in my career so I've spent my first 25 years like Chase mentioned in eastern cover County schools and this was the place I wanted to be um as as I moved forward with my career so I've been beyond appreciative of all of the support that I've been given not only from Chase reaching out and other District leaders um but Ryan Carlson um at West as well as the staff has been phenomenal in welcoming me um but also it's been so exciting the energy of the kids the energy of the staff as we've started off this new school year I've been very impressed um the support from the families and the community as well um has just all been fabulous and it's been exciting as we start to work and live out some of our goals of the school year um and seeing the students really engage in the New Black schedule and um and in some of the new courses that we've been offering so it's been a fabulous start and um truly appreciate the support that um people have reached out with um as I've you know new um in the district and so it's been um it's out you know outweighed what I ever thought it would be at this point so I really appreciate it it's um been a fabulous start and I'm excited to keep growing and um learning um along with everybody to make things as best as we possibly can for our Learners thank you Carly I appreciate that you came over here today and fought the traffic North southbound yes and East westbound think is not real great it explains some of you know some of the changes of the routes and so forth so it's good yeah well thanks so much for for being here thank you thanks for the opportunity nice to meet everybody thank you and I think maybe I'll just share a little bit about our other administrator my guess is she she the same route I did from the district off I pretty much could guess where she at right now but somewhere on Vicksburg perhaps but um anyway I'll just share a little bit if Cassie shows up we'll give her a chance to make a few comments too here between presentations but uh Cassie van coveran is our new assistant associate principal at Sunset Hill Elementary school and she's had quite a lot of experience actually right within the district she's worked with our mtss program as its coordinator she was a dean of students at Sunset Hill Elementary uh School assessment Court coordinator at sunset uh PBIS PBIS restitution facilitator at Sunset Hill she served as an awe course instructor in our Q comp program uh she participated in the West Metro leadership academy uh she's been a Special Education team leader and a teacher in special education at Oakwood in gleon Lake she did her uh bachelor degree at the University of Minnesota duth and Elementary Ed social studies and special ed uh EBD CER certificate from St Cloud State masters of education at the University of Minnesota and Twin Twin Cities and sld or special education learning disabilities and J did K2 a principal license at St Cloud State University so Cassie comes in we'll give her a little background but or an opportunity to share a little bit if uh uh we can work that out but uh just know that we're happy to have her in that role and she served the district well in so many different capacities so with that I'll hand it back over to you Mr chair thank you Dr Anderson and welcome Carly and Cassie we hope you get all the support you need and deserve in the district so welcome to WIA uh colleagues any questions comments all right hearing none we will move on to the next item which is a presentation on the Wells well-being advisor program entering its fifth year by Executive Director of Human Resources Stacy was Stacy thank you and good afternoon chair soney um and members of the board I'm very excited to introduce to you today three extremely instrumental people in our district helping us support all staff to be half healthy and happy employees first uh walking towards you is Christina and in the middle there is Katie Schultz and then we have Joanne field Seth Katie and Christina have been the district's well-being advisers for over the past five years um this program started uh as a collaboration between wetta public schools and fair viiew Health um services and it has morphed into a 0.5 position to now two full-time positions um the is a very unique offering that we have for our employees um because uh we are providing mental health services without the weight um if you know anything about finding counseling support services out in the community there is a wait um and it's very difficult um to find people to address concerns that are coming up especially the stress that we hear a lot about um with our employees and just the overall health crisis that we're experiencing in our country um and we really wanted to make sure that we had services to provide to all of our staff um to support their well-being in our district Joanne is an instrumental part of this as you know she's the one who loves health insurance um which we're super happy about um and she helps us monitor um we're self-insured and so we have a general fund basically for our self-insured um dollars that we need to spend on health insurance dental insurance and we utilize that money to pay for our internal well-being advisors as that then actually saves our uh our health insurance fund money because we're not spending um more money on finding service providers outside of um of who we have in our district so I'm going to stop talking because these lovely people in front of you have a wonderful presentation are much more interesting than I am and have lots of fun things to share with you so go ahead thank you Stacy and thank you school board members and superintendent Anderson for having us here today um I'm going to highlight we probably go over just a few things that Stacy said and um provide just a little bit more history of where we came from we actually have had a wellness program for our employees and that's the area under the human resources umbrella under benefits the well-being pieces um employee Wellness is under um our watch I guess to say so what we have always had in the district is an employee assistance program an EAP and you've probably heard of those a lot of companies a lot of businesses have had those and we've always had a traditional EAP which means a 24-hour you can call the number um you can speak to somebody possibly get referred maybe have three to potten five visits for that call um and that's what we always had but um in all the years that um I've been a part of EAP and part of Human Resources in 30 something years um it's always been a very low um return on investment you could say probably two to 5% with the pandemic it went up to almost 7 to n% which still isn't that great so back in April of 2020 while the pandemic um really was just coming on we had on our renewal to start looking for a more robust EAP like what else could we do this isn't working we had to renew so we really did um a big search to try to find something that was more of an enhanced EAP and we came across M Health Fairview at that time who had an offering to set that program up so that we could have your traditional Callin um 24 hours 365 days a year um set up for them in Hit or Miss of when you could get them or when you get appointments but they also offered um a dedicated employee from the M Health Fairview staff that was a licensed um senior adviser for mental health therapy and that became part of our plan so we set that up with them in September of 2020 which was fabulous it was started going we started building our numbers went up um and then they decided M Health fa to discontinue that program at that time Katie was the employee that was there so we were fortunate enough to steal Katie over to our side so to speak and she became a consultant to us she's not our employee and neither is Christina they both are on a consultant basis with us so that's when um we switched over started uh in January of what year November 20 that quick November you came on in January yes yeah we switched over um and added Katie to us and kept the same confidential services but we're able to start offering our employees a dedicated well-being advisor um and they'll explain how they do their services in detail as well but it was for just our employees to be able to call set up virtual appointments which during the pandemic was huge um to go over everything from you know Stress and Anxiety to family things to addiction all kinds of things so this was a wonderful um service that was set up we also were able to still go with one of our life insurance policies that had a free EAP and again that's not nowhere anywhere near as robust as this but it's still there it was no cost where we were paying for an EAP in the past as well just a it was about $2.50 per member per month so that was the cost back then so we have added them added them as consultants we have website resources we have videos on demand um all those things are still growing and and from November 22 is when we switch sorry so we were with M Health Fairview from 20 to 2022 November 22 we added Katie January 23 we added Christina um and again the numbers and Reflections I'll come back to a little later at the end if you have specific questions but I'm going to have um Katie and Christina just kind of explain how the program works from their side yeah all right so I am Katie Schultz um my background is I am dual licensed I'm a licensed addiction counselor and I'm a licensed independent clinical social worker I worked over a decade at Hazel and Betty Ford um specifically with adolescence at the Plymouth site um and then from there I actually started my own private practice so I work um is it nine years almost nine years almost nine years um that I've been in private practice and I think that's about it yeah uh I'm Christina Busco I'm a licensed professional clinical counselor uh my background is heavily advocacy based um so I have a lot of experience working with systems and program development clinically my background is very trauma heavy um I've worked at lots of um advocacy organizations in the Twin Cities over the years over the last been 10 years this year um Katie and I have been in private practice together for the last eight years uh which is how we were connected when she was looking to have somebody join her to help her support this program uh go for it no this is yours this is your slide um recently we've been doing a lot of um we've been adding some additional things to our program on top of just providing mental health services so some of the stats that are on this slide about why this program is important um comes from a couple of the resources that we've been utilizing so both Katie and I have brought our our resources today both a Beyond self-care and educator Wellness these are both resources that we've pulled from heavily over the last two years as we've developed programming as we've geared the work that we've been doing towards teachers Educators leaders principles admin um and so as you can see there's lots of support behind creating some robust well-being programs within the school system these are uh Canadian numbers I know we had a question I think from Heidi um about the research um and so we went back and took a look there is some us research um a lot of it is anecdotal a lot of it is this is what we know about well-being how it impacts people um there hasn't been as many US studies as there have been and um Ed it's education Canada Network I think is what the full name of it is um they have a dedicated program that implements Wellness programs and then does research based on that implementation um so that's where a lot of these numbers have come from um anything you want to add no I'll add yeah please so actually the one one of the most recent studies which isn't um guess it's it's on The Cutting Edge what is what I'd say there again like she said there aren't aot but in November of 23 um I'm going to read this because it's a long statement but there was a report called leveraging the evidence on the relationship between teacher and student well-being and learning and teaching that was published and this was a encompassed 67 studies and 34% um were conducted in the United States and the highlights of it was were um 93% of the studies found a positive relationship between teacher wellbeing and student wellbeing and 84% of the studies showed a positive relationship between teacher well being and student learn student learning and achievement so basically if you the higher level of well-being you're more likely to use Innovative technology and things to teach now this to me goes back to again however long ago I started really just the basis of my belief in this program is a happy employee makes a more productive employee I think you'll find that anywhere in Human Resources study you can find a million studies about that the happy you are the harder you work the more productive you are um I think it's just common and then the happy you are as an employee the happier your customers are or in our case our students um families our co-workers everyone so I think that all so connected together that um while there are all kinds of studies that can show that I think it's just kind of a common sense knowledge that you know if you feel good you do work a lot better so yeah there was um another one that we did research on too where there's a pew pew Research Center out of Washington DC and they did a study too and some of the stats that I quickly grabbed is one of them was 54% of teachers rated that they're very or somewhat difficult to balance work life balance and that is one of the areas specifically that we do a lot of support on in the well-being program is how to balance work and life being a teacher being a parent being a spouse significant other um the other one that I found really interesting on there is that 68% of teachers feel at their jobs since covid is overwhelming if this is something that you're interested in learning more about the research that's been done there are a lot of lit RWS that have been done about the research over the last probably two decades um the National Library of Medicine um their subsection of frontiers of psychology in 2023 did a a pretty large scale lit review um that covered research both in the US Canada Israel um a bunch in the UK Australia and so if if that is something you're interested in there's definitely research outside of the us too to continue to look at all right so now the actual part about the program so the well-being program is something that Christine and I are obviously very passionate about um so here's a few little things about it first of all it's very flexible for all staff so the way that the program is currently set up is that staff reach out or connect with Christina and I and from there we are able to start getting them scheduled right now it's taking about two weeks that's it for them to get onto our schedule um if you were to look at finding a private clinician outside of the program it can take anywhere from two months to gosh six months six months um if if somebody was to reach out to some of our our colleagues some of them aren't taking new clients so the fact that if a staff member needs something um and depending on their flexibility sometimes we can even get them in sooner um the flexibility is also how we meet with them so traditional therapy is therapy is on the hour so it's 9 o' 10 o'clock 11 o'clock um we have gotten really good if you look at our schedule um it's 11:11 to 11:47 um the next schedule might be at 106 to like 1:25 so our therapy sessions are actually based around when staff have availability during the day so if it's during their prep hour if it's during their lunch hour sometimes that we are having them meet us right after school um before they leave to their kids soccer game so our schedule is very flexible to try to be an enhancement to their life um let's see what else is important on here here the coaching opportunities so besides offering individual therapy which we offer either by Hippa compliant Zoom or by phone call we also do a lot of training so we go into the schools and we offer specific training if the school asks for it so last year we did different series on understanding the stress cycle um window of Tolerance this year we'll talk about a little bit later we've actually made a progression of trainings that we're pretty excited about going into the schools so we're going into the schools and offering trainings either individually um by what the principal is requesting or we've actually even went in and done even smaller cohorts so if there's a first grade team that needed some additional support we'll go in and and meet with them to do that is there anything else that I yeah so some of the differences between the way that we provide services versus like a basic EAP program so if you've ever utilized an EAP program typically it's a set number of sessions that you are allowed to use anywhere from like 3 to 10 depending on the insurance carrier and then after that set number of sessions you are then referred out to somebody else or you can start using your insurance to Bill we don't have any time limits on the on the length that folks are able to access our services so we have some folks who will come and see us once to talk through a specific situation or access some skills or we have folks that we have seen for years um we have folks who will come and go throughout the year as stressors change in the school year es and flows so we get have a lot of flexibility in the length of time and the relationship that we get to develop with the folks that are using our services the other beauty of our program is that we don't Bill Insurance um and so what's beautiful about that um is that we don't have to operate within a pathologizing model which is required of us when we're billing through insurance so if I'm meeting with somebody I have to find a diagnosable code in order to Bill Insurance to have it reimbursed if you don't meet threshold or criteria for diagnosable disorder um you have to pay cash I can't bill insurance if I can't substantiate the symptoms you're bringing to me and so the beauty of a program like this is we don't have to pathologize what people are bringing in they get to just come in and access services and get support I had somebody come in for an intake a couple weeks ago and they came in and like I'm doing great but I want to come in and I want to check in like once a month to make sure I'm consistently staying in that place as I move through the school year and so we get to catch people before before it's reactive before their symptoms are starting to impact the way that they're showing up at school as well as helping folks who are kind of pass that past that threshold as well anything else no that was great so our program is growing so this is the exciting piece so the first year um was our dear friend Heidi who actually um is the bridge between Fairview and us and the first year we had four meetings and trainings that entire school year so four meetings that we went into and did trainings and on average um between Heidi and I we were seeing 24 people the whole month um now we are going into every single school at least once this year our goal is to go into every single school three times um and at the end of last year we were averaging 113 sessions a month so our our numbers are consistently increasing and people are seeing the program when they know the program they're coming back to us so when we get to go in and do those trainings and they get to meet with us the numbers of intakes continue to go up when they get to see us and and get to know us yeah statistically what we've seen is that the schools that we have physically been in front of and done trainings with have been the ones that have reached out for services so Katie and I can see even on our calendars the folks that have that that know who we are yeah um that know that we exist because they're utilizing the program yeah do you want me to go go for so the servic we're offering today obviously mental health therapy so we offer therapy for staff that work with wetta as well as ages 16 and up that are in the household household currently and so we are able to offer services to spouses or to older children who are also needing Services they're able to utilize this um and with our back ground in kind of our ability we have a lot of services we can offer as Christina said she is trained in trauma I have a background in trauma I also specialize in DBT we both um are trained in EMDR I have a huge background in addiction so the benefit with us we have a vast um knowledge between the two of us which opens up a lot of doors for people to receive services that way this year we're trying to roll out some additional services on top of um individual mental health um we this year have developed a three-part training series that we're starting to roll out um for our first portion of the school year and the goal is for it to be a progressive training series that moves through the school year what we found in the last couple of years is that there are different needs that staff are having throughout the school year depending on the time of year so the beginning of the year that transition to the start of the year that middle year if any of you ever feel that like January February after the holidays our teachers feel that too um and then wrapping up to the end of the school year how do we make that kind of last final push and so our goal has been to develop a training series that reflects those needs that we've heard over the last couple of years we're also going to be piloting a group support starting in October so one of the other things that have come up in the last few years what we have noticed is that teachers feel very siloed or very alone about certain issues however they're not there's very common themes there's very common threads and so this year we are going to Pilot um titling a few different options for group support and offering that through Zoom so that teachers from all over the district if they would like to can join to offer that support to one another we also rolled out a new website this year which is new um just so that folks have a landing page to go they can learn a little bit more about who we are what we do um there's resources that exist on there there's information about the trainings that we've been doing there's handouts um that's where we will put schedule for our rotating groups throughout the school year so that people have more of access to what it is that we do and how we can support them did you want to add anything to we could do a college course on this actually probably our degree if we wanted to put everything everything into this program but I think this is one of the programs that I consider one of my favorites of all of our things of our in our Wellness programs and our benefit programs because I think it really addresses our staff and I'm really big on saying not just teachers um it's also for a pair of professionals our custodians our food service our admin staff or administr it's for everyone and and so all staff have suffered I think in all positions and jobs and careers in the world it's been tough we've had a lot of things that have changed so I think it's really important that we start recognizing mental health as the same as a broken leg you know if somebody has that oh you have a broken leg you can't walk well if you're having a mental um concern of any kind of stress we also need to think about that and recognize as normal you know it's something that happens we need to talk about it we need to make it not a taboo anymore so I'm a big believer I while Stacy said I love benefits out love love is the right word um I'm passionate about you know making sure people are taking care of again because the staff are my customers we like a teacher the students really are like theirs but I view um the staff as really uh our customers and who we want to take care of and um to grow and develop from there and I do think it has been um well received I don't get if if there's something a complaint about something I usually hear it um uh and I don't always hear the good things but this is one program that I've actually heard good things from and I'm like don't tell me too much because it is private information so I don't want them to tell me but they'll sometimes go on and on but I think that's a huge Plus for us I do have a slide and I think if I do this right I'm going to show you just my little cost because I know this was a question that was asked so we'll see if I can get this to work oh look at that great so if you look at this slide um that that's there this is my rough uh rounding of numbers of just a cost analysis of how what we would spend because again we're self-insured so anytime you go to the doctor doctor's office we pay that as a district so if you look at the office visits and and the number of people using the program and the average office visit and that's on the low end just being treated for an intake basically um that's the cost it would be if we look at meetings and trainings again a low and a low number but if all the trainings that they're doing and meetings that they're set up for um consults and mediations which they also can do with maybe a group is you know experiencing some issues they want to talk about um and then Staffing and substitutes I put an asteris by that it's highlight in yellow because I view this as Priceless the amount of time that it takes to find a sub to have someone come in to do their lesson plans where if we can keep people in their jobs and they're just using their break time to schedule I really I can't put a price on it it is priceless to me and if that's only based on a half day if someone were to leave if someone leaves for an appointment for a whole day we double that amount so you're looking at our total there the cost of the cons Consultants the two of them and their secured data the site that they use um their cost and our overall savings again I view I I truly believe this is on the low end but it's around 329,000 so do I think this is worth it absolutely um because it keeps people in school and hopefully will continue to grow and Thrive and I think that's it but I'm we're more than willing to answer all right thank you Stacy thank you Christine Christin Christina Christina ktie and Joanne thank you so much for the presentation anyone have any questions or comments thank you for that presentation um it sounds like it's a win-win for you know our budget our staff and then ultimately our students so and if I'm not mistaken uh other districts in the area are looking to wetta because this program is has been so successful that they're wanting to copy us and I guess thank you for your leadership in this area because it is you know it does sound like it's really been beneficial and um so thank you um I did have one question about um you mentioned return on investments um and I know it's not just budgetary savings but is it also the number of teachers that are able to make use of the services is that what you mean by return on investment actual like I mean like actual contexts of any staff yeah that are actually using it versus like what we get in our past from just a traditional EAP like we were paying that $2.50 per employee per month for that service and only having a 2% usage where now we are paying more but the usage is amazing and it's saving us all those other costs that I kind of broke down as well that's what I thought you meant I just want clar and you're right about the other Katie and I have been asked to go to several presentations we were even asked to go to one that they wanted us to run their program um we're like we don't have time for that sorry but um and I know it's a struggle we were super fortunate part of this program and being successful is luck because we were able to get Katie who stayed and was with us it's finding the right person too that also values education that really wants to be in that and understand what our staff are going through we were fortunate so other places really have to find the right people to fill in those role and again part of that luck uh question I'll have is uh what kind of common themes do you have at the beginning of the year in the middle of a year and at the end of a year I'm curious thank you uh so the beginning of the year is a lot of well we actually just in my training I did last week with Christina we talked about the well-being question so like how do you feel on Sunday night like what emotions do you get Sunday night thinking of your calendar looking ahead and so the theme for the beginning of the year is a lot of fear and anxiety it's a transition of coming back into school and wondering what tools we have so the beginning of the year it's a lot of focusing on a personal plan and developing of the overall well-being to help them understand what resources they have and what support they have moving forward in that um after the holiday season that Christina was talking about the big word that comes up a lot is burnout so by the time we get into January February the days are longer in regards to like like the days are short the nights are long so it's dark it's cold and we're kind of getting to that place of where there's seasonal affect too and so that burnout is really high so our goal for that Progressive training is we're going to focus on burnout and connecting people back to their why to support them to move forward and then at the end of the year we're going to be working and focusing on transition it's a lot of exhaustion by the end of the what you say yeah yeah so how can we continue to kind of I don't know if you ever hear from folks about like senior year slide right like lots of folks feel that at the end of the year like how do I get through that last month how do I get through that last couple of weeks uh and it is really just sustainability at the end of the school year how do we keep going strong through the end and then set ourselves up for Success once we transition into the summer so we can try and kind of get some of those energy stores back up to start the school year again in September we do keep information though so we understand themes so besides those themes of school there are other themes that we focus on too if it's anxiety depression family personal relationships addiction grief and loss um trauma see is there any another ones I miss it's been a lot of parenting as a teacher lately like how to balance being a parent and a teacher after you've much yeah um that's been pretty heavy this last couple of months as a school year I'd say in the last year too was a lot of grief a lot of grief and loss Y and I think it's important to note too because I don't think we said this enough that one of the other reasons I think that other EAP is are getting our employees to participate is confidentiality we don't in our office in the hii department we don't find out who they're seeing or why they're being seen so we really have to emphasize that because that fear of talking to somebody and somebody finding out is huge so that's why a lot of people are hesitant and I think our numbers continue to grow because the word's getting out that this is happening and we don't talk about it the only things that we're going to find out is if um there's a whole entire building at an elementary school and they're all having the same issue and they're all calling that's when Katie would shoot off and say hey guys uh there might be something going on at this Elementary so that's the kind of stuff again but again nobody's personal information is ever shared and we really emphasize that because we want them to feel like they're um in a secure and safe environment to speak all right great you answer one of my questions because I want wanted to understand if there are any trends that you see that you share with you know School administration to say hey this is something we we are seeing now on increased basis and so that answers my question um the other question I had was based on your professional experience is this typical you would call it within Wisa School District or are you finding instances where now you have to refer them to external help or is it very typical the the volume the trend all of that looks either seasonal very typical for this profession any concern any sort of concerning Trend or yeah I would say it's pretty typical across the board both from what we would see in our private practice just moving through a typical year in Minnesota um but also following the progression of the school year and specifically teachers who have a summer break what that looks like as they move through the nine months I wouldn't say WIS is out of out of the ordinary in terms of the challenges that they're experiencing in being a teacher in today's school system um and I would say it follows outside of the school system to a lot of the themes and um needs that Katie and I see in private practice as well okay okay thank you would you agree with that yeah yeah well thank you for answering all my questions you addressed everything that I had question um I I just wanted to say thank you you because I think one of the huge value ads that I learned about thank you for educating me on it um is that we're addressing issues before the need gets too big and I I have a public health background and I can't tell you how much that it really touched me because I know how incredibly important that is that you get ahead of it before the need is there and not having to have that diagnostic framework is huge so I really appreciate that and I think that's a huge as asset to our district for our teachers thank you thank you thank you thank you again um I think a um a healthy teacher that's very very happy does not only help the kids it the teacher helps the family it helps the friends the community everybody wants a happy person around them right so that I think is is a lot of uh uh good stuff I have two questions uh St mentioned that you the teachers can call any time of the day so what happens if a teacher wakes up at midnight with a panic attack and calls calls the num that they have what what do you do well we would recommend like again they they primarily they number is really for weekday set out you know with answer or voicemail but we do still have our health insurance um that they can be covered under for those emergency situations that they should call them first and we do have a traditional EAP if it isn't life-threatening so still educate that like in our flyer we say if an emergency or you know suicide prevent all those kind of things those are still out there as well um and we would encourage people if it's that type of situation to go our insurance or their insurance for something in emergency need in a really odd hour okay so this is not a total replacement for EAP or Insurance correct not complete replacement just more personalized def um you mentioned that in the first year there were 24 sessions per month and now after four years it's like 113 I don't know if I'm wrong about this but most of that might have been the effect of the after effects of P the pandemic lot of it now do you see a trend of that still going up do you see that going down eventually what's your idea on that that's a good question I think there's um if if we look at our numbers they do Trend based on the school year so um our our numbers kind of continue to go up throughout the school year and then the first month of Summer our numbers drop and then starting in August our numbers start going up again um I don't think that the trend is based on the pandemic I think that first um the first year I was on I actually thought the numbers would have been the largest in the pandemic but I think our numbers are continuing to increase because we're continuing to be out in the public fory Zetta and letting them get to know us and understand the program The More We Get out there the information about the program the more people are using it um and I would say a lot of our intakes are actually coming from Word of Mouth uh it's like hey have you talked to Katie and Christina like I talked to them it seemed like it really helped and then pretty soon we'll have somebody call and say like I was told to call you so I think our numbers are increasing because of those connections we're making okay thank you so much uh if there are no more questions thank you again for for your presentation and it was very very enlightening though all of us thanks a lot thank you thank you all right moving on to the next item um teaching and learning executive director Dana Miller will give the world's best Workforce report on kindergarten Readiness and literacy and I believe she has help from Dr lner MERS of the board Dr Anderson thanks for having us tonight um as director soney said we are here tonight um to focus on a portion of the world's best Workforce report and as some of you are aware each year it's a requirement for us um of the state to present to the board the world's best Workforce report but based on some feedback and I just think in our fourth year together doing this continuing to try to get better and make this um information that can be really dense more useful to you as a board and more informative we're kind of changing things up a little bit and been working with our committee of the board to break this world's best Workforce report into kind of three chunks and so tonight we will be doing half of the world's best Workforce in October we will do another half and then in November we will join um director heray in the achievement and integration but we wanted to start out tonight you'll notice this fine young gentleman here in the picture to really Center our work um as we're looking at goals and data it's important for us to remember that in education how we measure how we're doing is different than if we were running a widget business or something to that effect it's really hard to just increase productivity because we make a change in something and so really our work is human work it's about students it's about Learners and so it's always just a really good reflection to come back and um keep that really in our mind as we go through um some of this work in that um the importance of both qualitative and quantitative data or for those that you have been with us and read the street level data the importance of that satellite map and street because it takes all that to tell us a story of about the product that we're responsible for and that's our children and our future so just really wanting to keep that in Focus tonight so as we think about our goals and our purpose and and why we're here um we want to really tonight create a shared understanding and we are going to start with maybe doing a little bit of reflective work on what is that District through line and when um Dr flansburg was here he would often talk about a through line and talk about it in the forms of people from board to the superintendent to leaders to teachers to students and we've really taken that a little bit deeper approach to that tonight and are going to talk about what that um through line Looks like in our system and the systems work that we do and um that it starts with a very important strategic directions and Equity commitment that you all set that really becomes kind of that Beacon that drives our work throughout the system we're going to take a look at that world's best Workforce and the achievement and integration legislation and how it relates to the collective work that we all do together we'll talk about kindergarten Readiness and now that is actually School Readiness and part of systems work or something known as the successful learner equation we're going to come to a shared understanding hopefully of fastbridge as a reading screener and how that provides us a source of information about student learning and I would argue student growth being more important there and then the results from our current screeners and that those provide again one data point on how our students are doing and how our demographics are performing specific to reading engages K through 8 so this is the draft and I'm going to emphasize draft I met with Amy today in the communications department and I just want to own this is not her work because it would look amazingly better um this is our first draft thinking on that and we are going to spend some time together and make it um better once we get some of your feedback and slt's feedback as well but in a draft we were looking for something that we could use as a visualization of that through line and to really see how all the work connects and that it starts with all of you at the table telling those of us that um Implement what are the directions and what is the focus that you want us to have what are the outcomes as a board that you want for the wetta public school system and you put those forth every three years in those strategic directions and in that Equity commitment and as I said before that really becomes then that that guiding document that we use them for all of our our work um if I was to go back as we talked about this um model on we just continue to talk about this visual I would have put the student achievement and student engagement at the front as well because again keeping that student centered so the next draft you will see we'll also have that student achievement student engagement so we start with that and we end with that because those are really our anchors and then the work the great work that you all do to guide that so I'm struggling to remember to click click for me um so tonight then um while all those strategic directions as you know you've written seven of those to guide gu together so it's really hard to pull them apart because you can't do one without doing the doing the others but for tonight's work we're really more strongly focused on strategic Direction One and Two from the road map and so that's the daily student experience um that is our high quality instruction that therefore leads to high quality achievement so as we talk about the through line of the work those are the two things that we'll be focusing on so then from that strategic road map that you um give to us the next thing that's really developed through that um is the work that Dr Anderson directs with District leadership whether it's at the district level at the building level um and all of us come together to create that District operational plan so really that's that that road map to say now that we have the dis the board's directives how do we bring that to life and how do we tie in some of those requirements from the state how does that all fit together so that we can have that High student achievement um and high daily experience so things like the world best Workforce the achievement and integration work uh Minnesota's mtss system that we're requiring to do our literacy plan all those are examples of things that go into that dot in order to reach those strategic directions and then we lay out like the task and so forth um in those so here is just an example of some of those that have been started for for this year and again you will be seeing that District operational plan at another time as well um as Dr Anderson brings that forward but here are two of our mtss goals this year there are five components to the mtss state systems plan and um we are focusing on three areas this year and so just as an example um and kind of give you an idea of how this is is also set up so the mtss leadership team creates that multi-layered practices and support goals and we'll talk about how those go into the site plan so there you'll see the district will lead the work in adjusting in line high functioning plc's so it tells you that our work is in plc's to support Universal effective tier one instructional practices and align our curriculum to that so then you will see the work of teaching and learning so if we were to break this down to you we have action steps who's responsible our resources timeline check points and that's a lot of in the weeds work for us to be doing but it kind of gives you an idea of things that would be in the dot and then another one around infrastructure for continuous Improvement so just a a an example of how from your work that translates into the do and then next on that is our site growth plans and our district Department plans so we take that dop Direction and then our buildings and our department so such as teaching and learning then make our own plans for that work all right so again we're coming back from your direction to the district work and now we're really bringing that work down to the to the building level with our building um leaders and you've heard us talk about in the last couple couple years those building um instructional leadership teams this is where they really start to get into that work so every year in August um for the last couple years anyway we come together at what we call the Leadership Institute which is two to three um in August with District leadership and along with every building's be building leadership team and we look at that data from the those different areas outlined in the do and we make new growth plans according to that so here are some examples um from three different building site growth plans so the state q comp goal for example is one that we have to report to the state um and every building has to have one and they are around academic achievement and they must include all students so I've taken names off of them for our elementaries but you'll see a percent of all students in grades K5 at this Elementary whose fall to Spring growth is in the typical growth or aggressive growth and Stacy's going to be talking about all that terminology with you um they'll range from and they're going to look to increase that from 58.3 this last spring to 61.3 this spring so it's a very solid metric in that building to know how they're doing with all of their students um then from there each building is required to have a academic goal and then um a student experience goal and they may have a third one if they choose which can be another academic one or they um based on some of our work this year could do a culture and climate goal as well based on some recent data we've been collecting from Educators thriving that can be another one of their goals so just wanted to share with you I'd point out like in that last one um you'll notice that you'll see 100% so when we start talking to our students who need to make that high risk or some risk we're really wanting to say again to support the direction you've given us each and every that a 100% of our students should get to that point to support that goal and then that brings us from the kind of District level and you're inching that way in the site plans with buils because there are teachers on that to the building level so they take that um built or that site growth document and they bring that to our professional learning communities or you'll hear us called those plc's and that's really where the work gets into the teacher level in the classroom and at that grade level and so this is another example of how this plays out all of our plc's create then from that um site growth plan their own PLC goal so this is an example of a kindergarten one from one of our buildings so this kindergarten team through instruction of learning letter names curriculum small reading groups and Paris support were committing to 100% of kindergarten students on being able to verbally produce all 26 letter sounds by the end of last school year so that they would have functional um literacy skills so that's consider a foundational skill so that all of our students can be reading at grade level which is one of our world's best Workforce goals which is your each and every direction that you each and every direction you've set for us um and then you this will take through how they plan to do it um how they will work for students who aren't there yet and may be struggling with that goal how they'll look for students to extend it and then you'll see their winter and spring data it's these reports then when teams of us like Dr Anderson or myself uh and myself and some of us go out to those built visits that you've heard about in the winter and spring this is what they're reporting out so it's our way of checking in on how we are progressing with those site growth plans and how that's feeding to the dot so we know how we're doing at meeting the goals that you've established for us so it's those frequent checkpoints at that level and then from there from those um plc's are we get to our staff our staff smart goals so every um teacher must establish a smart goal and that's part of our Q comp program as well and they do that with the support of our peer coaches our literacy coaches this is part of our TDE or teacher development and evaluation program and it's also supported through our job embedded professional learnings and so this is just kind of an example of the process that we've um shared with teachers and again just to help you understand the through line of how your work gets to that teacher level work and is so important and so you have that building site goal that we talked about the PLC goal and then our teachers can choose from having their personal individual goal be the same as the PLC goal they can create one that's aligns to how they're going to some work they may want to do around that or they can create one that is um specifically personalized to theirs so for example in that last um PLC kindergarten goal you notice that um one of their learning targets was to implement their OG strategies or Orton Gillingham to make sure that 100% of students got to that letter sounds so I as a teacher could set a goal to say I want to try one Orton Gillingham strategy um every month and I might have my peer coach come in and watch for that and see how I'm doing that or I might invite Julie Schneider and farbach from teaching and learning to come over and co- te that with me so I got that Improvement that's the through line on how that completely gets through that work and so as we start to report out tonight on how on how we're doing this is the the report on all those different level of work and how it gets back to you in that through line and so lastly then that takes us to what we're here for tonight and that is to report on how did all of that come together in these areas last year to see how we are doing on meeting your mission that you've established for us as a district to meet each and every student and so tonight as I said we're here for the world's best work force report report and just as a reminder of what this is It's the report that is um part of Minnesota state legislation to ensure that school districts enhance our student achievement through teaching and learning um supports and then in November we'll be here but they're also very tightly aligned so some of the data we'll be reporting on tonight is also data from the Ani and this is our statue and requirement to pursue racial and economic integration increase student academic achievement create equ educational opportunities and reduce academic disparities and as a reminder this is a requirement um based on our racial um um I'm losing my words right now of sparity that we have in alignment with Orono schools that we partner with as well so this is a requirement for us to do and then we have to report those by December 15th so tonight the 2324 goals um Stacy's going to talk about a change coming but for this last last year so what we are reporting on tonight is last year's work um and these are the four areas and so all children ready for school um changing to that successful learner equation all racial and economic achievement gaps between our students are closed all students are ready for career in college and all students graduate from high school and we're going to be reporting on those first two tonight okay so I'm going to talk a little bit about the legislative changes that we have had in the last two years which impacts how we report on our student outcomes so if you remember back in 2023 there was the the new law reading to ensure academic development otherwise known as the read act and in that new law there were some changes into how we measure our student goals and we how we report them in the public so previously the world's best Workforce included a goal on all students reading by third grade that was removed from the statute in 2023 and it was replaced by the react goal of all students reading at grade level at every grade so now that's part of the react report and we also have our um 23 I'm sorry 24 25 uh District literacy plan and that is on our um school or our uh School District website and that has our 2324 literacy results and our new goal for the 2425 school year so those results are in that plan and also they're they will be reported this evening as part of our literacy report report then in 2024 this past season world's best Workforce was changed to a new name it's now the comprehensive achievement and Civic Readiness statute and so with that um there are new requirements so when we develop our 2425 operational plan we need to make sure that we're reporting on those new requirements and one of the things just to note is that there is a new goal area um around students um being lifelong Learners so we'll be putting that um together into to our new plan um for our 24 25 goals so as Dana had mentioned we will be reporting three times this fall all of our student outcomes because there's so much information we um wanted to respond to the board's request to have multiple um presentations so that you could get the information in detail and also have an opportunity to ask questions so the first part of the tonight's report is kindergarten Readiness and from the world's best Workforce um plan that was in place in 23 24 the goal was that all students are ready for school so as you know um with the governor's do North plan they've shifted from all students ready to for school to the successful learner equation which talks about the systems being ready for students and um indicating that the Student Success rests with the adults working together to create the conditions for students to be successful in school focusing on relationships resources and the whole child so with that our early learning school has been working hard to make um connections between Early Learning and kindergarten so they launched their connect at 3 initiative in the past school year and um this next year they're going to be continuing that initiative and um working on getting um families to sign up for Early Childhood screening they're also last year were working to increase their Outreach to Community Partners so they had a co- teer that worked with 10 Community preschools and this year that teacher will continue to work with those preschools and also add additional Partners they've also worked to align their professional development between kindergarten uh between preschool and kindergarten so they started microaggressions training last year and then this year they'll be starting letters training with all of the staff um the teachers in the early learning school letters was chosen because it has a specific preschool um component to it they're also going to be completing their um or finishing up their micro regressions training with the rest of their staff they're um continuing to collaborate with iocp they had regular meetings with them last year and they'll continue those this year they're also continuing the TS gold assessment which is a standardized observational tool for three to five year olds um that are all served by the earlan learning school they're continuing to implement that um assessment and in the 2425 school year they have um goals set around students meeting age expectations in in language and social emotional areas so moving on to literacy most of what we have tonight in terms of outcomes to share with you around literacy and um let me move my slides along so the first thing I want to talk about is the different types of screening in our fast Bridge assessments so you probably have heard a lot about dyslexia screening and fast Bridge assessments that are required by the state and then also in our Minnesota I'm Minnesota um multi-tier um system of support system we are also focusing on universal screening that was in our goal last year so I'm going to talk about the difference between those two with dyslexia screening you're looking at discrete skills based on um specific foundational reading skills that are identified in the read act that includes in grades one and two early reading specific subtests and then for grades two and three it's CBM reading those are required by the state in um starting in 2425 all districts are required to administer those assessments and those specific subtests fall winter and spring so talking about Universal screening Universal screening is about General outcome measures they measure a combination of reading skills that predict future success and performance on the MCA for K And1 that's the early reading composite so that's a collection of subtests for grades 2 through eight we use the a reading test so starting in um 23 24 we did screening for all students grades C K8 fall winter and spring so I'll be sharing those results today so the fastb universal screeners fit within our professional learning framework specifically on the levels of data component of the framework these are specifically map level data so as um Dana had mentioned we have many levels of data that we use to track student progress and so we know how students are growing and how to meet their needs so fast Bridge screeners are map level data it's that middle tier that tells us what is happening and leads us into a specific Direction there are one layer of data that is used by the the builts and the plc's and for 2425 as Dana had shown in one of the examples for um the student I'm sorry the site growth plans a lot of our buildings have used um the fast bread Universal screeners as their um Q comp goal and also their building goal so early reading composite and a readings the early reading composite as I me mentioned measures specific skills that predict successful reading of connected text they can be used to identify students with characteristics of Dyslexia and the com the composite is made up of four separate subtests they're administered one to one um by School staff and it takes about 8 to 10 minutes to administer each test to each student a reading measured broad reading skills it's aligned to Minnesota academic standards and it predicts Student Success on the MCA it's group administered on iPads it's untimed but it typically takes an individual student about 20 to 30 minutes to complete the test so fastb Universal screeners are periodic assessments for all students to identify which students may need additional support the scores are always used in combination with other data for individual student decision making to to gather that additional data we call Street data um teachers would be using formative assessments interviews and observations to identify where to focus their instruction by doing the universal screeners um we can measure student growth across years and also within the school year um these results are reviewed by our teams three times a year um including our teaching and learning leadership team the lead the building leadership teams and our plc's it informs their goals their planning their instruction and their professional learning I did a um analysis of our wisett a data this past spring of looking at the MCA scores and I did find a strong Cor ation between a reading and MCA reading scores for our students and that um correlation was um between 75 and 85 oops sorry so reading at or above grade level mde has not defined this yet so we as districts need to determine this for ourselves so in y Zetta we use the fastbridge national cut scores for the early reading composite and we use the MCA aligned cut scores for a reading within fastbridge there are four different risk levels for each of the screeners We There are highrisk some risk low risk and on target and that tells us the probability the student has based on that score of meeting grade level targets just a note for low risk I have an as risk there early reading um the composite the highest range that students can score in is the low risk range in fastbridge they guide districts to use low risk as um the indicator that students are on track track to meet grade level Target so that that's what we're using for our definition of at grade level in the 2425 District literacy goal we are using fastbridge to measure our progress and so the data that I'm presenting today for the 2324 school year should be considered a baseline so um there we go for early reading composite in grades um K and one you see that we have 65% of students who met that Target of being lowrisk in the spring of um 24 you also see that when you're look in the at the left hand side for um students by race ethnicity there is quite a big gap between Asian students and our students in the group of black or African-American and um Hispanic or Latino it's about a 30 point gap on the right hand side of their special populations I do want to note for students who are eligible for El services our El teachers make the determination for students who have very limited English um proficiency on whether or not the test is appropriate for them so not all of our students take the early reading composite however we encourage as many students is it is appropriate for um to take the test so moving on to the next slide um for grades two and five we do have data for the last three years so I'm going to present this in two separate um charts so here you can see we've got three years of data from the 2122 um school year in the spring to the the 2223 in the spring and then 23 24 overall um we have about 80% of our students in grades 2 through five performing in the low risk to on target range in the spring and then you'll notice we do have um achievement gaps between our students in the Asian student group and students in the black African-American group and the Hispanic Latino group one thing I do want to note is that for the black or African-American student group there was an increase from the 22 spring of 22 to Spring of 24 in terms of closing the achievement Gap however it is still a large achievement Gap so moving on to special populations you'll see again up above that um the all for all students the percent performing in the iron Target or lowrisk range is about 80% and then we do have a gap for um our students in special populations and grades six through eight I'm sorry I'm advancing my slides on my um laptop and forgetting to do this slides so that everybody can see the the advancement so um for grades 6 through 8 we're about 80% meeting that um grade level Target of low risk are on Target and you can see again there are um significant achievement gaps um for our students by racial group and also by special population yeah that be great thanks so then moving on what's really exciting about using Universal screeners multiple times a year is that we can measure fall to Spring growth and um in the um in the fastbridge materials that we get from them they do have four different growth ranges that we look at to determine whether students are making the growth that we would expect or that we would want for them so um all of their growth ranges are based on National Norms there are their ranges are flat growth modest growth typical growth and aggressive growth and as you probably would suspect the typical growth is average growth aggressive growth is above average growth modest growth is below average growth and flat growth is well below average or flat or declining to close our achievement gaps we need to the our goal is for all students who scored in the risk level of high risk or some risk in the fall to make aggressive growth from Fall to Spring that's how we know that we can close our achievement gaps because students who are starting with low scores in the fall we need them to make more than average growth or what is called in fastbridge aggressive growth so looking at our data tables um you you can see that for kindergarten and first grade students who started the year with a score in the high risk or some risk range we had about 30% making aggressive growth if you look at the data table by student group you see that there is quite a big gap for some of our groups for black or African-American students we only had 20% meet aggress aggressive growth and then also for students receiving special ed and those eligible for free reduce price meals about 20% as well so moving on to grades two through five again we have three years of data and you can see overall about 30% of our students who are starting at summer high-risk made aggressive growth from Fall to Spring and again we do see some differences in Stu in student growth based on um their uh special population or race ethnicity and for special I'm sorry that was um race ethnicity this is special population so you do see we do have some disparities in special population compared to overall growth um and it's kind kind of a mix between the different um years and the different population groups we look at the results for growth for our sixth through e8th grade students is quite a bit lower than um K5 so that's something to take note of um some place that we we really need to um improve where at about 10% of the students who start at summer high- risk um are making that aggressive growth so back to Dana um to pull us back around to the goals and purposes of today so we know still as we said we are trying to cut this down and make it more digestible and it's still a lot right but as we continue to think about that through line and what it is we hope that um we're coming away with tonight and in the next two presentations so this isn't something we will get to completely tonight and I think important um to remember how that comes from your work down to our student engagement level um as well as this being um with fastbridge and our ability to now do it K8 which is a change and three times a year we're really starting to get some very good growth data and why is those three times a year so important is because we can adjust instruction in the moment in that time we're not waiting for MCA data that we get after the kids are no longer in our classroom and so just kind of thinking of some key takeaways or um if as a board member if I'm out and about what is what is something I can digest and take away from um tonight and that's that the work at our early learning school continues to line with kindergarten and our kindergarten starting to also understand their role in that Readiness to system so a change conferences this year was a way um to get at ready systems so changing our language from kindergarten Readiness to system Readiness is an important shift because that puts the onus on us as adults um to be ready around the literacy work that continued you set the mark that um we need to be committed to all students and high achievement for all of our Learners and that that Gap is not acceptable um we measure growth by screening throughout the year and as I said that way we can respond to it much more quickly and adeptly um in our instruction and then to close the gaps we have to focus on students who are not yet at grade level and they need to make that aggressive or more than a Year's growth in a year's time um if we're going to close close that Gap so it's exciting to see that in buildings when we report on typical growth but for our students in the Gap we really need them to make that aggressive growth and then coming next to you will be that District operational plan that links your work in that strategic Road mapap and just need to really continue to um stress how important your role is in that work because it sets the tone for where we are headed and then that that dop is a process that will line that to have those accountability measures for it that be forthcoming and so again just to remind you we get to be back with you on October 26 to do the rest of that world's best Workforce and then with Dr her um for the achievement and integration and then for our public or for any of you if you have questions about this report um we do have kind of like our own um ticket if you will and that's asnl aty zettas schools.org and then that way you're assured the question gets to somebody who can answer it as well and then we're here to thank you for the time and your leadership as a board that's very important as we do our work and then we're ready to take some questions we also have I want to thank um Austin terson who heads up our literacy work in the district along with Anan farbach are here to join us in case um some of the questions are an area where they can and then Julie Schneider also critical in this work could not be with us tonight but just want to publicly thank them as well as Dr lner for her amazing work with us so thank you and we'll take questions all right thank you Dana thank you Dr lner and thank you Austin and an and far sorry um so Dana should we wait to ask uh tnl questions or can you ask we're here you I'd rather answer a lot thank you so any questions comments no yeah um just so I'm following right so when we look at those metrics because we want to make sure all students are successful right is it fair to say so let's say if you look at any category k21 which says you know 65% for now there is Def definitely a variation between each of those categories right whether it is Asian black and africanamerican or when you look at other buckets but the goal is ultimately to get everybody 200% is that fair so your roll up should always gear towards 100% now we'll see year-over-year increment but that's really how we would track the trend and make sure all of our action plans are working and we are seeing that progress and so on does that make y that's correct in the best of Worlds and when you set the tone of each and every student and all students all means all and so we would be looking for 100 % okay um well first off thank you so much for all this information it's very complicated but also very necessary I'm really happy to hear it um I just had a a general question about kind of the the numbers and statistics that you gave us so you know for example um just kind of how they might track and how we might understand the data um in comparison to maybe other metrics so when you said for example like you know 30% roughly of our um you know two to five group achieving like aggressive growth so do these numbers do these breakdowns when we go to like you know um you know uh average growth at uh and uh you know aggressive growth where would those track over like a typical bell curve is that kind of the a distribution that we would see or is it much different than that so when um when they develop the ranges for uh the growth that that is a bell curve so flat growth is below average um modest is just below average typical is average and then aggressive is above average so those are based on percentiles and um and the normal curve when we're looking at just our students who are starting at summer high- risk we're trying to maximize the percentage of students who are getting that aggressive growth so above average so what we're trying to do is basically beat the odds with our students who are starting at the lowest um performance level um because we do want to make sure sure that we're closing our gaps and getting all of our students to be at grade level so the growth bands are normative um but our goal is is to have more of our students um at that above average growth excellent thank you you have one do okay uh looking at the slides I have a question from world's best work for uh force uh 2023 24 goals um my question is uh especially when you're putting that all um uh racial and economic economic achievement gaps between students are closed uh statement by what year are you expecting is looks like I mean it is long-term strategic plan but by what year you expecting So within the world's best Workforce statute they don't um tell us a specific end date that's something that we'll do in our disc RCT operational plan for 2425 that we will have metrics to have a start point and an end point and that's something that we would develop whether it's a two-year goal a three-year goal um or a five-year goal that would just need to be determined when we have an official operational plan for the 2425 school year yes so those four goals are State set goals that they expect all districts to get to but they don't set a marker because obviously districts are at varying places on that and some gaps are much larger they're starting at different places so in general from a state level those are the four goals that they want for schools which will go to five goals here for the 2425 school year and following that statement my question is I understand they can set up goals in front of uh schools but my question is how realistic it is to do a 100% because I mean we're human beings and any parent who has two uh children can tell that even everything economically and all is the same the same household uh kids can have completely different outcome and here we're dealing with I mean quite wide range of uh students obviously uh I mean what kind of economic uh I mean from what kind of level they they are coming and um what kind of support they're getting from their families absolutely so when we're setting our goals we'll be setting what's called a smart goal so those goals are strategic measurable um attainable realistic And Timely so what we'll do is we'll set this is you know we'll start here and then in two years we'll be at a certain point so we wouldn't go from where we're at right now at 65% all the way to 100 in one year so but the goal is to ever increasing every year and across years to that 1% and we know that students come from all different um backgrounds and they have all different experiences um throughout their life and but the goal still is for every student be to be reading at grade level and I think too um the Strategic road map tells us that right so you've set goals that say each and every student shall Excel um and we want to asset frame that so we believe and we have to have a mindset and a commitment that regardless of a student's background around whe regardless of race ethnicity parents income level parents education level whatever their experiences are we believe in education that we can get all students to grade level um and that has to be our mindset and our commitment and the asset framing that we um come from so um we do believe and that's it's our tag line for each and every student that they shall Excel and reach our grade level standards and that's the Mark we set and that's the Mark we strive for because we would never want to have a mindset that is deficit framed saying well it's okay if 10% of our kids don't make it I wouldn't want that to be my child we're talking about and so we have a mindset that says 100% of our students and that may mean we have to do different things for different students and and more time or more resources that's all good with that goal in mind of of each and every student and Excellence for all so thank you okay thank you both for the presentation I have a couple of questions um one is regarding the the world's best Workforce goal of having all students being ready in in terms of career and um college readiness how how is how does the world's best work Workforce or how does wiser measure that because my in my mind the proof of the pudding is in the eating right so when you go to college if you don't drop out and you finish all four years then yeah then you have done well I guess is back in high school um otherwise once they go to college do we track their performance do we track how they're doing so what we have um this year is we're looking at the ACT results so we so we measure our students um within High School um so we'll in um October we'll be reporting that ACT results however we know that that's not just the only thing that students need to do to prepare for career in college so we are talking about other metrics that we could be using Beyond test scores we also do have access to the sled systems the Minnesota sled system that that does track students from high school into college and into career we don't currently use that in our goals um in our operational plan or we haven't in the past but that is data that's available um so um that may or may not be something to consider um in um as we look forward to career in college readiness um it's it's a little tricky because we can only control our high school um years with students but that is something that that we could consider to look at that sled data that looks at higher ed and also career attainment okay and the second question is about lifelong Learners how I don't know if how you how do you define that how is the world Workforce how do you is there a measure that you can that's the million dollar question a very good question so um with other directors in the area assessment directors and research and evaluation directors we're all trying to figure that out um so we are having um conversations with each other to figure out what are individual metrics that we could use and so we haven't really landed on anything yet um but that's something that we'll just need to work out as we're trying to interpret the new statute yeah because that means that you know it's not just College you know you want to make sure they're Learners Beyond College as well right in their careers in their work yeah we're you know maybe the state will give us some guidance since they created the goal they could maybe help us out on how they want us to measure that and that would be helpful but um I think it's really one of those mindset goals again and that passion and love for learning um that they're really looking for us to to instill thank you very much if nobody has any other questions thank you D thank you all of you appreciate that all right the last item on the agenda is Schoolboard reports um I'll just give you background on this first before we proceed um at the beginning of Summer director a asked me if the school board called or could recite the Pledge of Allegiance similar to how it is done in our schools the Board needs to weigh in and decide what it wants it it would like to do but before we do that my colleagues would benefit from learning the historical perspective behind the pledge and some other information based on Research followed by a very brief discussion please note that today's discussion is not a vote either way it is only for informational purposes Amy can you please display the first slide for me okay so since its Inception in 1892 the Pledge of Allegiance has seen several modifications until 1954 Francis Bellamy an ordained minister created a pledge that would be taken on Columbus Day by millions of school children and I don't know if I want to go through each and every iteration but there are Minor Adjustments that were done all the way through 1954 and to note his version did not mention the words under God the phrase under God was added to the pledge in 1954 4 under President Eisenhower during the Cold War as a way to distinguish the US form uh us from atheistic communist countries all right if you want to go to the next slide okay so now we have the state law governing the pledge of allegian by State Statute 121 a11 it is required that all public and charter school students recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America one or more times each week and we have a policy in place uh policy number 531 for precisely that the statute also recognizes that that the students are able to opt out and we also have that in in place in our in our policy number 531 however there is no such law mandating the recitation by school boards so I'm going to do spend the next few minutes um from whatever research I have done whatever I have seen heard Etc on why there is support versus why there is apprehension so both sides okay number one it is a policy for children in School classrooms and should also be recited during board meetings that is what what the supporters are saying number two while the addition of under God in 1954 has been controversial supporters argue that under God reflect the historical values of the nation and is a recognition of of the religious Heritage of the United States they believe that the phrase is more ceremonial than religious number three a vast majority of rural school boards surveyed reside the pledge in suburan school districts however School boards it is split 50/50 and finally the Plymouth city council the msba board the state legislature and the US Congress also recd the Pledge of Allegiance those are those are from the support side so why is there apprehension number one religious concerns the phrase under God was added to the pledge in 1954 this inclusion has been controversial particularly among those who advocate for a strict separation of church and state some people feel that including a reference to God in a pledge resided in public settings is an endorsement of religion atheists agnostics and followers of non-theistic religions may feel that the pledge alienates them or forces them to make a religious statement number two political implications The Pledge has been used in political contexts to question the patriotism of individuals or groups who refuse to recite it this politicization can deepen divisions within society and create an environment where dissenting voices are marginalized and number three inclusivity some some school boards reject the pledge of allegiance to promote inclusivity and respect for diverse beliefs and backgrounds they may believe that requiring members from different cultural religious or national backgrounds to participate in reciting the pledge could make some some feel excluded or uncomfortable so that is that is the information I have and now I'm going to open this to questions comments from from colleagues just remember this is not a vot so what I said so far has nothing to do with you know trying to make up your mind one way or the other so so please please remember that when when you say something yes Sheila just to clarify um we're only talking about the board the school board saying it we're not talking about anything about students correct that is correct that is already in place the policy is already in place for as far as the high the schools are concerned with talking about that of the board and this is in reference to us taking out of the consent agenda like many board meetings ago I guess I'm confused about the yes I I I checked that thank you for asking that question I did check that it was with reference to the schools actually so it was not with reference because school boards our board was not doing that anyway at that time so being the Pledge of Allegiance at the board meeting where where we where where we are not doing it anyways it not was not actually a part of the consent agenda thanks any other comments so I think we are going to end our work session um can I okay it is um obviously I'm an immigrant and I uh at the beginning I have to admit it was very interesting as an immigrant to see it but at the same time I've seen my kids doing pledge pledge of allegiance as Scouts and I was amazed how kids are bringing I'm an American at the beginning I was thinking did Grandma Grandpa uh train them or what it is it is coming within them uh when they are saying it uh they are proud to be an uh to be an American uh obviously my kids are raised in international family so uh it is very interesting to see the growth and then pledge was a way uh pledge is to the country not to president or party it unifies rather than divides pledge to flag which belongs to all Americans and which represents all Americans indivisible not divided by state or race color religion or anything else we pledge to support all Americans if anything our pledge actually helps us to be unified uh to feel um proud that we belong to this country and when we are as a board asking our students to recite Pledge of Allegiance why don't we uh show uh an example thank you all right if no other there are no other questions or comments you want to go ahead yeah just to your point are there any concerns any observations that we have seen and again not saying I'm against it so I'm immigrant too obviously our primary goal is to focus on students outcome right that's why we are here so is there any kind of trend observation that we have seen which is impacting that outcome and hence we need this decision or this is just a topic and we going to vote at later date that's correct this is just a discussion question clarification session okay and I do not I do not know of any research data that shows that there was any change in outcome one way or the other by the board pledging allegiance to the flag right so do we see any issues or concerns within Wisa School District again whether it is Unity anything along that line again just asking because I know a lot of times each one of us get approached by different parents community members so again just trying to understand is that what we are hearing from Community to okay um that's a good question but I have not focused on that I am focusing only on the school board because that was the request as far as the schools are concerned I believe we do not have a choice it's by Statute that we are requiring them to have the Pledge of Allegiance with the way also Incorporated in it so I am I am not aware of of any that sorry all thanks all right okay if there are no other questions uh this completes our work session agenda for this evening we will now take a 5 minute break following which we will reconvene for a special meeting of the board the time is now chair sonone I have a I think we cannot start until 600 p.m. because the next meeting is scheduled at 6 p.m. so it'll be a little bit longer than a 5 minute wait thank you I I was not I did not pay attention to that so okay so we'll meet in about 25 minutes or so just make sure you're back by 6:00 thank you everyone uh the wiata school Public Schools Board of Education work session for for Monday September 23rd 2024 is adjourned