May 9, 2022 Regular School Board Meeting

001a major we will note that this meeting is open for public attendance however if you have concerns surrounding covet 19 in social distancing we encourage individuals interested in watching this meeting to do so remotely via live stream on youtube i will ask carlin to do the roll call and verification of quorum mr evil ms bushman here mr pope here ms portson here mr wade here ms scott here um mr robbie is excused ms rano here ms erler here and we have a quorum okay we will move into item three which is our pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the brag of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice we will move into item four public comments uh carlin did

002we receive any email public comments we did not thank you um we have one uh person who we're all familiar with who would like to address the board it is carolyn blakeman and she is responding or speaking to agenda 5a [Music] hi so there was some misunderstanding with i guess which day was my last day but i didn't want to just leave abruptly so am i allowed to give an update okay so spash has been busy as it enters the final month of the school year this past weekend the music department performed showtime we are the champions this was the first time we've been able to have the show in three years the show was a diverse collection of talent there was singing dancing acting and musical performances congratulations to the music department and all

003the students involved spring sports are in the midst of their conference champ competitions good luck to all athletes for the rest of the season on april 25th the youth apprenticeship annual banquet was held at the holiday inn apprentices bosses school board members administrators and parents gathered together to celebrate the hard work students and companies have contributed to the program the youth apprenticeship partner the youth apprenticeship program partners with local businesses to create opportunities for students to learn and work in real life situations state senator patrick testin also attended many students have been busy with ap testing tests started last monday and will conclude next week last week was teacher appreciation week students wrote letters and made posters to show gratitude towards teachers and staff thank you teachers for all the hard work you contribute to

004the growth of students our community and our future on april 27th the class of 2022 celebrated decision day by wearing college attire to school the last day of school for seniors is may 19th follow followed by graduation on the 29th congrats to everyone graduating tonight is the academic awards program at spash we will recognize students in grades 9 through 12 for their outstanding academic achievement as well as department students of the year unfortunately this is my last time presenting the spanish updates thank you for your time and attention at each meeting throughout the school year my public speaking skills have improved i gained a better understanding of my school and community and my appreciation for the work this board does has grown thank you thank you best of luck in all your future endeavors we

005will move into our is there anyone else here this evening no one signed up but is there anyone else here this evening who would like to speak to the board with respect to an agenda item seeing none we will move on to presentations uh the superintendent's report craig gerlach have a short report to as we wind down the school year our covet cases are continue to be very low we have six staff uh positive staff members zero quarantine 12 students uh positive and uh 30 quarantine um hopefully we're literally coming to the end of this thing uh we have chris nyman with us chris you want to just stand up to the podium chris is our new director of element elementary education and assistant superintendent to replace uh corey this is just weird now so

006chris is currently the director of learning and student achievement in wausau um he comes with a wealth of experiences he's been a principal a supervisor of literacy interventions a literacy consultant coach and facilitator he's been a title one director an elementary teacher a middle school teacher and he's just been in a multitude of different districts so we welcome chris we're excited about his leadership and where he's going to take us in the ed services department and as the assistant superintendent so with that chris do you have any words to say i would just like to extend my gratitude for this opportunity like really excited to to jump in and engage in the work so thank you all for the opportunity and i look forward to getting to know all of you good thanks chris you're

007welcome we went through the interview process we interviewed chris he walked out the door and said how do we get him here [Laughter] we're fortunate to have him okay uh end of the year highlights uh we have a number of graduation program ceremonies um as was previously stated um a charles fernandez center will be may 26th that will be at splash seven o'clock uh the spanish is may 27th one o'clock um two o'clock project search ceremony on uh may 27th a splash special ed ceremony i'm gonna go back to that one i already tripped up caleb um i'm gonna have caleb touch base on the spash special ed ceremony and the project search ceremony you recall last year we had a little confusion in terms of the differentiation of what they are well thank you

008for letting me speak especially with new board members this is a great opportunity to kind of just clarify the spread ceremony is actually their graduation ceremony for those three you received an invitation in your packet these three unique individuals the larger ceremony itself is kind of overwhelming from they walk with their senior class all three of them though are projected to return in some sort of transition program the following year so we hold their diploma actually until they complete it through their their iep process whether that's through our strive program or if they go into project search at that time they complete their programming they received their diploma but we really encourage them to graduate from spash proper as you would say with their senior class so that's what's unique about the sped ceremony that

009we held at one o'clock on that friday the second one which is the project search ceremony is actually a ceremony of completion the individuals that are in this program have actually walked the stage with their senior class the previous year or maybe previous two years depending on where they fit within their transition program they go through the project search year program which is a job training program upon that completion and successful completion they get a certificate of completion hopefully employment that's our goal and then they also receive their diploma from from their graduating class at that time so it's two really unique but cool ceremonies that we're we're doing one's graduation one's more of a ceremony of sorts but it's always kind of been a confusion so i wanted to make sure we brought this

010to attention and really encourage you to attend if you'd like to that really cool process for everyone thanks caleb you're welcome and of course bash is may 29th one o'clock in the field house we will then again have project graduation that evening so that's exciting and we have uh a challenge academy graduation june 9th at 12 30 at spash uh you'll recall the challenge academy is the academy that we place students in in sparta at fort mccoy retirement dinner is june 9th at the holiday inn that's all i have are there any questions for me any questions of craig thank you right we will move into our consent agenda the consent agenda this evening has the minutes of the prior school board meeting of april 11 2022 the minutes of the prior school word meeting

011of april 25th 2022 the approval of the schedule of monthly bills and the employment recommendations could i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so move second motion by wade second by ran out any discussion or questions on the motion hearing none oh yes go ahead barb where do we have the employment recommendations i did not they're in your packet they're in the packet okay right behind the minutes getting later on okay gotcha whoa here [Music] we have a motion and a second on the floor i get any questions on the motion hearing none i will ask carlin to call the robo due to the uh hills mr wade yes ms scott yes mr pope yes ms portson yes ms rano yes ms buschmann yes ms earler yes motion carries all right we will

012move into item seven business services and i will turn the meeting over to mike wade as the chair well uh business services and human resources committee met last monday and the first item on our agenda tonight is 7b which is the removal of a house at 333 north second street so as you see in your in your board package the district owns a house or some property on second street which is adjacent to spash we've owned it for nearly 20 years and the property at one time was rental property but it's been vacant and it's in disrepair and the recommendation of the staff was that we have the building uh removed we own all of the lots on second street most of them adjacent to the school and so the recommendation that is that we

013remove the building and the further recommendation is that the board um allow the district to work with the fire department to actually do a kind of a training burn at the location to remove the building and so it was the recommendation of the committee that we approve that um that recommendation um dr owens is there anything on the removal of the house next to spash that you'd like to make comment on okay so um so i will move to allow the fire department to burn the house for training purposes and subsequently direct administration to raise any remains and restore the site to blend with adjacent lots second motion by wade second by scott any discussion or questions on the motion are there other structures on that section of property just west west of the parking

014lot tom she asked if there are any additional structures on that property west of the parking lot it's the house so that's it once that's gone there's no is it wasn't there a bar there that bars there yeah do we own up to the where the bar is yeah if you're looking in your packet yeah matt i'm looking at it and uh we own all the lots on the east side of 2nd street on that block except for the little white end okay all right thank you any additional questions on the motion hearing none all those in favor with eye any opposed with nay motion carries um the next item falls under human resources and that is eight section eight and a is the district health insurance carrier proposal um the school district has its

015medical insurance with wa w-e-a trust and they in the upcoming renewal period which starts july 1st they have increased their premium costs by 19 and a half percent and so the administration went out through m3 their insurance broker and looked at other carriers for medical insurance and so we have some other proposals to share with the board and beth do you want to talk about those sure um i think you pretty much covered it mike we're we're looking at a 19.5 increase with wea trust we've only been with wea trust for the last two years prior to that we were with security health plan for i believe about 12 years so as we went out to bid when we heard of this 19.5 percent increase we did only have two i would say competitive bids

016returned to us to decline to provide a quote so we're bringing forward the security health plan proposal it will result in no plan design changes for employees it will allow us to keep the contribution rate for the the full-time regular employees at zero there will be a small increase for part-time employees i am going to turn it over to john price he is our representative from m3 insurance and he's going to talk a little bit about the proposal and then we'll entertain any questions that you have i think you all should have a handout of the presentation and thanks beth good evening hi so we'll try to keep it brief um if you look at the first the second page you can see where beth had mentioned the district's loss ratio you can see right

017below the proposal from wea had you just renewed with no changes from wea would have resulted in a 2.9 million dollar increase the district's loss ratio is 104.3 percent so that means for every dollar you were paying wea they were spending uh you know dollar for and that that that wouldn't have worked um for them or for you really and that a change needed to be made 14 members had exceeded a hundred thousand dollars in claims and was position was that it was not competitive the other thing to note in this is that i don't think that wea's provider contracting is what security health plans provider contracting is in the area nor do they have a long-standing position or an investment in the area the way security health plan does having the partnership or ownership

018i should say by marshfield clinic so early decisions were made even prior to a final renewal from wea to look at a request for proposal as beth had mentioned and the outcome was that both aspirous health plan and security health plan did have competitive bids aspirous health plan had a uh an eleven and a half percent renewal security health plan a nine and a half percent renewal but security health plan included two second year not to exceed back to back for the next two years of eight and a half percent that doesn't mean an automatic eight and a half percent renewal what it means is it's not to exceed eight and a half percent so that gives you some planning ability it provides the district with some time along with the employees to implement other

019proactive measures to continue to improve upon the health of the overall health of the district which is terrific we'll talk a little bit more about that briefly there's no increase in the dental premiums or no change the dental plan and due to low enrollment the district will no longer offer offer a flexible spending account not necessary so the recommendation for the carrier change to security health plan uh effective july 1st 2022 you know in part is because you can keep zero percent employee premium contributions for 2022-2023 per year human resources and finance department based on provider contracts your expanding security health plan with a more competitive bid in the stevens point area and security health plan is expanding the hospital or should say marshfield clinic is the hmo premier network does include marshfield clinic aspirous

020mayo and uw care my way also known as telemedicine has 24 7 unlimited mobile access so that's definitely a plus there's thirty dollars per quarter for over-the-counter pharmacy products delivered to members at no cost that's not currently being provided that's an advantage online member portal an application for members to track benefits fine care id cards there's a wellness program being implemented at no additional cost there's a new program called amada which includes diabetic and weight loss management program care management nurse navigators live healthy and that's going to be provided with this bid and lastly on a very dependent coverage and in network coverage down at the bottom you can also see you know the benefits are substantially comparable we always like to you know put one caveat on there is that no two plans can

021be an exact match as it relates to pharmacy benefits in particular but i'll say that i don't i don't feel that they're so different that employees are going to feel much disruption in fact i do think for the most part the plan designs um are are like i said substantially comparable and in some ways an improvement if you look down at the bottom of the second page you can see that there's no change for the vast majority of employees the exception of course being employees that have a scenario where there's 30 to 35 hours there's a difference but other than that you're not seeing for employees that are 35 plus hours that there's a difference so it's you know no contribution changes no plan design change no deductible change um given where we started it's

022a very positive outcome that's the that's the presentation it's it's short but um to the point are there questions yes what is the slight rate increase for those that are part time or the 30 to 34.9 you can see in a second um down at the bottom it says the 2022 2023 employee health premium contributions in green you can see that for the high deductible health plan for single there's no increase if it's 35 hours or more for a single and for family that's also true but if it's 30 hours to 34.99 it's 55 and 57 cents that's a new health insurance rates for july 1st that's actually five dollars uh you can see it's roughly about five dollars more than it was previously for a single and then for a family it was previously

023a dollars and 17 cents that's going up to 125.59 it's if it's 30 hours and between 30 hours and 34.99 so it's going from 115 17 to 125.99 and then in blue you can see the differences also for yeah different paper 19 19 periods versus 24 pay periods other questions okay well i will move to approve partnering with security health plan to provide health insurance and wellness programming to district staff effective july 1st 2022 with the plan changes noted and discontinued the flex medical and limited purpose accounts so there is a motion by wade and a second by bushman any discussion or question on the motion hearing none all those in favor with i opposed with nay motion carries thank you thank you and then the last item under human resources is 8b teachers contract

024renewals and beth would you care to talk about that sure we have 503 teacher contracts that we would like to present to the board this evening the amounts that are listed in your packets do include the 4.7 percent increase and we will be sending out contracts on or before may 15th they're due back by june 15th um the only change from last year's contract template to this year's is the amount of the liquidated damages that that we the board approved a couple months ago so well i will move to approve teacher contracts as presented so it's a motion by wade second by scott any discussion or questions on the motion hearing none all those in favor with eye any opposed with nay motion carries thanks beth we will move into the ed services portion of

025the meeting and i will turn that over to g pope the chair of the committee okay we had three presentations at our last meeting the first one was by sam dinga and gigi stahl but now i see they're here tonight are they going to do the same presentation tonight yeah so i won't say any more about that they're going to be taking care of that assistant superintendent corey hurstberger gave information about the number of students opting out of state testing the data showed that before the pandemic we had 26 students in the district opt out this past year we had 119 students opt out before the pandemic the opt-outs really hurt us they counted as zero on our district but when the pandemic happened this procedure was stopped so they right now they don't hurt

026us that's not to say that might not change but right now they're not hurting us uh and then the third thing we had in a structural instructional leadership plan uh that uh corey and four other uh principals and one assistant uh super assistant uh curriculum person was working on but they're gonna also do that tonight so i'll just let that go to them then the last thing was the secondary math instructional materials and you have in your packet a summary there's no page number on here so i can't tell you what page but there's a summary of the quotes for buying the instructional materials for the new illustrative math program you have it up there it should i might we're certain so the challenge hello everyone um thanks for letting us present a two-year project

027that um i have a group of really committed math teachers at the secondary level 25 teachers have been involved in this project for two years i'm really happy to have alex kittner kitchener secondary curriculum and instruction coordinator and jennifer bolling who is the spanish math instructional leader that we'll be helping to present tonight so i'm very appreciative that they are here um as i mentioned about 25 secondary teachers grades seven through 12 have been involved in a two-year project really diving into our math achievement data i'm using state assessments as well as really analyzing our school report cards we were looking at some areas that we went down a little bit on our school report card and looking at the why and what can we do about it so for the first year we looked

028into our data as i mentioned looked at the school report card and took a look at our secondary programming and we made some tweaks to our secondary programming for math to assure that all kids are getting really high quality curriculum in their math classes the second part which is the focus of tonight is we were looking at our instructional materials we worked with a math consultant karen gartlin we also looked at ed reports and what works clearinghouse to look at what are determined to be the most high quality math instructional materials that we can take a look at we narrowed that down to illustrative math and reveal as two that the math teachers wanted to take a look at um and illustrative math for from the from what works clearinghouse was actually rated number one

029in terms of usability and content and rigor reveal math was number six there's a wide variety of math resources that are used in fact if you looked at the dpi website they have an instructional materials outline of all the materials that are used by all the school districts in the state and if you look at math it's really all over the place and even in our conference people are using all different sources so we really wanted to dive into the data and the research in terms of narrowing it down to our pilot so second semester of this year 15 of our math teachers were involved in that pilot jen bowling took incredible leadership in this area so i'm going to have her talk a little bit about that pilot project just a few things we

030want to talk about tonight first of all is the um process that we went through i'm going to talk about the participants the process the student feedback and the staff feedback and then the final recommendation that was decided on april 6 by the 712 math teachers so this is just a list of all the participants we wanted to demonstrate that we had involvement from all of the schools including pods pj's ben and spash and you can see the teachers that were involved throughout all subject areas so that that way we thought we had a good representation and good feedback related to that so that was our participants this is the process that we did so 15 teachers piloted we had a team of teachers and administrators go to arcadia school district to observe illustrative math

031being implemented we were able to talk to an algebra 2 teacher and an 8th grade teacher and also their instructional coach on that trip data was collected from teachers weekly about their piloting experience we also surveyed our students about their experience with the two series being reveal and illustrative math and then on april 6th all 712 math teachers met at bliss to make the recommendation when we made that recommendation we had two basic criteria we wanted feedback from our teachers about their experience with the two programs but additionally we wanted some real data and numbers so we used a rubric that came directly from ed reports which was one of the resources we used when we were looking at our resource options and so we we adjusted that slightly to make it of course applicable

032for junior high as well so what we did is we collected data from students and so the left two columns is the reveal data and the right two columns is the illustrative data so you can notice the reveal series strengths was they enjoyed that everything was in one journal there's a lot of practice problems and it seemed a lot like what they were used to the weaknesses there wasn't a lot of room to do the writing or the work they had to pull out an extra piece of paper to do the assignments i don't like filling these are student comments i don't like filling in the blanks in the journal and i don't like carrying the journal so those were the two base or the six pieces of feedback summarized from the students about reveal

033illustrative we figure things out on our own the book breaks things down slowly so i can understand and the application problems are relevant weaknesses there's not a lot of practice problems sometimes the explanations are hard to write and what they're saying there is oftentimes in the illustrative program is they have to do a lot of explain why or or why do you think this happened that prediction piece and so we're trying to work on that development of literacy anyway in the mathematics classroom so that piece of it students do struggle with but it's something that we really want to strive to improve in any way and then of course the journal is heavy and big so similar comments on that one they don't like carrying it around this is the staff feedback again reveal is

034the left two columns illustrative is the right two columns the staff feedback for strengths of the reveal is there's just a large large selection of practice problems a lot of versions of assessments and lessons included learning checks the weakness is that the journal is too scripted and does not allow for student thinking it really forced one way of thinking for students instead of multiple ways and we experienced significant technology issues with both because the publisher for both of them were mcgraw-hill so you'll notice that on both series illustrative math strengths was application-based requires greater depth of knowledge it's student-led learning with lots of discussion and discovery and material spiraled throughout the units the weaknesses not enough practice problems review or assessment problems requires a different teaching approach because it is very student-centered and then again

035the significant technology issues that we experience with both series due to the same publisher same platform on both so it was essentially just the same problems with both so this is what the team did on april 6th we went through we met as a team 712 we broke up into these five categories the five courses essentially that we will be using for our adoption next year and so we had them do a rubric score with their teams individually and then as a team and so the team rubric score as you can see for reveal is 25 23 27 19 and 24 and the illustrative 3231 35 31 and 33 and again the max score on the rubric is 36. so then once we had all that that each of the groups of team teachers from

036the each of the categories courses broke down their reasoning for why they chose it and then at the end every team made a recommendation and as you can see every team chose illustrative math so 100 of the 712 math teams recommended the illustrative math series so as um jenny had said as we were going through this pilot process we did have have quite a few significant technology issues so at that point in time when we had finished the the pilot we didn't necessarily feel comfortable making a decision to go with mcgraw-hill so we took a look at the three different publishers of illustrative math as you can see mcgraw-hill is one of them learns alien is another kendall hunt is the third and this table is in your your board packet so i'm not necessarily

037going to go over any of the numbers there in detail but what we found throughout that process of looking at at all three publishers as as a whole is that kendall hunt and learns inline the workbooks were broken up into three workbooks instead of two kendall hunt's web portal was much more accessible and easy to use from a teacher perspective we didn't necessarily have to worry about assigning students to the web portal or anything like that we like we did with the mcgraw-hill web portal so so we kind of got away from the tech issues that we were having there one of the other things that teachers really liked about the kendall hunt assessment portal was that the assessments were available in pdf and word which they were not with either the other two publishers

038so there was really a large a large list of things that we looked at with with each publisher including like lessons downloadable via google docs and powerpoint and that kind of thing and and really kendall hunt was the publisher from from a web portal series that that really checked all the boxes that we were looking for moving forward and looking at the professional development aspect of things with with kendall hunt and illustrative math the upfront pd for im is really in depth in it and it kind of spans out over the course of two days and they call that a teach and learn what that kind of goes over is the pedagogy the mathematical progressions throughout each course instructional routines on how lessons are planned and ran throughout the day and then other embedded supports

039that are put in place through the the curriculum itself and then with that plan we would also get two additional customized support modules for our 712 group of math teachers so how do we pay for the new series we're looking at a three three-year contract if you saw all three publishers even though mcgraw-hill was just not going to be an option just because of the technology issues we're very similar um we did put aside two hundred thousand dollars with esther funds um and there's also money left in our textbook fund from this year so we'll easily be able to fund that for the next three years um they did offer a six-year contract we feel like three years is a good time and sometimes those journals and technology may change if you go with six

040years you're going to be having a storehouse full of materials so we thought it was just smart to to go with a three-year contract in terms of the professional development i also want to mention that part of jen's assignment next year is she's going to be an instructional materials coach so we all know that you can purchase new materials but it's not going to have the kind of impact unless we have ongoing professional development with teachers and so part of her assignment is going to be working with all of schools and teachers to help design lessons to actually go into classrooms to help co-teach to do some modeling which i'm really excited about because that is going to make a big difference when teachers know they have that support because this is a very new

041way of teaching and i think it's going to be very impactful for our students the other thing i was going to mention is that this was really really tough work during coveted times and the fact that we have um 125 all 25 teachers saying this is the resource is is very exciting so that um that was something that we were thrilled about and feel really excited moving forward um as i mentioned um in the conference there's um cpm integrated is one big idea is this stevens point uh mcdougall mcdowell in la crosse glencoe and green bay envision in marshfield so there's lots of different um within our conference using the math materials that they're using the districts that are using illustrative math are duran gilman parkside wyoga wisconsin dells and arcadia as well as many

042districts throughout the nation the kieran garland who was our consultant virtual consultant is working through a lot through with a lot of districts throughout the nation um implementing im so can we answer any questions i have a question so connie um and i mentioned this to corey this is this is relatively new happens when you're in sixth grade moving on to seventh grade what kind of transition is there for those students who are currently four through six i believe they're using a different process then k23 well we're going to have to we've been talking we're going to have to look at our 4th through 6th grade math series eventually and probably sooner rather than later we also have going to have transition meetings with our sixth grade teachers so that they can have an understanding

043of what kids are going to be encountering when they come into the seventh grade math the real difference is that i am is really much more as jen mentioned into student problem solving versus computation kids understanding the why behind math and talking math and understanding the problem-solving piece versus just the computation and that's what i think is going to be really different but very exciting for our kids they will be working with sixth grade teachers yeah we're going to need to share with them what we're going through all right thanks connie is there there's usually a rotation for buying textbooks is this okay within that rotation i mean we're not jumping in front of somebody no in fact um science uh we'll be looking at um next year and jeff mills now who's in the

044director is a former science teacher in the district so he is excited yeah we're we're on rotation and there's no problem using esser funds to buy these no and now what what are you asking because i'm not sure in the recommendation are you asking to go with kendall hunt it seems that you're saying that here yeah we're at we're asking the board to approve the purchase of illustrative math through the publisher kendall hunt thank you i should have put that in the proposal or in the recommendation and this is only for the math classes that that you showed in your presentation yes so things like um ap stats ap calc they have really kind of national curriculum which we'll still continue to purchase the books that we have for those those classes yeah do they

045have illustrious other other things so we're talking about illustrative math but is there illustrative science or illustrative not that i'm aware of they don't have illustrative other than math but they have extended illustrative math k through algebra 2 now which is just in the last year or two that has expanded their curriculum so they started out as a junior high program six eight expanded to the high school a couple of years later and now they have extended through kindergarten thank you there any other questions from board members so i'm looking for a motion to recommend approval of a three-year contract uh with illustrative math purchased through kendall hunt for grades seven through twelve so moved motion by rano do i have a second second by bushman any discussion or question on the motions on the

046motion excuse me there's only one motion hearing none all those in favor with eye aye india posed with nay motion carries thank you and the next uh item the elementary instructional leader presentation so you want to come up so i would like to introduce some of our elementary folks and they're going to present for you the presentation that they gave at the ed services committee meeting we have molly demrow who is the principal at jefferson elementary just champion who is the principal at bannock elementary amanda zanchetti mayo principal at mckinley and darla panaski who is the curriculum and instruction coordinator for elementary it's finding the display okay i think that might be check in with your neighbor [Music] so what we're going to do tonight is present to you what we presented at the ed

047services committee meetings so that's why our screen says that it's an update um what we would like to do what i would like to do first is to just give you a little bit of background of um how we kind of started this whole process all of our students are supported through the mlss or the multi-system level supports process we use mlss instead of rti rti is another acronym response to intervention because mlss encompasses a lot more than just intervention this process provides scaffolded instruction and tiered interventions to ensure all students receive supports as they grow as learners and it assists in closing gaps in students performance as early as possible and it really relies on our data do i actually need to be at the podium for yeah okay so classroom teachers along with

048our reading specialists deliver a lot of the different interventions that kids need in order to close these gaps and they work they really do but sometimes this comes at the expense of our deeper universal instruction that instructional piece that all kids get in the classroom whole instruction and while we want to make sure that everybody has the interventions that we need sometimes by devoting a lot of time in terms of preparation learning how to do these interventions to fidelity brainstorming what different interventions would work best in grouping kids that comes at the cost of preparing for a deeper quality universal instruction if your universal instruction isn't as strong as you would like it to be you might start to see more gaps in kids with their performance now we're going to start to enter into

049this vicious cycle that we don't want to be where we're trying to figure out whether we should be intervening or increasing our universal instruction so here's what we have currently in place we have three to four instructional leaders in each one of our buildings and what you have to recognize is these are our core classroom teachers that just as amanda just shared with you their responsibility is that core instruction and we're doubling that up with the interventions as well so not only are they providing interventions but they're also then helping to lead our student services meetings for those students who are underperforming or have lagging skills they're also planning those rti interventions and really doing a lot of that administrative side of things as well as the actual instruction so they also help us with

050planning for those professional development days that we have and our additional trainings that we have at the building level with fastbridge our new screener for this year as well as then edu climber which is our data warehouse that we use as well so there's a lot that they're doing in addition to that core classroom instruction all right so what you've just heard kind of um maybe you can you can kind of see foreshadowed that it really provides limited efficacy within our buildings um the structure had worked for us in the past it had been a system that you know provided what was needed for our students but at this time you know what we're seeing where what our students need um in our buildings um this this process isn't sufficient enough um and so we

051want to make sure that we aren't always just focusing on those reactive elements of providing intervention as amanda kind of shared we don't want to be stuck in that cycle so we want to be able to focus more on helping staff in regards to their instructional practice and growth so that piece is very strong for our students we will continue to have students who need intervention we know that but we really need to make sure our universal instruction is strong so we're going to share what our proposal is so one of the things that um we've we have done is this year we've implemented fastbridge which is a screener k10 and it we screen three times a year and with that screening data it really pinpointed and was showing is showing us that we we

052have students that are have instructional gaps but we also need to strengthen our universal instruction in order to do that we need to have the ability to to plan and to be able to meet collaborate and we're finding that with different meetings and just different supports that we're needing to provide with our students that that time to collaborate is is shrinking staff feedback from several years from the past several years have indicated that we really need a specialist in the building one one person to take a look at the screening data to be able to digest it and to be able to meet with grade level teachers to say let's take a look at your data teach you know teach them how to to read those reports look at the data and then problem solve

053to come up with how can we make our universal instruction better and also to support staff with deciding what intervention would be best if a student were looking at a student that needs that intervention what intervention best matches that the student need we the staff has just has talked about boy it would really be nice to be able to have one person be able to really help us and coach us through that right now a lot of that is me and there's nine buildings so it's it's really hard to to be able to to meet their needs one of the things that we looked at is the success of the rti specialist positions at the secondary level and that really prompted principals and myself and corey to try to work on a way that we

054could creatively get those specialists in our building to where we can review data and collaborate with classroom teachers at the secondary level a little bit easier because you have you have different hours in different preps where our instructional leaders at the elementary level are in a in the classroom all day long and instructional leaders are leaders not only for their grade level but it's typically a unit so it's multiple grade levels so that was some of the difficulties that we were running into we should have planned the dance part better so the restructure so the purpose is really to dedicate like darla had said the an individual in each elementary school um and the responsibility is quite large but it's always done in a team so our buildings all have leadership teams um and we

055have those staff members that work alongside administration we all work together to make sure that our mlss process is meeting the needs of our students so by having this one person it really really will help us to be more effective with our time and then really being able to identify what students need so you know it is one thing to note too so some of the interventions that are provided for students are also like our classroom teachers so again the load on our classroom teachers and instruction leaders is very very large and they're amazing and have been doing it for so long but we really want to be able to have somebody who can who can lead that that charge that's me so as we were talking about what can we do how can how

056can we help support our teachers how can we um help support and and try to solve this problem that we have we went to corey and corey corey was tasked with yup that sounds great but we need to come up with a cost neutral plan so what we have come up with is to create a full-time academic specialist by reducing the instructional leaders responsibilities and we did that because we would also be reducing their stipend and we were we also took a look at the district fte of the reading specialists to be able to shift some of that fte around to be able to support teachers in buildings and there are six sections of classes that would be reduced across the district to um provide six that that's six of the positions and then by

057reducing the instructional leader stipend um that would create two more positions so that's eight we have nine buildings and what we would do at um kennedy elementary is um provide some additional fte for reading specialists and we're gonna um we were able to come up with a strategic plan for kennedy so as you can see by our slide our timeline is quite short so we prepared this for ed services last week in anticipation of preparing this and sharing that out with our instructional leaders those that are currently our instructional leaders to then have a meeting with them on this wednesday afternoon after school so we'll share that job description with them as well as then the new instructional leader job descriptions that go along with that as well our intentions are to have this posted

058and do interviews the week of the 23rd does anyone have any questions so basically in a nutshell we feel like this concept is going to better meet the needs of students enhance our universal instruction and it's just a creative way to provide more supports in our building we want or we're asking the board for your approval tonight for the concept as a pilot for next year and we'll continue to give you updates throughout the year on how things are going and we'll continue to monitor our data throughout we've gotten feedback from instructional leaders on this concept throughout the year as well as staff within our building so this will not come to a surprise to any one of our elementary staff because principals have been taking information back to them as we've been discussing it

059during our meetings so with that any questions i just want to say i appreciate the creative problem solving especially creating these cost neutral positions i recognize that's not easy and i think it's exciting i think it'll address some of the challenges and so i look forward to seeing how many people are interested in applying and the outcomes i also like how it's a pilot because it gives you the ability to pivot if it's not meeting the outcomes we're wanting it to arp i have two questions no one's losing their job right okay what certifications are required for this one so currently we're looking for somebody with an elementary certification or reading support specialist it could be a special education teacher it could also be possibly even an ell teacher okay so they don't need all

060of those certifications but any of them really that elementary ed focus okay so special ed teachers will also be eligible for this yes uh the only problem and we mentioned this when you had this in educational services committee is you mentioned like somebody might go from a class of 20 to which is quite a jump and i'm concerned about that teacher walking in and saying you know i got nine more kids that i didn't know about or i at least i didn't know about when i left school the previous year so we're completely transparent with that corey has given us kind of a boots on the ground look at least every couple of weeks of what our current enrollment is and we've shared that out with our staff already and in order to mitigate some

061of that we will certainly put more educational assistance support into some of those classrooms but the other part of it is is that for that classroom that has a larger caseload in there and a caseload of those students who might require tier 2 or tier 3 level support and instruction that classroom teacher can then focus more regularly on that core instruction without really trying to find something that is meaningful and busy work so they can pull those intervention groups because they are no less than especially if we're looking at upper grades 20 minutes three to four times a week sometimes five times a week depending upon where they are in the cycle the principles have been really transparent every time we have met and had this discussion going back to their staff and letting them

062know this is kind of where we're at with this plan and so it would it would not be a surprise to teachers or to staff to to to find out that oh a sections being reduced because that has been communicated throughout our process which happens on any given year we're we're shifting teachers and grade levels and sections just depending on what those enrollments are and we're staying within our enrollment caps which the district has already previously established and we have classrooms that are already functioning at high numbers to begin with and that just goes back to justice point of now you have not you have that plus interventions we have been able to we actually not surveyed but had buildings have meetings just solely on this this concept and this plan and provide principles with

063feedback and provide the current instruction leaders with feedback and that feedback then came back to corey and i um throughout so it's not anything that we had a secret meeting about and and are planning it um they're well aware of of what we have been trying to do and and actually the the feedback was really strong with if we can have somebody come in and be able to help us with this be able to help us with interventions support more students yes we are willing we are willing to to go with this plan are there any additional questions of board members i just want to know this is the you know with committees coming back you know items come to committee oftentimes the items are shared at committee and that's where they're shared at often

064though items that are shared at committee um we look as we're creating a the agenda to bring them up to board um sometimes they're brought up to board um as you know we're going to see with gigi and sam that it's a presentation that we want to make sure the full board hears as well as the community because the board meeting is where we're live streaming where we're filming and it provides the community with that broader information that they might not be showing up at the committee meeting to to learn about this is a situation where when this present occurred at committee it was one of those that clearly it involved staffing it involved moving around some existing positions as well as hiring you know a couple new positions as well as you know doing

065some things with staffing again cost neutral but a lot of kind of balls up in the air about something that's going to be happening in our schools as a pilot this next year and so that's why we decided um to have this on for action of the board um because this is this is a pilot project we're moving forward so we're looking by bringing it up to committee and again having you guys show up again to help do the full present for all of us to both get approval and support by the board questions and then also have this information available to families and community in case they have ideas as we move into summer and into that next school year so again that's part of the management of agenda and trying to determine you

066know what happens at committee that that really needs to come to us all as a full board for us to learn about as well as our community so i would be looking for a motion to approve the concept of restructuring of elementary instructional leader slash academic interventionist and reading support to better meet the needs of students in our elementary schools as a pilot for the 2022-23 school year so move second motion by wade second by bushman any discussion or questions on the motion this motion we're going to meet again next year to find out how it went we will we will be asking them probably about this time next year to bring back a report through definitely through committee and then likely up to the board as well all those in favor with i aye

067aye any opposed with nay motion carries thank you thank you thank you and the next uh mr dinga and ms stahl made a presentation to the ed services committee and they're going to do that presentation here on the work that they've been doing in the district this past year oh did it do it thanks [Music] touch the pants help us [Music] okay you guys want to start i'll restart your machine you bring your laptop up now don't you just love technology [Music] it's just a successful toy mr curly oh my god if it's got wheels yeah that's it he packs stuff on that guy no he's just told me that my my granddaughter bought this thing they wore us out everything how old is your dog he's actually about 10. they thought he was about

06824 and a half and five my son has a many two about the same age but he's andrea's back hers is about 10 and i've noticed lately drove into them now you come in sometimes he's asleep somewhere and he's sleeping you can go inside this way i was sleeping you can just plug it in up there with the hdmi you want to do that there you go let's let's plug into the hdmi okay how do you do that computers aren't recognizing the bluetooth how rude yeah so is craig doing like a countdown he really hasn't been really no he did he said he didn't walk by going 16 days i've not heard that 17 minutes he's looking a little relaxed though unless he's got it secretly somewhere i don't know nope all right i'm a

069little anxious no i even tried here it's not connecting input which one try try hdmi two there we go thank you oh yeah first one one minute yes if you just click on edit then you can go to present from there all right thank you everybody so much for your patience um yeah you know just always an adventure so we're super excited to be here today to talk to you a little bit about what we've been doing um we wanted to first off just thank you for letting us come in it's been month 10 for me 11 for sam and mai have we learned a lot and we're still super excited to be here so it's going to be a good time to kind of give you an update on what's been going on over

070the past 10 months so we're going to run through who we are a program summary some specific examples and personal stories to kind of deliver what that actually looks like and then we'll pause at the end if you have any comments questions or cries of outrage so i'll let you introduce yourself and before i do that i did share last time that we set up we designed this presentation we thought we had an hour then we were told in 20 minutes and when we were asked to present to the board we thought maybe we could screen it down and corey said just leave it like that just go through so we might go a little faster my name is sam dinda my pronouns and i'm gigi stall and i use she her pronouns so we

071have a mission and vision up on our website and i thought for the point of today i would summarize it into three big pieces so the first one is that part of our job is to look at what is provided in the classroom and make sure that we have opportunities to provide options for students um that have a mirror of their experience you can see that little kid in the bottom and then a window into the experience of others so part of our work is focusing on that classroom experience what are kids seeing are they reflected and do they get an opportunity to learn about somebody else the second big piece of our job is ensuring that all of our staff and all of our students feel like they genuinely belong and not like they

072were just invited but like this place was made with them in mind so then that last piece is really focusing on learning because we are a school so making sure that we have opportunities to do all three of these things um with an equity diversity and inclusion lens in mind is really what our mission and vision has been in this work did i miss anything nope all right take it away sam um so program summary of what i do um i do see the cabinet and i think i bring equity diversity and inclusion lens to a lot of the things that come through cabinet i support staff where necessary i'm called into meetings to help you know either navigate the meetings or help bring different viewpoints or bring my skills to issues so i do

073travel to different schools and support principals and teachers where needed um we are part of a co a peer group that i co-created um we meet um once a month now i think yeah because this job edi is really fairly new in school districts so we wanted to know what other people around are doing so we created this group and it's been helpful for us to kind of compare notes and learn what others are doing make sure they have resources we're not recreating the will and it has been working for us i do a lot of presentations in the community to help both explain what we do what my role is and to bring the community into get them involved into what we're doing in the school district and so in a lot of cases

074is to help with misinformation i see there's a lot of that going on in the community for several reasons and so i go into different businesses or organizations and help to to clarify those and sometimes ask questions or just to know what's happening out there and bring it back to the school district i do a lot of mentorship for students in different schools in most of the cases these are young boys whose family structure maybe dad is not present and so i kind of help that role when i can so i do travel to those schools and meet with the students and when i learn things through my relationship with those students i share them with the teachers as appropriately as possible and we we help find solutions to support the students then i did

075create the alliance for equity and inclusion it's brand new we've had two meetings and this brings together student students teachers and staff and community members parents and the goal is for us to find creative ways of for example closing equity gaps in our school district and the community will be able to organize courageous conversations for the community and a bit to help educate the community awesome so to kind of continue on that i've got four areas i want to kind of focus on in my summary so the first one is professional development so i've gotten the opportunity to work specifically with our secondary teachers and staff and admin this year which has been really exciting so i've been able to bring in things that their monthly professional development as well as some independent department meetings

076so that's been great the other part that's been really exciting and i think where i've had the most impact so far this year is in the co-teaching so i've done this by way of offering some curriculum support and building new curriculum for teachers because i have the time during the day while they have kids in their classroom or come in to do some book reads and activities in the classroom by myself or in collaboration with some teachers the other big piece of what i do is mentoring and advising staff and students so sometimes this looks like an incident happening at school and staff responding to it and giving me a call and saying all right gg this is what happened today and this is what we did do you think we did all right and

077most of the time it's absolutely let's walk through like how to make sure that you feel better about this in the future or okay we might need to take a couple steps back here um to to look at this again so that's a big piece of what i do i also do some support with our student groups so i do some advising with groups at the secondary level again so those agents for change and equity the gender and sex check wow gender and sexuality alliance i need to stop trying to rush so much as well as some other groups the other piece in that is maintaining a caseload of sorts so similar to sam i have a set group of students at the different schools who i check in with whether that's in response to

078be some behavior academic challenges they've experienced or just because they've taken a liking to me and we can use that to support their success in school um so really maintaining strong relationships with students is a big piece of this work the last part that i put in here is that i started working with our pre-k team to kind of support them with their pyramid board piece of things to ensure that they have the culturally responsive set of expectations to continue to meet those standards so i spend my time all over our district which is honestly the best part of my job my office is located in spanish so that i'm accessible to students but generally i'm in about two to three schools a day so this is what my schedule looks like but it kind

079of just depends on what happens throughout the district so the beginning of the school year i spent you know most of my time just working out of different buildings but as a result of building those relationships now when i spend times in the buildings i hardly get a moment to even open my laptop because people are so warm and inviting and they want my feedback or they want me meeting with their students so this time spent in 14 different buildings though it has been challenging has been exceptionally rewarding and i'm seeing a large return on that time spent so the example i want to give you just to really demonstrate what this work looks like is going to collaborate all of these things i put together into one beautiful story so i'm going to crash

080you through a really quick story book so once upon a time there was a caterpillar and a snail and they were trying to get to an event together and i read this story to ninth graders and the caterpillar and the snail have to go under a fence to get to this event uh the caterpillar can fit just fine the snail can't and getting this big argument about how hard it is for the snail and the caterpillar's like come on i don't just have it easy all the time have you ever tried shopping for shoes i have 16 feet it's a nightmare you know the snail's like i don't have feet i've never even thought about that i'm not saying that you have it easier i just can't fit under this fence right now i really

081want to get to this event can you help me out and so they figure out a new way to get to this event and it's a wonderful story they have a great time so i read this to ninth graders and then we do an activity to kind of reflect on this story and ask them what are some moments in your life where you are the caterpillar and where are the moments in your life where you are the snail and they have to fill it out in this little triangle and then that tops part of the triangle they have to demonstrate what you would do if you are the caterpillar how can you make sure to look out for your snails or if you're the snail in this moment what can you do to like advocate

082for yourself or how can you look for somebody to support you in this challenge and it was a really wonderful learning experience in ways that i didn't anticipate so i got to have a really great one-on-one conversation with a student who told me miss gigi i'm a caterpillar because i have my hair cut in a mullet i was like okay this is not where i was expecting this to go can you tell me more and he's like well it is just the best style of haircut so that makes me really awesome i was like cool who's the snails he was like well everyone else and i'm like okay um again didn't anticipate this direction but what can you do in that top part of the triangle and he had to sit there for a moment

083and he came to the realization that the most important thing he could do was recognize that everybody needed a different kind of hairstyle to look their best and his job in the caterpillar space in that moment was to recognize that and understand that everybody's going to bring something a little bit different to the table so i share this example because i think sometimes the way this work is portrayed is that it's really challenging and that it always has to be explicitly about race but that's not how this work has to look the student was able to recognize his own identity see the difference in others and find a way to celebrate that and be okay with people being different than him so this lesson that i was able to teach i now bring into my

084professional development for staff to demonstrate how to bring this into the classroom i was able to model this when i was teaching in the classroom with that teacher and as i built the curriculum i tied it to all of the standards within dpi so again being able to model what this work looks like and how to integrate it into the curriculum we're already building so i think this is just the perfect example to demonstrate what it looks like to be in my role in our district can you imagine how many times i've got that it's a good story still like the story though so i walk out of this building but i spend some times in the different schools and also spend time uh in the community and i really i cherish that a lot

085because i've spent 20 years in this community and i and i've been part of a lot of the different organizations and i think that is the big piece that i really bring to be able to make those connections i have requests for to serve on almost 80 percent of boards around here i'm still waiting for a bank though because i hear banks pay to serve on their board i'm still waiting for that one but i i think what that helps me do especially when i'm meeting with parents is either i went to school with some other parents or i have worked with their kids at the boys and girls club and some of the parents today i did work with them as kids when they were at boys and girls club so i think being

086out in the community really helped me make the connections and understand the issues that are out there in the community um two examples that i wanted to really share with what my role is we had a meeting with uh folks from hmong uplift it's an existing program in our community but it was kind of fizzling out and they wanted to bring that program back so they met with ginger and i and during the first meeting everything they were asking i i recognize that we do have um an organization here in our community that could be a better fit and that was the boys and girls club and i served on their board so i really encouraged them to meet with boys and girls club set up that meeting we were part of that meeting so

087we met with boys and girls club talk to them and we agreed that they could create a separate club and part of the reason is the boys and girls club has been struggling to recruit and retain hmong students within the boys and girls club but it just doesn't work for several reasons and we feel that if we were to create this club that can be managed by um among students or staff for hmong students they could do language cultural enrichment programs food those are the big things that they really want to do when they are in the boys and girls club and so we have that relationship with working and setting up that club we will pilot this program at mckinley school and we're looking at starting in september so that is an example of

088how my connection the community is creating to close those equity gaps and the second picture that is my son who is now a fourth grader at uh plover whitening and his hair at that time was really cute but as he got older it wasn't cute anymore and we wanted to cut his head so i took him to a barber shop here in town and the baba said i really could not cut that kind of hair um and not just for him for me also i i didn't have places where i could go cut my hair so that is a problem as a community we try to find we talk about recruiting and retaining people of color this is part of the challenge to find things you know like place to cut hair or where to

089fight by um ethnic food and things like that so i am hoping that through the alliance of equity and inclusion we could identify challenges like this and figure out why we can have barbershops here in town that can help kids and their parents with things like this there are reasons why it's difficult to have babasha both ordinances and the way things are set up in mid-state so we could bring all those entities together i started talking to the mayor about this this issue and so we're hoping that we can be identifying and naming things like this and addressing them so just an example of some of the things that i do to bring equity in our school district so thank you for listening to our crash course of the edi update like i said we

090are super excited to be in these roles it's been 10 really fruitful months and i'm excited to continue on because i think this work is really important and i said when i first got here that i would love to love it here and i'm loving it here it's this is a really great role so what questions do you have for us i i have a question just curious when when you go to the different uh buildings to work or they have an office for you or do you just work anywhere or how does logistically how does that work the short answer to that question is yes um so it kind of just depends if the conference room is not reserved then that's typically a place where i sit if i need a place to sit

091while i'm there but sometimes if there's a table in the hallway i'll do that one or really just wherever i can find a space pull up a chair i'm not very picky so so just a quick very excited to have you here and and in the school so what would you say and this is a hard question i hate to ask it but what would you say your your greatest challenge has been this year either sam i know you've been here in the community and know that but but if you either one of you has you know a challenge that maybe you've already beat the challenge or whatever you think you think a lot of me i like that um yeah so this is a great question you're right and it is super hard um

092the first thing that pops into my mind is the the biggest challenge of this work is time because what we're trying to do is not just present you know information and then magically everything is different and easy um we're looking at at long term change right so it's really challenging sometimes to be in this beginning space and be like okay i can identify where some of the challenges are here but what it is going to take to overcome some of those challenges is a year or two years or five years so what do i do in this interim so really uh figuring out how to build what is best for people right now while also building to take care of people better in five years i think is one of the biggest challenges that i

093face he thinks i think for me is the misinformation that i kind of talked about before we came into our different role there were a lot of assumptions about what our role would be and uh so it seemed like we're fighting to set the record straight and and correct that both in water and action but it's still out there there's a lot of reason why that is happening you could say the national what is happening at the national level seem to seep here real fast and i remember as soon as i got this job somebody walked up to me and said are you the new critical race theory guy and i said no wrong black guy because i was that's not my role but that's what they were thinking my role is and i have

094to start by do i spend time and explain what that is or but so was constantly struggling with that misinformation that is out there a lot of times when i talk or do presentations people come up and say it seems like you're talking about a different role i said no that's actually what my role is because they had mis understanding of misconception about what this role is supposed to be when we came in here i let cabinet know we're not the edi police we're not here to police people we're here to you know work with the team and be a part of what is happening and look long term like jesus said to make you know create awareness name things and work together to to make the change that we want to see again it's

095not a light switch but we hope we'll make strides and with this with your support and cabinet we want to continue to do the work that we're hired to do thank you very much one thing i said at our educational services committee meeting when you made this presentation it's already been an article in the paper i'm sure a lot of you saw that uh that illustrated some of the great work you guys are already doing and what uh what i was say uh impressed about or really happy about is that you're helping individual students already you know that it can come that fast and that it can happen this is a great article thank you okay yeah thank you so much any other questions at all i guess i have just one i have one

096question and it it actually relates to um well sam you were on the wpr the um what was it called road trip or um route like something yep yeah but so did an hour-long presentation and one of the questions that was asked that you know i think for me really kind of hit home was this sense that um that by providing this service to students there's the potential that something else may be being taken away from someone and so i just wanted you to respond to that because i know that was a question on the radio show and you did a wonderful job of explaining that i think the example i used was um i i said if a family were to go out to eat right and they had a baby in the group

097when they bring the booster seat for the baby that that seed is not taking away a seat for any of the adults it's just providing what the baby needs and so that's how we see our role here right we we're trying to find inequities within the school district and provide what those individuals need without taking away from anybody else so i think that was the lens that i was i was trying to present that response thank you thank you thanks for coming thanks guys services you also cover technology all right so so keep going well we've got brian here to talk about oh you're going to wirelessly you're back on the instrument there we go all right somehow that wireless connection on the tv has got to be troubleshot it's not working so um good

098evening i'm here to talk about the elementary chromebook program uh we're at a juncture now where after two years of pandemic we needed to take a look at that program we conducted a review and there's a report in your board packet which has a lot more information a lot more of the data and there's more detail i'm going to give you a brief powerpoint tonight just to keep it short and condense it to the most your main issues that we need to discuss with you so we need to start at the very beginning uh starting out 2019 we were running a chromebook program in our elementary schools on carts no devices went home every child had a chromebook and they stayed on carts we had no provisions ready to send those devices home they didn't

099go home and then of course we know what happened in 2020 the pandemic arrived we had a resort to contingencies that were planned for we had an emergency chromebook deployment program that we mobilized a massive amount of people at all schools and really under pandemic conditions too i mean people were scared to go out and we were asking them to come and pick up a chromebook so we gave one chromebook per family that got us through the end of 2020 coming back the next year we knew the pandemic wasn't going anywhere we needed to have those options for hybrid learning so we created a one-to-one program and that that was where every child had a chromebook in grades k through six they took it home in a case and with the charger and they brought

100it back and forth between school every day and the reason for that was to be able to prepare for lockdowns quarantines and hybrid learning environments that we were implementing at that time so we got to this last school year things started to get a little bit more normal back in school on a regular basis kids are in class every single day um and we really felt we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and we needed to take a look at how the program is working and what we can do to make it better for next year so that's 2019 and 2022 this year starting in april we decided to do a formal review we talked to a lot of different folks we had focus groups with the technology steering committee

101that is a group that is intimately involved with how we'd plan for and deploy technology we had instructional leaders we had a focus group with them they're also important and elementary principles so we had three different groups where we collected some qualitative input from them we had a survey that went out to all k-6 staff excellent participation probably about a 50 participation rate over 100 teachers which is excellent for a voluntary survey and if you want to see some of the results i look in that report we did include some examples of the opinions that they said and they said some very good things um and then of course we had a parent survey too we were able to get six questions on to the school perception survey that did make our timeline a little

102tight because we were waiting for those results to come in to include them so now we we condensed all this in and we're getting it to you because right now in may because we need to implement these changes over the summer and we also have to let folks know before the end of the school year what is it that we're doing of course next year after we do these changes we'll take another look i don't know if we'll do such a formal review process or just tweak it a little bit or see what direction this is going again to possibly make recommended changes so what do we find out what's working well in all of the data that we looked at quantitatively qualitatively we saw learning continuity was the number one thing that people said

103about the benefits of taking a chromebook home it's a fail-safe for learning if a child is isn't there they're on vacation they're sick they're quarantined maybe a class is quarantined maybe we have disruptive events that are pandemic related or not we're able to deliver instruction and that's that continuity of learning the teachers mention this the most frequently in all of their comments they also really appreciated the ability to connect with students at home they thought that that was really something great whether that was email with a parent helping or or the child or maybe that was a web conference or whatever tools that they had learning management systems schoology seesaw those types of things the second thing that we saw as a really good success was digital equity that is improved educational access one thing

104that we've seen through the pandemic is that internet access and access to a device is crucial for learning it's really hard to do education without that so through our program we're providing digital equity in a number of homes where there is no device at home or if it wasn't for us they wouldn't even have internet more families are now connected to their schools a lot of elementary principals said that was a huge benefit to the program that it wasn't just the fact that children could do lessons online they had a way to communicate with the families where they couldn't before because they didn't have internet they didn't have a device well now they can get the newsletter or they could watch their child's band performance online or participate in digital parent-teacher conferences we saw an

105improvement in digital skills students have improved their typing coding online research digital media creation skills all of those things were mentioned by teachers and i would have to say too we already talked about this i think maybe in a presentation last year i just can't say enough about our teachers how much the elementary teachers were this program was thrust upon them the whole idea of digital learning and they really rose to the occasion their skills have increased beyond imagination i just have to mention there was a teacher that when i think i first came into the district she told me in no uncertain terms that there was no way in heck that she was ever going to use computers to teach kids flat out said that and then this year she lobbied us to make

106sure that her student teacher had access to all of the digital programs because she could not teach nor could she do lesson plans for her class unless that student teacher had access so that's how much things have changed uh a plurality of teachers are regularly providing supplemental work not necessarily homework per se as they would at the secondary level but just even the opportunity to do things that enrich their instruction then the other thing that came through loud and clear from all the data that we collected was the support that we provide and the online safety tools so uh teachers in the school perception survey said they're very satisfied with the technology that they have they're very satisfied with the support and i i can't say enough about our staff we probably have one of

107the best technology staffs i've ever seen um we couldn't have made it through the pandemic without them um they're they are our most valuable resource hands down above anything else they make this stuff all work that also goes for our technology integration specialists we have two at the elementary level uh four district wide they were really that glue that kind of helped kept all of this stuff together and working because they're in the classrooms helping teachers they're jumping around from schools and they aren't teachers that's where they came from that's what they know so our support is really really good um we've instituted a we couldn't do a help desk like we could at secondary schools so this sort of evolved where some offices started exchanging chromebooks and it worked so well we said let's

108do this at all the schools so now all the child has to do is take their chromebook to the office doesn't matter what's wrong with it they get a new one that works so right during the day there's no interruption of instruction likewise if they're at home they just have to make it to the school office they can swap out that chromebook everyone really likes that program it makes it keeps learning going um we also added online support for teachers and the phone call and support have also been well received people like the ability to submit a ticket you know whether that's at night or on weekends or maybe it's even during the day and of course they can always call us too that's been well received we implemented a new filtering program called securely

109which also provides parents the ability to monitor their child's access at home and we implemented this year securely classroom which is the ability for teachers to monitor what their students are doing so if you're teaching anything digitally you can actually look at all the screens of your students you can lock them down you can direct them to one website that's been very well received by teachers at all levels k-12 so that's what's working well with the program what are the challenges primary grades are probably one of the biggest challenges it's the age of the students kindergarteners are not necessarily ready for the responsibility of toting a device back and forth the additional weight was mentioned very frequently that it was a lot for a kindergarten or even a first grader to you know it doesn't

110seem like much to us but just add more stuff in the backpack um there was that um less digital work was required i'm not going to say that there aren't kindergarten teachers out there that do digital work because i know that they are but for the most part they do a lot less digital work it's not every day it's not it's not enough to warrant the transportation of the device and what we also saw is a natural dividing line and this is interesting because it mirrors our original setup of the program its k12 is different than third grade at that time we had made the kind of decision to do touch screen chromebooks that were touch screen and that was universally wanted by those teachers in those primary grades so then third grade didn't didn't

111seem to matter well we saw the same results when we asked about you know should there be discretion or what age should these go home when we looked at primary teachers versus what the upper grades said it was pretty clear primary teachers felt the devices should stay at school whereas if for third grade and up they saw a lot of benefit to the devices going home charging is a universal problem for all teachers even the ones that were very supportive of the program and wanted it to continue just said please can you do something so that we can help kids that just need to charge their device at school because they forgot to charge it so we need to have some option for providing charging at schools and that would include carts and extra chargers

112in the classrooms family education came through a little bit too that we heard from staff saying that they wish we could reinforce the expectations i feel like when we rolled this out a year or two ago we did kind of a massive effort with videos and things we need to redouble those efforts and just let parents know hey here's the expectations for caring for the device also let them know again about all the wide variety of online safety tools that we have that people do not know about or maybe they forgot about i think we felt like we did one campaign and then we haven't continued that so we'll be looking into some more communication to go out district wide and also at the school level so when implementing the changes we had four goals

113number one we wanted to preserve the gains made into digital equity whatever we did we did not want to take that away or that a child would not have the opportunity to take home a device if they had none at home number two continue this momentum of digital learning that keep those tools available working keep that learning continuity going and also be able to do that for future future disruptive events so we always want to preserve that ability to pivot we don't know what the future holds i i hope we're done with the pandemic but no one can tell if we ever have to do anything like this again we don't want to have to mobilize hundreds of people and rush around and rip out charges out of carts we want to be able to

114pivot into that quickly and then we need there are a few issues we need to correct uh which were mentioned with the program what are we recommending students in grades three through six will continue with the current program we didn't see any reason to change that that seems like that was that dividing line as i've mentioned we are going to provide three extra chargers in each classroom so that should hopefully alleviate any issues with the charging we're also going to provide more guidance about chromebook responsibilities and care we'll work with the schools and at the district level to try and get that information out in in the best way possible and then we also do want to provide parents more information about the filtering and monitoring and online safety tools if they have concerns about

115the device in their home because they have the ability through securely to literally shut off the device if they don't want their child using it they just have to know about it and register to use it then we get to k2 the primary grades this is where we are recommending a significant change students in k2 are going to keep their chromebooks at school each classroom will have a cart used for storing a charge charging but we are also going to make sure that each child is assigned a specific chromebook so that chromebook that they get is assigned to them that asset tag will know that it's theirs those may be checked out for home use and that's where that preserving the digital equity piece comes in so if there are children in those grades where

116they want to take the device home their parents are saying we need it we'd like it they will have the ability to take it home on a daily weekly monthly uh short term long term basis because it's a sign to them we also have the ability to send devices home for e-learning days not saying that that's required but we have that option now um and of course as i mentioned provide more information one thing that we are going to do is make it easy for teachers we're not going to have them try and wire up carts we're buying extra chargers and wiring up the carts so that they can just literally take a chromebook out of a case stick it in the cart and plug it in and if they have to go home they

117pull it out put it in the case and there's an extra charger to go home in the bag so that was an easy solution right there we just had to purchase more chargers and that's it those are the recommendations i would gladly entertain any questions you might have at this point members have any questions of brian so everybody above sixth grade automatically takes their chromebooks with them yes that program is continuing it's working well no changes need to be made there [Music] so seeing no questions i would look for a motion to approve the program changes as presented so moved motion by ran out second second by pope any discussion or questions on the motion hearing none all those in favor with eye any opposed with nay motion carries thank you brian we will move

118into general uh future meeting dates and time we've got our june 13th regular school board meeting we have our school board retreat now scheduled for june 29th and we will have our regular school board meeting for july 11th in the event that we have a meeting in july in the past we have that's the month that a lot of our administrations administrators on the 11-month contract are not available um and so we often do cancel that meeting in the event there is a need for it particularly with respect to employment recommendations sometimes we're looking at things like that we will definitely let board members know so if you can just hold both that committee and board date i believe the first monday of the month is the fourth this year so we would likely if

119we need to do it we would move that to the fifth so we now i am looking for a motion to go into closed session under wisconsin statutes 1985 paren one parent c considering employment promotion compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility specifically consideration of employment recommendation and contracts for one ben franklin jr high school principal two p j jacobs junior high school psychologist intern and three school psychologists so move motion by scott to have a second second second by bushman any discussions on the motion i will have carlin call the roll miss bushman yes you have to say yes we have we all we're so for new members we're required to take a roll call vote on heading into closed session that's

120just a rule mr pope yes ms portson yes mr wade yes ms scott yes ms rano yes ms erler yes and motion carries okay if you can give us like 10 minutes about