January 18th, 2022 Meeting of the Hopkins School Board

0017.07 p.m. Our first agenda item is open agenda. This is the time during our meetings when the board hears public comment from our community. We believe that hearing from you, our community members, is crucial for implementing Vision 2031. We have two options for public comment. Community members are welcome to join us here in the boardroom or leave a voicemail prior to the meeting. We did receive one voicemail this evening from Ellie Kretz, and Elise is going to play that for us now. I just stood with my hands underneath the... Hi there, my name is Ellie Kretz. I have a daughter who is in first grade. Sorry I can't be there with you tonight. Too many close contacts, so I don't think it's really safe for me to come in person. I expose you to all

002that, so I hope you are all staying well. My comment is related to the calendar for next year. First, I'd love to state that I'm happy there's no more late starts, which I found very disruptive. The whole day ended up being pretty much shut those days. I also love to strive for equity with the additional holidays. I guess that my concern is that we dropped to 166 days. which is less than what we were scheduled for this year and that puts us only one day above the state minimum of 165 days. And if I compare that across districts that are close, so Minnetonka and St. Louis Park, Minnetonka specifically, over the course of one scholar's career, with Hopkins, it ends up being 91 days less, which is about a half of a year less that

003the child is in school. I know with all the concerns of COVID and now with high school and middle school moving online. You know, we keep saying that it's really important for these kids to be in school because kids are behind. And so I just would like us to rethink dropping those additional days this year. I'm OK if we can find somewhere else that aren't the equitable holidays. That's fine. But I just want to relook at the number of total number of days. And then finally, you know, just as we kind of move forward long term, if we could look at consistency within a school, it would help if, you know, the middle schools and the elementary schools and the high schools all had similar days off. Right now it's pretty choppy. So if you

004have students in multiple, it's difficult to kind of manage as you think about child care and time off. So thanks for all you do. Hope everyone is staying well and safe and appreciate your time and efforts. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you. Next, we'll move on to our reports. We'll start with our student board representatives reports and who's starting this evening. Awesome. Oscar. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. So as you all know, I was at the last meeting as well, but I came to this meeting because I really want to be present for the vote on the new calendar. So not too much has changed within the last two weeks, except for one big thing. And that is, of course, that we're now online. So I think that there is quite a sense of relief for students

005who were already online due to COVID. They're not desperately emailing their teachers anymore, trying to figure out what in the world is happening in their classes. They can just log on to the Google Meet with everybody else and just have a relatively normal experience. And I think that there's also a sense of relief for students who were in person. Number one, because they're no longer afraid of getting COVID in school. And number two, they're no longer in what kind of became like a not really knowing what's going to happen kind of chaotic environment just because of the constant changes and huge absences. But in addition to the sense of relief that I think a lot of students are feeling, there's definitely a fear of a repeat of the beginning of the pandemic. We all remember

006being told that we're just going on break for two weeks and two years later and here we are. So the immediate impact is that students are relieved, but there's definitely a fear that this week of online learning is not actually going to be a week. And I think that... Excuse me. My one recommendation would be exactly the same as last time continuing to have direct open communication with students and I would likely I would like to quickly commend the administration on doing just that because after the communication went out to caretakers it was forwarded by principal Ballard to students just a few minutes after so I thought that that was really good and I'd like to see that trend continue Wonderful. Thanks, Oscar. Any questions or comments? I have one question. Oscar, does it seem

007like in the Google Meets from today that there was nearly... what felt like 100% attendance, virtual attendance? I felt that there was pretty high attendance actually in most of my classes, higher than it was in actual school for sure. Okay. What about for you in your classes? I would say the same. I would say there was definitely not full attendance or the attendance that you would maybe hope for as an administrator especially, but there was reasonable attendance. Okay. Thank you. And I would say that it's the end of term two at the high school or coming up on the end of term two. So that's where this three-day online school adventure falls, which I think for a lot of students, I mean, it's a welcome break, like Oscar said, from this land of limbo that

008a lot of people have been living in of, are we going online? Are we not? I would say, I lost my train of thought. I would say there is obviously a lot of strong feelings about moving online. I think that a lot of people are, I mean, relieved to not have the effort of being in person. But we're also, by going online, inevitably, especially with such a quick transition, we're inevitably leaving people behind. And I would say that I applaud the district for doing this in a really what felt like a planned way compared to other instances where we've gone online, such as directly before Thanksgiving break, where this was a couple days notice before. So teachers and students are all planning on this and counting on this. But I mean, we're definitely still, we're

009leaving people behind and we're leaving behind most the people who need the support the most at the end of this term. So it's a balancing act. And I think that the right decision was made, but I think it's a difficult decision. And I think that the administration will need to continue to work with. especially the scholars who are most in need at this time. On a lighter note, it's the end of college application season for a lot of seniors. I know I sent off my last application Wednesday, question mark. I'm a little late maybe, but. Early action decisions, early decision decisions are already in. They've been in for a while. Early action two decisions are trickling in slowly. So it's an exciting time for a lot of seniors and time with a lot less stress,

010which is definitely contributing to, I would say, good attendance, but also a sense of apathy among seniors, which is inevitable, I would say. That's about it. Thank you, Parker. You were talking about students who are left behind when we pivot to an online format. What types of supports do you see as being most useful during this particular time? Because I think that throughout the pandemic, our structural response and our system responses had to change depending on what is actually going on in the moment. What are you seeing right now that would be most useful? I mean, first and foremost, I would say that the most important thing any teacher can do, any administrator can do is work with students individually. I mean, having those, just sitting down and having those conversations is just like it

011is in person. It's a very reliable method to get people who are falling behind to work with them and help them catch up, so to speak. That's not something that works as well online, obviously. And so the conversations that are difficult to have in person become impossible when you're a teacher and you have to reach out to this many students, but you can count on almost all of them just not seeing it or ignoring you. And so from a teacher's perspective, I know that online learning, obviously, insanely difficult. And from a student's perspective, I would say there is less of a pressure, especially on students who are already, like, not so into school, like, students who under the current system are not, like, overachieving students, you could say. that those people feel more able to

012just kind of coast through. And teachers then are less able to deal with that. And I mean, it's just kind of this spiral of it's difficult and I don't care and I might as well just not do anything. That's the cause of... a lot of problems with online school. So I think that, yeah, to combat it, it's one-on-one discussions and it's coordinating this stuff in the first place before we go online. And so that's where I'd say, again, nice job that we had prior warning this time that we knew what was gonna happen, because it enabled teachers to work with their students to really plan for this time and so that it really feels coordinated from a student perspective. Thank you. Chair Bouchard. Really insightful. Yeah, Oscar. It is worth noting that students were able

013to come into school today if they wanted extra support. And also in every single one of my online classes, students were able to stay afterwards and get help from their teacher if they wanted it. So I don't think that the problem is a lack of available help. If students are seeking it out, they can get it. I think that the problem is students who are not seeking out extra help because it's much harder for teachers to identify who needs it. So that's where I see who's really getting left behind, as Parker was saying. Makes sense. Thank you both. I have a question. So as you said, Oscar, we did provide the option for students to come in. So we had about maybe 25 kids at West, about 50 at North, and a few more than

014that at the high school. My question is, do you perceive that there is any kind of peer level pressure to... not come in? Like, is there a stigma around coming in because you feel that that, that in-person experience really is best for your learning? I'm just curious about that. I think that there might be some, truthfully. I think that whatever everybody does is what everybody's going to follow, just sort of the bandwagon effect. I think that there probably is, truthfully. Okay. I agree with Oscar. I think that stigma is maybe the wrong word, but there's a lot of pressure that you feel as a student of people around me are doing this. So I should also do this, even if it's not necessarily the best thing. And I know it's not necessarily the best thing

015for me. Thank you. I mean, there's always that aspect of I'm anxious to be the lone person that I know doing this. And that's a big, big thing with these, like you can come into school if you need the support, if you feel like you should be there. Thank you. Thank you both. Next, we'll move to our superintendent's report with Dr. Mary Puri-Reed. Okay, thank you very much chair Bouchard and it's always really wonderful to hear from our our student board reps Thank you for sharing so candidly so as our students mentioned we have shifted to Just a very very temporary period of online learning for our secondary students. I just want to thank and commend our all of the leaders teacher leaders leader leaders who were involved last week in the marathon of meetings

016to make the determinations for what we needed to do for our students and then figure out how to operationalize. So I'm very grateful for the all hands on deck, hashtag true team approach that we consistently take in Hopkins. A few mitigation updates. So as you know, we did move to five-day quarantine for staff in line with CDC and MDMDH supported recommendations. Oops. And then effective today, we did something similar for students. Now, for any students who do test positive, then we are adhering to the 10-day quarantine. I really wanted to solidify my own understanding around that and it really is in line with CDC thinking, but Dr. Lightfoot and the mitigation team talked about our students are not either for developmental reasons or they don't have those strong habits around wearing their mask with fidelity.

017for that last five days as we think our staff will be able to do that really well. And so we do want to just continue to mitigate effectively in Hopkins. And we felt that that nuance in our quarantine reduction at the student level was appropriate. scholars who are close contacts and are not fully vaccinated, then we do need them to quarantine for at least five days. And then... We did talk at the workshop this morning about our desire to continue requesting staff vaccination status and of course providing testing opportunities for unvaccinated staff or staff experiencing symptoms. And of course we would continue engaging with our school board around the policy that may support the best practices in that area. I think many of you already know about these accolades, but just another congratulations to our

018school board treasurer, Steve Adams, who was honored with the 2022 Minnesota State School Board Association All-State Award. A few of us were able to go to the luncheon where most people were wearing masks. Would you say? I would just like to note, I took mine off for about five minutes for photos. Just five minutes. Actually, less than five minutes. That photo took about 45 seconds. So it was a really lovely luncheon, and also our vice chair, Shannon Andreessen, has won the Director's Award. I think I called it by the wrong name in the Friday update. The Rising. Apologies. Okay, well you are a rising star and you won the Director's Award, so congratulations to you. And then our Chair Bouchard has mentioned that the Hopkins School District received the... the Silver Magna Award from the

019National School Board Association, which recognizes our Royal Reps and Royal Connections programs. So really lots to be proud of. And we love putting Hopkins on the special awards map in the state of Minnesota. And a really special district highlight, you may have heard that our very own Paris Timmons was... was a recipient of a Hopkins Education Foundation grant and founded the Beautiful Education program in partnership with a... with the owner of 369 Studios hair salon. And so we will have a cohort of students who will not only be learning skills around hair care, but developing their entrepreneur and business skills as they think about launching their own business one day. So congrats to that whole team on that work. a couple of scholar highlights. We have, if you think about all of our junior high

020and high school athletes who are involved in all of our athletics programs, I think it's really amazing how they're able to, I don't know what's happening with the technology here, how they're able to balance everything that they do, right? The academics with these amazing accomplishments on the athletic front, but our Hopkins gymnastics team is ranked fourth. in class AA and then our Royals dance team placed second at the Lake Conference kick competition. So congratulations to those scholar athletes. And I did want to highlight our innovation design and learning team. This is a really incredible team. Not only are they supporting teaching and learning and assessment in all of our schools, they built and are are supporting virtual edu and professional development district-wide but they have they have been looking at their calendars to maintain only

021the most critical meetings so that they can all be deployed to our schools during this time where the staff vacancies have been so high. And, you know, there've been other people also deploying themselves to schools, but this team has really, really been on it in terms of partnering with principals and teaching classes, substituting when we cannot find the subs. So I just wanted to... provide a department spotlight to that amazing team. And then of course, we'll just end with a quick note around our system goal progress. The reason I do this is just to remind our school board members and our community members that we do have six system level goals. And one of them is focused on operations, how we will have teams that identify. system gaps or flaws that prevent our staff from

022doing their best work. So I just want to credit the IT department with our technology integration specialists who have really helped us be truly nimble when it comes to pivoting a classroom or a school. We could not do this pivoting work without our IT. department and you'll see the head of the i.t department back in the space john wetter who's done a really great job leading that department this year and our technology integration specialists who support all of our classroom teachers, whether it's the, you know, pivoting an elementary classroom to distance learning or pivoting a whole secondary school to distance learning. There's a lot of technology support that goes into operationalizing that pivot. So I'm very grateful to all of the... the thinkers and the leaders that identify all those details that we have to

023think about as well as the folks who help us operationalize. So thanks very much, John, to you and your team. And Nick and Stephanie and Anne and there are a few others who, you know, they are instrumental in helping us make those decisions around pivoting. So, you know, I just am very thankful for the thinkers and leaders that we have who work together to operationalize what will be best for our students. And that is it for the superintendent report this evening. Thank you. Any questions or comments for Dr. Mary Perry-Reed? Chair Bouchard? Yes. I just had a quick question about this most recent pivot to online learning. I was wondering, were we able to provide like we did the first time we went to remote learning? high speed or Wi-Fi access hotspots to scholars that

024need it? Yes, yes. We made that, we made, we provided specific language in the messages that went out to families and staff. And I don't know how many families contacted your department, but we... We made a specific mention of it, and we have been for the last two years been in the practice of providing hotspots to families who need it. So I don't know how many, do you know how many total hotspots have been provided, John? Couple dozen this week? Okay. Over the last couple of years, what do you think the approximate number has been? Okay. 240 in the inventory and nearly all of them distributed to families. Okay. Does that answer your question? Okay. Great. Well, next I would look for a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. I have a motion

025and a second to approve the agenda. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Next, I would look for a motion to approve the consent calendar. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second? I have. You almost tricked me there. You are out of order. Is there a second from someone else? A second. I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Next, we'll move to our treasurer's report with Treasurer Adams. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. Expenses of note. for this period were $4,000 for classroom furniture at Gatewood Elementary, $12,441 for boys hockey ice time at the Hopkins Pavilion. They practice at the Hopkins Pavilion, the

026girls practice at the Minnetonka Ice Arena, and so we pay for ice time at both of those. We had numerous payments for officials at basketball and hockey games, gymnastic and swim meets, and wrestling matches. So our athletic agenda continues to play out. Again this month, we're paying for psychological counselors at non-public schools within the district as we are required by the state. It was $1,300 this time for a two-week period. $200 for a guest speaker in our health sciences classes to speak on nicotine, vaping, and smoking-related illnesses, which continues to be a problem among our youth. Just as an indication of our energy usage, we paid $69,820 for natural gas for November. Expended 36,000 for data backup software, which is reassuring. And $600 to the Virginia area ski team for the Martin Luther King ski

027meet yesterday. So I didn't know there was such a thing, but apparently there is. And we paid for both the girls and boys team. I don't know if it was Alpine or cross country, but at any rate. Sounds like a good way to spend a Monday afternoon. So with that, I move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of $3,240,292.89 for the period from December 29, 2021 to January 11, 2022. I have a motion to approve the Treasurer's Report. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the treasurer's report. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Next, we'll move into new business. Our first agenda item under that category is our world's best workforce hearing. And I will turn

028it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. So we had to do a small agenda switch as a result of our technology issue earlier. So I am welcoming back this team. And I had mentioned in the framing that in 2013, the state passed a bill to ensure that every school district. Make strides toward improved student performance and the bill is called striving for the world's best workforce so every district does pay attention to the their strategic plan and their their strategies and efforts toward improving programs, systems, and practices that result in improved student performance. So I do have a team of leaders with us this evening, our Director of Innovation, Design, and Learning, Anne Ertl. our instructional systems data scientist, Dr. Abby Holm, and our Director of Resource Alignment and School Transformation, Stephanie

029Herrera, to present updates to you, board members, and any community members listening in on the status of the world's best workforce, achievement, and integration, and of course, our work that I mentioned is so important earlier around redefining scholar success metrics. which I think is a perfect segue from our equity audit findings from earlier. So it looks like Director Ertl, you'll be going first. And thank you for being here. If there are other members of the team, if you could introduce them for me. I apologize for missing their names. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Mary Perry-Reed and board members. Can you hear me? Loud and clear. All right, we're doing better. That's great. Okay. So we do have Pam Carmen and Sarah Chauvin as well on the call in case there are questions that are specific

030to some of the information that we're going to be sharing. But the bulk of the presentation will be Director Herrera-Holm and I. So as Dr. Mary Perry-Reed said, we... present every year on the world's best workforce and what is what was unique last year which was my first year doing it was that we actually didn't have very much assessment data at all thanks to covid this year we do have more data than we did last year. However, the impacts of COVID are still ever present in the data and we'll go into some detail around that. So World's Best Workforce is a requirement, but as Dr. Mary Puri-Reed said, we are working toward aligning our success metrics with Vision 2031. And in doing so, the goals that we can set for our Hopkins scholars in alignment

031with world's best workforce can more accurately reflect the scholar success metrics that we hope to engender in our students. Elise, go ahead and switch slides. Thank you so much. So this is the Hopkins Promise, and I think it's important to just remind ourselves of the promise that we are making to our students and to our community. 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 some 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 we are going to, Dr. Herrera, excuse me, Director

032Herrera and I are going to be just sharing a brief overview of World's Best Workforce and Achievement in Integration. Go ahead, Elise, to the next slide. So the World's Best Workforce Plan is a one-year plan, and the important part about it is that it really is about strategic planning and teaching and learning support. Thank you, Anne, and good evening, everyone. Can everyone hear me as well? Yes, thank you. So as Ann was talking about the World Health Workforce, that's a one-year plan, and the Achievement and Integration Plan is a three-year plan. So we're sharing on the progress from 2021, and the purpose of the Achievement and Integration Plan is it's a program to pursue racial and economic integration, increase student achievement, create equitable educational opportunities, and reduce academic disparity. And when we look at A&I

033and the world's best workforce, it's aligned in two key areas of the goals. Elisa, go to the next slide, please. So this is just a graphic representing where the achievement and integration and world's best workforce overlap. So the three overarching goals of achievement integration is integration of race and economics, diverse teachers, and academic achievement. And the world's best workforce goals are goal one, all students ready for school. Goal two, all students in third grade achieving grade level literacy. Goal three, close the achievement gaps between student groups. Goal four, all students are career and college ready by graduation. And goal five, all students graduate. And you can see that achievement and integration strategies are also intentionally aligned to support those goals. Next slide, Elise. And I apologize, I think we have a little bit of a

034delay with the slides are moving. We will we will try to be adaptable to it. So this next slide here is talking about the Hopkins system goals and as Ann was alluding to we've been very intentional about aligning the work of all of our programs and ensuring that we're measuring progress in alignment with our Hopkins system goals. So the old words that are in each of these goal areas are also calling out the segments that are aligned to ANI and also the world's best workforce. So within our learning goal, activating literate, critically conscious behaviors. Within our culture goal, our staff will reflect our student demographics. Within our equity goal, we're identifying, interrupting, and acting against disproportionality. Within our innovation goal, we're deeply understanding important problems and identifying solutions. Empathy goal, balancing power and sharing authentic

035voice. And our operational goal, where we're addressing system gaps. Next slide, please, Elise. So as we will be hearing from Dr. Holm toward the end of our presentation, Systemically, those six goals that Director Herrera just referenced are what should be guiding our world's best workforce plan and then in turn all of the accountability plans that we report on to MDE each year should feed into the world's best workforce. So we've been really intentional about the way that our goals are written to make sure that they encompass. each of those different types of plans so that we can make sure that we are fully aligned and have all of the our work streams pointing toward those six system goals. Go ahead Elise to the next slide. So the first overarching area that we'll look at is

036increasing racial and economic integration. Next slide please Elise. And the first data point that we want to just highlight is in reference to our open enrollment numbers. And so for the school year of 2021, this table shows by school, the open enrolled students that we've had that are students of color and our open enrolled students that are white. And then that final column there also represents of those open enrolled students at each school, the percentage of them that also qualify for free and reduced price lunch. Some of our A&I support strategies related to integration are our Equity Options Bussing Program and our Edina HOP Partnership, which is the Ready, Set! Kindergarten Program and our AVID Program. Next slide, please. The next overarching area is reducing disparities and equitable access to effective and more diverse teachers

037among all students. Next slide, please. And so this table here is showing each of our schools broken down and then also comparing Hopkins as a district to the statewide data. So the first column is identifying the percentage of free and reduced, of students that qualify for free and reduced price lunch. And then our experienced teachers, which three plus years is. That's being referenced the percent of courses taught by licensed teachers and then the percentage of our teachers with advanced degrees And so when you compare Hopkins side by side with the statewide percentages, you have a picture of what that looks like Next slide please This next slide identifies again school by school and then Hopkins compared to the statewide data So this is a representation of our percentage of students of color and our percentage

038of white students enrolled at each of our school sites and our percent of licensed staff of color, as well as our percent of licensed white staff. Next slide, please. So just to highlight some of the data, I know we moved a little bit quickly through those tables, but to highlight the data, our Hopkins teachers have a higher rate of licensure than the state of Minnesota. Our Hopkins teachers have higher percentages of teachers with master's degrees or doctorates. In Hopkins, we have the same percentage of experienced teachers as the state as a whole. With our most recent hiring efforts, 31% as of the fall of 2021 were staff of color compared to 27.5% in the fall of 2020. And that overall, there's been a 2% increase in teachers of color when we look at the fall

039of 2021 compared to the fall of 2020. Some of our current ANI support strategies that are in place to support these efforts is our teaching intern recruitment development and retention program, our equity and inclusion coordinator and professional development programming, and then also it supported the equity audit that you were able to hear about earlier today during the workshop. Next slide, please. The next overarching area is with academic achievement and specifically reducing the disparities that are seen in academic achievement. And I'll go ahead and turn that over to you now, Ann, if we can go to the next slide. Okay, thank you. So these are the next series of slides are going to talk about the world's best workforce goals. The first world's best workforce goal is all students are ready for school. And our local

040goal related to that was 80% of students in the Hopkins pre-K program will be rated proficient on the spring work sampling system in the personal and social development domain. And you can see the connection there with our learning goal. So just as for context, Hopkins preschools are based on the Radio Amelia pedagogical model, which is a student-centered and constructivist curriculum that uses curiosity-driven and experiential learning in relationship-focused environments. So that is the connection to our learning goal in the area of restorative practices and inquiry-driven learning. So each kaleidoscope child is assessed using something called the work sampling system in the beginning and the end of the program to determine progress. Go ahead to the next slide. So this is the first example of a negative impact in terms of COVID. The impact of COVID is

041that We had a lot fewer students participating than we had in previous years. And so we did not make our goal. Additionally, there was a lot of transition in and out of classrooms over the course of the goal. And that led to the data that was collected not being as accurate as we would have liked. So additionally, in general, all year long, we had fewer students in class. Go ahead, next slide. So in terms of change ideas that will continue to support this early childhood or preschool goal, all early childhood staff will experience restorative circles as a means of expressing connection with a goal of staff seeing parallels to student voice, identity, and community value in classroom. So building that restorative culture with staff and students will specifically support students working in the area of

042social and emotional skills that are necessary for school success. Building on those skills are essential for K-12 success, and it's for that reason that we will continue to focus on that personal and social development as goal areas, which are even more critical given our pandemic context. You can go to the next slide, please. So World's Best Workforce Goals 2 and 3 are both related to reading MCA scores. So I'm going to talk about them sort of in tandem. The World's Best Workforce Goal number two is all students read well by third grade. And our local goal was around increasing grade three reading proficiency on the MCA by two points, two percentage points. And you can see how that is related. to our learning goal in terms of activating literate critical conscious behavior. Goal number three

043is around achievement gaps and this is a shared goal with A&I. So all racial and economic achievement gaps are closed and our local goal again related to our proficiency. was that the MCA reading proficiency gap between white students and students of color will decrease by five percentage points. And that is related to our equity goal on the right. You can go to the next slide, please. So again, the effects of COVID are really clear here. We did not meet our goal. In 2021, we had 50% of third graders proficient on the MCA reading, which is a drop from 2019 when we were at 55%. And again, we don't have data from 2020. We should contextualize all of this data. with MDE's warning for us that the 2021 school year presented many extenuating circumstances due to

044the COVID-19 pandemic, and we do need to have special consideration in reporting and analyzing the assessment results. This is a graph showing our Hopkins results in conjunction with the state so the Hopkins Result is in the green and statewide is on the blue so you can see that statewide the trend was down with Hopkins state average I Wanted to show some data around participating director Adams has about that at a previous board table. And so you can see here again, the blue line is the statewide line and the green line is Hopkins. So overall, Hopkins does have a lower participation in reading MCA over and that trend has really increased since 2019. And similarly, our math participation is the same. The next slide will show some comparison data with other districts. So if you look

045at the left is math and the right is reading, you can see that our participation is significantly lower than some of our neighbors and higher than Minneapolis. Ann? Yes. Does this include all of the tested grades or just third grade? This would actually include all of the tested grades. So this is an overall average for all of those assessed grades. Thanks for the question. Thank you. So I think it's important to point out here that really using standardized tests to measure outcomes. is problematic in so many ways. Not only does it entrench deficit thinking, but the current assessment really isn't, it doesn't allow for us, or it's not designed to hold ourselves and our systems accountable for growth because this doesn't accurately measure. This is as students and caregivers continue to choose not to participate

046in these kinds of assessments, they become sort of less and less meaningful in terms of helping us understand really where our students are so that we can personalize their learning and really ensure that they are growing. And this is just one of the reasons that recalibrating our student success metrics is so important. If you go to the next slide. So again, similarly, reading participation was lower. And so while we did decrease our gap between our students of color and our white students, it was not a large enough decrease to meet the goal that we had set. Go ahead to the next slide, please. So as you know, we are working toward personalized learning and also ensuring that we are acting out against disproportionality in terms of race, income, and language and biased achievement tracking. So

047here are some of the things that our elementary schools are utilizing in order to support students in growth. We have district funded coaches and paras that are focused on implementing personalized learning by using things like learning progressions and pathways and student learning profiles. We have a district funded letters cohort. Letters is a very robust professional learning system around that's based in the science of reading instruction. And we have both trainers and coaches participating in that training. Related to letters, we also have Lexia Core 5 reading throughout all of our elementary buildings in order to support tiers one and two development of literacy skills in small groups and in blended learning. And also our Center for Collaborative Classroom and SIPS materials to support those higher levels of intervention. And then finally, we are... systematizing our collection

048of math and literacy data using our FAST system, which will give us more on-time, instructionally relevant data so that we can map out growth plans for each of our students. Our fourth goal is around college and career readiness. And the local Hopkins goal was that the percentage of students in grade 11 at Hopkins High School who meet or exceed a composite score of 21 on the April school administration of the ACT will increase from 58% in 2016, 62% in 2021. You can go to the next slide. So unfortunately, this is a goal that we did not meet with only 71% of Hopkins high schoolers participating in that school day administration of the ACT. They had to come in from online learning in order to test. Ironically, we were one of the only districts in the

049metro area that had 2020 ACT data because we administered that assessment so early that year. But we did experience a dip in 2021, perhaps because of that participation rate. This is another slide related to the ACT data that gives you some of the racial background, or excuse me, racial breakdown of those scores. So in order to ensure that 100% of Hopkins graduates will be placed at their higher education of choice, participate in an intentional gap year, or be their preferred employer's number one choice, we have some change ideas in terms of goal setting. one of the things that we are doing is collecting more data on engagement from students through Youth Truth and Panorama. And we're thinking of this more as street data. So if the ACT is sort of high level. satellite data, we

050want to know more about how our students are viewing their own engagement with the content that they are learning at Hopkins High School through these other measurements that Abby's going to talk about a little bit later. And then we are also expanding some student leadership roles like Royal Reps and HHS Responds to help us do some of those things that... We are hearing from our students around revising and updating some of our curricular and pedagogical approaches. So let's talk about some of that street data. So one thing that we've done since 2019 is collect data from our Youth Truth Survey. And so this allows our students, particularly in our secondary schools, to respond on things like engagement or their relationships in their schools. So I'm going to orient you to a couple of things here.

051This is a report on our engagement summary from 2019 to 2021. And what we can see here is that we've improved with engagement. So on average, our district, our kids are supporting that students are perceiving themselves as more engaged with their school and with their education. Now, another thing to notice here is that the graph shows, okay, what is the change from 2019 to 2021? It also shows our percentiles. So you can see we're in the 14th percentile now, and we were previously in a lower percentile. Next slide. Now the percentiles are looking a little better when we look at relationship summaries. So again, we improved in the degree to which students reported they received support and attention from their teachers. You can see we made a pretty quick jump here and we're in the

05258th percentile now. So despite all the adversities we've faced since 2019, we've seen growth in how our students rate their relationships and their achievement. Next slide. And then finally, we can look at student leadership. We see a jump again here. So between April 2019 and May 2021, we see that more students are saying, if I speak up about school issues to make my school a better place. Now, there's one thing to note here. We did have slightly less engagement in the Youth Truth Survey in 2021 than we did in 2019. So that could be a factor. But really, across the board, we saw growth in nearly all of our Youth Truth measures. Next slide. Thanks, Abby. So the last World's Best Workforce goal is all students will graduate from high school, and our local goal

053was 90% of all students will graduate from Hopkins High School in four years. Next slide, please. And this is a goal that we met, and you can, again, see the trend compared to the state Hopkins in the green. So in 2020, we did reach our goal of 93.4% of Hopkins senior high 12th graders graduating, which is a nice upward trend. Breaking that information down by race, we saw that all groups improved with the exception of our black or African American males. And so what is incumbent then upon us is to take again what this. graduation rate or satellite data is telling us and really drill down to collect further types of data to really deeply understand what is happening with that particular subgroup so that we can make improvements that are relevant and are really

054specifically targeting helping those scholars. Go ahead to the next slide. Some of the change ideas that we are working through are more robust credit recovery program that is actually currently being co-designed with students in conjunction with Hopkins High School administration and IDL staff. Establishing and further supporting uniform grading practices and then also providing more robust mental health supports. So with that information in the back of our in the back of our mind as we're thinking about what it is that we want to know about our students in terms of their growth and and their and their how we want to redefine their success. Dr. Holm is going to talk about the future of accountability in terms of the Hopkins student success metrics. Thanks, Director Ertl. So as you probably gleaned from the presentation so far,

055many of our current measures of success are standardized tests. And that's not unlike other districts. But while standardized tests are common metrics of success, there's good reason to consider what role these metrics should play in our system. Like Dr. Mary-Pete Reed mentioned earlier, there's a 4% predictive factor with standardized tests. So another thing to consider is that many standardized tests were created by eugenicists. So the SAT, for example, was created by a eugenicist. Their origins are also quite outdated and rooted in racism. So these tests disadvantage our scholars of color and our scholars from low-income communities in particular. So that brings us to the work we've undertaken in our district to think about a new system. Next slide. So as a district, we began this journey of re-evaluating our scholar success metrics in fall of

0562018. There was a task force that evaluated our current system, and they recommended that we reimagine what we consider to be academic or educational success. Two years later, I took on the role of data scientist and co-led another community-based task force to direct how we might re-evaluate student success metrics. In this task force, we discussed our current measures of success. Some were more Vision 2031 centric than others. We discussed that some of these metrics could stay, some should go, but ultimately we want our metrics to be guided by the 2031 graduate traits. We also heard from this group that we wanted interdisciplinary growth-based metrics that reflected the whole child, not just a test score. So at the end of that six-week task force, we developed a problem statement. Go to the next slide. So that

057problem statement is that our traditional metrics of success harm historically marginalized populations in Hopkins by inaccurately displaying student growth, closing off academic opportunities, and damaging self-concept of our scholars. Moreover, these metrics are not broad enough to reflect all that comprises the Vision 2031 student and thus will be insufficient in helping us reach our goals. We will challenge the root causes of this problem, comfort with the status quo, bias, focus on comparison, competition, perfectionism, racism, and classism. We will create a new metric to better gauge students' growth and learning and more definitively represent the broad diversity and quality of our students as they strive towards the realm of universities and employment. Next slide. So the task force provided the following recommendations. The first is that while we agree that a new system was needed, we were

058unsure as to what that system was. So our task force recommended exploring alternative metrics of success and some of those associated learning models. So you might think about IB as an example of a learning model and a system for success metrics. We suggest collecting data on people's perceptions of the current metrics and hearing from our students directly on what they liked or disliked about the way that their success is currently evaluated. Our second recommendation is to align scholar success metrics across the entire Hopkins School District, starting at early childhood and ending in high school or transition plus. We heard from parents, teachers, and students that it can be stressful for students to pivot from one grading system to the next, and then implementing a new set of success metrics will come with stress too. So

059we thought, okay, how can we do this creatively and thoughtfully to serve our scholars? Finally, our third recommendation is that regardless of what any grading system looks like, we recommend that Hopkins implement a strength-based portfolio system that captures the whole child in their strengths and contributions inside and outside of the classroom. We also recommend that Hopkins solicit feedback from families, staff, employers, colleges, and students when designing these portfolios and the success metrics as a whole. Go to the next slide. So those recommendations bring us to the end of 2021. Now we'll talk about the work we've done since then. So coming full circle with our work today, we've discussed alignment internally. The goals of World's Best Workforce can steer some of the metrics we might implement. So for example, if we think about all students

060being college and career ready, right now we use AP scores, ACT data to evaluate the goal. But what if we measured it differently? What do colleges and employers look for in graduates? And we measure that and we think differently about what that world's best workforce goal looks like. Next slide. In addition to aligning our goals and programs to leverage the student success metrics work, we have a plan rooted in the lab operating system that can operate in tandem with the world's best workforce goals. So what does that look like? Well, we propose spending the next couple of months to begin what we call a listening journey. So we start with empathize to understand. We want to interview scholars, caregivers, staff members, teachers, paras, college admissions counselors, career recruiters about the current measures of success. Maybe

061we ask a Hopkins student, what do you think about the measures? How do you feel about the MCAs? How do you feel about the ACT? And then we can ask, okay, what is a successful student in the eyes of you? What is a successful student in the eyes of a college admissions officer, in a parent, in a staff member? After this listening journey, we're going to have a ton of qualitative data. So we'll have all the transcripts that we've used and gathered from these interviews. So then we propose, after collecting all of this data, bringing in a group of stakeholders to identify the root causes. What did we hear from all of these people? What has stuck? What could success metrics look like in Hopkins? From there, we can co-design new student success metrics in

062the summer and fall. Maybe it's a quarterly grad traits check-in. Maybe it's a senior competency project. The important thing with this step is to bring in the stakeholders we spoke to in the Spring 2022 listening journey and design new metrics with the people closest to the issue, with the scholars, with the families, with our community members. And from there we can move. So we'll pilot new success metrics little by little starting in Fall of 2022. Of course, that doesn't mean we uproot our entire system in the Fall. Rather, that's why some of the co-designed solutions monitor their impact on our system, our scholars, and our community with the hope that these new metrics built by our community and our research will bring us closer to Vision 2031. So that's kind of the work we have

063ahead of us. You can go to the next slide and we'll answer questions about that presentation as a whole. Thank you very much to the team. You just did a wonderful job of helping us understand the alignment between achievement and integration, world's best workforce and Vision 2031. And then providing us a hopeful outlook for the future of how we are measuring student success in a way that's truly meaningful and advances our Vision 2031 goals. You know, standardized testing is... It's a topic I talk about a lot. I've talked about it at this board table and this idea that we need to have ways of holding ourselves accountable as systems. But one of the major ways that we've upheld systemic racism in public education is by making standardized tests the measure by which we hold ourselves

064accountable as systems. So essentially we're using these tools that are rooted in racism. to measure what we've decided to call the achievement or the opportunity gap. There's a lot of research out there that shows that presenting this data over and over and over and talking about the achievement gap and the opportunity gap, it's harmful psychologically to many of our scholars of color. So we basically created this self-perpetuating system that all hinges on standardized testing. I think you did a wonderful job of articulating that during the presentation and giving the reasons why we need to break out of this cycle. Because as Dr. Mary Perry-Reed alluded to earlier, I think it was during the workshop, what standardized tests are measuring, it's not useful information when we think about what colleges are looking for, what employers are

065looking for. for me most importantly really what our society needs in terms of thinkers and doers and when we think about the students that we're cultivating here in Hopkins all of them deserve so much better than what standardized tests have to offer. So I think this really intentional way of designing more holistic metrics and applying them and using the lab operating system to iterate is really exciting work. It's groundbreaking work. and it's incredibly necessary work here in Hopkins. So I will step off my soapbox. But I have never been so excited by a world's best workforce presentation before because I feel like we're finally getting somewhere and breaking out of this standardized testing trap. So thank you. Chair Bouchard. Yes. Can I step onto that soapbox? Please, yes. Well, thank you for the presentation. And

066I agree with Chair Bouchard that standardized testing is the bane of public education these days. And one of the things that I've been looking at since I've been on the board is who does well on standardized tests. There's a gentleman from Boise State William Parrott that's done a lot of research on that and how do you break out? As a school or school district to do well on those standardized tests And what he discovered was that the biggest correlation for achievement on standardized tests his family income Well, that's something that's really outside of the control of schools. And people wonder, well, why do they have better test scores in Wayzata, in Edina, than they do in North Minneapolis? Well, it's because people of certain incomes group together in cohorts. And it has nothing to do

067with the quality of the instruction, not even the quality of the facilities. It's more about what's the family income. And that's why you can predict with pretty good certainty what some scholar's test score is going to be based on their census tract. Where do they live? What's their zip code? That's the greater prediction predictor than the quality of the education or the school they're coming from. So I've been on this soapbox for several years, and so far it's had limited success. But I will say that we had a... We had a something called a World Cafe at the high school. I think, well, it was before Rhoda came here, but we invited members of corporations. We invited people from higher ed as well as parents and staff and talked about how we might improve our

068educational outcomes. And it was interesting to hear from, especially from employers, they don't really care about test scores. That's not what's important to them. They care about, can the kid read and write? Can they get along with other people? Do they have empathy for others? You know, the social skills. And they said, you know, if there's technical skills, we'll teach them that. So I don't think it's something that we should be trying to train our scholars to do is to pass standardized tests. I think if we can find a better way to evaluate them on the things, the characteristics that are important to employers in higher ed, which is sociability, empathy, ability to learn, they'd be much further ahead in their careers and their higher learning. So that's my soapbox. I pass it off. We're

069going to like shove the soapbox over here to Vice Chair Andreessen. Not necessarily a soapbox, although I agree with you and wholeheartedly support your boxes. I did then have a question since we, I think the district as a whole is pretty much aligned around this goal of redefining our success metrics. is long overdue. I am just wondering, since this is a world's best workforce report, is that even possible within the framework we've been handed from this bill? Do we have to use those standardized tests? That's such a great question. So I have a comment about that I so I think that we do have We do have I'm trying to think of a more professional term than wiggle room we do have some autonomy in terms of identifying the goals and and then how we

070are going to measure our goals and in fact You know, we don't always have that ability with MDE regulation, but even just this fall, we were working with them in terms of trying to shift their thinking on how we report out on QComp goals, which is another one of our aligned plans. And so I do think that World's Best Workforce does offer us some of those opportunities to define. what our goals are and how we want to measure them. But as Dr. Mary Perry-Reed said earlier, we are sort of on the cutting edge of trying to do that. And so I think we are probably up for continued conversations with MDE around how we can report out on these things. Great. Well, if you need some legislative advocacy, you know who to go to. Steve,

071it's Steve. Well, and one of our legislators too, Heather Adelson, is very concerned about this. Just to add one quick thing to that. I think at this point, it's not about elimination. It's about... identifying additional metrics that provide a more holistic approach for students and a more holistic view for the adults who are assessing the quality of our programs, our instruction, our support practices. So we want to add to, not yet eliminate. We don't want to have nothing and then... You have to quickly scramble. So if we continue using the assessments that we have been using because we are required to and we're thoughtful about which additional measures to enhance that collection of diagnostics and instruments, then I think we'll be setting ourselves up for success. And I would argue we kind of exemplified that

072today, right? Because we said, okay, one of our goals is that our students are college and career ready. Here's our ACT data. here's our youth truth data. Our students are more engaged than they were two years ago. They have reported that they have better relationships in school. Those are things that colleges and careers and employers are looking for. And so we didn't take away from the ACT data, but we said there's more to these students than their ACT scores could hear. Director Kahn, why don't you go first and then we'll go back to Director Adams. I had a question on slide 33 for goal number five, all students will graduate from high school. Then below that in small print, it says, survey data indicate that of students who reported considering dropping out, their most often

073cited reason is that they don't see how the work they are doing in school will help them in life. Is there some kind of way to get to these students and tell them that getting that degree is extremely important? Absolutely. And that data point from the Minnesota Student Survey is so critical. And one of the reasons that we are collecting more data around engagement and... in particular with our high school students through Youth Truth and Panorama. I think that the other piece that's really important about that is that we are working really closely with Hopkins High School administration on providing students with more leadership opportunities so that they can also start designing learning experiences both in their courses, but also as we look to the future of what the high school experience might transform into.

074so that they do see relevancy in their high school experience and really feel like it is adding to their sort of repertoire as they look to post-secondary choices. Thank you. Director Adams. Thank you. First of all... Is it possible for us to get copies of these slides? I had trouble reading some of them, so I'd like to have that. They're linked to the packet. They weren't on the packet that I downloaded, but anyway. Also, in the past, we have looked at what the test results are for students that have been in the district more than three or more years. And one of the things that we noted was that the longer a student is with us the less mobile they are the more they can learn and absorb the Learning techniques and they do better

075on standardized tests and if we could see a breakdown of those That would be helpful too. I don't know if well Dr. Holm, I think, would have the capability to slice and dice the data so we can see that. But that was a very telling characteristic, I thought. Yeah, in John Hattie's research, he's identified mobility and transience as a variable that most detracts from student achievement. It's a huge detriment. So longevity in a system is very, very helpful to our students in terms of their learning over time. Chair Bouchard? Yes, Director Hartland. I did want to take a moment to appreciate the implementation and then conveying data from Youth Truth and Panorama. I think that having worked As an American Sign Language interpreter, I've seen like the very act of involving the stakeholders and providing

076the information and receiving it, that that in and of itself is community building and that in and of itself increases this engagement that we're talking about. And so even if the answer is not as high as you would hope. that the act of asking for it and discussing it and valuing that input increases the very thing that we're trying to talk about. And I appreciate that so very much. And in a slightly related vein, then my question is, and I also love how... we're beginning a listening journey with key stakeholders. And I think that is a wonderful way to put it. Have you, or has the team identified since it is January, 2022, who some of those stakeholders will be and how we communicate about this with our, like the parents and other people in

077our network? Yeah. So we have started that, that convening of that group. So for one, We have some IDL team members in mind as to who could serve on the listening journey. So that's the innovation design and learning department. We've also, we're going to put out and ask to principals. And then actually Dr. Mary Perry-Reed and I talked about putting out an ask to just the entire Eisenhower Community Center staff. What experts might we have in our back pocket that might be able to do it? provide their expertise um it might not necessarily be a principal or or someone in the idl department but i think the priorities for now are students family members principals or other district leaders and then idl representation as well so is that planned will that go to say caregivers

078in an email is that kind of the vision to that to get participation or are specific families being targeted? I think probably go out and email what we can talk about more targeting, targeted work as well. I'm certainly open to that. I was just curious what the vision was and how you're going to go about communicating with the stakeholders. Yeah, and I should add that that's just for those steering the listening journey. When it comes to actually listening to people, I think it would be important to speak to a caregiver that standardized tests have really worked for and speak to a caregiver that standardized tests have not worked for and just get a variety of perspectives all around our community. So that will be a very wide net in terms of who we're hearing the

079perspectives from. Thank you. Other comments or questions for the team? i also i appreciated director hartland bringing up the youth truth data the slide that really stuck out to me is slide 32 about student leadership i speak up about school issues to help make my school a better place and if we look at the the increase between 2019 and 2021 and think about what we've been experiencing as a society between those times you know i think it's it's really telling one of the the things that standard this over reliance on standardized testing has done is drive this narrative around learning loss um you know that like we're seeing tons of think pieces about right everybody's talking about and parents and caregivers are experiencing a level of anxiety around and so i found this Okay, I

080found it on social media. But then I went and checked the source. It comes from a website called Teaching is Intellectual, which is an equity-driven website. And so I think this is a really useful way for us to think about this idea of learning loss and reframe it. So in order to believe in learning loss, we would have to believe that learning is linear, calculated in calendar months. Learning is only measured by standardized assessments. Learning only happens inside school walls. Learning always happens when learners are in school. Learning is defined by grade level standards. and learning can be lost. And I think as we work to reframe that, some of this data we're seeing, like imagine the learning that would have to occur to move someone from a place of either not feeling comfortable speaking

081up about school issues or not seeing the point or not believing that they could impact change to a place of... like, yeah, this is what we do now. If we look at the data, there's been a lot of movement in that area. Just a very specific example of how widening our metrics and making them more holistic just gives us a different viewpoint altogether on what we know our scholars have experienced during the pandemic, what we don't know that they've experienced and we need to find out in order to really be in this place of truth as a system. So really appreciate the presentation tonight. Anything else before we close on this agenda item? Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. I'd like to echo the gratitude to the team. Thank you for your time and the time that you

082put in before tonight to put together the slide deck and the thoughtful flow and also your time this evening. I'm going back to the Hopkins Promise slide, which talks about our aspiration to cultivate scholars who work collaboratively, disrupt the status quo, and solve some of the world's most complex problems, three very important skills, set of skills that standardized tests do not come close to measuring. So we have a very important charge in front of us of redefining student success metrics so that we can figure out if our students do know how to do these important things and what's our evidence that. you know, that they can or that they're making their progress toward really acquiring and mastering these skill sets. So thanks to all of you for your presentation this evening and look forward to

083partnering in the work ahead of us. Thank you. We'll move to our next agenda item, which is the approval of the 2022-2023 calendar. And we'll invite Assistant Superintendent Lightfoot to the table, and I'll turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Well, thank you again, Chair Bouchard. So welcome, Dr. Lightfoot. At our last board meeting on January 4, board members had the opportunity to review two draft calendars and to contemplate what the implications might be as you consider the version that seems most fitting for our students and stakeholders. And so Dr. Lightfoot is back with us, I think, to talk about one small tweak and then get board members' thoughts on how we might move forward. Sure. Good to be with you all again. We did, as we had mentioned before... bring the work back to

084our administrative group, gathered feedback there, gathered additional feedback on the placement of items in specific locations. In addition, we did check in with our education association partners in that process. Some pieces that were brought up along those lines are, was there a way when we looked at the extra holiday calendar that we were looking at, option number two, when we were looking at trying to look at that calendar equity, part of the questions were aligning. Could we look at a better alignment of quarters in that, particularly at the high school, being on the terms and the number of term days? What might that look like and could we work a bit on that? So what we did with that, and we're able to finalize some of that this morning, so that's why the quick change

085was necessary. But what was given to you was a more aligned quarter system as we look at what that would be. What it did for us to do that in order to more... condensely look at third term. It moved spring break to the next week. What that did, instead of being at the end of March, moving that to April, accomplished a couple items. What it did is it balanced out more closely the grading days that could occur, the conferencing days that could occur to make sure that the information could be communicated to families, lined up more closely to the quarters. It also allowed us to look at the... time in the beginning of April, which acknowledged also the inclusion of Good Friday and as well the beginning of Passover. So we were able to look

086at that as well in April with that spring break move. Overall, it didn't impact the number of days as has been mentioned. It did not impact the instructional hours. It was just more of an internal alignment. The dates of ending and closing the school year remain the same. Numbers of school days remain the same. Like I said, we're still doing a little bit more of the... tweaking with that, but that was the major item that we received as far as consideration from our education association and we were able to do that and as well add additional advantages to the calendar in the ability to accomplish more of the alignment. So with that, you've had the opportunity to review these previously. Like I said, this one is a little bit different in that it did move

087that spring break component. And so with that, if there are additional questions, I am more than happy to address those and to answer anything or continue to work on things that the board might see that are present within the two options that are in front of you in the packet of materials. Second option being revised as of today. Questions or comments? Chair Bouchard. Yes, Director Adams. I noticed in the draft number two, it looks like we lose one instructional day. Is that correct? Oh, you mean where are you looking at the loss of a day? Well, I'm just looking at the total numbers. Yeah, you mean the elementary is calculated incorrectly on this draft if you're looking at the 165? It should be 166. Term two actually should have 43 days instead of 42. Okay.

088Well, and then the junior high went from 169 to 167. Yep, and that was due to a conferencing conversation with the junior highs and what conferences would look like because we hadn't placed conferences in the other draft. Okay, and the high school went from 169 to 168, same reason? Mm-hmm. Okay, just in light of the comment that we had at the beginning of the meeting, I have some concern about that, how that will be received, but I don't envy your job. Well, I think the other elements to consider is that remember the days are one element. The other element in the construction of a calendar, the instructional hours of learning. And that's why we always want to make sure that, you know, yes, a day is included. But when we look at the hours of

089learning, we're looking at the state minimum of 935 for our elementary and we're at 996. So I understand that we do recognize that it's kind of the both end. when we look at the totals. Yeah. All right. Chair Bouchard? Yes. I think that I too, Director Adams agree with a concern around reducing instructional days, but I also then hear a wonderful quote that says, we're assuming learning only happens in school. Right. And so I think that I'm very much in support of creating spaces in which our community members can celebrate the important things in their lives. And I think that that might have more of an impact and be more meaningful and a place of greater growth for our scholars than maybe in the classroom on that particular day. For that reason, I really support

090it. But I also, as a parent, am painfully aware of how difficult it can be to have your kid at home when you aren't expecting it, aren't prepared for it, and kind of see them going into a world that maybe you don't feel like they're learning very much. So if we could pass this calendar, approve it. knowing that there might be a space for some flexibility to add additional days later on, perhaps in speaking with our teachers union, or maybe the legislature will give us more flexibility about when we can stop and start school. So just wondering if you have any thoughts behind that, would there be? some ways in which we could add days in. at some point? Well, they're all trade-offs. And looking at what you have here is that when you look

091at the 185 days that are available within the context of our instructor's time within the contract, it's what it looks like on those additional days. So when we think about conferences, we can look at different conferencing models. When we think about professional development, we can look at different kinds of professional development models. Those are certainly within our purview. And as we've looked at some of those creatively, when we think about late start days and those kinds of options, where you do have the day and you get some hours and you get some professional development, those also have some of the trade-offs that get associated with them. But certainly those are options that we can take in and we can look further into. We tried to minimize those and what you see here and tried to

092with this model, remove those late starts and compress those into days. So that's why you saw that transition happen. And that's why this looks a little bit different than what we've done before. Certainly you can go back to a late start model that would add those days back. But what that would do is then create that increase in number of days, but then you'd have late starts that you have to plan for. So it's really kind of a both and as we look at those. And there again, it's a lot of the trade-offs when you're looking at out of the 185 days and the time to grade and the time to conference and the time to professional development. Puts you all in the mix of ending up with, you know, as we close, as we

093get closer to that timeframe, what does that look like and what are the trade-offs? We certainly can. I mean, certainly if people want to go back and look at those additional options, certainly I know that part of the goal was to look at what we could accomplish now, especially given the start time components that we also have in front of us as well, with that transition and change as part of the framework for what families will be navigating next year also. In terms of process, what I've been hearing from community members is that they need some certainty around the calendar for next year. So I'm really hesitant to do any sort of like preliminary approval with things that are going to change. I think that families just really need to know so that they can

094be planful for a calendar that looks a little bit different for next year. Chair Bouchard. Oscar. I just have a few. thoughts I'd like to add to this. I've been talking to my peers about this and family about this, about having the high holidays and eat off. And for the most part, my friends who are not in religious minorities were very supportive of it. They think that it's a good idea. And the reaction from my friends who are in religious minorities was shock followed by excitement. Because this really is not a change that we saw coming. We didn't expect it to actually happen. I was talking to my grandparents about this, about the fact that the high holidays may be off. And they told me that they really didn't expect to see this within their

095lifetimes. And truly, my parents said the exact same thing. The high holidays are supposed to be a time of reflection, time with family, but what they became was an annual reminder that we were different, that we were somehow not a part of what everybody else was a part of. And I know that for most students at Hopkins, this is a pretty minor change. It just means that they'll get. a few extra days off, but for those students whose holidays are for the first time being honored, it's a really big deal. Not only will this calendar help students who are in the religious minorities, I think that it will actually help students who are in the religious majority get a better perspective about the other cultures that exist in Hopkins. And the more I think about

096this issue, the more I think about the younger students in our district, the elementary schoolers. Because I remember being a Jewish elementary schooler at Hopkins. And every year I remember falling behind on those two high holidays. The the main issue was never having to make up the work that wasn't a big deal The thing that made it a big deal was that feeling of exclusion that feeling that I had missed out on something and that the reason that I had missed out on something was because I was Jewish because I was not part of the majority religion So I think that in addition to them to the immediate impact of this new calendar It's worth keeping in mind the long-term psychological impact that this is going to have Students in Hopkins who are part of

097a religious minority will no longer have to grow up with that annual reminder that they are not a part of the majority religion. They will grow up feeling more comfortable at Hopkins, and I really do think that that will have a big impact on our current elementary schoolers and any future potential Hopkins student. I think that this will be a huge step towards improving equity at Hopkins, and I really hope that we will be sort of on the... on the cutting edge of this and that other districts around us will start to pick this up and hopefully it will spread further around in the state and eventually the nation. So with that, I would strongly urge the board to approve the second calendar with extra holidays. Thank you. Thank you. I feel like you just

098made your first motion. I know. Should we let Oscar make the motion? I don't think we legally can. Thank you. That was so powerful, Oscar. And thank you as well to everyone you referenced in your comments and for their input as well. This is what it's all about. grappling with these issues. I think that we tend to get really bogged down in the technicalities, which we legally have to, so I understand why we do, right? But when we think about the larger cultural implications, when we think about our culture as a Hopkins Schools community and the decisions that we're making, that we have a really important decision in front of us. Whether we are going to truly structurally honor the diversity that exists in our district or whether we are going to just kind of

099keep plugging ahead in the way we always have. So I appreciate you, you framing it up so beautifully for us, the importance of that work. I wanted to make one last comment. I like said to them before, I'm like, I'm tired tonight. I'm not going to talk a lot tonight, but that apparently is not happening. So I do want to recognize our Hopkins Education Association, our union, for their contribution to these conversations as well. You know, when we think about like. is the value of a school calendar to have the most days possible. What we're not taking into consideration is that educator collaboration time that has been so thoughtfully built into this calendar and that all of our scholars are going to be receiving a much better experience if our educators have time to plan

100and not only time to plan. Time to rest. And I see those priorities built into this calendar in a way that I haven't seen them in previous calendars. So I wanted to note that as well. I wish we could have Oscar make the motion. I'd get in trouble by like, I don't know, the judge of Roberts rules. I'm sure I may ask one more question. Absolutely. Both of you, you and Oscar brought up beautiful points that speak exactly to the work that the board and beyond, much beyond, are trying to do in Hopkins. And I don't know who's going to be in charge of communicating this calendar, but... Does that team, do those people have those same talking points? Can we tap Oscar to write the release about what the calendar is going to mean

101for? I love that idea. I mean, not to volunteer you for additional work. No, I can do it. I'd be happy to. But I think that because there will be community questions, and I think that this frame. It's very important to understanding. I think you're also right that it helps coming from a student perspective. I think that when things come from administration or the board, people are already on guard a lot of the time. But when it's coming from a student, it's a lot harder to say, no, you're wrong because we're the ones experiencing it. So I think it's a good idea. Great. You need a motion? Sure. With that, I would look for a motion that the school year calendar for 2022-23 be approved. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second?

102Second. So we should clarify. Approve draft two, right? So I have a motion and a second to approve draft two of the school year calendar for 2022-23. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Thank you, Dr. Lightfoot. Thank you. We will have you stay with us for a moment for our next agenda item, which is our resolution calling for executive session. And I'll turn it back to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Thank You chair Bouchard, so we are seeking board action to move into a closed session to provide school board members with an update on our negotiations with the Hopkins Education Association The motion should I read the whole resolution yes, please I move that the board approve the following resolution. It is hereby resolved that the

103school board of independent school district 270 Hopkins, Minnesota meet in an executive session to discuss negotiation strategy related to the HEA contract for the 2021, 22 and 22, 23 school years. That the meeting be held in person and commence immediately following adjournment of this regular meeting. Further, that it be noted that all board members, superintendent and clerk were duly notified of intention to call this executive session. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the resolution. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Thank you, Dr. Lightfoot. Thank you. And next we will move into board member reports. Director Adams? Are we going alphabetically? Yes, that's exactly where my thought process was. Well, I've only got two things to report on. but they were fairly

104substantial. On January 7th, two Fridays ago, I participated in person at the AMSD legislative kickoff and Superintendent Mary Perry-Reed presented along with two other superintendents from other districts to brief our legislators on... Our concerns and issues that are facing school districts across the state I was disappointed that one of the major Decision makers at the Capitol Senator Chamberlain who's the chair of the Senate Education Finance and Policy Committee? Was not there for the presentations You were probably not aware of that because you were presenting virtually. But the presentations went from 8 until 9, and he showed up at 9.08 and did not hear any of the presentations. And he's probably the key decision maker on anything that happens at the Capitol this year. So that was very concerning to me. He also showed up maskless.

105So we're going to have a challenge getting anything through the legislature this year. The following Thursday and Friday, I attended the MSBA conference at the Minneapolis Convention Center. And I again attended that in person. Just give a brief rundown of some of the sessions I attended. I had planned to attend the roundtables on Thursday and Friday that take place in the exhibit hall. But once I saw the setup and how confined the area was, I chose not to participate. Just out of fear of catching COVID. So I can't report on any of those. but the workshops in the afternoons were interesting, including the Minnesota School Board Directors of Color and Indigenous Fellowship. It was interesting that one of our former high school principals received an award, Willie Jett, who was principal at the high school

106for a number of years. and is now superintendent of the St. Cloud School District, receive an award for the Superintendent of Color Award of the Year. And it was fun to see him again, as well as a number of my cohorts. Helen Bassett from the Robbinsdale School Board got an award. as did Nellie Corman, who is a chair of the Bloomington School Board. So that was fun to attend. But I think the one session that I attended that had the most impact on me was on Friday morning. And it was a presentation by the Farmington Area School District. on supporting student-centered learning through a competency-based framework. Kind of relates to what we were talking about earlier. They don't really believe in standardized tests there, so that's helped them get in some trouble at the State

107Department, but they have their students prove their competency. And they talked about the different kinds of skills you can test using standardized tests versus, you know, projects, things of that nature. And standardized tests only test a very small subset of learning, whereas a competency-based evaluation that they do where a student has to demonstrate what they know. is really much more powerful and much more holistic. So it was fun to, I'd sat through one of their presentations years ago, but they're still continuing along that line. I believe you've been to Farmington, haven't you? Did you tour there? So there is a model we can perhaps follow in trying to evaluate student performance. So it was fun to see what they're doing and see how they're progressing. And like we've noted earlier today, not every staff member

108in the district buys into the whole process. But it's a gradual process of getting competency-based education implemented. So that's my report. Thank you, Director Adams. Who else has a report? Chair Bouchard. Director Ross. So I had the luxury of attending the MSBA Phase 2. I'm going over to School of Finances. This was on last week, Wednesday, October 12th. I'm sorry. My gosh. January 12th. I might not know where I am. It was January 12th. It's COVID time. It's COVID time. Over at the Minneapolis Convention Center. The information was. thoroughly gone through and it was well received and very good information. Met individuals from different, or peers from different school boards across the state and was able to, it was a lot of information so I have to reread all the details that was presented. thanks

109to the district had the luxury to go there and learn just like Director Adams said, there was quite a few individuals that did not have masks. So I was somewhat surprised, but nevertheless, was able to learn the information and be able to understand everything Steve was talking about. And the topic was school finance? Yes. Okay. Everything from the state, it's all the way down to how you get the funding and make the decisions that, and Erdo and her team were talking about how certain schools, you know, they get the funding, but it's not always equitable. Sure. Good. Thanks. Thank you for taking the time to do that. Both Director Ross and Director Hartland have been putting in a lot of time around their own professional development as board members. Just wanted to acknowledge that. It

110does. It takes a lot of work to get up to speed, especially the timing of board terms that we start in January and we're thrown into this budgeting process. Really appreciate the work that both of you are doing. chair bouchard yes um i have an update from intermediate district 287. we welcomed two new board members one from eden prairie and one from yzetta our and had elections for new officers. So the chair is Crystal Baraki from Richfield. Vice chair is Regina Neville from Edina. Treasurer continues to be Ruthie Dallas from Brooklyn Center. And I was pressured into serving as clerk. Sarah Bouchard, you know my tendency to volunteer when no one else does. Yes, I do. I rely on it. Yes. They are also, or actually are currently in a online learning, distance learning model,

111which, of course, comes with a lot of mixed outcomes and emotions. We did also have the monitoring committee met, kind of more of an organizational meeting and to welcome our newest member, Director Ross, which was fun to talk about all that kind of stuff. And then we established a timeline for our ongoing work. with different policy pieces. And I too was at the MSBA Leadership Conference, delighted to see Steve get his All-State Board Award. And then went to the directors. what is that region meeting? Yeah, region four. Region four, where I was not the only one who expressed frustration with MSBA's decision to leave NSBA and that the conference that they held did not offer a virtual option or virtual access for people who are serving on school boards, in particular in districts like... I

112am that are going into distance learning for students. So that is my report. Thank you. Any other reports? Chair Bouchard? Yes, Director Kahn. So many reports. Mine will be short. So I had the honor of attending the MSBA luncheon for Steve and recognizing Shannon, which was really nice. well-deserved for both of you so congratulations and the second thing that the second meeting I attended was a community and Advisory Council committee meeting where we had a really informative presentation by project sore which I didn't even know we had it provides specialized classes and activities for adults with disabilities and they're looking for people to volunteer and teach some of their classes yeah that's what i did thank you okay thank you for the the robust reports and with that i will look for a motion to

113adjourn so moved i have a motion is there a second Second. I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. This meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 9.10 p.m.