001Please rise for the pledge of >> allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we now open the floor to public conduct com comments on agenda items. Do we have any public comments this evening? Okay, there being no public comments, we will move on to recognitions. Good evening. Thank you all for being here tonight. Our first recognition we're going to uh provide is on behalf of the board of education and the administration is going to be to a staff member in terms of the diamond award. So I'm going to invite Karen Gonzalez up to share her nomination for her colleague. I'm Karen Gonzalez. I'm the speech language pathologist at the
002intermediate school and it is my honor and privilege to nominate Kate Kousnets off on behalf of the WOIS student services team for her extraordinary work as a special education teacher. Kate or as we affectionately call her Miss K in the building goes above and beyond just teaching her students. Her kindness and patience is evident the moment you talk to her, and she's incredibly supportive to her students, her team members, parents, and the general education teachers that she works with. She has incredible empathy and compassion for her job. Her students have made amazing progress in working with her and are so fortunate to have her as their teacher. We would also like to recognize Kate for her exceptional dedication to language access and support for our school community. Kate has become a vital bridge between students,
003teachers, and families, ensuring that language is never a barrier to understanding, growth, and opportunity. Whether it's helping a student feel confident, navigating a new language, or ensuring parents can communicate their hopes and concerns to teachers, Kate does it all with patience, compassion, and professionalism. Thanks to Kate, families feel heard, students feel supported, and teachers are able to connect more deeply with every member of their classroom communities. That kind of work may not always make headlines, but it changes lives. You're the best, Kate. You're welcome. >> Um, I just want to say thank you so much. Um, I know it's from the whole team and I am just so appreciative to work with such an amazing team. You guys and the other few that are not were not able to come here inspire me every single
004day. So, thank you so much. You can go shake the hand. In addition to having remarkable staff in Diamond Lake School District 76, we also have students who go above and beyond. And this evening, we're going to recognize some of our students who have gone above and beyond. So, I'd like to call Mrs. Colette, Mr. Peterson up to recognize our students for the Above and Beyond awards. This evening, >> we are so excited to recognize some amazing intermediate and middle school students tonight for the above and beyond award. The first student I would like to highlight is fourth grader Addison Gad. Leading up to our spelling be before winter break, she told me she studied tirelessly for many hours uh for the spelling bee. Well, it paid off. After multiple intense rounds with other fantastic
005spellers, she won the wo spelling bee on the word psyche. For the record, I don't think I could have spelled that word. So, it was pretty amazing. >> All right. And uh our spelling bee was held last Wednesday in the midst of that uh that little dusting of a snowstorm that we had impromptu that morning. Uh so you know so kind of a crazy morning but we did end up with an allnea um uh one two finish with our with our spelling bee. Um you know Olivia our eighth grader took on uh I think there were four four sixth graders and herself. So she took on uh them and came out on top with the words gallion and swaggering both of which I both words I don't know how to put into a sentence. Um,
006and then uh not not to, you know, and then followed up by her her little brother Patrick uh being able to spell discipline. So you guys um I I know Olivia, you came close to winning in the past, right? I did. Okay. I think Paul might have gotten you last year. Gotcha. Um but uh she was she was real close here last year. She came out on top this year. And I think you guys set a a big precedent for your your littlest brother here who's got some big shoes to fill when uh when when you get out of here this year. So just want to say congratulations. It was it was really cool and you guys did an awesome job. So, thank you. >> Congratulations. Congratulations to both our diamond award winner and our
007above and beyond. Mr. Hansen would love to grab some pictures before anybody leaves. So, if you could just come on up, we we'll grab some photographs first. Fantastic. That wraps up our presentations or our recognitions for the evening. We understand that that is a portion of the meeting you are all likely here for. you are more than welcome to stay, but if you would like to get home and maybe beat the possible snow, we completely understand. So, have a fantastic evening. Congratulations. So, great to see all of you. Okay, we will now move on to the superintendent administrative report. Excellent. Thank you. This evening, we are excited to update the board. Good evening. It's hard to top those award winners, but we'll we'll give it a shot. Updating the board of education this evening on
008our midyear progress for each of the district goals as we as we start off this evening. Sorry, Mr. Hansen. I'm jumping in quicker than Okay, perfect. Thank you. As we start off this evening, we just wanted to as we talk about updating the board of education related to the goals, um all of the goals are anchored in how we can successfully live our mission every day to embrace, empower, and excel each child each day. So, um to kick us off, Mr. Hson's going to open with a video of how we bring this vision to practice. So this evening, we'll dive a little bit deeper deeper as a cabinet team to provide more details and specifics on how we're monitoring our progress at this point in the year and how we're setting ourselves up for additional
009action steps so we can continue to live our mission for the remainder of the school improvement. One of the things that we have been focusing on is learning by doing. Sorry, which is divorce. Um and this is uh focusing on the key step in any effective improvement process is of course having an honest assessment of the current reality and being able to then put forth the diligent efforts that it takes to continue to determine those truths and make the improvements. So here we are at our time for a midyear review and we started with sort of a larger picture with our video looking through the telescope and now taking it down to the microscope and being able to look at specific data points. So with that I will turn it over to Dr. Cunningham who
010will start to do some of the data dig. >> So our first goal was professional learning communities which we saw in the presentation and really we've worked over the last year or so to ensure that that time is strategic. Our teachers have common plan time daily as a grade level team. And so really making sure uh starting with one time a week gets extraordinarily focused time on really what we've been answering is that second bullet point which are clear expectations for what we want all students to know and be able to do. That's really we've been wrestling through and of course they can meet and they collaborate all throughout other times of the week but really we're taking that time and the board saw in December we looked at some of those proficiency scales. That's
011really what they're wrestling through this year is to make sure we know exactly what the high level is that we want and that we understand across the grade level when and where that's going to be taught. And so some of our teams have really run with that and they're already um moving into the phase of assessment and redesigning that and that's the next phase of what we'll do and that's going to lead to some great reporting. But it all comes through that professional learning community. So some of the data just to look at fall to winter um this is showing star um projected growth. So really what you're looking at is percentage of students that are making what we consider typical growth. One year's growth in one year's time is essentially what you're looking at
012there. And Diamond Lakes reading is not totally fair because that does not include early literacy. So that number 55 is actually really closer to the 73% that they have in math, but it just only captures some of the first and second graders that are there. But overall, we look at that. We look for any trends that may exist both in what we're seeing students growing in one year's time. And really this goes back to the last slide of are we teaching things at the right level of rigor and the right sequence to capture what a measure like star uses where it tries to predict and change the content to what they think students should be seeing in the winter versus the fall. So we look at all those pieces to see are we aligned. So
013um these are great data points that show us and then star lectur is referring to the reading test. Star Mathematica is referring to a very small percentage of students that take Star Math in Spanish just because it's a better measure. You can see 58.3 stays at the district level because at intermediate school believe it was one student that took it. So it did not mess with the percentages in case you had questions there. With that really the message is no one creates success alone. Our teams are working extraordinarily hard to really raise the rigor of what they're doing. They're putting in many of our classes, they've put scales in front of students and begin to have those conversations about what students can do to show that proficiency. And as we go through that, we reflect.
014And so, as a pack team, as a leadership team, really asking some of these questions, it's really it's based on data and the evidence, some of the same things the board saw. Uh these questions are really an example of the guiding reflection questions conducted um with all the leadership team in PAC and really through thoughtful data and evidence-driven reflection. Updates were made to the PLC goal. Originally when we talked to the board, it was focused on assessment and we decided we really need to focus on understanding what we want all students to learn at high levels. So both those things are happening, but that comes through the reflection process and it it's really been an exciting time at PLC's to say the least. So with that, I believe I'm turning back over to Dr. Null.
015Thank you, Dr. Cunningham. Dr. Cliff unfortunately could not be here this evening. Um, but I am going to attempt to do justice to what she would share related to PBIS. Um, what I will say related to to this goal in particular, it's about how do we foster rich learning environments based on creating positive behavior interventions and supports and having those really in place. So our two action steps were frequent, specific, and positive feedback systems and interventions to strengthen learning environments for all students and stakeholders and to utilize that data at a building level, the PBIS data to really drive decision making at a uh school level. So what you see up here in front of you is the uh minors and majors for the entirety of the district. You'll see the blue bar is the
016minors from the 2425 school year comparative to this year 2526. You'll see the yellow bar is the majors from 2425 versus the green bar being the majors from 2526. What you'll notice in particular is the minors increased in September and October really decreased significantly come November and December. It's setting up those expectations and helping to retach clearly for students what those expectations are through those minors to be able to to definitely prevent the behavior to continue long term across the board. So that increase or what you see there is really an intentional focus on helping students to understand what those behaviors are so that hopefully those things get nipped into the bud and students can get taught those expectations early and then they sustain that throughout the school year. I do feel like the biggest
017celebration as you look data. When you look at our majors from last year comparative to this year, they are basically cut in half in many instances. What that means is that students are learning those appropriate behaviors and they're not progressing into significant behaviors that would constitute what we would call a major referral. So, um what our teachers are doing, what our teacher teams are doing, what our PBIS teams are doing at a building level is paying off and we were seeing that with the uh overall district data. Building by building though, each of our buildings are looking at the ve very specific building level data and then seeing what are those minor and majors that are coming up more frequently. Is it tardies in our middle school? Is it specific um you know defiance behaviors?
018What is it? And is it often happening in certain locations? Is it happening consistently on the playground or is it happening consistently in the classroom? so we can identify where where things are happening, what's occurring, and how we can better support students to understand appropriate behaviors in those in those moments. So, as a pack team and as a uh leadership team, we went through doing some serious reflection related to this and looking specifically at how effectively our PBIS expectations being taught and reinforced. I love it coming back from winter break that reteing opportunity when the students actually tell us we know this. I'm like, that's great. That's great that we're we're doing the reteing and the students are saying we know this that means that means those expectations have been clear. How are adults using
019data to guide interventions rather than reteing behaviors? Uh just making sure that we have the right if it's checkin checkout what interventions do we need to have in place for students and do we have those systems of support ready and then uh what practices we strengthen to improve consistency in climate across our schools. So again, we reflected as a as a leadership team first, then the district-wide pack team did the reflection on PBIS related to this, and then we made minor tweaks to our action steps to make sure we are set up for success in the second half of the year with this goal. I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Rogers to update us on our third goal. >> All right. So our our last goal is PE presence and uh really the
020goal is to increase attendance so all can engage in learning daily. uh we know how critical it is to have consistent student attendance and how that directly supports student academic achievement, social emotional development and long-term student success. So, you know, when students attend school regularly, uh they experience continuous instruction. They have built stronger relationship with their peers and they are better position to master grade level standards. So, this slide really just shows our student attendance data for students that miss 10 or more days. Uh, and I'll point out from the 24-25 data, we ended the year with uh 395 students missing 10 10 or more days. Right now through December, we're sitting at 97. So, we're really making uh a really good concentrated effort towards this goal while still acknowledging that there's been some significant
021jumps in November and December. And really, while it's not uh unexpected, it gives us a refined focus for the second half of the year and some good targets. But we are on a good trajectory right now. So, but by analyzing this data, it gives our principles uh better tools to implement intervention strategies uh for our students to really identify barriers that they may have for entry to school. And and one of the end goals is to really determine the cause and effect that chronic absenteeism has on overall student performance. finding and determining that correlation that chronic absentee chronic absenteeism has on our students uh so we can put appropriate interventions in place. But also we're still not only analyzing student data, we're looking at our staff data as well. So we've seen staff uh absenteeism
022decreased by 6% right now. And really by having uh having staff more present and engaged with students, we know that nothing really replaces uh their teacher in school. Substitutes help, but having the teacher in there is really what helps progress them forward. So when we brought up our reflection questions, these have you uh these are used to guide their conversation with our leadership team at our mid retreat and also we use as a discussion point for our pack meeting. Um and some of the factors shared in the reflections were uh these positive contributions to student attendance rates have really came with the uh personalized phone calls we've been making home. Uh schools are sending a lot a ton of communications regarding attendance. So where we're trying to blanket everybody with just understanding the importance attend
023h attendance has for their students education and also our schools are able to drill down for specific uh students and how they have might have barriers that exist whether social emo social emotional economic uh that would prevent them uh from having consistent attendance. So, uh, but for staff, we believe that they've had a decrease in absenteeism because they've had some accountability with each other. Uh, we see there's a lot of cultural influences that have existed on them wanting to be in school more and be there for their colleagues. With that, I I think at this midpoint, while we've shared some numbers and we've talked through a little bit about where we're at right now, and where we look ahead, results equal kids, and we know that, and we just want to make sure that we're
024cognizant constantly of where we're at, where we're going, and that we don't lose track. So, this midpoint allowed us to do some reset related to the action steps for the remainder of the school year. As you know, Mr. Rogers shared, that jump in attendance or absenteeism from November to December had us all alarmed. It was great. It was an opportunity for us to say, "What do we need to do in terms of not losing track of the phone calls? We might have done them early. Did we slip back? And are there things that we can do?" Again, these results are kids and kids being in the classroom is the best place. Hopefully, no matter what the weather is like, they can be in the classroom. Um, but the results equal kids, and that's what's most
025important. So when we think about the the process and our next steps related to the work we have ahead um the reflection and feedback we did the district leadership team on January 6th January 7th we brought the pack which is essentially a superintendent advisory council group of staff members from all three buildings together to do that reflection and provide feedback in the month of January. The building level leadership teams then are going to do reflections just like we just shared with you those reflection questions on the action steps to say what specifically do we need to do at our building in particular. Um implementation and monitoring from January through May. We'll implement those identified updates and we'll continue to monitor student learning and progress data. We'll adjust practices as needed based on feedback and evidence.
026And then looking ahead in June, while we did the midyear reset, now at June, we're going to see where are we at then at the end of the year. What does that data say and what did we do? And then what additional goals would we want to create for the upcoming school year? So that'll help guide us into uh the upcoming school school year. With that said, that's that's a mid-year update for the board and we would absolutely be happy to answer any questions that board may have. We always have to be reminded they are still developing like they're not fully developed. We have to keep teaching them just as well. Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question. Particularly for prek, I think the half day at times um has been definitely something I think
027we've seen that there's more frequent absences in prek in particular. We can probably associate that with child care in terms of don't have child care or not. We have working through to the credit of Dr. Cliff and again I'm not going to do it justice. She's been keeping track of the reasons why so that we can start to identify if there are barriers that are getting in the way. Um particularly with mental health for students, particularly with um whether it is transportation or care for another sibling who might be sick or need care. Um she's keeping track of that data to see that at the end of last year we had 395 students and we're only at 95. While that's not If we continue at this rate, we'll be down a hundred more students potentially,
028if not more, that will be in better shape and be in attendance. But yeah, we are continuing to monitor that to see what are those reasons, what are those barriers and taking it on an individual by individual basis rather than blanket just being absent. Not good. Yeah, absolutely. Our families do like to take extended trips around the uh winter break or coinciding with the winter break. I do think because of the messaging that our building principles and our school staff have have given about how significant it is that students are present directly correlated to their academic success. I principles have seen a decline in that in the month of December. I think continuing just to say that's great. Remember we return on this day and how important it is for your child to be present.
029Um but we also know there's times or extenduating circumstances that students do and how do we support them if they are going to be or they are still able to maintain that academic level. I just want to reiterate, thank you. I also really enjoyed the video and I thought that was like I thought that was fantastic and it it the video is nice for other parents and for community members to watch and kind of get that quick um snapshot without necessarily diving deeper into the data. So that was fantastic. Thank you all for putting that together. Okay, moving on to our business agenda. We only have one item for action that is the omnivous vote agenda. Items under the omnibus vote agenda are considered routine and or non-controversial and will be approved by one motion.
030If anyone board member, staff, administrator, or citizen wishes to have a separate vote on any item or items, that item or items will be pulled from the omnivous vote agenda and voted on separately. We have resolved that the Diamond Lake 76 Board of Education accepts and approves the omnivous vote agenda items A through D is listed. May have a motion to approve. That concludes business short and sweet. Um, moving on to freedom of information requests. We have two for notices of communications. the agenda for seedall or no I'm sorry this is the there is the agenda for seedall and also um there is the notification about the federal rate program where essentially we're required to teach internet safety and have internet protection software in place to block access to profitable images we have both of
031those and we are required to acknowledge that in a public meeting and ask if there's any questions or concerns any questions. There being no other community members here, we're going to assume they don't have any questions or concerns, but if they do, please reach out to us. We'd be happy to get um there fantastic. Um so then for We have December of the month which is adorable and it was lovely to have such fantastic trip. It is very funny. >> I smiled when I saw that on social media. I was like, Brandon is a giant >> and Natalie is very tiny. >> I wasn't even I was thinking Peter just looks so happy. >> He's very happy. And Peter also I feel like you made your hair a little bit taller. >> It's okay. maybe
032have Brandon kneel and everyone else can stand. Um, no, but that's fantastic. Fantastic work. You guys have done it just a tremendous job and it's great to see the progress continue. Sorry, I scrolled too far down my agenda. Um, we now open the floor to public comments and petitions on non agenda items. Do we have any public comments or petitions this evening? being no audience. I'm going to take that no. Um for board discussion, I just have two quick things. We are going to revive the policy committee which we have had but has been dormant for a while. Um Erin and I discussed it and I think we discussed it briefly as a board too, but um we thought it would be a good idea to kind of slowly go through um some of the
033uh board policies with the leadership team and and kind of rotate through key ones to review them just to um kind of clean them up, make sure anything that had specific people named or adjusted or um to make them a little bit more generic. And then also just so everybody's on the same page and we have a overall awareness of the policies. So, um we have scheduled two dates to meet about that. Um it would be before the February 17th board meeting and then before the May 5th board meeting. We generally just take like two board members to do that. If whoever is interested if you would just let me know, it does not have to be the same people both times. Essentially, what we would do is discuss those policies and then whoever is
034at that committee meeting would then just do a brief report back to the board. So um nothing too ownorous and then going looking ahead to next year, next school year, we would try to meet like three times during the year just to kind of get a better I think handle on the policies and make sure that everything is kind of where we would like it to be and that we all have a better kind of overall. Like I said, if you're interested, just let me know. Um, and then I think I mentioned this to mo most of you, but we're going to do a board self evaluation on February 3rd, um, at 5:30. We'll bring in dinner. That's kind of a continuation of what we started this summer, but never really got a chance to
035finish um, due to just kind of the timing of it. So hopefully everybody is available then if you're not. Okay. Okay, we'll just let you know and then um then we will you know just kind of um meet and walk through things but also just so you know uh board selfie bell is closed session. So that essentially will be a close session. Um does anyone have anything else for board discussion? Okay. Um then we do have brief executive session tonight. So we will adjourn to executive session for the appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of the district for the district. Have a motion to Thank you all for coming tonight. Hopefully you can help.