001adopt the agenda. So moved. Second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I opposed. Okay, moving on to C. Attendance. It appears everyone is here today. And then we will move on to D. Pledge of allegiance to the flag. Please stand if you're williance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we move on to 2 A. Do we have any public comments? No. Okay. And we'll move on to consent agenda 3 A and B personal recommendations and 202526 parent paid transportation contract. Um does anybody like to pull would anybody like to pull an item? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve 3 A and B? So move. I'll second. Any discussion or
002questions hearing? None. All in favor? I oppose. 3 A and B carry. Okay. We will move on to four reports and presentations for a strategic plan dash dashboard preview with Dr. Ryan. Hello everybody. I am very excited to be here this evening to show you our new strategic plan dashboard that I've been working on for the last couple of months. Um, this is really very exciting. Um, some of my colleagues may call me a nerd for enjoying something like this, but I think it's going to be a great tool for transparency for our district. Um, so just a brief overview of the dashboard. It's going to monitor the progress of our strategic plan. Um, it needs to be updated manually. So I plan at this time to update it three to four times a year.
003Um, I'll see when kind of the natural points of as data changes over um and is updated and then it will be updated at those times and then we'll make a little note of it. Brenda will probably share something out on social media when the dashboard's updated. Um, we really want to provide that transparency and accountability for our stakeholders. We had so many people come together to develop the new strategic plan um and make their voices heard. And so we want to show not only that we've seen what they care about and what they want to improve in the district um but also be really clear about what our actual metrics are um in these certain indicators. It's also going to help us to find our successes and then our areas that continue to need
004improvement. Um one of the cool things about the dashboard which you'll see in just a few minutes is that it can track progress over time. So we can see if some areas are improving or getting worse and have it all in one place. So it's easy to see. You don't have to collect a lot of little pieces from everywhere. Um, and it also will help us with some more datadriven decision-making. I think we've really improved on that in the last several years and we just hope to continue to get better in that area. Um, so before I show you the dashboard, there's a couple of vocabulary terms that I want to make sure we're all on the same page about. Um, the first term we'll see on one tab is an indicator. We're using multiple
005indicators um for each pillar of our strategic plan that are going to measure our progress towards our goals, where we want to be as a district. Um, so these are not necessarily linked to specific action steps, but are rather overall indicators to help us understand whether our strategies are effective and whether our goals are being met. We have different indicators for each pillar of the strategic plan. Um, some may even tie two components across multiple pillars. And then some of our indicators include data charts that show progress over time, and those are ones that I'm very excited about. Um, some of these indicators are not being measured yet and they're still in progress. Um, so these are indicated by little icons and these are things that we're hoping to collect in the future either starting
006this year or going forward into future years. Um, then we also have strategies which are these actions that we're designing to achieve our specific goals within the plan. Um, and each of our strategies is listed on the final tab of the dashboard and it shows how we plan to improve our indicators and achieve our outcomes. Um, and then you can click on the strategy and it will expand into action steps and those action steps explain how we're going to achieve each strategy. Um, we also have details about the general timelines and who's mainly responsible for that action step. Um, so we're going to click on the link and check it out. Jen, is there any way I could plug in? I'm sorry that we didn't discuss this in advance, but it might be easier if
007I could kind of navigate around. Thank you so much. So, you reach the dashboard through the Whitel homepage. If you go to the continuous improvement tab, um you will they'll see right away there's a link at the top of the page to the dashboard and then this is what you see when you click on that link. Um, so this is the same live dashboard that is available to the public. Um, it was shared out in the connect with our families on Friday and with our staff in the e-weekly last Thursday. Um, so I even had some staff comment to me the other day that they looked at it. Um, and they were very appreciative. So when you click on the link, it'll take you to the homepage. You can kind of see the navigation up
008on the left. Um, it gives you a little bit of information with links to each of our different schools, some information about our strategic plan, and then just a little overview of how to use this dashboard, which I'm showing everybody now. Um, then the next tab is those indicators that I talked about. Um, as I'm going through these, I'm just going to kind of give you an overview of the dashboard and show you how to navigate things. If you find you have any specific questions about the data points in the dashboard, um, please feel free to email Brady and I afterwards, um, just want to make sure that this is really focused on an overview. Um, so we have for each of our different pillars a little icon, different colors, and then you can see
009all of the different indicators within each of those different pillars. Um, we can also see that we have some of our little icons here that show that we're not collecting information or on those indicators yet. um because number one for district wellness plan participation we're still working on building our district wellness plan. So once that plan is built we'll be able to start collecting data in that area. You go all the way down to the bottom for community connections and partnerships. We're not collecting any data in that area yet because that's something that we heard from our community and our stakeholders as we're developing the plan that we want to continue um to grow and improve on especially with the referendum. Um, going back up to our engaging student experience. I'll just show you an
010example of some of the cool interactive components. Um, let's go down to let's see our students meeting or advanced in ELA. Um, if you click on the little eye icon on any of the little tiles that you see for any of the indicators, it will pop up with information that describes that data point more specifically. Um, so if you're looking at a data point and you're like, "Wow, where did that data come from? how did we get it? When was it collected? Um, it can give you that information in the little eye and then it also shows you a little bit of information down on the bottom. Then for some of the little tiles, it also has that view data chart. If you click on that chart, it'll pop up or click on view chart,
011it'll pop up with some data over time that shows a change in the data over the last several years. Um, I only tried to use data that's comparable. We know that the forward exam changed in 2024, so I didn't want to put any data on here that was prior to that. Um, so you can see for our district, um, we went from about 59% proficient to about 63% proficient from one year to the next. And that's using the same comparable data. Um, so it also gives you an example of what our goal is. Um, our goal is to get to 80%. I've already showed you that in previous discussions with the strategic plan. Um, so as we go through all of the different indicators, um, you can see they're kind of widely ranging. When we
012selected indicators, we tried to look at elements that cover all of our grade levels, um, all of our content areas, and some of our readiness indicators um that research shows are going to help our indicate that our students are getting ready for college and career. Um with our employee experience, we chose our indicators um based on what we heard from our community as things that were important to them like staff retention and employee satisfaction. Um for operational excellence, a lot of our indicators are related to our financial health, but we also have some different ones including um safety, staff and students perception of safety, um satisfaction with technology, and then some additional financial components. And then for our community connections, a lot of our indicators um focus around perceptions, attendance, um and then if we're
013going to have some community giveback events, be seeking out grants. Those indicators will show our strength and progress in those areas. Then finally, the third tab is our strategies. So this comes directly from our strategic plan. Um, this looks like the graphic that you can see on our website right now where it has each of our pillars and then each of our strategies underneath each pillar. Um, their language is a little bit different on the website. So, if you'll see where it says objectives and strategies, don't worry specifically about the language. The structure is still the same. If you'll click on the little arrow, it will expand each of our strategies into our specific action steps. And our action steps is what we're working on as district and building administrators um to really work towards
014those strategies. And then our success will be shown in our indicators for each of our action steps. If you click on details, it will show the level of completeness as which we're measuring by um the time that we've designated from start to finish. So that will change as the data is updated on the dashboard. Um and then it shows the main person who is responsible for making sure that that action step gets completed. So developing clearly defined learning outcomes for all courses in the district is not something that we can do very quickly. There's a lot of different components that build off of that. So we can see that it has a longer timeline. Um one of the things that Brady's been emphasizing for us is that this is a five-year plan. It's not all
015going to get done in one year. Um, so this has been really helpful, a helpful like thought exercise for us in thinking about how can we ensure that everything is done in five years, but that we're taking the time to do everything in the plan thoroughly and well. Um, so this will be helpful for everyone to see um how we're doing in terms of progress towards each of our action steps and each of our strategies. And if you want to see who's responsible um for each different component, you can click on those details. Sorry, Adam, you have a lot of them. Um, and you can see kind of our timelines for getting those done. So, that's our dashboard. I'm really excited about it. It's been kind of a labor of love. Um, still a work
016in progress. And so, um, I've asked Brady and our administrators that if anyone ever sees anything that is confusing or unclear, I'll ask the same of all of you as well. Please let me know so that I can continue to make it better for our community. Is there anything you want to add, Brad? No, I think it's, you know, it's an important thing. You know, we've been at several, I mean, I know a lot of you said in the W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W Abb uh things last year and one of the continual messages that we heard or I heard in those is you guys need to start telling your story, what you're doing and you be really clear
017with the public about what you're doing. So that was kind of where this idea came from and uh yeah as Dana said I think it's a really good thing for transparency and it's going to be very helpful you know for us to again manage this huge plan that you know we've developed you guys have approved that we're working on um you know what what gets tracked gets done and so when we put it up there we have a certain level of accountability to not only you all u but our whole entire community staff and everybody. So, it's it's a very exciting thing and you know, Dana has done a nice job um learning kind of the ins and outs of this thing and putting it together. By the way, just just when you look at
018it, if it has somebody listed, you know, Dana said, Adam's got a lot. John's probably got a lot. I've got maybe not a lot, but some. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but that's the person responsible uh for kind of putting it together, putting the plan together to get it done. So, that's not saying that you might look at it and say, "Well, none of our principles are responsible for anything." Well, oh, they will be. Uh, it's just uh Adam's kind of the point person that's going to organize the work and move it forward. So, that's what I question. Um, I'm really excited to see this. I heard a lot of those tell our story things. Um I think my biggest concern would be the prominence of it on our actual district website. Um I know
019a lot of families get lost in the drop down menus and so especially something like this when um a lot of times this kind of stuff about how our district is doing is what people are talking about. I wonder if it should be more prominent and easier to get to right away um instead of buried in all the drop downs. So, that would be my one big feedback point. Um but obviously that's something to think about. Yeah, it's a really good point. We're actually in the process of doing some redesign on the website as well because it's to make it more compatible with things. So, yeah, we will definitely Thank you. Um, I was just going to ask for a button or something on the front page, even if it's small, or something to drive
020people there because I think there's a lot of good things here that we want front and center. The only question I have, and John, this might be a question for you actually, is under the operational excellence ones for financial audit outcomes. I'm one is good, but is there a way to put in the info like out of this many possible things that shows how positive having only one identified thing I think just reinforces the message of that we're in a good position financially. I don't know if there's just a little I don't know what the scale would be, how many possible things they could find. Just to echo that because we're so used to the one through 10 and like 10 is good and one is bad. So Oh, that makes sense. It's basically up
021to infinity. You could have as many. So that's something like cuz I was like, "Oh, only one thing sounds pretty good, but somebody might not know what that means." And so just a way to say like know could be thousands or or if there's a scale under this many is a super good thing for beard or whatever. I don't know what the right scale would be but just a thought for extra explanation for someone who's tooling around in there. We can definitely work together to fix that because it's not as obvious as like 85% or you know. Yeah. Yeah. Especially somebody who's maybe not or if someone says why isn't it zero? What what are we doing wrong? You know what I mean? So, just to really hit home that we're in good shape. Go
022ahead, J. Yeah, to echo both Sarah and Cassie. Um, so for example, if I go to the website and type in dashboard, it'll bring up something from a few years ago and not the current dashboard. And so then I was like, okay, so how do I find this? Well, let me dig around for the strategic plan. Okay, here's a link. So, and I'm pretty good with the um I've been here a while, so I' I've messed around on the website a few times, but it would be great to have things point directly to that. I know that you can bring up a lot of historical information on the website, but if there's a way that we can date it so it comes up at the top of that priority list. Um, and echoing Cassie, I
023would wonder for a financial audit if we can even add some detail because I noticed on some of the descriptions there is quite a bit of detail and explanation. So, if we had one um one material weakness, what is it? You know, can we explain what it is? So, people if we want transparency, then let's be transparent. Um, the only other thing that jumped out at me right at the beginning was just having student state card reports, state report card score, EE. I'm like, well, I know what EE is, but does the average parent know what EE is, but you have to dig down for that. Do you know what I mean? So, yes. And that's part of the I guess one of the fatal flaws of the dashboard tool. Um, we have limited numbers
024of characters in each the title, the description, and the the big text. So, I I did my I've done my best. Um, it's been we only have 10 characters. So, in trying to think of like what's the best thing to put in there, it's been really tricky. We can continue to take a look at that and I might ask Brenda to help with she's very very good at finding alternatives and and so that's that's the district's report card score. It's not the individual schools. It's the district report. And so we don't have anything for the individual schools. So at this time unless you drill down I'm sorry. Go ahead. Unless you drill down to the district and then does the district link up to the elementary schools. Um yes. So if you click on the
025link for the district report card. Yeah, I can see it. I can update that to bring you to the uh the DPI website that has both the district and the school report card. I think that people care the most about their kids school, you know, if they're at um if they're at Edertton or if they're at HC. So, and it would make sense on this document, if this is going to be our be all end document to um make it available. So, one of my hopes is that we do have the ability um to have separate dashboards for the different buildings. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if that's necessary, but we could again add more detail in some of these popups. Just a just a thought. Yeah, definitely. It's It was kind of a
026oneperson show and creating it and so I'm really welcoming a lot of feedback. So, I like it. I I like having numbers and I like having I'm really excited about year over year over year over year. you know, if our standards stay consistent, you know, we'll be able to show year over year over year and someday we'll see 10 years of history and the trends and that's I mean hopefully a lot of growth. So and I hope it stays the same. Nice job first of all. Um you put a lot of hard work into it and I see that you're going to manually put in data three three four times a year. Mhm. So to me the most important thing is that we that we put correct data in whether it's high, low or whatever
027it is. You know the fidelity of it is is very important because if we are not put in the right data we're going to we're going to lose trust real quick. So that's in some of these different points. Um, I tried to be very specific about how frequently things like I specified that this is the spring survey. It's not just the most recent survey. Um, if we're going down to successful completion of algebra 2, for example, um, we talk a little bit about it, but it's based on the junior class specifically. Um, this is average daily attendance rate across all buildings. So, I've tried to be relatively specific in when and how the data was collected. Um, I tried to take as much from publicly available sources as possible so that people could go back
028and reference those sources as well. Um, to know that we're not kind of pe picking cherrypicking different data sources. Um, because I and I also have a separate document where I make sure that the data that I'm collecting and putting on each year is the same year-over-year. It's collected at the same time and in the same way. So that's important. Yeah. Thank you. I was just going to say I appreciate the hard work that goes into this as well and I love um having this dashboard and being able to look and see the indicators plus the strategies and then you can see the four objectives and then when you go in you get to see the strategies and what we're working toward and they're very clearly defined which is what what we like to see
029mirrored in the classroom as well like a road map and um it really puts the vision out there clearly and lays the groundwork for the systems work that that keeps happening. So, I think it's really exciting and I'm glad to have it. And like everybody else said, it it was a little bit difficult to find maybe and um it's going to be front and center. Brend is watching if you're listening. No, I just it's really cool. It really about the searching. There's like 13 results and it's not on there at all. I was going to suggest too that Brenda advertises it on the social media. Yeah. It's just so you guys be transparent and you have it out there and you're laying the groundwork work and then you have your strategies and the details and
030that's so awesome and it's going to be great to see how the story unfolds and how we're working toward that vision. So awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Um so you kind of talked about the limitations of this dashboard. Is this something that we already had available in house or is this something that we had purchased in anticipation of creating this in terms of the software? So this we are working with a company who provides the service of hosting the dashboard and all of the data for us. Um, interestingly, Brady had heard about dashboard software um, pretty much the same week that Brenda and I had already started talking about um, setting up meetings with some different companies. So, it all kind of came together at the same time. Um, and this was the most userfriendly
031on the front end and the backend platform that we were located. Okay. So, there wasn't any issues with like you said about manually inputting data. I just think of okay if you have data stored in some sort of location are they housing the data or we how does that get fed into so all of the data comes from me directly I have my own systems of maintaining all of the different types of data um you can also download the data all of the data from the dashboard so if we ever decided to not use the platform anymore um that's also available to anybody um You can click on the download data button at the top or export PDF. Um I know Adam has a copy hanging up in his office of all the nice tiles
032um and the different indicators. So it's not the data will not disappear if we ever decide to stop using it. I'm just thinking of more of like a consistency standpoint of we have if we had like let's consider like a data lake where all your information is in the one repository. So it's not like it's in different sources. That would be really nice. We do have I mean we have different um like data warehouses for like we have one for academics and educ. We have Skyward for our um some of our financial and our employee information. Um but nothing that's public facing. Okay. I was just curious if that was offered as an option from these different places. Yeah, not not overall with everything. Uh like Danny said, we we have places where you know
033staff data, we have you know student data in some places. Some of it's public data that you can get from everywhere. So not yet. So they provide you with the software and then you it's a software as a service and then you went in and actually designed this whole thing on your own. Very impressive. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. And just to reiterate that too, just um thank you for doing it and organizing it and um making it so user friendly. So once we get it out there to share it is pretty it's a great way just to see it and then to have just a little bit of information about what everything is and then um you know if people have questions or if anybody needs more information on it would you be
034like the point of contact for the general public as well or is there a way that people can communicate about I would encourage everyone to to reach out to Brady um because That's good. Um, no, Brady's Brady's really the best point of contact because then he can filter in questions to me. Um, and we can make sure that we're providing the same answers to everybody. Excellent. Great resource. There are no other questions. Thank you very much. Thanks, Taylor. All right, we'll move on to four 2025 launch week review with the administrative team. All right. Uh, sorry, I had it up here. Um, so we had launch week, which is the week we welcome our our staff back. Okay. um each year. This year we had four four days. We had developed or spread up between
035you know like district focus time and then schoolbased time. Um so we just wanted to share a little bit rather than um making you sit and listen to me just go through it in a report. I wanted to invite the administrative team to come and share. Uh I'll share kind of some of or I'll share some kind of overall things. Uh, Adam and Dana and Jackie will share what some of the district focused PL was and then our our building administrators will share um what they did in their buildings uh during their day. So, Jen, can you uh go to the the first slide? All right. So, we we kicked off the the day with with the the week on Monday with with my presentation. I mentioned it a little bit to you guys earlier,
036but uh the theme was this is the year. Uh, and and really I I played off the I I found a cute video, but uh I played off the theme of, you know, kids saying, you know, a kid saying this is the year I learn how to read and you know, a teacher saying this is the or 16-year-old saying this is the year I learn how to drive. This is the year. And so it's a really a cute video, but then I played off it with, well, this is the year we do a lot of really great things in our district. You know, uh I started with sharing the building projects that we're doing um this year. This is the year we start our building projects in case anybody forgot. Uh but but I but
037our staff hadn't seen all the rendering pictures that you had seen, so we got to walk through those. Um we we uh then I kind of went through some of the the other stuff. This is the year, you know, we get more feedback from you. We've added some some ways um Michelle, our uh HR director, has added some some um five fiveday interviews, uh 30 days, 60-day, and 90-day interviews for new staff. So, I kind of want to roll that out because I didn't want anybody surprised after five days by one of our new staff members saying, "Why is the HR lady emailing me?" So, so after 5 days, you know, am I in trouble or whatever. So, we but but we we put those things um in into account. Uh this is the year
038we get better with safety. Uh shared the standard response protocol with the overall just the the plan in general and then our buildings did a little bit more work on that. by the way that that is on the back the response protocol is on the back of all of our uh uh staff uh IDs. So that's that's I think that's a pretty cool thing. Uh this is here we get our evaluations organized. Uh we're in the we're now in the my learning plan system which um everybody's things are organized. We're not having student staff upload things and trying to track down things. It's all right there. um this is the year we know more about our policies. I just wanted to share some of the new policies and remind people of some of the policies
039of um you know for instance um controversial issues policy and some of those kinds of things just that's where we could get in trouble but as long as we have the like we follow the policies we're we're going to be okay. Um we talked about this is the year we we changed how we view school improvement. uh we challenged our administrators this year to really look at what are the things that are holding us back from achieving our goals and let's really go after those uh really focus on those leverage points uh and really really focus hard on those and so I kind of laid that out and then our administrators uh with their own each of their plans laid that out in in the buildings um this is the year we think differently about
040expectations uh that's where I brought in the finding Nemo thing We, you know, started with with Marlin Nemo's dad not having a ton of confidence in him and having low expectations, which we all know if we've seen Finding Nemo resulted in Nemo doing some things that didn't, you know, turn out very well for him. Um, but we also just then talked about nobody rising to low expectations and that's kind of the theme for this year. And then, and then we finally kind of brought her home with this is the year we move all in the same direction. And if you remember in Finding Nemo, there was that scene where Dory and Nemo get captured in the net and they're um they're getting pulled up and then Nemo says, "I can do it." And Merlin, dad
041finally says, "Yeah, you can do it." And he tells all the fish to swim down. And they all swim down and they break the net and they go, "No." Whether that's realistic or not, I don't know. But it it was a good analogy to use. So, so that was kind of how we kicked off the year uh with with my presentation with them all. So, it was it was a fun day um or fun morning. Uh and then we turned over to our principles and they'll they'll talk about that fun and it became less fun. Well, then the whole next slide on Tuesday we we did have uh we had Dr. Peters uh join us uh to really push home that um that nobody rises to low expectations u message. He he you know his
042his whole philosophy is around capturing, inspiring and then teaching. And he actually did that with all of us um in his presentation. I think for anybody who was there, he he really captured our attention. He inspired us and then he taught us uh how to to be teachers. Now, I didn't I didn't realize he was doing that at the time he was doing it till he explained it to me on the car ride home. But I was like, "Oh, yeah, you're right. He did do that. That was actually pretty cool." Uh but he he really talked about he his his story is very powerful and um his his track record of success is awesome. So um I think a lot of staff members were were quite inspired by by the um the time that he
043spent with us and and got us excited for the school year. And again, thank you to all uh the people who were able to join us that evening for dinner. Uh it was a it was a fun time to just get to know uh him a little bit better. Um, and then I'm going to turn over the uh the districtwide work that that Adam, Dana, and Jackie. Oh, no. Yeah. Districtwide. So, Yep. Okay. Go ahead. Next. Next slide, please. All right. So, um, in the morning on Tuesday, we got to spend time with all of our educators together. Uh, one of the pieces that we've been working on since last December in preparation is talking about how we build all of our K12 students to be skilled writers. um as that is something that unifies
044all of our subject areas across the whole district that every student is touched by. Um so all of our K4 through 12th grade um certified staff members were participated in a in a same basically the same section with the same information, getting the same message about the importance of how we're weaving in writing into um all of our curricular areas. That was kind of the launch for us. Um and then I'll kind of skip around here a little bit. Then we broke out into some different areas. We had a lot of different um external coaching opportunities um that we worked with for uh different departments. So we brought we had an Alex trainer that was working with our 612 math. So we can make sure that um as we've had Alex in our programming for
045our math students for a number of years now, but just getting to that next level um making sure that they are um fully confident in being able to implement that in our math classrooms. Um we had uh reps from Discovery Ed work with our K5 science teachers, our 68 science teachers, and then we had um from our adoptions from last spring. And then we had a rep from Hotton Metland Hardcore work on um with our 68 social studies teachers um in their new programming. They also got some professional development last year as well. Um, so really being able to capture on um, getting in that small group time and um, meeting some new friends via Zoom who our folks continue to reach out to with questions as they're supporting our implementation in our new curricular
046resources. Um, and then we did have some sessions also. um some of our 612 specialists uh worked on some AI usage in the classroom that was led by Suzanne Dunar and um we had our math coaches working with our our uh K4 math skills progression. My fun part was act 20 updates um which everybody has come to um love. Every summer we seem to get some new surprising things that come our way. Um but thankfully we were able to get our K4 through fifth grade educators together to provide those updates for everybody. Um we also did some work with our fourth and fifth grade educators about um the supports that we're going to be providing for students in reading as they move from third grade into fourth grade. Jackie next slide. All right. Hello. But
047um my part was to really educate and kind of introduce the HR um with our roles and responsibilities because there's new staff in HR. So I went over that with um Sarah and myself. Um reviewed our insurance benefits for staff um just so they're up to date on what we offer um what our Cadillac plan is I call it. Um so um employees are aware of what the offerings are and what um they they can sign up for as Brady had me oh elective voluntary benefits. I also went reviewed that as well so they're aware of the EAP the pet insurance and so forth. And then as Brady had mentioned I am going to be doing a five day 30-day 60-day and a 90-day review. Just a quick check-in with employees to know that they're
048heard and I'm there for them if they need anything. As simple as I've already had a few of them with some new employees and came to some conclusions that I needed to check in on some other things. So, it's working and it's just making that connection with the employees as well. Um, and then stay interviews. So, that's something that Brady and I talked about and wanting to make again that connection with our employees um by finding out by talking to the new employees what's working, what's not working, maybe they need a you know mentor or um other resources. And so I will hope to find out additional information as I talk to the employees and connect with them to um make sure that they are getting what they need and make making sure they're happy
049and enjoying their jobs because with them being happy they can do what is important is supporting our students. So that's my goal there. um reviewed the 2526 handbook, the work injury process, um the link process, and then I went over the overview of payroll and time sheets because there's been a little bit of change with that. And then just reiterated that that I communicate through the e. All right, Charles. [Music] All right. So, uh, day one after we heard Brady's presentation, uh, we actually went on a little bit of a field trip for our high school teachers, uh, and staff members. Uh, so we we had kind of our theme of a big adventure this year with a bold future. Um, so on that first day, uh, we had three different locations that, uh, some
050of our staff went to. the carpentry training center out in PWA. Uh WCTC uh and AGI, which is Total Mechanicals, uh big warehouse where they do all the metal fabrication. Um really there were a couple reasons for the the big adventure. One natural way for some team bonding through some shared experience. Uh so, you know, first day back from summer break, great opportunity to say hello to your your colleagues that you haven't seen all summer. Uh get to know some of the new folks that are on on board with us. Uh and have that shared experience. Um, but really the the other aspect was uh most of my staff member they they very much so understand a four-year college campus, what that looks like, maybe don't have that firsthand experience on what uh some of
051these other trades or uh locations might offer. Uh and really helping them see that learning doesn't end when you leave high school. So even if you aren't going to a four-year college, learning doesn't end. And I think that was hit on pretty heavily with with those three locations that uh those industries and whatnot have continuous education and continuous training. Um we also wanted some team reflection uh through that activity where they could then see maybe what are some of the the uh cultural aspects that they see in those areas that we could replicate with the high school. Um some key points came out with uh the need for students to know how to do measurement. uh students being able to put their phones away. Uh a variety of other things that culturally we can bring
052on board with with us. Um my building leaders, we spent quite a bit of time really mapping out the four days. Uh not a whole lot of time for us, but uh we we found ways to differentiate and make sure that what we were providing to teachers uh was was u important for them and have some collaboration time. Uh we spent quite a bit of time around our building goals uh specifically revisiting what interim work looked like um as well as some of the other expectations that we have globally for us for this year. Uh and then it was shared a little bit about the AI uh work. We also spent some time as a high school very specifically around some AI policy and procedural work uh that uh Chris, Adam, Suzanne and myself spent
053some time last year on. Uh so we had some universal uh expectations for our our students uh for this year. So, a lot more happened uh than just the highlights, but want to share those key points. Look at that slide. So, up on top you see the um the middle school staff all in our um our new shirts for this year that built off of the presentation that Brady was talking about with our keynote, which was very impactful. all the staff really um I think got a lot out of that and we built a lot of his themes into our our four days of work which was which was really nice. So um why I broke it up into the four days is day one is where we have all of our staff together and
054then you know for the other days we have some staff not all staff. So you try on day one to do the things that are going to be impactful for all of your different employee groups. So we always start off with some introductions and team building. We didn't get to go off site. Um but we did um we did really enjoy our time together uh as a staff. Then um what used to be a rodeo where um the safety plan, the district nurse and HR would go around to all of our buildings. We did something a little different this year and took took a little bit of load off of them. The three buildings stayed at the high school and we rotated to them. So um it was very efficient that way. I think we
055saved some time. But those are important topics as well around um you know learning about different things related to medical um HR there was plenty of new updates this year and then um safety and ready already mentioned that we have some new protocols for safety so that gave us the time to go over drills and things like that. Not maybe the most exciting thing on day one but something that all staff need to um need to have to start off the school year. Um what we really liked about the uh the building leadershipship team presentation was um being able to take the work that the building leadership team did over summer and all that all the data that we looked at and so forth and then apply the district strategic plan down to the building
056level and make it operational at the building level. And the the building leadership team really liked the fact that we were working off a new strategic plan this year. Um so we all have goals around uh English language arts, mathematics, um student engagement, staff engagement, and then a new community goal this year as well. Um really proud of our new community goal. I just mentioned that as a highlight is that we're taking our veterans day program and we are now going to have lunch with a veteran. So veterans and kids are going to be once a month um eating together. So that's just one example. Um PBIS and behavior we usually review on this day because it impacts all staff. Um, so we do a review of the behavior similar to what you saw with
057the assistant principles when they present it to you. And then, um, because, uh, some of our intram work that Charlie was just mentioning is something we're doing at the middle school, um, CISO 1 has, um, done a lot of work around strategic assessment and professional development. So, our coaches are walking our, um, our staff through some of that learning for this year, not only just in the opening day, but then throughout the whole year. Um and then our flight schedule we also went over because there is something new there. Um we have a counterpart to Alex which is the electronic mathematical side of things. Now the middle schoolers will have Dreambox which is the the counterpart to on the math for the ELA side. Um so busy day. Uh day two we already went over
058the district professional learning. So day three was uh we started off with our new teachers which was really nice because they had a completely different set of needs than the rest of our staff. Uh so we had two hours with them. uh we go into department meetings, things like that. And then in the afternoon, teachers had work time, but our pair of professionals also came in, which was new this year. So, they were working with our special education team in the afternoon going over case information and learning about the students that they were going to be working with. And then we had our back to school night. So, then on day four, um there's a lot of operational things that I listed on there. Um, and those operational and management things are really important like
059going over 504s, how to access 504s and IEPs, Canvas, um, setup, student and staff expectations. New this year is building classroom community. So that's something we're doing um, new through community circles at the middle school. So that was something we spent time on. And we use something called a launch rotation, which means staff are teaching staff. So we take staff who are experts in certain areas and they teach the other staff in a rotating basis rather than just coming and staying in one spot all day long. So that was that was great. And then Adam came over to our buildings and uh he worked on training on our new evaluation platform because um he already mentioned that but teachers will have a new platform this year and then they had time for goal setting. I
060probably took too much time but they have some similar things so maybe they can skip through a little faster. All right, for Edertton, um, as Chris mentioned, we did that rotation and it really worked well, uh, for our three buildings. Um, we spent a lot of time on day, um, one kind of setting our PBIS expectations. Again, um, that's a big, uh, part of our, um, strategic plan work. and um so spent a lot of times the graphic that we put on the presentation um is an idea that came out of PBIS but also out of our student um engagement survey with students not knowing um uh access to tools like calm down tools um in places like our playground. So, if you spend any time at Edertton on our playground, you'll notice on um
061I think it's four different picnic tables that we have these laminated signs that we put with this graphic. So, no matter what side of the table you're on, the graphics are facing you and you have access to our zones which our students learn in all of their um u classroom lessons. Um also some breathing techniques and then our step process is the other graphic that's on there. and um when it's much bigger, you can see the text better. Um but those are all accessible. So that was an idea um that came out of uh the work that was done. So we're rolling those pieces out. Um so if you're after school on the playground with your child and they're having a moment, know that those tools are there um for them. Um day uh two
062was district day. Day three, um we spent some time with um the help of Dana to go over those ACT 20 updates. There's some difference uh differences with the way we're doing assessments and what assessments are given and um and that's actually kind of some work that uh we're going to continue doing. We were working with grade um first grade today on the assessments and just kind of like um just working on our fidelity of giving me assessments. Um making sure that one we're following the directions but also like u not losing time with students like when when things happen when they sneeze and then we say oh bless you and then okay we've lost 5 seconds there they could have read three more words things like that. So just um uh trying to kind
063of improve those processes. Um and then day four uh we had time with our pair of professionals. Um so each of the case managers were able to sit down with our pair of professionals before they're meeting new students that they're working with and making sure that they're really understanding the needs of the students and what their goals are. Um so that was really um really appreciated for both the case manager side and the pair professionals. Um and then a lot of time for our teams to work on our community circle and our lessons on um uh just kind of mapping them out and talking about how they're going to be conducting community circle that we do have time in our schedule every single day uh for community circle lessons and so how the different classrooms
064and different grade levels wanted to set those up. And then um I think another important piece uh is that we had time for um really making sure that the teachers were aware of the 504 plans and IEPs for the students that are going to be in their classrooms before they met the students on day one. Thanks. What could I possibly say? And it's different, right? They could be laughing. I could um I'm not you know I'm not going to repeat everything that you've already heard again but I I will just hit some of the high points. Um I think that what we tried to do at HC was just keep people rotating too smaller groups kind of break things down a little bit. Um it was a lot of information in four days. I was
065you know I was exhausted and that that says something I think because I think I have good stamina. Um, so everything was like rotational as people have already said, the three um groups that we did up here at at the high school. Um, one of the things that I think really had to center all of our work was um the work that we've done this summer around our um continuous improvement plan. BLC members um did the representation of all that work. they did some of that um the presenting of that um which I think was really powerful for for them to kind of really own that work. Um one of the things that we've um that you're going to see here is that we're doing some iMes path towards kids problem solving um than we've
066been using. we have not been um and you heard the data la the last meeting um kids are really struggling with that problem solving when they're having those big emotions or big feelings. So we're kind of taking a little bit of a step back and simplifying the process. So, we t spend time teaching our support staff um how to use that language. And I think that's really been um successful for us. When I think about over time h how PBIS has really like secured itself at HCE um and it's done so because we use simple language and we've been consistent with our you know 60 70 adults that kids um can pass through through their time at HCE. So, um, so we're trying this side messages out and we because we had our support staff
067separate at times, we were able to kind of talk through that supervision. Um, uh, really truly trying to help them understand the importance of supervision and, uh, kind of like be the lifeguard, right? How the lifeguard supervises, um, scan, scan, then move. Um, so um, really spend time with them to really support them in in um, as the days now have started with kids around us. Um, we also didn't really take a lot of time to do a lot of team building um out loud with each other because we know pretty much everybody, right? Except depending on when you came to HCP know everybody's story. So, we put these uh profiles together where people could ask or answer some questions. So, who, what, when, where, why questions. And we've got them posted on our doors
068and we've got them around the building now. So, I put the link in there to the staff profiles as well. And kids like knowing stuff about us. Um, as silly as that sounds, they really do. What's your favorite color? I was asked today on my way out. So, um, is orange your favorite color? Is that why you're wearing it? No, it's just Well, I didn't have to iron this morning. So, um, but so, you know, that's how that goes. So, um, Tuesday professional development here at the district. Um, day three started. Um, really appreciate the 20 updates as well. You know what I think I like the most about it is that we were all together. it was every single educator from K4 on up hearing that and um you know sometimes you have this
069feeling like oh this is their work or that's this person's work and it really is an hour work kind of um feel that that day we we really pack that high school library I'm going to tell you um again the pair professionals being able to come and work with the special ed teachers to hear about students to see the case loads to kind of know what things were going on um can just get prepped. I heard a lot of them really, okay, good. Now I'm ready. You know, kind of um feeling as they headed out the door and back to school night. I should have added, of course, we had our food trucks there, which were a big hit. Um, day four, um, we looked at our strategic plan, um, or excuse me, our employees,
070uh, satisfaction survey and noticed that our staff really there's like this discrepancy between that they want to be learners and that they're getting the learning that they want. There's a like over a onepoint difference actually when we looked at that data. And so what we're trying to do in that little HC staff learning snapshot survey is figure out what do people really want to learn and try to coordinate that learning so that they can get it and how do they like to learn. You know some people want to sit down with a book some people give me a podcast when I'm walking. You know whatever the their modality we're going to try to figure that out and not just for our educators but for our uh support staff too. So that's why we came up
071with the learning snapshot. That's one of our steps for the a uh as one of our action steps for the strategic plan. So of course we did the expectations procedure supervision, you know, we did the rotation here so that nobody was sleeping at the end of it. Um community circles lessons just like Meg said, we you know, we've got to go through that again. We've got to talk about the importance of fidelity to our SEAL lessons and um kind of like how we're going to get all that work done in a seven-hour day. Um we went through um the PBIS pieces that we went through of the student handbook, the response reference that really is a reference that we've created like when something is going wrong, how do we determine if uh that's a major
072or a minor? And so we give the teachers kind of that that tool to help them walk through um kind of how to respond if you will. Um Adam came and we did educator effectiveness updates. Um and then the afternoon so you you you met with uh Gretchen Pratt for ELA math with Colleen Weiss. Those are our two coaches and then me. So it was like boom rotate rotate around. So, got my steps in that day. And then they had collaborative uh team time as well. Um I'm trying to remember the assessment updates that we talked about. Oh, they're probably the assessments that we are going to be giving as we're talking about springers in the upcoming month. So, so that was pretty much what we did. Four days. Are you as exhausted as we
073were after four days? I don't think so. And uh last slide, Jennifer. you know, we just the the crown jewel of the week is obviously when our kids and our families come back and so we have back to school night on evening on Wednesday evening and um you know our kids are finally back and we were whole again. So it's great. So that's kind of just an overall overview of launch and what we did. So, I don't know if anybody has questions or I'll just say thank you for all the hard work um because it it sounds like a whirlwind and I probably was a whirlwind for all of you and all the excitement to come back. I wanted to say especially thank you for spending the time going over safety because of the tragedy
074that was in Minnesota. That's just so important that we review that and so thank you for taking that time and then congratulations on making it through the first week back to school for everybody and all of your work. Thanks. Um again I have that thank you day has all these mixed emotions and it's an exciting time and an exhausting time and it's really a lot and you guys do all the planning to make it successful and your teams. I really appreciate all the consistency. You guys going back to back. You're like, "What else can I say?" Well, that shows that there's really this good consistency in our culture, and that's going to be great for as they move to middle school and high school and start combining. Um, and then, um, I love learning snapshots.
075I was an educator. Sitting through a PL day that doesn't make any sense for you really stinks. Um, uh, so I really appreciate that you're listening to staff and you're listening to how they learn and what they want to learn. And calming zones are really cool. Um I've seen them used not just by kids but by grown-ups cuz there's lots of big feelings. I should have added that. Yes. Um and I mean I have box breathing on my computer here. So um I've seen parents using them and little kids using them and they're very visible. They take up the whole table so very easy to use and easy to understand what they're for. And if we were allowed to go through or if we had the time to go through all of our building action
076plans, you would see a lot of similarities too. Oh yeah. in um the academic areas and how we want to focus on common assessment work and getting teachers together and then some of the other practices that we're doing with rotations and things and part of that is our building leadership teams getting to be together too our teacher teams uh and learning from one another. So um this is about as like similar as we've been in years over the four days. just had one um everything is very well put together and very organized and we have a lot of veteran principles here so this may not be as easy of a question but we always do the building walks. Was there any type of aha moment as we like to talk about that came from those
077couple of days that everybody was together? And if not aha moment, but I have we did not have any new new teachers at Edertton. So that's a big that was a big thing that I was excited about is just kind of you know um we have we have four maternity leaves. Yes. Lots of babies that are water there. So, um, I didn't have the I didn't h, you know, spent time with those substitutes, but didn't have the new teachers. Um, but I know that you all talked about, you know, meeting those new teachers and really making them connected and connecting them with other, um, you know, employees so that they, you know, are not, you know, we always say no one eats alone. You know, we want to make sure that they have somebody to,
078um, really connect with. Sorry. I I would say because we haven't had a new new teacher like we're talking fresh on a school teacher in quite some time. So, um I think having um remodeled ourselves back to away from pie and cake, sorry, to mentors um back to mentoring program has been really a good step. That's so I think that being my only aha is that they've indicated to me that they have felt supported because they've got like their content level coach who's working with them. In our case, it's a fourth grade teacher who teaches English language arts. So Gretchen Pratt right there helping walk them through the pacing along with a colleague down the hall who is not her grade level but is um all things Whitnell. um if you would know who I'm
079speaking of. But so that mentoring thing piece has really been I think a good shift back to. Awesome. Thank you. So Lori, what's your favorite color? You're not going to believe it. Well, let's hear it. Cuz I'm not really a girly girl that way, but I love pink. Red would be number two. Close second. [Music] there. There are not any other questions. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you. All right, we'll move on to 4C superintendent report. Well, we gave you a lot that last one, so I'm not going to spend any any time on launch week. It was other than saying it was a very successful week. Um last week, of course, we welcome back our our students. Um, you know, I always say that the the most important day of school
080is the first day and then because we set the tone for the year and then second most important is whatever today is. And so, um, our kids are our kids are back in the buildings. Um, you know, that goes with excite, you know, there's a lot of excitement, but also, you know, challenges and things like that. The principles and staff have done a great job the last uh week and a and a day. So, um, just a few quick updates on your way out tonight. Uh you might notice that the tennis courts are are back and functional. The lights are installed. Although you might not notice it because there's a timer with a button. So um in the past we've had to keep them on from when it gets dark until 10:00 at night uh
081for people to use. Now there's just a button you walk up to, you push it's on for an hour. If you want to keep playing, you push the button again. Um so from dark till 10:00, that's how it goes. So that we're excited about that. I think it'll save us some some energy and no needing to track down a janitor during the middle of summer. Correct. Exactly. Yes. Um other update. If you're at the football game Friday night, you might have noticed that the track resurfacing is completely done. You might have also noticed that there's no lines on the track quite yet. We're thinking about experimenting with a new sport with no lines on on track, but we decided WI probably found on that. Uh but Wednesday and Thursday the lines will get painted on
082the track and uh so we're excited for that project finally uh come to its conclusion and I think it'll it'll look really nice. Uh finally oh two final things uh tomorrow we have our by weekly meeting. Yeah every other week whatever uh with uh Bray and CG Schmidt representatives for our planning. Obviously, um things have been going really, really well with our planning. Um we're having a meeting with uh the Greenfield, City of Greenfield representatives tomorrow just to kind of lay out the project and then start talking about okay um what do we need to do for codes and how can we continue to work together to make sure everything gets done safely and efficiently. And then just a final just an update or FYI to the board. I'll be at the Wazda Wisconsin Association
083and District Administrators Superintendent Fall Conference in Madison next week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The the team will uh obviously be here and I'll be available by phone if anybody needs me. U so I'll be at that which will be a great learning experience as well as an experience to um collaborate with other colleagues. But I also want to let you know I have I've already scheduled meetings with Representative Donovan and Represent and Senator Wongard. So I'll be meeting with them uh during off times in the conference as well. So if anybody has any priorities they'd like me to share with them um I know we've talked about a lot but um I'm happy to you know just give me a call and I can share that information. So that's all I have uh for you
084guys tonight. Thank you uh for your time and attention. Okay, we move on to five announcements. Any announcements? Go ahead. I do need to do an entertainment PTO update just because we have a big week for our PTO. So, Wednesday we have a noodles fundraiser. So, anybody who needs food on Wednesday, it's my son's personal favorite. Um, it is at the Hail's Corners Noodles. And then Thursday, we have our first PTO meeting of the year. It is at a new time. Edertton used to be at 700 p.m. which was a little late. So, we are moving to 6 p.m. for our PTO meetings this year. Um, we also have a spiritware sale closing on Sunday. And for anybody who's watching, you can sign up for the PTO. It's free there. It's a pick your own
085adventure on how much investment you want to do with your time. So, it's a really easy way to get involved and get information and you don't have to do anything to be part of the PTO. Also give a shout out to the middle school PTO which will be meeting on Wednesday at believe it's 6 o'clock in the STEM space. So if you are new to the middle school or just have never been to a PTO meeting and would like to start showing up now's your chance. Get your noodles and go to the PTO meeting. There you go. I guess I'll have to add then uh HC's first PTO meeting will be next week Tuesday 6:30 the library and there's also the sign up for the HCPTO as well where you can um they have the
086Google form now and you can do the same thing where you say how much you want to participate or not and just for the board's uh general knowledge I'll put we'll put the um updates monthly you know your various committee reports in our business meeting. So that's next next meeting we'll have an we'll give you the opportunity to update you. Normally that will work well. I think it was just Yeah. No, no, I got no totally got it. I just want to remind you we we took them off for the summer because some of the things weren't so we'll start putting those back on next next time. Okay. There are no other announcements. Does anyone have anything for six meeting debrief? Okay. Seeing none, I'll move on to seven. Do I have a motion to
087close to adjourn to close session? Uh copy of the board of education will adjourn into close session pursuant to Wisconsin statute 19.85 consideration of employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility specifically to discuss the superintendent evaluation. So moved. I'll second. Please ask for roll call vote, please. Sarah, yes. Jesse, yes. Quinn, Karen, hi. Cassie, hi. Alicia, yes. Rachel, yes. All right. Thank you everyone.