May 2025 School Board Meeting

001First, we need to approve the agenda. So, moved. Second. Moved by Shabilian, second by Sixberry. Any other discussions? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Uh, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. Ice to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay, we have one open forum. Um, the guidelines for open forum are as follows. Speaker must state their name. Each speaker will be provided three minutes. No action can be taken unless the matter addressed is formally on the agenda. Speaker will not make negative comments regarding any employee of the district. The board chair can end the open forum at any time. Please note that data privacy laws do not allow for any matters concerning individual

002employees or students to be discussed. Uh Kimberly um I've been teaching a long time and in a lot of districts and I just want to say I've never seen a district like big and so I thought um we just moved here um within the last year and I thought sometimes if you grew up in the community or um have served for a long time you forget what all you have in your district in your community. So I just wanted to bring um a fresh set of eyes and a new perspective. So um just want to share some things with you that I've noticed in my time here. Um about a year ago, uh my family is very unfamiliar with Big Lake, Minnesota. And before we decided where to relocate, we actually toured seven different high

003schools and different school districts um before we even decide where we're going to buy a house. And Big Lake was one of them. Um we were super impressed when we got here. And um we were just impressed by so many things about your school district. Um important things to a teenager when my um son's a teenager uh when we toured the high school was the online school system. Um the food choices in the cafeteria which of course is important to a teenager um were great compared to last school. Um we were impressed by the families such um and things like or the facilities things like the pool um the new weight room the fact that you have a community gym membership was great um the balanced budget derosis district the friendliness of the staff and

004students the robotics team the engineering program and it was cool learning about the sandbox opportunities um we heard on the tour that the school board was this is just a quote from those students cracking down on dress code. Um, I don't know if that's true or not, but I have to tell you as a parent, walking through the hallways of the high school and not seeing students wearing hats, hoodies, midress gave a very welcoming and academic atmosphere that was um, very inviting to our family. We loved the friendliness and energy that came in the warm welcome by the counseling department at the high school. Um, before moving, my son played tennis against Big Lake, actually. And I have to tell you, this is where sports teams are important because I listened. I didn't know why

005they didn't make a choice yet where we're moving to, but I listened to those team members from Big Lake. I listened to their conversations. I listened. I watched how they treat each other. And uh we were just so impressed by their conversations and how they acted in their demeanor. And so it's just a good reminder that no matter where you are, if you're from Big Lake, you're representing that school district. And I think your your students and your coaches represent you well from what I've seen. Um the more I get to know how Big Lake the more I get to know about Lake Big Lake in the school district, the more impressed I am. Um after touring the high school, I got involved at Indie. Um I love the STEM focus there. The school follows

006some of the best practices in education and it was refreshing to be a part of um this great organization this year. Some of the best practices um like plumping GT students. I have my gift and talented uh license and I was a gift and talented coordinator. So, it's nice to see just that GT um just how we're serving those students here. Um the EL clusters, the great curriculum, CKLA is one of my favorites. Um so, I just love seeing that here. Uh collecting instant data and making instructional decisions and math and the amazing STEM teachers. We have a great group of STEM teachers at Indie that um do wonderful things and just the rotation with robotics, um the launch program, engineering, art, the STEM activities and the lessons are top-notch and very engaging. I also

007worked for the science museum for a while in in nonprofit education and it's just so cool to see like things like um the golf the golf stuff that they did and um some of the experiments that they that they do there and it's just everything we that I love about science and stuff. Um the PBS system for the students and the staff um are really impressive as well. It's fun to see like the 3D printing projects, the principal taxis. I can go on and on. Uh, one of my first impressions of Big Lake when I came here is it was nice to be a part of the PBIS as a teacher. And so I have to give John a credit. Um, give, you know, recognizing the staff and including them. It was great getting a

008front row parking spot, getting a caribou coffee delivered. I was like, "Wow, where did I just land?" Um, so that just making that welcome to new people here. Also, I have to give a shout out to Scott Pierce. um he went out the first snowfall and was clearing snow off of people's cars out in the parking lot and that just really reflects the care that people have for each other here as well as the culture and climate of the school system. Um the system and structures also are very refreshing at the school. They're very clear and outlined very well as a teacher to work under that and um good guidelines and communication really allows us teachers to just focus on teaching the kids and caring for the kids and so it's nice to be under

009good leadership. Um environment. Also, um I love that newly remodeled libraries. I want to spend I don't know if I'm under my three minutes, but um the libraries at Indian Liberty are bright, cheerful, and refreshing, and it makes students and staff want to be here. All the support staff are also wonderful. For instance, the custodians give out rewards for the cleanest classrooms every month and um share fun videos as they reward those to students. So, it just it's just a nice um overall atmosphere. Again, I can go on, but um those are some of the highlights. And so, I just want to encourage everybody in the school district um that when things look bleak and dim, um my hope is that parents, students, staff, and leadership and the community realize how blessed they are to

010be here in Big Lake. Um we wish um I wish we discovered this community earlier in life, but that Sorry, I'm getting over a cold. I am blessed by my my that my footprints that you left footprints on my heart and I hope that you are proud of your schools and accomplishments. I hope your families are aware how fortunate your students are to attend here. Thank you u for all you do. Thank you for everyone in the district um the parents everyone involved bus drivers um for their service this community and thank you again for your leadership and um all that you do and Big Lake will always have a special place in my heart. So thank you. Is there any other open form? Okay, we'll move on. Uh, we have the consent agenda, the

011previous minutes from the April 23rd regular board meeting, the May 14th work session, claims and accounts in the amount of I think I lost my sticky for that. Oh, there it is. Uh, 1,468,000 $71364. The uh credit card report, the personnel report, and the final reading of those policies listed. Moved by Brown. Second by Nelson. Any other discussion? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. On to donations. I will make a motion to approve the donations. Second by Sixberry. Any other discussion? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Activities update. Uh yes, Madam Chair. As um Mr. Queley comes up at the end of his presentation, I will be we will be asking the board for approval because it does include some adjustment of some of the fees that he'll go through and he'll kind

012of process through what it is. Um that is the action item that is being requested on the agenda this evening. Madam Chair, members of the board, good evening. Um, again, this is an update for you. Uh, seems like just yesterday I was standing in front of you guys for the first time. But, um, I'm happy to say that when I was going to come back here, I was going to have better data than what I did the first time. And I hope that, um, as we go through this process and you see the updates from the activities, the picture of what's going on within our department. So, as you can see on our very first slide, we're very proud of our state champion this year for wrestling. He was ranked number one Harrison Gellerman all

013season long and he came through and won a state championship uh for us the big lake this winter season. Go to the next slide. Um also state entrance for us, we had boys cross country and the team and individual girls diving, gymnastics, wrestling. We actually had a visual arts student who participated in um the state visual arts festival which was held at the perpetr which is an outstanding facility for our young students to be able to go visit see and actually take their artwork to that level of a competition. So very excited about that opportunity for our students. Um, also for next fall, we had our conference meeting uh two weeks ago and there was a discussion. Of course, we're not in the Mississippi 8 for football. We're in district football. So, the high school

014league scrambles everything, gives you 54 58 schools, and you put a schedule together. Um, and in talking with the member schools in the lakeside schools, many of them in the outer suburbs of the metro area are going to six o'clock starts uh for next fall. Um, so rather than have 7 o'clock games, six o'clock games, 7 o'clock games, um I think five out of our eight games will be at six o'clock p.m. We already do one game at six o'clock and that's our homecoming because we have the homecoming festivities of dance after that. So, little bit of a change coming into this fall as an administrative routine. We talked about this. What would the impact be within our community? We thought, you know what, let's jump on and try it and see how it works

015for us. Uh, and transitioning from the end of the school day to a Friday night football game, homecoming week. Many people have been very patient with this. Like I said, we got the football schedule about two weeks ago and se the week of September 29th through October 4th is our homecoming week. October October 3rd will actually be our Friday night um football game with that middle school activities. We um wanted to go through our activity fees and see how we compared. If you would like that data, I do have a spreadsheet from the Mississippi 8 schools to show what our high school fees are and what our middle school and our fine arts and activities fees are currently in our member schools. And um we found that we're way behind which not a bad thing,

016but we also thought this is a good time for us to do some catch up a little bit. So, before you tonight is a first of a two-year increment. Um, we talked about moving from $99 to $125 this year, looking at what that impact will be and then with this hope of next year going from 125 to 150. I just realized I got an extra zero in there as a typo. Sorry about that. Uh, next item, 9th grade high school league about a month ago approved those ninth grade changes that we talked about uh earlier this winter. Um, I've already started having conversations with our coaches as to what that means. Now, 9 through 12 students, we will track quarters, periods, halves, games, game limitations for all those students who participate in 9 through 12.

017So, as our eighth graders finish their school year here, they are now ninth graders. So, they're going to be under a different umbrella coming into fall and out of the summer coaching waiver period. If seventh or eighth graders are moved up to a ninth grade team or JVB or varsity, they have to stay now. And systemically, that's going to be different for some of our coaches. They can't come up, play on a ninth grade team, go back down to that seventh or eighth grade middle school. We were doing a lot of floating in softball this spring between our seventh and eighth grade girls softball team and our ninth grade. They won't be able to do that next year. They either got to stay on the ninth grade team or stay on the seventh and eighth

018grade team. So, um some good conversations about the what that's going to look like. And then also when they become a 9 through 12, their non-school participation is done. they can go off and participate in weekend basketball tournaments, Sunday events, those types of things. So again, conversations with our parent, our community, our youth programs about that impact. But um our coaches are well aware of our first step with that. Um next up will be our participation numbers, gate receipts, and our unduplicated numbers. So first one is just participation numbers. We go to that next slide. There we go. Fall participation numbers. Just kind of giving you a synopsis of where our fall participation numbers have been at. Uh this is as far back as I could go with the current registration system that we have

019at Big Lake. Um and so you can see that our fall numbers are staying pretty steady with participation. And these are all students 9 through 12 um duplicated in every roster that we would have. So this last fall we had 438 students involved in our uh programs up just a little bit but over the course of the last five years about right where we have been coming out of co our winter we see kind of those same numbers. Um still pretty close when you look at our normal enrollment. um the number of students hasn't gone up or down significantly and that'll show you on another slide here, but uh for our numbers to stay pretty um across the board the same is is a good thing for our kids that they are staying involved in

020our programs, they are participating um in our activities. Um next slide please. Then the spring sports season. Uh spring sports, as you can see, we've been way up there 450 and now we're back down to 439. I would say our numbers were down a little bit in um softball. Uh we stayed pretty steady in the uh track and field. Baseball was down a little bit. Um golf, girls golf, we're really struggling there. Um, we we were trying to do some things differently in the recruiting of numbers and and getting girls interested in in our golf program. And that's one that we're really taking a close look at here for next year as to what can we do differently with that uh programming. So, um, next gate receipts. I kind of like to show you the

021revenue that's being brought in by our gate receipts. I wish this wasn't a roller coaster, but game receipts are a roller coaster because it's weather and it's the quality of the team. If teams are doing really well, people follow uh quite a bit and if uh they're not doing well uh or being an average year, then our um gate receipts will go down just a little bit. But we we're at almost $33,000 in the boys revenue. um highest was about 36,000 a couple of years ago. So, not bad in the ballpark when we're looking at um our ticket prices and we've kept our ticket prices pretty consistent here for the last several years um with those numbers. And then also our girls revenue is the next slide. Um our girls was down. Our girls revenue

022was down. Um again that reasons. Uh a year ago we had a really good dance invite in the winter season. This winter um even though it was on a non-school day, the participation at that invite was down significantly from uh the spectator piece. Uh our winter crowds were pretty average uh for girls this winter and also in the fall a little bit too for that. So again, a synopsis for you. I didn't compile the season tickets for students and or for our adult season tickets. And that's another piece that I will give you um in the future as a um a three, four or fiveyear synopsis of what that looks like. Lastly, the numbers that I really hone in on at the end of the season because it has to do with our Title N

023compliance and um you know, I'm big Title N compliant guy that wants to make sure our participation between boys and girls is as close as we can and the what what are we offering and are we offering the right activities and I'm proud to report to you that we have 54.89% 89% of our boys participating in 9 through 12 and 51.3 of our girls. For us to be within that 3 to 4% air is really good. Um there are some districts that that's in the 10% 12% range and right now we're we're staying pretty healthy. And then the next slide kind of shows you the difference um from 23 to 24. And uh in 23 we had a gap a significant gap um like I said 11% almost there um between boys and girls participation.

024So our I'm noticing our younger numbers are coming along. Our ninth and tth grader numbers are staying healthy. Um our seventh and eighth grade numbers even though we can't use them in our Title N compliance. Um, it's nice for us to track so we can see in the future how many boys are coming into our program, how many girls we anticipate coming into our program as well. Uh, and then lastly, um, if you want a breakdown of the last seven years of our participation at the middle school level and at the high school level in each one of our activities on a yearly basis. I can shoot that to you in a Google file and and you can take a look at that as well because I've gotten that now broken down into fall, winter,

025and spring. So that's my summary. Any questions? I just want to clarify. So just the middle school activities high school. Correct. Right now, great, great question. Right now, our high school fees are right in alignment with what our other Mississippi 8 schools are charging for those fees. Um In line with question about school and so on increasing I would be really interested in There's an impedent thing done. with some of those fees, but you might also Yeah. Um, great points as always. I I too want to make sure that we're staying um we're eliminating as many barriers as we can for our students and or their caregivers with uh with them being involved. This is a safe well what you just heard. This is a safe welcoming environment for our kids. There's no better place

026for them to be other than at home. And um what we offer is pretty inclusive for this size of school. We should be proud of that. Um but I can't make those decisions without collecting the data. And that's what I didn't have coming into this. So, and if in a year we feel that we push the envelope, we'll need to have those conversations as to whether that fee should increase the next step or not. My only concern is when you do that again. Is there something in place if there's low-income families and their children want to participate in sports and activities? Yeah, we have free and we have reduced um currently and um our system that when they register online, we'll take that into consideration so that uh Emily can send them an email back

027and they they can get that reduced fee or no fee. How is that communicated to families currently so they know in advance? Um it's in our registration information, but again um what we really try to do is the grassroots piece and say to the coaches, hey, are there kids missing? Reach out to them, see why they're missing in our programs and build those relationships so that we're not missing those students or having them fall through the cracks. um because I I do believe that's a good way of looking at who was on the roster last year, why are they not participating this year and if we can do that financial piece to do that with the uh increasing fees the the way we're looking kind of going off what Amber was saying, is there a

028way we could explore doing something in terms of communication a a little bit more than just the coaches reaching out to potential kids because there may be kids that haven't thought about activities or sports or maybe new to the district and they're and they're scared that they wouldn't be able to afford it or they're embarrassed and they don't know that there's those things in place. I would say every district faces that same question of how you get to those students, what's the best way to try and reduce those barriers? And even in Rochester, I was working with that constantly. Um, and then the difference in social economics between our three high schools. Um it's it's a fine line because sometimes parents will come to you for the help because they're comfortable in knowing that it's

029going to be private and there are others that just won't um uh make the phone call or um break down that barrier to to have the conversation as to how can my child participate? um could be added to the registration page. you certainly could add that um information easily to that online page and um there well I think I think too is that if um this gets approved this evening in communication it's going to be you know just say hey remember as you register the increases they have increased and if this is a struggle for you these are resour we could utilize that announcement of the increased fees as also a communication of if you need some additional support, we don't want that to be prohibitive of your participation. So, I think I think to

030kind of get in front of it, I hear what you're saying there, Derek. I think that's a really good suggestion and trying to get in front of it that way to make it part of the registration and the communication of the increase. My my thought is if if we see I we maybe with the increase in fees we may not necessarily see a drop in numbers but if we see an increase in utilization of discounted and waved fees then we know that there's a concern that we need to address without hopefully seeing that negative impact of numbers. So and that'd be a way for us to be able to gauge it with with utilizing those processes and systems in future reports. Um, I will put that as a note to show you. Uh, hopefully historically

031with with our current database, I should be able to go back and do fall, winter, spring, free, reduced lunch count numbers of kids participating and are we seeing that drastically increase? Are we seeing that decrease because they're not coming to our door and asking those questions. So, great great feedback. Yeah. Yeah, that would be very helpful. Thank you. One last question. Do you ever give surveys to the players based on what they're experiencing this season? Yeah, we do. I I did it in the fall season just to kind of um capsulate for myself how things were going and um I got mixed reviews. So, I I I ceased it because I want to re-establish um my parameters and what the questions are that I'm asking because um it's a survey that I brought from Rochester

032and I just didn't feel that the information I was gathering was accurate about Big Lake kids and so rather than continue on and have useless data. But yeah, um there is a survey that I I go and seek out from the kids that are on our current roster that just finished their participation. Usually it's the last week of the season so that I get them before they leave. Um and I'll have that re reestablished for this upcoming year. You did the survey with kids or co-op groups too like hockey and lacrosse like just um in the past. Yes. Um I in the fall we didn't uh girls tennis I guess was the one that I just opened it up because I didn't look to see whether that was a Spectrum student or a Big Lake

033student. So all of the students got that survey. Yeah. One of the things I will say about the co-ops is if we're not hosting the co-op, um I'm finding that we can gather information and give feedback, but that's about as far as we can go because it's still the other district's responsibility for the full evaluation of that program and the evaluation of that coaching staff. Um so, but yeah, we do collect that feedback. putting it out to the board members about approving just one year at a time. Yeah. I mean, I I guess I would I would lean toward um approving just this first year and reevaluating next year before we I I don't feel comfortable putting in a two-year fee increase. I would reassessing next year. I would agree with that. So, do you

034want to make a motion? So, um, I'll make a motion to approve the middle school fee activity fee increase for the 2526. And then I'm assuming that you would want some data next spring before you make your next decision. Okay. Second motion. Okay. Motion made by Shabilian, second by Nelson. Any other discussion or questions? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Thank you, Mark. get you the data on all of the activities and I'll make sure that yeah I'll get it to Kevin and have her disseminated that way some uh on to the financial reports Good evening, school board members. Uh we'll enroll moment as usual on the financial report and you can go on to the next slide. So more good news. We actually did have one uh one ADM or average daily membership

035increase um from last month and seeing growth again very common at this time of the year seeing growth in the six big lake online. You know we lost students in some in some buildings and grades but then it was more than offset by the growth that we see in the big lake online. Um, so bottom line is our average ADM is 3,134, which is seven over our second revised enrollment budget. I think it was last month or maybe the month before that I had brought that second revision forward. So we're in really good shape um for the end of the year for enrollment. Um, so that's good news. And then you can see that graphically here um that orange line is above that the yellow line which is our revised budget. So you can see

036that graphically um that we're above our budget. So again, good news. And then we do have uh a few budget revisions. So what is common at this time in the year is is that we I go through and I figure out, okay, what projects are we going to complete this year versus next year? Because we have June 30th year in right in the middle of the summer. So, um, it just, so that was a lot of these revisions this month was going through our capital and construction LTFM projects. So, on revenue side, first of all, we did get a grant. Um, so I just established a budget so they could do their ordering for that. Um, that was a central Minnesota Libraries Exchange grant. Um, and then the other thing is, uh, working with TJ

037on that that h the roofing the hail clean um project. uh we the expenses are coming in a little bit higher than what we got in insurance proceeds. So we will be billing insurance. The underwriter knows that. So then I just adjusted the budget to reflect what our latest estimate is. That's at 458397. So total revenue increase in the general fund of 461397. And then if you go on to the next slide on the expenditure side again established budget for that grant um the project cost for the hail claim and then um LTFM had to increase it a little bit again working with TJ on that and then um that last bullet point there the decreased budgets for purchasing and project timelines and then so these dollar amounts are then they're taken out at 2425

038but then they're recommitted in 2526 as I'm establishing them 26 budget those go back in. So total expenditure decrease of 113873. And if you go on to the next slide, just want to um let the board know these revisions don't have any impact to that unassigned fund balance. That's the one we always look at. Um but it just affects these restricted and assigned fund balances. And again, like I said, most of the those funds are recommitted for next year. So again, it's common common that I do that at this time of the year. It's usually in May. And um this is our total budget. Again, no change to the unassigned. And then lastly, I was hoping we could talk about a deal, a budget deal. As you all know, they adjourned without a budget deal.

039Um and I put on their status of special session. I don't know that there's any updates other than there's no deal. So, I just stuck because I did this PowerPoint last week and was hoping something would come through when it has not. So, I guess we stay tuned. I don't know what else to say. There really isn't anything to report anything new. So, met one time and said nothing and dismissed and Yeah. publicly. Yeah. Yeah. And I I've not heard any I've not heard anything from my group, my Mazel group. I don't know. I don't think MSBA I haven't seen anything there either. So, so hopefully maybe next month we can have an update on that. Hopefully they'll have something before June 30th. So, um with that, that's all I have. So, just need approval

040of the financial report and then the budget revisions that I just Oh, sorry. Any questions? I should say any questions for me? I'll make a motion to approve the financial report and budget. Motion made by civilian, second by Brown. Any other discussion? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. On to approval of a transportation contract. Yes. Uh so uh Lynette Ashley and I uh negotiated a new transportation contract with with Vision and I I had included this memo in the um in the schoolboard packet. So, I I'm not going to reiterate the whole memo, but I just want to highlight um that we did have to make a an adjustment. I call it a year one market value adjustment because it was very clear that we were behind. We were very behind. And

041so, we made that year one adjust. We agreed to that. And um even with that adjustment, we actually are still behind our neighbors, but not significantly behind. And then so after that year one adjustment, so after that ongoing um the increases will be tied to CPI, actually the transportation consumer price CPI as of January the preceding year for the next year, next fiscal year. And and but we have a floor of 4%. So it guarantees they get at least 4% but a ceiling of 8.5% because we felt we had to protect ourselves as well. And um yeah because there was a few years I know when we were looking at some historical data um you know I mean there was increases of double digit increases in transportation but we just felt we had to protect

042ourselves as well because unfortunately we don't get double digit increases from the state. So um let's see I should add that Oh, this is actually a four-year contract and then but with option to renew for another four years. And um Ashley Lynette, did you want to add anything? Did I forget anything? Yeah. the district I came from charged so I shared that and it you know so I don't know what sometimes you just don't know how lucky you are yeah yeah and unfortunately we can charge and we were lowerucky But but we have a long the other thing too we have a long-standing relationship with vision and and I do recommend approval of this contract. I know they've worked very hard. They themselves haven't they've increased drivers wages to so they can recruit and retain.

043I think the biggest thing is is retention and um and things have done pretty well this year. So So I I mean unless there's any more questions for me or Ashley or Lynette um I do recommend approval of this contract. I'll make a motion to approve the contract. I think you guys did a good job with this. I know we were really behind and the costs have gone up, not only just in I mean, you can see it just in the wages alone, but fuel and in all aspects. So, I think you guys did a great job. Motion made by Sixberry, second by Hancock. Any other discussion? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. Uh on to curriculum presentations or presentation first. We have a lot. That means we've been doing a lot

044of good work. So All right, we are going to start with our curriculum. All right. So, our ELA adoption. So, as you know by statute, districts are local controlled. So, it is up to us to do a curriculum adoption. So, English language arts, communication and language that people use to um for all of what we do. And so, this was our 68. We just did K5 um previously. So, a lot of you sat and watched us do that. So, up now our 68. And remember, we had split those just because the cost and so we kind of did those. Um next fall is the actual roll out of the English language new standards and so we have to have everything ready by next fall. So we really once again rooted in Scarboro's rope focusing on

045those higher level knowledge um language comprehension and um as we walked through our process. So we did present these that you're going to see at the district curriculum advisory committee. So we are going to go a little bit faster for you all tonight. Um so if you do have questions please ask. Um again we we started off our year with the redact literacy training. All of our middle school ELA teachers and special ed teachers went through the OLA training this year. And so we wanted them to get some foundation of that before we really dug into the curriculum. So we let them get into I think about module eight before we even really started our process. And then we started with our research and we reviewed um the data. We identified some curriculums. We looked

046at our standards. We studied those standards. We investigated the entire body of research which they were learning in the OLA curriculum. We did our initial vetting. Um Katie and Ryan dug in and found us some curriculums to look at. I listened at our networking sessions of what everyone was looking at and then um our ELA curriculum committee which we have all the names on the last slide really did a great job. Mr. Erns set up a room for us and we had physical um materials that we could look at. We had all the digital samples which I had shared with our curriculum advisory committee and we came to these three which then we set up in the room um and they really dug in. and we had a rubric that we used um based on

047the science of reading and the Minnesota ELA standards and we just went through them um all and filled out that rubric. And then um we had the initial presentations in January, but if you remember that PD day was a snow day and so we did have them present to us virtually which was better than nothing. Um and so we can kind of continued to dig in. Um, we did do a deep dive into all of the materials that we had on hand as well as the the digitals. We did pros and cons. We did parking lot questions. We asked questions to the vendors, had them reply to us. And um, and this group really did a great job of really digging in from a teachers lens. Um, Ryan and Katie dug in through literacy leads

048and and through our data leads and we had technology digging in from technology. I was keeping that big picture. And so we really did a lot of work just to get it down to these two. And so we were down to um Amplify ELA, which is the continuation from CKLA. It's the middle school version, and then Imagine Learning EL Education um which was the one that was approved for elementary. And so we did want to really give that one a good a good look. We did have those two vendors come back and present to us in person and we asked them to present to us within the parameters of what we have to teach in middle school. We have 46 minutes about 170 student days because a lot of curriculums have all the bells and

049whistles in them. But how would it really look for our middle school students? And so that's what we asked them to do. And so then um after that we discussed pros and cons. We let everybody on our curriculum really have voice to the decision and we settled on amplify ELA. All right. So um amplify A is a really nice continuation of what we do and um you can see on the slide it's um a high quality curriculum. So anytime we're looking at curricular materials, we're looking at high quality instructional materials. Doesn't matter what they are. That's the goal because we want high quality instructional materials and evidence-based practices in our classrooms in every content area. So you can see it's content specific cumulative meaning that the kids are learning things that build upon each other

050from kindergarten all the way through 8th grade and then in high school as well and they're coherent. Um we looked really carefully at things that align to our district literacy initiative. So the four practices that we launched four years ago um in all of our classrooms across the district, the Minnesota K12 academic standards and um ELA which are new um are going to be implemented this fall even though we've been implementing them as um for the last year and a half since we've known about them and then it aligns to our um K5 CLA curriculum. As uh Mrs. Anderson mentioned, they are using CLA uh currently at the elementary level. Um being in a district that has a primary and intermediate school and then of course our middle school here um it does make for

051a natural transition with this curriculum amplify um at the CLA level K through two really focuses on knowledge and skills um knowledge the student knows what a theme is skill they can identify the theme from this specific text transitioning to intermediate three through five the students are getting more of a blended model um the curriculum starting to be guided um through a collection of text progress um with their skills and it's starting to become embedded with the text. By the time they arrive in our middle school as sixth graders, they're familiar with the platform already, but now it's fully embedded in the text. So, they have a natural progression of te of text. It wraps around a variety of interests and now all those new Minnesota academic standards are innately embedded into those selected texts.

052So, that was a big positive with that specific curriculum. Um, another thing I do want to and we can actually go to the next slide. Oh, right there. I like to have control of my slide. Yes. I didn't want I I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want to touch it. Um and so, uh one thing that I have heard amongst, you know, teachers, uh that are friends of mine from other districts. Um and kind of what I'm gathering is Amplify is a popular program. And so when I found out it was one of the three curriculums that we as a big lake school district were looking at, I kind of naturally had in a way a little bit of skepticism that I had to overcome with that. I kind of wanted to figure

053out, you know, why is this so popular? What is the one magic seed maybe that's in it? Is there not one? And kind of what I've overall noticed um was there isn't necessarily one magic seed about it. It's the overall quality of the curriculum. Now, um I think one thing I've heard a lot of about this curriculum is how well-designed the digital platform is. That was something that I was concerned about as a teacher. I'm a teacher who I truthfully believe that physically engaging with text is important. I'm a huge believer in muscle memory. I ask students repeatedly, "Write this down. Write this down. Write it multiple times down." Because if you are writing something down and you eventually write it wrong, that muscle memory is going to catch that. And so I'm a big

054believer in that. Um but despite uh that concern, I was reassured um when Amplify the vendor came in and they had told us everything that is available digitally is available and pencil and paper. I know we are the district is purchasing all those materials um for next year's roll out. And I do want to speak to um especially sixth grade because that's kind of my specialty. Um, as a sixth grade teacher, I hear primarily, and I have students who have a variety of interests, like anybody, of course, but primarily students are interested in historical fiction and science fiction. Historical fiction, you can see that we have the Titanic collection there. Um, science fiction, a lot of those students are also interested in Greek mythology. And shout out to Greek mythology. We have a lot of

055words there as well. Um, now speaking to the digital piece about um, Amplify. Um although we can also have it completely pencil and paper. One thing that was really important I connected with Ryan Fury about this is um currently we use the fastbridge system which has many pros to it but sometime sometimes accessing data for our um trimester screeners or for progress monitoring from fastbridge can be quite cumbersome. One thing I'm very excited about with the Amplify curriculum is the ability to have consistency in assessments from classroom to classroom and then have a common place for teachers on the teacher dashboard to bring the PLC to compare and know that it's valid and consistent administration of that assessment. That's you sixth grade. Yes. Um and so I do want to speak a little bit on

056this one. Um, so this kind of breaks down into subunits a little bit. Um, this is where we'd start to see, you know, when we go on to that Greek mythology unit. Um, we have our subunits here that break them break down the text further. And this is where also, um, students would specifically engage with content specific knowledge, content specific skills. Um, other thing I like with this platform is amongst the three vendors that presented to our district, um, Amplify was the one that just simply fit the best with our scheduling. I don't think there's another way to get around that. It just simply fit the best. We looked at Eucation. We looked at Great Minds and it would be a lot of slicing and dicing to get that to work. And I just don't

057feel if those would have been the curriculums that we'd be recommending that it would be delivered with fidelity. I should introduce Ryan Herbald. He's one of our sixth grade ELA teachers. And Katie Anenson, who is our literacy lead at our district. So, two people that were on our curriculum committee. And here's some seventh grade. And I'm stealing Katie Slender because she would love to tell you all about these. Sorry. Um, so if you want to learn more, I think we gave you passwords and the program guides are there. Um, we also give you linked onto here program guides for the K2 and 35 in case you wanted to go back and look at the CKLA. And I also put this little third edition thing which we're going to talk about in a little bit. Um,

058so here are the members of our middle school curriculum committee. And you can see we had our ELA teachers, we had our um, special ed teachers, we had technology, we had data, we had literacy, we had administration. and we tried to get as many people that touch the middle school ELA curriculum um in involved in in having a voice in adopting this. So with that, we would u make a recommendation from the district curriculum advisory committee to the school board to consider adoption of amplify ELA and I am um I'm asking for a six-year adoption for this. Any questions? [Laughter] Engagement is our specialty. So, Minda, looking at my notes, um I'm sorry I missed asking something in the curriculum advisory committee. Um so, just uh the differentiation component. Um is this middle school curriculum

059better set up to address skill deficiencies? I mean, are you able to pull out skill deficiencies better for this to identify what the students are actually missing or is that still a interventionalist? Um, yes. Yes. And so the way that ELA is designed, um, if you use the print model, there are three different levels of differentiation in every lesson. If you use the digital, there are six. And it's really neat. Um, I could talk about this for a long time, but like for example, it'll give you a text um and like it'll have the grade level text, but then they have the same text written um in um not as complex language, but the just the meaning is exactly the same. And it does that for every level. It's very very cool. And so it

060allows kids who to access a text that they wouldn't normally have access to. So it's very cool. So they're still getting the the high engaging content. Yes. And the rigor is the same. It's just the standard is the same broken down. And Ashley, I'm so glad you asked this because as I was sitting over there, I did get an email about something else that we've been looking at and it's called Amplify Boost. And so most of our buildings have be time. And so those when you've heard me talk about MTSS, we have tier one and that's for all students. And then we have tier two kids that need a second helping or something else that we provide an additional addition for. We've noticed in our tier one as kids are going out to get their

061two or even just those tier one or B. What do we do with these kids? That's infidelity that's aligned to our So, we've been looking at something called Boost and it comes from Amplify and they have a um K5 is boost, boost close reading is 68. So, we're looking at that to complement this. It's new hot off my email just now, but that is another way that we can differentiate for kids and it's already built into our schedules. So, we have that time, we have that pacing, we have it set aside. this would help us align what we're teaching so that teachers have all of that material right there in front of them. So hot off the press. I don't not sure if we're going to get that yet, but something we're looking into. Any

062other questions? I would make a motion to approve the 6 through 8 curriculum of amplify ELA. Okay. Motion made by Shabilian, second by Nelson. Any other discussion or questions? All in favor? I oppose. Motion carries. All right. Point of personal privilege. I really do have to thank that that middle school ELA committee. Just the hard work. They took it to heart when when Mr. Erns set up that room and we put out all the materials. They really did do their due diligence of rumaging through it and digging into it and digging into the platform. And so I I really feel that this was a very well-made decision by them. So, a fun thing happened as I was calling Amplify to get quotes. Um, I call and I, you know, try and get that sweet spot.

063Four years, five years, six years, what what is the best pricing that we can get out of them? Um, and then being I'm old and old school, I always call back and say, "And can we get free shipping?" Because that used to be a thing. It's not a thing anymore. Um, and so they said, "No, Mindy, you can't get free shipping." So, I called back one more time. Is there any is there any other perk or thing you can give me free um if I purchase this? Come on now. We're K8. we've talked to other people about you. And she said, "Well, I'm going to tell you about a thing that we did with Bell Plain." So, we've worked, Katie and I have worked with Bell Plane, aligning standards, doing a lot of the the

064the work with CKLA and Bell Plain. So, CKLA came out with a third edition. And so, what CKLA told us they would do for us is we had purchased a six-year edition of CKLA second edition. We purchased six years. So they said, "What we'll do is we will buy back those four years, give you the third edition, and then if you add on two more to align with our 68 purchase, we will give you all of that at a 10% discount." And so we were getting those four years of the upgrade at the price that we had paid for second edition. and then adding on the two years. And now that Angie knows how much my curriculum is and I've got it all in a nice cycle, she can budget so that next time we're

065doing a K8 adoption rather than splitting them up. So we're going to just walk you very quickly through through what does a third edition look like. Um so I'm let Katie take over. This is for specialty. All right. So just like the second edition, CKA 3E is what we call it. Um it focuses on knowledge. So the the purpose is to build There's two sides of scar bro, right? There's the um word recognition side and there's a language comprehension side. So both sides are recognized in CPA. Um so one thing that's really different about this particular edition is the pacing. Um in 2E one of the flaws of the programs, it's very robust and it's really beautifully written, but there is too much instruction. There's too many days instruction. And so after giving a lot

066of feedback to CLA and then because they're a really great company that way. They said, "Okay, we're going to make it better for you." So, we in K1 and two there are 10 units with 16 lessons each. In three, four, and five, there are nine units with 18 lessons each. That equals 165 days of instruction. CTA also has something called pausing point days that we do. We use them for remediation. We use them for extra things. Um, but those aren't included, but 165 days of instruction, which is exactly the sweet spot where we want to be. This is a really very small slide and there's a link at the end of this presentation that you're um more than welcome to go to look at the topics. They align just like the previous ones though. So

067like they keep building on the topics. Ryan mentioned that in um sixth grade they do a Greek myths unit. We also do a Greek myths unit in second grade. So we see in Greek second they do Greek. In third grade they do Roman. So they build on top of each other as we go. Um so this is I'll just this really quick. There's a lot of information here, but these are the units. And you can see the ones in red are the new ones in the um in the new edition. And then there's some that they've removed. And then they've also given us what's called choice units. And so a choice unit means that the district chooses between these two things. And then we adopt that for the whole district. And um so our teachers

068have some voice and choice in what we are teaching, which is really um first grade is there's you can from 11 units to 10 and second grade we went from 12 to 10 and third grade we went from 11 to 9. So no we got rid of the Vikings not the not the football team but the actual like guys um so anyway and then they added these really cool novel units and so in um fourth or third grade they get to choose between Charlotte's Web and Stella Diaz has something to say in fourth grade they get to choose between from the mixed up files of Mrs. basically Franker which if you haven't read it's really good I highly recommend that one um and the season of six Malone in fifth grade they choose between the

069Phantom book or the science of breakable things so just different things um that we've been asking for so those choice units that I just mentioned this is just another place you can look at them I put a link there that you can click on so you can see this document it's got more information than this um and another thing that they added oh I forgot to mention this they added capstone unit in um K12 it's just a research unit but 345 it's a capstone unit and the capstone units align beautifully to our STEM practices and our STEM schools so that's really fun for Indie as well um writing is something that they really beefed up we we talk about this the science of reading so we have decoding or word recognition times language comprehension equals

070skilled reading what they've uncovered over the past few years well 50 years um is that writing has something really similar so there's transcription times composition which is still writing. So um that's one of the things that they've really they really hurt us when we said we want more um holistic writing not just writing about what they're learning about but then also like the craft of writing. So that stuff is embedded in read. So you can see that um the building blocks are there. Sentence expansion, sentence combining. These are things that are really great activities for kids to do because it teaches them not just how to good writers, but in turn because to be good readers. Um, and they're they come from a resource called the writing revolution. If you've not seen that before, it's

071definitely worth looking into. Um, oh, I don't know what just happened. Um, but it's by Judith Hman and Natalie Wexler. Um, I'll keep telling you a little bit more. You don't need the slides. You can just listen for a second. Um, and one of the things that they added in third grade was um, there was they added So teachers can either use them in their actual instruction or they can use them as a whole like independent um small group stuff with their students as well. Um and this the systematic and explicit phonics instruction that really is part of the react. Um that's what we're getting at there. We want our kids to know the code of language and how to break it and so that that systematic and explicit instruction is maintained in because that's

072very strong. Um assessments are a little bit longer in the student workbooks. They're in a separate um in a separate resource that teachers can copy and hand out Stephanie. Um and I talked about that. We're gonna skip. And another thing that really aligns beautifully to ELA is that there's a digital platform now that's teacher facing. So students can actually do their assessments online. Oh, I forgot about this. Okay, I'll tell you about this first. So there's presentation screens. We have them in E, but they're done in Google. This is its own platform. So teachers can go in and um look at the slides in advance. They can do a little bit of editing, but this makes it easier to hold fidelity to the curriculum the way that we want to. And then with that platform

073there's autoc scored assessments that students can do and what's really neat about those just like the ELA ones in 68 they give teachers reports and you can see the reports here so it shows like here's did on this assessment but the cooler thing is the one down below um it'll actually break it apart by standards and say this student did really great I don't know you guys they did really great on this standard or this is this is a standard that you need to focus in more on. So that's really cool about that as well. Helps graduation. Yes, absolutely. So that and and that gives us some data for our passing point as well. So those kinds of things all tie in together. It also helps us support our interventionists and that kind of thing

074as well. So it's kind of just a bigger ecosystem as far as what like um also manuals are in full color which doesn't seem like a big deal, but let me tell you as a teacher for 25 years color manuals are really big. So anyway, uh there is a link there that you can click on. You can type in the next chapter. That's the password. And you can literally see every single manual and all the bells and whistles that they're so lucky to have in our district. Um so I'm really not coming and asking you to approve curriculum like we normally do because we've already approved this curriculum. What I'm asking for is your permission to do the buyback and take us into a six-year instead of staying with the four-year and switching over to

075the 3E. So, there is a little upfront money because we're going to buy new teacher materials, but they were only going to support 2E for another four years anyways. And then we would we'd be doing this anyways. So, we're getting that switch off of four years plus then we're getting that 10% discount and we're getting it off the 2E price. And so this is a great opportunity for Big Lake to move ourselves into that third edition and get all the things that our teachers um have been asking for. Um we did take this to the teachers because we wanted their input. And of course at first it was what? We're going to do what? And then when we sat on it for a little bit, any emotions? Yep. Then it was all good. Um and

076then so I said well email us back your feelings, your thoughts, your emailed me back was they're choice units. So their their teams got together and that we want this this this and we did want to have their voice in the choice units because either choice is a good choice and either choice covers the standards and aligns to all that scope and sequence. So we were really happy that our teachers had their voice and included and and that they did come to realize that this was a good opportunity for us. I will second that. So motion made by sexberry, second by reasoner. Any other discussion or questions? Um I just I just wanted to say um so as a part of the curriculum advisory committee. Um I dug into all these materials as best I

077could. Um and also just getting updates throughout the process of implementation um both through my children that are in those grades but also through Minda. Um, and I just really want to give a super sincere thank you to all of the teachers that have undergone this implementation and the re, you know, the research and our read interventionists and our district administration because giving CLA the feedback of what our students in Big Lake need has given us an opportunity to not only save our taxpayers money, but give our Big Lake students a more tailored and better educational opportunity. And I just think that speaks so much to the dedication of our staff that they not just took in a new curriculum. Okay, I'm going to do this. They took the new curriculum and they said, "Oh,

078but this will make it so much better." And then they acted on that. Um, and it's our our community that's um going to take in the benefit of that. So, I really have been impressed by the whole the whole process and um I just wanted to make sure that was on record that you guys are doing an excellent job. Well, thank you because you know that whole MTSS, it's a heavy lift and to do it well, it it takes work and it and our teachers feel it. Um, but but we are leaning in and we are doing a great job and we're seeing it with our students and we're seeing it with our results and so we're excited. So, we do have one more piece that I think we have to vote yet. Oh, yeah.

079Sorry. Yeah, you Thank you, Chairwoman. Any other questions? And then discussion. I was waiting till you told us the second part of it before I asked. Okay. Which one do you want? Do you want the I want the whole ELA or the Okay. So the ELA price is a little because I'm only getting the right the um student workbooks for one year. And so we'll have to go back out which will be about another $30,000 a year to buy those. So for six years student um print for the teachers editions and for the one year of writing it's $120,000. Um, sorry. That's with boost. See is already writing notes on her paper. It's $100,000 um for six years. $20,000 is what my email just told me. If we add boost for six years, that is

080six through eight. Amplify CKLA to do a six-year with student and student workbooks for every year. So, that's already included in this um is 205,000 and that's for that additional two years. So, it's a sixyear quote. Okay. Any other questions or discussion? All in favor? I I oppose. Motion carries. Thank you. On to social motion. Yes. We have one more curriculum that we've been working on. And this one u Mr. Bonnet's been leading up with a group of teachers who have been piloting and one of our social workers who has been piloting the tier 2 curriculum. And so we kind of went all in on this one. and um I will let them take it. Well, good evening. As you can see, I have a great team behind me um as we're looking at how

081we can uh best support our students uh with building a more effective system um specifically with so this slide is just from MDE just so we all understand what is um those skills that they need for both school and in life. Um and again under from MDE under Minnesota's ESSA plan uh they talk about um requiring uh schools to have to develop a plan that promotes a well-rounded education. Part of that is explicitly teaching skills which um this program does that we're going to be talking about. As far as research goes when we're talking about wanting to uh best help our our students uh excel academically. uh research shows that schools that implement a evidence-based program like we're talking about tonight does impact positively impact their academics. So they go hand in hand. Um this

082again is the the uh curriculum review cycle and you can see that we're looking at um our curriculum uh ourCCL curriculum. So last year you approved uh character strong in the high school and now um we're going through the process of implementing it or adopting it for K8. So all four buildings uh ideally would have the same curriculum. So this is just the process that we went through uh showing at the top what's being currently used in the different schools. Um and then looking at what what is what are other districts using uh what does MD's guidance on this? How does it compare to what we're currently using? And with that uh we created a character strong pilot team at the three schools to really dig into this tier one curriculum which would be in

083all classrooms all students getting this material. I wanted to put uh a lot of documents uh up there so you could see all the all the different pieces of the curriculum. Um and some of them will be in these next slides. Um uh so just kind of big picture K5 um the the student outcomes that we have are wellbeing, engagement, and belonging. That's our goals for our students as they engage in these lessons. You can see that they're grade and developmentally specific to students. Um, which is again, it'll be K12. Each lesson is tailored to that specific grade. And this is more kind of in depth of those specific skills that they'll be looking at in each of the different grades. Social skills, executive function skills, emotion regulation. So, key areas that we can better

084equip our students with so they can be successful in life but also successful in school. Uh again with the overview of 6 through 12, it's very similar. Um so looking at these different skills that they're learning and going from knowing the skills to be able to be able to apply the skills with those three uh same three outcomes as state five. again a little bit more in depth with the skills that our our middle school and also our high school are working on. So with our pilot teams, we because we're piloting it in all three buildings, we assembled teams in all three buildings at each grade level to have representatives and our pilot teams grew as we started piloting it uh with teachers talking with each other about this is what I'm doing. This is

085I'm part of this pilot. This is what character strong is about. And so in all the as those teams increased as more people wanted to be part of this pilot which just goes to show um with with full plates there our teachers are willing to do uh extra to help our students and I feel like this is a really positive step forward as far as meeting our the needs of our students holistically. So I asked a few of the piloting teachers to come and share with you a little bit about their experience. So we'll start. Hi, I'm Courtney Goldth. I'm a kindergarten teacher at Liberty. And I was really excited to start the character strong pilot and at the younger ages it's called purposeful people. Um, and as a kindergarten primary lens, I'm looking for

086engagement and keeping kindergarters engaged isn't always super easy. Unless you're really good at cartwheels across tables. If it's not full of color and catchy tunes, you're not going to hold their attention for longer than a minute. So, what I liked about purposeful people that is that it had really catchy songs um with a video that went with it. The kids loved listening to them and it was also teaching some of those key components of the curriculum. It also had videos that went along to teach a lesson. Um it had moments where you would teach and then reflect and talk about what would you do in that situation. And it had a lot of games um in the connect component that really taught the character traits that we were aiming to teach. And there were some

087of the games that we've played before, but it taught it from a character trait perspective instead. Um, the unit or the year started off with a kindness kickoff that really focused on anti-bullying and taught kids what is bullying, what should I do if I see it happening, what is not bullying, so that we can equip kids with that language right from the get-go. Um, another part that I really liked what was that it had a really strong school connection, but also a home component so that parents would know what we were teaching and would know how to engage in that conversation at home and some things that they could do on the home front to to show that they know what respect is um to know what those nine different character traits were. So overall

088from primary it was super engaging and um our pilot team grew significantly because we were really excited about it. I think in kindergarten we started with two on the pilot and we ended with 10 of our 12 teachers. So we really excited to hope to go forward with it. I'm Houston and here's kind of what we see when we look at the format. And what's really nice is this goes with our PBS monthly theme with student. And one thing that I really liked about it is look at the bottom with the start connect grow and the exit. It was really flexible for us teachers. So it's like that the grow part's really your big lesson. That's about a half an hour, 20 minutes to a half an hour that really anchors it in, but it

089it's really every week there's four weeks each of the months. And What's nice is if you hit start, it can be fine. The connect if you need a brain break during the day. It's a really quick four things. We don't have to really prep anything. It's there. They have these two characters that the fourth graders were like, I don't know if I like it, but you know what? You play into it and they loved it. Um, and then there's a clo the respond is kind of like rock paper scissors and like teaches a lesson and then the exit is your closing circle. So, it really works well for us. We've been responsive classroom trained for a long time and it really really worked well with that. Um, one thing that I liked about our great

090or our our thing too, there's a tree and it's kind of like the problem solving like look at the roots, where did it stem from? Then you have your your trunk and then which way do you go with your branches? And it kind of gives the kids a I can handle this problem. Is it big? Is it small? And then another thing they have is um we it kind of reminds you a lot of Inside Out if you've seen that movie. But it has what is it J? It's earth wind. It's like four different character or four different earthly things with the emotional building things. And then one thing that I really really like being a third teacher in my heart is every single week has a different book that goes with it. And kindergarten

091through fifth grade they're all different books. So they're really good books that have strong characters that teach. So, we really hope you go forward with it because the kids liked it. We liked it. I took some pictures that I got in school. I'm April Bishoff. Uh, eighth grade actually. Uh, we and Ann Segner, my partner here. Uh, we teach sixth grade social studies, but eighth grade advisory. This year we get the privilege of having these kids six, seven. So it was really interesting to jump into character strong having uh done a different um seal curriculum before that. Um our our sixth graders, you know, they're always motivated. They come in, they want to share things. Seventh grade, it cuts off a little bit and by the time they get to eighth grade, they're like, "We're

092not talking out loud. We'll write whatever you want, but we're not going to say anything out loud." um with this curriculum which we've only done for the last couple of months um they there was definitely a shift um from Lion's Quest to this where they they seem to be much more engaged and um there was a lot to this program that made it uh much more exciting for them. So our elementary will be doing this twice a week which fits in our schedule already and middle And one of the things that our students really like and our layout is a little bit different. connect. It'll have six to 10 different questions and you can ask them give me a number that they get excited about and it's an engaging question that we do bring it

093up to the big group and there's times you can talk about that one question. So that's been really exciting with that. Our exit is a little bit different as well. It's called Dare. So that Okay, now that you've learned this, you're we're daring you to go out and make a connection with our school, our community. And the next So that's our tier one pilot. So again, lessons that all students Before we move on to the tier two, are there any tier one questions about thus far? All right. So for tier two, it' be those students who after getting these lessons through character lessons, if they're still struggling, then we're going to help support them in different ways with this tier two, usually more kind of small group, more targeted interventions. And so we went through

094a similar process, piloting process. talk about that tier two piece again in those same three buildings, Liberty, Independence, and Middle School. So, with interventions, you want to make sure that you're always you you're understanding what is your students the concern that you have for the student and then matching the intervention to address that concern. And so, Character Strong does a beautiful job. They have a five-step process to problem solve of what kind of or how is the student struggling and then what intervention do we have that can address that specific need. So, There's two types. The one that's in gray on the left is uh with which is a skill building intervention where they'd be in small groups and learning these different uh pieces because they don't have the skills yet to be successful in

095that situation. But then for students who do have they do possess those skills but they're not consistently applying them then there's a different set of interventions that we're using with them to help uh kind of encourage motivate and be more consistent in using those skills that they have. So character strong does a beautiful job differentiating between the two. Again just a lot of different documents so you can see what it looks like at the tier 2 level. Um, and I will one thing I'll point out as I think was mentioned before is how it aligns really well with PBIS. So, one of the criteria we're looking at is with how does it fit with our district, how does it fit with our school and though it's flexible, it does align really well with what's already

096happening in our system. So, with tier two, we had the same piloting teams with our support staff, excuse me, our behavior staff. And so you can see their names up there. And one of those people, Christina, is going to come and talk about her experience with tier 2 at Indie. My name is Christina Brown. I'm a social worker at Independence. Um I presented earlier and said that I have a unique lens. Um I moved here from Kansas and we used Character Strong for four years. Um so I got to watch it play out in the elementary school and how easy it was for teachers. excuse me. Um, and how much kids really did like it. Um, I heard them using the language in different classrooms and music and your quiet here. Um, and in the

097hallways and the lunchroom. So, that was really nice. We at Indie have been using different curriculums for our uh, tier 2 groups up until the spring. Our last round we used character strong. um the students identified in our groups. We um they came out of the savers um scales that teachers filled out and students filled out and students that were in high risk were the ones that we targeted to see what skills are they needing and then we picked put the groups together based on if it was internalizing externalizing and those types of things. Um the tier 2 program has 10 sessions. Um and they also have the connect component. Our um exit is mission. And so you know your mission to go out is XYZ for this week and then it also feeds back

098the next week. Okay. How did you do on your mission? What did you do? Those types of things. It does have opportunity to lend strategies. So that was really nice. Um and kids really connected and so as part of the also the implementation part um we have implemented check-in checkout with students who really needed that one-on-one connection with an adult in the building and more personalized um honing in on specific behaviors. So we did um the Hornet way. of the five aspects of that, math, reading, and specials. And so every morning I had a had a couple students where I would check in. Okay, the today what are we working on something yesterday? So like one of my students today was didn't want to work in groups yesterday, so they didn't get points on it.

099Okay, so how can you work in groups today? How can you manage that and get more points today? Well, and she said, "I'm not feeling very confident myself, Miss Brown, today." I said, "I think you got it. You will do great, 100%." She wanted to, her goal was 80%. And so, just seeing her beaming like, "I did it. I did it." And I had another student, same thing. Watching their confidence. So students who in the classroom teachers were having difficulties having lots of conversations about behavior, different things they're doing changing to where they were getting 90% on these charts. Um and so they've been able to turn those around and take more responsibility for their own behavior and accountability for that. So it was really nice to see that aspect. So we're asking the board

100uh to honor our recommendation of adopting tier one and tier two character strong um for next year. Um so questions that you have about these programs. So um I know we talked in the curriculum advisory committee as well. Um but I just was hoping that maybe you could just um touch base on the high school since we did implement this curriculum at the high school. Um I've heard some not amazing feedback um pertaining specifically to the advisory period time not necessarily to the character strong program but to the advisory layout. Um you told me earlier there was some changes that would explain how you see this going better at the K through eight level and then getting better at the high school level the advisory period. Yeah. So we did learn a lot through implementing

101character strong at the high school this year and decisions that we made um we found that weren't as effective as um we now know. Um one of those being kind of a main one would be um this year we had when they had advisory at the high school they had all four students from all four grades in one advisory. So they're mixed thinking looking for ways to build community having olders mentor the youners those kinds of things um where we found that it was really difficult for students to feel comfortable uh participating in the lessons because they had different ages in that same uh group same class. So this next year it will be just grade specific which is how character strong is designed to be. So ninth grade specific lessons for students that are

102just entering high school versus 12th graders who are ready to go to that next step. So that will be a big change that um I'm really hopeful um and confident that it will bring about a better result. Um so then tailored to that um as we've been thinking about how to make sure that we're implementing uh in the schools next year with the three buildings really going through this process of having the pilot team um thinking about training for next year's uh teachers and making sure that we're doing it with fidelity so it does have a better outcome than than our first uh year at high school. Any other questions? Well, I ran you a three-year cost um for tier one and uh for tier 1 K8 and for tier 2 um K12. And then

103the other part of this is we do get some funding from the county that we will use for this. So, we have some specific funding set aside for this. And so, for that three-year quote, it would be about 46,000. So, $45,878. Any other questions? I will make a motion to approve uh character strong tier one and tier two. Second by Brown. Any other discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm not done yet. You're on to Q comp, right? To comp. Okay. I I just I do want to give Ben a big shout out. Um he has really led this piloting program. I'm not a big fan of piloting because sometimes if you pilot two different things people but he um he really felt strongly about and Character

104Strong allowed us to do this for no cost which is the other thing. Usually pilots are expensive. So they were right alongside us and once people started piloting more and more teachers just wanted to jump on and so that was a true testament to the program and to Ben's leadership. And so, um, I'm I'm very thankful that that he helped with this process. So, thank you, Ben. All right, our last presentation for you all. You know me, I can go as quick as you want me to. Um, so this is a statutory requirement for us to present to you for the QC count program, end of school year 2024, 2025. And with me, I'm going to call up our amazing peer coaches. We have a peer coach at every building. Um and so they work

105um alongside implementing the UC comp program as well as being peer coaches which are really instructional coaches in our buildings which might I add is the highest level of evidence base that we can give our instructional growth for our teachers. And so these four people behind me wear a lot of hats um and are a main reason for a lot of what we do being so successful in our buildings. And I think every one of my principles would be sitting here doing this right now. Um they are just an arm of our instruction that we just very much lean on. So history of Q comp. Um QC comp has been around since 2005. Big Lake adopted it in um 2011. I'm not sure if you've heard, but there is question if it will be around.

106Um we have one more year funded through the legislation, but it was on the governor's list of budget cuts. Um and so Q comp is um a funding source that helps us with teacher development and evaluation. Teacher development development and evaluation is a statute that we have to do regardless if we get the funding from Q comp. And so Q comp is kind of that funding source that puts a couple more caveats on it. So this being one of them. Um we need to have um teacher leaders and I don't know when done. Um literally um so the core component is it's it's helping develop those career ladders, those teacher leaders. And so that's part of what it wants. And so in our district, we have our oversight committee, which is a combination of teachers,

107BLEM leaders, our BLEM president and vice president, and then our administrators and myself all sit on that and do the big oversight of the UC count program. We have our PLC facilitators, which are teachers in every grade level or department that sit in and are the leaders of those PLC's. And then we have our peer coaches who um apply to be in that job and then um our principles and other teachers select them for that position. The other two components are the job embedded professional development which is our PLC's our teacher observation evaluation which is that TDE component that you have to have but is embedded in this program and then you also have to do some kind of a performance pay or an alternate schedule for your performance pay is embedded in this program.

108So, our q comp plan might keep going. All right. So, I already it's usually on the notes and I can't see them down here. So, um so our count plan I already talked to you about how we've done um those those three. But what what I really want you to hear tonight is the importance of our peer coaches. I do think this is one of the very solid reasons Big Lake is as successful as we've been, especially implementing all of the new things I've been throwing at everybody in the last three years. These these are the people and it just so happens that QC comp helps us fund this right now. So, all right. Um, so the the peer coaches, are you gonna do this last? All right. So, we do wear a lot of

109hats. Um, one of the things that, um, we try to stress with our teachers is we we are teachers and we can be back in the classroom at any time. So, we're really on that level playing field with them. Um, but we can kind of be a go-between with administration and the teachers and kind of uh, see things from both sides. I know that myself I've learned a lot just position I've been in over the last few years, seeing things from, you know, different angles and things like that. So, uh, we offer a lot of different services for our teachers. Um, we can certainly, uh, co-e with them, co-plan, there's collaboration. Um, at times we'll observe if if somebody's, uh, struggling with something or there may be, uh, things with, especially with like some of

110our newer teachers, classroom management can be a piece where getting another set of eyes, it's not like we with all the answers, but we can sometimes make some suggestions or give them an opportunity to review another teacher, which can be really really beneficial. So, we we kind of wear those uh those hats. Uh we meet with our teachers at least four times. There's no cap on how much if somebody wants to meet with us more or wants our support in any other way, but we do meet with some goal setting with our PGP process and then we meet roughly every trimester kind of see how that pro progress is going throughout. Um, one of the biggest things that we've been doing over the last few years is we've done a lot uh coordinating with professional

111development. got a lot of PD days in there. And so whether we're facilitating some of those sessions or helping with some of that uh that work on the backside leading into the preparation of that. So I guess basically our job throughout the year um we do a lot of the record keeping that comes with Q compon because with it being in the state statute um there are things that need to be turned into MDE and uh so we do a lot of that with our teachers and our principles trying to keep things uh lined up for them and then along with the assistant superintendent um we gather data and and try to we're progressing with those goals, whether that be our individual personal goals, but also um the goals that come from our PLC's and

112that also come from our specific buildings. Um so we do do a lot with the with the PLC's as well. We kind of we kind of guide that um and what those those are going to look like. Um and then Ryan Pertie is another guy that helps us with a lot of the data digs. You've heard him talk a little bit about Fastbridge and some of the things and going to be really nice. I'm excited this next year with the ELA and having those uh similar assessments that you're going to be able to bring those into those PLC's and really kind of look at how kids are doing with the exact same testing and things that have taken place. So, those are a few things um that we do during the year. I won't read

113everything to you, but uh we've been doing a lot of work here within the last month on on uh new teacher prep and how we can uh work with those people and hopefully keep them, you know, in the job. It's it's a tough field and and uh seems to be the numbers are dwindling of people going into the teaching profession. So, if we can provide that support um and give them a good start, hopefully that carries on throughout even more. It just goes on and on. So, you can kind of look through a lot of these. Um, like I said, I don't want to sit here and read read everything to you. Um, it's it's interesting when somebody does ask you what you do and you tell them you're an instructional coach. Well, what does

114that mean? There's a there's a lot of different things that we we we fill roles in, you know, because even today we're at the end of the year and here I am taking kids that there was portion of kids that were were taking a their English class and they were doing presentations. Well, these kids had the option of doing the presentation for their final or taking a an essay exam. Well, I gave them the essay exam. So, it it really we fill some roles in places that that can plug some holes and really help meet our kids where they're at. Not everybody's in the exact same place. And I'm not going to go into the cognitive coaching there. Um before we um jump into these roles, we are given the opportunity to take an eight

115day training on cognitive um coaching and it's a fantastic training. I remember sitting in on the training and there were different parts that I was like as a teacher because the conversations that they teach you to have with teachers trying to problem solve and not be the problem solver but to to get the teachers to really you're really a mediator of their thinking. And so to be able to take that with um take that back and guide our conversations with the teachers whether they're in our PT meetings where the teachers are setting goals or teachers will come in if they're struggling with some students. You know it's not well try this try this it's what's worked in the past or kind of asking those questions to guide their thinking so that they can be successful.

116Um it really aligns critical thinking closely to the active teaching. So those strategies recall their experiences and we just instruction. So we're not having coaching, but we're all going to do instruction coaching also to try and further our skills of that coaching process. Good evening. I am Heidi Olsen and I'm the peer coach at the high school and this is my second year and it has been a wonderful opportunity to work with the teachers in a different like they have said we're side by side with them. we've been where they're at and we get to support them and help them and be there to um it's all research based helping them find information sitting in their classrooms to give them a second set of eyes to say so what about this or what do you

117think of this? So and one of those components is the prioritized practices. Four times a year at least we meet with each one of the teachers and they each have their own professional growth plan that they get to select what they would like to focus on. And with this um this year at the high school, we had this, uh special education team that focused, they had they did the literacy training and did a fabulous job with that. And then the other teachers, I sit down and I talk with them and we talk about their classroom, what they're working on, what they would like to focus on. And then we take a look at the prioritized practices which we've worked on developing resour for the teachers and to say so how does this fit in here

118and then that is what they focus on for their first cycle and then at the end they're gathering research I can stop in their classrooms and get information for them um and they compile that and then they reflect on it then they we meet again and then we start that process again saying do you want to continue with this would you like to develop this more or would you like would your classroom would your students be would there be better benefit in another area. So then that's what we worked on. And so that is four meetings throughout the year and it is the highlight for me that we just finished up with is the final culminating meeting with them where they compile all of the information from the school year and they're like wow we've

119accomplished a lot this year. they can see with the students. They can see the student work there. And then that goes in their final slide that they get to. It's like their best of. And that to me is one of the highlights to be able to see for them to see all that they have accomplished that we're seeing, but sometimes when you're in the thick of it, you don't get an opportunity to see and notice. So I love that component about the uh prioritized practices giving them choice they're working and the success for them and for their students everything's fixable there so here coach a year in the life when I came into this two years ago it was what I had the opportunity also to do the cognitive coaching which was fabulous But you

120you don't know how busy all that's involved in the day. So, it's being in the classroom. It's um in the cafeteria, it's uh being visible with the students, talking with the students, it's uh checking in with teachers. How can I help you? What do you need today? Um we as peer coaches meet once a week. Um and we collaborate and we uh talk together and we have resources that we can back to our teachers. Um we also facilitate the every week we have professional learning communities that meet and we facilitate those and we work with the mentors with that the PLC facilitators with that. Um and we also then along with that we have the new teachers that we work with and we have a new teacher PLC once a month that we uh collaborate

121with the new teachers find out what their questions are and then meet together and then share and then I can go into their classrooms. I can work with them on that to see um I can look up research. And then one thing that's not on here is that really was very successful at the high school is we started a weekly newsletter on Fridays called the educator hop and it gave us an opportunity to say what's coming up next week and then put research in there for the teachers. Uh Ryan had a literacy page in there. Joe Hartell had a technology page in there and then we had a chance to highlight all of the teachers and they got to see what the other teachers are doing in high school because so often you're here and

122you don't get an opportunity to get outside of your classroom and that was a highlight. So that that took a lot of time but then it got us into their classroom and they got they knew that we were seeing what they were doing and it opened up that conversation even more. So it is to me this is foundational and that we are there for the teachers supporting them helping them to be the best educators that they can for our wonderful big students. So I can't even put value on. So another thing just how awesome these people are. Um resource training and solutions had um had been part of the new teacher um new teacher something um with teacher mentorship. They were part of that grant and we just said oh we didn't have the capacity

123to do that. Well, then they came out this spring and said, "Well, if you want to be part of this smaller thing and help develop a better mentoring system in your school, you can come and join us for a day." And I said, "Hey guys, you want to do this with me?" And right away they said, "Yes." And and it was awesome. And so, Miss Dvil and the four peer coaches and myself went up and in one day we crafted a better mentor program. How do we keep and retain our teachers um when we hire them so that they want to stay at Big Lake Schools? And so, um, with our administrative support and with our peer coaches, we are going to go into next year with an even better program. And so, the value

124of our peer coaches is just something that we really can't replace. I mean, they are really the people to say yes. They are the people that will dig in. They're they do researchbased. I mean, Patty will say that this is the best thing that we can do for our teachers is to give them somebody that's highly trained, highly qualified, has experience in the classroom, works well with their administrator, and can really be that additional person to go in and help our teachers be the best that they can be, to help our students be the best that they can be. So, I just I really did want to focus on just the value of our peer coaches because everywhere that I go, any place, and people ask me, "Well, how many instructional coaches do you have?"

125And I say, "One for every building." They say, "What?" I say, "Yes, that's how much we value them. One for every building." And I don't know how we would do it with less because they really do put everything they can into growing every aspect of our building. and everything is tying together in this MTSS system with what they're doing. And so I just I'm hoping you understand the value. Okay. I'm Sarah Edgar. I'm super proud to be the care coach at Liberty. This is my fifth year. I'm finishing up my fifth year. Um component two of the count plan is about PLC's, which we've mentioned a couple times, but that's just our weekly meetings that teachers have with their teams, um professional learning communities, and the your coaches and I, we work really well together

126as far as we meet every Tuesday for our PLC. We have new teacher PLC's, we have data dig PLC's, we have PGP PLC's where that one is where teachers can come together who have same professional growth plan topics and they can talk together. Like I like to pair a kindergarten, a first grade, and a second grade teacher with a with a special ed teacher. they can have wonderful conversations because like we said sometimes we work in silos and if we have that collaboration and we can talk together sometimes you like oh that's a great idea I never thought of that before so we really help um develop those we also get together or we also plan with in collaboration with our administrator what the PLC's are going to look like and make that plan for

127the year because we can see that long term a lot of times teachers are in that daytoday and they kind of don't have that lens sometimes and so we can help with that longterm goal of what we want to have you know what what our goals are for the end of the year. So we hope you'll see these as well. So all right so teacher observation this is something that by statute we have to do um our our peer coaches partner with our administrators. Our administrators are still in charge of doing um the evaluation cycle. Our peer coaches are just the support. They're there to help but our administration um still is the one that does their summitive evaluations. Um and then um probationary teachers receive theirs three times per year and then if you're

128um non-probary it's um every three years once you every three years you get your your so yeah so our last part is that performance pay and so for this year um teachers who meet their PGP get $1,130 $10 for meeting their building goal $10 for meeting their PLC goal um next year that will be reduced to $1,000. We also I might have a slide in here. We also had to add in the cultural competency. Um we had last year kind of brought you a range of things and so this doesn't have to be approved by the board. This is just information right now. Um so we did shore up being statutes have changed. We did have to change it to a minimum of 90 days. Remember it used to be 120. So that was one

129part that changed. Um and then we made some some change just kind of clarified that what who can be involved in in the UC count being that we've had some statutory changes to the definition of teacher. Um the alternate salary is um required by statute. And so this is how we make vertical movement. That's part of Q comp. We have our goals. We're just getting done with our data. And so I didn't quite get this done but um you guys know you know you filled out the sheet. So, um I just got it from them before I went on vacation. So, um and here's what I want to say is sometimes we meet our goals, sometimes we don't. But the purpose is to set the goal and then the journey to get there. What did

130you learn in the journey to get there? And so people that set goals that are sometimes unattainable, what did you learn in getting there? I remember my first year of setting a a Fastbridgeidge goal and once we talked to Fastbridge, they looked at me and they said, "That's not even an attainable goal." And I went, "Huh, we learned something." So, a a goal to me isn't about making it or not making it. It's really about what we learned and how did we impact our students for the better. And so, um I'll bring these back to you in the fall. You always hear more data from me in the fall. So, um impact of our QC comp program is just our our system that we're building the system. We're reviewing the data. We're doing the PLC's.

131We're doing the teacher um evaluation that we are making sure that a 100% of our teachers are successful in their PGP goal. That's the one where when they meet with those teachers four times a year and they say, "What do you want to accomplish and how do I help you get there?" And they really do help them get there. And so, um, I think 100% of our teachers did meet their PGP goal because that's kind of what we say that we want to walk beside them to make sure that they meet that goal. So, we're having them set some pretty rigorous goals, but then how do we get there? And we're changing those goals so it's more student centered. So, it's about changing the teacher, but it's about impacting students. And that's all we have.

132So, thank you very much. That is all from us. Any questions from our peer coaches or from me about Q comp? I just have something to say. Uh, I just want to say that this is competitive. Not every district in the state has Q comp. I know I've been in two districts uh that want to be part of Utah and they were not allowed because there's limited in space and and due to the forward thinking and the support and the teamwork and the success that they're seeing um in 2011 and beyond um this has been part of Big Lake culture and who we are and a major part of um teaching and learning and the important stuff that we do here. So kudos and compliments to all those that have been involved throughout the time

133since 2011. So, thank you for those. I just wanted to say I I mean, and you probably heard this before, but I was part of the evaluation process when we started QC comp and bringing it on and I was nervous going into it. Wasn't really sure because there was a lot of talk around performance pay and retaining teachers and um we were like, are we just making this about the money? And then I got to go in and really see the PLC's and watch the collaboration and see how um you know, our long-standing teachers were bringing their experience to the new teachers and how the new teachers fresh ideas and and vice versa and the conversation that was just going on in the room was amazing. The support they were getting from each other, but

134then you add in the peer, you know, the peer coach and really back then the conversation was about retaining our teachers. like how do we continue to support them and retain them and that was really important and now like you you mentioned many times the dynamic has changed not to just retaining them but recruiting them and and in recruitment um I think support is a huge thing you know and to know that you can come in you have this whole team behind you that's going to lift you up and carry you through and um I mean I know a lot of teachers in Big Lake have been around for for a while now and I can just say like the the feedback that comes around about comp and our our peer um coaches huge. So,

135I thank you for the time and efforts you guys put in and for the teachers, for the work that's done at the PLC's and I really hope that, you know, more moving forward through comp will continue because um I mean,