LCSD1 School Board of Trustees Work Session & Meeting - March 3, 2025

001order so I'll turn it over to Dr Newton thank you very much we got a uh two presentations tonight and probably either of them could talk for hours and hours and hours so um we're going to probably try to end the first one right around 5:30 maybe a little bit before um and so this this is a a work session in light of or as a followup to uh the November approval date of our schools that have been identified as being in need of support and so um you'll you'll see we have quite the I was I saw Mr Lloyd and I was going to say we have quite the Rogues Gall but that wouldn't be very nice to the others that are sitting there with him so uh we we do have our principles

002back there um and they will chime in and and put a voice to some of this but before we get there I wanted to give Mr Jackson a chance to talk about his work and um in this process yeah good evening Madam chair members of the board uping thank you for letting us come tonight um yeah great to have these folks behind me uh probably some of the hardest working folks uh it seems like yesterday that um we were in The Boardroom and you guys were approving their school Improvement plans and in that conversation um we had promised that we'd come back and give you an update and so uh you guys have received um the 90day updates from each of the buildings uh as well as the school Improvement plans from before I want

003to clarify with the handout um Dr Newton will not be surprised but uh and maybe nobody else will but the title of it at the bottom where it says 2425 fall to winner y top interims change in should be percent the one we sent you said change in the number uh that's a pretty big difference uh so it is percent below 7% but I noticed that yesterday when I was kind of reviewing this like I looked at the thing a 100 times and didn't catch it so my apologies um before we begin I think um I have a celebration so two years ago we had we had two different categories of of schools represented tonight one that's called schools in need of support identified by the state those are the schools who uh have have

004not met expectations for three consecutive years and then we have the not meeting expectation schools and those are the ones who just this past performance report didn't meet expectations if you guys look historically you're going to notice the schools bounce in and out of that all the time um and so it's not unusual to see a change in that over time but our schools to support is based on um we find out which schools have been identified through our accreditation process and we just received our annual accreditation on Friday uh with 100% passing rate so we uh will be fully accredited which is exciting but the more exciting part for this conversation is we two years ago we had six schools in schools in need sport last year we had five out the visista dropped

005off and this year this coming year we're going to have four and so I want to congratulate Mr Lloyd and AR Elementary go [Laughter] that's exciting I didn't know that thanks out I wanted that is cool thank you yeah a lot of hard work for the kids they done awesome job so great great stuff and I think the lesson there is um there's no question that everybody in this District wants continuous Improvement and the folks in our district every single school um really strive hard for that and I think if we were to ask Mr Lloyd five years ago um where he would be now I think he would say yeah that's our goal to get there but to get there sometimes takes a little more time than we would think and so I think

006Mr Lloyd and his team should be congratulated and I think it's just a testament to the hard work been done at every single building not only in this room but across the district um as you guys know the school Improvement plans um and the 90day reviews are really focused on typically the schools will focus on two maybe three goals but we'd like to have them l are like focused on the things they feel based on their needs assessment is going to impact students the most and so you'll you've seen in the school Improvement plans you've seen in the 90-day reviews that they all look quite a bit different because every one of the staff are in a lot of different places depending on how many new staff you have or how many veteran staff you

007have or what the history of the school is uh some of those areas they focused on are multi-tiered systems of support uh professional learning communities stakeholder involvement um tier one instruction data informed decision- making and the list goes on um tooo many for me to kind of go through tonight um this handout really is super high level so we took a look at the ytop interims and you all know that the yops uh interims assess what kids should no one be able to do the end of the year and so it's not unusual for us to see not great scores at the beginning improvement over time and then hopefully by the summit of itself we've seen much better impr so you can kind of see the high level and that's just the very beginning the

008story and this is a quote from Dr Newton all data is just the beginning of the story you could visit with each one of these principles and and I would encourage you to do so at some point to talk about the complexities and the depth that it takes to get there every one of these principles have have not only looked at their overarching data from the interims to kind of give them that Baseline but they have um they've used our Universal screener they've used District assessments they've used um progress monitoring assessments that are much more specific uh to individual students and I know compation to require uh we all know that um but it is it's a much more complex and it takes a lot more work than just looking at that's those simple numbers

009there but I think those numbers are Testament to to the Improvement or the progress we've seen in our students over just a few months and also keep in mind that this winter inter was given almost a month and a half of it uh so the improvement from then to now has probably improved as well we know that we have areas to work on every one of the buildings do um and so we will acknowledge that tonight as well um so really uh that's my brief intro um but I think um as we as you have questions or um as we ask a couple of the principles to share maybe a little bit about their improvement process and the things that have been happening in their school uh I think that we'll probably have a deeper

010understanding of kind of where they're seeing so with that Dr NE did you want to do I want to pick on somebody I do want to pick on somebody Ian Brown back there Ross man Elementary just made eye contact with me and that's the worst possible mistake he might make um and um so Ian you can certainly come forward if you'd like or or sit where you're at but um maybe if you just share and we'll since you're going first take your pick what are some successes or what are continued challenges what are some next steps um Al turn to be sure so uh at Rosman we've really focused on um one of our we had two uh priority practices on our on our school Improvement plan uh we're working on our PLC structures that

011are building along with our ntss structures which both of those priority practices do go hand inand um one of the things that that we realized uh at our school along with our PLC structures is that we are in need of strengthening our tier one instruction across all grade levels in our building um and so we have uh partnered uh with solution tree to work uh with an author of a book that called 15-day Challenge and within that uh within that work um on plc's we are focused on intentional learning and intentional instruction and so our students are working on prioritizing standards across the entirety of the of grade levels uh our teams have um put together learning plans unit plans that are designed to um again intentionally uh prioritize those standards um we just coming

012from our fall to to Winter uh testing um we've had some major growth specifically in the area of math at our school um most of the work that happens is it's slow going um but it's very intentional and our teachers are doing a phenomenal job many of them have started in the area of math so uh as you know we have implemented the GRE math program um and along with that uh our teachers jumped in and it was the best time for them to do that so it's been really successful uh the way that we've implemented the 15-day challenge work along with our plc's um I've been attending all of our plc's and the teachers are really uh getting after it and doing really high level PLC work in in those in those meetings they're

013focused on the core questions they're providing data uh based on the assessments that that they're conducting in their classrooms um and they're they're using that to inform the instruction going forward um in their unit plans um here in uh in March I've uh I've brought out that our same consultant solution tree and we're going to start to vertically align uh our our standard going um from our prek all the way up to our third grade currently um so that we can start to be even more intentional with our work I think looking forward when we start looking at our prior priority practices um in the area of mtss that work goes hand in hand and we're going to be ready to uh to get after it so we're really excited at Gosman and we made

014uh We've made a lot of positive impact on our building achievement so and if I may just as a followup um I've often said that many of our best teachers in our district are in the very schools represented in this room tonight can you talk a little bit about what are some of the challenges that are just ongoing that that uh make it so that we have to continue this focused effort to see these improvements yeah so I was thinking about a large Challenge and I know many of my colleagues have the same challenge uh part of our our our goal of of improving our PLC practices that Rosman have included me providing each teacher PLC team with one day of work around the the 15-day Challenge and so those teams get to sit down

015and they get to begin to to map out uh their coming units and prioritize those standards and one of the things that we run into is we don't have sub students in our in our schools and so one of the i i partnered with our PTO and we did some uh don't steal this guys but uh we started doing a deal where we our PTO made like snapbacks for the for the subs when they come in and we we try to welcome them say hello provide them with a snack bag it has a drink maybe a snack in it um and then they also have a monthly drawing for a for a gift certificate to a restaurant um it was going really well last couple weeks we we've had a challenge to get subs and

016so what ends up happening with that is it takes away from our work specifically in our ntss structures and interventions um where we're we're pulling PA professionals sub throughout the day uh so that's been a challenge uh we have several uh newer teachers uh um then we had a teacher resign mid year so we we had a teacher come in and be be we hired a new teacher to come in and take over the classroom so many challenges I know that my colleagues are are facing as well but my staff is really jumping to that um and we're figuring out ways that that we can control our our situation and our four walls uh to to better the situation continue to implement our our mission our vision positiv great thank you again um maybe on

017the other end of the spectrum before I let everyone who is just dying to talk um Mr schel won't even meet me eye to eye he's he's paying very close attention to his shoes right now um but uh you know one of the things that I used to to to always say um just to keep the perspective on things is and I'll because I'm looking at Mr kersner I'll say it to to him when he's high is in session it is bigger than the town I grew up in and so there's certainly challenges in lots and lots of ways there's a particular challenge when you have 1500 kids well over 100 adults all in the same uh building all wearing light blue but doing very very different things in a coordinated way so mark would

018you maybe kind of take the same kind of swing at at the questions we asked Ian yeah I think one of our one of our big Focus areas for the year was just increasing the number of proven teaching strategies that we're using in classrooms on a day byday and period by period basis and we were really intention really intentional about how we were going to measure that to see if we could see an increase the use and so we started off I challenged the principal team to complete 100 walkthroughs um by the end of September so that we could kind of get a feel for where we were at um East has historically been an older um very veteran staff we've had some a lot of retirements recently so we have some new staff members

019so we just weren't really sure where we were at we did that and then we found that we were seeing about three um proven teaching strategies for walkth through so in a short window of time 10 to 20 minutes we'd see about three strategies and so the goal was to increase that and we have we've increased that not as much as we wanted to but we've increased that and so some of that comes down to consistency we have a 100 teachers um we want them to to be delivering the best instruction possible and so trying to make that more consistent so that every student that each High School gets a high quality experience in all their classes is kind of our go one of the things we often say is that teaching is both an

020art and a science and on the science side of the house is what he was speaking to where we're using strategies that research proves are highly effective with kids while also recognizing there's an art form to this thing with called teaching when you have 25 to 30 kids um all who have different ideas in their brains at any given moment um and trying to coordinate all that for through the day's learning Target so um thank you Mark okay who else do I say Mr swle you're now meeting me eye to eye does that mean you're ready to talk well I'm always ready to talk well let's get a junior high voice in the room too you know I I want to just talk about how proud I am of the the teachers and students that

021carry um one of the things that we've talked a lot about this year is you know when you went a state championship it doesn't matter what position you're playing you're part of a state championship team and so the last time that we really dug into some yop data um it was It was kind of inspiring for me like to see science teachers and health teachers sitting together and the health teachers are saying okay how can I help support the science that's required in eighth grade and my family consumer science teacher my tech ed teacher that were sitting with the math teacher saying hey how can we help support this like really what we're doing is we're applying the things that you're learning inside of those classes and so it's not just the Math teachers the

022English teachers um and the science teachers although they're working incredibly hard um we talk about it's just data not Destiny and how do we change the destiny of our building we all work together and we all work together at one common go um and I think that they really bought into that and they're just doing an amazing job working kids in all content areas not just those that are tested Matt could you U maybe and and Mark certainly jump in as well I I skipped over this any particular challenges that those who just drive by persing may not fully appreciate but are just a part of what makes the job even more difficult you know I would say Carrie one of the things in the year and a half that I've been there is is

023some turnover right and so I think when we have that turnover one of the things that caught me off guard was just you know do you know what a PLC is right you're busy learning what the curriculum says that you're supposed to be teaching but do you know how a professional Learning Community is structured do you do you know how the multi-tier system of support works and so how do we make sure from one year to the next if you lose three teachers or 13 teachers that we don't have to take a step backwards in the quality of things that we're providing so making sure that we memorialize those things inside of our work so that when you know somebody's going gone or we have a retirement that we just jump right back in and

024we're not starting from Ground Zero I think has been big the other thing that that uh we talked a lot about like every time we're looking at Su data we're like okay let's move 5% right now in the next two weeks what 5% can we move and I think it's a numbers game at that point when we're talking 5% right we're talking about what 40 kids do we need to move and I think Mr kersner you're looking at a much bigger sample size right and so 5% might be more like 80 to 100 Kids how do we move those numbers of kids inside of the school day becomes pretty difficult thank you Mr SCH I think Steve if I mind I think one of the biggest challenges that we're noticing is that kids are changing

025so quickly their needs are changing so quickly the skills that they bring with them um as a new ninth grader 10th grader 11th grader or 12th grader are changing so quickly and so that's been a challenges to adjust to how quickly kids are changing and how rapidly their needs changing and and just because I know that you and I have talked about this a bit before um I think I remember you saying one time I've been at this for a while ninth graders are doing things that ninth graders never did before and so I I assume that that kind of goes along with what you were getting at um am I correct in that that just some of the behaviors we're seeing or the dispositions or the the the mentality that they're bringing into the

026schoolhouse maybe is shifted a little bit yeah yeah like a student a nth grader's ability to manage conflict with peers let's say looks dramatically different this year than it did you know even two or three years ago so they previously maybe came to us with some of those skills now they come to us without those skills and we've had to figure out how we help teach them like how do you manage a conflict with another student that sort of thing and learn algebra yes right others I guess I'll address something just a little bit on the opposite side that I think the three of us deal with it's kind of unique is the very opposite end of a very small population so when we have very small schools all three of us I think have

027fairly transient populations so we're working with small numbers of teachers and there's one or two absences to deal with the tardies I don't or you know the teacher being absent I don't have a parent to put in class rearrange that look like what gets canell to support kiddos Plus at that time when we have a small population one child coming in can really you know disrupt the entire system especially if they're significantly behind and now how do you shift all of your resources to help because of naturally unfortunately um a lot of our students who are very transient also have missed a lot of schooling so when they arrive with and um join we call ourselves a pack when they join husky pack and we've got to try to figure out how to fill in

028those gaps the mtss system is gorgeous in framework and it works beautifully and my teachers have really learned how to adjust for that but it makes a big difference because when Matt talks about 5% change one child coming in can make a 10% change on my scores especially when you're looking at how many kids count with all this statistical analysis that goes behind that one child coming in in August who's two years below grade level can make a significant impact systemwide but also it shows on the scores and so one of the things that I would also say is that sometimes it's really hard for our small schools to show the impact that they've really had and my phrase to Eric is we're not there yet 61% of my students have already exceeded more than

029a Year's working growth y they're at 60 70 points growth when the average is around 35 that's not going to show on any report that you're going to see um and that you know I think the three of us could Val that really difficult on our small numbers because that 60 points growth was the Kido that was two years below grade level it is going to be almost on grade level before they walk out my door the next spring and I don't see them again so dedication and passion on our end I want to make sure that you know our teachers do that hard work unfortunately we don't always get to see the benefits of that but nobody gives that we always say we're not there yet we'll get them there and it's a team

030and Dr brenman I I think it's probably fair to say that that highly mobile population doesn't all arrive the first week of August oh no right you're correct October November January I got one today that's fourth grader that who will test in your Cas in population here in the commities I think that's important to notice what school I'm from Hebrew HEB okay thank you Mr Jackson I think uh I think our time is about upon us is there anything else that you wanted to say as we kind of close up this portion we like you said we could talk for an awful long time um on the complexities behind each of these things and I think you just got to tasted it there and I know that you guys been out in the buildings and

031I just want to let you know how much that means to them uh when they see you come and say hi uh we certainly would encourage you to Conta contact one of them if you have any questions to dive into this any I know it's super short but we got J over there keeps we probably have time for just a couple of questions yeah just yeah you have questions thanks um I just have a question you know we have two schools now the last few years that have come off this list do do you you guys as principles ever share what what the other principles did to get that success I mean is that something that you guys do as we do within our Triads um and get ideas from one another and I think

032um we look at how it can be applied or can't be applied within our setting just as she said our our situation mine's even more unique that my buildings are split in half um so I have to overcome that communication just within my teaching population um and then of course with small schools you get a small budget um and so you might not always be able to afford everything but for us for example one thing that we're doing this year is we've been trying to find ways to continue our growth in our mtss process without the financial um and part of the reason we did that is um so my schools are looked at as separate schools at the state level so each of them qualify for title one separately and we saw a significant

033decline in our title budget in one building and I'm not legally allowed to use the budget from the other building Cross Way um so what we've been doing is looking at how do we continue those processes without the finances and one of those ways is to use our internal people in the district so we've been working really closely with Tom Jones um this school year bringing him in once a month um for half days to work with my data team and look at our mtss process and how we can continue to make it stronger I'll take you back F celebration as well that's one thing that we've really been focusing on South is using our district resources as much as possible to really start to build a stronger ntss um system around academics of attendance

034our curriculum and our behavior and that's been such a celebration if you were going to celebrate anything at South High School every single curriculum coordinator has been in our building um almost not weekly so not bi-weekly to work with indivual PLC teams and departments to really start to support leading the change in the curriculum process and um not to mention when you take advantage of all the different state um free professional development through wde regarding some of these systems um sending teams to those has been a a challenge as far as Subs go but teachers are more than willing to jump on board and and administrators to lead that to lead that change in that work too and so I think that's a huge celebration that I think our district um as as a whole

035if you call anybody they're going to jump on board and help you and I think that's a huge celebration I'd like to tap in as well our instructional facilitators and our reading interventionist have been a huge success for us as well and they work with our not just with our teachers but they also work with our parents and our to add to that I think our director of instruction I know the junior high level uh three times a month the three principles get together along with director of instruction and Dr Newton and we conduct walkthroughs together as a building and then we sit down for about an hour and talk about what we saw what worked well and every time I think we leave we all change something within our buildings to mimic what was

036occurring in the other building so it's it's really a nice Pro sharing thank you um did you I just want to make a statement I I'm so thrilled to hear all of the specific things and it just it's such a testament to the work that you have been doing and continue to do but it sounds like you're getting a little more Direction and support in this area I I see some heads nodding and that's what is that's what makes me happy because I think we need to get this piece right first right before we do the other things we're all here to try to help students make sure that they are have what they need the skills have learned the skills they need to graduate and be productive adults so I just want to say

037thank you for the specific information and also just the great work and I can just see hear all of your hearts that you want to do more and you're you're taking advantage of these opportunities and let us know how we can help you so just to wrap up thank you all for coming and sharing and being vulnerable to be here we're as a board I think I can speak for all of us we're incredibly grateful for all you do and we know your talks are not easy um and understanding that you each in your schools you have very different challenges right and what works in one school is not always an across theboard solution but thank you for showing up every day and just doing everything you can for the kids in your building meeting

038their needs can I also say what few places I've been to I'm always so impressed that you guys have unique problems you try to solve them on your own but you're always there to support the other principal and that I mean it's not a competition it's like how can I help my fellow principal so I'm so impressed with all of you the few that I've talked to but um you guys are amazing and I wish we could pay you more I think she looked I think she looked at me when she said that now they're all looking at me now let's bring J up Sil up the conversation thank you uh everybody you be out your way Jed would you and Ashley mind joining us here at the table thank you guys congratul congratulations well

039all of you know our Chief Financial Officer Mr selli very well you may or may not know our director of nutrition services Ashley Ross and if Ashley begins with an icebreaker saying that at the na at The District Food judging competition I ate an inordinate amount of taco pasta do not believer I thought it was just about the right size portion so with that we won't take any more of your time go ahead and um so Madam chair you might recall U about a year ago um Miss Roth and I started evaluating um the US Department of agriculture's um Community eligibility provision um with regards to a a very specific base year that allowed us to um uh qualify for the program in a way that was going to provide free meals for a significant

040number of larmy school district one students um Miss Roth's going to get a little bit more detailed into what the community eligibility provision is and since that's a mouthful we always use the acronym C um but as we complete the first year under that program uh we thought it was a great opportunity to talk about some of successes we've had with the program and give you a little bit of a glimpse in um where we intend to go with the program going for okay so the community eligibility Pur it is like je said a USDA meal service option or provision that allows hovery schools to offer universally free breakfast and lunch to students in the participating school or group of schools to become eligible for the community eligibility provision there are national standards and the

041minimum requirement is that the school or again group of school meets what's called a 25% directly certified student population directly certified is kind of like what it sounds it's a group of kids who have been certified or verified by various agencies as receiving um we have some examples up there snap Foster homeless Medicaid um uh home runaway migrant are also on that list and we work closely with the Department of Family Services as well as the Department of Education to get list each month to certify these kiddos so these are all kids that are not self-reported on income apps so we like Jen said found a unique opportunity in the space year last year where we actually did meet this 25% minimum requirement um of directly certified kiddos and we'll talk about that a little

042bit more here later on so benefit I know I have some cute pictures we have a fun Department um okay so obviously the biggest benefit to this program is 4,449 students have access to free mails this is without need of application this is $4,400 49 kids who get to go to school every day and not worry about do I have money on my account did Mom or Dad apply for meal benefits on my behalf that is a huge deal that's a lot of kids to impact in this community um like I said no application required it extends to all kids enrolled in these 13 schools that we're going to show on the next slide and that's breakfast and lunch breakfast and lunch yep breakfast and lunch and so part of offering free Universal meals to

043kiddos in this under this program is it redu this the stigma associated with free and reduced lunch so we typically see an increase in participation and obviously access to meals as a result um an added benefit to this is the red it reduces administrative and household burden and so we're not like I said asking families to submit application we're not having to process those applications in my department and we're not having to verify that the information on those applications is accurate it's just kind of taken at face value I need to stop I'm just going to share this just we're just sharing the slides with Britney thank you and then additionally um having to go online and make payments which is again another burden that we can alleviate in my opinion the biggest benefit outside

044of increased meal access to this program is the removal of meal debt and Alternate meals um that's a huge impact if you look at our overall District meal debt it's obviously decreased significantly um and then Jed hin on the unique base year in 2024 there was a CO waiver that expired at the end of last year and what it did is it qualified more Medicaid benefits than would have typically qualified so we jump jumed on that opportunity and said hey our DC numbers are going to be higher than ever we're going to do this we got to do it now so the participating schools you will notice there are 13 schools on this slide and these are all South Triad schools so we have a art Bane P Fairview gulls Heber Johnson lebart Rossman sou

045sunrise in Triumph Ashley can I interrupt for one second can um when I was running Federal programs a number of years ago we would watch the percentage of kids who were receiving free and reduced lunch diminish over time which because they were feeding through the same Triad no pun intended feeding through um they should have stayed the same but what clearly was happening is for one reason or another parents weren't filling out the paperwork um and again hard to say why but the net effect was kids weren't getting access to meals who earlier in their life qualified we certainly believe they still did um but they just couldn't Avail themselves of the meals um and which was just sad to see as the kids got older um they were still hungry and it was harder

046and harder to get kids the meals that we knew they needed so sorry success of the program this is the most fun sight um okay so we have served 285,000 breakfast to students at the 13 schools between the beginning of the school year and last Thursday that's a lot of meals at 13 schools and so I broke it down on a number scale um so we're averaging about 2 200 lunches a day and then we and nutrition services term ADP which is average daily participation it's basically the number of meals that you're serving in a day and you divide it by the student enrollment so what percentage of the population are you directly feeding directly in packing and we are serving 57% of the eligible student population lunch 27% of the eligible population breakfast in

047Bull down below you can see we've seen a 21% ADP increase at lunch and a 35% increase at breakfast from last school year these are Big Numbers these are really really large percentages um kind of what you expect when you introduce free meals right but it's right on Trend with what we were hoping to see Madam chair we had to have very aggressive goals to increase that ADP in order to make um the C program financially feasible for the district um and we're well on track to maintain kind of that break even point that um we were struggling at first to meet when it was um before the covid-19 pandemic and um when you're working with just those meal applications that Dr Newton mentioned so um we'll talk a little bit about what that looks

048like going forward um but uh we knew coming into this program that we had to really move the needle on this and um kudos to Ashley and her team for for really following through and making that happen juste CL can I ask what I I don't understand what you meant by that um to make it financially to make this program financially feasible okay so so the community eligibility provision it's an expensive program to be a part of um you that's typically why you the higher your direct SE population the more financially feasible it is and so how this program works and I'm sorry I totally skipped past it in the previous slide what is you take your direct SE population you multiply it by multiply 1.6 that gives you an identified student population and that

049tells you how many meals or what percentage of meals you're going to claim at the free rate so like the free federal rate right now is uh for lunch is $443 so right now we're claiming with risp 71.6 6% of all meals at these 13 schools at the free rate the $4 and 43 cents the other 28.3 4% we only get 42 cents a meal for and so we have the higher our ADP the more meals that we're claiming at the free rate and that higher reimbursement that we're getting does that make sense thank and so how do you increase so looking here we go you're just leaning in for me um and so we looked at the Baseline of 23 24 we saw the ADP increases of the 21% at lunch and 35% at

050breakfast so it's doing what we want it to do increasing um you can see here C operates on a four-year cycle typically there's a fifth year grace period so the intention is always hopefully to um do this for the full four years but we have to obviously evaluate it at the end of each year it's Our intention to opt in for school year 2526 and we will continue to be aggressive in our methods of increasing participation just like we always are every year we introduce new and fun things we're going to do some targeted approaches at these C sites so you'll see at Johnson and South we're going to introduce what's called Second Chance breakfast I think breakfast is in every District around the nation is like this it's one of the largest opportunities for

051participation increases because you typically see just a lower ADP at breakfast and so by introducing Second Chance breakfast what that is is we're going to offer breakfast before school just as we do now and then there will be a second chance breakfast not a second breakfast so kids don't get to breakfast but if you came late or weren't hungry first thing in the morning there'll be about a 15 20 minute period um that I worked with Carrie and Michaela with to implement this second chance breakfast there'll be carts around the school where kids could come and get a free breakfast burrito a free breakfast sandwich whatever that might look like and teacher oh Madam chair no the teachers did they have input would that interfere with learning or but I have to tell you I

052only work with the principles they're very excited about it I think Michaela and this is a little bit outside my world but Michaela mentioned something about the school Improvement plan and time and me participation increases with that um but typically if kids are fed they learn better and I think they can bu into their South already has I think they call it bison her time sorry time and so it's kind of already built into schedules yeah or they're finagling it just mixing an afternoon you know what I mean yeah and then districtwide we're introducing we're super excited several new menu items um we are really taking a stab at we call it speed scratch or scratch made items um every year we try to add more and more this is my I'm going into my

053third year next year here and so just try to make small improvements to the menu and every single item on this list that you see is new and scratch made so obviously that's a way to increase participation as well kids are getting access to well-rounded healthy meals that fit feral guidelines every single day that may or may not be luring over the taco pasta the taco pasta will yeah do you guys have any questions I guess I have sorry I want to go back see the question I asked because I'm not sure I understood I was sitting here thinking do I understand so this is the grant that you applied for that last four years is that what I'm that's not right Madam shair it's it's a it's a program that um you can um

054use your direct certification numbers to qualify for um we had that faas year where we had more direct certified kids and keep in mind that your direct certified kids are a subset of the students that are eligible for free youru launch so when you look at it from kind of a paper application process um and a direct certification process both of those make up your full free reduced lunch eligible student population so we're working off of just a subset of that population and it's extrapolated out to um determine a your eligibility and B what Financial Resources you'll receive from the federal government through that program um and so the key um as Miss Roth mentioned earlier is that um that one-year base snapshot allowed us to qualify for four years um but we also have

055the option to re-evaluate and see if we um are not meeting those same levels of um uh participation that we would need to carry the program forward so we're not locked into the program if we will for that full four-year period um we uh have to provide our not ification to the Department of Education in the next month right um in order to qualify for next year or maintain our qualification um based on the information that we have right now um certainly we're keeping an eye out for any um federal policy or regulation changes um but we feel that we can uh maintain the program into the the second year um without having a detrimental effect on the the nutrition services over J could you perhaps explain what conditions would cause a detrimental Financial effect

056sure um I think the key the first one would be if we saw um a lack of participation um in um the programs that Ashley just mentioned uh that's really the key multiplier with the program as a whole um the other things that would impact our ability to maintain the program is if um the reimbursement rates are modified in a way that um they don't provide the same funding that 1.6 multiplier is a big factor in determining what we get per meal if that multiplier is adjusted down through Federal Regulation that would definitely impede our ability to maintain the program um but there's always going to be other cost factors um labor is a key factor um what are we paying our staff what benefits are we providing um other factors are going to be

057just raw materials um we're starting to see um those cost pressures um whether it be tariffs or increase in costs or inflation that's always part of the equation um Mr Roth and her team have um emphasized um a very specific calculation that's utilized called the meals for labor hour where we can determine um where our costs are um down to S site and so's been very help J am I correct that we incur costs to buy the food prepare the food pay the labor and we can get reimbursed if kids that are eligible actually eat and so if not enough of those kids do we can't get as much of a reimbursement to recoup the cost that we've incurred is that the way to one way to say it it's a very effective boil down

058explanation and just for those of you who aren't familiar with National School lunch and its typical operations so outside of community eligibility provision we claim meals at the free reduced in paid rate so our s our um software Titan keeps track of each individual students eligibility and every time a free age I claim with the state that $443 and every time kiddo eats I play the 43 cents reduced it's $3.39 I thinked off the top of my head um and so that's the difference with the c program is instead of claiming on those individual statuses we are claiming on just the bulk 71% and so that's why it's more cost effective if you can directly certify more kiddos which we always hope our ISP is going to go up on April 1 um we can

059never be uh we'll never be um our ISP will never go down in these four years and so we're locked in at the 7 1.66% a every April 1st that we have the opportunity to increase it so as long as we can maintain where we're at which like we said we're doing does that help a little yeah y TR thank you um two questions for you does this the summer program does that affect anything or um so the summer program is called Summer Food Service program and it is not related to the community eligibility provision however it is another Federal program that we do opt into and under the summer food service program all meals are free and then my second question somebody had approached me uh Church a friend of mine that a church

060and they were talking about um unpaid lunch debt so can you tell me is there a formula for who gets the assistance with unpaid lunch debt sure and can we share that with me so could share them yeah and feel free to give my contact I'm happy to chat with them so we have a district Community funded account called feed it forward and feed It Forward is what it sounds you're feeding a meal forward and how we determine who's eligible for that is it's just really based on need we ask principal secretaries to reach out parents will reach out when they need the help um we have a process in our district where and I'm just going to start from the beginning so when a kid gets a NE when a kiddo's account um becomes

061negative we send negative balance letters every single day via email so we can see in our system actually if the parent has opened those or not so that helps us those go daily when the account reaches ne15 we ask we call them the dsos made School official it's typically secretary sometimes a social worker they actually call the household and they say hey can I help you fill out a free introduce application or do you need help with for funds and they start that community ation it's basically the halfway point between the all the um meal help me the $30 the charge limit the charge limit of $30 so we're doing early Outreach trying to prevent that kid from getting to that charge limit and so in that phone call if the household indicates that they

062want to use those donation funds we do always ask that the household fills out a free introduced application only because that is the first line of defense in fighting meal debt because for introduce meals is what prevents meal debt whether they qualify or not it doesn't matter we'll always pay off the meal debt but we do ask for a little bit of parent um involvement when that happens and if the parent refuses to fill out theal application like Dr Newton indicated sometimes that does happen we actually can fill out what we call School admin applications on the kiddo's behalf where we just list zero income and the kid gets freals for the rest of the year so just kind of on a Case by case basis one more so what would happen if a child

063has a high debt mean more than they can't go by 30 oh what happens at $30 and so we serve alternate meals um they are Deli cold sandwiches and Deli cold sandwiches are menu on on the menu every single day lots of kiddos take them anyway um and so it's we did that we made that change a couple years ago because it's not singling out kiddos who do get to that point the goal is always obviously to prevent that I keep a very close eye on Alternate meal reports we have a policy in our department that if middo gets more than three alternate meals we turn that excessive and that's when we get principal and myself involved and then typically a social worker and we kind of push that mail application a little bit more

064with Mom and Dad lots of eyes on it yeah M chair there no other questions that's the end of our work session this evening and have a few minutes to get prepared before we go into our meeting e e e welcome everyone it's six o'clock and I'd like to call this meeting of the laramy County School District number one Board of Trustees to order thank you uh we will start tonight with the pledge of alleg pledge of allegiance which be is being led by students from Rosman Elementary please stand hello my name is Brown principal of Rossman Elementary and these are our students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance well that was that was awesome um thank you Rosman okay Dr Newton do we have any adjustments to the agenda tonight Madame chair there are no

065adjustments to this evening's agenda Madam Jerry move to adopt the agenda I second we have a motion in a second to adopt the agenda I'll in favor say I I opposed and I'm would like to note we have one trusty who's not with us tonight um do we know if I don't believe she's going to be on Zoom for the meeting but do we know it looks like she's all there she is on here okay all right all right well moving down to our our first exciting section of the agenda is one of our favorite parts and that's the recognition of the student of the week and actually this week we are going to be recognizing three students students um one from the week of February 10th um and then one from February 24th and

066another one from this current week March 3D so we'll start with the week of February 10th and I um this is Chase and Chase I don't know how you say your last name is Chase here BL blaz I I'm so sorry Chase is a student from Johnson junr hi he's an eighth grader and he's joined by um principal Michaela Bradshaw and his favorite teacher Ken Johnson good evening Madam chair trustees I'm michayla Bradshaw principal at Johnson and I am pleased to introduce you to chase blatus he's an eighth grader here at Johnson joined us um from this summer military family uh thank you both for your service uh Chase Smiles Chase is a standup student he is funny um he it takes you can look at him right now it's really hard for him to

067accept compliments and being told he's doing such a great job at all times and we had a fun long T last week um all a is very active in our Athletics and we are just so excited to have him join our Firebird Community as well as start rocking it up there at South next year okay hello oh hello um reason why I chose Mr Johnson as my favorite teacher is because he's funny he makes class enjoyable and he's not a complete uh meaning to me all the time um what I like about Johnson is um is um the people there they could be um tough sometimes but um they find it uh enjoyable sometimes um I do football wrestling and Su to do track and I'm often in the weight room so then Chelsea and

068Andrew pleas stand um so real quick this is one of my favorite things that we we do as a district um really we're here celebrating one of our great students I work with so many great kids and that a bunch of them actually come up here and talk to you all every once in a while and so I appreciate it uh one of the best things that we can do as teachers to be recognized is actually when a student like Chase um I promise he's a bit more articulate in class he's a little nervous in front of you all I don't teach public speaking it's not on me but working with a student like Chase somebody like him say oh that's that's my teacher that's my favorite person um that's better than any teacher of

069the year or anything like that so uh thank you all for continuing this um we love it and my students Rock so thank you the next student of the week that we'll be recognizing tonight and I again I apologize if I get the last name wrong but is Ross tentin e um from South High School Ross is a 12th grader um is RO good Ross is here um and Ross is going to be joined by or with principal Carrie Gentry and is um favorite teacher Jamie weisbrook thank you um trustees and board members and everybody here present again thank you so much for having us up here for student of the week we're excited to announce Ross as our um candidate this week because I'm the one that nominated him that went to our committee

070and the reason I did is I saw this young man perform um and I want to say it's all Northwest is that correct has the most precious voice I can't even explain it um and then while I was learning more and more about him I found out that not only is he a rockstar singer he's a rockstar student he's he's a quiet leader but he does amazing things he went to Nationals for chess that was a new one that I that I I found out and then additionally he's part of many activities and including swim oh help me speech and debate he went to we the people he rocked it got third what else is there anything else I'm missing I'm sure there's more but um so I'll let him speak a little bit but

071thank you for b um yeah uh the people at South are great students te students teachers and principls I love them all but um yeah I don't have much to say I have a swim Bank wood get to so I have a couple things about um Ross has been really great he's only been in the choir program at South for um two years uh he was not a singer his freshman year and then he has worked really really hard to graduate early um so he's working on completing all of his required courses um a year almost a year almost almost a little over a year so um but he has been a great student he's been a great ambassador of our school of our district um I've taken him to Spokan Washington the last two

072years as a member of the all Northwest choir for the American coral director's Association as well as this year for the National Association for music education he auditioned um and competed against students from Alaska Washington Oregon Idaho Montana and Wyoming and was selected for each of those choirs for the last two years uh he has been a great leader um as well as in our school uh he had the great idea this year he said I want to start a jazz and so I worked with him and we have a jazz choir we haven't been able to do too much because we're just so busy because of speech and debate and swim and all those things things but we do have a jazz choir that we are starting to get some things in now that

073we're also in the musical right now so Ross is one of our actors in our musical he's just very involved in our school in our music program uh but very well-rounded student and I am ecstatic to be here to sing his Praises because he absolutely deserves it so thank and with every great kid there's a great parents so can we have uh uh dereck's or sorry Ross Derrick and Amanda stand up please thank you and our last student recognition tonight is tan mcennis from Carrie Junior High School Tan's an eighth grader and oh seventh grader I'm sorry um and tan is joined by principal Matt Schlagel and favorite teacher Mr Todd Jon Jonas right yeah so uh Madam chair members of the board Dr D thank you for letting me come up here today to

074celebrate our student of the week tan mcginness tan is just an amazing kiddo this quiet leadership that she has incredible academic performance incredible attendance incredible Behavior like she embodies everything that we look for in a student and I couldn't be more excited to introduce tigan mcginness to you thank you um um I would like I'd like to go to a university such as MIT or Yale and I'm currently involved with the student Senate and the orchestra and I chose Mr Jonas as my favorite teacher because the his teaching style tends to work with how I comprehend things along with how he does brain breaks and he makes things more fun like earlier today we were watching um a documentary on Africa and when a spider came up he would W he was waving a rubber

075[Laughter] spider thanks T was pretty funny uh first off thanks tan for inviting me I've never been to one of these and it's awesome so thank you so much and I'm just as nervous as you okay um I've been teaching close to a quarter of a century and every once in a while a kid comes along that just fors you and this is one of them right here Tan's absolutely amazing she's a 4.0 student uh her work is phenomenal I don't have to worry about her um she goes right to work and um she makes my job really easy um so thank you for that but as important as academic are I think there's something WR for them and that's just being a good human being and I can see they have no R over

076there since he's a guy and it's just being a good human being because that's going to take you really far away on top of being super bright so thank you family d Everybody for doing what you do thank you guys because it makes our job so much more pleasurable and easy coming these things so we should give these guys a thought would love it I know that Billy is here Billy mcginness is here and I think um got quite a support group so if anybody else wants to stand up with her I think that'd be fantastic to celebrate you okay wow what a great group of kids and teachers um my name is Mary Quast and I'm community relations director here and it is um my pleasure to uh bring up Joan Martinez and she

077works for Western Vista Federal Credit Union and she has a few words to say and some certificates to present yeah good evening my name is Jan Martinez um I'm a member service officer with Western Vista um we are honored to support the School District student of the week program when once again this year uh each week we are delighted delighted to learn about the amazing kids um they have in this ly County I was able to kind of read some different things about these um children and just wow really really blows you away they've really accomplished a lot in their small time in life so just you're going to do amazing things ahead of ahead of you I'm sure um but in recognition of the efforts put forth by the student of the week we

078are proud to present a certificate of achievement and Visa gift card to the recipient um we'd also like to present a certificate of appreciation and Western Vista gift card to the recipients nominee for favorite teacher as well um so we congratulate you on this honor and wish you nothing but success in the future so much congratulations congratulations congr we'll wait just a second if you were just part of that recognition or here in the audience to support those folks you are welcome to leave but you're welcome to stick around for the rest of the fun if you'd like we are now moving into the portion of our agenda where we have um public comment from visitors uh concerning agenda topics and non-agenda topics um we have some parameters for public comment that I'd like to

079share with you before we start the purpose of the board meeting is to conduct the business of the school district publicly the board sincerely values Community input and feedback on school operations and welcomes public comment on both agenda and non-agenda items individuals wishing to comment during a board meeting must sign up by 5:45 p.m. on the day of the meeting signups for public comment can be done electronically by accessing the form available on board docs under the public comments portion of the meeting agenda alternatively individuals may also contact Darlene Dava three minutes or less and please recognize that if you wish to discuss a Personnel issue that regards an individual employee this cannot be done during the public comment portion of our meeting such comments should be directed to the assistant superintendent of human resources

080or to the board during executive session so um the first individual signed up for public comment is Mr Dylan Ford I gave you guys a handout um if you want to kind of follow on with me you don't have to um Madam chair members of the board D board CTA president um so every year CTA sends out a climate survey to members um this year we had about 155 respondents the reason we do that is to kind of identify what's some issues within the district are and and some things that we can address uh so page one uh is all about headb building principles and a lot of this data aligned to what your guys' survey um earlier in the year reflected as well so congratulations all you principles in here you're very popular people

081um so for the most part building principles were really uh had really positive out looks there's some exceptions and we're currently analyzing the data by School uh to see if there are any areas that we need to address um but overall head building principles is pretty solid page two is all about associate principles again shows pretty uh positive overall outlooks the one outlier would probably be uh handling student behaviors and this is understandable because we know student behaviors are on the rise and it's usually the associate principle at the secondary level who's kind of in the weeds with those issues um and Page Three sorry to fly guys um page three is just building and again building Outlook was largely positive uh with 85% of Staff planning on staying in their current buildings um so

082so far everything seems pretty good um page four the district question this is where the data in some ways shifts so while a vast majority of our teachers do believe that our kids are getting the best possible education um there are some issues so first the majority didn't feel supported by the community which we sent this out during the legislative session totally understandable with some of the stuff that was coming out um second uh only 25% of those who took the survey felt the district was transparent um and finally only 15% of the respondents felt that the district valued educator input when it made decisions and you know you can look at our data say set you can say it's small 155 people is hardly large enough number but that still means that 135 Educators

083uh did not feel valued in District decision making and I felt this personally like as an English teacher wondering why a curriculum that I felt uh and express wasn't ready to be rolled out got rolled out um I'm sure there's some social studies teachers with their curriculum who felt kind of the same way uh you have decisions um that just feel like they're handed down to us and I really feel like the district could benefit uh from more transparency so that's what our data shows uh thank you thank you we have um excuse me two more individuals signed up for public comment tonight U my understanding is that both of these individuals are students so I wanted to just explain a couple of things before we move on to them um first of all when

084I call you up I'm not going to use your first names or your last names since you're student so I will just call you out by your initial so if you hear those come on up um the other thing I wanted to just um make sure that everybody's aware about because looking at at the signups um I believe that you may be here to talk about an employee or an issue regarding an employee I and that's something we got to be super careful about in our board meetings there was actually a recent court case um that kind of came down on some school on a school district for allowing um negative conversations about employees during public school board meetings so um just want to go over a little bit of that so we can be

085super careful if if if when you're talking if it crosses a line to where we might be going against what the court has said um is allowable in a public school board meeting um I'm going to have to ask you to stop or to redirect so I just not trying to mean um I I just love the fact that you're here to speak during public comment and we all really applaud you for that because I think it's kind of scary um but we just got to make sure if it's an employee issue that we are not um doing or saying anything that could be um illegal for us in this meeting so the language that the court used in their decision is that matters that pertain to the employment of a District staff member or

086confidential person information um can't be talked about in the Schoolboard meeting and so that includes Theo the appointment employment the evaluation the reassignment um discipline or dismissal of an employee of the school district um and it's hard because I I I I mean that this it limits um what you can say but if you I we we would love to hear you okay and we're we're super glad you're here but just know if if it starts going into employment issues regarding um somebody that works for the district will will have to pause that that comment does that Miss poly did I miss anything um Madam chair no I I think that it's also important to remember that um there are alternate methods to um bring these types of issues to the board um one would

087be to work through the human resources department um the assistant superintendent Thompson in addition um we can schedule a non-public executive session um where those issues can be brought forward to the board to maintain the um privacy concerns regarding um employment issues thank you thank you okay so the first student I'm going to call up is um m d hi um can I say my name or do I just have to go by initials um I you can say okay well I'm Malia Doo I'm a current senior at East High School and I do stand before you today in strong support of a beloved government teacher of ours and he does work at East High School and whose dedication and Innovation with his teaching methods have just profoundly impacted all of his students that he's

088had over countless years that he's been with us while his approach may be considered unconventional sometimes it's undeniable that students learn best through the engagement in real world applications that we are given um especially with his studies when he gives us a model called The Apprentice and it's used in these classes for students to immerse themselves in real world decision making while also engaging the broader Community involvement from local officials with the law enforcement presidential candidates and well-known public figures and as well as our renounced shy Frontier Days the teacher has is very admired at East High School for his ability to make complex Concepts relatable Dynamic and even fun I don't believe education should be measur measured solely by opinions or emotions but by real world effectiveness of the teaching methods used kind of

089removing an educator based on subjective sentiment risks depriving students of an invaluable learning experience and we must PRI prioritize equality and long-term benefits to students rather than an individual's emotions I urge you to thoughtfully consider supporting this teacher for the betterment of students at East High School and we've provided statements from students that really do support and encourage this as well we able to give those to you guys awesome thank you thank you our next um public comment is from DW uh good evening members of the board Madam chair uh my name is Derek wood and I'm a junior at East High School uh for over a year I've had the privilege of being a student uh in a classroom that Ed critical thinking real world application um and meaningful engagement the recent removal oh

090I apologize not removal um the recent removal of the educator from our classroom um has left students not only confused but deeply concerned about what is um for the future of Education in this District um I understand that this situation is still being investigated um but this board ultimately decides we we can't talk about the employment any employment issues okay I'll skip that section I apologize um but this isn't about whether a teacher's methods are unconventional I'd have to agree they are but they're also effective learning should not be limited to memorization and standardized tests it should be about applying applying knowledge engaging in discussion and thinking critically about real world issues students weren't just passive Learners in this classroom we were active participants on our own education um we debated policies analyzed Glo Global

091conflicts and engaged with real leaders such as Governor Gordon uh mayor Collins chief of police Francisco and Sheriff kak this approach didn't just make us listen it made us think it made us care not every great or not every teacher has that ability but great teachers do um if this board's goal is to ensure students are engaged challenged and prepared for the future then I ask you to truly consider what is at stake here um the decision you make will not just impact one educator but it will impact every student that has been part of this classroom and every future student who won't have the opportunity to um learn the same way if this continues um I know that many students share this concern and I'm not standing here tonight um we have also gathered

092written statements like mayate said and I'll hand those to you guys after um but at this moment this teacher has still not in the classroom um and while this continues we feel like we've been left in Li limbo our curriculum has been disrupted um our learning experience has been dis diminished and uh the structure of our coursework is undone um if this board truly invested in its Student Success and I ask that you guys um reinstate if uh applicable while the investigation continues um I don't believe that this board wants to take away an educator who has such a strong positive impact of students and I don't believe that this board wants to send the message that passage uh passionate passionate and Innovative teaching is something that uh to be penalized so I ask you

093when the time comes um that you think of the students who have come here to speak who have submitted statements and who have shared how much this teacher has impacted them listen to the voices of those who are directly affected by this decision thank you thank you to both of you thank you for for coming to speak if you'll give those to Darlene should we'll get him from her here in just a bit but thank you for coming to speak and sharing and um supporting our Educators all right well that wraps it up for our public comment portion of the evening uh we are now going to move into board Communications and reports um first with an update on upcoming meetings uh this Wednesday at 6:30 pm is a parent advisory committee here in the

094boardroom that's March 5th next Wednesday March 12th we'll have the executive trustees with the superintendent and then our next regular board meeting will be on Monday March 17th at 6: PM um I do not believe we've done signups for the meeting on March 12th so first of all do we have any trustees who haven't been able to come recently who would like to be a part of that meeting on Wednesday March 12th do it just to make sure everybody's got a chance okay um so opening that up then is who would like to be part of the um board planning meeting with superintendent on March 12th trusty cook okay anybody else we've got room for one more person I can be there okay all right so trust me Ashley all right thank you um now

095for individual board Communications and reports does anybody have anything they'd like to share Madam chair um I've been in a couple schools but one really fun thing is I went to an 80s dance party at Henderson and that was really pretty fun so anybody else trusty Burton Madam chair um I had the opportunity to visit five of our schools last week four principles five schools um and I'm starting with the souths side as this South trustee um they're doing some amazing things um just in one that just really impressed me was and they were talking about what they were doing and I said oh a whole person concept and and the principal said no a whole family concept they're embracing the entire family and the entire community and um they're just doing some amazing things

096in our district thank you anybody else I can I give a quick shout out yes trusty Ashby I am not I am sure they're not in the room but I I just wanted to give a shout out to some of our Central High um teachers and students this last week they um have spent the last four or five months working on putting together the Shrek musical and unfortunately ran up against a very hard life lesson this week um with the uh stomach flu um coming rampantly through their cast uh and it ended up having to shut down a couple of their Productions on Saturday um is also the reason I am not there this evening um but I I know that was a very very hard thing to do um and I am told that

097the if the production was fantastic and want to give a big thank you to our teachers for managing that absolutely I was unfortunate to hear that that whole production was um for yesterday was just cancelled because of illness um I just wanted to share I've had a cou the opportunity to do a couple of really cool things in the last couple of weeks today I had the opportunity to read to a well to the ENT entire second grade I believe at sdge elementary school as part of the read Across America day um and it was it was especially neat because when I went in and they directed me to that classroom it was um turns out it was the same classroom that my daughter had been a third grader in um when s Ridge I

098think it was in a second year of of of being in operation so that that was really a fun day um and then in late February February 20th I had the opportunity to go um and do interview judging um for the East High Frontier FFA kids who were competing to see who would represent the school um at the state competition so um that was quite exciting and and to spend the afternoon with high schoolers and um just hearing I mean these kids are amazing but so that was that was a neat experience too does anybody else have anything all right then we will go on to reports from superintendent and staff thank you madam chair just a quick shout out to all of our school social workers this is school Social Work week which is

099hard for me to say um the the work that our social workers are engaged in in our buildings are literally keeping families afloat so um if you see a social worker here in the next few days please remember to wish them well and thank them for all of their work um a couple of agenda items I might bring your attention to agenda items D 3.4 and 3.5 um because major maintenance efforts are usually uh completed in smaller bites um than the construction project we're contemplating at McCormack we usually don't see a budget amendment like we do tonight um however because of the comprehensive nature of that project you'll note both the budget am mend M on 3.4 and then the motion to approve the contract as well for the um the renovation at McCormack so

100that's just maybe just a little out of the normal Rhythm so I thought I'd bring it to your attention but uh we have a very special program tonight and so I'd like to call forward the director of instruction Amanda Hall assistant director of instruction Chuck Kern um it's been a particular focus of this board and the the entire District the division of instruction to um look at the growth and achievement data for this year and so um as we're in the middle of a winter storm warning it still feels fitting to to have a winter update hopefully we'll be on the other side of that soon but with that Miss Hall take it away all right well good evening Dr Newton Madam chair and members of the board I'm Amanda H the director of instruction

101and I have with me um Mr ker who is our assistant director of instruction and we are thankful for the opportunity to give you a very highlevel brief brief overview of some of our data that we use in our district and just a few updates on some of the trends we're seeing with our winter data so um first I'm going to kind of cover the elementary side of the assessments and then Mr Kern will jump in and share some secondary so to get us started I just wanted to briefly overview what the assessment platforms are that we use in our district so fastbridge is used as our screener um for helping identify reading difficulties and it's also used to help Educators identify student needs Track Pro progress and adjust interventions to support Learning and Development

102for our students in reading and math um this slide gives you an overview of the tests that are administered for each grade level they test a wide variety of different skills from things like concepts of print word segmenting letter sounds comprehension fluency number identification place value and much more um this assessment is not used in isolation but gives us a good idea of where students are starting and then it's also used as a progress monitoring tool for our students the next assessment that I just briefly wanted to bring attention to because this is new to our conct and we're really excited about this for our students this is the coat screener um the Kat looks at a very different type of data for our students so it's really looking at um the students cognitive strengths

103and weaknesses so it initially is brought to a district typically to be used as a as a screener for gifted and talented students and it really is looking at verbal quantitative and non-verbal reasoning for students and it it really can pull out students that maybe don't always typically perform well on standardized assessments but have really high levels of cognitive abilities that we want to make sure that we're addressing um so that is another screener that we give in our district and then we have whop and white toop is our Summit of platform that we use with wde it is what is testing to see if students are on level to reach Proficiency in the state standards so we have the summit of assessment in ytop and then we also give it interim so we have

104a fall assessment and a winter assessment that we give to our students in third through 10th grades um this assessment is used for a lot of different purposes and one of the things that we really are excited about is really making it a lot more actionable with the use of the authoring tool where teachers can go in and then they can create additional assessments and practice tests that can be used formatively in the classroom and inform instruction so let's get into some celebrations um what we are looking at here is our F data so as I mentioned fast bridge is used as our screener in the district to look for those reading difficulties when we are looking at fast bridge data we're really looking at in this screening but well like I mentioned before there

105are a lot of tests we're looking at but one of the purposes is identifying our students that fall below the 15th percentile um we've talked about the IRP or the individualized reading plan that we put in place for students who fall with in that category and this assessment really gives us that data so if we're looking at the little um chart that I put on the screen we're noticing really good Trends in from our winter data of 2024 to our winter data of 2025 we are seeing that we have less students that are qualifying for irps these are different cohorts of students so we can look at it a lot of different ways but just looking at the grade level bands we are noticing a decrease which is what we would want to see in

106that area um just to give you a little bit more specific data on that right now in Winter um we've reduced our students in each grade level pretty significantly so in kindergarten we have reduced by 54 students that qualify for an IRP in first grade we have 17 students that we've reduced from fall to winter um 59 oops yep I apologize 59 students in second grade and then 34 students in third grade so that's a total of 164 students that qualified for an in the fall that no longer fall within that below the 15th percentile which is what we would like to see um we are still heavily monitoring those students we don't just take one snapshot you know that quickly together and say oh they've got it all figured out and we don't need

107to worry about it but we are moving in those Trends in a positive direction which we're excited about um next I want to look at our ytop reading for elementary um once again we're really excited that we are seeing some positive Trends with this data so this chart and I'm I'm more than happy to give you printouts of this or whatever you need if you want to look at this more in depth but just briefly going over so this shows the average score from fall in in 2023 and fall this year where you can kind of see that um where we started out each year and then you can see our average winter scores and our average winter scores for reading are all trending in a more positive direction than they were last year so

108our average scale scores are higher this year than we were where we were at winter of last year which is a a celebration for us um once again I can drill into that a little bit more I just picked one grade level to look at as you look across the screen you'll see a lot of colors so that is actually taking our fall and winter interim to show our our bands of proficiency from fall to winter of this year and then it breaks it down even further into the domains so we can really Target in and see you know maybe we have reading informational as really trending in a positive way but we're seeing some deficits in um language and vocabulary so we use this data from the district level to really look at what

109those those data points are trending like for students as a whole um as we looked at our fall to winter data in Reading I I pulled third grade just as an example um you can see that we have an additional 177% of our students have moved into that perisher advanced band from fall to winter of this year so ytop is always testing the end of the year standards to look at that grade level proficiency so that's saying that just from fall to winter we've moved 177% of our students into that perisher advanced range which is really good to see um so and thinking about that I know 177% may not sound like a lot but when we're looking at that that's an increase of 164 students across the district that have gone from below basic

110or basic to proficient Advanced and then we have a similar similar celebrations for math we're seeing a lot of the same Trends in math um we do see a little bit of a dip in sixth grade from our winter this year compared to Winter last year it's very small and we're looking at the um the data I mean it's something we're monitoring and and trying to check into but we're we're still seeing positive trends when you look you know at the breakdown across the across the board um in math a lot of time or I apologize um we just adopted I know you guys are familiar with Eureka squar to our to be our program to support math instruction a lot of times when you adopt a new program you'll see an implementation dip as

111things are adjusting and you're kind of making up where standards are taught those types of things um we are seeing very positive Trends though in our data so we're really excited about that I think some of that has to do with the number of schools that piloted the program last year but we really are seeing that that rigor in the program and some of the implementation is helping with making sure our students have access to high level and quality instruction so we're seeing positive Trends there as well so we all know that data does not mean anything if we're not using it to make informed decisions about instruction so we wanted to take a few moments just to talk about the different levels of decision- making that we're using um to use the data so

112at the district level we really are looking at when we develop our GBC our guaranteed and viable curriculum we are analyzing data a lot so we're looking at those Trends districtwide to see if we're addressing the needs to make sure students are able to access the level of rigor and support they need for Bec proficient in the standards um and we're using that like we look at it with our coordinators our content coordinators we're looking at it when we go to adopt new programs to support the curriculum really making sure that it is aligned with what the state has defined as that rigor that we want to see in the standards um this is a report that we brought to our principles and Mr Kern is going to go into this a little bit more

113um it's a stoplight report so we have this at the district level and then we also have it at the school level on this report it breaks down by standard and domain from ytop each kind of area that we are monitoring through the assessment and then we have it by year so from 2021 to 2024 we have our Summit of data to show where we are performing as a district and then we also provided this to the schools so they can see specifically what their school is doing in comparison with The District and then just also in comparison to themselves over the years so the principales found a lot of value in this data being able to to really go and look and make actionable steps in their school Improvement plans and just in their

114plc's and the work that they're doing within their schools and um like I said Mr Kern's going to talk about some of the protocols and different things that we have used um as we were looking at this this next piece um is probably where my little data geek heart gets really excited so this is a report that we provided for all schools by grade level so each school was able to receive this it had has the fall scale score their win winter scale score their growth from fall to winter so we can monitor are they making adequate growth or not their overall performance and then that that middle line that is not highlighted that's the distance from proficiency to reach summative to reach proficiency by the summit of assessment so that's really telling us where

115they are on track to either get to proficient or how far they need to grow and then it breaks it down by standard or strand to show which areas they are success seing or they need more support in so if we look at this next slide this is a specific student that I just highlighted so this is a student that actually is scoring proficient on reading in fourth grade in Winter ytop for us um when I look at this there's a couple of things you quickly kind of can can notice right away so this student actually had negative growth from fall to winter and sometimes that happens sometimes it's a bad day for testing sometimes they miss one or two questions that just really changes their data in a different way so it doesn't always

116necessarily mean something negative but it's something that as a teacher you would want to pay attention to and make sure you're you're monitoring um the student also is if the distance from proficiency is zero so that means they are right on the cut of proficient so that means that one or two questions different they could go up or down for spring so we really would look at that and say okay how do we make sure that the student is continuing to grow and and do what they need to do um to reach that proficiency and then if you look even a little bit further you'll see that they're ater approaching and reading information in Reading literature but they are scoring low in that language and vocabulary and so at that point the teachers can really

117go in and they can look at individual test items from the interim assessments and they can make sure that they're targeting that skill sometimes it's a retach in tier one sometimes they need a full intervention in making sure that they get extra practice in a different way so it really gives actionable data for our teachers and our principles to be able to use and make really quick and meaningful adjustments to instruction so really excited about this data and then the other thing and I think you heard a little bit about this in the in the work session um is the professional development so we always want to make sure that we are supporting our instructional Leaders with how how they can use this information and so our goal is really making sure that we have

118data that's relevant it's timely and that they have time to actually get into it and and use it um in our monthly academic Council meetings with the principes we give them time to collaborate where they can share ideas they basically have their PLC and so they get a chance to share ideas they get a chance to look at and say you know this in February I had I overheard principles that were talking and um it was like man my fourth grade I just can't figure out how to get them going and I see your fourth grade is doing really well like tell me what you're doing and they're starting to have those conversations and really share ideas to to spread you know these are the positive things man I'm stuck we've tried everything I know

119how to do I don't know what else to do and they're really getting comfortable with having those conversations which is exciting um we're very fortunate we have strong instructional leaders in our buildings that are very engaged in this work they're excited about it they're getting kind of data geey like we are and so that's exciting that we know that we're making good changes for kids and then these are just a few of the items I've talked about you know throughout the brief presentation just some of the stuff that we're wanting to make sure we are always doing is making sure we have data analysis and review we're continually providing professional development opportunities um we're doing a lot of professional development with the curriculum coordinators up at district office as well to ensure as we're making

120big district-wide decisions that we're gathering information from our stakeholders that were making very informed decisions based on what students need and then always continuing to improve so I mentioned earlier when we had a brief conversation about fastbridge that we're doing an audit right now especially in elementary to really look at all the assessments that are being given and ensure that we have the right information the right assessments and we're spending our time in the right ways to actually help students um continue to grow and learn so with that I'm going to toss it over to Mr Kern to talk to you a little bit about secondary and then we'll have time for questions thank you director Hall chair Smith and honorable trustees I'm excited to report that the secondary um this year as a district

121uh nine out of 10 subject areas going from seventh grade clear to 10th grade um n out of 10 outperform their winter assessment compared to last year so that's a positive trend that we are very excited about uh seven out of 10 subject areas in the secondary scored their highest winter in the last three testing cycles and so we're closing the gap on the state in some in some areas that maybe we weren't as effective um in the past what I want to do is have you guys opened the the the folder that was passed out and I just want to briefly take you through one protocol that we we do this protocol would generally take if you we were to do it the first time together it would at least take 60 Minutes um

122I'm going to try to do this in three minutes or less so I'm going to see how talented I am so once we crack that open the first thing that you're going to see is a page with lots of colors but no student names so I'm talking about this document right here this might be um a a class that M Hall is teaching seventh grade math uh this would be 8th grade math and so this is organized by alphabetically and we just go down the class roster we look at what students scored in the in the fall and where they scored in the winter just like director Hall pointed out that's either going to be positive possibly negative we actually do have and I thought that was a little bit of an outlier we have

123a lot of scored the exact same I thought that was phenomenal phenomenal at how often that happened in the district just how many times I built that but um looking at this and going to the last four columns you'll see expressions and equations functions geometry and statistics and probability I'm not going to stump you guys but if I was just going and look at that in eyeball I would probably say the area that we really want to focus on heading into the summative would you guys agree with me that might be geometry okay and that's pretty easy now what isn't easy is if we take a look at the protocol is organizing how do we get there how do we build our goals how does Miss Hall look at her 8th grade group and say

124okay now we really want to focus on Geometry where's some where's some Focus are what we would do is we go back to the the slide that had kind of the big stop we call it the stoplight report it looks like can you fold that document up right there yep it looks like just Big Blocks and it's broken down by standard so we go back and this one's Ela but we take it and we look at I imagine that's Reading literature um it is Reading literature and in this one we'd probably take a look at rl2 because that's an area that we really want to focus on it's an area of lwh hanging fruit that we think maybe we could get some immediate Returns on we're doing pretty good in the other two areas but

125that's a that's certainly an area that going back to 2021 we can grow there so going into our protocol we look at the document that I have before you what are our strengths because we always want to start with strengths if you get a document and sometimes this happens on a roster I've had that as a teacher where my roster is all red and you just shut down so we want to start where are our strengths where are our positives wases it say that maybe our students have some gaps some areas of growth and then what surprised you about the data it might be well wow Mr Ford he really wrote Amazing his his seventh grade writing score is outstanding we really want to make sure we're developing that he surprised me because that's not

126reflected in my my daily interactions with him so I'm I'm excited about that um and then um on the second page for part three breaking down those individual groups but also as director Hall said as a subject area take the whole seventh grade ELA PLC team and saying as a whole we probably need to work on rl2 because that's been an area that everybody's struggling in and so as a team who has the best ideas and I thought director H Hall did a great job of of sharing getting ideas from you each other I will share and I'm sorry to do this to principal Schlagel he's also gotten in on the fun and he's like he's he's experimenting with the white toop offering tool as are many of our other principles and teachers and so

127they're starting with bell ringers and they can pull straight from the W the authoring tool on a quick quick check for understanding around rl2 kids can do it as he's taking attendance or the lunch count in the morning it can also be collected at the end as an exit ticket so bell ringer to exit ticket you have immediate feedback and data it doesn't have to be a long process and we could just kind of progress monitor that and check in with kids and start using our Flex time which all of our secondary buildings have two team goals can be developed that's um part four and then part five thinking about those individual students and looking towards next year this is how my class scored this year but I also want to start thinking about next

128year's winter because is this a trend that might carry over and how can I do that so that's a health health check the unhelpful thing about that document before you is it's an autopsy that's a summative assessment that's at the end so we look at yearly the one that you have in front of you that you're looking at that one's in the moment that's less than a month old and so we can really take some actions on that that's been given to all of our principles at every school in our district uh minus one school and we have an alternate plan for them um the math coordinator and I have built out rosters for three of our six schools that requested I want to see as as a teacher how my students are doing so

129that's how I I pulled one of these so quickly and uh she's being deployed and she's going to meet with all the plc's share ideas uh tweak the protocol make it even better so it's more actionable as we deploy it more frequently throughout our district with that I believe director Hall and I will stand for any questions anybody have questions trusty CL thank you madam chair I always have questions but I'm particularly excited about uh what you shared tonight um it's like Christmas for a Schoolboard member I just want to say thank you first off for um doing this level of work and then sharing it out with the people on the ground that are doing the hard lift of teaching our students um I think this is fantastic I love the idea this maybe

130are more comments than questions but I love the idea of an exit T ticket just for the teachers to be able to use something quick to help them um make sure their students grabb the concept that they were teaching that day I think that's what you meant by that um and so uh more than anything I want to say thank you for doing this work and for thinking of pipelines to get this valuable information down into the the teachers hands and for encouraging the collaboration of if someone has something that's working and how they can share that with their community of other teachers doing that that work too so um yeah I'll just stay there maybe reserve the right to come back to a question but I'm so excited and I just want to say

131thank you absolutely thank you thank you trusty cook I never know if this is on um this is for you Amanda do you attribute the Improvement in the reading data to the programs that are being used um that's a very tricky question um I do believe that right now we have some really good programs available um it really comes down to the craft of teaching so think what we're seeing a lot of is because schools are increasing their PLC they're increasing that conversation around the standard and what do we really want to make sure we're learning so our GVC documents have all been revised and updated in the last year and a half or so to really be intentional and focused in on how do we make sure that what we are teaching has a

132high level of rigor and also is very clear with the teachers and then we have really good resources to support that so it's kind of a combination of we've tried to be very clear with here's how here's how you meet the standard with examples of objectives or activities or you know just different levels of Assessments and and things they can pull through the GVC but then supporting that with with um programs and resources that that support that level of rigor as well and then they're really in the data as well and they're making those informed decisions of oh we can speed up and go a little faster here we need to slow down and retach this and really looking at that tier one instruction that's been a focus for our district um this year is

133to ensure that we have high quality tier one instruction in our classrooms so so I think it's a combination of a lot of things I can't just say like oh this is the Silver Bullet I wish I could but okay thank you yeah anybody else trusty Ashby did you have any questions or comments no I think I'm good thank you okay I just would like like to thank you both but really thank everybody out in the district one of the things that is a board we had expressed to Dr Newton sometime last year was that while we really are interested in seeing you know we the growth across the board and proficiency across the board is important one of the things that we asked that the district kind of dial down on there some of

134our most struggling Learners and and looking at at their growth and so I'm really excited to hear the numbers with the students who were on irps in the fall and now have transitioned off of that because of their their scores and their their growth so um thank you for sharing that exciting data all of it was really awesome but um really excited to take care about that growth for those kiddos especially absolutely well thank you thank you thank you very much um that was well said um from everyone I might just um the last compliment aside from just incredible job well done at all levels from classrooms to all the way up um I've been in this district for a lot of years and I could not be more proud of one um one thing

135in particular and that is I have never seen a division of instruction more dialed in with what our Board of Trustees has asked what is important to you what you want to see and how you want to see it and the entire division of instruction has embraced that and it's easy to embrace because it's the right work and for the first time I think in a very very long time maybe even ever I feel like there is complete alignment between what's happening in the life of a student and what's happening in Monday night in our board meetings so thank you to everyone including this board for that and with that Madam chair that's the end of my reports thank you Dr Newton uh we're moving into consent agenda all items listed with the designation of

136CA are considered to be routine items by the governing body and will be enacted by one motion there will be no separate discussion on these items any item removed from the consent agenda will be considered in its normal sequence on the agenda does any board member request to remove a motion from the consent agenda you seeing none Madam chair I move to approve all motions listed as consent agenda and I second so we have a motion and a second to approve all motions listed is consent agenda all in favor say I I post those have been approved there's no old business so moving into new business do I have a motion Adam Cherry move to approve the following financial institutions as depositors of public funds in accordance with the Wyoming statutes 9-4 802 through 808

137First Interstate Bank US Bank Wills Fargo Bank Pinnacle Bank First National Bank of Omaha First National Bank of Gillette Wyoming Bank and Trust plant Valley Bank Wyoming government investment fund yostar local government investment pool I second we have a motion in a second to approve those financial institutions as depositors of public funds do we have any discussion on that no so all in favor excuse me of approving this motion please say I I opposed okay that passes Madam chair I move to approve the notification of the superintendent's cabinet and Senior leadership on the attached list that the Board of Trustees intends to offer said administrators a contract of employment for the ensuing contract year I second so I have a motion a second to approve the notification of the superintendent's cabinet and Senior leadership contracts

138of employment do we have any questions or discussion on that all in favor say I I iOS right those have been approved do we want to say thank you to all of you all right we have another motion Madam sh I move to approve the notification of the school administrators on the attached list that the Board of Trustees intends to offer said administrators a contract of employment for the ensuing contract year A second we have a motion of a second to approve notification of school administrator contracts of employment is there any discussion on that one Madam chair trusty cook um I'd like to recuse myself for this vote okay thank you anyone else all right so all in favor of approving the notification of the school administrator contracts please say I I opposed all right

139those have been approved as well Madame Cherry moved to amend the major maintenance budget by increasing General support by $14,000 second um we might want to check that number I think it's a bit sorry $4 million I res my second and now I second so we have a motion in a second to amend the major maintenance budget by increasing General support by $14 million um do we have any questions or comments on that budget or that agenda can we just get a little bit of an explanation absolutely Mr selli looks like he's jumping forward thank you madam chair um truste Hinkle um you'll recall um at the beginning of the year when we um passed the budget with your consideration of what was to be appropriated um at that point in time um Mr nap

140and his team were just starting to work through the process with school facilities on the major renovation at McCormick Junior High School um since we didn't have any final um ruling on um if that project would be approved or not we did not include it with the appropriation ask to this board uh so what this does is allocates resources um provides the budgetary Authority for Mr nap and his team to continue with that work that he's been working with the school facilities division on any more questions for Mr s no okay thank you all right so seeing no more discussion all in favor of approving the amendment to the major maintenance budget uh please say I I I opposed okay that has been approved and we have one more motion no two sorry okay Madam

141chair I move to approve I move to approve a contract for construction with Richardson Construction Incorporated for the mccormic junior high school renovation in an amount not to exceed $17 million wa 17 million 632,000 plus a 5% contingency a second so a motion in a second to approve the contract for construction of the McCormick Junior High School renovation do have any questions or comments trusy CL Madam chair I was just curious when this construction will take place Mr nap would you like to come forward please Madam chair trusty Clon um this this is going to be a phase renovation so there's five phases in in this and it'll start this summer and then the first couple of phases will be completed around Christmas time it um it includes the front area vestibule with the administration

142offices and then the classrooms anybody else thank you Mr we have a motion and a second to approve the contract for construction at mccormic Jor High School renovation all in favor say I I opposed all right and that passes as well um our last we one motion Madam chair I move to approve the administrator contract on the attached list for the 2025 2026 school year and to place them on the appropriate step of the administrative salary schedule second we have a motion and a second to approve uh the appointment of an administrator uh do we have any questions or comments on that no I would just um yeah can we just just for the public to be aware that this is not adding an administrator this is replacing Madam chair um yes that this motion

143is to approve the contract um for the new executive director of student services which is a reconfigured position which was formerly the assistant superintendent of instruction okay thank you anybody else right well we have a motion and a second to approve the appointment of um an administrator all in favor say I I I opposed and that has been approved as well is he with us tonight or Madame chair Mr Jeff Lewis will be our new executive director and he is busy currently being the executive director in a district down the road so he was not able to be with us this evening um certainly I'm not sure we want anyone traveling out on the roads tonight anyway so he's comes very well recommended and is very excited to be with us thank but that wraps

144up the um new business items the next regular board meeting will be held on Monday March 17th at 6:m the business of the district is done uh do we have a motion now for executive sessions Madam Jerry moved to go into executive session prior to adjournment for the purpose of possible student long-term suspension expulsion Personnel legal advice and potential litigation I second okay we have a motion in a second to go into executive session at this time all in favor say I I I opposed all right