February 24, 2025, ISD 199 School Board Meeting

001We're ready guys. The Monday, February 24th, 2025 Invergrove Heights Community Schools Board of Education's regular meeting is called to order at 5.31 p.m. at the Invergrove Heights Middle School. As a reminder all public comment during tonight's school board meeting must be related to an information or action item on tonight's agenda The district holds public listening sessions prior to all regular board meetings to allow participants to speak on topics that are not on the agenda More information on public comment and public listening sessions can be found on our website this meeting is being recorded and access to the recording will be made available on the school district's website as quickly as possible our school district's mission is to inspire innovate excel a community commitment board clerk larson will you please member lounsbury here member nehemiah here

002member warwick here member dukes is absent tonight uh member larson here member klingner here and member pearson here Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Do I have a motion and a second to approve tonight's agenda item? So moved by Member Warwick. Second by Member Nehemiah. All right. Member Warwick and Member Nehemiah, any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion is carried. Tonight's district highlight is the positive community norms group. I'd like to invite Amy Powers-Johnson to share this month's highlight. Good evening. was that on okay good evening my name is amy powell johnson i'm the positive community norms grant coordinator

003i'm here for the district and we do have a highlight tonight we have our spark group and a save group which i think is going to be new information for some of you to learn about a different another group that we have going here at simile i'm going to start it out and tracy i'm going to have you start with just a short little video and then once our students present i'm going to go back to our video here at the end Imagine a warm, sunny afternoon. Suddenly, you spot someone in the river being swept downstream and struggling to stay afloat. Without hesitation, you jump into the river and help the person ashore. As you help that person dry off, you hear another cry for help. Someone else is being swept downstream. Immediately, you jump

004into the water again and pull out this second person. This scenario continues all afternoon. As you pull someone safely to land, you have to jump back in and save someone else. Finally, you say, I can't go on like this and walk upstream to see what's happening. As you walk upstream, you warn other bystanders. Thank you, Superintendent Bernhardson, Chair Lounsbray, and school board members for welcoming our group here tonight. My name is Leah Benedict and I'm 15 and I'm a part of the Spartans Anti-Vaping Effort, a team of Simley High School students dedicated to addressing the widespread problem of team vaping in our community. We work to raise awareness about the significant harms from flavored nicotine vapes and other flavored tobacco products popular among teens. And we are working to end the sale of flavored tobacco

005products in our community. Most students don't vape, but most is way too many. Nationally about 8% of high school students and 3.5 of middle school students, about 1.6 million teens are frequent users. Here in Minnesota, about one in seven high school students and one in 50 middle school students used e-cigarettes recently. More than one in four Minnesota high school students have tried vaping at some point. This number has gone down since 2020, but it's still much higher than for other tobacco products. We were grateful for the support from our school leaders and the chance to educate our peers while pushing for real change. Like students across the country, we've all seen friends and classmates struggle with vaping addiction, and their experience remind us why this issue is so important. We want to share some of

006our stories with you so you can see firsthand why ending the sale of flavored tobacco products in our community matters. My name is Marciano Urbina. I am 18 years old and I'm a senior at Simley High School. A recent experience I want to share with you guys is me going into the bathroom a couple weeks ago to use the restroom. I go to use the restroom and it smelled like cotton candy in there and other fruity smells. I go to turn around to wash my hands and I see a lot of smoke. And when I look into the corner, I see a lot of kids vaping in the corner. These type of behaviors happen way too often at Simley High School, and they happen all over the country at every high school. Some facts. Most

007teens who try tobacco start with flavored products, almost 80% to be exact. And when it comes to vaping, almost 90% of students use flavored vapes. Some of the nicotine pouches, over 80% of students who use them get flavored ones. And flavors make it easier to start but harder to quit. My name is Courtney Kowarski. I'm 18 years old and I'm in 12th grade at Simley High School. A couple weeks ago, I had to go use the restroom because of female things. The smell of flavor vape hit me as soon as I walked in. I had no choice but to stay there for a bit. The girls vaping in the bathroom just stared at me. They wouldn't even move to let me wash my hands. They were too busy blowing clouds of smoke. When I finally

008asked them to move, they just stared at me and was like, and why would I even be in the bathroom if I wasn't vaping? By the time I walked out, my sweatshirt reeked of whatever sweet, fruity flavor they were vaping. Disposable e-cigarettes are the most popular commercial tobacco product used by youth and are available in more than 15,000 kid-friendly flavors like cotton candy, gummy bear, blue razz, and pink lemonade. Almost all flavored e-cigarette products are illegal, yet they are still widely available at stores and online across the United States. My name is Marina Jessen. I'm 15 years old and a sophomore at Simile High School. Throughout the years of playing high school sports, I've noticed a decrease in the number of people who play sports. When I walk into the bathrooms, I see girls I

009used to play sports with vaping. This is really sad because I used to know some of them really well. Most e-cigarettes have extremely high nicotine content. Some of the most popular vapes teens use have anywhere between 10 and 26 packs of cigarettes worth of nicotine in that one vape device. Nicotine harms adolescent brain development and no amount of nicotine is safe for kids. Four out of five Minnesota students who vaped in the past 30 days reported one or more signs of nicotine dependence. My name is Luna Flores. I'm 15 years old and I'm a freshman at Simley High School. I've seen kids vaping on the bus and blowing the smoke down under the seat. But the most painful story I want to share is being pressured into vaping by my friends in middle school. These

010friends are still vaping and they want to vape even if they know it's bad for them. They still need it because they believe it helps them relieve their stress. They still try to pressure me into vaping, but I don't talk to them anymore and sadly we are no longer friends. Hi, my name is Anya Benedict and our friend Chris couldn't be here tonight but we still wanted to share his story. I've seen my friends and the people around me get addicted to vapes and ruin their athletic careers and academic success. Many of them I would have called my best friends and they have not been capable of stopping. They have encouraged me and younger siblings and classmates to vape as well. This is an ongoing occurrence and we must take action to protect the future

011of my peers and future generations. I've noticed fewer girls playing sports lately, and I think vaping is a big reason why. At the beginning of our winter basketball season, we were already struggling to have enough numbers. Then just a few weeks ago, two freshmen on our team got caught vaping and were suspended. Losing teammates like that doesn't just affect them, it affects all of us. It puts our season at risk, forces us to work even harder, and takes away the sense of teamwork and commitment that makes sports so important. Vaping impacts all of us. Every day, there's a new issue with kids vaping. They think it only affects them, but it doesn't. When they decide they can't go eight hours without their vape, the school has to shut down the bathrooms, and then when the

012bathrooms do open, they abuse that by vaping. It's really painful when you actually know one of those people, someone you used to play sports with, but now you don't because they chose vaping over athletics. I also want to share that I've seen kids vaping in class, hiding it in their sleeve, or blowing the vape smoke into their backpack. My name is Isabel Tix. I'm 16 and a sophomore at Simley High School. Just last week, I walked into the bathroom to find a group of girls vaping. All the stalls were full because of the people vaping, and I couldn't go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, this happens a lot, and the bathroom is becoming a place for people to vape rather than go to the bathroom. As high school kids, we were on the front lines of

013this battle. This problem is not unique to Simley and is happening in high schools and middle schools everywhere. We are worried about our friends and our peers and we are also upset about how vaping impacts all of us daily. We are working for change in our community by working hard to educate our peers about vaping so they won't start using and working with the adult leaders in our school to support the kids who've become addicted. But we can't do it alone. We need our lawmakers here in Invergrove Heights to step up and take action to protect our community. We are gathering support from community members and community leaders like you to support our initiative to end the sale of flavored tobacco products in Invergrove Heights. We appreciate your commitment to the well-being of students and

014families in our community. While we understand that the school board can't take formal action on this issue, we would like to invite you as individual community members to join us in supporting an ordinance to end the sale of flavored tobacco products in Invergrove Heights. Your support means a lot and as leaders you can help make a real impact moving this initiative forward. Together we can create a real change. We are thankful for this time to present to you and keep you informed of the work we are trying to make our community a healthier place to live and to go to school. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further in an educational session and answer any questions you may have. Thank you for your time and for all you do in our community. If

015the message you leave here tonight with is that our teachers or administrators or even our bus drivers are not doing a good enough job, we missed our mark here and I'm really, really going to regret this presentation. I cannot emphasize enough that the issues you heard tonight are not unique to Simile and Invergrove Heights Middle School. But the fact that we have SPARK and this group of amazing students and partners like Tobacco Free Alliance to help work on the problems, that is what makes us unique. If we go back to the video we watched at the start and think of it through the lens of trying to protect our kids from the harms and addictions of vaping, what is unique to us is that instead of just standing along the river and pulling our kids

016out of the water, Excuse me. What is unique to us is that instead of just standing along the river and pulling our kids out of the water, because of our resources, we have been able to walk upstream to find out why our kids keep falling into the water in the first place. And what we and many other communities have discovered when we walked up the stream is that there is a bridge over the water that our kids have to cross every day. And we also discovered that the bridge is pretty old, pretty cracked, and has some holes in it. And the biggest hole by far we have identified is flavored tobacco products and how heavily our kids are being targeted. Through SPARK, we are already working on fixing other holes in the bridge with things

017like most messaging, parent education, providing after school and evening events for our students, and even updating curriculum, just to name a few things. But the flavored tobacco products hole is by far the biggest and probably the most dangerous of all of them. And we feel it is very important for our school board to understand that we have come to believe it is essential for us to begin working on fixing that particular hole. We thank you for your time and attention tonight. And we thank you for the support you have given SPARK and hope for your understanding and support as we move forward with this. Well done. Well done. before you go first of all thank you thank you thank you for being here this evening and also recognize we have one of our student advisory

018council members and a couple of the people here also presented to our student advisory on a field trip to the police department what are your next steps what are you looking at as far as talking with the City Council about flavored tobacco is that something that's on your radar Well, last year we went to one of the meetings and made a presentation and we had videos showing like other kids that couldn't be there made videos and why we want to, why we want this issue addressed and why we want to limit the sales of vapes and stuff like that to teens. So, I mean. we've had that meeting with them we're trying to get another meeting with them and we do like stuff on our school like we hand out donuts we go to middle

019school lunches and ask them how they're doing and if they have experiences with this and like last year we went to their lunches and we got over how many cards do we get about 300 cards they're just their experiences in school so And I also want to thank you for the work that you're doing in the schools because we as adults can say a lot of different things, but if they hear from you, that's a big difference maker. So thank you for the work that you're doing with that. And also the messaging because even in the community, if something happens at one of our schools, I can go in the community and somebody will go, what's going on at that school? All the kids are doing it. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

020Not all the kids are. maybe a few or one or whatever. And the message that you're sending is helping people to better realize that not all kids are doing that, but we're really trying to help those kids that are so that they can get themselves on a better path. Because as you shared, a lot of the people that are doing that are actually addicted. They start that addiction fairly on because of the flavor, right? And the intrigue of that. So thank you for the work that you're doing and the way that you're presenting it to your peers. Do you know how many places in Invergrove Heights have flavored vapes available? 32 locations in Invergrove Heights that sell tobacco products. Thank you for that. How many gas stations do we have? Can we get you guys

021to go talk to the owners of each of those places? Yeah, I'll just share one thing that we are doing. The Spark Coalition, we get the data of the... places in Inverdure Heights that sells tobacco products and the same with alcohol and every year they have to do a compliance check where they send an underage person in and we get that data back. We know the places that are violating it multiple times and we are sending them a certificate because Positive Community Norms is trying to focus on the positive. So those places that have passed their compliance check we're acknowledging that with them and thanking them for helping to keep our kids safe and healthy so um we're definitely involved in that and and be trying to be proactive i appreciate your education on this

022sorry okay appreciate your education on this students i'm very much so um i i hear about i've heard this for several years about the bathroom that is such a problem and not to put you on the spot but have you ever thought of Any solutions for this? I hear you said that they were closed. They're closed sometime. It sounds like that's the place that people will use to vape. What are some solutions? Or have you had discussions? I've seen at other schools like North St. Paul, they have like one-by-one bathrooms all next to each other. And there's like 10 of them. And when I went in there, there was like a little fire. vape detector yeah so I mean stuff like that could help but I don't really know some teachers go in the bathrooms

023throughout the day but it's not often so I mean I mean they really can't do much because they still have to do their job but I don't know that could be a solution though because I when I went to North and I seen that I thought it was really cool maybe that helps them okay Thank you for that. And I also hear you talk about stress. You said something about stress, that that was why one person was using it. Any thoughts on that? I mean, is that just a myth of the stress part? I feel like a lot of kids use it just because they see other people using it. But I think stress could play a factor in it because some people that I know use it. Yeah, it could be stress. It could

024be a lot of things, but usually it is from stress from school and stuff and then someone gives it to them and then they get addicted and they just can't get off of it. Thank you. I'm just really proud of the group of you to get up here and be on camera that our public can watch this and I'm thinking of someone who I'm going to send this first part to as soon as this meeting goes live because we had a basketball tournament that we hosted here a while ago and it was a friend of mine who I graduated with from Simley. They don't send their kids to our schools and they were kind of ridiculing the message of most kids don't vape. and i didn't have the facts at the moment to back it

025up and i'm going to use this video to make sure i send that to them because i knew i was proud of our kids but this is just that extra proof so speaking on behalf of most kids who don't vape want to echo what board member Klingner just said that I'm really proud of you guys for the courage to come up on camera and share some of these stories you could have come up here and just talked about vaping in general I have to tell you resonated with me is these personal stories about what you're running into in the bathroom but the teammates that you're losing that is often that takes a lot of courage to say in front of this group of people and I see you I see you in your uniforms and

026I see you as leaders and athletes within our school And there's a very famous quote, and I can't think of who it's by, but you will hear it throughout your life. And I want you to know you're living it right now. There's this quote that says, speak the truth, even if your voice shakes. That means when you're nervous, when you feel like, oh my gosh, is this the right thing to do? Still speak up and still say something because we're all doing the right thing here. And it's really educated all of us. And I thought I kind of knew a little bit about this topic. And I've learned so much just listening to your stories tonight. I'll second that. I'm proud of all of you. You're amazing students. But I also want to say, Amy,

027I'm really grateful to you. This is the second time I've seen you here. I've seen you in other capacities as well. And I just want to commend you on the improvements you have made with your team. And I would like to know what is working that is getting these numbers to go down. Because my understanding is our numbers are creeping down. It's not perfect yet. I'm not settling either team. Like, I'm not. But I'm wondering, is it the education piece on the dangers and the addiction and the fact that you don't have to go along with your peers because there's actually not as many peers as you thought engaged in this? What are some of the things that are working? For me, it's trusting the process of what the Positive Community Norms Grant is. They

028have sunk so much into this. that it is that positive peer pressure with kids to let them know that it is okay. You know, I always use the example of my own daughter who is an 11th grader. If I imagine her at a party on a Friday night and somebody asks her if she wants to vape, she's not going to think of that old lady that, remember that lady that smokes through her neck? Yeah. My daughter's not going to be like, no, dear, I'm not going to do that because when I'm 80, I'm going to have to smoke through a hole in my neck. Like I could see my daughter thinking first my mom's gonna kill me second I think she's gonna say wait wait. I don't have to do this. It's so empowering a

029positive message is not enough we have more holes in the bridge and we've got to when we partner with tobacco free alliance and the police and all these other places and that's something that came from the positive community norms grant we had all this stuff out there like this but the grant has pulled it all together and and that is why it is working okay you mentioned you've got some friends adult friends with could you share with us who they are Yes. We have Erica. I think everybody knows Erica. Erica's part of the coalition. And then we have Elise, and Elise should really be applauded for her work with these kids. She did the big, heavy education piece with us. And then as well as Alyssa from Tobacco Free Alliance. So they have been coalition

030partners from the get-go. Who did I miss? Charity. Oh my gosh. Charity is our youth group leader, so she works with all of these kids too. And so it's a giant... I didn't mean to miss you. Oh, no, it's okay. They're fantastic. And your coalition has members from around the community as well, right? Yeah. We do. We do. We do. We have a really good representative on our coalition, but these are them. This is the shining stars of all of it right here is these guys here. What do you got for us here? We have some handouts, just some education pieces for you guys, some speaking points. I love every time I hear, I thought I knew this, but I don't know this. And that's so true. And that's something we have realized along the

031way is that... We still hear people say things like, well, I thought vaping was the safe alternative to smoking. Like, what's wrong with it? Because it's supposed to be the safe alternative. So we have a lot more education we've got to do. We have to educate parents. We've got to educate our community members. So we have a lot more education that we've got to do. So we're just beginning that phase, and there's a lot to come. Thank you all for being here this evening. And you know your message is going to carry on with you after you're done at Simley High School as you move on to different parts of your life to be able to educate people about vaping because that message is still going to be out there in all the travels that

032you make. And you're going to make a difference. So thank you for making a difference here. But know that you're going to make a difference after you leave here as well. And thank you. We have some parents that joined them this evening. It's always great when you have parents come to our school board meetings. So thank you to them for coming as well. You're welcome to stay and listen to the rest of our meeting. Do I have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda items? Second by Member Pearson. Second by Member Klinger. Second by Member Pearson. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion is carried. All right now we have Donations on the board. Thank you to those who have donated to the school district this past month Your generosity

033and support of our schools in the community is very appreciated as they make a difference for our students All right now on to information items We are excited to welcome principal Jody Wendell and assistant principal Jason Voss to provide an update on the middle school Welcome everybody Thanks for coming to the middle school tonight. It's always fun to have an opportunity to talk a little bit about what's going on in the middle school. And we've got some of our amazing teachers here to talk with you a little bit too tonight. So I'm just going to quickly kind of go through our part because really the highlight is these three. So, yep, Jason Voss is with me. Also tonight here is Jesse Hannes, one of our assistant administrators. Mary Dillon, Lisa Quinlan, and Michelle Jensen are

034three of our teachers that will be speaking to you about a couple of new things happening this year in the middle school. So just again to highlight our vision, our vision is to create that learning environment that provides high students, provide for high student achievement. So all of our learners are academically and socially prepared for their lifelong learning. And sometimes it feels like we are only focused on the social part, but the academics are just as important. But when you're talking about 11, 12 and 13 year olds, the social part is really important. Our mission is to help each one of our Kids reach their full potential. We really do believe in that whole child development. So the personal, the social, the physical, the academic is all crucial, especially when we're talking about adolescence and

035middle school. And our goal is to make sure that we prepare all of our students to be career and college ready. So we have some guiding principles in our school that we really focus on the needs of each one of our students. We meet those needs through purposeful collaboration amongst the adults that combine wisdom of all of our peers. Not one of us has all the answers. That's why we need a team to make sure that we are able to help all of our students. And we use that teamwork approach, share our insights, take collective interest in not just our students' education, but also in our own professional growth. Just looking at our enrollment numbers, and these are numbers as of February 6th, you can see our sixth grade is our largest class that we

036have right now. Seventh is pretty close, and then our eighth grade. And our total enrollment right now is 840, which in the last couple years actually has gone up. We actually have a 4% increase since the start of the year, which is pretty good. Some of our demographics by ethnicity, you can see that still white is 41%, but our Hispanic population is reaching almost 30%. And then you can see that our multiracial and black students are next. And these numbers have been changing, as those of you that have been in the community, these numbers have been changing in the last decade and the last 20 years. Other information that we have about our students, our ELL students, and we've got two of our fantastic ELL teachers here to talk to us. We've got 12.4% of

037our students are English language learners. We also have about 16% of our students are in special education. And this number, our next one, has gone up, and that's been pretty significant in the last 10 years, I would say, too. We've got about 60% of our students that are receiving free and reduced-priced meals. And then our homeless population at the middle school is about 0.8%. So what are the focus areas that we have for 24-25 school year? Our first focus area is to refocus our school-wide efforts to use best practice teaching strategies in all classrooms so that it works for all of our students. Our next one, again, it centers around our ELL, our English Language Learners. Develop a set of classes to better meet the needs of our ELL students. We're going to be talking

038about Spartan Pathways. Mary Dillon's going to be talking a little bit about this. Implement core life skills into a new class called Spartan Pathways at all three grade levels for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. So that is new this year. And then foster a positive school environment where all students feel safe, respected, and supported, and have a personal connection with at least two adults. And that is our 199 way that we emphasize every single day. Next, we're going to have Mary Dillon come up and talk to us about Spartan Pathways. So maybe first you need to give a little shout out to the Cornell Rams and let us know who they are. Cornell College, every Monday is College Monday. It's the middle school promoting our college going culture and being an avid demonstration school. So

039the first college I went to was Cornell College. Sweet. Fans of one course at a time. It's a fabulous schedule if you haven't heard of it. You only take a class for 18 days and then you're done with it for the whole year. It's fantastic. I love it. That's awesome. It's very specified. You love it or you hate it. Where is it? Mount Vernon, Iowa. Oh no, that's right. Oh yeah. Cedar Rapids is the next closest known city. Just get access. I need to give you access. I have an extra laptop over here. Alright, so again my name is Mary Dillon. I teach many classes but Spartan Pathways is one of them. I was actually here five years ago the first iteration of Spartan Pathways that began to serve our eighth graders. So in 2019

040we created the first iteration of Spartan Pathways and it was one trimester at the time and it was a second try it was for eighth graders only and we focused on some school skills and increased academic success and really was a transition between the middle school and the high school. So after looking at a lot of data we were finding that a lot of our ninth graders were struggling. They weren't making that successful transition so we thought we would create this class to give them some extra skills and support to be successful at the high school level. It also gave us much more time to dive into ninth grade registration. So rather than a one-day presentation in a class we actually spend weeks looking at it talking about our options talking about post high school

041options. and so really giving them that information and then starting the kind of college and career readiness journeys. They would take interest inventories, do some suggestions, some research pathways to get to their careers. So that was the original version of it and we've been teaching it ever since then. So this school year we expanded it to all grades six, seven, and eight with a slightly different focus. So we took kind of the premise and the basis of the original Spartan Pathways. We left some of the more specific high school transition pieces to the eighth graders only. So eighth graders still have a second quarter of it this year. So they actually have two quarters of Spartan Pathways. But those basic school skills, we figured why are we just giving them to our eighth graders for

042high school when really all of our students need those skills to be successful in middle school. So we moved it to be first quarter. So all students are starting off the year in that additional academic supports, learning some of the skills, getting our brains and our habits into that school mindset for the year. um we kind of focus on avid organization so again it's not just for avid students it's for our whole school using our planner using a binder system checking our work making to-do lists and then also focusing on some digital citizenship so now that we're one-to-one ipads i'm trying to teach and encourage our students the appropriate respectful ways to use them to interact online and so we kind of took all of that information like i said that's for quarter one for

043all students sixth seventh and eighth so over the summer We got together due to some planning and we have similar themes but we wanted to make sure it was in the exact same class three years in a row so you have the same topics but they do adjust them for the different grades of sixth, seventh and eighth. Our sixth graders need a little more hand holding with the Schoology and some of the iPad stuff. Our eighth graders for the most part have that down but they just need some of the reminders and the refreshers. Where does this fit in? I mean, it's a limited hour day. I'm not sure. What did it replace? In sixth grade, it took first quarter of reading. All of our sixth graders take reading. So we kind of robbed a

044quarter from reading and put it there. Seventh grade, we took a quarter of art. and then those teachers are the ones teaching it so the reading the art teachers Mary and others they teach that first quarter spark pathway and then they go into being or art or stem And then in addition to the skill, some of the other things besides the academics would be just those personal success traits. So even our eighth graders this year, we talked about like a hard skill versus a soft skill, something seemingly common to adults. They love that lesson. And all quarter long, we kept going back to, is this a hard skill or a soft skill? When would you need this? Why would you use this? So really just those like personal things that we sometimes overlook, they can

045be helpful in school and so many other places. So calling those out to kids. getting them to do the critical thinking so the problem solving interacting working together and then the kind of the four c's the communication collaboration critical thinking and just really kind of working with others again social skills are definitely something our students need and try to have that in a structured productive way that they can then transfer to any of their classes for the entire school year and beyond how do you feel like it went this year It's hard. So I teach eighth grade and I've been teaching the other version for the last five years. So it seems pretty seamless to me. I think like any class you teach for the first time, you kind of live and learn of we

046had some ideas. We weren't sure of the timing of do you spend two days on this or one day? Is it better to dive into it for a chunk for intensive study or spread it out? So I think that's something we'll try to figure out the balance of what's the best way to keep students engaged because some lessons they loved and other ones they were like, man, this isn't great. So how can we try to make it more applicable so they see that value in it? I think so much of it is setting our kids for success. Making sure they've got that conduit to whatever comes next. And when you mentioned that soft skills piece, it always reminds me of when we talk to employers, the first thing they say is, how are their soft

047skills? And for a middle schooler to have an understanding of that, also be mindful of that, is a very important piece. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our Michelle Jensen and Lisa Quinlan, they are two of our ELL teachers. And I'll just kind of give you a quick history of how we got to where we are and then I'll let them kind of take over from here. So over the last several years, all of us, Ibal, Lisa and Michelle, myself, we've talked about what can we do, how can we keep getting better working with our multi-language learners. trial and error we've been trying different things all along but then as an avid school it came up like wait a minute we could talk about avid Excel so the four of us actually this past summer

048went to avid summer Institute and I have to say I've been to several similar summer Institute but I can say that one has been by far my favorite Yes, I was with amazing group with Abel and Michelle and Lisa but it was also the learning that went into it and we were able to have such great conversations and okay now we've learned about Abbot Excel how are we going to do this in Invergure Heights Middle School and I have to applaud Lisa and Michelle because this has been a significant change in the way that they are teaching some of our students. um so and every day it is new learning trial and error as mary said every single day so i can't thank these two enough for taking this on and saying yeah let's let's

049try it let's see what kind of positives we can get for our students so that's how we got to and i would have to agree with jody the experience of i'm lisa quinn then by the way and yes i'm wearing my college monday I will have to agree. The amount of knowledge that I got from this training has really turned around the support we can give to our multi-language learners through the AVID Excel program. Honestly, the students are working so hard, and they know they're working hard. sometimes when they feel like it's too much they still keep going so it's been really a game-changer looking at the powerpoints we have four bullet points that we really want to just talk briefly about we focus on six consistent learning strands reading writing oral language academic vocabulary

050study skills and self-determination and leadership and For me, it really just validated what we were already doing. Because I feel like we were already talking about, you know, moving into transitioning into high school and transitioning into college. But this is affirmed that we were on the right track talking about that. What I love about it is that AVID's whole focus is trying to eliminate that gap. That gap between students' opportunities. And our EL students are really a big part of that gap. And so focusing on their, you know, and talking about their college transition and their high school transition and even. It turns out middle schoolers don't like college like shoved down their throat. So we talk about just adults in training. A lot of the skills that we're talking about, that we're constantly, you

051know, talking about academics and academic skills are really adults in training skills. They're training for your first job interview and you're, you know, sounding more academic. allows you to be more respected as young adults, etc. So the idea in a traditional EL classroom is going to be more focused on reading, writing, listening, and speaking, but also in AVID Excel, we're talking a lot about leadership, a lot about self-determination, a lot about study skills, prepping for high school and college. In addition to what you're saying, they are also starting to talk the talk. They are becoming changed as their mindset isn't just, I can't do it. It's, we are leaders, we are scholars. And they're using that terminology and believing it. And that is a huge change from past as I've seen students not believe in

052themselves before, where now I really feel like many of them. realize they can do the hard work and have that self determination to do it. EVID Excel also helps to accelerate language acquisition, increase overall achievement and give students access to rigorous coursework. And so every day we write like about our goals. They'll have a sentence starter to begin with and we write about our goals and that constantly writing about your goals. turns out to be one huge measurement of success, right? If we're goal-oriented, we can see the finish line. And it's neat to see them see the finish line. I constantly think about asking, just like last year, the year before, asking students what they wanted to do when, you know, as a young adult. what are your aspirations and a number of them like

053would surprise me with like they want to be a roofer and there's nothing wrong with wanting to be a roofer you know but I just feel so many of them have limited themselves to what they saw their parents do and now they're seeing that now I have students that would be in that same boat that want to go into welding or want to take courses in you know car mechanics and where I think a lot of those same students would have limited themselves again. So I see that goal orientation being really helpful. I also see it when they do their journal writing as their bell work. That's one of the things that AVID does is bell work for the start of the day. And in their writing, I'm... witnessing them writing about what they want

054in their young adult life, not to graduate from high school, but to go beyond that, whether it's a trade school or college, whatever it may be, those talks are happening and they're writing about it. So I'm seeing a lot of successes as well as far as their overall achievements. The next bullet, it says students continue as a cohort in which they participate in intensive academic language building throughout middle school to prepare for the high school AVID elective. And they've been told that if they complete this, they are automatically enrolled in AVID the following year. So they have that automatic ticket into AVID, whether they exit. EL services or not they still go into avid and a lot of them as I teach eighth grade a lot of them have already chosen that that's what they

055want to do not all of them and we wouldn't expect that right because there's limited opportunities and a lot of them want to take a Spanish class or whatever but about 50 are choosing to go with avid and that them staying in avid will just think of that close-knit community that they stay with all along and you're avoiding those peer pressure issues because of so many of those avid students are the ones that want to stay on track and want to go on for further schooling and make the right choices so i think it's healthy all around students also participate in scholar groups with tutors twice a week yeah and we have tutors that come in on tuesdays and thursdays and that's A scholar group is academic discussion around a question that a particular student

056has from a particular class and they help each other through inquiry process, help each other answer those questions. So really it's an adult conversation. That's the way I see it. Who are the mentors? Is it other students? They're past students. Yes. Past students that are in college. Yeah, and that's neat too because they see themselves in those other students And it's really nice to see the scholar groups work. It's hard personally for me to sit back and not guide them and just keep my mouth shut because they can do the work. They know how to ask the questions. They know how to get the group started in these scholar groups. And they really take a look at tough, rigorous coursework that they have been working on, discovering what the academic vocabulary is. What are my

057point of confusions with it and they really self-talk their way through that confusion to come up with some solutions and understanding of what it is they want to learn. And you have to remember these are the students that try to fly under the radar. They are the students that are quiet that some teachers don't even know by their name who they are because they're the quiet students that have learned to avoid any call out. And they can't avoid it in this room because they're going to lead a scholar group at some point during the quarter. similarities between avid excel and the avid elective classes that we have in both the middle and high school so they do mirror each other quite a bit um in the scholar groups you know we call them tutorials in

058the avid elective class but it's the same thing as the same consistent routine and process that they go through that they are doing the inquiry and talking to each other and helping each other with problems that they're bringing from a different class lot of the time is math but but it's just it's so powerful to watch Abel and I and Karin Swaney our avid project program manager and Jen Moe our avid district director we did a walkthrough a few weeks ago and I think Karin came out of these two classrooms almost in tears because it was exactly what you wanted to see at AVID Excel. And AVID Excel is relatively new, but it was just so powerful to see our EL students. a reframing and they are having fun too yeah but and i like

059that it's a reframing in their brain it's not it they they veer away from that you know negative um idea of having el as a service as opposed to it's a college preparatory class it's we're thinking about what's your future and what advantage do you bring to the table with your second language Same nation to have right now because I was just talking to the Dean of Liberal Arts over at Inver Hills and They are trying to get their English language learners to be okay with getting a little support and certain kinds of learning. And there seems to be a stigma attached to it, and they want to avoid that, even if that means less success in their other areas. And it's all about teaching them how to advocate for themselves again. Right. Because they're

060so scared to. They've spent years and long... A lot of times the ones that we're focusing in on are the threes and fours, your higher students that have just learned to get by, but they're not stretching themselves because they're afraid to ask for help, because they're afraid to make mistakes. And we're teaching them that that's the whole part of success is making those mistakes. And how to ask questions and what kind of questions would you ask? And that's part of this AVID Excel is teaching them when would you ask a question? What kind of questions? How do you ask that certain question? Get the answer you want. Yeah. And be okay with it. And erase the cool barrier that you're holding right now. The cool barrier has to come down. Yeah. You can't have that

061up and grow. When would this group of AVID Excel folks graduate? Four years. So this is the first, the eighth grade. Full class. Okay. We have sixth, seventh, and eighth right now. Okay. So this eighth grade will be the first. Yes. Okay. Cool. Yeah. It's fun for myself to watch these students that thought, I can't do this. And now that's not really even a conversation anymore because they think they can and know they can. And it's hard work, but they're willing to do this hard work. Is there an application process like there is for the... Nope. We pick them. Yeah. Okay. We're the application process. They get no choice in the matter. We do. I mean, we look at their access scores. Yep. And really kind of target, as Michelle said, those threes and fours.

062We're looking at a different option for our ones and twos. But right now... So it is different from AVID in that way, that they don't go through the interview and the application in the interview and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, they've done a great job of getting the students to truly understand how this is so powerful for them. You reminded me of what you'd already said about the threes and fours and it just makes me wonder. Like how could yeah, how could some of like the threes and four students maybe support the ones and twos and do some of these skills in their native language maybe just to Bridge and get them involved. There's that was my question. Like do they ever? Resort to the language that they maybe spoke first or primarily

063because I know it's multilingual but it sounds like this it's obviously English acquisition and They might want to learn how to do it in their own language. So just a question. Yeah Cool Just for reference, are 3s and 4s and 1s and 2s in reference to their academic performance or what does that mean? It's where their English is. The level of English that they've acquired. 1s and 2s tend to be newer to country, newer to English learning. 3s and 4s are more proficient in English as compared to 1s and 2s are still learning the language at a very basic level. And it's common as threes and fours to be stuck there. They can graduate as a three and four. It's very common. Because once, and it's like I think of myself as a Spanish language

064learner. Once you get high up there in language ability, it's really hard to progress. And that's what I tell students all the time. If you want to get to that high level, you have to want to. You absolutely have to want to because there are Spanish speakers all around you. You don't have to learn any more English to survive. But if you want to really become academic, you have to push yourself. And that's our presentation. Before you go, I just want to share a couple things. One is that what all three of you have shared is that you're creating conditions for kids to be successful. And that success is rooted in them being in charge of their learning and being the thinker. which is so important because a lot of times kids would be content

065for you just to tell them what to do and to do it and be done. But you're doing that next step, which is how do you make it so that you're in charge and you're the one really being the creator and the contributor to your own success. So thank you for that. That's very fun to see the theme between both shares this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Just the last thing we thought we would share quickly is just some of the different leadership opportunities. because again yes we're trying to teach them reading writing and arithmetic hopefully you all know that um but we just also want to again show the different leadership opportunities that we're trying to give our students in the middle school to go past not just the academics but those soft skills

066those leadership skills that are so important so we've talked before with the board about our program called the web with our eighth grade leaders that do some training over the summer and then are really instrumental in supporting our sixth graders make that transition we have students for change also known as student council we have Some of our seventh graders on the superintendent advisory group. We have some of our students on the SPARC group that works. Jason's on the SPARC group as well. So we have some of our students there. We have a student newspaper. That is so fun to read just the creativity and some of our students. Mr. Hannes Jesse Hannes has started the Spartan news report. I think there's been two out And it's just I mean grassroots effort where these students are

067just kind of trying to tell the news in the middle school and what kind of cool things are happening in the sports world and talking to students and The spark group actually is donating some different things to kind of help that group. I don't know if it's called a green screen, but like a backdrop and some different things to support that. So that collaboration between the spark and the Spartan news report. And then the Spartan strong mentors program was actually a program developed by one of our eighth grade teachers. And she saw the value in some of her eighth graders in going into sixth or seventh grade classes and supporting students in in their classes so she is taking kind of those a b and c students in our science class who are are wanting

068to maybe go into another teacher's classroom and support students we had a sixth grade teacher say yep i'd love some kids to come in whatever hour And after the very first day, she emailed Becky Mamani, the teacher who developed the program, and myself and others to say, oh my gosh, it was, she just could not speak highly enough of the collaboration between the eighth graders. sixth graders in her Minnesota history class they were able to sit down one-on-one with the kid help them with their work you know whatever she was glowing after day one so just a lot of cool leadership opportunities that we're trying to put in front of our students not just something academic part of them but then that is just as important as those leadership leadership and soft skills I love

069that because it really kind of tracks what elementary schools do. Buddies, big buddies, little buddies, or I don't know if every elementary does it, but... that concept of being mentors and then think about that transition to ninth grade you know some sophomores and I mean how cool is that I think that's really awesome um and I love the leadership opportunities I love the newspaper I think it's fabulous to read have you seen the news reports oh yeah oh no I haven't seen the news reports I'm sorry oh yeah I can't wait to see the news yeah we'll have to send them share those yeah please um but i was also curious i got a lot of questions after the let's get ready for sixth grade meeting about activities next year and i'm really excited we

070have a new activities director and could you just speak to that kind of what that means for families i think maybe bart might even be the best to speak to that i can speak to as well it really means to families that we want to expand the opportunities for kids after school and in our current format it's mainly sports yeah we want to expand that beyond that and make more opportunities available to middle school kids and that's really the essence of it all and with the changes that we've had in the district office with health and safety and some other aspects and a person leaving the district we were able to reorganize and have someone that's really devoted to that because it takes a lot of time and effort to work with staff but to

071for kid or with kids to find out what their interests are after school and they can then be offered through a community ed class We've heard over and over again about things that kids would like to do but they haven't fit because we haven't had that format to do them. I think that's great. I just don't think I don't think as many people know about that actually. I think we're working towards that. We've got a committee together that's working to develop what that looks like so it's still in its early stages but the main part of that was having someone that was able to devote time to that. And my other question is how is the process on figuring out what are some of the other class offerings that are coming for kids? Where are

072you at in that and when would kids start seeing these choices? It sounds like in music already there's some. Yep. So the Excel, obviously the AVID Excel was implemented this year. The Spartan Pathway was implemented this year. Not around choice, unfortunately, but we saw the need. in our students and then yes Jill Sarah's one of our music teachers are she primarily teaches music explorations and say something eighth grade she came into us and said she wanted to try something a little different for eighth graders to give them a little choice and we were all for it so she did some work over the summer she's doing like a keyboarding piano class guitar Film, appreciation, and popular music. So kids choose two of the four in eighth grade, and then they take one of them first

073semester and one of their choices second semester. Because it was important to us to kind of change things up. Music exploration kind of got a little boring to them in eighth grade. So Jill was instrumental in saying, let's do something a little different in eighth grade. So kind of a teacher-led initiative? Okay. I think that's all a part of also getting settled into quarters and semesters as part of that transitional piece that we're trickling into bit by bit. Because I don't know if we would have still been on the trimester. It would have been a little bit harder to do Spartan Pathways. It wouldn't have been impossible. But that nine-week time frame seemed to be just kind of that sweet spot for Spartan Pathway. And then... the music you know giving them the choice of

074two of the four and then they kind of straddled the two first two quarters of the third and fourth quarter it just made those kind of things a little bit easier to do even just switching to the quarter system I just wanted to thank your team while they're still here, because I save it for comments at the end. But school years can be so different one after the other. And last year was a very different year in tone than what we're hearing this year. And I think although kids and things change, the constants are the teachers and you and your team. And so thank you for choosing to come back year after year and doing the hard work. Well, and one thing I... You know, we, our family's first year in the middle school was

0752021, which may we never return to that. But we've been in the middle school for a while. And your efforts this year with the Spartan shout-outs are, I mean, it's been a lot of work. It sounds like it's that I don't know whose idea that was or how it was created, but it's making an impact in our family. So thank you for that. It was, again, it was Jesse, the PBIS, and then two teachers. 4,000. 4,000, shout outs. And we're just coming up toward the end of third quarter. So, again, it was the same thing. It wasn't. Yeah, no Thank you. I want to do this and this Shawn man time said I think I can figure out how to like and make it simple for teacher That's great any other discussion, thank you very

076much All right Very important work but Maybe not as exciting is our budget. I mean Heather's gonna make it really exciting. We'd like to welcome Director of Business Services Heather Ahni to provide a 25-26 budget update. Thank you. So when we start the budget process we started by looking at our current reality so in our 2024-25 school year. and our total district budget is $57.2 million and that's after budget adjustments that will be brought to the board in April. Our fund balance policy is 8% which is six weeks of operation and projected deficit spending is $483,000. The state portion of our budget is $43.6 million or 76.8%. federal is 1,870,000 or 3.3% due to the ESSER federal funds expiring our federal budget is 3.2 million less than it was in 22-23. The local portion is

07710.35 million or 18.2% and other is 936,000 and other is like interest, activity fees, miscellaneous things like that, donations. The local levy voter approved operating referendum portion increased from $708.79 per pupil to $1,369 in 25-26. So that is an increase of about $2.3 million and that's due to our voters approving an operating referendum. So cross subsidies are state or federal mandates that are not fully funded. So the 22-23 special education cross subsidy projection from AMSD, that's the most recent projection that they had, was $3.73 million for our district. And we estimate that for the 24-25 year that it's about $3.4 million. There's no current AMSD or MDE English learner cross-subsidy calculation, but we project that to be about $898,000. And as we know, the general revenue formula funding hasn't kept pace with inflation since 2002-2003

078school year. And if it had kept up with inflation, it would be an additional $1,364 per pupil, which would be 18.7% of an increase and $4.9 million. So our district priorities, district budgeting priorities are strategic plan, class size, and quality programming. Our budget guiding change parameters are to align with the school board fund balance policy, align with the school district mission and strategic priorities, and maintain financial stability. And we remind ourselves of these priorities going into the budget process. 2017 referendum priorities operating levy was to maintain class size, increase career and college readiness, increase vocational and technical opportunities, support student behavior and mental health. And our capital projects levy was to access to digital content, vocational and technical tools, software, classroom furnishings, large musical instruments, and textbook and curriculum materials. So our strategic process is

079that district cabinet meets with each principal and we identify the challenges and the opportunities for the upcoming school year. We review the enrollment and formulate some natural additions and reductions based on staffing parameters and enrollment. And then additional adjustments may be taken into consideration after dialogue with the school principals and cabinet. And then we continually update the school board and school board finance committee at work sessions and regular meetings. Enrollment. So enrollment decreased about 50 students more than expected for this school year, 24-25. And we're projecting another decrease of 45 students for next school year. That decrease is due to our senior class graduating being larger than our incoming kindergartners. And birth rates are lower across the nation, so most districts are seeing a slightly declining enrollment as well. And also like most districts, we

080go through the process of right-sizing every year, which is increases or decreases to maintain staffing to align with enrollment for the upcoming school year. So just aligning the enrollment, like for instance, per grade, where fourth grade might have more students one year than the other and less than third, and just making those adjustments. The process helps the district stay within its budget parameters because in a typical year most of our funding is based on our so Where we're at in the timeline is sharing the budget fact sheet with the school board and then from February to March cabinet will meet with it has I think met with all the principals now and department heads and March through May ongoing updates to the board is available and June 9th, the budget will be shared with the

081school board, and on June 23rd, we'll ask for the board to approve the budget. So that's it. Thank you. Any discussion? just want to share a couple pieces one is that as you know the legislative session is in process and that can be we always wonder what that outcome will be and that all of you us everyone is very active in making sure that our legislators know what our priorities are and we're keeping tabs with that also i just point out that we keep that 2017 levy piece as a part of our budget fact sheet and to that the 2024 levy is to hopefully maintain those things and sometimes people may get wonder about that but our 2024 levy i look at as being maintaining the things that we put in place with the 2017

082levy with the exception of adding another sro it's just important for a community to know that as well and we look forward to seeing what the end of the session may bring to us heather for community members listening can you just explain what deficit spending um that spend yeah yeah um it just means that our our expenditures are more than our revenues and that happens from year to year we ended uh last school year with a surplus um and then that carries over so we it's like having money in the bank But your money coming in and expenses going out might either dip into that savings or add to the savings. Sure. So it's not for management of funding. It is... potentially the income from last year we know will be spent this year yep

083and we did have a larger technology um purchase that we thought was going to post in last year but ended up posting in the this year so that's a big portion of it sure thank you any other discussion i also want to share that this information was shared at our last work session as well so it's not the first time our board members are seeing or hearing this thank you All right, now we'd like to invite Superintendent Bernardson to lead a discussion on the school board member election cycle. Thank you. I also want to share that this was also a conversation at our last work session. And this is about school board election cycles. And as we talk about them or talk about elections, we have three different types of elections that take place in

084our school district. The first and one that occurs on a reoccurring basis is school board members. uh this is set where we have elections where uh at one cycle there are three board seats up at another part of that cycle there are four seats up a second type of refer election that we have is an operating levy which we just referenced which we just had this fall and an operating levy is exclusively learned for learning so that supports the daily operations that take place within our school district and then the third type of election is a bond referendum and bond referendums Bond starts with B. Bonds are all about buildings. So neither one of those can be used for the other. They are totally separate. And those are the three types of elections that we

085as a school district have. As mentioned, our school board elections take place every two years. They are intentional again in regards to the cycle, three members in one cycle, four in another. And this is done to make sure that we have a consistency within our board. It wouldn't be good management on the board's part to have all the board members up for election at the same time. That really takes and challenges some consistency and some knowledge that we need to make sure that we're doing the best we can for our kids and our community. Right now in ISD 199, we have our school board elections on odd years. So it's basically at a special election time. Operating referendums, as mentioned, these are done again to support our general fund. Minnesota statute requires us to have

086these elections on a general election time frame. They can be on odd or even years. Actually, this past fall, that was probably the first time this district has had a levy referendum on an even year. The other type as mentioned is a bond referendum. And bond referendums, again, exclusively for facilities, buildings, and etc. And you can also see within the presentation that state statute dictates when you can have a bond election. So there's various times throughout the year where bond elections can take place. But again, they're guided by state statute. Our current format again we have elections for four-year terms and they're every other year. We have three terms that are set to expire this fall. Actually it should be at the end of December in 2025. Four terms set to expire in 2027. And

087really the difference between it is something that basically if there's nothing else on the ballot, the school district runs the elections. So in other words, in odd years like last year, the district runs that whole election and we do get some support from the county, but we do bear the brunt of that cost. So it is more expensive for us as a school district to have elections on odd years or during those special times. In even years like this past fall, we don't have much impact on the work within the election. We do pay a fee, but that election is really run by the city in collaboration with the county. So if you look at that, the labor is quite different between the two different elections. We're considering and bringing to you the consideration to

088make a change and the reasons for making the change in our board elections would be that as you know over time the window for voting has increased and increase in a good way but it does start now a couple months before the general election so there's a lot of activity that takes place much before it used to plus the costs have increased if you're increasing the amount of opportunity with an election window you also have more costs associated with that And then also what goes along with that is the time demands. So our staff have to spend quite a bit of time involved in that election process. And we're also considering the change and as mentioned earlier, our first election in an even year, there's a much larger voter turnout during a general election year.

089And we think that's a good thing for our district and for our community. More voices to that election cycle. As we look at changing our school board elections, there's a couple of different things to consider. There's actually three. One would be we can continue as we are right now. Keep board elections on an odd year cycle just like referenced. Our next one would be 25, then in 27. Another option is to transition to even years. If we make the transition to even years, that would also mean that the board would have the opportunity to extend the term of current board members by one year to meet that election cycle. The other option is to transition the board to even years by holding two consecutive three-year term elections. Our proposal to you is to move school

090board elections to even years. We think this is a good thing to do because it reduces cost and time as mentioned and the cost is rather significant. There is a much larger voter turnout during even years and by doing so again we would recommend extending all of our current board members members terms by one year. So again our recommendation we would be to move to opt move ahead with option two and we would also recommend bringing this to the board as an action item at their next regular meeting which is on March 10th there is a resolution that's associated with that and also by Minnesota State statute we also have to have a action plan associated with that and as mentioned we did share this information very much similar to this with you all at

091a work session and we would be open any discussion that you'd like to have on it this evening. My understanding that the legislature at this time is also considering this change. So we may be just, this may not become a choice. Correct. There is a bill in the Senate that would require this. I think another piece to mention is that within Minnesota there is about 300 school districts and there's less than 30 of them now that have school board elections on odd years. Districts are incrementally moving to even years for all the reasons that we shared. reiterate that we've we have talked about this and that we as a board at our work session talked about like the optics of extending your term and also the cost savings to the district to do that and

092so just be explaining that it like many factors like liz said and whatever but it just seems like it makes sense to do any other discussion i think the only thing for point of clarification the costs have been going up every year that we can calculate it's really hard to calculate the time correct And I think it's significant, the cost savings. And we don't even understand. I just think of Tracy alone, of the amount of labor involved for her and so many things she has to do. But it's not just Tracy. There's calls being taken at every building. Teachers get questions. Principals get questions. There's so many hours that it's hard to even. that if it could kind of be consolidated into those even years, I think it makes a lot of sense. And there's

093so much that we realize by having the levy election this fall in an even year when we were able to find out the difference in that aspect of it because realistically in an odd year, the labor associated with that starts in July, more or less, and runs all the way through the month of November because not only is there the election itself, but there's a follow-up aspects that go along with that as well. I do want to share that we will also be having an addition of the reporter that would be going out before the March 10th meeting and we have an article referencing this in there so that we can inform all of our residents in advance of the board taking action on this as well. Thank you. Thank you. All right moving on

094to committee reports. Sarah will you please give an update on the facilities committee. The facilities committee has not met this month. Okay thank you. Jake will you give an update on finance? The Finance Committee met to discuss updates to the fiscal year to date comparison, disbursements, the Pine Bend parking lot, and the compensatory education funding. That is funding that we use to compensate things that we don't have such as, oh man let's see, I mean I think it's like our money that goes to like educational benefits. It's directly linked to educational benefits or some used to refer to it as free and reduced lunch. Right, yes. Yes, that funding may be shifting and I think it's important to note as we had the budget presentation this evening that the way that they calculate comp ed

095funding is quite different this year and it could if it stays as it is have a significant impact on our budget but we're hoping for some legislative aspects to help that to not happen and that's one of the things that we're advocating strongly for yes thank you Darcy will you please give an update on the personnel committee sure the personnel committee met on February 10th to discuss middle school activities and get an update on insurance committee the ECA committee and an employee investigation thank you Sherry will you update us on a policy committee yes the policy committee met prior to tonight's meeting to discuss policies from the current policy cycle thank you Now membership highlights Dave will you give an update on a MSD sure they met on February 7th and their agenda included some

096routine business and then guest speakers on the strategic use of AI Shaping future ready school communities. I can also do best foundations. Yes. She's not here this evening They met on February 13th and their agenda included a financial report an executive director's report and an action team update and just want to reference that the best foundation does now have an executive director and she's hitting the ground running and actually she's going to come tomorrow late in the morning i'm going to give her a tour of these this these facilities but it's exciting to see them have someone in that leadership type of leadership role to help grow the foundation uh sherry will you give an update on ms msba i can msba is offering several workshops contact tracy if you're interested in getting registered and

097uh dave will you give an update on intermediate school district 917. sure they met on february 4th and of course their agenda included routine business but they also have a new board member from lakeville great all right now moving on to the action items Director of Learning Megan Blazek will introduce the recommendation to approve the ISD 199 American Indian Education Program and the American Indian Advisory Council's vote of concurrence for the 24-25 school year. okay good evening you guys um we were with you at your last work session and shared a pretty lengthy presentation with a lot of information we had a parent from our american indian parent advisory committee join us along with our american indian program liaison chris johnson i'm here to represent all of them tonight at our board meeting i'm going

098to share just some information for our community about our american indian education aid program and then share where we are at with our vote of concurrence so first of all minnesota statute section 124 d.78 requires that minnesota districts charters and tribal schools with 20 or more american indian students have an american indian parent advisory committee specifically the statute cites that school boards and american indian schools must provide for the maximum involvement of parents and children enrolled in educational programs, programs for elementary and secondary grades, special education programs, and support services. To be compliant with this statutory requirement, districts and charters and tribal schools are required to submit an annual compliance document to the Office of American Indian Education by March 1st of each year. This is also known as the vote of concurrence or non-concurrence.

099It's an annual compliance that is valuable, is a valuable opportunity for American Indian Parent Advisory Committee members to meet and discuss whether or not they concur. with the educational offerings that have been extended by the district to american indian students if the apac finds that the district or the school board have been meeting the needs of american indian students the issue of vote and resolution of concurrence if they find that the district and or the school board have not been meeting the needs of american indian students the issue of vote and a resolution of non-concurrence this vote is formally reflected on the annual compliance documents So just a little bit about our program. So the purpose of the program is to increase academic achievement, to decrease the dropout rate, and to improve the school climate

100of American Indian students in a culturally appropriate manner. This program addresses five specific goal areas with a specific focus on ensuring that all children are ready for school, all racial and economic achievement gaps between students are closed, and that all students are college and career ready. Our goal is to provide meaningful, intentional, and targeted educational opportunities to every American Indian student while at the same time fostering a culture of identity and pride. You guys got to see many of those examples a couple weeks ago. So I'm here tonight just to let you know that in accordance to the statute our APAC has met and they have voted concurrent for the 24-25 school year and have shared that they are very happy with the programming that we are providing our American Indian students here in District

101199. So if you have any other questions for me I'd be happy to answer those tonight. Any discussion for your work on this? I think Chris, I like to make her. She is an amazing individual and she has some amazing families with her. And being that we're at the middle school that they have a student group, I think of over 40 here, right? I mean, she shared all about awesome. It just I'm what a point of pride for this district. Thank you. Do I have a motion and a second to approve the vote of concurrence for the 24-25 school year? Motion by Member Pearson. Second by Member Warwick. Motion by Member Pearson. Second by Member Warwick. I should have done that first. I apologize. I was just in the moment. All right. All those in

102favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion is carried. Thank you. All right, moving on. Superintendent Bernardson will introduce the recommendation to approve the second reading for review of several district policies. Thank you. The policies that we have before you this evening are here for their second reading and these policies were reviewed by the policy committee in December and they had no changes, minimal changes and limited changes and we do have one adoption. They did have their first reading at our regular meeting in January. So we do have no changes to 901 community education, minimal changes to 215 addressing school board member violations, 511 student fundraising, 701 establishment and adoption of a school district budget. 902 use of school district facilities and equipment. 904 distribution of materials on school district property. We do have limited changes to 512

103school sponsored student publications and activities. And last but not least, we do have the adoption of a new policy which is 807.1 service and therapy animals in school. Do I have a motion? Oh yes. There's one more slide and so you need a couple more policies. Oh forgot about it. Thank you. So you can see here there's some additional policies and we have some substantive. Significant. Huh? We have some policy updates to 519, interview students by outside agencies and 721, uniform grant guidance policy and a total revision to policy 522, Title IX, sex non-discrimination. Tracy does her policies so we're gonna let her you can actually even go right there if you want yep and so that total revision we actually discussed in our policy committee tonight due to some changes above us we it

104was suggested that we move to a total revision of policy 522 titled on Title IX non sex non discrimination. It was actually approved at our previous meeting on January 27th. But since then, we've gotten guidance from those changes that need to be made. So we're actually reverting back to a 2020 version of policy 522. again it was discussed at our policy committee this evening of the reasons why um but because it was approved at the last meeting we've been made aware of these changes our policy 208 allows us to bring it back to the board for a second reading and one reading again for a total revision on that specific one like i said earlier kind of today these were a unique set of policies different than what we're used to seeing at a typical

105board meeting for a second reading but these will be grouped with that second reading for the that group of policies for this evening thank you do i have a motion in a second to approve the second reading or review of the policy policies presented member near me second by member klingner and second any discussion i have a quick question but i'm okay with an answer later um With the use of the community and the use of facilities policy, do groups get access to password-protected Wi-Fi, or is it guest Wi-Fi only? I was trying to read through and find that, but I couldn't see. It's guest. Okay, so people that rent facilities just get guest. Yep. That was a question. You must be employed to get the other access. Okay, thank you. One question or clarification,

106policy 522, it is reverting back to a 2020 policy. Yep. Okay. And thank you to Trace here for clarifying all this because it's a much different aspect than what we're accustomed to. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion is carried. All right, moving on to our closing comments. Mr. Berners-Lee. Thank you. First of all, I think and the Broadbanks Middle School for hosting this evening and sharing this evening, as well as the opportunity for our Spark Kids to share with you their involvement and how they're committed to their school and their community. That is just phenomenal. I want to just share a couple things. One is that Simley High School had a Minnesota State High School League large group band contest here at the end of last week, and they got a superior rating for both

107of their bands, which is outstanding. I want to also congratulate Simley Gymnastics for their fabulous performance at the state meet this past weekend and wish our wrestling team the best of luck as they go into state competition this week. And then probably one that I want to make sure people really hone in on is that we have parent-teacher conferences next Wednesday, Thursday evening, and Friday during the day. And it's a fabulous opportunity for you to connect with teachers and or your teacher, and we really encourage you to take part in conferences. and it just shows you how fast the school year is moving along because that means that it's quarter three yes thank you member warwick Yes, I want to start off by thanking the students that came in tonight for their great presentations on

108educating us on vaping and their personal stories as well as a member Pearson talked about. I wish I wish we had a crystal ball 10 years ago when we designed those bathrooms. I just I or if there's some way we can open them up and still have the stalls there, of course, but it just You know, they're off to the side, but when we were looking at the blueprints and everything last year, or 10 years ago, yeah, I just wish there was something we could do to change the bathrooms somehow. 32 businesses in Invergrove Heights, right? Oh, my goodness. That is a need for concern that are selling vaping products here. So, I don't know. That was a real concern to me. Also to our middle school leaders, thank you very much for your preparing

109for your presentation tonight. And to our teachers tonight that came in to share their passion for the For what they do Mary Dylan telling us about the Spartan pathways Lisa Quinlan and Michelle Jensen EL teachers sharing with us about the avid Excel getting them getting the kids to think and also setting all of our setting our kids up for success One last thing as duck as as mr. Burnison mentioned that conferences next week, so don't forget to thank your teachers thank your teachers when you're there at conferences that's it Yeah, again, the SPARC students, it's always great when we get to hear from the students about their experiences and stories. And of course, now I'm thinking of more questions I wanted to ask them. But just out of curiosity, is that the group or are

110there more that are involved as well? There is a few more. A few more, okay. Sorry, what was I talking about? No, she's peeking over. Yeah, I mean, fabulous work. And I know that there's... there was i can't remember who was just asking me like why do you have those i can't remember how they referred to them banners in your parking lot at the high school those are like so those if nothing else they're a talking point to start to bring up with people because they kind of look at them like well that's strange um The I think Jake you had mentioned the message about the middle school is very different this year than it was in the past and I didn't even realize it until Dave and I were at our meeting a couple

111weeks ago, and it was like hey things seem to be running a little smoother Which is awesome to hear with that That group of kids, but I also thought it was so great the the creative teachers and staff and how they're given They're given the option to dream and to come up with these new ideas and try them and just see what happens I mean school can get a little stale for the kids too So to be able to have these new things to try I think that's super great and exciting for everyone involved. So happy almost spring break Number cleaner just always amazed by kids that take risks and speak honestly about what they believe in and I guess you know if they're asking us for help to the extent that we and help

112them fix their problem I just think former tobacco user myself and I was able to quit and I think that people can on one hand do what they want with their bodies and on the other hand we have rights to learn and work in echo free spaces so I want to make sure that I can do what I can do to help them I'm proud of them so thank you member Naomi Oya I second all the comments tonight. I'm really glad Dave you made so many great highlights about some of the activities that have been going on because I just want to jump to something serious for a minute. I just I want to remind folks watching at home sometimes that there's only so much this district can control. And I think I was sharing

113with Carrie and Dave a couple weeks ago there were 10 bills in front of the Senate and then in the following week there were 836 bills in front of the Minnesota Senate. That is how fast things are moving and happening and that doesn't even touch on what's happening at our city level or our county level or the federal level. I think we're really trying hard as a group to be connected with our community, to be connected with our kids, to be connected with our legislators. But if you know of something going on, share it with us because it really does sometimes take, it takes a heads up from the MSBA, SBA or the AMSD or... somebody who heard at a planning commission meeting that some big thing is going to change. It's going to affect

114our kids. So please talk to us and share to us because we're all trying to stay on top of everything. But we really can't control everything because there are a lot of actors. So we're going to do our best. But there's a lot out there in the world right now happening. So please talk to us. I just wanted to echo the kudos for the students who had bravery and courage tonight to speak up and share stories that may not make them popular among their peer group for sharing that in front of a group of adults. But I hope that it does make them stand out as leaders. And I think that there's a difference between being popular and being a leader. And we're really, really proud of them for doing that. I wanted to call

115out what I heard them say towards the end. They asked for help from us as individuals. And they talked about wanting to pass an ordinance. And if you're watching this recording, and help with that too. You can Google search city council meetings. You can look up names of representatives and you can see their previous efforts and that young man Marciano talked about their previous effort to Send a proposal to City Council. We can all do that as individuals and help them with their efforts and like board member works at 32 businesses. I will be looking that up Finding out the thing that I think angers me is the fruit flavored They are right. That is the root cause, right? If it tasted like crap, less people would try it and get addicted. So kudos to

116them. Also wanted to share last week, I had an opportunity to tour Hilltop Elementary with the superintendent. And that place is so much more than a school. We talk about our mission being a community commitment. And Hilltop is living that out. I got to walk around. Not only with the superintendent, but Principal Byrd joined us for a while. And that tour slowed down when you were with Principal Byrd because kids are hugging her. constantly constantly every kid that pastor grabbed her around the waist and even as we were walking around with the student success coach or principal bird or a teacher I noticed every one of their interactions they could call every kid out by name but it was followed with how's your day going how's your morning how are you like they literally stopped

117and had a conversation how is your day it was just so impactful to me because it really is it's it's so much more than a school it lives out our promise that the school district is a community commitment and it was really powerful to see so kudos to principal bird and the student success coaches there and all the teachers and what you're doing day to day really really makes a difference um i'm proud to have my children in this district and i'm proud to have my children my child at the middle school um i mean just the idea like courage with the with the spark group courage at the middle school level of administration allowing teachers to shift courses and courage for teachers to take that on because as a former teacher I it takes

118effort but I also think that's that's when when I enjoyed it more also was like, what is this group of kids enjoy right now? What do they what makes them come alive? And it, you know, adapt adapting your curriculum to meet their interests, just Sort of wakes everybody up. So yeah, I just I think the willingness to adapt and with that to inspire and so I think You know Darcy and I it was a few weeks ago. We we participated in the Lunar New Year and Visited the robotics club and oh my goodness that robotics club was like Dylan is not here, but it was unbelievable and I mean, that's just that that's not I don't have a background in that type of thinking and so like I was just awestruck and then Just there

119were so many students at the Lunar New Year celebration and that was really really fun and it was fun to see Live demonstration of it. What is the was the game? Yeah? No, it wasn't look it was it okay? Look it look it yeah, yeah, it was it was like 23rd and 24th. Yeah, I did terrible But it was given prices. Oh, you're right. It was really fun, and and I just I thought in the the room where the Lunar New Year celebration was being held off to the sides in those other rooms. I don't know what it was. D&D and gaming. Yeah, there. And then robotics. And it just, you know, it was, there's something for everyone. And so if you're a student watching this, please ask a teacher for extra credit um but

120also get involved there's something for everybody and um i just think that's really cool so um yeah that's what i have um there is no work session in march the next regular board meeting will be held on monday march 10th at 5 30 at salem hills do i have a motion in a second to adjourn All those in favor? Aye. The motion is carried at 7-14.