January 23rd, 2024 Meeting of the Hopkins School Board

001Hello everyone and welcome. It is 7 p.m. and I would like to call to order this regular meeting of the Hopkins Public Schools School Board on January 23rd, 2024. Our first order of business is open agenda. This is where the school board hears public comment, and we believe that hearing from our community members is crucial for implementing our Vision 2031. and there are several ways to contact the school board if you would like to leave a public comment you can either leave voicemail or attend our meetings in person and i would like to thank everyone who is here this evening to be with us we always like to have community in the room There are, when you come in person, you can fill out a comment card and we will invite you up to be

002a part of our public comment. We have two sessions. The half hour portion at the beginning of the meeting is for those topics that are on the agenda and the half hour portion at the end of the meeting is for those comments that are not on the agenda. I believe that we do not have any comments for topics on the agenda. Is that correct? And no voicemails? We have two public comment cards for topics not on the agenda that we will hear from at the end of our meeting and we look forward to that. So then we will... go ahead and move into our report section of the meeting we are very lucky to have some fabulous school board representatives here this evening our student board reps and a new board rep to introduce themselves

003would you like to do that at the beginning or would you like to go last I think I'll go last. Okay, great. Wonderful. And I don't know if there's any student board reps on the Google Meet with us tonight, but if you are, just give a shout and we'll be sure to recognize you. So who would like to go first? I can. Wonderful. Hi, I'm Praise. I'm a junior board representative. Okay. It is final seasons for many students, so tensions are high, especially since the semester is ending. AVID had a fast food night for their seniors. It was a good opportunity for students to learn about financial aid for their post-secondary education plans and to receive support for the difficult process and also to have some pizza. Students in the exploration of the medical and

004health fields class got to hear from a pediatrician, a veterinarian surgeon, in addition to another, even having a dog in the classroom at the time, and an OBGYN labor and delivery nurse. They also took a field trip to the University of Minnesota Medical Simulation Lab at the Health Science Education Center. Congratulations to the Math League for getting first place in their sections meet and if they win first place again at the next meet, they will be on their way to state. Our Hopkins boys varsity basketball team battles Rosetta tonight at the Royals Athletic Center, so good luck to them. In addition to the basketball game tonight, one of our students will actually be singing at the game. Thank you. Hello, my name is Mia and I'm the 11th grade representative. In the past, the high

005school parking lot was very chaotic and hard to get through. To leave the parking lot, you would have to either make a left or right turn, and that means you have to yield for the people that are going straight, which usually takes forever because there's so many people trying to leave, like parent pickup, et cetera, et cetera, and they're trying to just go. So recently, we said... And it's not really ideal because there's a lot of students like me who have to get to jobs right away after school. And recently, we had two paras, and they would stand at the ends of both parking lots. And then they were direct traffic and literally standing right in the middle of the road, put their hands out, and make us go and stop all the cars. This

006has made leaving the parking lot a lot easier and very faster. By 3.40, everyone is out. And since many of us juniors are new drivers, this has been really helpful for us, and it helps us get home safer. Okay, and in April, we have to take our SATs. So many of us have already started studying for it because there's only four months left. Students who don't have access to an ACT tutor, classes like AVID or textbooks, were able to sign up for the classes that are during Royals Connect. The deadline has passed to sign up. Today and tomorrow were pre-tests. To be let in, you have to take the math and English test, which was today, and then the science and reading test, which is tomorrow. The actual content starts next week during third term.

007Due to lots of homework, sports, clubs, jobs, et cetera, not many juniors have time to actually study for the ACT. So to have a class that doesn't actually hinder with their school schedule has been really helpful. and wonderful and appreciated by those who signed up lastly the back student association is holding its fourth annual rurally speaking performance on february 29th the additions were two weeks ago and the performance the performers have been chosen bsa has been working its hardest to get this ready um to continue the new tradition at hopkins high school i'll give you a second update in march because i have plans to attend thank you wonderful thanks hello my name is Manuel Wahyu, and I'm the freshman representative. So, heartograms are happening next week in preparation for Valentine's Day. And also this

008Friday, there's going to be a band named Don Bosco coming from Costa Rica, 42 kids. And they'll be staying with host families from Hopkins. As the first ninth grade student board representative, I kind of just wanted to talk about the ninth graders moving to the high school. I think that for the most part, it's been really good, and most ninth graders really like it at the high school. It does get a little crowded, especially during passing time, and bathrooms are always really full. But I think overall, most ninth graders would say they really like the high school more than the junior highs. Thank you for that. Update, I think we've all been wondering about that perspective. And I wanted to say praise thank you for being part of our Legislative Action Coalition breakfast. You were

009amazing. Does anyone have any comments or questions for our student board reps? Chair Andreessen, I'd like to ask a question. Yes. Hey, Mia. So the ACT pretest class, did it fill up? How was capacity? Were people on a wait list? It filled up. It filled up pretty quickly. There wasn't really a wait list. It was more like a QR code and then students would go to the Wells College and Career Center. So yeah. And like the flex place is like pretty big so it can like hold up all the students that signed up there. So there wasn't a capacity problem. Everybody got in. Okay, great. Thanks. Manuel welcome and you are making history as the first ever ninth grade student board rep. Yes This is a big night we're happy to have you Yes, thank

010you all for being here. I love your updates and your reports and with that we can move on to a Superintendent report I will turn it over to dr. Mary Perry read Thank you, Chair Andreessen, and welcome to all of our student board reps. We're really happy that you're here. For my report, unsurprising to everyone, we are now in the final week of the first semester. It's amazing how fast our school year has gone by. Students are taking exams, teachers are wrapping up their lessons and units, and everyone is preparing for a K-12 grading day that we have this Friday. This is also the time when registration activities are being facilitated in our schools. Parents are signing up for kindergarten. Parents and caregivers are submitting open enrollment requests. Students at our secondary sites are receiving

011visits from academic counselors to go over course options for the next school year and parents and families are attending info sessions at our various schools. Our weekly school newsletters provide enrollment and registration updates. to parents. Here is a screenshot from last week's high school newsletter, and we've been working very intentionally to ensure our registration timelines line up with our strong school start planning timeline as there is a master schedule and registration component in that strong startup plan. As you heard from Chair Andreessen, we recently hosted our annual Legislative Action Coalition breakfast at the high school, and we were so pleased with our culinary scholars who prepared a very delicious breakfast. Several board and district staff presented information about the platform and also about our innovative programming throughout our district, especially at our high school. And

012we did have a good conversation with Q&A at the end. And I wanted to thank our LAC for that really amazing event. And just it was so well organized. The legislators who attended, their names are on the slides. We had very good representation from our legislature. And overall, it was a wonderful event. I'd like to highlight some of the great learning that occurs every day in our schools. In school visits last week, I spent some time at Gatewood Elementary and Alice Smith Elementary. This is a snapshot of kindergartners in Ms. Dishinger's classroom at Gatewood, and honestly, you could spend all day in this classroom. Students rotate being the star of the day, and they practice their literacy skills by... spelling the name of their classmate who was the star for the day. So the star

013for that day was Violet. And of course, they had fun drawing a portrait of Violet. So Ms. Dishinger will have the student stand in front of the class and then literally detail by detail, head to toe, she's modeling how to draw the portrait and then the students follow. with their own portrait and it was just really wonderful to watch. First graders at Alice Smith were steeped in literacy learning as they practiced listening, reading, and speaking skills. They watched a video about Dr. Martin Luther King and listened to parts of his I Have a Dream speech and then they took turns reading aloud follow-up information in a scholastic newsletter. And it was really impressive to see these first graders listening to and practicing their words so intently. In Ms. Lana and Ms. Holly's classroom at Alice

014Smith, third grade, multilingual students strengthened their English literacy in the context of engineering. So the students had read the book, Just Like Ruby Goldberg, which is a true story about the son of a German immigrant who built complex machines that performed simple... tasks in elaborate ways. So not only did students have to build their own contraption, they practiced using technical vocabulary such as lever, wedge, gravity, and chain reaction. Our specialist teachers work really hard to enrich our students' learning during the day. These are third graders in Ms. Ellingson's physical education class. So she had stations set up for students to rotate through. They spent about five minutes at each activity before rotating again. And what I was very impressed with is when Ms. Ellingson calls for silence between rotations. You can hear a pin drop

015throughout that whole gymnasium. She and the kids work together toward a 100 participation goal that she rewards with praise and compliments. Two weeks ago, middle and high school students from virtual EDU went on a field trip to the Minnesota Institute of Arts, MIA, to view the In Our Hands Native American Photography Exhibit. The field trip aimed to enrich students' understanding of art and culture. in a hands-on experience beyond the classroom. Upon arrival, students were immersed in a contemporary Native American art exhibit and then chose their own adventures in smaller groups. They explored different art forms, gaining a deeper appreciation for the artistic process. The trip not only broadened their artistic horizons, but also encouraged critical thinking and cultural awareness within the context of indigenous culture. I'd like to also promote our media specialists and the

016good work that they do. Each of our media centers has a full time. Media specialist and a supporting media pair professional our media specialists take their role very seriously Most send school-wide newsletters to their colleagues highlighting key activities for the month. So here is Emily Lundberg's newsletter She's the media specialist at the high school And if you visit our high schools media center And I would encourage all board members to do this regardless if you're paired with the high school or not It's just a wonderful and fascinating place. There are two soundproof pods. You can see a picture of one of them there that students can check out for quiet studying. You'll also find lots of students reading, catching up on homework, playing chess, even coloring, or just having a quiet moment to themselves. So

017thank you to our media specialists for all the work they do. We had our second quarterly union meeting about a week ago, and this is an opportunity for leaders and union reps from our nine bargaining groups to gather together and talk about what's challenging across our system, but also what's working well or what improvements have recently been seen. On the slide, you can see examples of each category. And one thing that we did talk about is how to ensure there is representation from all of our bargaining units, as there are a couple. where we haven't been able to figure out what time of the day works best for them so we really want to increase our representation to make sure that we have a discussion that reflects employees across our entire district I recently launched

018superintendent parent and staff advisory groups. And this was actually a pre-COVID goal of mine, but then COVID came and we're very busy. And interestingly, during the two and a half years of COVID, we had a lot of staff and family engagement, lots of listening sessions and virtual gatherings to share information. But now that we're... past that time I wanted a formal structure to build connections and relationships with our staff and parent representatives as a way of being more in touch with our public image but also celebrating what's going well in our system and doing some shared problem solving around various challenges. And then I also wanted to share super quickly that another advantage to these engagement sessions is not just the relationship and connection building and culture building with our staff and families. It also

019provides a much-needed structure when there are times where we have to get information out to staff. So, for example, the budget season is coming up. At the next board meeting on February 6th, we will have our Citizens Financial Advisory Committee provide a budget update to our board. But similar to our conversations at the LAC and also in all of our budgeting and staffing meetings with our leaders, we're working very hard to determine what next year holds for us with Hopkins within the context, the statewide context of budget forecast being quite grim. So yes, the state funded an increase at 4% this year and 2% next year, but we'll have some very significant problems to solve when most employee groups across the state are settling at 9, 10, 11%. And we do have a very important

020ethical and cost of living imperative to pay our employees well. But it'll be challenging to figure out what we can preserve in our system, in our classrooms, and in our critical programs as we strive to compensate people what they deserve. So I wanted to just do a quick budget highlight and make sure the board knows and our community knows that we'll have a more substantive update at next board meeting February 6th. And then finally, just a plug for Inside Hopkins, our podcast. We recently sat down with leaders from our early childhood community, and we will be highlighting early childhood and preschool and all of the fantastic work that you all do for our littlest learners, birth to five. So thank you all for your work, educating and supporting and nurturing our littlest learners. And look

021out for the podcast that I think we might call What were we going to call it, Director Goldati? I think I love leg hugs. You know, when you walk into a preschool classroom and they run up and hug your legs. So that might be the title of this upcoming podcast. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Mary Peary-Reed. Does anyone have any questions or comments? Well, I really appreciated that update in particular Recognizing our early childhood staff that is here with us this evening I know that our families started at Harley Hopkins and it was an amazing start to a lovely career. So thank you for that. And with that, we will move to approving the agenda. And before we do that, I would like to suggest a change to the agenda that you see before

022you for tonight. We needed to move our report of the world's best workforce from our workshop agenda. of this evening to tonight's agenda in new business. So I would like to make a motion that that change gets made. Do I have a second? Second. There's been a motion and a second. All in favor? Or any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. The motion passes. Oh, any nays? Seeing none, motion passes. So I would then look for a motion to approve the agenda with the addition of World's Best Workforce being put into new business. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, I would look for... All those in favor aye aye aye any opposed Seeing none motion passes We will then move on

023to the consent calendar. These are items normally routine in nature and Get put together for our review and passage Do I have a motion to approve the consent calendar? Chair Andreessen, I do have a question about the pay equity report. What should I, I'm not sure about the procedure for that. I do want to just talk a little bit about it. You would move that we pull it out for further consideration. Even just ask a question about it? Yes. Okay. Would you like to make that motion? Yes, I would. Have a motion to pull out the pay equity report from the consent calendar for discussion. Do I have a second? second second I Have a motion and a second any discussion Seeing none all those in favor. Aye any opposed motion passes We are now

024discussing the pay equity report Okay, Chair Andreessen? Yes. So my main question, I read it, and I just wanted to understand a little bit better. The way I read it, it seems like Hopkins is doing a pretty good job about pay equity. You know, there's some that are above and there's some below, but that's maybe to be expected. So is that an accurate interpretation of the report? That's a good question for Dr. Lightfoot. I can provide a little bit of context that a couple of years ago we conducted metro-wide comprehensive compensation analysis, including an internal pay equity analysis, and since then have made some adjustments. But Dr. Lightfoot, thank you for joining us. And would you be able to answer Director Jimmy Chow's question? Absolutely happy to. The pay equity report is a statutory requirement

025that governmental agencies every three years, used to be six years, then they have changed it out accordingly now for three years, need to do a report for the state of Minnesota. All districts are required to do that as school districts and governmental agencies. What the report specifically looks at is from the data sets that you can see, balanced classes, male classes and female classes of employee groups and looking at the pay rates for those and then submits that information for the state for review. The agency at the state reviews that and then provides compliance information back for us. So that's generally the procedural elements. What we have is that set of data that we submit every three years and we have continually been in compliance with those ratios that are required for state certification and

026then once we do that we notify all of our bargaining groups of the results of that and then post that in case there are any questions related to the pay equity as it relates specifically then to any collective bargaining components that would come with it. So, Dr. Lightfoot, would that be accurate, maybe, to say that we're doing a pretty good job with pay equity? I mean, just as a layman looking at the regression line or the slope, it looks okay, pretty good. Yeah, it is. It's a very detailed statistical analysis, and they report based on that regression. And then if there are any concerns that they have, the part that I've always liked is that if they have any concerns, they'll let you know so that you can be proactive. And any thoughts after they

027review it that they might be indicating that you may need to consider? As you think through all components of delivering compensation within the bargaining agreements. I think maybe just overall then. At least for me, it's very heartening to see that there's pretty good equity. So I just wanted to highlight that as well. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lightfoot. So then I would look for a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. That brings us to the Treasurer's Report. Treasurer Hartland. Wonderful, thank you. Good evening, everybody. I am the district's new treasurer, and so I wanted to speak for an additional couple of minutes. I

028will keep it brief, but I wanted to review the roles of the treasurer in accordance with our district policy, which is number 202, if you feel like perusing it. And that policy is itself in accordance with a very spartan state statute. elaborating, which is a strong word, on the duties of the board treasurer. And some of those duties are to make deposit funds within the school district. The treasurer shall make all reports, which may be called for by the school board, and perform all duties a treasurer usually performs. The treasurer shall pay all valid orders presented. in accordance with Minnesota statute and the treasurer shall serve as a member of the citizens financial advisory committee and Shall direct the board audit committee And I've spent my time recently deepening my understanding of those duties and

029want to be transparent about some of the goals for this role on behalf of the district. So beyond the requirement to simply make reports, I will hopefully move towards making our reports both more consistent and understandable, which as of now, which would require a lot of human effort to produce. And business services upcoming upgrade to Oracle will make this a lot easier. That platform will allow for much more customized reporting. And I will be working with that team to develop some more clear and digestible reports for you here at the board table and for our community at large. I envision highlighting the same several categories at every board meeting, perhaps. expenditures related to subbing or building maintenance or PSEO tuition spent etc And highlight a kind of a year over a year Comparison so that

030we as a board and the larger community can better understand The context around a category we can tell if it's deviating from a baseline and what it actually costs to run and maintain our buildings and Where we spend money to increase our students experiences here in the district. It's a very complex picture and i hope to bring a little clarity to that and to that end i will be reaching out especially to board members to see if there's categories that any of you in particular are interested in highlighting and more broadly i welcome any of these conversations related to the treasurer role Email is the best way to engage with me on this topic. And I'll do my best to answer myself and our business services and finance team will continue to be a fantastic

031resource for me. They've been very generous with their time over the past several weeks helping me to access and understand our district data. We have some more conversations scheduled already, including a review of all the districts, assets of the buildings, and all the funds, which I will include as an overview in an upcoming treasurer report for all of our benefit. Additionally, the Minnesota School Boards Association has an upcoming training for new school board officers that I'll be attending. The Citizens Financial Advisory Committee, which was mentioned in the duties in our policy, is currently undergoing its process, and Dr. Mary P. Reed mentioned that we will have an upcoming update from that group. Additionally, the financial audit is underway and should be concluded by the end of March, and we will hear more about that at

032the board table shortly thereafter. So then in reference to this past month's check register and treasurer's report First there was an error that's already been noted in the word document attached to the agenda There's no error in the check register or any of the finances only in the word document It still references treasurer Adams and that will be updated going forward Secondly both Tyrande Howard and Tarrero Chapenduka took Extra time with me recently to answer my questions and provide additional information and I would like to really thank them for their efforts One thing that's worth pointing out is that this check register does not include every expense the district occurs Payroll most staff benefits and teacher pensions are among some of the things that are not Included and that you will not see on this

033check register Some staff benefits that are included for our purposes here from this period was $258,688 dispersed to total admin service core as the employer side contribution to our staff members flexible spending accounts and $10,212 to superior vision for their vision plan since the health insurance industry for some reason. treats people's eyes as distinct from the rest of health. Other expenses of note were $34,310 to Xcel Energy for our various buildings, electrical service, and associated fees. We paid $8,851 to Breck Schools per Minnesota State statute that requires public school districts to consult with all non-public schools within our boundaries, and we have several of those. three times per year and provide financial support for a variety of allowable services. These particular expenses were related to Breck School's student support and enrichment used for addressing academic

034outcome gaps, expanding access to technology. and professional development on culturally responsive and anti-racist practices. So this money is an addition to $32,000 that the board approved back at our November 28th board meeting to support similar measures at Breck. Similarly, we're required to support in-district families that choose homeschooling, and we paid $1,101 to some of those families this period. We covered $9,181 in tuition to North Hennepin Technical College for our high school students to take PSEO classes there. That's something we directly cover for our families as our PSEO students take college classes and receive college credit at no expense to themselves or their families. And we pay several such institutions at various times throughout the year, depending on those schools' invoicing schedules. And finally, I would like to highlight the amount of money we spent on

035transportation to our two busing vendors this period, $614,871. And that includes amounts from many different dates of service. GO FROM A HIGH OF $188,000 FOR REGULARLY CONTRACTED DAILY SERVICE DOWN TO $128 FOR A DAY TRIP IN A SMALLER VEHICLE. SO ALL THOSE LINE ITEMS, BOTH FOR TRANSPORTATION AND ALL OTHER CHECKS WRITTEN THIS PERIOD ARE ON THE REGISTER ATTACHED TO THIS MEETING'S AGENDA FOR ANYONE. at the board table or in the community to review. And there are accompanying descriptions with regard to transportation. The lines specify all different kinds of trips and most were in support of our various athletics teams, away games and tournaments. So with that, I thank you for your extra minutes of attention and move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of $2,714,688.17 for the period of December 16th, 2023 to

036January 17th, 2024. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Treasure Adams. I read the thing. I'm sorry. Treasure of Heartland. Sorry. Okay. My bad. So I see severance is like the third, maybe highest expense. Could you talk a little bit about that just to give the community and myself a little education in that? Why it's so high? I would say that I'm probably a poor. new treasurer to address that question. So either I would ask for one of our admin professionals in the back of the room to do that, or I would happily follow up with you on that. Dr. Lightfoot's coming. Thank you, Nick. Absolutely. Great questions the severance component is part of our collective bargaining agreements the severance is Payable as outlined in January 15th installments So what you are

037seeing there is the January 15th installment of the severance That is throughout the district for all bargaining units that do have that as part of their agreement It is a collectively bargained item. Some of those severance dollars go to TASC, which is our VEBA, Voluntary Employee Benefits, post-retirement. And then some goes into 403B contributions, similar to the 401K, but the 403B is the public sector component of that. So it gets paid every January 15th. Mm-hmm. We have most bargaining agreements have a cycle that we pay in three installments The January 15th is the first installment, then the next January 15th is the second installment, and then the third installment is September 15th, so that it goes through three fiscal years with a January 15th structure, and then that September 15th hits that third fiscal year.

038So that's the way that we do it over the course of two calendar years, if that makes sense. I can map that out for you too. And you have that all in your brain Wow That's impressive. So I think I just wanted to clarify that for the community that it's not a reoccurring expense that's monthly right because that would probably be a little on this is unsustainable probably Thank you for the context. Yeah, and in the course of it all as director Chapin Dukkha can identify we work through that in our OPEB responsibility, other post-employment benefits that we fund, and those are conversations and components that you'll see coming up through the CFAC report and part of that information as well. And all of that's done to the question before so that we can use

039actuarial values to determine how much that is so that we can work on making sure that we're funding our obligations into the future. Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Any further discussion? Seeing none all those in favor aye Any opposed the treasurer's report is accepted We will then move on to new business. I would like to turn it over to Dr. Mary Piri-Reed for an update for the board on World's Best Workforce. First, I do just want to comment that... I thought that this meeting wouldn't go as long, so did say that we might get to public comment a little bit earlier than thought. So my apologies to those waiting to address the board. Thank you, Chair Andreessen. And I would like to welcome our Director of Innovation, Design, and Learning, Dr. Ann Erdl,

040to the table. She's followed by Assistant Director of IDL, Dr. Abby Holm. dr. Leanne campy another assistant director for IDL and also our principal on special assignment to provide leadership and guidance to principals as approaching and Melissa McDonald who is our district assessment Specialist, thank you all for joining us and for all of the work that you've put into this report. So you'll find out... from these experts that the report has been submitted to the state. It does not need to be approved by the board. This is a discussion and sharing item only. World's Best Workforce is a multi-year strategic plan that districts are required to put together and submit to the state for approval detailing how we will achieve learning goals and So we have a lot of information for you and we'll take

041questions at any time So thank you all of you for being here and dr. Ertl you want to take it from here sure Thank you. Good evening board members and especially our new board members welcome. It's our pleasure to Be with you this evening and sharing this information in this report We want to start out with just the Hopkins promise. I like to start out with the promise because it is really the foundation for our strategic planning and for all of our improvement work. Natalia, can you switch? Thanks. So I'm going to read it aloud the Hopkins promises an educational experience for students ages 0 to 21 that prepares them to succeed in our increasingly complex rapidly changing world our students are recognized as global scholars who work collaboratively Disrupt the status quo and solve

042some of the world's most complex problems. They are the best and brightest citizens of tomorrow Together we are creating a better world by inspiring each student to reach their full potential. So with that grounding, I'm just gonna begin by providing a very brief overview of what the World's Best Workforce is and also the Achievement and Integration Plan. So the world's best workforce is legislation that was developed in 2013 to provide a strategic planning mechanism for school districts to work towards improvement. So of course in Hopkins, you're familiar that we have our own pretty sophisticated strategic improvement plan, which incorporates all of these goals that we are also reporting on annually as required by the state. The World's Best Workforce is an annual report, and the Achievement and Integration is a three-year cycle plan. These goals

043hopefully look pretty familiar. These are our system's goals that drive our strategic planning work, and throughout our presentation, we'll be referring back to these goals just to highlight the connections. So we are working toward creating more holistic assessments of our progress. Traditionally, districts have focused on single data points to illustrate progress, and we know that that does not provide a full picture of student learning. So we are creating a holistic system that uses and triangulates multiple data points. I know at, I think... The last board meeting, Dr. Mary Puri-Reed was mentioning our data cloud. So this is an example of work that we're doing to be able to capture student learning at multiple points in time to create that fuller picture. And we are also working on balancing our assessment system to provide a fuller

044spectrum of data to show our students progress. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Camphy, and she is going to share some information about our Achievement and Integration Plan. Thank you, Dr. Ertl. As Anne stated, the Achievement and Integration Plan partners with the World's Best Workforce Plan. The work associated with the Achievement and Integration Plan is tied to legislation as well that is mandated by the state. Achievement and Integration for Minnesota provides school districts funding for the purpose of pursuing racial and economic integration and increasing student academic achievement by reducing academic disparities based on students' diverse backgrounds. Over the last several years, we have focused on achieving integration through enrollment, operating under the assumption that open enrollment is likely to bring students from diverse backgrounds into our school communities. We open

045enroll students from all over the metro. While the demographics of schools are how the state formally measures integration, we believe a focus on the experience students have within our diverse setting is a stronger data point. While we are proud of all of the robust research-backed innovations that we provide in Hopkins, the bottom line is that students in Hopkins are receiving an excellent academic education. Additionally, research suggests that the school community alone, the students, teachers, and staff that your child interacts with on a day-to-day basis, is a powerful contributor to students' current and future success. As you can see on the slide, there are many reasons that integration is good for students. The bottom line is they are better prepared for the real world as a result. This slide and the next several show the racial

046and economic breakdown of students who are enrolled at each of our sites. You can see that despite our work with open enrollment, there is variation among schools in terms of how diverse they are, particularly at the elementary level, which is shown on this first slide. Slide 11 highlights the diversity of our secondary schools and you can see that they are more aligned with one another for the most part in addition to significant racial diversity at all of our sites we also experience a high degree of economic diversity throughout our district as shown by our breakdown of free and reduced lunch Again, you'll see more variation amongst the elementary sites with free and reduced lunch or economic diversity than you do at the secondary sites, which is on the next slide. Beyond the demographics of our

047schools, we also want to share some data that aligns more closely with our goal of providing a rich, diverse learning experience for all of our students. Our students consistently demonstrate a high level of cultural awareness and action, as measured by the panorama survey that we administer multiple times each year. In addition, our secondary students largely recognize their schools as places of both diversity and inclusion. As I mentioned with the previous slides, there is variation among our schools with regard to demographics. Specifically, we have several elementary sites that are racially identifiable, which means they serve a significantly higher number of protected class students when compared to the rest of the district as a whole. One strategy we have used to diversify these sites is placing our immersion programming options there. While we will continue to monitor

048the diversity of our district as part of our integration plan, moving forward we will pay attention to what our data tells us about students' ability to regulate their emotions, their sense of belonging, and our capacity to increase restorative outcomes. Another area of the integration plan looks at the diversity of our teaching staff. Increasing the diversity of our teaching staff is also a goal of our strategic plan. Similarly, as we saw in the last goal, the state uses demographics of staff as a measure of integration, along with students' access to experienced teachers. We believe those are important data points, but we also look to the points on the right side of the slide to provide a more comprehensive picture, which include teacher recruitment and retention rates, teacher and student perception of diversity, equity, and inclusion at

049their buildings, as well as feedback from teacher affinity groups. As I mentioned, increasing the diversity of our staff is a focus of our strategic plan, and as you can see, we are outpacing the state in this area. That being said, while we have made good progress here, we still have work to do in order to reach our strategic plan goal of staff demographics that represent our student body. As we look to our next cycle of achievement and integration goals, specifically the integration goals is what I've been speaking on, we will continue to focus on recruitment and retention of diverse staff, along with ongoing training for staff in areas of inclusive and culturally supportive practices. From here, I will hand off to Dr. Holm to talk about the achievement part of achievement and integration and how

050it overlaps with World's Best Workforce. Yeah, so at this point we start to see the two plans overlap So we've been talking about integration which is in our a and I plan and now we're moving to world's best workforce So a and I third goal is around student achievement and world's best workforce has goals tied to student academic achievement So that's where the overlap starts to happen The First World's Best Workforce goal is all students ready for school. Specifically, our goal is that 80% of students in the Hopkins Pre-K program will be rated proficient on the Spring Work Sampling System, the personal and social development domain. And this aligns most closely with our learning and teaching goal that we have at the district. So traditionally, and on the report, we measure this with the pre-K

051work sampling system. So there are several domains that teachers rate students, their pre-K students on in the fall, winter, and spring. And one of them is this personal and social development. And we can measure readiness for kindergarten in a number of other ways, right? So we can look at children's social-emotional learning data in Panorama once they get to kindergarten. And we can also look at their readiness for reading in their fall FastBridge data. Go to this slide with the graphs on it, please. Oh, back. Keep going back. One more. There we go. So these are the results from the work sampling system. You can see we met our goal and even made gains from the spring of 2022 to the spring of 2023. So we showed the board that our spring of 2022 data last

052year, and then this year we even saw that instead of 80%, which we saw last year, 85% of our pre-K students were rated as proficient on that personal and social domain. Next slide. So when we look at those additional data points that I mentioned, we see that our students' language and literacy scores also look great as they're exiting pre-K. So 82% scored proficient at the end of the 22-23 school year. And then when we look at the incoming kindergarten class in 2023, so in the fall of 2023, we know that not all of the students are the same right from our pre-K program to our kindergarten program, but a large majority of them are. We see that the majority of our students were rated proficient in social-emotional learning domains. So this is encouraging for us

053because we have our pre-K teachers saying, yep, they're ready for school, and then we have our kindergarten teachers saying, yep, they're ready. And then our last data point is that 76% of our kindergartners demonstrated readiness in their fall reading assessment, which we measure by FastBridge. So great pre-K data. I'm going to turn it over now to our District Assessment Coordinator, Missy McDonnell, for the next goal. Hello, everyone. Thank you. I'm going to walk you through the goal that's titled All Students Read Well by Third Grade. Thank you. This goal is included in the World's Best Workforce, and it is part of the state accountability system. This goal is about making sure that all of our students can read well by third grade. There is data suggesting that students who are proficient in third grade at

054reading will continue to succeed in their school career. So our goal was to increase the grade three proficiency reading as measured by the reading MCA by two percentage points. The MCA, also known as the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment, And it is given for the first time in grade three for our students in reading. And this goal aligns to our learning goal for Hopkins Vision 2031. And I do want to mention that Read Well by Third Grade will be changed in future years. This is our last year reporting in this style for it because it is being replaced by the Legislative Read Act. And we will be applying our local literacy plan. And Hopkins is a little ahead of the game. We already have a local literacy plan, and we have a literacy lead working to ensure

055its alignment with the future announced requirements by MDE. And we will have the opportunity to use some different measurements of reading as well. Next slide. Thank you. So as you can see, reading well by third grade has traditionally been measured by the MCA reading scores. And you can see we measure our students' reading skills more holistically by using a variety of our other programs and assessments. So we measure the program implementation and fidelity data of letters. Letters, it's L-E-T-R-S up there. It's not spelled wrong. It is a professional development program, and it is focusing on the science of reading and part of the READ Act, which we'll discuss a little more in detail soon. We've used an internal assessment called Being a Reader. We've used Lexia Learning Programming, the usage and progress data. And we've

056used student reflections on their own perceptions of themselves as a reader. Finally, we've used a universal screener called FastBridge, which is also part of the READ Act legislative components. So here in this graphic you can see the third grade reading MCA proficiency the green line is hopkins public schools third grade reading proficiency scores over time from 2019 to 2023 and the blue line is the statewide proficiency scores notice there's a gap in 2020 and 2021 from our covet interruptions and learning and within this data you can see that for the past five years we've been within two percentage points from the statewide average and that we have 46 percent of our students succeeding and meeting our reading proficiency standards as illustrated by the m Minnesota comprehensive assessment. The MCAs are taken in March and early

057April, depending on the site. And you can see 17% of our students are considered partially meeting the proficiency designations on the MCA reading test. And we're going to talk a little bit further about what's happening with our partially-meet students by the end of the school year. So this slide is one I'm very excited to share with you all. So letters, I mentioned earlier that L-E-T-R-S. It's a professional development program and it's based on the science of reading training for all four teachers of reading So it's one of the state approved professional learning programs associated with the read act It is an intensive program that covers how the brain learns the domains of language It requires 144 hours of training, which is equivalent to 12 master credits. And while the REED Act mandates that all kindergarten

058through second grade teachers are trained by summer of 2025, we at Hopkins have trained already 77% of our K-2 teachers. Our goal is more robust. We want to train all pre-K through third grade teachers and additional targeted teaching groups. our ELL teachers, our special education teachers, within the next two years. So this graph here shows the difference in average scores between students taught by letters-trained teachers in yellow and those taught by teachers not yet trained in letters in blue. So we're dedicating professional development time on district PD days to train our teachers, and we anticipate a positive impact on both our universal FASBridge scores and our MCA results. Hopkins is leading the way with letters. We have our 77% of our kindergarten through second grade teachers already trained, and this is far beyond many of

059the metro districts and throughout the state. We're really excited to see the impact and the enthusiasm our teachers are showing for the training and implementation of the teaching practices. Now, you may recall the group of students who I mentioned earlier who partially met MCA standards. And I just want to highlight them on the left there. By the end of third grade, 66% of our third grade students were meeting target or at low risk on that FastBridge reading assessment at the end of the year. And this assessment is taken in May, and it is considered a better indicator of reading fluency than the MCA, as it measures for both fluency and decoding with grade-level passages. All right, we're going to switch gears to our next goal. And this one is about students being career and college

060ready. So this is also a world's best workforce goal as part of our state accountability system. And this goal is related to the percentage of students in 11th grade who take the ACT and have a composite score of 21 on the administration of the ACT. And this is also aligned with our Hopkins Vision 2031 goal. In order to holistically measure our students' readiness for college and careers following high school, we not only use our ACT composite score, which you may remember taking your ACT, it is a composite score of multiple domains, so it's taking into account your performance on math, science, English, and reading. So we also consider these other measures. How our students' college application and acceptance rates are. college and career readiness assessments that we take in the high school, our percentage of

061students in a career or college program after graduation, the number of higher ed credits earned while in high school, and our graduation traits. And in progress is our competency system, which will span all grades, and we'll talk a little more at the end about. Here is a graph. This one shows the national, state, and Hopkins ACT averages over time. You can see that our average score has been around 22 and 21, in line with both national and state averages. The ACT has suffered from a drop in... participation rates over the years. Due to COVID, a number of colleges stopped requiring it or waived the requirement in order to accept students. So we're seeing in Minnesota that we're at 68% of the 2023 graduating class that took the ACT, and that's higher than the national participation

062rate, which was at 60%. All right, I'm going to hand it back over to Dr. Ho. Okay, so I'm at our last goal. So turning to that goal, which is closely related to ACT, is our graduation rate data. In the World's Best Workforce Plan, we aim that 90% of our students will graduate from Hopkins High School or virtual EDU in four years. Of course, this has strong alignment with our Vision 2031 indicator, which is 100% of our graduates placed in their higher education, an intentional gap year, or be their preferred employer's number one choice. So how do we measure it? Typically, we measure this via the grad rate data MDE provides us every spring. But we can go beyond this and look at things like college application acceptance rates, college and career readiness assessments, many

063of the same things that Missy mentioned in regard to the ACT. So when looking at grad rate data, it's important to note that we get the data 10 months after the fact. So we are going to be reporting on the class of 2022's data, and that's because we won't get the class of 2023 data from MDE until March or April this spring. This is because MDE has to track down a number of different intricate indicators. And so what they do is they look at each student that's been through a Minnesota school and they say, where is that student and which school do we attribute them to in their status? So in 2022, we had an 85% graduation rate, which is fairly consistent with past years and still above that of the state. Next slide. One

064thing to know about how MDE and we report graduation rates is that we look at four categories. So every student that is assigned to Hopkins as a graduate or in our graduation rates is either a graduated student, so they graduate in four years, continuing, which means they take credits in summer school or go to Transition Plus or graduate in five or six years. They're unknown, which means the state can't track that student down and doesn't know what their status is. Or they're a dropout. So they dropped out of the system before they were able to obtain their degree. And of course, we have additional data points we use alongside our grad rate and ACT data. We have a strong AP program at the high school and virtual edu 60% of our 22 and 23 exams

065earned a score of three or above So three or above is considered passing by most exams and colleges will take that for college credit and In that will earn students credit in in their post-secondary endeavors MDE has a data set called SLEDS. It's the Statewide Longitudinal Education System. This allows us to follow our students post-grad, so we can see how many of them are still on their career paths as they go into their post-secondary endeavors. We know from SLEDS data that 80% or sorry, 88% of our class of 2022 grads were on a school or career path in the months following graduation. And finally, we've been working hard on our bilingual and multilingual SEALs program. This is probably an underemphasized success indicator by a lot of districts and schools. And when we think about what

066adulthood and the workforce is like, having a second language or being able to speak multiple languages is a huge asset. And so we want to be able to reflect that in our success indicators and get students to a place where they can have a success indicator along with that skill. So we see that 63 students earned seals in bilingualism or multilingualism in the past year, which earns them college credits and then obviously expands their college and career opportunities after they graduate with us. So that wraps up our world's best workforce and achievement and integration results. Before wrapping up for questions, we want to briefly touch on what the future holds for data and assessment accountability in Hopkins. We are moving towards a competency-based assessment system Many higher ed programs and many jobs use competency assessments

067to gauge how their employees or their students are doing on a number of key skills So in addition to or instead of grades we see leading districts measuring their student success and achievement of core competencies So in Hopkins, for example, we think that critical thinking is an important competency. In 2018, the group that went together to construct the vision identified critical thinking as key for student success during and after their time with us. And so we think it's time to measure it. So this gives you an idea of what this competency system could look like. So we can see here in the progression, we have examples of what critical thinking looks like in early childhood, K2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12, and then post-secondary. So this will give our teachers kind of a benchmark of, all

068right, the student is in second grade, and we're working on this critical thinking competency. What do we expect from them at this time? We have a group of teachers. They are multidisciplinary and across several different sites working on this assessment and our other five scholar traits this year. So we're excited to share more in future assessment and accountability updates as this work progresses. And so this competency system came to fruition in part by our student success metrics research. We've talked about this in a couple past board presentations, but essentially this was a project where we interviewed over 100 people in our system around what they consider student success to be in the 21st century. And so we're happy to share that the research process is complete. We've synthesized, coded, analyzed over 85 interviews with teachers,

069students, caregivers, business owners, college admissions representatives, and other community members. You can find the results of this research at the following links. There's a QR code here. You can access the full report, which is some nice lengthy reading, or you can access the executive summary, which is a nice two-page summary of what we found. Finally, we want to leave you with some of the resources we've discussed today, along with a few other tools that guide our work in measuring the success of our systems and students. So we are excited to continue to build out a system that meets the needs of our students in a fast-changing world and we look forward to future updates with you all Thank you so much Thank you so I am always excited to see how you bring together two,

070I think, pretty lengthy reporting processes to the state and make it useful and tailored to our district. And I was just wondering, is that something that you think... Done in other districts or is this a little unique to Hopkins bringing together world's best workforce and The integration report I Think it is done in other districts because of the because of the overlap whether that becomes less relevant with some of the Changes to how we'll be reporting on world's best workforce, but I think And when it comes to the reporting, there's, as Dr. Mary Puri-Reed mentioned, there's a sort of a lengthy actual template that the state pushes out that we have to file. And then the presentation is meant to just provide a little bit more detail and nuance to that kind of boring report.

071Great. Thank you. Are there any other questions from? My four colleagues I have two questions real quick. I'm out there. I'm for the for the free and reduced lunch them Data is there any way to have the data? You know by by race, you know, so I know that there's Just one second. So I know that the, you know, that is showing right now, like, non-free, reduced, and free and reduced. But we'd just like to see, like, if there's, you know, how many, like, students of color are actually on, you know, free, reduced, as compared to white students. Is there any data available like that? We can. Yep, we can absolutely pull that data, right, Dr. Holm? Yes. Okay. We did not put it on the slides because it's kind of messy to look at

072on a slide. But, yeah, it's definitely. Okay, cool. And then one more just quick question, and I'm pretty sure I'll be reaching out to you all with more questions. I'm just, as I'm learning, but was just wondering, and maybe this is a question for Dr. Mary Perry-Reed as well, but to see how we landed on Fats Bridge Learning as a assessment, as a district assessment for us. I know that, you know, Fats Bridge have like a, like time test, and I know that they, you know, are, you know, one of the less favorable assessments amongst some of the teachers, right? At least what I learned through conference. So just wondering how we got to that assessment. Sure. I think I can help with that a little bit. So. This is my sixth year in Hopkins,

073and when I came, we were in the process of adopting it because we were required to do screening for dyslexia. So at that time, to the best of my memory, at that time, we were using it, but kind of on a limited basis. When COVID happened, we felt that we needed to really get a handle on, a clearer handle on student learning in literacy and math. And so it was COVID really that pushed us to do a fall and a spring administration of FastBridge. And one of the rationale for that was we had to use it for a required screening anyway. and the NWEA was not providing that for us. So that is part of the switch to FastBridge and the shift away from the NWEA. Thank you. Chair Andreessen? Yes, director Westmoreland. So I

074have a question that I think exists at the intersection of culturally responsive and validating practices and students self perception As a learner, right? So there's a lot of really interesting research out there on this and when we were talking about reading I see the some of the holistic metrics include being a reader data and and students' perceptions of themselves as a reader. I'm wondering if you can talk a bit more about that and then kind of as a follow-up, if we're doing that sort of student identity as a learner work in other realms as well. I can speak a little bit about the reference in according to the reading data, and I think Dr. Holm can talk about where that shows up in our panorama survey. That would be great. So specific to the literacy

075piece, one of the, I mean, really even before we were looking at FastBridge and trying to triangulate some of those more quantitative numbers, we knew that We need our students to identify as as readers right in order to Feel like self efficacious in the area of literacy and so we did develop some Measurement tools and now actually in retrospect they kind of they look a little I don't know rudimentary compared to some of the tools that we use now But we were able to measure students even as young as like first and second grade using like smiley faces and sad faces with questions like I I enjoy reading inside school. I enjoy reading outside of school. Just to really kind of capture how they were viewing themselves. Since then, we have gotten more sophisticated tools.

076And Dr. Holm, maybe you can speak to where that shows up in Panorama. Yeah, so we've talked about Panorama before, but Panorama is our social emotional learning screener. And so it allows us to screen for students and also it allows us to see. comprehensively how are our students rating things like self-efficacy how are they doing in those domains how are they doing in their growth mindset and so we can it's private data and teachers use it to support their students and also understand how students are falling in a given classroom or in a given school and so i think the domains like self-efficacy growth mindset they ask questions that specifically get to that in other subject areas in addition to reading. And so I think that would be the current assessment that we use. And

077it is encouraging and helpful to get that third measure of students' social-emotional learning in addition to how they perform on the test. Thank you. Chair Andreessen, can I ask a question? Yes, Director Thompson. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Just kind of a couple thoughts as I try to formulate a question here. So back to the read well by third grade, I think a lot of us here would probably agree that that is a very important measure. So, I think I had heard someone say that that increase the MCA percentage by two percentage points was a Hopkins goal. And then we showed the graph, and it doesn't seem like we ever met that, unfortunately. It also just, you know, it's a tough... percentage to see when you see, you know, less than one out of

078two kids is meeting or exceeding. proficiency as demonstrated in the MCA so that's a challenge I I applaud the use of the letters curriculum which seems like it's one of the curriculums approved by the read act as I understand it and You know would would you say that that letters curriculum is? Direct instruction that they're the teacher is teaching the kids these skills for the reading right? That's how I understand it, too. It's a direct instruction so We see the value of letters and it's a direct instruction and then one of these learning goals here is talking about Concept and inquiry based personalized learning so that's different than direct instruction of the letters Which is working so what why the difference in in literacy? You know supporting letters, which is direct instruction and then these

079other things in the learning goals here more concept inquiry base sure I think I can help with that a little bit anyway, so letters this might seem like a not important detail, but letters is the adult curriculum. It's the adult professional development model that supports the science of reading. So the science of reading is pretty multifaceted, and if the board is interested, we can come and share all about our implementation of the READ Act and science of reading and all of those kinds of things. We're really happy to do that. So so the science of reading has literacy instruction that supports phonemic awareness and phonological Flexibility and things like that that is different than inquiry and concept-based learning so inquiry and concept-based learning as a learning method You know, we typically think about that very

080differently once kids have more of those foundational skills. So in a kindergarten classroom, what inquiry might look like is pretty different than what it might look like in an eighth grade classroom or even a fourth grade classroom, because we know that our primary teachers, their most important job is to really... facilitate and support that social emotional growth, but also those foundational reading and math skills. So what we're doing now to help kind of our system understand where inquiry and conceptual learning apply at those early ages, you know, may not be in the same academic areas. Although, I mean, inquiry around science topics is very appropriate for a kindergartner or first grader. Okay. Can I add something? Mm-hmm. I think one thing I would add, as I've talked to one of my team members who works

081on the concept-based inquiry side of our work most primarily, she provided a really strong example for me when talking to our literacy specialist who is implementing the READ Act or the local literacy plan. And it was really interesting watching them talk through that because one team member said, okay, well, when students get to secondary or even in elementary and in some of those grades, We want them to be able to transfer what they learn to other subjects. And so concept-based inquiry would take something like power and say we learn about power in physics, and we learn about power in civics, and we learn about power in history. And so that's something that we can transfer. We don't want our secondary students regurgitating some civics knowledge. and in physics knowledge, we don't need them to memorize

082the equation, we want them to understand the concept. They can only do that if they have the foundational skills that they learned in K2 through that literacy programming. And so just watching them talk through that, it was really cool and it really illustrated to me how these two are complementary and how they make our system stronger. So in super simple terms there's there are specific times where direct instruction is absolutely needed and there are other times when an inquiry concept based driven approach is more appropriate for the learning the content the Transdisciplinary learning absolutely. Yep phonics is not a concept. It's a skill. So yeah, absolutely And when we've talked to districts who have implemented competency-based systems, they talk about the two skills differently. They talk about we measure our concept-based inquiry progress differently than

083we measure the you know it or you don't, which we tend to see more in the literacy side. Chair Andreessen, I have a question. On slide 28, you have some numbers here, and it's been a while since I've looked at a chi-square graph. It's been a while since econometrics. But is it accurate to say, so it's better, right? And is it, and I know it's squishy and whatnot, but it seems like it's about 20% better than the old way. Is that an accurate way to kind of read that graph? What I can say is there is, so when we're looking at the numbers, the 1.79 and the 1.97, these are their growth scores. So we've essentially put their growth scores in FastBridge from fall to spring into a numeric value. And then we said, okay,

084what are the growth scores for students who were taught under a letters-trained curriculum? And then what about the growth scores for students? taught with a non-letters trained curriculum. And so what we did is we saw a significantly different or a statistically significant difference between growth scores in the... not letters trained and letters trained students. Okay, so there was a statistical differences. Do you have a sense for scale? I don't quite get that right like you know I know it's dangerous to be like this means this and it's going to always mean that but you know roughly for the community right so we're making investment letters I think you know that's a good thing it's seems to be better but like you know do you have a sense for like how things like you know do

085you have like an expected target for next year of like where things should be? Well, so when we asked Dr.. Abby to do this analysis for us. We did feel a little bit nervous because we also know that What matters most when you're doing an implementation like letters training for teachers is like The student outcome data comes after a strong fidelity around implementation. So we were a little bit nervous to even look, but we really wanted to look. So I guess the long-winded answer is no. We don't know, or we're not using this to predict what we're... hoping for but it's something that we will definitely continue to look at especially now as more and more of our teachers are getting trained this the the um this this data was the result of one year's

086worth of staff training and now we're on two years worth so we'll have a broader kind of sample to look for look through okay yeah at least for me i think i'd like to track this at a at that level of detail and be like hey you know if we think that we we should get this amount of benefit we'll call it that and but we're not maybe you know readjusting or whatever right obviously you folks are the experts but um you know i'd like to stay pretty close to that if possible so thank you yeah and what i can say is that higher scores indicate more growth So, like, when we look at the yellow bar, we're seeing more growth. And in terms of scale, for the fellow stats nerds out there, a p-value

087of less than .05 is considered statistically significant. We found a p-value of less than .001. That means, in lay terms, it's super significant. Yeah, well, so, I mean... it could still be significant and not move the needle, right? It could be statistically significant and not really affect anything, theoretically, right? Because I just want to get a sense for scale, right? Was it P001 at 30% or 40% growth, or is it just that 20%? And sorry if I'm using the wrong terms. It's been a while. Yeah, I wouldn't use percentages. I would use the... the values that we've ascribed to the growth scores. And perhaps this is something that you might be willing to follow up with board members in an email for a deeper dive into how that correlates to different outcome perspectives. Sure. Would

088that be all right? Yeah. I want to get clear on the question. Do you understand the question? Mostly. Yeah, if we could follow up over email, that would be great. Okay. So I have, can we disaggregate free and reduced data by race? That's one question. And then this other one that you'll have in your brain. Great, and I just wanted to do a quick follow-up. I know that we in Hopkins have been advocating for moving away from using the free and reduced lunch benefit form, and happily our state has now provided funding for universal school meals, so we no longer, families no longer need to fill that form out. So is there a different measurement metric that we are using in Hopkins or moving toward using in Hopkins to measure levels of socioeconomic status of

089our families? Not really yet. I think we're kind of waiting to see what the trajectory of the forum is going to be. And I know in our updates that we have with MDE, At least monthly it feels like a lot more than that Okay, everybody's kind of waiting for guidance on if not the form then how are we going to measure this and we don't we don't know yet Great. Thank you. Mm-hmm any other questions Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for this presentation for all the time and information that went into it and it's Very easy to look at. So I appreciate that as a non-numbers person. You can thank our MarCom team for helping with that, too. Thank you very much. Thank you. And with that, we will move on to our board

090member reports. Is there anyone who would like to be the one who goes first? Now that Director Adams is... I will go first Thank You chair recent one I wanted to highlight for the public I Had opportunity on January 19th to attend a fun event in the morning with some of my colleagues We were able to meet with some legislators and be able to go over some of these legislative priorities it was really special to be able to present these to legislators to get their their feedback to get their attention I definitely want to call out chair Andreessen and for emceeing as well as our treasurer, Heartland slash Adams, for doing all the work, facilitating and working on the back end. It was a great event being able to go over some of these bullet

091points, expanding and stabilizing student safety, expanding mental health support, eliminating compensatory funding qualification, empowering local elected school boards. spurring innovation and reform, reducing educator and staff workforce shortage. I know that was a nice hot button one right there. And then continuing to fund new expectations for schools. And then obviously want to shout out for praise for speaking during the event and learning more about... You know the CT and what she's working on what other students were working on as well. So it was a great event I thought it was successful. I guess I would say talk to your local legislator and make sure they understand even though we did get Historic funding we are still gonna need that push to continue to get that funding you know, to be more cyclical so then we're not

092continuously running into that same situation every year when the budget conversation is going to come and then constituencies are going to want to understand what is going on at the public education level. And then last but not least, I had the luxury to attend the MSBA luncheon on January 12th. I was able to share my table with Treasurer Hartland. We were sitting with some friends at YZETA just due to the fact that they had some open space, but it was a nice event and we were able to have nice conversations with neighboring districts as well. That's all I have to report. Thank you. Anyone else? Chair Andreessen. Yes, Director Westmoreland. So I work with an organization called Local Progress. We're a national organization committed to racial and economic justice. And we have a Minnesota chapter.

093I'm on the organizing committee for the Minnesota chapter. I'm also on the National School Board Steering Committee. So there are 12 of us who are school board members from around the country who meet, to really advocate for policy at the national level and then support each other in the work that we're doing locally. We released our first ever statement of values, and that's available on the local progress website, and I encourage you to check it out. Really proud of this work, and a lot of the language on there should look familiar. because it's work that we're already doing in Hopkins schools. And it was really an honor for me to be able to elevate that work on the national stage. I talked about our work in Hopkins at our local progress national convening in September.

094And that's where we started to craft the Statement of Values. And it was just published about a month ago. So I'd encourage our community to take a look at that. I'm also part of the Heading Home Hennepin Executive Committee. Heading Home Hennepin is a continuum of care partnership to eliminate homelessness within Hennepin County. And we just approved our legislative priorities. So we're working with the county board. and legislative liaisons at the county level to advance priorities that really reflect things that are happening, realities for families in Hennepin County regarding homelessness. And so we have a shelter proposal, and if you look in our board packet tonight, an incidental report that we'll be voting on momentarily has to do with student homelessness. And so we're looking for support for this legislative priority around really a very

095forward-thinking approach to shelter systems in Hennepin County. So I hopefully will be bringing that to the board so that... that we can decide as a district if we want to support that work or not. I am the only school board member on the Heading Home Hennepin Task Force or Executive Committee, and it's really been a learning experience as I think about the lived experiences of our Hopkins community members and how that relates to an overall strategy to eliminate homelessness in Hennepin County. So, thank you. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Chair Andreessen? Yes. I have a report. Vice Chair Ross mentioned, we did attend the MSBA luncheon and the training at the Convention Center, and that is a lovely event every year that lets us meet school board members from around the state who come

096to learn together about a variety of topics. And in it was a lot of, we heard a common thread of anxiety around, despite the funding from the legislature that we all very much appreciated, that the impact of the various mandates and the coming appropriate salary negotiations that are happening. There's just nervousness kind of across the board as people were wondering what the impact to their larger budget would look like. And so we talked about that a lot, both formally in workshops and then informally in groups. Vice Chair Ross also mentioned the Legislator Breakfast. It's a fantastic event that we host here. We are lucky to have legislators that have very strong ties to Hopkins and they value our input and they give generously of their time every year to come and listen to us. And

097now that that Legislator Breakfast is done from the LAC and our legislators are about to begin their legislative session, they will sometimes run iterations of bills by the LAC and or the admin here to kind of understand the impact, financial or otherwise, on their proposed legislation. They will ask us to kind of humanize. that data and so that is the work for the spring that the LAC is facing and yes I do want to thank our student board reps for their efforts there they had heavy lifts as well to prepare for that event and did a fantastic job. I participated in some district conversations around the formation of clubs and activities and funding them. This was born out of an initial push from a graduated student board rep, Oscar Wolf, but is continued by our

098current student board reps via their inquiries and efforts to gain clarity around. how those clubs and activities are formed, how those two designations are different from each other, how they get funds and how they can use those funds. And so that is a continuing effort. CFAC is meeting, so they will come give the board. recommendation soon so I attended several meetings with them including some additional first new people directors Jimming and Xiao and I had a kind of a history of CFAC meeting that they were kind to provide to us and then I had a lot of help from the business services team as I already mentioned to learn about the role of treasurer I got to help the Meadowbrook PTO pack the break room with snacks for staff there I I'm the treasurer also

099of the newly formed North Middle School PTO, and we finally received our official designation from the IRS as a nonprofit, and that was my responsibility, so I'm very relieved that that went through. And I think that that is all the things that I did in two weeks. Wonderful. Thank you. Anyone else? I just wanted to quickly mention that I'm wearing this amazing t-shirt. It is para professional recognition week at Gatewood Elementary and they have been really making paras feel very appreciated. Just wanted to call out to all the paraprofessionals in the district. You're amazing. You do wonderful work, and our students benefit from you every day. So thank you. And with that, we will move on to our incidental reports. As Director Westmoreland called out, I wanted to make sure that everyone here at the

100table and in our community looked at the homeless student report. I know it is very illuminating information for our community and for myself as a board member to know how our students and our families are showing up in our community every day. And I also think that it is critical that we are aware of that population and the impacts it has because there are not a lot of option for students and families to stay in this community if they are impacted by housing insecurity. So I really appreciate the work that is done in our district to support our families. And keep them here in Hopkins, which is their home. So with that, I would ask for a motion to accept the incidental reports. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I

101have a second. Any discussion? I have a question, Chair Dreesen, if I can. Yes. Just about the homeless report and just looking into it. Is there, and this may be a deeper discussion amongst school officials, but is there ever an opportunity to offer our gym spaces as warming stations for kids who are experiencing homelessness in our district when there are colder days outside? I would definitely pass that off, too. Our superintendent. I don't know if we've ever had that question. It's a great one and We'll look into it our gym spaces are hotly contested areas But providing shelter for people is more important than basketball practice So I think it's worth looking into. Thank you. I imagine the transportation will be the toughest part Any further discussion seeing none all those in favor Aye. Aye.

102Any opposed? Motion passes. And with that, we can move on to our final public comment session of the evening. I have two comment cards, and I am pretty sure one of our commenters had to leave due to the meeting going longer than anticipated. I will call Catherine Walker. Is she still here? Neither are here. Oh, neither are here. They both had a statement, but I can read on Jackie's behalf if that's okay. Yes, this is Jackie Wood, ECSE teacher evaluator. Yes. Okay, I have some stuff I have to read through for public comment. We value having people commenting at our school board meetings, and we appreciate your input. If you wish to speak to the school board during our two public comment times, please observe the following guidelines. We ask that you complete the information

103requested on the card. You may speak for three minutes. Members of the school board will not respond directly to public comments that are made at this meeting. A district representative may follow up with you after the meeting. If you have written comments, the board would appreciate having a copy, which will improve both their understanding of your concern and their ability to investigate and respond. personal attacks of anyone by anyone addressing the school board will not be tolerated persistence in such remarks by an individual or otherwise disruptive behavior shall terminate that person's privilege to address the school board I would ask you since we don't have a comment card from you that you state your name and get just for the record and you have three minutes the timer is here and it will count down

104Great appreciate your mother and the early childhood special education lead for the Hopkins School District And I work primarily at Harley Hopkins So I am speaking on behalf of Jackie wood who is also an ecsc teacher both Jackie and I are also he eight members So I'm just gonna read Jackie's comment So as you listen, it's in her words, not mine, and about her job. Specifically, my job is an evaluator for students who potentially could meet eligibility for special education supports and services. I work on an incredible team to screen and provide students and families a comprehensive special education evaluation. Last year, with the help of the multi-transdisciplinary team, I completed almost 80 evaluations, with even higher numbers that include students who only qualified for speech-language services. This current school year, we are ahead of

105last year's projections from our data, and the state of Minnesota to exceed this number as we meet the needs of students. I take royal pride and ownership in being one of the first voices of the district to families as it relates to entering the world of special education, not only in preschool, but in their future years in Hopkins. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you being here. Thank you, Jennifer. We did have another one from also in early Hopkins, early intervention, a physical therapist. who wanted to address the board on early childhood education in the district. And I appreciate you all coming this evening. Chair Andreessen. Yes. Potentially, if either of those people want to have their comment said in the future, they can still leave a voicemail, and they're free to email us as

106well. Yes. We'll pass that on. Thank you. And with that, I would look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This meeting is adjourned at 8.45 p.m. Thank you all for attending.