September 14th, 2021 Meant of the Hopkins School Board

001Okay, we can get started. This meeting of the Hopkins School Board is called to order at 7.01 p.m. I'm Chair Jen Bouchard. I'd like to welcome our community members who are joining us via the YouTube live stream. And our first agenda item is open agenda. This is typically the time when we would hear public comment. Our board believes that hearing from our community members is crucial for implementing Vision 2031. And so we accept public comment in two different ways as we are still in the pandemic. And so one option is to submit a public comment via voicemail. And you can find information for how to do that in our board packet. The other option is to show up in person to comment before the board that way. We did not receive any voicemails this evening,

002nor do we have any community members with us in the boardroom to comment tonight. So we'll move on to our reports. And Director Peterson, we don't have any student board representative reports tonight, right? Okay, so we will we will move to our superintendent's report with Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Okay, thank you, Chair Bouchard. I'm just going to find my slide deck and so you can have visuals as we're presenting here. Okay, so I always love hearing the student reports. I'm sad that we don't have any this evening. Maybe you scared them away. It's an exciting feature of our board meetings. Well, but I am very happy to report that Our school year is in full swing, very, very busy at our schools and in our district office department spaces. And we're just truly hoping that our

003scholars are happy and being well served. And we hope that we know our staff are very busy. Our leaders are very busy. And we're also hoping that our staff feel a sense of purpose and are finding opportunities throughout. the days and weeks to just have moments of restoration and feeling centered. We know that that's hard to achieve during such a busy time, especially the first few weeks of school, but we are focused this year on restoration and wellness, and we just want to be purposeful in providing those opportunities for our staff. So yes, we are in week three of school for our K-12 scholars. On August 30, we welcomed, believe it or not, 6,917 K-12 students for the 21-22 school year, which is a really, really robust number. Our birth to age five students. began

004school that next week with a total of 555 scholars that we are serving in those programs. And you can also see the numbers for the Hopkins portion of our T+, our Transition Plus, and our Adult Options ABE consortiums. So I just really want to take a moment to credit our teachers, our leaders, and other staff who serve our families, because when we provide quality service, then word gets out and we will be able to. experience increased enrollment. We're really excited about personalized learning this year. We're excited about outdoor immersion, multi-age classrooms, Spanish immersion, which is now at Eisenhower and Ellis Smith, applied learning or Flex Fridays at the secondary sites, and again, that focus on wellness and restoration. So for this evening's scholar highlight, I wanted to spotlight our kindergartners, the class of 2034, if

005you can believe it. We're probably unable to predict all of the unimaginable things that we'll experience in the year 2034, like maybe we'll be traveling to Mars, as though it were another country. We don't know, but one thing we do know... is that these kiddos are going to graduate in 2034, which is 13 years from now. And that's really the importance of long-range planning, right? Being able to look into the future and try to imagine, try to predict what will be expected or demanded from our scholars. You saw the strong numbers in all of our programs on a previous slide, and I'm really excited to share that one of our strongest gains has been in kindergarten enrollment. Jolene and Nick will provide a deeper dive into enrollment later on in the board meeting, but here

006are a few numbers of kindergarten enrollment at a glance. We're excited about all of our kinder programs, of course. These littlest ones are just very, very... I'm thrilled to be in school, to be with their nurturing teachers, and to just explore and learn. But when we launch new programs like outdoor immersion or a second Spanish immersion site, then of course we're uber excited about those new things and we just love to promote. So there's a lot of infectious excitement in the air about these programs and all of our kinders. And again, I just want to credit our teachers, our leaders. all of our wonderful staff, as well as communications and marketing for the great work that Hopkins champions do to tell the Hopkins story in a really compelling way. For this evening's staff highlight, I

007just wanted to showcase the amazing experience that staff had. Oh, there's Principal Camphy. She's also in our board meeting audience, in-person audience. I wanted to showcase the really great experience that Hopkins staff had on August 24 with the Brave New Workshop. So the lady in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, which honestly, for a second, I thought it was me. And then I was like, that is not me. I'm not wearing my hair anymore like that. But it's Margie Simmons from Brave New Workshop. And we had Director Kuhl, we had Director Adams, and Director Kahn with us on that really exciting morning where our staff were able to, so we had about 400, I think 400 or so adults in the Lindbergh space. And then we had all other staff spread across multiple remote

008spaces to experience this. Really, it was an interactive, a 90-minute interactive experience that got us on our feet, engaging with colleagues that we don't normally work with, lots of laughter, and thinking deeply about the neuroscience behind empathy, behind healthy risk-taking, how to build a culture where we cheer each other on, and how to build a culture where we're always supporting one another. So it was a really wonderful experience. I do wanna just shout out to Barb and Nutrition Services staff for the amazing meal that they prepared on that day. It was a really great way to showcase who we are with the talent in Nutrition Services for our more than 60 new teachers and nearly 60 non-certified employees that are new to us. If you were able to... partake in that meal, then maybe you

009tasted the lemon garlic chicken or the lamb kebabs with lemon mint yogurt sauce, Mediterranean cod fillets, raspberry mojito, non-alcoholic. And fig almond cake. I'd never had fig almond cake. It was delicious. So shout out to Barb and the nutrition services staff for really treating us to a wonderful meal. And then finally, I'd like to put a spotlight on a department, communications and marketing, otherwise known as Marcom. It's really my pleasure to highlight the work of communications and marketing this evening for our community. This is a team of six individuals who are always moving, always thinking, always creating. Jolene is the head of this very professional and skilled team, and she does great work in supporting her colleagues so that they can truly tell our Hopkins story in compelling ways. And I personally appreciate this team

010because when you see what their products are, when you experience their deliverables and their products, you can see that their products are aligned with Vision 2031 and with the Strong Hopkins brand. So there's a great level of coherence in our marketing and communication efforts. So thank you, Jolene and Megan and Michelle. Kevin, Carrie, and then Jenny is also a part of that team, but she's not in that cute picture. And then finally, just the last part of the superintendent's update for this evening is to introduce to our viewers and listeners that we are focused on six system goals in the areas of culture, empathy, equity, innovation, operations, and learning leadership. And I wanted to... try to make a practice of sharing with our community on a regular basis and also with our school board examples

011of work that we're doing in each of these spaces. So the one that I wanted, the piece of work that I wanted to highlight this evening is in the, is aligned to the operational system, the operational system goal. which requires us to identify and address system gaps or flaws that prevent employees from doing their jobs efficiently or effectively. And so right now our focus is in transforming Infinite Campus for maximum usage, but also to be seamlessly integrated with Canvas, which is our LMS, our Learning Management System. So that's a big project that a few of the leaders in our system are undertaking. At the workshop, we talked about how the parent-facing portals, you mentioned Chair Bouchard of campus and Canvas, we really need to make sure that our families are experiencing an intuitive family, parent-friendly

012navigation process as they interact with those platforms. And so that is it for my report this evening, and I'll take any questions if you have them. Thank you so much, Dr. Mary Peary-Reed. Any questions or comments from my board colleagues? Just a comment. The food at the district kickoff was fantastic, and I want to give a shout-out to the nutrition services staff. It was a great meal. It really was. Yeah. And it was beautiful, too. Yeah. The aesthetics of the meal. Absolutely. I really enjoyed the format of your report tonight. You've always been... Featuring highlights, but I liked the scholar highlight and then the department highlight and the goal highlight for a bit of context during our workshop right before this meeting. The theme was goals, so we finished our board goal setting process and

013then Doctor Mary Perry Reid shared the overall system goals and then how her goals as Superintendent fit into and support those and. one of our shared priorities as a board is making sure that our board goals and then the goals across our system are communicated to our community. And I think the more specific we can be in terms of like what those goals look like as they're being implemented, the better. And so the example that you gave of the LMS integration, I think was very much aligned with that. So thank you. Thank you. Any additional comments or questions? With that, I would look for a motion to approve the agenda. So moved. The motion, is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Any discussion? Seeing none, Clerk

014Peterson, I think we can just do a voice vote on this. So all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. I'm going to do something procedurally that I don't typically do. I'm going to make a motion for the consent calendar. So I move that we approve the consent calendar with the addition of our school board goals as listed and articulated in the workshop packet this evening. Second. I have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar with the inclusion of our board goals. Any discussion? Chair Bouchard? Yes. Will those goals be included in the minutes for this session? Yes. All right. Thank you, Director Adams. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Next, we'll move to the Treasurer's Report

015with Treasurer Adams. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. Before I go into my report, I'd just like to reflect on one of the items that was on our consent agenda that we just approved, which was the insurance renewals for this year. And I don't know if it's been this way for long, but I was... and surprised to see that we are in a consortium with other school districts to, on an insurance policy. And the consortium is called ALPS. I can't remember exactly what that stands for, but at any rate, it includes the members, the members that are included in that are Hopkins, Minnetonka, Moundsville, Rosemount, Apple Valley, Eagan Public Schools, Stillwater Public Schools, and Rochester and St. Cloud Public Schools. So I think this should hopefully result in some savings to the district by having all of

016those organizations covered under a single policy. The cost for that policy is over $5 million annually. That's up 7% from last year. And I looked at the individual items on it. I used to be in the insurance business, so I... I have some appreciation for this, but I saw that the biggest increases were in our property insurance for $303,000, cyber liability, which is an indication of the kinds of problems that school districts are experiencing now. That was over a $176,000 increase. And pollution liability. And there's a schedule on there of all the... underground storage tanks for various types of substances including fuel oil and gasoline and things of that nature, none of which are in the Hopkins School District. So I thought that was interesting. Some school districts still have underground storage tanks. The other

017thing that caught my eye was that there's now an exclusion for communicable diseases. And it reads, this exclusion applies even if the claim against any insured, which would be, for example, the Hopkins School District, if any claim alleges negligence or other wrongdoing in supervising, hiring, employing, et cetera, personnel infected with and spread a communicable disease. testing for a communicable disease, failure to prevent the spread of the disease, or failure to report the disease to authorities. So none of that is covered by our insurance policy. And maybe that would explain to our viewing public why we are so concerned about proper immunization and masking, because we are exposed to liability. if that is not rectified. So our insurance does not cover that and it falls on each individual school district to take responsibility for that. So

018end of insurance sermon. Our expenses for this period were, well, we're 17% into the 2022 fiscal school year. So 17% in, and we've only spent 7% of our annual budget year-to-date, which is expected at this point. Expenses of note include over $1 million for a ventilation project at the high school, which those of us that took the tour all saw, or at least portions of it. Nearly $106,000 for new Dell servers for our IT department. $41,000 for a parking lot repaving at North Junior High. And I haven't been up there to inspect that, but that was much needed. And new furniture for a number of our schools. $58,000 for new furniture at North. $55,000 for Meadowbrook. $65,000 at West. And $25,000 for new furniture at Harley Hopkins Early Learning Center. And then there were numerous

019payments to other school districts for a telecommunications consortium. I'm going to have to dig into the details on that. But we, besides partnering with other school districts on our insurance policy, we partner with them on some telecommunications. And that, again, is aimed at saving our taxpayers some dollars. In preparation for the new school year, we paid $56,000 to Apple for charging cables and iPad repairs going into this school year. And there were numerous annual subscription fees for software. This time of year, we typically have renewal of a number of our subscriptions for various software products that we use, and those showed up. So with that, I move that we approve total disbursements in the amount of $4,769,252.52 for the period August 10th, 2021 through September 7th, 2021. Thank you, Treasurer Adams. I have a motion.

020Is 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. And we have eagerly been awaiting the school opening report, which is one of the most exciting of the school year, in my opinion. So much energy here at the start of the year. And so I'll turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed and our cabinet leaders. Thank you very much, Chair Bouchard. We do have a beautiful slide deck for our board members and our audience. And so we will, okay, we'll make sure we're presenting well. So I want to welcome Principal Camphy. She's one leader we have, well, shall we say the only leader we have with

021us in person. All of our other amazing leaders are. going to be coming in from maybe their office or home office spaces. I don't know where they are, but for sure they will show up. So, and like you said, Chair Bouchard, this really is, it's also a highlight. For us as leaders to be able to talk about the opening of school and, you know, we work so hard over the summer to get our school spaces, our classroom spaces, our district office services ready for our students and for our staff and for families. So to be able to share with you details of, you know, what those preparation processes and or results look like is a wonderful opportunity. for us. So I'll just do a little bit of framing and then leaders who are listening in,

022I will just obviously operate the slide deck from my laptop. So all you have to do is, I think when you are culminating your report, then if you could introduce the next leader, then that would be great. And if you forget to do that or don't know who's coming next, then I'm happy to jump in. So it's really fascinating, I think, to look at where we were last year and then just see how, how. much of a different space we are in this year, except there is one huge similarity, which is the pandemic has not gone away, right? So if you remember last year, we opened elementary with a hybrid model two days a week. We kept our secondary students at home for quite a few months before we were able to staff our in-person

023education services for our secondary students. There's a lot of anxiety and even fear around COVID spread and transmission because the vaccine was not yet available. We were even worried that students would not wear masks, either that they would experience mask fatigue or just exhibit mask refusal. And interestingly, we had almost zero problems last year with students wearing masks. They were really, really good about it. And lots of great things happened last year. We surveyed our families and students and staff endlessly and got so much data to inform how we might do things this year. So we're all very pleased to report that this year we're able to welcome all students for in-person learning. We have about 240 families who have elected to enroll in our K-12 Hopkins Online Royal Academy. We are requiring masks for

024all thanks to very prudent and people-facing decision that our school board made a few weeks back. And we're really trying to focus this year on... on wellness and restoration, but also alignment and coherence. What are all of the ways that we as leaders and staff across our system can engage together so that we are... you know, just having multiple opportunities to be on the same page. And a component of that is identifying system goals that we will all share and that inform our strategic plan with, of course, Vision 2031 as our continual North Star. So Hopkins is an exciting place to be. When I talk about Hopkins to my colleagues in other districts, I talk about our amazing school board, and I talk about our incredible leaders, that when we have all of the right

025people in the right place, we can do amazing things for kids and families. So I'm really happy with all of our leaders, and we have many of them with us this evening. So this will be the order of reports. I'm going to have Principal Camphy, Dr. Camphy, go first, just to provide a secondary highlight. And then Principal Radel will go next to provide an elementary overview, and then we'll hear from our IDL and special services team. We will hear from Teriro on transportation, from Director Makura on nutrition services. We have a team of leaders to provide us with summer programming report, Alex, Jalisa, and Paris. and Dr. Lightfoot will talk with us about staffing and then either Kevin or Teriro or maybe they'll tag team it, will touch a little bit on facilities and we

026know that board members had a facilities tour a couple of weeks ago but we were hoping to share some information with you this evening that you weren't able to hear about during the facilities tour at the high school. So that is our order of reports. And Dr. Kempfie, if you would like to go, that would be great. And thank you so much for joining us in person for a few moments. Of course. Thank you so much for having me. It is good to be here. If you want to slide ahead one more, I'm not going to talk long because as Dr. Mary Perry-Reed already shared, we have a fantastic communications and marketing department, and they have been hard at work capturing what West is up to these days. Our leadership team spent four months. in

027the midst of the pandemic last winter, reimagining what learning might look like. And communications came over and has been capturing what it is looking like at our school. So we have a short video for you to see because I think that our staff and our students are able to show it to you much better than I am. So if you don't mind just clicking, we can take a look. One of our core values in Hopkins is optimistic innovation. Utilizing personalized learning is going to help us achieve that core value. So we're innovating our schedule in hopes of empowering our students and helping our students learn and grow. We are taking our classes that were traditionally about 90 minutes and we've made them just a little bit shorter so that we will have a five period

028day. So we're going to start every day in crew. And that's really a time for one teacher to really develop a strong relationship with their small group of students who are in their crew. And then Fridays are our new flex Fridays where really they can take their learning to the next level. So students can opt to start at our regular start time of 7.55 or they can start at 10.35. Their morning is self-paced learning, so they can do that learning at home. If they're starting later, they can come in and do it in the morning. building. During their afternoon, they'll have four slots where one will be their lunchtime. They'll create their own schedule for that day and they will go to that classroom and work with that teacher to either get some additional support

029if they're feeling behind or to do some enrichment activities. So like if you're behind in anything at the end of the week, then you can just make sure that you have all the classes that you need to get done finished. You'll be able to go to some clubs, things like our GSA club. We're going to have some music clubs. things where they can really connect with a passion. I think it's good that we get to choose so we can think about what we actually like to do. Later in the future, we know what we want to do as a job. With the Flex Fridays, I might take classes I need extra help in. They'll make goals in their crew about what do I want to accomplish in those classes each week, and then they'll go

030back to their crew leader at the end of the day to reflect on how did I do, how did it go. So it's going to be very structured. Students will know where they need to go. We, as their crew leaders, are going to work with them to coach them through how to be successful in that time. For students who... need more rigor or more of a challenge. I'll be able to give them things that they'll be interested in doing and that will be personalized to them and what they want to do with those skills. Because some kids work faster than others and some kids work a little bit slower and so self-paced just helps them reach to where they need to be at that moment. With me like there are some assignments I cannot get

031done for like the life of me. and being able to like fall behind and just catch back up later would be useful but also like not being held behind so the ability to like not hold anyone back and be able to go further than most people would. One of our core values is to be intentionally adventurous and this new structure is us taking a step toward that. and I think it will take some practice in the beginning. I think the way that we're rolling out Flex Fridays is going to be really beneficial. We're scaffolding the process, but we've been really intentional about how are we rolling this out, how are we going to support students to get there. We're empowering our students. We're giving them some agency in their education and saying we trust you.

032We believe you can make the right decisions. This mimics what students will have to do in whatever other environments they are in. One of our core values Questions? Dr. Canfie, this is so exciting because you visited us in the spring and told us about all of the ideation and planning that had been happening in order to implement this. And I remember feeling at that time like I wanted to jump out of my chair because I was so excited about the ideas. And I'm having that same urge right now, just seeing it implemented and how our scholars are reacting to this and really, you know. the fact that MarCom centered their voices in the video. Just so exciting to see how this is playing out and really appreciate you taking time to share it with us.

033Thank you. Leanne, I'm just curious on Fridays, how many kids start early and how many kids start at 1055? We are at about half and half that are coming in early and half that are starting later. Okay. Yeah, and I framed that for families really through the lens of how did your student do in distance learning? Because our mornings, they are given assignments that they need to do. And so I wanted families to really think about, will your student be able to engage independently? or not, will they need to be having someone there to support them to complete that work. The morning, that's really where they do their A and B day class. The afternoon is where they choose which classes they want to either get enrichment or extra support with. And so in that

034morning time, they do need to be independent learners if they're going to do that from home versus coming in. In the afternoon, everybody gets some choice and the chance to kind of spread their wings a bit, but we're all in the building in the afternoon. Sure. We offer transportation for both start times. That is correct, which is pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, I just have to say I went to West Junior High Open House last week as a parent, and it was really exciting to talk to teachers about, the ways in which their classes are embodying this new approach to personalized learning and pedagogy. It was just thrilling, really, and you could see the energy. Thank you. We are very excited. That was just a little bit about Friday, but we're also doing

035some innovative things Monday through Thursday. We have some flexible paraprofessional roles that we created that are new and doing some things with student grouping. And so that is, we wanted to take the first couple weeks of the school year for students and teachers to really build community within their classrooms. But then once we move through that, we're going to be Using our flexible learning space in some really unique ways. So that's kind of our next step beyond the flex Friday to create this space where there are many adults and many students and we're all learning together and it just is very interwoven versus one classroom where one thing is happening. I think maybe you could envision like open workspaces is what I'm hoping it will look like when we get it all working. Principal Camphy,

036are you able to briefly share how the model at West mirrors or is similar to the model at North in the high school? Yes. So all three schools are using the Friday, two different start times to provide choice for students. And so at all three schools, students can choose to start earlier. or later and have independent opportunities during that morning time that they can either be supported in the building or be doing independently. I think that at the high school, because of the different age of the students, there are more advanced opportunities like internships available, which is not necessarily something that students at junior high would have access to. I also know that there's been discussion at North about perhaps providing some in some intervention opportunities so supporting students that might be struggling and i

037would say that at west that's more happening in the afternoon because we are doing that when kids want to pick okay i'm going to go and get help with a class that i'm struggling in so we're kind of the inverse of that that they're doing their regular class in the morning support enrichment in the afternoon and north is doing support and enrichment probably in the morning regular classes in the afternoon so i think everybody is also being flexible within the construct of what there is but there's choice at all three buildings for students thank you any additional board member questions or comments for principal camp fee i have a quick question sure So, Principal Campy, for the Fridays, how is the staff feeling about, with half of the student body being there, is there more

038responsibility that they have to take on, plus some of the other things that they're trying to complete? How is that working so far? And is there anything that you've identified that needs to be kind of worked through or spent more time on? So you heard in the video a couple of staff members talk about how we were scaffolding and we were scaffolding for students and for staff. So this Friday will be our first full-blown Flex Friday and by that I mean teachers will actually have some collaboration time in the morning. Students are for the first time selecting their courses for the afternoon. But to get to that point, we spent the first two weeks of school with, we have our crew, which is our advisory. We paired two crews together. And those two licensed staff

039members plus a non-licensed staff member worked together for two weeks to create a classroom culture and come to agreements about what that learning space would look like so that by the time we get to this week, when the licensed staff is off collaborating and the non-licensed staff is with those students who are doing that self-paced learning, there's a common understanding of what the space needs to look like. the licensed staff is going to be in the building and they're going to be popping in to say hey what does that look like or how are we doing are we staying on track are we sticking to the agreements we made about the learning while we were working on that morning piece in the afternoon students weren't picking classes they were just going to their a and

040b day courses because we wanted to focus on the morning but last week we had them practice the system for signing up for their courses even though they didn't get to pick. So we were doing like a little bit at a time. And then in the afternoons, we were having teachers practice their parts of what they would need to do. So I don't think that you could do anything this big and different without people's brains maybe wanting to explode a little bit. I mean, if we're being honest. And I think that we have tried to add bit by bit. And so what I have seen... Like the first Flex Friday coming up to it, people were very nervous. And then I walked around the building, and the building was calm. And then last week, I

041walked around, and we were calm. And so I'm hoping for, you know, three in a row. Is that called a hat trick or something like that? That's what I'm hoping for. Thank you. Any other questions from Principal Campy? Well, thank you very much, and we really appreciate you being with us tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much, Leanne. We'll let you enjoy your evening. Thank you. Mr. Warner or Mr. Wetter or Chair Bouchard, I just have a procedural question. So if I'm projecting... then will the what will the audience see when a leader is presenting remotely but Okay, so there's no way to have it aside be a side-by-side similar to when you're presenting on it Okay, thank you so much Okay, very good. Well, we also have Principal Radel here with us. So, Principal

042Radel, I'm very grateful that you could make it this evening and share an overview of school launch at the elementary level and perhaps a Glenlake spotlight. Absolutely. Thank you, Dr. Mary P. Reed, for having me. Thank you, school board. So, yeah, we are into our third week here. 3,600 students back for elementary. It's just a crazy number to have. Keeping health and safety at the forefront. Our students and staff are wearing masks. They're doing a great job of it. You know, during those times when they're not, and we keep those reminders of keeping our community safe so students get it and they do their part, which has been great to see that this year. Using a lot of what we learned last year. into this year. Some of those things of state release and your

043students getting out of the building safely. A lot of outdoor learning, a lot of outdoor lunch, a lot of outdoor activities as much as we possibly can make sure we're staying safe whenever possible, whenever our masks are off for lunchtime. So I talked to my colleagues, we have six sites, a rundown of two or three different items for each. At Gatewood Elementary, they are excited about the outdoor immersion at the kindergarten level. They have three full sections for kindergarten, so it's been a really robust beginning for them for the outdoor immersion. Dr. Nolan is also implementing Gator reading time, which is common school-wide reading time, silent reading, for all students. I believe they're starting at about 15 minutes a day, again, all doing it at the same time, so that's pretty exciting. Eisenhower Elementary, they

044are an IB candidate school this year. They're also expanding their Spanish immersion as well as outdoor immersion. So Eisenhower has those things going on. Tangland Elementary, they took part in some catalyst training during workshop week. And what catalyst is, it's the creation of improved classroom and school leadership, relationships, and culture. So their staff and their students are focusing on that this year. They also are taking advantage of their center courtyard which has been updated this past year as well as using the outdoor labyrinth as a calming space. At Glen Lake we have multi-age is our big focus this year. We have 11 of our 18 classrooms are in the multi-age setting. In our fifth and sixth grade leader structure for our specialists, which is art, Spanish, music, and phy ed, our specialist teachers are offering

045elective type classes for our fifth grade students. Our students can choose which class to go to on a three-week rotational basis based on their interests. So they'll still see all teachers, but they'll get to elect different courses for that. So that's been exciting. And this Friday, we have our first Glenlake Go field trip experience. Our fifth and sixth grade leader will be going to the Glenlake Golf Course to hit a bucket of balls and to talk to staff there at Glenlake Golf Course. We're excited about that. Meadowbrook Elementary, they are implementing school-wide community circles in their journey to establish a restorative culture. And they're also digging deep with their concept-based learning, which is a combination of project-based and inquiry-based. And lastly, at Alice Smith, they also have multi-age going on. They have a third, fourth

046grouping, as well as a fifth and sixth grade groupings. They're excited about their kindergarten Spanish immersion, the Juntos program. And then this year, they also have some STEAM specialists and musical theater added to their specialist model. So that's what's happening at the elementary level. I'll stop and open up to some questions. Thank you so much, Principal Riedel. It's nice to see you. Thanks for joining us this evening. Any questions or comments from my board colleagues for Principal Riedel? Could you talk just a little bit more about Glenlake GO? It's such an exciting model and would love to hear a little bit more about how that's playing out school-wide. Yeah, absolutely. So Glen Lake Go is, at the foundation, it's experimental learning. So we want our students to be learning outside of school as much as

047possible, but within that it's also bringing experts and community experts and parents into our building to learn from them. There's so many skills and passions that our community has and really tapping into those. So our goal is trying to get students to have experiences as much as we possibly can. So our Hopkins Education Foundation was a big partner in that to start us off. They gave us a grant to fund some experiences. And with that, they also helped fund a bus that we have. We have a 14-passenger bus through our district transportation. that we partnered with Graphic Design Company to wrap that bus. So that's the bus that I will be driving this Friday to shuttle students to Glen Lake Golf Course, which is very exciting. So the goal is to take either whole grade

048levels on these experiences, maybe taking 14 students at a time, really trying to make it organic and seeing what our students are interested in, using their voice and their choice in guiding what those experiences are. Our teams have been collaborating over the summer and will continue to do so this school year to identify what experiences are really going to be robust and meaningful and not just the typical field trip that we've had for many years. It's a really exciting model. And I do have to say the board had the privilege of riding in your bus when we did our facilities tour two weeks ago. So thank you very much for loaning it to us. You're the driver. What's that? You didn't ask me to be the driver. I know. A missed opportunity. Although Mr. Newman

049was an excellent driver that evening and host. So thank you so much for being with us this evening. Any other questions for Principal Radel? Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Principal Radel. Okay, just a quick procedural shift here. So for all of the leaders watching and listening in, as you can see, we could not have this laptop at the board table. project and hear the speaker voice. So Elise is now presenting and we'll just, Elise and I can see each other. So we'll just try to make sure that we're showing the right slide. So thanks again to principals, Camphy and Radel. And at this time, we're gonna hear from our wonderful innovation design and learning team. And we have Anne, Allegra, Dr. Tiffany, Lou, and we're also going to have Fonda present

050a bit from the specialized services perspective. We try to have a strong partnership between IDL and special services. So Fonda will also be presenting. So Anne, do you want to take it away and introduce your team? Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. Mary Puri-Reed. Good evening, board members and everybody watching. I wanted to take an opportunity to first introduce the Innovation Design and Learning team. We've had a couple of new team members join, which is very exciting. And I think as Dr. Mary Puri-Reed was doing a shout out to our fabulous marketing and communications, team and also the video that they did for West Junior High. They were very busy this fall because they also made an introductory video for the IDL team and I would like to, it's short, so I would like to

051show you that now. It's a more interesting way to introduce our team members than me just reading their names. So Elise, if you don't mind playing that video. I'm here to be your advocate and to help you create the very best learning community possible. I am here to reimagine extended learning and enrichment to better serve all scholars. I'm here to help Hopkins use data and measurements to equitably reflect and empower our entire community. I'm excited to build community with you, partner with you, and do whatever is necessary to transform education at Hopkins Public Schools. I'm here to support you to design and test innovations as we inspire all of our learners. 收集和分享各种奇思妙想和老师们一起把学校变成更有幸福感的地方。 I'm here to support your technology use, innovating and visioning towards a more equitable and just community. I'm here to activate student strengths,

052both in the co-design of their learning and by sharing their brilliance with our entire community. I'm here to inspire new thinking and to help create cohesion in our community. Amazing. Props to Kevin Noonan for the video. I was a little dubious, but it turned out really amazing. And like I said, was a more interesting way of introducing our team than I could have done. You could go to the next slide, Elise. Thank you. So as Dr. Mary Terry-Reed outlined earlier, our system this year is organized around systems, these six systems goals, and as such, IDL goals and our work streams are organized in this way as well. So our learning system goal is implementing the E12 learning framework. Our culture system goal is launching and supporting restorative practices through a restorative practitioners collaborative. Our empathy

053goal, which is about acknowledging everybody's equal worth and elevating voices, is related to our work with the Hopkins Instructional Leadership Team and elevating community voice. Our equity systems goal focuses on detracking our various systems. Our innovation systems goal is related to lab operating systems coaching with our Hopkins instructional leadership team and our site and systems leaders. And finally, our operational systems goal is to use the LOS to reimagine really typical curriculum processes like review standards reviews and also curriculum purchasing process. So those are kind of some of the things that our team is going to be focusing on this year. I now want to introduce Dr. Tiffany Nielsen-Winkelmann. She joined IDL and has been very busy ever since joining us on July 1st. to get the online Royal Academy up and running to support our

054scholars who are still choosing to learn and a distance learning model. And she's gonna share a little bit about the Royal Academy and some information about our program and our scholars. Thank you everyone for having us here with you tonight. I'm pleased to share with you about our Online Arroyo Academy. And ultimately with our Online Arroyo Academy, it's one of the many ways that at Hopkins Public Schools we're looking to innovate and provide student-centered learning experiences in service to realizing Vision 2031. So the Online Academy meets all academic standards. But we're really showcasing the learning priorities around personalized learning, concept and inquiry-based curriculum, and restorative practices. We're not able to hear. Let me do that one more time. Yay! Hello, everyone. I'm Allegra Smisek, Assistant Director of Innovation, Design, and Learning. I feel very fortunate

055because I think most teachers and administrators dream of building a school from scratch. And I have been able to have that opportunity and be able to participate in that journey along with our team and with many others who have helped with this founding. A couple of things we wanted to share with you. In our current state, we have provisional accreditation from MDE, and that was really kind of what launched and made the dream a reality that we could take off. We are working towards full accreditation and hope to submit that October 1st. This will be an opportunity for us to really articulate the credibility of our program, and in practical terms, it will also allow us to... open up greater opportunities for open enrollment outside of the Hopkins School District for students who are interested

056in our program. In the past six weeks, we have hired 27 staff members. I think that number actually might have ticked up a little bit today. And it's been a wonderful mix of teachers who have really, in the past year, really thrived in distance learning and were passionate and skilled. For online learning, I really wanted to continue that work. Additionally, we've really had opportunities to hire some incredible new staff members, one of whom you'll be meeting this evening, but we're just really excited for some of our new members of the online academy and to the new Hopkins community as well. The staff right now is developing our collaborative teaching space at Eisenhower Community Center as they continue to collaborate virtually and get to know their students and families. We have about 260 scholars enrolled at

057this time and in their classrooms while they're getting their content, teachers are really focusing on building that community and a school identity. For folks who want to connect with us or have questions, we have our own email address, onlineacademy at hopkinsschools.org. We do have slightly different models at each grade level to support scholars developmentally in an online format. I think the common thread through it all is truly scholar voice. At our elementary level, We have four learning environments that are multi-age. We have a kindergarten one learning environment at grades two, three, one that is three, four, five, and one that is five, six. So we had a large number of scholars in our five, six group, so we had to do just a little bit of shifting to make sure that all those learning environments

058were based. Scholars felt heard and it was a small enough environment. At our junior highs in grades seven through nine, we have IBMYP, interdisciplinary and project-based learning. And that scholar agency is really, really prominent in how students design their learning experience and co-create that with our teachers and guides. At the high school level, We have a combination of core content courses that look a little bit more like a traditional online course. And by traditional, I by no means mean like old-fashioned. I just mean more structured. And then they also are experiencing project-based learning, particularly in their electives. So it's kind of a balance of a new model of learning combined with online learning that they experienced last year. Go to the next slide. In terms of who our students are, as I mentioned, we have

059about 260 students in grades kindergarten through 12. 75% of those students identify as students of color, and 25% identify as white students. I have a further breakdown of racial demographics below. So we have an incredibly diverse student body, and with that, they bring many, many perspectives and life experiences. One thing I wanted to highlight on the other side of the screen, are the languages represented. We have at least 16 languages that our students reported. So just a really rich language community that we hope to invest in and have students share throughout their time with us. Additionally, about 25 students receive English learner services and 33 students are receiving special education services. One visual example, as I mentioned, our teachers have a great passion for online learning, and I think this is just a great visual

060example of that. This is Mrs. Prajada's 5th and 6th grade learning community, and each student designed their own avatar to represent them. And then they combine them into what looks like a traditional class picture, but in a virtual setting and a virtual community. So really capturing that feel of a classroom and this is your crew, this is your class, this is your community in a digital sense. And this just makes my week. I love this image so much. And with that, I will turn it back to Dr. Nielsen-Winkelman. Thank you, Allegra. So as you can see, we have a beautifully inclusive community in our online academy. And while our enrollment has been closed, we do have pathways for scholars to, should circumstances change or family situations change, there are pathways for scholars and caregivers to

061join our online learning academy if they so wish. So the first path is for current scholars who are in person, if they wish to transition into the online Royal Academy, they can complete the in-district transfer request. And then the ask is a one semester commitment. They can choose to continue and stay with us through the end of the school year if they wish. For our current online academy scholars, should their circumstances change and they wish to go back in person, they would follow the same process with the in-district transfer request. And again, the ask is a one-semester commitment. And last but not least, which is really exciting to us, we've had a growing number of brand new to Hopkins. So where families are open enrolling to Hopkins and then enrolling in our online Royal Academy.

062And for our brand new to Hopkins open enrollment, because they're not this year connected to a physical school site, the ask is that they join us for a one-year commitment. So there are multiple pathways should circumstances change and people need or want to move in and out and requests are processed as space allows in partnership with physical school building and leadership. Hi everyone, my name is Yingluo Zegling. So I'm the Associate Principal of AURA, Online Royal Academy. By the way, one of the 27 new hires, what Allegra was mentioned earlier. So I'm very happy here to share some snapshots from life in the Online Royal Academy. Pictured on the right, you can see the administrators, Dr. Tiffany Nelson-Wunkleman and myself, when we were welcoming families at our open house, as well as our staff, our

063amazing elementary staff, gathering for online collaboration to create rich learning experiences for our scholars. And here is an example of what we do in junior high. Students in our junior high program were exploring what makes a good online learning environment and what they need to be successful in it. Scholars applied their communication skills interviewing a peer and an adult who worked from home. Then our scholars selected one of the guest speakers, Dr. Miriam. Sarah P. Reed and Heigou Geologist and the Group Director of Concordia Language Village for small group interviews about their experiences leading teams in an online environment. Scholars combined their learning from the interviews with additional research for the community share of their projects at the end of this week. And then we invited families to ask their scholars to share what they

064have discovered about their learning preferences to be successful in an online learning environment. And for the next slide, you will see a short video about our meet and greet event we had in August at Lansart. Today we're at Burns Park with the Online Royal Academy with meet and greets for our families to connect with our teachers and our scholars and get us started for an excellent year. Hi, I'm Dr. Tiffany Nielsen-Winkman, Learning Design Futurist at Hopkins Public Schools. Today we're at Burns Park with the Online Royal Academy with meet and greets for our families to connect with our teachers and our scholars and get us started for an excellent year. Thank you for sharing. So that was just a sneak peek about one of our many events that we've had or will soon be having

065in our online Royal Academy. If we could go to the next slide, it can tell you a little bit more about some happenings that will be occurring. So we started off with a drive-through open house event. And we held some meet and greets both at Burns Park in person and then we provided a virtual option to meet with our families and our scholars in Google Meets throughout that whole first week of school as we're building community together and co-creating a really human-centered space. Some of our teachers have been actively connecting with families and home visits. Today we had our very first food truck visit to support nutrition services and access for our online Royal Academy scholars. And a big shout out to Barb and the nutrition team for making that happen. So that will occur

066on a regular basis. So we have the next. We have five more Tuesdays in place as we learn about what our community needs are and then we'll continue to be responsive to those. This Friday we have our first outdoor park meetup for our elementary scholars and our junior high team has has been working on their project-based learning and they're going to be doing a community share at the end of the week. And the highlight for our high school team is Monday through Thursday they have advisory. So a really community-centered experience that's all social-emotional learning that they do each day. And then on Fridays, they come together with the whole high school community so that scholars can see and connect with their peers across grade levels and across the program. And in the near future, we're

067going to have an in-person optional biology lab happening as well. So those are just a few of the sneak peeks of ways that we are trying to really center ourselves in the human experience and providing access and opportunities to realize Vision 2031 in a virtual setting. At this point in time, I'll open it up to any questions that you might have for our online Royal Academy team as we... How the new school together. Thank you so much for that exciting presentation. It is so impressive to see what you built in an incredibly short period of time and also the agility and the flexibility that you're offering for families with the various, how did you say them, on-ramps in and out of the program as we continue to move through the pandemic. I just think that's...

068That's a really amazing feature that you were able to build in for our community. So I'll open it up to any questions or comments from my board colleagues. And welcome to all of the new IDL team members. So in addition to building a completely new school, the IDL department has gone through an incredible restructure that I think will serve our district very well in the immediate future to the long-term future. So, so many exciting changes and we're so happy that you've joined us in Hopkins. Cher Bouchard. Yes, Director Adams. I have a question regarding state certification. I understand we're under temporary certification for the online academy right now, but moving towards a permanent one, is that correct? Correct. How is that process going? Have you submitted the application yet for the... Not yet. We're looking

069forward to continuing to dive deep into that work this next week. It's a very intricate application and process. Really? They don't make it easy, yeah? They sure don't, but that's, you know, then the accreditation really means something, right? Right, right. All right, thank you. I'd love to add a layer as we transition and earn our full accreditation. That will allow us to serve any scholar in the state of Minnesota, so it opens up greater opportunity for us to connect with and support and welcome larger groups of open enrollment to our online Royal Academy as well in our Hopkins community. Sure. That's very exciting. I think it'll be a really attractive option for a lot of folks who are seeking a very future-forward online learning experience. Thank you. We hope so, too. Any additional questions, comments?

070Chair Bouchard? Yes. I'm just curious, what do the home visits look like? Could you move your microphone a little bit closer? I just wanted to ask, what would the home visits look like? For the online academy That's a great question. Thank you for asking. So, for example, Ms. Frary, one of our amazing EL teachers, and Ms. Kasten, one of our elementary teachers, connected with a family this week. They were having some technology challenges, so they brought a new Chromebook and a new charger and worked through some technology things and connected with a family that has four scholars. And then also talked about some food support services and really just spent some time with the family in a space where they felt comfortable getting to know each other and learning about how we as a program

071can support and connect with and work in partnership with the family. So that's just one example of a few visits that have already happened this year. That's awesome and so cool that you still have that personalized learning. Thank you. One question that hasn't been asked but I wanted to come back to just in case the 27 hires caused some raised eyebrows with our number of students. I just wanted to clarify that several of those are very part-time. So for example, some of our high school math teachers offer to teach one section online. We also have part-time learning support paraprofessionals and a part-time admin assistant. So I just wanted to clarify that in case there were any concerns there. That's helpful. Director Kuhl had a question. I'm actually good because I was going to ask about

072how the staff was broken up. If there was administrators or everyone was teaching courses, you answered it great. Thank you. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, IDL team. Thank you. Thank you all for having us today. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks again to the wonderful IDL team. And I do see Director Contreras on the screen here. So Fonda, if you'd like to share a bit from special services, that would be great. Sure. Good afternoon, everyone. So I just wanted to start I'll kind of start tying in to where we left off for the online Royal Academy and special services is also collaborating with the IDL department to make sure that students on IEPs are not excluded. And it's a really fine dance of making sure we're not being exclusionary, but making sure it's

073an appropriate location for our students on IEPs to access online academy. So I think we have approximately 30 some we're around that 30 students that are on ieps that are accessing the online royal academy at this time and they still will have access to the other related services which will be offered virtually or if the iep team decides for those services to be provided in person we're thinking through that on an individual basis so each student on an iep will the families will have an IEP meeting with their team to decide what's best and which services are appropriate in the Royal Online Academy and which services may need to be in person. I think one of the biggest things that we are working on in special ed, actually across the state, is we have to

074touch every single IEP to see if students qualify for recovery services. So that includes looking at... around if there was any learning loss during distance learning. Minnesota is a no-fault state, meaning that no matter what happened during distance learning, if there was regression, special ed staff have to recoup and rethink those services with families. Between now and December 1st, we have to have an IEP meeting with every single family, even if the annual IEP is in the fall. So in that case, some of our special ed staff will be touching students, will be having student meetings more than once. So anything in December, we're trying to coach our staff on having those meetings just once. But anything, if it's an annual IEP meeting in the spring. You know, they will be doing that twice. So

075trying to wrap a lot of support around our staff during this time as they have to go through that process. So we did create some online modules for staff. And if you are bored and need something to do, you can sign up in the SPED One Stop. There's a link there to self-enroll and you can kind of see what our staff are having to do this fall. So that's like a huge piece of what they're doing, and we're just trying to make sure we're supporting them through this process. In addition to that, we are noticing an increased amount of requests for teletherapy. So whether students were accessing services prior to COVID, where students would go in for therapy sessions or counseling, we are getting more requests for those services to happen in school through a

076teletherapy model. So we're noticing that, and that's for all students, not just students on IEPs. And then on the next slide, what we're working in in our department is a para shortage, kind of like the driver shortage that's happening. There is a statewide paraprofessional shortage. So we're trying to work through that in our department. We currently have 17 openings. We have created a task force so that when our lease is up at the pavilion this spring, our students have a home for the fall. So we're working on that now, preparing for that move. And then lastly is just I received notification that two of our existing private schools will be expanding next fall. And so we are anticipating a higher number of service needs that we will be meeting next fall. So just looking ahead

077but planning now as it impacts budget as well. Are there any questions? Thank you very much, Director Contreras. It sounds like an incredibly busy time for our special services staff and so many pandemic-related impacts and needs to attend to. So just wanted to express my gratitude for the holistic approach there. I was going to talk about this during the transportation portion, but I think it really relates to what you were saying about paraprofessional positions, that we are across the nation experiencing a shortage. We've been talking about teacher shortages for a long time, and I think that we need to obviously remedy that and bring attention to... shortages when it comes to our support staff who are absolutely integral to our students' experience. And Dr. Mary Perry-Reed and I were on a call with Representative Omar's

078office two days ago, yesterday, sorry. It's been a long week already, yesterday. And, you know, one of the things we were talking about with her team is just the fact that when we're looking at bus drivers at paraprofessional positions that this shortage is impacting us in Hopkins but it's not unique to Hopkins it's a national issue and that we really need attention at the national level and solutions at the national level as well as the state level to really elevate compensation in these areas and and training and support for these crucial staff positions that none of us in districts can do our work without. So I'm glad that you highlighted that in your report because it's important for our community to be aware of as you're speaking with your elected representatives and advocating on behalf

079of our students. So thank you for including that piece. I don't have a question. I was just going to talk about those things for a while. Any other questions or comments from my board colleagues? Chair Bouchard. Yes, Director Andreessen. Thank you, Director Contreras, for this report. I think it's really important that we know what our special services departments are dealing with, in particular this year. I think this time right now until December is going to be a really heavy lift for everyone. So I appreciate you calling attention to that. I do also just have a question specifically about the two private schools that will be expanding. What was the reasoning behind putting that in the report? I think a lot of people would assume that a private school wouldn't have an impact on a public

080school special education department. Could you speak to that a little bit? Absolutely. So we are required to provide special services to private schools that are in our district. And so that's a very good question. And so one of them is closing their campus in another area and combining it within our Hopkins border. And I don't have all the details on the other school, but... definitely they're expanding and so we are as a public school district have to provide special ed services and it impacts the special ed budget because there is funding for our non pub schools but that's for counselor and nurse So anything outside of that special ed teacher evaluators, all of those positions are funded from our special ed budget. And just to clarify, do we get any funding from the state for?

081those students once they're not enrolled in Hopkins Public Schools? Do we get any ADM dollars for that student that's going to private school? I think it's a different percentage if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, it's a different percentage because they also get some funding for those kiddos. So it really impacts us with those numbers. And I believe on the campus that's expanding, it's they're anticipating two to 300 students. And we provide all services, OT, PT, speech. So yeah, we have to provide the same service that we would do for our students at Hopkins School. Thank you. Director Contreras, I have a follow-up question to... Vice Chair Andreessen's question, the services that we provide, are they only to resident Hopkins resident students who attend these private schools in our attendance area? Or do we also provide

082them to students who open enroll from other cities to our resident schools? Yes, so if the private school is within our district and there are service needs, we provide that service. So if that student is coming from another district and that child has an IEP and they are within the Hopkins border at a private school, we do provide those services. Thank you. Any other questions or comments for Director Contreras? Well, thank you very much for being with us tonight and for all of the incredible work your department is doing to support our scholars. We are actually going to take a 15-minute recess. Well, I have to make a motion, so I don't know if we're going to do it yet. And then we'll look forward to getting back to our school opening report. So I

083move that we recess beginning at 826 and returning at 841. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to take a 15-minute recess. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. See you back here shortly after 8.40. This meeting of the Hopkins School Board is reconvened at 8.41 p.m. We are currently in new business under Agenda Item A and hearing from our district leaders about our school opening. And I'll turn it back to Dr. Mary Puri-Reed. Thank you so much, Chair Bouchard. I'm grateful for all of the leaders who have showed up so far this evening to share some really cool details and overviews of many facets of our unique programming here in Hopkins and just have painted a picture of a successful

084start to the school year. And so I am thrilled to invite Director Chapenduka. to the virtual table i think he's presenting from his office um teriro will talk about transportation thank you teriro and other board members in the community with me i have our transportation supervisor mr derek agate first of all with transportation i would like to start by apologizing to all our families who were impacted during the first week of school. And we know how hard it is and how challenging it is not to know maybe where your scholars are. or getting to school after the bell time, or getting picked up and getting home after an hour or two hours. I would apologize immensely for that. And we've been working diligently to rectify some of the challenges which I'll be talking about in

085regards to what's happening in our transportation operations. At the same time, I would like to thank our... team in transportation and our contractor at Lake Country Transportation. This team worked really hard and beyond. We have team members who spend the whole entire week without seeing their families because they leave the transportation facilities at midnight or one in the morning and be back at four in the morning. I just want to acknowledge that and the hard work which has been put into into this space which is so complicated and challenging considering where we were starting with the pandemic as well as some of the operational challenges we have always had within our transportation network which we are working hard to rectify. So our first day of school actually started rocky but processes improved as weeks went

086by. We still do have some challenges we are working on, especially in the area of special education. Some of the challenges we actually encountered related to shortages with bus drivers. As most of you know, we do have a nationwide shortage of bus drivers to the extent that some states have even engaged the National Guard to be driving buses or school districts. We were very lucky enough that we had enough bus drivers thanks to Lake Country Management who actually went on an overdrive of recruiting bus drivers. But still, we just had enough to be able to cover our routes and didn't have extra drivers in case there's emergency situations, which did actually impact some of our routes. At the same time, this partnership with Lake Country also brought new drivers to the district. So about 80%

087of... the drivers who started driving on the first day of school actually knew drivers into the Auckland Public School District. So although they've done some dry runs, they also had some challenges, one due to construction. There's been significant road and rail construction, some of which actually changes overnight. So when they did, they were within the first week or the first five days. before school started. Sometimes the next day when school started, they would find out that the road they used for their dry runs are actually under construction, which really did impact the drop off and pick up times for our scholars. We also had some delays within our new GPS system which would have actually guided the drivers as they go through different chain-dressing routes. We are still in the process of actually getting our

088GPS system installed into our buses as well as other technological triggers which we are anticipating will actually help the district as we move forward. The other thing which actually happened on the first day of school was our phone lines. Actually we realized that the phone line system had been actually programmed so that it shuts down at four and no one really knew until we got information from families and we're able to actually rectify that and that really did pose a challenge because the message was that transportation department was closed when in actual fact all the staff were in the buildings or in buses helping students. We do have a new relationship with our bus contractor, Wake Country Transportation. We have been great and awesome. We want to thank them for their partnership as well as

089the new look into doing business differently. Starting with what you now see every day on our roads, the buses with the decals written Hopkins Public Schools, which are actually bringing visibility to the district. We are anticipating that this partnership will be a long-term partnership and they've been very flexible in looking at things differently and becoming innovative and strategically develop a robust transportation system which is aligned to Vision 2031. We also have been working on deploying new technologies into our into our buses, it's always our system. And unfortunately, due to some of the challenges outside of our control, we're not able to get some of the technological components installed in our buses by the beginning of school. But our vendors are working diligently in trying to get this process working for us. And we're anticipating that

090to probably have everything set up by... by the beginning of November. So some of the technologies we are leveraging include the Hopkins Bus Stock Finder, which will allow families to actually log into the system and be able to find their bus in real time or as changes are being made. What is happening in the past is Infinite Canvas, which is our student information system, feeds information into our routing system and then our transportation routing department does the routing and then that information is carried forward overnight back into Infinity Canva so that families can see it. What the bus finder will do is it will actually eliminate that process. Whereas information is being changed, families will be able to see those changes as they happen live. We are also bringing the GPS system into our buses,

091which is tied to our routing system. And what that does is it will actually trigger the... parent-friendly MyStop app which allows families to be able to see buses if they pick up students and drop them off at their designated locations in real time. And also notify families if there's any delays or if there's any changes which are happening within the routed buses. We are also deploying the student accounting information system which actually allows us to be able to identify students as they get into buses. What this system actually eliminates is students getting into wrong buses. As students get into a bus, they will be able to use a badge system, scan it, and their pictures will actually appear. the student is getting into the into the court bus. We still have some challenges we are

092working on, like I said, which are related to some of our special education due to alignment between the routes and the programs. And we've been working with different departments in trying to identify the quickest way we can resolve some of those issues. And hopefully, as the year goes by, everyone will be able to see the visibility in what we've done in transportation as we align everything to Vision 2031. I don't know, Derek, do you have anything else to add? I have nothing to add at this time, Director. Thank you. And I will take any questions. Thank you. Thank you very much, Director Chapanduka. Director Adams, did you have a question? I do. Thanks for the overview, Truro. When I talked to one of the principals last week, they said that, and we've gotten emails regarding

093this too, that some of the buses are going past scheduled bus stops. And I'm just wondering, is that due to some scheduling or routing problem? Have we changed routing systems from last year? You can invite Derek and then I'll start. Yeah, Director Adams, we have not changed our system from last year. However, each year we look at our routes per board policy to make sure they're efficient and safe. And so each year the routes get adjusted slightly. This year we had a lot of drivers that are not familiar with the district. And those, even in years that we have experienced drivers on in the first few days of school, those things happen. So it was not a... system that was changed, but yes, the routes were somewhat reconfigured. So it's due to driver inexperience, sounds

094like. Yes. Okay. All right. And then just to add to what Derek said, one of the things we actually did this year, we did send out a survey to families trying to identify those who were opting to actually use the district buses and those who were actually opting to use their own transportation so that we could desegregate those families and then concentrate. uh on the actual families who needed transportation uh we still have that process open for families to change their mind if they want to use district transportation uh it's a way to actually create some efficiencies thank you chair bouchard yes director cool i'm wondering um Has there been additional challenges put on you for the additional pickup on Friday mornings? And how have you adapted to be able to make that happen? Thank

095you, Director Kuh for that question. So what we are doing currently, one considering that we did send out a survey to families to identify those families who were planning to actually be picked up on the first year or those who were planning to be picked up on the second year. What we currently have, which is not sustainable in the long run, is we are actually running two two routes at every bus stop for the at least for the first month. We identified those families who didn't respond to the survey whether they are using the first tier or second tier so that we don't miss any students. So the challenge to this is mostly tied to the budget. We do have some resources we set aside to actually help mitigate some of those challenges. Thank you.

096Director Chapinduka, I had a question about drivers. So it was great to hear that Lake Country was so proactive in recruiting drivers. But you mentioned that we're still experiencing a driver shortage in Hopkins. If we were fully staffed with drivers right now, like how many drivers are we missing still? Dirk, can you answer the last question? Chair Bichard's question. Yes, Chair Bichard. If we were, you know, right now, if we were to, we do have our routes covered that we need at this point, but we, if we look at the spare drivers that we would need and the drivers that we would need for, you know, open routes, we would be short probably about 17, drivers right now, even though we're covering our routes. That's what would be ideal for us to have to not

097have to not experience the challenges that we're having right currently. Thank you. How many drivers do we have total at this point? We currently have, I'm not sure of the exact number. We have 55 drivers. currently and we we are experiencing more ridership than anticipated so we are we are needing you know more more drivers especially in the area of special ed I understand thank you Director Chapenduka, thank you for addressing the communication breakdown on the first day of school. That's really what I heard the most about from parents. I think parents and community members understand that there's a nationwide driver shortage. Obviously, we're all impacted by the construction. And when you say it changes overnight, that's no exaggeration. I'm always like... As I'm leaving my house, what way should I go? Uh-oh, that was

098the wrong way. That cone was not there last night, right? So we're all experiencing that. So I think that there was a great deal of understanding from community members around those two factors. What was really upsetting was on that first day of school that there was no way for families to get the information they needed about where their kids were. And so I appreciate you. talking about it tonight and just want to emphasize that that's a systemic issue that we need to make sure that we have solved for next year because there was already a sense of anxiety, both excitement certainly, but anxiety sending students back to school in the midst of the pandemic. And to add that communication challenge on for parents that first day of school, I think caused a lot of a

099lot of extra anxiety that didn't need to be there. Thank you for mentioning that, Chair Bouchard. And again, we apologize for that mishap. Again, considering the transition between when our previous bus contractor left. And unfortunately, when we tested the systems, we tested during the day. We never tested after 4 to see what the message would look like. So we do apologize and we promise that this will not happen in the future. Thank you. I appreciate you explaining it. Chair Bouchard? Yes, Vice Chair Andreessen. I had a quick question, especially to follow up with the shortage of drivers in special education that was. talked about earlier. I know that you're, I think that the district is contracting with a company called CST to make up for that shortage. And I'm continuing to hear that there are

100issues with communication with that company and specifically with the drivers. Have we got any plans in place to kind of take care of this transportation issue for our families? Thank you, Director Anderson. And Derek, you can chime in too. Yes, definitely, Director Anderson, we do. We still do have some communication challenges which are tied to the contract we have with CST. And part of the challenge is CST actually is the middleman for the different... bus, speed bus contractors out there. And so it's a variation of different contractors who actually work with CST. And if a building is more needs for special education transportation, you find out that probably have more than one vendor applying that building, which may sometimes bring some challenges because these are all different vendors. with different modules. So we are trying

101to mitigate that by actually leveraging Lake Country transportation to actually pick up some of those students once we've identified and getting solution on extra drivers. Derek, do you have anything else to add? Yes, Director Andreessen. I also wanted to add to that that Everyone in the industry, in the transportation industry, is experiencing the same thing, and that is a difficulty in finding staff. I also recall that for special services there's a shortage of paras. Some steps that we are taking to do that is to get the direct numbers of the vendors that service Hopkins so that we can call them directly rather than going through the staff at you know, at CST. And the other challenge that we had, we contracted with CST, you know, far in advance of other districts going to them. And

102so they've had a, right now, all the companies similar to CST with the shortage of drivers and especially special ed, some of those companies are just out of. out of vans and drivers at this time. So it is the somewhat perfect storm where we're having the driver shortage and we're also having a shortage in finding employees. However, we are taking the necessary steps that we need to do to make sure that we could stay in contact for our scholars and families. Thank you. Any additional questions or comments for our transportation team? Okay, thank you both very much. Thank you, Director Chapenduka and Mr. Agate. It is clear that we do have some work with transportation, but at the same time, there's a lot to be grateful for. And the truth is that the vast majority

103of our students have been transported safely and on time. We have transportation and dispatch staff with Lake Country that are working really, really long hours to... problem solve in real time and to also spend some time in the proactive space. So I'm thankful for all of the long hours and lots of thinking going into the problem solving. I was at the high school watching the buses show up and depart and I saw a familiar face driving and it was Paul Spakowski, the CEO of White Country driving a bus. Derek has also driven buses. Our assistant director, Jason Schoolmeesters, is driving. And so it's clear that, you know, they're really, really working hard. And we all need to partner with transportation and, as a system, work together on continuing to problem-solve around any lasting issues. So

104we're looking forward to the challenge and simultaneously appreciate all of the hard work. Derek and Tarira, if you could pass that to the team. So at this time, we're going to invite Barb McCura, our Director of Nutrition Services, to the virtual board space. Are you there, Barb? I am. Did you hear earlier when we were praising you and your team for that delicious lunch on August 24? Yes, yes, I was here and I heard those wonderful accolades and I will be certain to pass them on. Oh, good. Well, thank you. You all work so hard and you're always so focused on making sure students are eating healthy and interesting food. So we appreciate you very much and we're looking forward to your report. Thank you. As you can see, the... The bones of my report

105are short staffed. But our team is amazing. We have around 39 veteran staff who are returning to work. We have 14 new staff this year. And we have at least six openings and three people who are out on. either long-term or intermittent family medical leave. And so with things like increased enrollment, new programs like the Hopkins Online Royal Academy, Flexible Fridays, how that changes schedules, Harley Hopkins, expansion of the early childhood learning there and the services that we're providing there. and different programs that we're doing, like the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program that we've been doing at Eisenhower for quite some time are being expanded and brought into Alice Smith and Gatewood, serving increased meals because of free meals for all. We have been taxing our staff quite a bit. If there is anyone out

106there listening to this that thinks that they might like to cook in a kitchen with kids and serve them, it is wonderful, gratifying work. It is very busy. It is very physical and mentally challenging both ways. The central office team has been out almost daily supporting our staff in the kitchens to make sure that we can meet the schedule needs of each one of the school sites and feed all the students. And I was lucky enough to be at West Junior High last week when they only had two of their six employee positions that were at work last week. I was lucky enough to work alongside that team there. And I can just say that I really believe that some of the work that the school leaders are doing with children, yesterday and today I

107was at Alice Smith, around restorative work and empathy and kindness. I think it is really showing up in our students already. I've served on... school meal lines for many years, but the kindness that the students show and the relationships that they're willing to engage in and build just at the beginning of the school year here are really incredible. So that, along with we've been serving around 4,000 lunch a day and around 1,500 breakfasts a day, and our counts do continue to go up. We still have parents every now and then who don't know that we're serving free meals for everybody. So I would expect that our meal counts will continue to go up for the next two or three weeks as word continues to get out. We do post it a lot on our Facebook

108and Twitter pages and our social media. We send out letters. So we're not certain how we're missing. that communication with some families, but there's just a lot to read and stuff for everybody. So we haven't started some of our programs yet, like our a la carte program. We just don't, our staff doesn't have the capacity to deal with adding that in right now. The students are asking for it, so we're trying to figure out a way, especially at the high school, we're trying to figure out a way. that we can bring that back, especially those high school students who are very active and can be in those big growing spurts. We know that sometimes they need the extra nutrition. But one of the other challenges with the a la carte program, yeah, I'm just trying

109to... figure out how to navigate it with our staff so that they can handle those extra sales. Also, there was a new law put into place by the Minnesota legislature about lung shaming. And that can also impact how we handle things with a la carte sales if students don't have money in their account. And so we're needing to meet with The high school administration will probably have to have a policy in the district to address how we address the sale of foods to students without lunch money in their account. It's not 100% clear yet. I was on a webinar last week listening to the details of it, but it did sound like we might have to develop a policy to address that. So I think that's probably the student's biggest complaint right now is the

110no a la carte. They were so thrilled to come in those first days of school and see their fresh fruit and vegetable program. I mean, like literally thrilled. They were kids at Pangolin the very first day of school I was there. They were giggling and they were so excited to see their fresh fruit and vegetable bars back to serve themselves. So that was really, really heartwarming to see. But I think that concludes our report. I'm deeply grateful to the school community and the school leaders and our school nutrition team for the support and all the work that goes into feeding kids every day. So there's been a lot of great partnerships with a lot of different people around the district to make it happen. So with that, I would ask if there are any questions.

111Thank you, Director Mercura. It's nice to see you and really appreciate all the work your team has been doing. Any questions or comments from my board colleagues? Chair Bouchard. Yeah, Director Adams. Barbara, I thought we were on the summer meal schedule. So I'm flummoxed by the idea that kids still have to have money in their account. I thought all meals were free now. The meals are free, but if the students want to buy a second entree or other a la carte items, like maybe it is a granola bar. I can't even think of what we used to have on our a la carte program anymore. It seems like it was eons ago and got COVID brain bad. But if they want to buy additional foods, and mostly the students want to buy second entrees. So

112they'd have to have money in their account for that. All right. Thank you. Well, keep us updated on kind of the implications of the lunch shaming legislation and what you need from us as a school board at that policy level. So we'll continue to collaborate there. Any additional questions or comments? Thank you very much for being with us tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much, Barb, for your report and all of your work. And at this time, we will transition to summer programming. A very quick report from Alex and our colleagues, Harris and Julissa. Thank you, Dr. Mary Perry-Reed, and good evening, board directors and public. I hope everyone is doing well tonight. We had a very busy, active summer. It was really nice to get people back together in the buildings, having really wonderful

113learning experiences going on throughout Hopkins. I will read them just to make sure that... No one's efforts get overlooked. We had adult enrichment classes, AVID Blink, Camp Royal, ECFE, extended year learning, ESY, our free parks program, K-8 enrichment classes, K-8 targeted services, kids and company, pre-K hop kids enrichment, pre-K outdoor adventures, pre-K stepping stones, 9-12 credit recovery, Ready Set Kindergarten, and Royal Connections. So it was a really wonderful summer. And here to tell you a little bit more about a couple of the programs are two people who are still fairly new to their roles. And we're so fortunate to have them leading our programs here in Hopkins. The first person you'll hear from tonight is our Summer and Extended Learning Coordinator, Paris Timmons. And then we'll hear from Community Education's Youth Programs Coordinator, Juliza Smith-Breedlove.

114Paris, do you want to start? Good evening everyone. I'm going to share with you some information about targeted services from this year's summer program as well as grades 9 through 12 credit recovery. This year's summer learning program had 415 scholars at four different sites. It was three weeks in duration, Monday through Thursday, and our educators focused on personalized and experiential learning. I apologize for the background right now. No worries. This is real life, right? It's so hard to keep them away. We have all been there at one point or another during the pandemic. So, okay, our educators focused on personalized and experiential learning as well as community building and social-emotional learning. As we have started this school year off strong, we have done a lot of reimagining of what targeted services and credit recovery can

115and should look like. We understand that both of these programs have historically focused on a deficit model and has not been entirely inclusive. And we're going to change that. This fall, we will have a secondary scholar task force centered and led by our incredible Hopkins scholars. The goal of the task force is to generate meaningful conversation about what secondary scholars would like to learn. gain and experience from targeted services and credit recovery for the 21-22 school year and summer programming. We are going to revitalize the Camp Royal model for all K-12. In the past, it has been done for K-6, and this year we're going to extend it to all of our runners in K-12. We will accomplish this by using the MYP-IB design cycle that our more specifically our junior highs are familiar with.

116And it has steps for scholars to follow when innovating a new idea, experience, and or project. So from start to finish, the conversation will start with them, will be developed by them, and we will execute a new model this year. We are very excited. I will pass it to Shalisa. Thanks, Paris. I'll talk about the free park program. This summer we had a total of 175 Hopkins scholars registered over a six week period at three park locations with programming Monday through Thursday. Scholars were aged five to 14 and were provided opportunities for social emotional learning, social interaction, and free recreational activities. In partnership with School Nutrition, lunch meals were provided daily in the food truck. We also utilized Emergency Response AmeriCorps members and Royal Connections instructors to lead each park site. Our Royal Connections instructors

117were current or recent Hopkins High School graduates that were hired through community education to be assistants in the parks. Overall, scholars have expressed that they had lots of fun, enjoyed their time in relationship building with instructors, and expressed interest in future programming. With such great feedback and encouragement from school leadership, we have begun the process to imagine and coordinate efforts to offer this program year round with increased partnerships. opportunities for tutoring and other unique enrichment activities as well and will remain embedded in community sites where most need is considered if there's any questions for us we can take now thank you it's so nice to meet both of you and thank you for being with us this evening any questions or comments from my board colleagues Really excited to hear about the holistic reimagining of

118credit recovery and the extension of Camp Royal to more scholars. I think that's going to be a great evolution and looking forward to welcoming you back to the board table in the future to hear about how it's going. Thank you for being with us tonight. Thank you. Okay, thanks to the three of you, and a special thanks to Julissa and Paris, who maybe are new at the board table. You did a great job, and we so appreciate you joining our Hopkins District Office teams. At this time, we're going to transition to Nick Lightfoot, who will provide a staffing update. Good evening. Thank you, Dr. Mary Perry-Reed, Chair Bouchard, members of the board. You know, I mean, like everyone, an incredible shout-out to the Human Resource Department, a small group of individuals who do incredible support

119over the course of all the recruitment, selection, and retention work that we have as part of our hiring. If you think back to March, we were talking about positions that we were reducing, and as we entered an ESSER phase of funding and shifts and transformation that were occurring, if you look through your emails and saw all of the new position postings that were part of the work that was ongoing throughout the course of the summer and the programming that you're hearing about. The delivery of that includes job descriptions, offers of employment, and everything in between. So I can't thank the individuals in our human resource team and as well our hiring managers. In a minute, I'll show you some of the statistics that go along with that, but also some of the story lies in

120what you are also hearing from our hiring managers this evening, is that the labor market right now is incredibly challenging. What we discovered over the course of the summer was that when we had gone through our processes and made offers to individuals, what often resulted was that individuals had multiple offers to choose from. So it was not uncommon that individuals had multiple offers and had ability to negotiate rates of pay in ways that were different than our landscape had been before. So oftentimes districts, because of ESSER funding and resources, were competing for many of the same individuals. And so part of the work that we had to do the course of the summer was to look at our recruitment strategies and ways that we could further develop deeper networks and how we're tapping into community

121resources and looking at our own individuals within the organization to use our story to help really do our work of recruiting and bringing top talent to Hopkins. So that was really a primary focus of what we've been looking at throughout the course of the summer. As you have heard, part of what we're also looking at is we continue our work throughout the course of the year. is not only how we might have absences for positions, but how we're also looking for any ability to have any, I guess, Director Chavenduca and Supervisor Agate had spoken to. We are running maybe at the level A, but we know that if we have needs for substitutes, we are nowhere near where we need to be in order to fill positions if there are the... absences that occur or

122leaves that occur or transitions that occur. So we know that while in some cases even for programs that we might be fully staffed for, we also have the challenges of looking at what backfilling for substitutes looks like to help with any kind of disruption for service delivery. So all of that is kind of the landscape of what we look at and what we're facing right now within the labor market. What I am able to tell you given the results that we have been able to look at so far with the notion that our hiring is continual and ongoing, of course with that caveat, is that the first slide that you'll see here that we have is when we look at our licensed teacher population for hiring. When we do our annual tracking, you'll see that

123we brought in 68 individuals of licensed teachers this year. We do look at our percentages as we look at our success indicator of really our student demographic matching our staff demographic. I'll give you some additional information on a couple upcoming slides. But I am pleased to let you know that in 21-22, we were able to increase our ratios over previous years. As you'll see we were able to bring in 16.2% of the individual and these are new hires new to the district 16.2 identified as black 7.4 Hispanic 69.1 white and 7.4 is Asian Pacific Islander Elise we can move to the next slide in the next slide what you'll see is we tried to take a look at 1819 which was our year that we had some previous increases prior to COVID impact but had

124previous increases in our percentage of educators of color. So you can see that as we look at the population that was 40 hires in 2018, though we've done 68 this year, you can see 16.2% this year, 10% of the population in 2018 identified as black. 7.4 this year for Hispanic, previous years 5% in 2018. As we look at our white population, 69.1 this year, previous year in 2018, 72.5. Lastly, as we look at individuals who identified as Asian Pacific Islander, 7.4 this year. Previously, 12.5, especially as we looked at some of our native speakers for our previous work that we had done with our Shinching program. So as we think about our work and we think about looking at driving toward our new incoming population, what's important for us is that we think about what

125that looks like in comparison to our student demographics. And you can see the corresponding pie chart there, which shows you the percentages of where we are within our student population. And what we're really driving for with our onboarding and our new hiring is looking for populations that we hire and bring into the organization that can meet or exceed our student demographics. You can see that we still have ways to go in our work, but you can see that we are also improving and looking at the power of networks and looking at the power of building environments that really speak well to our diversity work, in our equity and inclusion work, and creating spaces where people can come to thrive to do their work. And that really is what our story needs to be in order

126to really recruit those individuals who are top talent who have multiple offers in front of them. So that being said, I think as has also been spoken, not only for our licensed teacher population, but as you also identified, Chair Bouchard, we know that we have additional populations to recruit from in all of our support areas as well. The next slide, Elise, shows where we have been with our work. This year, as we look at 21-22, you'll see that we hired 60 individuals in our... support staff non-licensed areas percentages of course they're similar to what we had had before in other areas 11.7 percent identified as black 10 percent hispanic 70 percent white 8.3% Asian Pacific Islander. And I think it's also important to note that in all of our work this year, we have not

127been able to recruit American Indian Alaskan Natives, whether in our instructional staff as well as our support staff. So as I've mentioned along the way, we have work to do. We are striving toward that success indicator of making sure that our student demographics are reflected in our staff demographic so in a brief overview of an incredibly complex course of summer and and continual hiring work i am open for questions as the board would have thank you very much assistant superintendent lightfoot it was really interesting to see the the comparisons and i appreciate how you you laid out the data for us any questions or comments from my board colleagues I think it's important to note that in addition to hiring educators, support staff. all of these positions that are really crucial to the functioning of

128our district that represent the demographics of our students that we're focusing equally on retention and what does it mean to create a culture where teachers, educators of color, staff of color want to stay here, right? So I think we have an environment, especially in Minnesota, where we have a lot of districts who are actively recruiting teachers of color and staff of color and then not changing their systems and practices and honoring the the unique perspectives and voices that these staff members bring in so I wanted to name for our community that we are also focusing on that work of transformational change within so that So that the staff members that we work so hard to find and hire and recruit want to stay with us here at Hopkins. And I am grateful for that work

129that's truly happening system-wide and certainly for the work that our HR department has done with hiring this year, especially with our pleasant surprise of increased enrollment. And Chair Bouchard, I also want to call out that we have been fortunate to be the recipient of a Pelsby grant through legislative funds to allow us to develop a mentorship program that really is designed to serve mentoring capacity and support capacity for our teachers of color. And that's been a two-year partnership with Hamlin University and our ongoing continuous work with Metro State University to bring in intern candidates as well. So exactly and well said. Our work also needs to focus on retention. Thank you very much, Assistant Superintendent Lightfoot. Any questions or comments? Thank you for being with us this evening. Thank you. Thank you again, Dr. Lightfoot,

130and please extend our collective thanks to the human resources team who, as you mentioned, has really, really worked many hours in hiring and onboarding our staff. We appreciate their efforts. At this time, and it is 9.30, I think at the board table, we're just wondering maybe where we would be in the school. opening report at around 9.30. So thanks to everyone for their listening and presenting stamina this evening. Last but definitely not least, we have Kevin Newman, who, Kevin, you wear the hat of supervisor in buildings and grounds, but also school board driver, I think. We have Kevin here to just give us a super brief facilities update, some information that perhaps we didn't get to during the facilities tour a couple weeks ago. Kevin? Thank you Superintendent Mayor Perry-Reid and greetings Chair Bouchard and

131the board. First I want to start before grounds the custodial report. Mark Parsley, our custodial coordinator, had a robust summer with the resumption of summer programming. And so that led to the need for a quick turnaround with deep cleaning our buildings in areas of carpet cleaning, floor waxing, window washing, bathroom refurbishing. You know, the demands, our buildings don't rest. And so it's very vital, you know, for when our teachers come back in August that they have a building, they have a classroom, they have facilities that look refreshed and ready for the new school year. And our custodial staff really put in time to make that happen. So I want to really thank Mark and his custodial team. And then grounds this year, Melissa Gallagher and her group had challenges with the drought that hit. The

132challenge we have, obviously, with the Vision 2031 is having outdoor learning available for our teachers and our programs. And so the irrigation systems got a little workout this summer to create green spaces for our students and staff. And also the summer brought out insects. And so we had many challenges with Asian beetles. box elder bugs, ants, ground bees, and of course the ever present grasshoppers. So it's added to some of the challenges of our grounds teams. And they also were involved in, I think one to remind the board is we've been very aggressive with our flex furniture in the district. And all of the ordering from this last school year, we scheduled for summer delivery, which helped out, you know, keep the chaos down during the school year. And so there was a lot of

133movement of old furniture going out and being repurposed. and then the new furniture coming in. So that took a lot of time and then to coordinate that with all the summer programming, it becomes quite the dance going on in the summer. Moving on to maintenance, COVID protocols put a lot of strain on our systems this last school year. So that required a lot of belt and filter changing over the summer to gear up. A lot of thanks goes to Gary Strom and the maintenance crew, not only maintaining the air handling systems, but also with The ionization projects and getting all that installed Gary met a lot of challenges in procurement and finding labor to do the installations but every unit in the district now has Ionization and that was a huge accomplishment that Gary and

134his team completed this last during the middle of last school year Environmental Health and Workplace Safety, Jeff Goldy, has been overwhelmed. He's been helping out with the mitigation team, as we all know, and doing a fantastic job. Jeff came through helping Mark with procurement of PPE for staff, students, teachers alike. And also continuing with the ongoing occupational health and safety with OSHA, meeting those guidelines, doing walkthroughs of all the buildings this summer, looking for OSHA-related issues so we have safe working environments. And then not to forget, he also conducts the annual air quality testing that we do in the wintertime. And oh, how valuable. Those reports have been in showing our constituents, showing our parents, showing our teachers the quality of our air that we've committed at Hopkins in maintaining our facilities and our equipment

135and running them in an efficient way. District Safety and Security Dave Carlson has been working with district cameras, also with doors, keys and locks. A lot of our buildings went through some changes this summer, especially with team teaching. And so he was involved with... doors being put in between classrooms not necessarily to the hallway but between rooms and so that was a big help with him and he'll be a lot more involved in district security as we start this next school this new school year And then finally, summer construction. And again, we had a great tour. You know, what we can accomplish in 10 weeks is just amazing. And, you know, we get the help of SiteLogic. We get the help of our teams here at Hopkins. But to literally demo. and put things together

136in a 10-week time period so things are up and running when our teachers arrive in mid-August is just amazing. We had three major rooftop projects at the bus depot west and north and of course the large ventilation project at the high school and all of those projects met challenges by supply chain issues and the amount of stress that a lot of our staff had to deal with to make sure things were done in a timely manner. And again, just how We appreciate the help of some of our contractors and vendors. We really do have a group of people that understand how important it is for us to get things done in a timely manner. And to do it all within a 50-day period is just, I'm amazed every year that it all falls into place.

137And I thank you, the board, for taking the time. to go through and see some of those construction changes that we did at the high school a couple weeks ago. That is my report. Well, thank you so much. And it was great to spend some time with you two weeks ago as you took us through the high school. It was a very comprehensive tour and, you know, really helped us understand the impacts of the investments and the decisions that we've made over the past couple of years. Your team has been integral to the health and safety of our scholars, our staff, and you know like never in a million years did any of us think that we would be talking about hvac and filtration and ionization as much as we have um going on what

13818 months now no longer than that we've been talking about longer than that um and you know the way that you've also addressed, you mentioned this, community member questions and concerns as the quality of our air filtration becomes of paramount importance as we continue to move through the pandemic. That's been an added role that your team has taken on communicating about that with our community members. And I really appreciate your work there. So thank you. Any questions or comments from my board colleagues? We will look forward to another facilities tour in the future. It looks like I may have to arm wrestle Mr. Radel for the bus driving. Right? Well, then you could be like the tour guide, you know, like the stand-up tour guide at Universal Studios. I think there's a role for everyone,

139right? Okay. Thank you. Sure. Is there? No, that's it. Oh, that's it. Okay. Yes. Well, at this time, I'd like to express gratitude for all of the leaders who showed up in person or virtually to help present our school opening report for our esteemed board members here and also for our community. Lots of really great learning, and as Principal Aromacelli, Principal of North Junior High, said in one of his parent newsletters, or maybe it was a staff letter, he said, you know, we have a really important charge to highly educate this generation and to prepare them to be transformational civic leaders, responsible family members and neighbors and transformational leaders in lots of different spaces when they grow up and get delivered to the world. So all of the work that each staff member and leader

140does across the many aspects the many um spaces in our district is very very important work we're all contributing to the education of our young people and um i i value this work and and all of the leaders who are involved in creating the conditions for this to happen well so thank you leaders and um i guess i'll turn it over to chair bouchard for the next Sure, we'll move on to our next agenda item, which is redesigning and learning parameters community, and I'm going to pass it right back to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed. Okay. So last spring, we shared with our staff here in Hopkins and also with community members and parents that we would engage in some system redesign conversations to make... really some long-term decisions about learning parameters that inform how we organize

141schooling experiences for our pre-K through grade 12 and beyond scholars. And so after lots and lots and lots of planning and also aligning our current efforts with recommendations that came from our 2018 task forces, in particular... the school design task force that looked at time and space. We have come to a point where we are preparing for the community engagement sessions that we've been talking about for a long time. And so there's some pretty broad and system-wide questions that we hope our staff and community members and students can help us answer. One is around what should the start times be for our older and our younger students. Another one is around potentially having a year-round elementary school. We talk about the needs of our elementary scholars to provide more stability in their schooling experiences to

142create opportunities for that. The summer learning loss to be mitigated and how might we try that at one of our elementary sites and is that something that our community and parents would support? Another question is around where our sixth and ninth graders should spend the majority of their time. We're one of the last probably one or two districts in the entire state where we still have the seven, nine and the 10, 12 model. And is that the right thing for our students or does our family and do our scholars want us to shift? And finally, how might we create flexible hybrid models that become permanent features in our system? So we are building our online learning academy. We are offering flexible Fridays for students to apply self-directed learning. What are other ways that we can

143create flexible and hybrid opportunities for our scholars to prepare them for a world where learning and work is much more flexible and much less predictable than the way we experience to school or the way we experience work? So we will be inviting community members to sessions that will be co-led by some of the adults who have been involved in this process who will... I'll partner with 28th, 7th through 12th grade scholars who have said that they would like to be involved and we're going to train those scholars and they're going to be really helpful in the research and in the reviewing feedback from the community and putting together recommendations for district and board leaders. So that's a little bit about the engagement sessions and I invite our community to strongly consider participating in one of

144those four sessions. A couple of them will be in person and a couple of them will be virtual. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. You know, I've been hearing a lot of input from our community members who are really desiring that later start time for secondary. And we've been, you know, talking about... kind of this concept of calendar equity and scheduling equity at the board level and that's reflected in one of our board goals that we approved earlier in the meeting and those board goals will be posted to our board page on the district website so community members can take a look at those so this this work very much aligns with that goal area and looking forward to to being a part of it and and really innovating here within the next year

145in terms of calendar equity and scheduling equity. Any comments or questions? Drew Bouchard. Yes, Director Adams. Where are these sessions going to be held? The in-person sessions will be here at the district office, and then there will be two virtual sessions, which we will facilitate via Google Meet. All right. So the ones that are listed here are all in-person? Or not? No, two are in person, two are virtual. And I will email the board which is which, and then we'll make sure that we clarify that with our community messaging. Very good. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. Anything else? Okay, we'll move to our next agenda item, which is input into the Legislative Action Coalition platform. And I will turn it over to Director Adams. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. I co-chair the Legislative Action Coalition with

146Michelle Pascoe, who's a citizen in our community, a constituent. Unfortunately, or fortunately for her, she's on a swimming vacation in the Greek islands right now. She can't make it tonight. But Shannon Andreessen, Director Andreessen, is also on the LAC, and so is Director Kuhl. So I think we should have adequate participation. Our administrative assistant, Catherine Callahan, can't be here tonight. She took some medication that she thought... She'd still be awake at 9 o'clock when we thought we'd be on the agenda, and we aren't. So anyway, I gave her permission to turn in. Elise, do you have the slide? One of the things we do every year is create a platform that we present to our legislators, typically at a breakfast in January before the session starts, the legislative session. As part of that process, we

147seek input from the board on what their priorities are and what they think our priorities should be in presenting to the legislators. And if you could scroll up a little bit on that, Elise. Some of the things that we've talked about as being top priorities are special education, cross-subsidy reform, to increase funding. I think we need to blow that up a little bit, to increase funding on the formula and tie it to inflation, which has been suggested in the past. So you see a number of items there that typically get addressed or at least brought up with our legislators. Elise, could you magnify it just a couple more clicks? We've got tired eyes. Thank you. Tired eyes here. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Here are some of the things that we have talked about

148as being on the platform and things that we think perhaps the board would be interested in making part of this year's platform. I also will let you know that we did at the last EMSD meeting approve a preliminary platform, if I can find it here. Well, I take that back. We did not approve a preliminary platform. We looked at some survey results. They surveyed their membership and determined what the priorities are for AMSD members. And the ones that came to the top, and this was a limited sample, I'll remind you. I think only 22 people responded to it. They're still taking input, by the way, so it may change. But the cross subsidy for special education was a top issue that concerned those members. The second one that was most prominent was to increase the

149formula for general education and to tie it to inflation. And then number three was to allow school boards to renew previously passed referendum or recently passed, previously passed levies without a referendum. And those were the top three in the initial survey that they did. But we're just looking for input from the board tonight as to what they think our priorities should be. One of the things that we've talked about a lot, and I don't know if it's on the list there, in our sessions was meals. Is that there? It is. It's fully-funded school nutrition programs. There we go. There we go. And with special attention to the Federal Universal School Meals Program Act. One of the things I think the whole pandemic response has highlighted is that Free meals are really worthwhile for our students

150and our parents. And we've been able to do that over the last two years because they put everybody on the summer meal program, which means that everyone gets a free meal. As we discussed with school nutrition, that doesn't include a la carte items that kids may want. But it's really proven to be very popular. In the past, to get a free meal, you had to make an application, which was, I believe, an 11-page application that would allow you to get a free and reduced lunch if you met certain criteria. Well, we think it's an unnecessary burden to put on parents to have to go through that to get their kids fed. So that's one of the items that's been of concern to us. Naturally, opposing vouchers, tax credits, scholarships, anything that would allow for state

151subsidy for private education, we oppose. And one thing that we think is going to come up again this session, which has in the past, came up last session, was a change to the Constitution, the Minnesota Constitution, that's commonly referred to as the Page Amendment, that would change the wording regarding education to make it, rather than guaranteeing an adequate... education for every child, to make a quality education for every child. Unfortunately, it also eliminates the requirement that the state fund education. So we're not really sure what the intent of this constitutional amendment is, but it has created some controversy. So at any rate, those are some of the items that we've discussed. There's a whole list of them you see there. And I'm just looking for input from my fellow board members here as to what

152they think our priorities ought to be. I will tell you that whatever you say, we will rationalize against what AMSD and the Minnesota School Board Association puts as their priorities too. So we aren't in conflict with any of our fellow organizations. I think students have been tested so much and as it is they're online too much and I would really go for eliminating the MCA testing. Okay. Yeah, I mean, as I read through this list, like this comes as no surprise, but obviously you have your fingers on the pulse of like the major issues. And the only thing I would add is kind of this theme that's run through the evening of staffing shortages and challenges. And what can our partners at the state legislature do to help us increase pay for our public school

153employees, our teachers and. our support staff and our bus drivers. You know, I just think that we're feeling it now. We're feeling the impacts now, and this is only going to get more dire. And people who are tasked with, you know, really preparing our scholars for the future, they need to be making more money. And, you know, when I think about our support staff, We have people who are working with our kids every day who can't afford their basic life costs, right? And that's inexcusable. And we've allowed that to happen as a society and as a system. And so that would be a priority area that I would add. The Page Amendment is already, you know, there's already a lot of conversation about that happening. And so I would... really appreciate, you know, a statement

154from the LAC kind of outlining, you know, some of the things we like about the amendment, but also the concerns that have been brought up, you know, by legal scholars across the state, what some of the intended or unintended consequences of such an amendment could be. I think that's a really important conversation, and it's going to be important that we're unified here in Hopkins. around that and around what some of our concerns are with that amendment. So I appreciate you including it on the list. Any other concerns, comments? You know, when you think of the things that are in the news these days about education, you'll note the absence of critical race theory. because we don't think those necessarily have a purpose in being in our agenda or platform this year. I would like to

155just mention that last year I wrote a resolution for the MSB aid. Is it called the Delegate Assembly? Delegate Assembly, right. Yes, around fully funding school nutrition departments, and I intend to resurrect that resolution, obviously adapted given the federal bill that we have going on. So just wanted to make anyone aware on the board that if you have any input for me on that resolution, I would welcome it. I'm glad that you are. You had a ton of support the last time around and really appreciate your leadership on that. And if you have any ideas for additional resolutions you would like us to present to the Delegate Assembly, the deadline for that is the end of September. So if you have anything that you think is a priority that we should present and get support

156from MSBA members, let us know. I would be interested to hear if there's anything on this list that you think maybe shouldn't be a priority. You know, since I've been on the board, we've been talking about the special education cross subsidy. And I know that, like, I'm still the new kid to the conversation, right? Like, that this is something that's been going on for so long. And this is just more of a wondering and a signal to our legislators. Like, what's it going to take? Yeah. right, for the state to fund their fair share. And so I think that we've had this on platforms for so long, and it's like the best we got out of it was like a working group. And so I would be really interested in escalating that conversation, because everything

157that we've tried so far has not worked. And it's like, you know, what's next? We did get some money on the formula last year, right? Didn't we get some money on the special education cross subsidy? There was some allocated in the last session, and just enough to keep the gap from not growing. But eliminating the gap is going to take about $750 million, and most of that is not state money. That's federal. It will take an act of Congress for us to close that. But there is a movement to try and at least close the state's portion of that gap. And yeah, if we could do that, it would be, but that's an ongoing allocation that we have to get for that. So it's gonna be an uphill. Upfield climb, that's no doubt. Continued, yeah.

158Well, if you have any ideas or you think any one of these should be priority, let either Shannon or John or myself know, and we'll make sure that it gets elevated. We do have some good news to report on the legislative front. represents a portion of our district. He has now been made the Senate Minority Leader for the Senate, State Senate. And that's Melissa Lopez Franzen. So it's always nice to have friends in high places. So we've got that this year. Definitely. Well, thank you to the LAC for your ongoing work. And we'll really look forward to reading the platform in December. And we'll let you know if we think of anything else. All right. Something might pop up between now and then. Well, given how the past two years have gone, I'm sure something

159will, right? Thank you very much. I'll turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed for Agenda Item D, our proposed tax levy certification. Okay. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. This agenda item is connected to a recommendation in front of the board that the board certify the proposed property tax levy at the maximum for pay 22, which is fiscal year 2023, and to help board members in our community further understand the context for that, we'll invite Director Chapenduka. to the virtual board table. Thank you, Superintendent, Dr. McPherry. Again, good evening to Chair Bouchard and the board members in the community. So what I have here is something we usually would actually bring to the board in a two-part reading. starting with the first meeting of the month and then getting the certification approval during the second meeting. Unfortunately

160this month has kind of been unique since we only have one board meeting. So we are bringing this again, just knowing that these are preliminary numbers. We are still working with MDE in solidifying the numbers so that we get at least a solid preliminary certification for submission to MDE by September 30th. So what I have here is actually A slight increase if we are comparing what we actually certified last year. Our 2021 total leave certification was $58,426,316. And our proposed preliminary property tax levy for pay 22 is $59,210,536, which represents about 1.34%. Again, like I said, these numbers will probably change. If the numbers change, we'll notify you through either a Friday report or through email. Some of the changes which are making up the $59,210,536 is actually an increase in the general fund of

161about $1,998,018 which is mostly tied to our long-term facility maintenance. Now we also have the FWTA approved leave referendum. increase of about $329,168 which represents about 2% and this is due to a slight increase in student counts from 2021 in all main projections. Our capital project slave is also increasing by $726,155. $736,185 which represent about 6% and this increase is again due to a slight increase in our net tax capacity, meaning that there's an increase in property values and I think we've seen that throughout the nation. Our long-term facility maintenance increased by $1,184,721, which is about 35%. And this is due to adjustment in our long-term facility maintenance plan. Other general fund level components, it really minimal increases and decreases due to different adjustments. The community education portion of the levy is increasing by a

162total of $46,450, which is about 11%. And this is mostly to adjustment within the school age care. Our debt savings fund is decreasing by 1,203,456 or 7% due to reduction in our debt obligations. So, overall we have about an increase of $784,220 when we compare what was certified in December of 2021 and what we are pre-certifying. for fiscal year 2022. At this point in time, the Board can either certify this proposed tax levy at a specific dollar amount or at a maximum. And this actually gives the Board flexibility if there are any subsequent levy changes beyond the district's control between now and the final levy certification. Due to the fact that these are preliminary numbers and again we are presenting them in the middle of September, my recommendation is for the board to certify this

163level at the maximum and we'll update the community as we get more information and as we solidify the numbers. There will also be a Truth in Succession meeting on December 7, 2021 at 6 p.m. prior to the regular school board meeting to allow for citizens' comments and input. And this meeting will actually be held in the boardroom. And the final certification will actually be approved by the board on December 14. 2021 during the school board meeting. So this is what I have at this point in time in regards to the certification. Again, as I recommended, the board approved this at maximum to give us flexibility to be able to make an adjustment as we get more solidified numbers from the state. Thank you. And I'll take any questions. Thank you very much, Director Chapenduka. Any

164questions or comments? Well, it's certainly been this board's practice, at least since I've been on the board, to approve the property tax levy at the maximum at this point in time for exactly the reasons you stated, Director Chapenduka, to allow us that flexibility between now and then the final certification in December. So thank you for the specifics and the context this evening. So I would look for a motion that the board certify the proposed tax levy at the maximum for pay 22 fiscal year 2023 levy cycle. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second to certify the proposed property tax levy at the maximum. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. Thank you, Director Chapman-Duca. You can

165go home now. But we can't. It's a pleasure to be here. Next, I'll turn it over to Dr. Mary Perry-Reed for our district enrollment. Thank you, Chair Bouchard. I'm happy to invite Jolene Goldati to the virtual board table and re-invite Dr. Lightfoot back to co-present a brief. report on enrollment. So essentially we want to give you an overview of what our enrollment looked like as we are launched into the school year and then get your feedback on any inquiries you have around some of the data that you hear. And I think you know that our communications and marketing office is blending. with the enrollment office to give enrollment of sharper marketing edge. So we appreciate Jolene's leadership in that space and Nick's partnership with her. And there's lots of other people involved as well. But

166Jolene and Nick, without further ado, if you'd like to present. Elise, are you presenting the slides? Oh, perfect. Thank you. I'm not sure if it's me or you, Dr. Lightfoot, for the intro, but I can go either way. Either way, I'll go ahead. I'll jump in. Really, our goal, as was stated in the overview, is really to give you a brief overview, give some historical context, and really, as we give you this information, ask of you what questions that you have as we start to do our deeper work in enrollment. As you're aware, October 1st is the date that we use to benchmark our enrollment data. When we make our submissions to the state and we use that date, what it does is it allows us to look at comparable sets of information over periods

167of time. So as we come into the initial set of information that we were able to show you so far, what we would ask of you is that as we go through this information to really be mindful of the questions that you have so that When we are done with this initial set, we can learn from you how you might like us to guide our work in October as we look further at the data and then present to you, as is our normal practice in November, enrollment projections and a more detailed analysis of the enrollment data. So how's that for an intro, Jolene? That is perfect. Thank you so much. And I'm glad to be here tonight. And we will make this really brief because we are aware of the time. So what you're looking

168at here, as Dr. Lightfoot said, the enrollment isn't really secured until October 1st. The data here represents September 10th, which is not considered finalized enrollment data. Typically, we do experience a drop of enrollment between the first day of school and October 1st. So when we come back in October, we might see these numbers adjusted a little bit. But what we do know right now is that our enrollment is 6,870 scholars are enrolled in Hopkins schools. And our projection was 6,618, which means we have an increase of about 252 students. So what we did was we kind of broke down. you know, kind of where that increase is sitting. So secondary is up by about 70 scholars. And we look at grades one through six, which is our elementary schools. That's up about 109 students. But

169where we're seeing maybe the most significant increase is in the grade of kindergarten itself, which is up 74 from projection. Next slide. Thank you. So before we get into kindergarten, which we're going to look at a little bit, at least with the information that we know now, I just kind of wanted to talk through a little bit of the enrollment process and the team that manages that. As Dr. Reed mentioned, we are marketing and communication is now, we have this new relationship with enrollment. And that came out of the spring task force in the spring as a recommendation to have that sort of relationship. So we've been spending a lot of time with the three ladies who manage that department, Carlina Lloyd, Stacey Tupper, and Pat Wright, our very student-focused individuals who are working really

170hard during a pandemic to process a ton of enrollments. Over the summer, just alone, they estimate that they have process 686 enrollments. So that's a significant increase maybe from what they typically experience. They have created a bunch of opportunities to allow families to engage in the enrollment experience in a safe way during a pandemic. One of those ways is through drive-up enrollment, which is offered throughout the summer on Wednesdays. Families can drive up and drop off maybe birth certificates or information that they need to enroll in. in Hopkins right kind of from the comfort of their car which is an interesting concept. Last year with the help of the marketing and communication team we also created online enrollment so now you can from start to finish enroll in Hopkins schools completely online if you wish

171to do so. This year we also started something new called virtual enrollment and that's a way to serve families in a way that feels in person but is actually through a Google Meet. So that has been something that has been kind of experimented with. And we might even keep that after the pandemic because it's just been a way to serve people in a way that's kind of convenient for them. The team also provides multilingual services. Karla Lloyd is a heritage Spanish speaker, so she offers Spanish services to our families who need to have their enrollment translated. And then we also partner with our school, our language liaisons, I'm sorry, in each of our schools to provide services in other languages as well. Next slide. So when we look at the kindergarten classes, I mentioned that's

172probably more up than, I mean, that's just significantly up. So that's really exciting for us in communication and marketing because we push kindergarten. Like that's the thing we focus on the most. Our class this year at this moment is 589 scholars, and that is big. That is bigger than it has been as far back as anybody could remember. We actually did do the research. In 2003, four, we had a similar sized year and that was 570. So that wasn't even at the 589 mark. So that is really thrilling. And I guess our work now is trying to figure out why. So here is what we currently know. We can go to the next, thank you. So here's what we know about our kindergarteners so far. We have seven enrolled in the online academy. We have

17353 scholars who are enrolled in Chinese immersion. And as you might recall from, you know, earlier in the evening, we talked about Alice Smith opening up a Junto section. And so now Junto Spanish immersion. And so now that's available at Alice Smith and Eisenhower. There are 24 scholars that are enrolled in Alice Smith and 53 in Eisenhower, making up for a total of 77. scholars that are enrolled in Spanish immersion. And then the remaining 504 are sort of, you know, like they're enrolled in school in one of our six elementary schools. One thing that is kind of exciting when we look at this and then kind of compare it to what's been happening in previous years is that we have been seeing an increase in kindergarten since 2017-2018. Prior to that, it had kind of

174always been just like decreasing a little bit, like a little bit below projection. And then in 2017, 18, something started to happen and we started to see growth beyond projection. We saw it again in 2018, 19. We saw it even bigger in 2019, 20. And then in 2020, 21, of course, that's the COVID year. I guess maybe we'll still in the COVID year, but last year. many school districts, I think pretty much every school district was impacted with declining enrollment, and many lost a ton of kindergartners. One of our neighbors lost 100 kindergartners. We didn't lose 100 kindergartners. We lost four. So we were able to, even in that COVID year where we were experiencing enrollment decline, we didn't really see enrollment decline significantly at the kindergarten level, which you know, I think indicates a

175little bit of kindergarten enthusiasm and then you go into this next year that we're in and we're, we jumped. And so what we need to look at is, is this, you know, a kindergarten bubble maybe from whole people who are holding back last year and now are enrolling? Maybe. We've done a little bit of research into that. That may be, it may be not. Is it because of, you know, the diversity of programs that we're offering and parents just really being attracted to the choice? We're not sure. I want to say yes, because we have, you know, the best school district and leaders, you know. in the world. So, but we definitely need to look into that a little bit deeper to see kind of why, why we're experiencing the increase that we're experiencing. We

176do know over the last, as I mentioned before, we do tend to lose enrollment from the start of school to October 1st. but not in kindergarten, which is that's another thing that's kind of interesting. So the last three years, we've actually gained on average nine students between that time frame. So that's another kind of interesting stat, I think, to pull out as we sort of look at just what's been happening, what's happening this year and kind of what's happening in the past. So I think that is everything I wanted to present today. And after that, after that presentation, I think we just wanted to get a sense of questions. Unless Dr. Lightfoot has something else to add. No, I think you covered it very well, Jolene. Thank you. Chair Bouchard? Yes, Director Peterson. One of

177the things I would be curious about as we, because as you were kind of presenting, I was also going through the link and all those spreadsheets and everything. I would love the statistics around students. enrolling elsewhere that would otherwise be in district, right? We have our open enrollment numbers and coming in. I would be curious the number going elsewhere as well and how those compare. And then if we're reducing that number through our efforts, right, are more of our Hopkins residents choosing Hopkins? or Hopkins District residents, as well as growing that open enrollment. Because I think about like those Juntos numbers and the Shinshing numbers, that really increases our open enrollment in, but doesn't increase our retention. And I would love to see some of those numbers in the future. Sure, we should. Yes, Director

178Adams. Likewise, I would be interested in finding out how many people are transferring from charter or private schools. into the district. And I think that's something we look at every year. I don't know if that, what level of detail we get, but over the last few years, the biggest outward drift from our student population has been to charter and to private schools. So I'd be curious about that. But I've got another question along a different line, which is what kind of stress is this putting on our space and on our staff? Do we have enough space and do we have enough staff to accommodate these additional students? Yeah, I'm happy to start on addressing all those. And, Jolene, you know, any other information that you might have to add as well? Yes, on the enrollment

179elsewhere. We and it's a great question and I think one to really kind of go into a little bit more detail. So I appreciate that director Peterson. The piece that I think will be telling for us is as we look at each year, do we see that shift like you mentioned director Adams to any kinds of specific programs? and what that shift looks like. So for example, in grade one, with the move of Isla to Edina out of the Hopkins School District, we saw approximately 12 first graders come into Hopkins who were part of Isla who did not continue to move but came into the first grade Juntos program that we have. And so, I mean, those little kinds of shifts can be a 10 to 15 student or larger. I mean, when we've had

180some programs move in, we've seen full sections move to charter programs. So being able to break that out for you as the board to be specific where they go in program is something that we can definitely do. We just have to wait for the MDE data to come from the Mars data. And that usually is available mid-October because by then everybody's reported their October 1 kinds of sets of information. We'll have some of that additional as follow-up, so I think those two pieces are really critical points that will build into the enrollment report for you. On the space and the staffing, yes, we have had to add more space. Director Chapman-Dukas' guidance, we've made sure that we have the students in order to fund from budget. So we've been mindful through our targeted staffing funds

181to make sure that we are planful with what we have and what we can bring into. Sometimes that happens just in, it really has been distributed among buildings. We've seen a little bit larger increase in the Tanglin section for kindergarten that we needed to respond to. We've seen some overall increases through, as we mentioned, the Juntos program. Students that might have been on the Meadowbrook waiting list were very interested in looking at Spanish immersion, and so we saw part of that population really kind of create the section at Alice Smith as well. So we've seen some of those moves and can kind of speak to some of the staffing element that goes with that. On the space issues, we've been pretty fortunate right now. The one that we're watching closely for space right now is

182really North Junior High. They're close to 1,000 students, and really capacity for that building ranges between 1,000 and 1,100 if we think about available space for numbers of students that can really fit within the classrooms and the number of classrooms that are there at North Junior High. So I would say that's kind of the space element that we're watching. As always, we watch Meadowbrook, and right now we're at about 860. In that range, our agreement cap with the city of Golden Valley is about 880. So when we look at that ability to accommodate students as they move in and out throughout the course of the year, we still have space to do that at Meadowbrook. And so I would say those are kind of more of some of the general space pieces, Director Adams, in

183relation to your question. All right. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? Well, I think it bears repeating. largest kindergarten class in 18 years and that is something to celebrate and you're you know Jillian as I was listening to your portion of the report you're asking all of the questions that were on my mind I'm especially interested in this qualitative piece so why are families either choosing to stay in the district I know anecdotally I have friends who have open enrolled from elsewhere into Hopkins. Why are they choosing Hopkins? Who are they, right? Like what are their backgrounds? What's their story? What's attracting them to our district? I think that qualitative piece is going to be just as important as the quantitative as we try to figure out what's going on, right? And

184then use that information to plan for the future. I appreciate all the work you're doing on that. Anything else on this item? Well, thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you. Now we'll move to our board member reports. Director Adams. Sure. I'll make it brief. August 19, audit. August 24, district kickoff. This is fascinating. Actually, the one I'd like to concentrate on is last Friday, the AMSD meeting. And I know that Rhoda was on line with it. There was a fascinating presentation by Bill Morris and Peter Leatherman. They always do a presentation every year gratis for AMSD. They cover both political issues and educational issues. And it's always interesting to find out what our populace is thinking. So if you've got some spare time. you can go to their AMSD website,

185amsd.org, and download their presentation. And we also had LAC. And then I attended the Tanglin Ninja, all-day ninja event, which was kind of fun. And John was there too. I saw some other people. But just a lot of parents, a lot of students, and all having a great time on the ninja. events that were on the playground. And they had it there all day, so it wasn't just an evening event. The deal, I think, was told by Jen Cameron, who heads the PTO there, that it was from 7 to 7. So the kids had plenty of time to test their skills and their agility on those events. And then last Saturday, I did attend the Golden Valley 9-11 commemoration at the Brookview. And I was one of quite a few electorate officials who attended that.

186And it was very well attended. I was a little surprised being so early in the morning. So that's it. That's my report. Thank you, Director Adams. Any other reports this evening? I'll also be brief, but just a heads up to the board members that we did complete our interviews and selections for the new student board reps for 21-22 school year. Most of you had a chance to meet Oscar, who we're adding to our junior cohort this year. And then we have two sophomores, Elif Ozturk, I hope I did that right, and Grace Riley will be representing the sophomore class. Again, just a really great group of candidates and kiddos that came forward, and I'm super proud and excited about the representation we'll have this year. Thank you for your work on that. It's really exciting.

187Any other reports? Okay, we'll move to our next agenda item. I move that the board accept the incidental reports. Second. I have a motion and a second to accept the incidental reports. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. And we made it. I move that we adjourn this meeting. Second. I have a motion and a second to adjourn. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay. Motion carries. This meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 10.35 p.m.