Northfield School District Board of Education Regular Meeting 01 25 2021

001Public School Board today is Monday January 25th 2021 and the time is seven o'clock P.M right we are present in our new board room located at Northfield Public Schools District's offices formerly Longfellow School in accordance with Governor walls stay safe plan this room has been set up per the planned social distancing guidelines in addition all those present at the meeting will be wearing face coverings for the duration of the meeting also attending tonight's board meeting via teleconference are Aaron Bailey director of Community Education kimbrisky director of Technology services and found her to start Director of Finance this meeting is open to the public via live stream on the recording of this meeting will be posted on the district's website Dr Hillman there were a few items in the table file yes the table file this

002evening only included Personnel items hey thank you very much if there's no objection we'll prove the agenda as presented moved by Jeff is there a second second by game all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries we now have an opportunity for residents business and Property Owners parents students and employees of the Northfield Public School District to address the board to accommodate the public comment portion of our meeting be made available on the district's website the ability for the public to submit feedback to the board via email by 5 pm today all submissions that follow the district policy regarding public comment would be read Now by myself the board chair we have no items for public permit this evening so we will move on to announcements and recognition Dr Hillman yes I have

003uh one announcement in recognition this evening and instead of me trying to do justice I'm going to allow her to do it for us so early today we learned that Northfield High School junior Clara Falcon Geist was invited to speak at Governor Wallace briefing this afternoon at two o'clock about the State's new due north education plan so as you might imagine I happen to have the recording here and I'm going to play it for you I hope to Clara funkengeist from Northfield hi there my name is Clara Falcon Geist and I'm a junior at Northfield high school first I'd like to thank the governor and lieutenant governor for this opportunity as well as for prioritizing the youth education with this plan today I will be talking about several parts of the plan I think are

004important to begin something that is very relevant is supporting students during and after the covid-19 pandemic personally I'm a very outgoing person so the closing of schools means I don't get to see my friends but for many people school is a safe haven which is why supporting them is so important the next priority I'm looking forward to is the expansion of access to opportunities for students in Greater Minnesota I'm in several AP classes and I think they're a great opportunity especially for students who want to continue on to a post-secondary education it goes hand in hand with that is the expansion of Career and Technical education pathways everybody has different goals and interests but what's most important is nourishing those and providing valuable opportunities lastly something I'm very passionate about is the commitment to supporting

005students of color and Indigenous students creating a diverse anti-racist School environment is vital to learning for everyone which is why I am so glad this plan is prioritizing it once again I'd like to thank everyone here for being dedicated to our youth education and for allowing me to speak today next I'd like to introduce my fellow students Olivia Schaefer so that was Clara falcongeist a High School junior who I think we can all agree demons represented Northfield exceptionally well today on an important stage so we congratulate Clara we thank her for representing us and I just thought it was best coming from her mouth those are your announcements for this evening that's really fun I was able to listen to it on the radio when I was driving so but it was way way more

006fun to see her actually presented in front of the flag and you're right that's a huge stage and we uh we are fortunate to have so many outstanding students at Northfield that can have the courage to do that right um any other announcements of recognition board members have okay we will move on now to items for discussion our first item for discussion is our technology services update and we welcome our director of Technology Services Kim Briskey welcome Kim hello um thanks for having me tonight this is my my first Zoom board presentation so a little bit of a new experience for me and that also means it's the first time that I have presented to you in quite a while and part of that was by Design because it's been a real really busy time

007as you're well aware but I am happy to be here to be able to give this update to you as well um I am unable to see my presentation deck so I have to know what you were actually saying I'm gonna I'm gonna share it right here now Kim okay I can start talking through though basically you've seen in the narrative and um in the presentation slides they're very similar an overview of what's going well some opportunities and challenges ahead of us some key learnings that we've had in the in the past year or so and a little bit of a summary so with what's going well really um the first thing I can say is our technology services staff has been outstanding we have a just a solid team of skilled technicians um who

008are also providing an excellent level of customer service across our district so our staff right now is not only skilled with the technology and in education tools for for instruction but also diverse and we've just had a new staff member start today his name is Mohammed Noor he is from Owatonna and we are just so excited to have him so it's fun to have him start in the district today and to start meeting some people and looking at our tools and it will be one more um one more person to provide exceptional service across the district we are also very fortunate here in Northfield to have high quality devices in every area of our district so we've had our one-to-one iPads of course now for well this is the eighth year for students having having

009iPads one to one that um of course it wasn't K-12 at the start but we have gotten it to be fully K-12 now and that just happened this year we were able to send devices home with every student who needed a device last year when we left early in the spring and so we repurposed some of the devices that we had and then we were able to purchase new devices for our staff which allowed us to bring our kindergarten through second grade classrooms up to one to one um a one-to-one provision so that is excellent now our teachers can count on that that every student has a like device to and a quality device to get their work done and to be able to meet right now so that's excellent we do have our MacBooks

010out to all of our licensed staff as well and we have added more as we've needed them for a different support staff throughout particularly this year so many devices out to staff across the district we also have Apple TVs in every single space where we can present in the district which means that we can walk up whether it's a student or a staff member with their iPad or with their MacBook they can connect wirelessly to a presentation display and begin sharing right away so the the level of collaboration that can happen of student leadership to be able to share their own work for a classroom or for a small group is excellent and then finally that teacher MacBook piece we are in the fourth year of our MacBook lease which is the end of it

011so we will be looking to renew that lease I will come back to you again in the next month or two um to bring a lease and in that time prior to that of course I'll be seeking some input from our staff and making sure that we select well moving forward um Kim you just you can tell me you just tell me when you want me to Advance the slide I know you can't see it but I'm on the first one Advanced one okay so now on the Seesaw page yeah okay um so here we talk about that we have a lot of great products to facilitate learning as well of course we were already using CSUN schoology um these have become indispensable in getting content to our students particularly now that our students are

012mostly distance learning so even our youngest Learners have been able to access their content and we're fortunate to have these tools in place and then we definitely invested in Zoom this year so we have become very proficient in teaching facilitating games meetings all sorts of discussions over zoom and our students are becoming so proficient at the same time in in using the tools that are in front of them to complete their work and to continue learning we've moved all of our phones over to IP phones so that means that they are no longer the digital and analog phone lines but they run on our data and they um they provide the opportunity for us to have what we call the soft phone which allows staff teachers admins often office assistance to make phone calls either

013from their cell phone or from their computer and they look like they're coming from their school phone number so that's a huge Improvement particularly for distance learning where many of us are working from home or outside of our office away from our desks um and we're able to access our phone and receive calls voicemails so on and so forth finally when we talk about access to learning we've continued to improve our District's Network we have undertaken a pretty large project to improve from a previous design of network access that was maybe designed with fewer devices per students in mind or fewer devices per person in mind if you think of what you might be carrying with you at any time I have three devices with me right now that connects to our Network and so

014that's becoming the norm that there are multiple tools that we're using that are streaming content and we have had to increase our Wi-Fi capacity so we've moved to Cisco Systems as our main hardware for our Network and installed access points in all of our learning spaces across the district almost we will finish up with the Middle School in the coming year and that has been approved in our capital projects for the next year so across the district we have a really strong Wi-Fi network which is excellent and then finally um I can't say enough about our partnership with HCI uh that they have worked with our families and with volunteers to find students who need or who don't have adequate access to the internet and to provide that for them so as a district we

015purchase 50 hot spots last spring and HCI came right behind us and helped us manage getting those out and then they also continued to purchase additional hot spots supporting hundreds of students at this point with internet access either through hot spots that they have purchased in our paying service for or through providing Charter connections for families who are who can get a Charter internet connection in town so that has been just indispensable in the work that they are doing to be in touch with families um to provide language support where needed and to um to really help all of our Learners access content and be in touch with their teachers during this time uh Matt you go ahead to the opportunities and challenges portion here um the pandemic has of course provided many challenges for

016us but it has also provided a great opportunity for learning for us so um I mentioned earlier how proficient our our staff and our students are and using the digital tools that they have to continue learning even when they've had to change so much of what they're doing we have staff and students who are up to the challenges in front of us for both synchronous and asynchronous learning so sometimes our kids are all together we're doing the class activities sometimes they're on their own schedules and sometimes we have teachers who are managing both of those scenarios at the same time um and they're finding ways to do that and so I think when we come back from this pandemic we will need to be mindful to leverage the skills we have to continue to best

017serve our students so um there are opportunities for us moving forward to take skills from from this pandemic time and to put them to good use even when we can be back in our classrooms uh we continue to need to plan professional development for all levels across our system so we need to aligned learning that leverages the devices that we have and we um the learning activities that presents the ways that they can be used for oh I think I might have lost my audio here nope we can hear you you're good okay thanks um the ways that we can leverage our tools for Learning and to be creative in our use of Technology oh that means uh some really consistent pieces starting with even our administrators so that they know what is out there

018for our for our classrooms and so that they can support that work in the classrooms and also for our teachers and for our education assistants who work with our students and for our substitutes who come into our our classrooms and they're technology rich and so we need to prepare them to walk into those classrooms and know how to operate the technology there and that's been something that we've thought about but not something that we have gotten done and figured out the best way to reach all of our people who spend time working with our students so that they know the technology tools that we have um and then finally I think what we have seen right now is some what I like to call living in beta you never quite have the whole thing developed

019but we're working on it as we're developing it and as we're using it um and when we are going through what we've gone through this year we're growing a ton as I've mentioned and our systems are changing our instructional design and the ways that we collaborate and work together are changing and we have seen some some great collaboration in our district um partly as a means of survival and be able to get all the things done and partly as a um just a professionalism that wants you know has people seeking to reach all of our students in new ways and working together to do that so when we move forward from this when we are able to be like I said back in person and the pandemic is behind us um I think we've got

020a capacity that has increased and I also think we might um there are some of us who are going who we just not have change for a while could we just have things that back to normal and it could we could settle in a little bit and then there's also I think some increased ability to manage change and so I think as a as a leadership team and as um teachers and as Leaders across our our district we need to be mindful of of what we can do to continue to improve our practice post pandemic and we know that the pandemic has provided challenges that have when I mentioned some people are looking for that change to stop to get back to a normal kind of cruising altitude um and we know that that's true

021of staff and it's true of students that some have had additional challenges it's true of our our families and parents who have had to work with their students um that there have been numerous challenges this year and um and they have not fallen equitably on all of our Learners and all of our families and all of our staff so we know that as we return to some sort of normal whatever that might look like we're also managing some some wide in the gaps in some cases we have some who have thrived during this entire time and we have some who have have struggled more and so we will need to be mindful in how do we manage meeting the various needs that we come back to as well uh so some key Reflections if you

022can move to the next slide Matt um we've definitely seen that the covid pandemic has increased our Reliance on technology in ways that we never imagined and so as uh of course someone who is a proponent of Technology integration and use of the tools that we have in front of us um this is not the reason I would ever cope to to need all of the technology that we have in place in our district however I'm grateful that we have have access to the technology I think we've tapped into some potential and like I said it's prepared us to use that technology as we as we move forward from this point in time our students are capable directors of their learning I did mention that our some of our students of course have had greater

023challenges than others but we have seen even our youngest Learners be able to follow some plans that their teachers put out be able to complete work they can find where the work is on their device they can share it back with their class and that means that they can also do those things when they're back in the classroom our students are ready to share their work and they're able to do that and they've had to do that now in this in this pandemic and I think we can move forward with our student students having a little bit different role in their own learning because they have learned a lot of the skill to to manage their learning during this time and so um I think we have some increased confidence in even trying something new

024we have people who of course at the start of the covet pandemic when it was very rushed and we all went home in the spring and had to figure things out pretty quickly it was overwhelming and and we made it people made it through that and got their classes working on Zoom they figured out how to how to manage all sorts of little things like how a student's name shows up on their Google account or on their Zoom account or um that they hadn't used the schoology submissions feature in the past but now that was their only way they couldn't just accept the work in their classroom and they've done it and so there's maybe some new ability to take on some of the the technologies that are new to us and to to figure

025out how to make them work and even to know that if they don't work the first time we can still go back and adjust and make the next time so um some of my My Hope Is that we shift from needing to learn the nuts and bolts pieces of Technology how do I use this tool what button do I press to make it do that to how can I leverage the technology really for learning so um it's not learning the technology as much as the technology is what what supports the learning so um I think those are the main points like I say it's been just a year of constant adjustment and change and I am really hopeful that we get to be back in person in the in the near future to have the

026relational part as in person as we can and to do that as safely as practical um and I'm also hopeful that we can take some really great learning from this time and apply it for continuous Improvement in the future so with that I am definitely happy to take some questions actually um just looking at the slides here I wasn't watching my presentation as I went I guess I put in a couple of photos there and I just want to tell a little bit about them so on the first one that has key Reflections it shows a kindergarten classroom and this was just last week and this is a typical picture that you might see in a Kinder kindergarten classroom before we did distance learning and now after distance learning for this this group of kiddos

027but you see a student at the front um reading that morning message to the class and that that student is the one that's that's sharing their voice at this time right um and they're up there needing and these are kindergarteners and they're I think it's one example of how our students are ready to to be in the front of the classroom and to to be showcasing what they are able to do and you can also notice how nice that classroom looks a bed that way forward in that projector this is the new Greenville Park um so you see that there's zero wires to connect to Future laptop or add to that display and then you can just walk right up and use it it's great the next one I had asked some teachers about some

028things that they've done um in their classrooms and this particular one it links if you click on it Matt but sell parts and analogies this particular student I went through a few of them and it's just one assignment um but it goes to a deck where the student is taking you know each piece of a cell and comparing it to basically a city so um functions of you know a city council and town hall and the water tower and um the community members and things like that to say how are how does a community work as an organization that's similar to a cell as an organism so um just some ways that that kids are able to to share learning that I think add value and have some some creativity in there so with that

029I will definitely take questions that you might have about our technology services update excellent thank you Kim well just for the record you were here in October of 2019 so it's been 15 months and a lot has definitely changed and you had no idea what was ahead of you when you were here in October of 2019 . so um questions comments for Kim huh um good to see you again Kevin haven't been on taking my dog for a while because I've missed you too um a couple couple questions um and social media some parents have been concerned about lacking um unwanted apps and I know you addressed that even on social media but uh has that has that been an issue um some issues where parents have contacted us um I'm not sure if the

030when you're particularly talking about um but I do know that somebody reached out to me on one of those um and I was able to to help with blocking a site that was problematic at the time we do have our devices filtered for living in adult content even when they're not in the district and we have some ability to filter further on our devices so I have worked with families who have wanted that and we have also of course um and I just want to make sure everybody's aware of this because we know some new board members here as well since I've presented of course um but we do curate the apps that are on our iPads so um students get apps from self-service which means that they have been requested by a teacher or

031a staff person and put there for the age group that they've been requested for and those are the only apps that they're able to install does it mean that there's not any distraction on the device definitely not but they don't have access to the App Store to install all the games or anything that they want um and then on our district website under the parents category if you go to the home page there are the top icons that are for parents or for staff and if you go to parents there's one that has Technology support and it just has a few items there about our most basic you know tools that we have across the district one of the items there is how to use the screen finder features of an iPad so it shows

032parents how to set limits so YouTube is one that I hear about quite a bit but as you know there's a lot of pretty private games on YouTube who just watched YouTube to see one of our students speaking at the governor's press conference so the the content there is excellent that many of our teachers use it um but we know that a lot of times there's you know there's a ton of content on YouTube and kids are watching it for entertainment and so is that okay most of the time yes but maybe we need to limit it so there are some instructions on how to do that teachers might be the biggest one we get for wanting wanting to limit time okay um and have you noticed parents becoming more at ease with the technology

033too I have had bar keyword Aaron's interactions this well actually they've had fewer this year but they've been for a variety of different things this year um regarding the needs a filter or the need to lock down iPads then I add say two or five years ago so that that could be the case that is a guess on microgroup okay one more question um that was a kindergarten the picture of a kindergarten someone reading the morning announcements is that right so yeah yeah um I noticed that with my kids when they're they're gaming especially like on Minecraft and you have it's very that they're like motivated because they're at the screen and they have to read in order to complete something I'm wondering and I don't know if you have the answer maybe Dr no

034one does if the readings if reading skills are improving ironically because we're actually on a screen or not and I you know maybe externally to tell our yes I'll be happy let me chime in on that Kim and then I'll turn it over to you so I think when we think about reading right I think that there are a variety of different ways that people think about reading right what we know and what our district is focused on is the science of learning to review uncovered a whole lot about the brain we know what helps the brain learn to read and so there's a lot of theories another thing but in our district we focus on the science of reading we're continuing to move toward that with the CCC curriculum but one of the things

035that we know it can be helpful is when a child is motivated by the content so if I like dogs and I can read every book in the world about dogs that's going to help you right because it's about practicing the skills that we've taught you in the technical aspect of learning to read so I think that we also have some some debate in this country about what is worth reading and what is not worth reading and what I would say is from my perspective I think anything that we have that gets kids to be motivated to learn to read is a good thing and so I think that you're right Tom for some kids the stories that go along with the video game for whatever as adults we think about video games some of

036those stories are very complex they're engaging and the words are on the screen and that may be something that's is that going to be the give all and all for get teaching no but what we know is when a kid is motivated that is a that is something that is very helpful for us in that process so Kim you wanna if you want to add to that please do um yeah I was just going to talk a little bit about correlation and causation that reading is such a huge I mean it's such a building block for what our kids need for all of their schooling um that it of course we want to focus on reading and literacy at an early age and those kindergarten students you know they're at definitely different levels of ability

037to read like truth of any any of our ages of students but um there there are so many um practices in place to reinforce literacy skills and to build literacy skills um they go into causation on a single one or especially a week like the technology instance I think is is challenging to to draw that causation kind of conclusion thank you other questions comments sorry yeah hi Kim [Music] quick question about hot spots you mentioned the district in HCI providing those for families is there a set end date for families to lose access to those hot spots no there's not um the ones that we purchased and the Euchre has purchased have a or your science with the word bigger that HPI has purchased um have a two-year service agreement on them so they're they're

038going to be in service for at least another year um but then we can continue service on them as well I've actually been in touch with Zach about how do we continue to provide internet because this basically is not going away for families and it is an activation we need our students be able to access the internet from from where their residents um because we will we will continue to have students who need that just looking at numbers we have 214 Northfield Public Schools people with students who have internet provided through HDI so that's a pretty awesome contribution it's 104 families foreign excellent other questions comments yeah yeah thanks for your report I'm just curious on the hot spots who's the carrier on that uh we have some that are through T-Mobile and some through

039ATT okay are you finding uh getting the speeds that you want out of both Services because I mean sell sites can be anywhere I don't know um yeah yeah we are made of an adequate for our student needs we had a couple that were brought back as not not working early on and we were able to provide a different one so maybe if they had it to Google it was an ATT and then that doesn't work and in the rural areas they're working great I mean as far as I know I haven't heard anyone who has gotten the hot spot and not been able to have a reliable internet connection well for not complaining they must be working so that's good it would be unlikely tonight to not hear anything right for people who have

040died thanks again for your report [Music] I have two questions for you the first is do you find that technology is still a barrier for any students or are we pretty much past that stage and the second question is how are a lot more software products available and If because of the pandemic and if there are you see any really promising ones coming down the way that you think you should try um well I think I think there will always be barriers to some students in whatever area of our curriculum and instruction we're looking at and so that's one of our constant goals is to remove the barriers so whether it's a language barrier with a technology tool or an internet access barrier or um you know we have students who are using multiple multiple

041devices at home for learning so um you get a kid who's on their desktop computer and using their iPad to watch a lesson while they're creating something else in their desktop so um is that then say that the other student who doesn't have that has a barrier maybe they're they're not on a Level Playing Field and what they access that's for sure um one of the main objectives in actually providing advisors that we we approach Equity because we don't have any students we have our teachers relying on that device to deliver content and to to see the students learning what they're producing and teachers are going to cater to what that device can do because they know that every single kid has it and can access their content that way and so that ability I

042think is our is our best step in reducing barriers because of technology and then our the next best one was the internet access and so that partnership like I said with HCI is just indomable in in reducing that barrier as well um there will be other barriers and you know even distractions something like that that's a barrier for many of our students not for all of them but for many so then we have to figure out how to manage the technology so that it's a learning tool not just something else that's pulling them away from and um that's a hard balance sometimes we're all we will always have some barriers I think um and then the second part about software there there are so many awesome tools for learning out there and so as a

043district I think it's important to us to um to vent the tools that are out there and to determine which ones are are worth funding of course um when we all went home last spring from school many of the the software content providers offered their products for free um and I was weary of that because I think we want to be more intentional in our instructional practices and consistent across grade levels so for vertical alignment and ensuring that we're still aligning to our space standards and also ensuring that a student in second grade gets access to a similar set of content as another student in second grade whether they're in a different class in the same school or in one of our other elementary schools so to quickly jump on a product um I'm not

044usually game for that I very gain from jumping on products that is something like creating um a stop-motion video to show you to show your learning or um photo collages or pieces like that that are the the creative parts or coding um things like that uh content delivery needs a little bit more vetting and buying across all like content areas before we would jump on a new product I don't know if that answers your question perfect scripts around it but um I think the the best thing is to collaborate with our teachers and with Paul Langston in ensuring that the the tools we select are going to be used with with some end results in mind thank you um did anyone else have a question or comment that I'm invited yesterday I can um thanks

045for your presentation I don't think there's a volume control or not um I just I'm proud of that partnership that we have with HCI what a Powerhouse there and um it's incredible to hear that our teachers have been working through synchronous and asynchronous models at the same time you know everybody had a huge learning curve teacher students parents so it's just amazing what um we've been able to do in this pandemic um my question had to do with the current problems or um questions that you're getting with that technology so in the spring the big thing was couldn't get connected to the internet or didn't have the device what are the what are the the bigger issues now here in January people have been using and troubleshooting these things issues for several months now what

046what are the current um trouble spots well I'm gonna just knock on wood right now because of the problems that we're here at this point are pretty minimal um I I can't actually categorize that we have a kind of a large problem that we're tackling if I were going to say our our biggest need is direct support of students who who need them at home who don't have the direct supports 1870 games to check in on them whatever it might be and uh I mean HCI also helps with that in reason out the the families and um and of course we have um torch who is helping with that we have the Americorps volunteers helping with that um so right now I don't think our our biggest barriers are in in our town because they're

047in the technology itself I think the challenges right now are keeping our students engaging with their classwork and and learning and it's like it's a long haul so um it can get firing to to be on Zoom still for your classes and um and that instant access to the teacher is there and so for some students they're going to find a new way to to connect with their teachers and thank you too and for some or not and so really it's that increased support to the individual students who need it the most thank you okay any final questions or comments thank you Tim I mean this report was just so fun to read because it's just you're so excited about where we have come through the pandemic and your vision about where we can go

048from here was just really inspiring so and thank you for all your all your work and your incredible team thank you thank you okay we will move on to our next item for discussion um is my life within three an area where people can hear I know we're all kind of learning how close to be so if I start to Echo or you can't hear this give me a sign so I am next on the agenda actually as summary of the superintendent's Midview revaluation and it really is my honor to do this um so we uh so this is the summary of the mid-year performance appraisal for the appraisal period of 7 120 to 1 121 so the six month Midview appraisal for our superintendent Dr Hellman so for this review period all seven board

049members including those two board members who were still um on the board Ellen Iverson and Rob Purdy during the uh evaluation period they had completed the eval as well so there was all seven board members um the evaluation covers the many facets of the superintendent job responsibilities the um numeric ratings are at a one to five scale one being low and five feet and high for 44 job responsibilities around eight major topics so in addition to completing the numeric ratings board members also provide additional narrative comments so I compiled with the help of Anita Ozzie and summarized all board members input for Dr Hillman for the numeric ratings means we're calculated all written comments were shared verbatim but were not attributed to a specific board member as board chair I met with Dr Hillman on

050January 20th 2021 to review this appraisal so it's my pleasure to report that I as a board we gave Dr Hillman an exceedingly strong performance rating across all key areas his overall score was a 4.91 on a five point scale so um what I'd like to highlight now is where um lot of course uh board members citing many many um performance um evaluation um strong points of Dr Hillman's work but they were his exceptional work was highlighted around three key areas the first being the handling of the covid-19 pandemic and I would like to read this so that we as a group and also for the community to get a sense for where board members were with Dr Hillman's performance so in terms of the handling of the covid-19 pandemic Dr Hillman is a leader

051who has met the moment is incredibly adaptive leadership skills we're proven day in and day out throughout the pandemic Dr humans Dr Hillman's communication with stakeholders has been Stellar the multiple modalities employed to provide timely and comprehensive information including the covid-19 website dashboard webinars and emails resulted in high marks by District stakeholders the working and learning environment that Dr Hillman built during his years in the district provides the foundation of trust and flexibility that allows the district to thrive during these challenging times he has shown himself to be a calm confident compassionate and empathetic leader secondly Financial fiscal stewardship the board recognized Dr Hillman's exceptional fiscal leadership his quick and decisive action of freezing discretionary budgets at the onset of the pandemic and the systematic approach of ensuring the use of relief funds puts the

052district in a better than anticipated financial position also a note the district completed five construction projects on time and within budget under Dr Hillman's leadership Northfield Public Schools demonstrate that unwavering commitment to strong financial stewardship lastly Dr Holman's District Equity work Dr Hillman's commitment to building on the district Equity work has been outstanding especially in light of the pandemics competing and Urgent priorities he truly believes in the importance of equity he has continually reviewing curriculum procedures policies symbols personnel and students through an equity lens to ensure that everyone feels represented and that their voices are heard the anti-racism framework Dr Hillman developed is guiding long-lasting systemic changes that are invisible on a number of fronts in summary board members gave Dr Hillman exceedingly positive mid-year performance appraisal there is no question in the past the

053past six months for really the last 10 months have been the most challenging of his professional career to board our District staff and our entire Community was Dr Hillman a debt of gratitude for his phenomenal work in handling the challenges of the pandemic the board is confident he will continue to face the challenges head on and we will emerge a stronger district and community so thank you [Applause] really it was it was really a wonderful opportunity for the board to celebrate your your um incredible work so I would like to ask board members if they have any comments they would like to share with Dr Hillman thank you good job keep it up Corey as a new board member I don't have much experience in the official capacity but as a candidate for office Dr

054development made himself available for my many questions and after being elected was also uh more than welcoming and available to help me get up to speed and going north so thank you for that and look forward to working with you Tom I was just going to say he gets a thumbs up emoji for me Amy um just thank you for all your exceptional work during this time and um you know continuous Improvement and it's always your Mantra and I'm amazed that even during the pandemic you've kept up with that as well thank you great thank you Dr Hillman your leadership in the community is a gift to the community thanks Noel can you just plan to be a part of the school district and you've just done so much for the whole Community not just

055the school district and I love this sentence about calm confident compassionate and empathetic leader that says it all thank you excellent well thank you to the board for for your work and completing the evaluation and we all know Dr Hillman is one who is quick to give shout outs to to anyone and so it was really um really gratifying for the board to be able to do that for you so thank you and I thank all of you um as you all know I've told all of you I do not take your confidence or your trust for granted and I will continue to work as hard as I can to continue to earn that from you from our staff from our parents and from our students every day to make sure that they have faith

056in the system that's the number one thing that we can do is make sure that people have faith and confidence in the system and Julia is right about shout outs I am the beneficiary of a whole bunch of people who do great work and make me look pretty good one of them is sitting in the back and need Ozzy I could not do the work that I do without her and we talk about the fiscal stewardship and I get to be the mouthpiece but we all know that now murder storm is the brains behind it right so you know Val is the one that came for we have to freeze these budgets right now and it was of course you say yes and so well you've got that you saw kimbrersky Aaron Bailey's exceptional work

057to engage Learners from the youngest that they are all the way till uh they are senior citizens and our principals and all the staff that do a great job every day it's my privilege to get to serve these people every day and it's really um pretty inspiring when you work with people who are very capable sometimes we forget that because so many people are capable here in this school district that we think it's the norm and I've worked other places and what I will tell you as well lots of people bring their a game we have so many people that bring their a game in this District every day is you can't help but get up with a spring in your step so thank you for your confidence and I will continue to do my

058best to earn it excellent thank you well I did think that it was an amazing and well-timed segue to be able to not introduce uh for the next financial update uh Val murdersdorf our Director of Finance because yes that was going to be my comment is the fiscal stewardship that we um that that we prove day in and day out is in a very large part due to you so thank you for that and so Financial update thank you very much I appreciate that um so pretty brief update today um we did um last meeting I had given you an estimate of the second round of the Esther funding and their estimate I gave you was just shy of about 1.3 million and that was a calculator that was shared through the um National Association

059of school business officials that the federal government had calculated and we now have the estimate from the Department of Ed here in Minnesota and it's about one I pulled it up um one million 153 417 so a little bit less than the other calculator but again it was an estimate at that point um usually MBE doesn't share out numbers unless they're pretty competent but that's what you're going to get so I feel pretty pretty good that that's where we'll be getting um that footing we're still waiting on more information about um when it'll be available and how to access it in the budget process for that so we're still kind of just waiting for those pieces um to get um drop down from the states and then we'll make sure that we're on top of

060that and have a process too and spend that effectively outside of that um I think that was the biggest one I had all the other um we're still just finalizing the the reconciliation for the CRF funding um that had to be set up by December 30th um says we're getting all the end of your stuff in the system where we're wrapping that up um and working with the state to do that but I think those are the big ones for right now there hasn't been a whole lot of movement on anything so not too much to update from my end but if you have any questions about that or anything else I would gladly answer them well I just want to ask I think the mde estimate was for the 90 of the Esser and

061not the and the so we still stand to get the additional 10 from the year funding I think that might be the difference or was what you got are they doing both again that's what I understand and they have not completed how the 10 percent is going to be yet but I think what you talked about it I misunderstood that I think it's just the 90 that we've got right now right yeah yeah the number I gave you is the 90 and because the care responding has two buckets and the last time was that 90 10 and I know what a knee is sure about right now is the 90 that I have not heard what what the plan is with the 10 but I had to understood it was possible I've seen some runs

062that would suggest that we're going to get that done in percent as well but I think we're still waiting since that pot of money is is more geared to what the state wants to do with it yeah thanks for clarifying that I was trying to keep track of that so you have cares funding and it's Esser and gear and so not sure what the two different buckets are but it's it's good for because there's using it's gear and Esser and cares and so it's sort of interesting to be able to keep the sense of the buckets in our in our thoughts thank you Val questions comments for members have I had a couple questions um so the Esser and then hopefully the the additional gear have they given us guidelines of and I imagine not

063because they're just now telling us how much we get but we don't yet have an understanding of how we can use that when we have to use it or anything like that so hopefully that's coming at some point um so yes it will be coming um my understanding is that they have basically put the same spending requirements on it um there's like a list of 12 different things that um were considered allowable but they added three additional items this is the last I saw and so I can't say it's official official because we haven't got it from nde yet but um one of the items that was added was um I would say kind of a catch-all that makes it sound like we would be able to um pay for some of our staffing that's

064been a huge limitation of the current funding because of the way Portage was and most federal funds that we get in general they have a no supplant rule and so we can't use the federal funds to pay for something that we would have already been paying for um because that obviously the intention is typically to um you know expand your programming in some ways to perform this was obviously intended to help support the technology needs and all of the different PPE and things that were happening um but the the dollar amount that we're receiving is pretty robust um and especially with the CRF funding that we got um really our goal would be to preserve the general as much as possible and so utilizing that um in ways obviously that our um coherent with all

065of the um rules that they're going to put in place would be ideal but that's the last I saw but again I haven't got that from the Department of edia that was just some initial guidance that was um shared around with some of the state groups so that that would be my hope is that they've expanded it so it's a little bit more flexible um the the cares umbrella with us or in the gear um the gear funding was much more focused towards technology needs and supporting families and students and making sure they were connected and had devices and those sorts of things as well as mental health of students and staff that was definitely the focus of that funding whereas the Esther funding was a lot more broad it was the budget wasn't as

066specific so that's what we're heard um again as soon as we have the official in print guidance we will share that with the board to make sure that we're up to date on what we can do with it but that's my understanding is that it's basically the same set of parameters but they've added just a handful to make it a little bit more flexible okay and then I have one other question we've talked on a few occasions about FRP enrollment and how that had declined and there was reasons for that of course and I'm just wondering with the return of our uh preschool seconds and then on February 1st we'll have the three through five elementary which is always a you know a good significant portion of our FRP if you see that then where

067we're at with it and then now with um you know in person if daily if that will change or what the government is actually providing now for a meal reimbursement now that we're in an in-person model so um the the FRP number um has not changed significantly at all since October um despite numerous efforts as to get families to complete the application we did receive some information that they would be looking at um a potential different calculation for Title 1 funding the FRP number is part of that calculation and so we have gotten communication that they're aware of the issue that the free meals is causing and are looking at some alternative solutions for that the larger one for the district is the compensatory Revenue which is a state calculation and um to my knowledge

068I haven't heard anything about that um the the meals are free through the rest of the school year and so there is no incentive at this point for families to fill it out there and Dr Hillman can maybe provide a little bit more information about this but I know there is um a new federal benefit that's tied to your free interview status um some debit card or benefit card I can't think of what it's called um but that I think is um I think they're hoping will entice families to apply for it because if you qualify for free and reduce you automatically qualify for this other um meal benefits with some kind of debit card I think or some benefits to get food outside of school um so I think that they're hoping that us

069sharing that message will help increase the enrollment in that program but um again the the calculation for a compensatory Revenue is as of December 31st um or the December 1st count so that date has already passed and I'm not sure if that's actually written in statute where they wouldn't have flexibility with that or if that's just kind of an mde practice that's the date that they've always used for consistency um and so I don't have any good information about that quite yet but that's where it stands right now thank you and I'll just share a little bit about what so what Val is talking about it's called the pandemic electronic benefit transfer and so basically what it is it's a program that's intended to support students who qualify for free and reduced lunch to be

070able they would basically get a debit card that would allow them to purchase food on the days that they are not at school and there are several ways that you can qualify for that benefit but one of them is to complete the free introduced lunch price application and as Val said we have done a lot of work to try to get people to complete the application we have sent all sorts of communications electronic via voicemail right to our Spanish-speaking families uh to a postcard that went to people to try to get them to sign up and unfortunately there's not the motivation of oh if I don't you know take care of this I'm going to start getting those voicemail messages every Wednesday and Friday from school so but we're really doing an all-out effort to

071try to make sure people know about this we've included in our parent updates numerous times because we know this is a great benefit we know that as we see if you've been paying attention uh if you listen to economists we've got this dichotomy in the economy where we see the stock market going continuing to go up yet we see unemployment now taking another dive back down in terms of where more and more people are becoming unemployed so we know that food insecurity is a real issue so we're working with people to try to get those things get them those benefits the other part is Val's exactly right we've seen some movement from the Feds that they may go back and use the previous year's data to calculate some of our federal funding that relies on

072free and reduced price launch but the compensatory funding from the state which is really important also relies on this and in our legislative update tonight you're going to see that on the platforms of the major education lobbyist groups are to do a hold harmless right and even the governor today as he announced the due north education plan talked about a one-time investment in holding districts harmless for reductions in enrollment now I've not seen the details of it if it also goes into holding harmless on the compensatory ad but we would need my understanding we would need some kind of state action from the legislature to be able to make that work and that's a big deal because it's quite a bit of money that we've shared with you about fairly certain it's about a quarter

073of a million dollars that we would see 500 000. so about a half a million dollars that we would stand to not get in Revenue because we because we can't be all that different in the number of people who qualify for fruit pre-introduced lunch this year versus last year logic would say we're at the same and he would reasonably argue that we're at a much higher rate because of the joblessness pieces that we've seen But if we don't complete the paperwork that the number that we use is not what is truly based upon what people need so we're going to be advocating at the legislature for a whole harmless for these pieces to make sure that we can get the fund similar funding to what we got last year okay thank you Val we rest

074well at night knowing you're watching thank you okay so we can move on now to policy committee uh recommendations and as you recall this was in our uh four packet at our last meeting we had chose to um just do quick overview at our last meeting and then delve into it more deeply today uh at our at this board meeting this will still be considered our first reading of these policies and I I want to thank Dr Hillman and Anita Ozzie for their work in the past two weeks to really um incorporate some changes that the board um has had discussed and and the the policies you can see have been Wordsmith that made a little more concise so I think it will be a good effort to review these policies so uh Dr Roman

075yeah so I think what we'll do is we'll start with uh policy 103 that would be new and so the last time we had kind of what I'd call a Frankenstein uh complainting concern policy we took the msba model policy and then we tried to Overlay some things that we were interested in having on top of it and clearly as we we looked at it we thought we needed to clean it up so you'll see that this is very different than the policy that we had shared in the packet the last time at the end of the day when I am at wanting to have here is since I had to all since for a long time in this District we had to use what we call the chain of responsibility which in general in

076most cases if I have a concern and when we talk about this we're talking the run-of-the-mill daily kind of concern that it's very appropriate right in terms of in a school environment and what I really want to emphasize is that I want people to talk to each other rather than about each other my experience my 26 years of experience my years as a principal tell me that when people at the root cause of the issue talk to each other more often than not it's a misunderstanding right but if they don't talk to each other people you know they they get kind of upset and they stew about it and then by the time we talk about it now the relationship is broken and we know that if we can get people to talk to each

077other that the relationship can be built so when we talk about a chain of responsibility in general we're asking people employee whomever to go to the person that they have the concern about try to work it out with them if they can't do that then they would go up to the next level of responsibility in many cases that may be the building principle depending on what the next layer could be if it's an employee it could end up being you know maybe to our HR department it's parent a property owner a business owner or a resident or a student that next level could be the superintendent it also might be depending upon what the nature of the complaint is could be one of our district level departments by way of example we had a snowstorm

078over the weekend let's say that we had a neighbor at one of our schools who wasn't satisfied how the district's sidewalk was clear if they you know went to the school and they talked to the principal and they weren't satisfied with the answer they would then of course go to Jim callsef in our buildings and grounds Department who is the person who is responsible for overseeing that with the final stop in the process being the chair of the school board what we want to do is try to create a process or cut I should say not say create we should codify the process that we have been using and then this way everybody knows what's expected and of course there are circumstances where you may not be able to go to the person or we

079also have some policies that are that govern things that are fairly serious that have their own complaint procedure and so you'll see in the general statement of policy we ask people to go back through that and make sure that if it's a if it's a harassment a bullying we already have a process for that we direct them to that process because of course that's very different than a General concern about a grade if you will but what I really think a healthy organization does is a healthy organization invites concerns to be shared because concerns are an opportunity to fix a misconception and to build a relationship and to be able to move forward better together so I know a lot of people get all worried when oh we've got a complaint we've got a concern

080as I said many times before I'm from New York and a complaint is a good it's a good way to get an opportunity for us to improve so I want to try to take this off of oh my God we have a concern yep we've got a concern we have a process how to handle that we're giving people your I am going to change the name I I we count we call it a form um we actually create a worksheet if you will for people to work through the process I had used the term form but and talking with a couple of board members I think that the truth is it's really kind of a worksheet for people to have a process that I can keep notes for myself so that if I have to

081go to the next level on the train of responsibility um that I can have have I yep I've talked to that person here's what the concern was here's here's why we didn't get it resolved that's really a tool for the parent or the person with the concern just to be able to help guide them through the process because I understand it can be I'm not sure I want to say something we're fine with people saying something we want to give them the tools to be able to complain or share concern productively if that makes sense so um I think that this would really put you know a really codify uh the way that we have tried to do this before um and I think that it's a good piece to communicate with people Yep this

082is the way we handle these kinds of things in our school district excellent thank you for that fun um so board members questions or comments again there was a lot of changes from what was the rough draft at our last meeting Amy first I just want to say this is so much better than the last draft so thank you for really thinking it through and making it clear because I think that'll be a benefit to everyone in the future as I go through this uh and that's my main comment I already talked to Dr Hillman a couple small edits but other than that I think it's a great policy thank you excellent other questions or comments um just to comment to uh come thank him I think the process for the worksheet and have and

083having a some papers some of you know problems come up again in the future you can oh yeah we did this or you know two years ago and that's how we resolved it so thanks do that no regarding the worksheet who fills it out and where is it finally filed yes and all I I don't see that the I see that the this is a worksheet for the person with the concern or the complaint it's really a method to help guide them through the process this is not something that I would see would be filed which is why I think we need to change the term from form to worksheet it's not like I complete this and turn this into someone they may you know someone might use it and share it with you but

084really this is intended to be a tool for the stakeholder to guide them in that process there's a couple of minor changes I'm going to in that worksheet on the third section where it says C policy we're going to try to actually lay out what it what would the step be for there's one part we refer back to the policy because it's a little bit long-winded but we're going to try to shrink the font and put that all in the worksheet so I like to keep things to one page if I can but I recognize we might not be able to do that here other questions comments I was going to say um just piggybacking on what you said Matt is that not just clarifying the process But continuing to cultivate a culture that we

085want people to resolve their issues in a in a way that's respectful for all the parties and then also respectful that people don't just automatically go to the highest title in the process you know but that they're going through the steps I appreciate that and I end up also just also on step C and I think there's a way of instead of just referring to the policy to have someone today thank you excellent thank you okay good excellent work so we will then um approve this as item for individual action policy 103 we can move on then to policy 417. yes so when we start to take a look at policy um and again I wanted to take a step back and remind you that we are looking at we're trying to look at every

086single policy every four years right so they don't want to be clear there's no specific reason that this one could just happen to be the next one on the list right in terms of some of the things that we've been looking through so really what you see is we see a number of different changes in this particular one that came through from the school boards Association you see the uh underline and the strikethrough pieces I've had a number of different pieces of feedback from some board members just about some suggested uh what I would consider to be minor but impactful changes by way of example um talking about both chemical use and abuse you'll see there's some terms interchanged that throughout the whole policy we're going to look at how we can um we're gonna

087look at how we can frame that at the beginning to to use both terms so that they're it's up front but again a lot of this is uh School Board Association changes since the last time that we adopted this I know some people have had some questions the last time around what was called is called the pre-assessment team and I just want to clarify because if you look at our school district we don't you're not going to see the word pre-assessment team you know specifically identified anywhere but the pre-assessment team is baked into the work of a committee that every building has called the student support team and so if a person has a concern about any concern about a student they go to the student support team and that student support team does serve

088as a pre-assessment team if there is concerns about the student in any kind of chemical so I just wanted to explain that because I know some people had some questions about that the last time that the pre-assessment team which we we wrote that in to say talked about the student support team explicitly to make sure the people in the district know that that's the way that we handle that so those are the main things I would indicate right away otherwise I think it's really some updates and whenever you do an update from msba a lot of times it's because some kind of Statute has changed or there they are making it more clear based upon feedback that they get from the field all right talk to Dr Hillman about this on under the student section

089four part e there's the consent where apparently a state statute allows a minor to agree to treatment um for issues perhaps dealing with alcohol and drug abuse that doesn't require any other person I.E in adult and you know we have a another policy [Music] the 516 or something that uh that deals with giving out drugs in school and the you know forget aspirin you need parents permission to do that and and here they're they're allowing kids to get um treatments by uh whomever professionals notice some and that takes away the parents rights responsibilities who pays for it if things goes out who's liable you know if a kid says yeah you can give give me treatment and give me those bad medication then the parent goes that there's you know you can't have that medication

090it'll cause this problem you know it just opens up a heart uh a whole host of potential issues um so I think um that needs to be looked at and may be updated or take note all together and then then Part F 0.2 there are procedures that include and then says in the last sentence that says the procedure must include contact uh parent for Guardian in case of a minor storm so it's like they're at odds with each other um so anyway I know Dr Hillman will look into that but I wanted to bring it up that um to me as a parent it just doesn't seem right that the school district or the or or whoever that that entity is and um essentially knew the parent If the child agrees to it so I

091think that it needs to be reflected too yeah and we're going to review this I've got a list of things I'm going to be talking with our friend Terry Morrow from the school boards Association about and again one of the things that we always have to want to make sure that we're careful about is that our policy does align you know with State Statute now we can make some additions right we can modify it slightly for our own use but at the same time we want to make sure that we're putting ourselves in a position where we are following state law and I think that my understanding of this provision is really about those students who might fear that if their parent were to learn of this that there could be some other kind of

092Retribution or abuse or things like that and so this is a way right because we know that in in most cases that that's not going to be an issue and parent of course is very supportive but at the same time we just I think I think that that's where this part is coming from but I do understand that the issue is that if we um I think the issue is that we have to be very careful because there's a mixed message about you have to have a permission to be able to get Tylenol but not for something that I think most people would consider so I think it's an issue because you're trying to create a policy that governs all circumstances and while at the same time some of those circumstances in some cases could

093be dire for some students and so we'll we'll ask the question further about what is we understand this as part of State Statute is there another piece that we can do and also the part that it conflicts a little bit with that next section certainly as a reasonable thank you thanks Tom Amy I just want to add to what Tom said because there are other parts of this that should conflict um there are a couple other places that talk about notifying the parents so just someone needs to think it through completely um so on page for paragraph B reports of chemically use and abuse when he by the students parents it says right there and then on the next page with the pre-assessment team um paragraph C3 it again talks about um the in the

094case of a minor that you know they tell the students parents so someone needs just to figure out how those all relate to each other yes that's why we do a first reading yeah excellent comments other comments have my only question would be would would we be able or or want to consider instead of saying pre-assessment team to just name it student support team um yes I think we can and I'm fairly certain Anita we change that didn't we to include I think we referenced the student support team at one point yes yes no okay we'll we'll go back and take a look at that too so then to that and under e where it's school and Community advisory team would that also be student support team um advisory team something um yeah so I

095would say that um the school and Community advisory team is more like the Rice County Coalition for chemical health and so we did make some modified modifications there um or we're planning to make some modifications there to work through how to how what our responsibility is in that area right because I can't I could be a convener right but if we all know to make Chemical prevention drug prevention work in our community it has to be an all hands on deck situation and so making sure that we're not totally in charge of working as a table okay I understand that no great thank you okay excellent excellent um changes to 417. thank you for everyone's good work um 420 would be the next policy yes and again I think what you'll see is some a

096fairly minor additions uh or modest editions in this one uh that are suggested by the school boards Association any have any questions or comments on how people are 20. okay oh come on yeah um section I I guess it's just one of our two section I um point two where it uh talks about abstaining from sexual relativity until marriage um understand someone else had some better words for that you can share with what those are but um if you if we could just leave off the until marriage but it's probably covered by the state statute again no it's a we're a school district we're not parents we're not you know once they're young adults they get to do whatever they want once they turn 18 so I think it's uh just a bit much but

097um I'll turn the floor over well I've had suggested the word into adulthood and then we got into that same conversation and then I just suggested that maybe just an additional parentheses or additional statement that just says Northfield schools is in support of all healthy relationships or something or anything like that yeah and in that case as I am mentioned that that particular in fact that entire list of items from prevention comes directly from uh 121a.23 however I think that there is the ability to potentially add something to it rather than subtracting adding something to it so I'm going to draft you know a an inclusive statement that would be after that and then I'm going I am going to ask the School Board Association attorney just to give me some advice on you know

098is there I don't see a downside to that right we can always make some additions to this um but I just want to get hit I don't want to get Terry's opinion on it as well great thank you yeah we just you know it's legal age of 18 so we're not making any judgment on it is there an adult at 18 so what's the physician and the legalism within the phrase to put in there and I think the key thing is remember that we're not trying to govern people's activity right what this part is about what the um what are the components of a program to prevent and reduce the risk of sexually transmitted disease so you know that's the purpose of this one it's not to govern people's behavior is to try to prevent

099and help people make better decisions for themselves right so what you're I think board members right once a person turns 18 they're a legal adult or make the choices that they want the point of this particular part of the policy is about the what is the content of the prevention program that's the key part and I think we can go above and beyond you know what state statute says um but at the same time we certainly need to make sure that it aligns with what it says in the statute okay all right great thank you so then our last policy for review is 422. 422 is one of my favorite policies because it says all of these policies also apply in this case to employees as well so uh it really is just an effort

100to make sure that people know that there are some policies that are in different sections of the policy manual but then also apply to employees and so that's the key part of this and pretty much what it's exactly what it says it is any questions or comments are common 422 . in general I'm fine with the idea if you'd find it I just I'm a little concerned about not knowing what all the other policies are and saying well this applies to this you know when you see a policy that's called Student Activities and you say it implies to employees too um so along that line I'm just going to say I assume we'll be reviewing these policies over the next few years with the intent of clarifying how they apply to employees and incorporating that

101piece of it absolutely okay great thank you so again a lot of really good changes noted um these will be an item for individual action February 8th okay so we can move on to coping 19 response and operations update Dr Hillman yes I'm delighted to share with you the update this evening we're going to cover a couple of different areas the first thing is we'll start a little bit with uh just some highlights of the district's ongoing anti-racism work and uh in this report I specifically want to share with you about the work that happens or reflector Pond Dr King's birthday and so a couple of Key Parts and something that I now realize I did not include in my report is that we had Northfield schools involved in the Human Rights Commission celebration in

102a number of different ways as I highlight Bridgewater principal Nancy Antoine was the keynote speaker at the community event via Zoom this year and if you've not watched her testimonial I believe that you can watch it on the Human Rights Commission website it's very powerful I think that for those of us who are white and with privilege in this community but to hear the experience of a person of color growing up in our state and how profound of an impact especially for a child and how a person that still recalls those things very clearly later in life I encourage all of you to watch I can encourage everyone in the community to watch it because I think it's really important that we hear how difficult it can be the second part is I'm very proud

103to share that Rama abdullai who is one of the presidents of our Garfield High School black student union was named the human rights Award winner this year and uh Rama is a senior going to attend McAllister college and she's been an integral part of our racial Equity Northfield promise racial Equity team and so we are so proud of Rama and the work that she has done and so I should have included that in this report and I did not so I'm talking about that right now Rama is a great representative of Northfield Public Schools she is a truth teller who says exactly like it is and cares so deeply about Northfield public schools and making sure that our vision is realized of preparing every student for lifelong success so that Human Rights Commission event online

104about 120 people participated uh another wonderful event different obviously like all other things this year but I wanted to highlight that and then I also shared with you a note that all of our building principles collaborated on to send home on Dr Sean's birthday to really emphasize thinking through how we can reflect on Dr Finn's amazing Legacy and how we can leverage that work today so those are two updates uh just from anti-racism work that we continue on but I just want to share an update on our return to campus plan we are moving forward with the plan that we established in December our pre-k through two students are back and it has been just great to be in school buildings and see their shining faces and you know if you remember back in the

105fall there was a lot of concern about whether small children could wear masks effectively they can and it isn't that some students don't need reminders right there are students who need reminders um but guess what I see a lot of adults in the grocery store who sometimes need reminders too and so I'm so proud of our students we did some work ahead of time to try to make sure that we were preparing uh families for those protocols again but by all accounts for my building principles for the first week from Food Service it went well very pleased and again this week has started off fine as well next week on Monday we welcome our third through fifth grade students back and we're excited to welcome them back and then on February 2nd we are going

106to welcome back at this point remember all of this is as of 8 29 on January 25th because this can all change very quickly but we are still playing at this point to bring back our 6th through 12th grade students into a hybrid model and you will notice that the number at the county level is still above 60 right and if we look at that grid that the the table the learning model parameter table the governor walls announced on July 30th the average person in the public will say wait a minute how come that number is so much higher you know than what um the grid says and yet we're going to bring students back to school well we have had a week over week six weeks in a row where The Rice County number

107has dropped right so we'll continue to see the number going in the right direction I believe this week will actually be at a lower number than what we were when we put students into distance learning in November so we're going in that right direction and as we really reflect upon what those county numbers mean we look at how do we localize those numbers to Northfield talking with County Public Health people about what is the situation in Northfield versus just the county and then we think about our ability to implement these safety protocols we have a we have a strong history in the fall of being able to effectively implement the safety protocols at the middle school and high school we were participating in Cheryl Hall and I participated in a consultation the required consultation with

108the Department of Health we walked through our plans with them and they had no objections to the plans and furthermore they said that they thought we had a solid plan and said it was well thought out they did emphasize that because of the changing nature of the pandemic we have to be ready to shift back to distance learning I also will tell you that I've shared with you before we had a concern that just a week ago we would have had 19 active High School cases that means there were 19 cases that were within the 14-day window when they were initially reported almost all of those cases look like they're in the window of right after the New Year's holiday um as of yesterday we were back down under five cases that's how quickly they

109can come off right so we felt that the number within the building was also going in the right direction to be able to support a return to campus so that's what the plan is at this point the other thing that we hear is that as we continue to learn more about schools and their safety protocols in the pandemic one of the things that public health people will tell you is that they like kids being in school because it's a predictable environment there are also a number of research studies that are coming out that are saying that the transmission with us in a school usually is reflective of what's happening in the community and that it's not that the school is not that engine that is driving so I'm not saying that that means we're not

110going to end up back in distance learning at some point this year it's very possible I think we've learned a lot I think we know that our protocols can work we will have more cases there's no question about that right we know that we'll have more cases but we are also starting to see some other things come into play more rapid testing vaccination and those kinds of things that should help the cause so are we Julie Pritchard is on our incident command team we have met every Friday morning for quite some time now and for the past three weeks in a row we've gone through the data and I've asked that team that includes Julie it includes other members of our administrative team it includes people from public health they haven't been able to attend

111the last couple of weeks a local physician and parent it's a teacher an educational assistant a student and they can and the consensus of that team for three consecutive weeks is yes this is the right plan and it's time to move forward so we are looking to welcome those students back for second semester and again we will be keeping a very close eye on the data we'll be doing contact tracing and making sure that we know you know if when we do have cases to verify that our Protocols are working I did also want to share with you just an update about testing and vaccination last week was our first week of the state-sponsored semi-monthly staff testing saliva testing we had 124 staff members participate in that first round please keep in mind a number

112of people are still working from home right because we only had Pre-K two people officially on campus if you think about vaccination as I've shared with you we've had a great partnership with Northfield Hospital and Clinics and we know that about 70 employees have already been scheduled to get their tier one vaccine tier 1A vaccination through the hospital now that number could be potentially up to 140 employees but we're really looking at the definition of tier 1A is with the hospital to make sure that they are only vaccinating our teachers and our educational assistants and other people who duties fall within that tier 1A last week we also had the surprise announcement that there are now nine vaccination sites throughout the state and that teachers were part teachers and Educators were part of this next

113round of vaccinations there were 10 we had 10 slots last week and it took us a little bit to fill them because you know it was a surprise so people when we had to call people to say hey we've got an opportunity for vaccination there were some people that might have had a medical procedure planned and were worried how might that impact their ability to have that medical procedure or someone who has another health condition that they're concerned about how that so we work through through that we have all 10 slots filled and I talked to several people who had been vaccinated and that just this it is you can just see the relief that people have uh today we learned that they're creating another round of it and that this week we have 33

114uh slots available and so I want to thank Cheryl Hall and Anita Ozzie and Jordan Strife from our office who are working with the prioritization Matrix that I shared with you for using the prioritization metric Matrix that was originally developed by Rochester Public Schools we've added in some of our pieces and then also worked with the mde document and that's how we're working through it this week we are now adding another layer to that to survey staff to ask them are you interested in a vaccine because the inefficiency that we had last weekend into early this week is if we are contacting people and our people who are not interested in a vaccine we've wasted our time and not that it's a waste of time but it's just less efficient to contact people who aren't

115interested the good news is this is rolling and what the governor has said is the purpose of these Regional sites and ours is in Rochester is so that as the vaccine becomes more available we have the systems in place so really what we did is prototyped it last week right they made continuous Improvement they made changes this week including changing the metro area and adding more doses this is all good as we get the ball rolling so vaccination is going we still have a hard road ahead of us right if you listen to anything um Dr fauci said over the weekend if to get to where we think we'd be getting close to her immunity based upon the current schedule we're still looking at probably fall right before we but there is hope on the

116horizon that doesn't mean that we can let our guard down because we're going into the next wave here where we have some concerns we are just so people know we're watching about the variants we're trying to understand the variance but I think Dr fauci also said something very powerful that said the variants don't matter if we stop the spread if we do the protocols and we stopped the the transmission so we can be worried about the variance but the key thing is if we follow the protocols and we work on that if you stop the chain of transmission you're going to stop the mutation because the virus can't mutate if it can't transmit right so we're going to double down on those pieces we're going to keep advocating for people to wash their hands and

117all those kinds of things because those good old-fashioned stuff that we've been talking about for a year are really important um but two final things here tonight I give you a Portage update what you'll see is a number of people coming back to campus and our anecdotal data there's been a lot of counseling of from our Portage staff with parents about the right thing for them is to do now there are some people who have had a negative experience with the system completely under I mean we don't run anything where everyone is completely happy right but I want to honor and recognize that there are some families who the model did not work for them we knew that that would be the case we did everything that we could to try to not allow that

118but it does happen the majority of the people who are coming back are coming they're telling our staff that they're coming back because they feel comfortable having their student back on campus and they feel that it is as safe as practical for them to come back so you'll see the in and the out there um for the excuse me you'll see the investment of those leaving for campus the tentative second semester enrollment is exclusive of those people leaving so that the number of people leaving are already taken out of the total so those are the real numbers for the people who are tentative second semester enrollment and then the final piece I just want to share is that we're continuing to work on updating the names of the schools I anticipate that our next meeting

119you will have the names for both the change of the Sibley school and the change of this building and the high school mascot refresh is still on track in fact the deadline for those uh images were last Friday I believe and and so we are starting to get that committee together to elevate the top three that we would then have nuger communications assist us with polishing those to a certain extent and we're still on track they'd be getting these to you um as as long as everything keeps moving forward by March so that is my report this evening and I appreciate your time and uh sharing I'd be happy answering questions that's fine good stuff anyway I have three questions for you yep the first is how many employees are there in the school district

120approximately 600 regular employees when we go beyond that where we can we do over a thousand W-2s a year because we have a number of other people who are casual employees that they're they're not full-time employees but they're people who we do pay because they do some kind of work for the school district so we typically use around 600 employees as our run-of-the-mill daily average kind of thing so which number are you using for the vaccination yeah right now we're using the 600 and then plus some as we get through one of the things I give you by way of example um our substitute teachers are people who we would consider to be casual employees they're not included in that 600 but we're putting them into the prioritization they're not in this version The prioritization

121Matrix but they are in the version that we're just modifying this week all right and my second question is now that Sports has started up again um what is your is there any concern about the risk specifically with sports and covid and having that come back from other schools or you know and how are you handling it yeah so I think that uh what public health folks would tell us is that you know Athletics is a vector for transmission we know that that's the case that's what the experience was in the uh in the fall however what I'll tell you is I think we've learned a lot and I really want to compliment Joel Olson our activities director and the coaches um I met with Joel Olson Joel Lear and myself met with all the

122coaches for the winter sports at the beginning of the season when we talked about the importance of following the protocols uh I visited with Joel Olson our activities director every day during the first week of practice at around five o'clock or so he would visit practice sites each day and was very impressed with the level of commitment and compliance with all of the safety Protocols are there going to be or will there have there been cases in athletics across the state yes we know in other communities so far we've had entire teams that have been shut down you know for a couple of weeks we will probably have that at some point as well right the just the law of averages but what I would say is that the coaches and the athletes understand how

123important following the protocols are for them completing their season so that's a very important part property before too about we did purchase some of our own tests that we're going to be working on creating a voluntary testing program for student athletes it's got a very small number to start we're looking to start that very quickly here and so we can we're going to be talking with our student athletes about that this will be a great way for us to make sure that if there's an issue we can catch it early and then we can try to build have you be able to complete your season we've also heard that there are some additional potential coming from the state around that we've not heard when it's coming but we know that we've heard some we've heard

124some chatter about the possibility of going to some of the rapid tests the bainox for example which is a rabbit it's not a PCR test but it would be a it could be a great screener and we know in some of the college athletics not just at the University of Minnesota but at some other division two that the state is working with them they're starting to see how they're able to use that and those so I I wouldn't be shocked if we have something like that um more on mass before the end of the winter sports season is about with the reduced number of Portage students will that affect our staffing of Portage again it's a great question and we are not planning to adjust our staffing of Portage right so when we first of

125all our elementary we've had as you've seen there are some elementary students who are coming out but it isn't enough to where we are going to modify or reduce any sections there and then at the secondary um when you see people leaving that again uh we would see those case what I'm going to call a case load for each Portage learning coach ebb and flow of it and then we added some greater supported graders to help with the grading and we believe that the number of people we have is satisfactory and that we don't want to actually diminish the support reporters because even with a fewer number of students who still have if you calculate we're still well over 500 students in that program it's the size of a small elementary school that's the size

126of one of our elementary schools that could think about it and so we started this as a way for families to be able to have it all the time online experience during this year and we are using it now how can we Leverage said how can we leverage this learning and this potential model after the pandemic so we don't plan on reducing in fact we plan on keeping all of that in place as it was basically for the first semester I'm really glad to hear that because from the beginning you've always said that the relationships are the most important thing and these staff members have had the chance to develop these mind you know relationships with the students and I think hard for everyone to pull the rug out and I just can't say enough

127about the work that our Portage team has done you know hope Langston and Carrie dubar doing the day-to-day leadership of that work and the staff members are on a roller this is we've never every day is new right through the whole school year and so I really applaud and appreciate the way that people have embraced that change it's not been easy it has been very challenging and yet they keep coming back and they keep problem solving and mistakes have been made you know we've made mistakes you know I often will say sometimes we've learned more about how not to do this right than how to do it but we also didn't waste the pandemic in terms of this we didn't just add this on to people already teaching a full load quality before talking about

128the the synchronous and the asynchronous in many districts They just added the all the time online students to the case loads or to the loads of the teachers who are teaching people in person not going to judge how other districts did what we tried to do is how can we leverage this year to learn how we could do this full-time moving forward we are meeting this week to work on submitting our formal application to the state to have online learning school status thank you other questions [Music] okay great the uh actually the online status is a good segue to the legislative because there's some conversation there about streamlining the application process for online an online Academy so to speak but we can get to that so thank you for this update we appreciate it and

129all the great work so we can move into our next item or last item for discussion actually which is legislative update and the legislative action committee concept Dr Homan do you want to start yeah so we know that the legislature has convened uh they are working albeit differently than normal we know that today the governor announced his plan called the do North plan for education and what I just I did not have a chance to print that for you but really focuses on seven different areas meeting the needs of students during and after the covid-19 pandemic making sure that every student receives a world-class education you know how I love when they use the word everything every student learns in a safe and nurturing environment every student learns in a classroom with caring and qualified

130teachers expanding access to opportunities for students of color and Indigenous students expanding access to opportunities for students in Greater Minnesota and then the final one which is really important because you can't do any of the rest without any fund a 21st century education within each of those areas there's four or five different sub bullets that they are pointing on that's going to be part of the legislation that they're looking at introducing so this is going to be a big piece because the governor's proposal as you know has a has a huge component we're going to start to see some of the budgeting Pieces come out this week and the legislature will continue to churn and we know that they're not going to get done it's good we'll be lucky if they get done on time

131this year right the purpose of this update is to share with you a couple of items from two platforms that organizations that we belong to I'm not going to go through both of them because you all can read it and I I know that you're going to do it but I want to focus on is that I want you to take a look at how the policy or the the priorities the legislative priorities overlap right and the School Board Association the schools for equity and education and other organizations work hard to make sure that while we're at they're advocating for their own individual groups and the what their groups are looking for that they are also trying to look at the same thing so some of the key things that I want to share I'm

132only going to really highlight a couple of them where my really highlight is the heart the hold harmless and I'd like you to look at the schools for educational Equity uh platform under the 2021 legislative priorities and you'll notice the first thing is holding school districts harmless on funding fluctuations during the pandemic and so they're looking at making sure that we can use the better of the two revenue streams for General Ed for special ed and free review spice launch that's what we talked about before this is huge it's a big deal remember we're 67 students less than we were last year based on our projections and that equates to some real money and so the key thing is and we're a district that is in the middle on this there are some that have

133lost less but there are many who have lost a lot more and so this is a really huge piece and it would be a one-time investment right because it's just making sure that we don't go backwards that we stay where we're at in fact that is part of the reason that the state's budget surplus went up is because they're not having to spend as much money on public education because of the students who have chosen private schools or home schools because remember that even at the state level the the investment in education is around the investment in terms of the enrollment so that's a big piece and then again I just really want to focus on making sure that you see that we are looking at that two percent increase to the per pupil basic

134formula you know we get about 70 percent of our revenue from the state so that's huge we love State Equalization that's what school is for equity and education is all about so we're looking at Equity at that Equalization and then again looking at special ed cross subsidy we cannot let our our we have to be relentless on that one right so we made ahead away the last time around but again trying to slow the growth of that special education across subsidy and then of course on policy we are just asking you have told us how great of a job that we have done during the pandemic don't give us anything else new to do right now so when there's a lack of money they tend to like to give us policy stuff and so really

135what we want to do is be very careful on the policy part that we do not have any new mandates that do not have the corresponding funding to go along with them so that would be just a very high level legislative update we are far from this I will tell you that I've also just on a local level I have worked with a representative liver and senator drayheim who are both going to introduce a bill for us around uh Charter School governance there are some technical issues with when we reauthorize when we recertify as a charter school authorizer there are some things that another part of legislation much like we talked before about conflicting policies there's another part of legislation that would suggest that we have to do less than what we're required to do

136to get re-certified as an authorizer we think it's just a an oversight in how they wrote the previous legislation so representative we worked with the house the folks who write the legislation the house researchers they've written the two bills Senator Graham email me today saying that they're going to introduce that legislation in the Senate this week representative leopard assured me that he's also going to be the chief author on it as well in the house so it doesn't help us now we're re-certifying right now but five years from now when we have to recertify again it would make the process less onerous for us to become to re-certify as a charter school authorizer so that's the report I'm going to turn over to Julie to talk about the legislative action committee well again great segue

137because is talking about how Dr Hillman works so well with our local legislators and so as a background to to this concept of a legislative action School Board committee really came out of the discussion I have as a board chair with each board member and it's always a great opportunity opportunity for me to talk to board members about what interests them and where their passions are and we kind of try to marry match that up with the different assignments that we have as as a board liaison assignment since so my discussion this year kind of evolved to be really fun and exciting and exhilarating for me when I spoke with uh Claudia and Corey and we were talking about the schools for acting and education that um you know I have always been the liaison

138or in the recent years and they had expressed both Corey and Claudia had expressed really strong interest in really advocating with legislators and so we we uh when we had talked it kind of evolved to wow maybe you know we should actually have a subset of board members who actually are going to dedicate some time and effort to intentionally Advocate with our legislators and certainly as board members we understand how important that is to Advocate but it's really up to you know the time and effort that you have and certainly as board members we are getting emails from msba and C weekly to say here's an action alert that not always aware of what we're doing as as a board and I think Dr Hillman has been incredibly effective and dedicated to that work of

139developing those relationships with our legislators in fact one um one legislator said you know I always email superintendents and say how is this particular Bill going to impact Northfield schools give me some feedback or your particular district and he said I don't often ever hear from superintendents I hear from Dr Hillman every single time so that makes a lot of effort so I think if we can have it you know the a subset this year I would I would um propose that it would start with Claudia and Corey and I as as the initial three and then we would you know obviously rotate off as we do on our other liaison positions but I think that and you know the three of us can really utilize msba and see one thing msva is doing now

140is that Friday morning chat room where you can just kind of hear what happened in the week and Corey and I were able to to log on and hear Denise from msva talk about the weekend so it kind of helps us see how things are progressing you know legislation that we know impacts us from and all districts really Statewide but I think the Nuance for Northville Public Schools and in particular Dr Hillman just highlighted the charter school authorization piece and so I think it would be it would be really beneficial for us not only to be advocating with our legislators as elected officials and constituents you know as board members but secondly that we understand the nuances to the legislation and how it impacts Northville Public Schools so we would be setting up an established

141communication Line with Dr Hillman to understand this as legislation is pending and evolving and changing and we're asked to weigh in on that the Comfort level for the board is always I have an opportunity as a board member to do that but I understand that there are three board members who are kind of on it for us and able to to take the time to to respond and to be really intentionally advocating what we would see in the future would be that a legislative action committee would be set up similar to our other District committees where we would have staff members we'd have parents community members and students and there is a a very strong footprint and Statewide for this Edina has a very strong legislative action committee Centennial White their Lake Hopkins I remember

142I said Hopkins already died at first but both Hopkins I think Diana so there are communities Statewide that do it really well and I think that legislators respond to board members and constituents in different ways than they do maybe a superintendent I mean there it's another voice but it often is a very powerful voice because they understand that reluctant officials and you represent the community when we talk to them as well as being um constituents but I think the timing for this is good and that we're going into biennium budget and that one point Denise from msba made is that our legislators are really more accessible right now with covid than they have been they're all working from home um so the responses are good the opportunities to to really work with them but I

143think we look at this as really a long-term long-term strategy for Relief forging those long-term relationships with the legislators and um um I so I I was really excited I had done this previously with more so with um in in years past but have quite honestly kind of Fallen away from it other than staying up aggressive with c and msba are doing and um you know responding to action alerts what I can but to have the excitement of of the of Corey and Claudia who actually has quite a lot of experience from another District she was in it was just time to say let's just really make this a more formal and intentional um effort that would be as as board members do so that's that's um what um my proposal is around how we

144would address this coming legislative seats session and then how we would seek this committee evolve as as we move forward so would have any questions or comments board members have on this concept Amy I think it's a great idea I think you know I get all the CMA lanes and the msda millings and the action alerts and sometimes I responded but just to know if there's somebody actually paying attention and who might be like you as a committee I would welcome you to contact me and say hey this is particularly applicable to our district and we're trying to get as many voices to weigh in as possible um it's just nice to have someone but I know telling me this is something good for me to do and not some organization suggesting it so I

145love this idea and uh I think we're all going to be great at it so thank you um thank you for your comment and I had put in there as well that that we would because you know there are opportunities where you realize it's sort of an oprecipice where we really need to move on this or this could you know additional voices could really make a difference and I think it is going to be a very very long very drawn out session there's no sort of uh indication that they would finish anywhere before sometime in June so we have a long way to go lots of changes I did appreciate Dr Hillman meeting with with me to kind of rough out a timeline so that we are very intentionally looking far we would start in

146the summer and look to the next session review what happened look to what we would want to do and then really come back to for example tonight we would have Northfield Public Schools legislative platform so that we would we would take some of the key key things that we know are happening but where should it be nuanced to make sure that that we're really advocating for what is really best for us at the same time we obviously educate for strong public education okay any other questions or comments so because this is a a board committee we will come back to the board at our next meeting for uh item for individual action to officially approve this community board committee so thank you okay and thank you for the legislative update one of as many as

147we we go the wild Mr told wild ride through the legislative sector okay um so that is it for items for discussion we can go on to approval of the consent grouping as a reminder there were just a few Personnel items in the table file that were to be added to the consent grouping is there anything anyone would like to pull from the consent proofing for separate consideration okay is there a motion to approve the consent grouping moved by Jeff is there a second second by Amy all those in favor of approving the consent groupings they aye aye opposed same sign any motion carries we'll move on now we have two items for individual action our first item with the presentation um for additional um special ed staff for Early Childhood special education this was

148a presentation done by director of special services Cheryl Hall at our previous board meeting so it is an item for individual actions so I will ask if there is a motion to approve the request to hire additional special education staff at Northfield Community Education Center for Early Childhood special education as presented at the January 11 2024 meeting at that presentation the projected cost was forty two thousand five hundred and seventy four dollars salary 29 620 dollars oh I'm sorry total projected cost is 42 575 000 with approximately fifty five cents fifty five percent of the salary reimbursed your special education revenue for a net cost of twenty six thousand two hundred and eighty four dollars that was a long motion is there a motion to approve someone moved by Amy is there a second okay

149opportunity for questions and comments no questions or comments all those in favor say aye aye oppose the same side okay motion carries our next item for individual action is the pay Equity report I will ask for a motion because it is an item for an individual action that we would have opportunity for questions or comments so is there a motion to approve the January 2021 pay Equity reports moved by Tom is there a second seconds by Amy okay opportunity for questions and comments on the pay Equity report and if I can just frame this you know we are required to complete a pay Equity report every three years because you're really approving tonight is the submission of the report and so tomorrow uh pending your approval will have our uh consultant Kathleen Murphy Kathleen is

150one of the preeminent pay Equity people in the state she works with us to audit our work and then also to help us complete the pay Equity report we'll be submitting it tomorrow you'll notice that there are three tests two of which we are passing one of which we have some concerns about and a few the issue that we have with that third one that we do not believe that the state will pass us on at this point is one that is really a result of a certified and non-certified issue as opposed to a gender-based issue it's because our teaching contract has 15 Steps most of our other contracts only have four steps and so there's a way that you can ask for reconsideration from the state if you can prove that now we don't

151they did accept that the last time uh and if they don't this time we'll have to work through we have some plans of how we can address this the payoff report report is important for us to take a look at every three years because it's intended to catch if we were to have any issues Brewing you know within our pay system to making sure that people are paid equitably based upon their gender and so we are working with Kathleen to be able to dig into this part there's a couple of other parts of the report that we're just looking for down to the next line wanting to make sure that we are ahead of the game with any potential issues so um again you're approving the submission we have the concern that we know about

152the one test the other two that we have passed but we are really looking at how we can adjust those pieces for the third test okay thank you for for the overview of any specific questions so have they compared just straight like the male teachers to the female teachers without the extra you know female classes are those Equitable and is there any way of comparing the extras people to other districts to see whether our pillars in mind yep so remember the state faculty law it governs everyone right and so school districts are part of that regardless of your gender and our teaching contract you get paid the same you know based upon your experience when they look at you as an organization they're looking are there a difference between female dominated classes and male dominated

153classes and in this case our teaching group is a female dominated class that take 15 years to get to the maximum pay other other groups that have more we have more male dominated classes who have the smaller number of steps now it also doesn't take into account the total amount of pay and a variety of other things so it is a part that when we actually separate out and we take the certified group versus the non-certified if we take that part out and only look at the non-survey we pass easily with it so it's really a function of the fact that as an organization we have multiple bargaining groups that have negotiated over the years a variety of different approaches to how do they get to their maximum salary so are the maximum salaries comparable

154they're not comparable they're exact and within the certified group okay but it's when you bring all of those other groups together right and you look at some groups only have four steps and some groups have and so the teaching staff if you're on step if you're on Ma you know Masters step 15 regardless you know of your gen you get paid the exact same that part isn't the issue it's the issue when we have one group that has specifically one group that has a large number of steps that takes you a long time to get the maximum salary and others where you can get to the maximum salary in four years okay it makes sense thank you any other questions or comments okay so we have a motion and a second uh to approve the

155January 2021 pay Equity report for submission all those in favor say aye aye aye oppose the same sign motion carries okay that is our items for individual action we can move on to items for information paraprofessional recognition rate Dr Hillman yeah so this week has been declared as paraprofessional recognition week and what I want to share is that of course in our district we refer to paraprofessionals as educational assistants every District calls them you know something different the predominant term in the state is paraprofessionals but Governor walls has proclaimed this week um as paraprofessional recognition week there are 20 000 paraprofessionals in Minnesota and I think this year especially I just encourage everyone in the public if you know someone who works as an educational assistant in our school please thank them these are people

156who have had the most change in their jobs more regularly because they are working in distance learning supporting our students on campus they are working with students who need additional assistance then they also have been the main engine to help staff our required essential trial essential worker Child Care Program and so we have had to ask these incredible employees to do a variety of different things a lot of of which maybe they weren't wasn't exactly what they were initially thinking it was going to be and they have done so in a way that I think can make you as a board proud so every year paraprofessional recognition week is important but this year even more so because when we think about people who have had to demonstrate the most flexibility in terms of their day-to-day

157work our I would argue that our educational assistants are right at the front of the line with the number of changes that it had to endure so we're very grateful for their work excellent thank you well said um just wanted to also remind board members that we need to send uh headshots to Anita Ozzy when we are able so that that can be on your website until we can gather as a group for a group photo so uh future meetings Monday February 8th and then Monday February 22nd at this juncture we will plan that we will be in our new board meeting room in the new district offices located at what was formerly well fellow school before we adjourn I would like to thank Anita Ozzy and Bruce for your work today to set up

158the room I know Bruce you were here for a great amount of time today to make sure that this room was set up and we followed the social distancing guidelines and it's just been really fun to be together tonight and we appreciate everything that it took to get to get us here tonight and uh so thank you for that thank you okay so with that I asked for a motion to adjourn you know if I know is there a second by Jeff all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries we are endurance [Music]