Northfield School District Board of Education Regular Meeting 07 13 2020

001I call this meeting to order this is the regular meeting of the Northfield Public School Board today is Monday July 13 2020 and the time is seven o'clock P.M due to the health pandemic and extension of Governor Wall's executive order 20-10 covid-19 peacetime emergency this meeting is be being conducted via video conference in accordance with the Minnesota State Statute 13d .021 in addition the school board has determined that it's not feasible for at least one board member or the superintendent to be physically present at the regular meeting location and it is not feasible for the public to attend this meeting at the regular location the district did make accommodations for public comments which I will outline when we get to that part of the agenda welcome board members and to those who are observing the

002meeting via our live stream broadcast procedurally we will conduct the meeting using the same format as we have done for our previous teleconference board meetings we will begin in by taking board members attendance by roll call Anita Ozzy will call the name of each board member and alphabetical order by last name when your name is called respond by saying present bronyak present gurwitz present Hardy present Iverson present Pritchard here Cornell present stratman present okay thank you also present at this video conference meetings meeting is Dr Hillman superintendent Anita Ozzie Dr Hillman's Administrative Assistant Aaron Bailey director of Community Education and hope Langston director of instructional services will be joining us for a presentation board members are asked to mute their microphone when they are not speaking during the course of the meeting when emotion and

003second is required Dr Hillman will initiate the unmute for all board members at the start of each discussion as chair I will call on each board member in alphabetical order by last name for any questions or comments if you don't wish to speak you are welcome to pass I will conduct one round of questioning for board members if members have a follow-up question or comment consider using the raise hand feature in order to be recognized by the chair all votes on items for individual action will be conducted by roll call by Anita Ozzie each board member should wait until their name is called before voting this meeting is being live stream and recorded according to um and recorded excuse me access to the recording will be posted to the district website as soon as possible

004so with that we'll move ahead Dr Hillman there were a few Personnel items in the table file yes we just had a couple of items in the table file today there was an appointment and two leaves of leaves of absences okay thank you uh we'll add those to the items items to the agenda as we move forward is there a motion to the approve the agenda as presented motion moved by Jeff is there a second second by Ellen uh we will do so we have a motion at a second we will conduct a roll call vote uh to approve the agenda Anita moraniac I gerwitz hi Hardy I Iverson aye Pritchard aye Quinnell hi stratman hey excellent thank you are you getting my voice yes all right thank you agenda is approved we'll move on

005to public comment this is an opportunity for residents property and business owners parents and employees and students of the Northfield Public School District to address the board this is a listening opportunity for the board and not the time to debate an issue the Minnesota Government data Privacy Act practice acts prohibits comments about specific student matters even without naming the student in Open Session the board respects and values input on student matters but it relates to a specific student or a specific student matter such input must be heard by the appropriate personnel such as the building principle or superintendent and not during an open meeting of the school board to accommodate the public comment portion of our meeting we made available on the district's website the ability for the public to submit feedback to the board

006via email by five o'clock today all submissions that follow the district policy regarding public comment will be read by myself at this time there was one public comment submitted for this board meeting and there were per the policy 206 uh we did need to make a couple of edits to these the requests or to the submission but I will read that now we had a submission by Jesse Fuller Rogers a parent in the district good morning I would like to make a comment on request for further discussion with reference to social skills groups for district children during and post covid planning autism affects social communication the isolation of the covet era creates an even bigger hurdle for the children who have worked so hard to connect with others this affects our community our state our

007country and our world in a larger way as if these children are not exercising their social muscles with as much attention as we give to their diet and everyday needs they will not be able to function as fully as possible as adults there are inexpensive options for social skills groups available to implement now even online to keep their social muscles from proverbially atrophying I'm writing this comment to request an open dialogue to determine what supports may be enacted during the next school year whatever that may look like beyond that what activities could be implemented to support social communication via inexpensive social skills groups online and or after school activities thank you all right so that was the only public comment um that submission that we had this evening so we can move on to announcements

008and recognitions Dr Hillman uh chair pressure we have no announcements this evening okay thank you we'll move on then to question and reports our first report uh we welcome director of Community Education Aaron Bailey who will provide an update about her division summer programming um during covet 19. welcome Aaron I'll take myself off mute first thank you um thanks for having me um here board members to share kind of what summer has looked like for the Community Education Department um I'll let man I think Matt is going to share beautiful thanks Matt um so as we get started things I wanted to highlight tonight is the programs that we are offering this summer through Community Education the hurdles we have faced um and the things we have learned I think part of what we have

009done in Community Education this summer will provide a good testing ground and we've tested some things that will be likely provide good feedback as we enter the school year depending on which model we would potentially return in the fall that we have tested some things around health screening tracking and other things that will be important as we look to the fall to be able to kind of share that information with you tonight as well so Matt I'll let you you can jump forward one more so the this first screen is just a list of the recreation programs that we have offered this summer um these are all being offered in person that the vast majority basically all of these except for two started this past Monday July 6th so we made the decision um in

010late May to uh to look at having programming starting in July so the vast majority of both are Recreation and enrichment programs did start last Monday July 6th and then in our enrichment um programming we uh you will see a few more of those options were also opted virtually um the driver's education was all virtual that we did start earlier in June with the classroom section um the state has allowed for the remainder of this Summer that class the drivers education classroom sessions will be offered virtually and then when the stay-at-home order was lifted we did move to offering behind the wheel um following all of the guidance which includes wearing a mask and gloves while um only the student and the behind the wheel instructor are in the car we sanitize the car between

011each class each driving session and that is how we've proceeded with that and that again started in May and then as I said you will see that between the adult and youth enrichment classes many are being offered in person um and if if they were offered virtually it says virtual behind all of these classes both the recreation and the enrichment are being offered following the um the CDC the depart Department of Health and the Department of Health guidelines so um if it's an indoor class that means no more than 10 people to a pod or a classroom uh so you what if that's nine kids and one instructor or eight students and one instructor it just the indoor is nothing over um nine for Aquatics you will see we are actually only offering private lessons

012or household lessons so if you are have children that might be taking uh youth lessons and you're coming from the same household you are allowed to be in the pool together as a household and the instructor is currently teaching from the deck and so if you are you if again if you're from the same household you do have the option to get in the pool with a child if you would like to provide some assistance but um that is certainly a smaller ratio there and then when um programs are offered Outdoors we are again in pods and spreading out on football fields where we can we can have more pods per football field but again following the guidance um as is allowed and then at the end of June guidance also came out where we

013could start having adult softball leagues again there again the guidance only allows for 25 people on a field so that would be with both teams we can't go over that number um any Spectators that are come we have designated areas we do not use the bleachers um simply to eliminate having to sanitize those in between people being there so we are using um beyond the first and third dugouts and in the Outfield and again people are asked to stay by their household within their households and social distance as well other programs that we have going on early in early childhood are ECFE our early childhood family education we moved that all to online this summer um as as you all probably know or are aware as you start to move younger in Ages social distancing

014becomes more of a challenge it is not um something young children understand very well and so we we made some choices in programming areas this summer one to be that um Early Childhood family education would have virtual camps so those who are enrolled are picking up uh their packets of information activities and then they meet via Zoom with the teachers each day of the camp and then they are able to go work um on the activities that were part of that camp Early Childhood screening um per the Minnesota Department of Education has been on hold since um mid to late March we um so we do not at this point have screenings scheduled again until the end of August um where we would screen we have about six children who will be entering kindergarten six

015or seven that have not received a screening yet they would be the first children that we currently have scheduled if we are able to come back and do that in person starting closer to the start of the school year we are in the process of finalizing the decision for Bridges to kindergarten and transition home visits um the transition home visits we will make um as we learn more about how um we we learn about how we will return to school at the same time our child care sites our early Ventures Learning Center that is at Longfellow that serves birth to age five that has been open since June 10th we are currently serving about 30 kids there that's about a third of what we would see during the school year we always see a slight

016dip during the summer because we do serve some a number of District District staff children who don't always choose to send in the summer so we are serving about a third of the students we typically see there and then kid Venture School Age Care is has been open since the 15th of June that is being held at Bridgewater Elementary as you know we um on Mondays and Fridays have about 45 children there and Tuesday Wednesday Thursday we have about 65 children there that again um in a typical summer we probably have 115 kids a day there so again we are tip it's pretty in line where we have seen about a third to a half of children in our child care sites um since we entered this the pandemic programs um we did start issuing

017um having facility use rentals begin also last Monday July 6 so we have um just a few that are taking place they are following all the district guidelines around covid-19 and they also need to complete a plan that says how they will meet those guidelines so we have put together a template that we give to those um and then they with the guidelines we have put in place for our facilities they tell to inform us how that will work with whatever their programming is summer plus and some are blast is virtual this year we have about a hundred children enrolled right now between two um as of the end of the first week we had seen I believe 85 children one time so at the end of last week we were following up with with

018any students who had not logged in at least one time and then the Greenville Park Community School is also still starting over the summer part of that Grant requirement is that we would have seven weeks of programming throughout the summer so that has always been tied to plus and blast in the summer so the weeks that are happening with plus and blast will be um the first the programming and then we are doing three weeks of um a high level of activity bags so um think Beyond markers crayons and really um we are working on putting together kits that have a level of activity for students to then um use for the rest of the for three weeks in August we did have some programs that did not did not run this summer go back

019just so um reasons for that we had that programs did not potentially run this summer we had some instructors and agencies who we did western path that simply just chose not to offer programs during covet instructors were not um either interested or um for their own personal health reasons should not offer programs during covet some of the agencies we've contracted with um are either not in operation at this time or again are choosing not to offer programming during covid other reasons we had some programs that were just we were simply not able to meet the CDC the department of health or other guidance that were out there so if it was um impossible for us to follow the appropriate guidance then we were obviously not offering that that program some programs we were not able

020to make financially solvent um under the new guidelines that were in place so obviously with reduced ratios um between participants and a staff person it it certainly it makes us increase the cost to to those who participate and if that did not seem to be a way we could operationalize a program then we made a choice not to do that for some programs it did mean we increased costs for example we did in our school-age Child Care Program we did increase the costs um somewhat this year over last year in order to be able to be in in a meet the guidance that was provided at least the Minnesota Department of Health and also be financially solvent in that program and then some which isn't in truth were just due to low enrollment so some

021of the hurdles um that we have faced as we have moved forward with programming this summer um one of course is determining how to complete a health screening at each program site we have this um which I think is will be helpful as we enter the school year we have currently have health screenings happening in three different ways um if you are at a child care site you uh are be participating in an on-site health screening meaning that your temperature is checked and you are verbally asked the health screening questions as you come in the door um so that would be at early event Ventures and Kid Ventures um so a staff member or a nurse depending on which location you are takes your temperature records it each day um and and for at conventures

022we actually for either site we do that for any person that walks in the door for most of our Recreation and enrichment programs we are asking people to complete a home health screening that means taking your temperature before you come to the program and then as you reach the program the staff is verbally asking you the question did you take your temperature and also at walking through the other uh list of symptoms for covid-19 and they are also asking if any member in your household has had those symptoms in the last 72 hours um if you clear that house screening obviously then you are admitted to the program if not we are um asking you to go home and follow the guidance of the Minnesota Department of Health uh for some of these programs if

023you're a child that would come to that program on a bike or you're between the ages of 16 and 18 and you might be driving to that program and thus you do not have a parent dropping you off we do have that form available for parents to sign and date and then you have to bring that form to the program for us to verify that you you a parent and you have completed a health screening each day and then the other uh third option of how we are completing the health screening and this is happening at the skating school because that program is held in the Northfield Ice Arena um and they do not allow anyone besides those that are in the program to come into the facility we have a Google doc that families

024are completing so again each day they are completing the health screening at home they have to log into the the Google Doc um for that day in submit it and then staff are checking that Google doc as people enter that P that they the child has completed their health screening before entering the determination we made for whether you are going to be having a temperature check um on site or being able to complete that at home um was one the length of time you were going to be spending in the program determine that and um also the feasibility I mean when you talk about the number of recreation and enrichment programs um to be able to have that number of thermometers and people recording and and the the time it takes to go through that

025was just not feasible so um and for most of those programs you're talking about less than two hours that people are together and so that was how we part of how we determined how health screening would happen other hurdles um is just the diligent recording of PODS and attendance at all programs um as you are all aware I we had a positive covid case in the child care center in May which provided us some great learning as we moved forward for this summer and programming about how to how important it is to record which we had been doing in may as well um but to record who is in each pod who is in attendance each day and who if any is their potential mixing um so how this looks at our child care sites

026is basically anytime and we're kind of doing this in an old school manner but we have a notebook in every every room in the every classroom the computer lab the gym and as a pod moves in there we record which space they are in at every moment of the day so as they enter a new space they are recorded in that pod so we know where everybody's at at all times in the day day for our Recreation and enrichment classes again they are recording who is in attendance and the pods that they are in are the pods that they are in for the entire program um so if you are attending strength and conditioning you are always in the same pod on the football field um each time you would be in attendance we also

027have stressed the importance of keeping diligent records all about pods for all those who are doing facility rentals because I think one thing if you aren't if you don't know what they would ask for is should you have a positive covid test that is the help we can provide you right now as we we know how this what they're looking for um when you do get that call monitoring social distancing at programs I think as we all know social distancing while it's becoming um easier for adults and children it's not something that I I think is necessarily first nature for everyone so we are monitoring social distancing at all programs we have a warning system for um participants where they get warned if they um twice and on the third time they will be asked

028to leave the program if they can't maintain social distancing but we do have a monitoring of that at all programs by staff we also have um coordinators and myself checking in on programs just to make sure social distancing is is being kept at all times monitoring exclusions which is the time that P um participants or staff need to be away from programs um this is something I think we continue to learn more about each day this has been most prevalent in our child care settings of course at this point since the start of child care we have had somebody out of child care each week on an exclusion um I will say they're not that does not at this point mean a positive covid test but primarily means people who are showing a symptom that

029is a symptom um there's also a symptom of covid and until we can rule out that you do not have covid and you have an alternate diagnosis you do need to be out of the sight um I will say that we are seeing some increase in that as we continue to move forward uh we have had more people out on exclusion this last week in the child care site that we've had the first four weeks of programming so this I think is the reality of what we will see is as people continue to move around a bit more and P or are together more in settings that we will be having to monitor exclusions um so we have created several different documents of how we track that because that is something families um need help

030in understanding how that looks for them and understanding what that means there is a decision tree that the Department of Health has put out but I think those who are working in programs every day are more familiar with it than families and so it does take time to talk with families uh um about what they need to do should they want to return to programs should they be needing to isolate for 14 days and things like that staying on top of guidance provided by the Minnesota Department of Health the CDC the Department of Human Services Etc as you all know that guidance has changed several times since March and so every time that guidance changes it does have an impact on some part of our programming and so just making sure we're always keeping up

031with the most current guidance will continue to be a hurdle we face as we move forward accessing hand sanitizer and other needed materials for programs that along with determining how to disinfect surfaces as they are used it is um one of course we have we have hand sanitizer we have gallons of hand sanitizer at each one of our outdoor programs and so as you come in um you get to there's a pump and you use hand sanitizer as you come into the program but just needing uh needing to secure that for all of our outdoor recreation programs um most of our enrichment programs if they are held inside are using the pumps that are located inside of the building we also just because of the increased need to sanitize have been working closely with Jim

032callsets and his staff to determine what is feasible as far as his staff or the Community Education staff being able to disinfect surfaces in between use as I mentioned before balancing the program costs and the cost to fam program um what that cost for families is continuing a hurdle there's certainly a an increase um to our department to run programs just because of lower ratios the need potentially for more staff to be able to sanitize the need um being in a typical setting in conventures in the summer as people start to leave the program we would start to combine classrooms and combine pods that is not something we can do this summer so again these all have increased costs which on on some level need to be passed along to program participants and then accessing

033buildings it um the district we have kept District buildings locked this summer and so we have had to work through systems about how to get if programs or District um facility renters are are going to be in the broker in a building just working through how they will then access that building so that we do not need to unlock any of those spaces for any portion of the day so the the things we've learned and I think that will also be helpful as we move into the school year completing the health screenings as I mentioned does take time um we as I mentioned of course we have tried these in three manners just to determine what is the best way to do these um as we work it out for our community education programs and

034then as we think forward to this upcoming school year monitoring exclusions also takes a lot of time as I said um most people are just not familiar with the decision making guidance tree from the Department of Health uh as they present a symptom of covid that may be coveted or it may be some other Illness but and how how we work through that and how we are able to guide them on what how much time they potentially need to be out of sight this takes time both for families and it takes time for staff as well we've also had a number of staff that have been out on exclusions from child care sites and just the level of documentation that needs to happen with this is also great we've also learned that having forms and

035documents that can be easily completed are important this for example Gene District facilities we made a Google form that they can easily fill out so they unders I think it's rather than saying we need to have you tell us how you're going to meet our guidance for them to specifically know the questions we are looking for them to answer has proven to be easier for them to understand as we are as we are waiting for that information from them making sure there is a United approach and staff are on the same page as important um as we have moved through different um we have now at our child care sites required mass at Bridgewater things like that have been important for people to be on the same page um just so that it has been

036easier when we've been United and presented in united front but also given if they do have Challenge questions or challenges about that of a format to do that before we put out the decision so that we have taken care of any hurdles that might be um raised before we go forward and have people that might not be in all in the same place we want to we've wanted to answer those questions before they became a bigger deal we also things we have learned for for Community Education as you all know we print a brochure three times a year um we printed one obviously for the winter spring that by March was um inaccurate but just because of all the things that had changed and so for this fall we are printing a brochure that is

037about half the size of our typical brochure that contains a calendar of what we will be offering each month but then is really directing people online to get the details of those this allows us if we need to make any changes um due to guidance due to the nature of how school is in operation we can make those changes with and people will still be able to see how programs are offered um without a brochure that doesn't have the correct information we are also offering almost every class possible in dual options meaning that they will be both offered in person and virtually and then we will of course have information about um our our new building as we will have not be having large groups of people in there in this year and then of

038course I think what we've all learned is flexibility flexibility flexibility this is an ongoing and ever-changing situation um and I can't commend the Community Education staff enough for how much flexibility they have exhibited since this began in in March um we have made changes we have set up systems we've done them on very very short notice um and we've learned a lot and I think that will that will be exactly what happens for the rest of of this this this calendar year and probably into the next so with that I will take any questions or comments excellent thank you Erin um so I will uh run through board members and um you can ask uh Aaron any questions or comments I'll begin with Tom um yeah thanks Aaron that I was just thinking it's like

039trying to go to the moon in a decade and figuring out all the all the things you have to um uh and so it was you answered a lot of my questions I had uh two two thoughts that came to mind one is when all is all of a sudden done and things have calmed down maybe a year or two from now um is to uh gather all the thoughts and all the all the information that you went through to all the questions you had to ask and answer and um somehow record that so the next time this happens um we'll be just that much further ahead um so that's the comment and then the question is for for rentals um who's responsible for cleaning after they're done sure um so a little bit time

040depends on the rental so right now we have um the swim club is renting a The Swim Club the baseball association and the Softball Association are three renters so for baseball and softball they're outside and they're not using the bleachers so there's virtually nothing on our and they are responsible for sanitizing their own equipment so as far as the district there's nothing on our end for us to sanitize uh for the swim club they have made the choice not to use the locker rooms simply because for their own um I think ease of of flow and things like that so that greatly reduces um what we are needing to clean in that space too if if they ever they have the ability to use the locker rooms if they want if they do we have

041a we have a plan to to fog them to use the machines at fog so we would fog them um after their morning session then we are running um are private lessons in there during the day in which our staff are wiping down door handles like any High touch surfaces and then we would fog the locker rooms again at the end of the day and the states we are fogging if there's High touch areas on the pool deck after the large the larger group of the swim club and then the Community Education staff is wiping it down during the day and all that's just part of the fee or is there an extra amount for that or is it just covered yep so we haven't charged an extra amount to to any rental group yet

042for um additional cleaning um in in true we we've always had the swim club as a as a facility use renter they've always been a split kind of morning and afternoon so we've had some some level of cleaning we've always had to do as far as that that rental goes is it a little bit higher under covid certainly um but we have not charged a higher facility used fee for that yet great thank you Amy questions or comments yes Aaron thank you for the presentation um it's really interesting to hear the hurdles that you ran into and some of the things you've learned and it seems like you've been an excellent test case for us as being moved forward into fall or whenever school starts again um so thank you for that and thank all

043your staff for being willing to be out there and you know exposing possibly themselves to covid so I really appreciate that their willingness to be be there for us and um so I actually have two questions at first is sort of about the staff and if you heard from them you know what their feelings are about being on the front line and the second question is how well are the virtual classes accepted you know are people signing up for them do you think they're doing the trick what can you tell me about the virtual version of classes sure so I'm going to cover your so how are our staff feeling first and then I'll come to your virtual um so I one thing I guess I didn't mention we have required that staff wear masks

044um at programming since we started the associ if you're a facility user you can make a choice about how you do that um within within that program but as far as Community Education Program staff are wearing masks unless they are outside and are able to be more you know more than six to ten feet apart so otherwise we have had staff masks on um but we were acquired that from the start we um we're certainly we tried Amy to work with all staff so if people were not comfortable we did not we don't these positions as far as Recreation and enrichment um you applied to work this summer so you we explained to you coming in that this was what it was going to look like and I think those who were not comfortable probably

045just didn't apply with us this year to be to be totally honest they didn't they chose then that that would not um probably be the best fit for them in the child care setting you know that we've probably we had some staff that took kind of leaves of absence on the front end of it so they potentially took those 12 weeks starting in March and so then they started we have some that are starting to come back um there's a risk here right there's no way to say there's not a risk in this sort of setting um I think we have tried as hard as we can to mitigate as many risks as we can wearing masks um in the child care settings we have staff that clean bathrooms twice during the day we cleaned

046out all the other surfaces that get used in computer labs we wipe those down several times a day we sit you every each pod actually has their own set of computers um so I think for Child Care staff there we've probably seen a few more concerns because this is their full-time often benefit eligible job more than we have seen in those that chose to apply for summer employment if that does that help answer that part of the question um and then as far as our virtual classes um overall I think they've done pretty well I will say um the feedback we've gotten is people like that there's an in-person option I think when you're coming off a stretch of distance learning and and there's not a lot running for the summer when people felt like

047they could either attend in a small group or they could attend um in person there was certainly some that opted for that because that was different than what's been happening with that being said we reached our goals in plus and blasts for attendance in a virtual option and we've had success um in a virtual in Virtual options and enrichment so I I also think um that going to Tom's point and going forward one of the things in the journal I'll try to keep that right now Tom is a bunch of yellow legal pads with a lot of scribbling all over them um is that we will probably always offer a dual option so we will I'm going forward we will not just say you have to show up in person on this day anymore I

048think that's a great learning out of here that you could attend this class while you're on from wherever um if you so chose for ones that that is if we could offer a dual modality we will likely do that continuing to go forward thank you rob questions or comments uh thanks Aaron um I guess my question is about you you mentioned a little bit about enforcing the social distancing and you've talked a little bit about wearing the masks these just seem to be things that are very difficult because they're not things that we've grown up doing so I'm just could you talk a little bit more about how you enforce the use of masks and if you've gotten any pushback or and you know I've noticed being in a group with just maybe like eight

049people for half an hour we start out six feet apart and we start to drift together and um so that must take up a lot of mental energy during the course of a class or a day so could you talk a little bit about just the enforcement of these things sure and and Matt has her has heard me say this they're um there is no covid guidance that is probably developmentally appropriate for anyone under the age of five that that is not and maybe slightly older but these are you are talking about social distancing is very hard um you're talking about um in part of their development is the interaction among people the touch of people the re being able to re you know read expressions and react to them so what we have done

050in some of those younger settings age settings looks are absolutely different than what we've done in the older settings um we have not required maths that early Ventures yet although we will be looking to start that and we're going to try some some face Shields and so you can see um so you can see a teacher's reaction and you can still have that um piece and and also with the acknowledgment that there's going to be sometimes in an infant room that that is just if you're burping a child if you're coddling a child and you that is just not feasible um so I think what we have learned another learning in this is probably is where the Department of Human Services guidelines and the Department of Health guidance kind of conflict is that they don't

051want us to reduce any of our licensing capacity for child care they want people understandably so to be able to go to work so they don't want us to reduce this but they want us to be able to put in Social distancing guidelines and those don't always marry so well because you're talking about you know numbers of kids that might be higher in a certain space than what they've been comfortable with so what we have tried to do is really um and we've been fortunate enough we have space and this is one of the great things about going into the building that we are going into this fall is we are not going to set up some of the motor rooms some of the conference rooms we are going to turn those into spaces that

052can better social distance children so that better social distancing children knowing that sometimes they aren't so good at Social distancing but if we can limit the number of kids we have in that room that automatically reduces the number of exposures we have for kids and for that staff member so that way we can we're going to try our best to keep trying to to split things out because for the example the Department of Human Services would say in your toddler classroom you can have two groups of ten you just can't let them intermix well if anyone's tried to work in a toddler classroom if you think you can have one tenth group of 10 in this corner and one group of 10 in the other corner and that they're never going to intermix they I'm

053I would question what toddler classroom you might have been in and so I think for when you ask about enforcing social distancing we are trying in the age groups it's harder to enforce we're trying to do it by spreading them out um which is how you know I think that also brings a level of comfort for staff too that we are trying to do our best to not put you in a room that has a large number of children in it does that help Rob yeah thank you excellent questions or comment yes I had one question um Erin thank you for this report and for all that you're doing um I'm wondering looking into the fall as you're balancing Staffing realizing there's additional work involved and wanting to have redundancy if there are people absent

054with being financially solvent those are hard things to balance out so I I think the other thing that we've learned is um you need a deeper staff pool to make this work because you are going to have people out on exclusions right and and that is going to be for any number of time and it's going to happen one day and you're going to need somebody there the next day to fill in for that person and why that person is out there obviously they're being paid their sick leave or whatever and you're paying for whoever is coming into staff that so you're right the bottom line is it's it's nearly it's hard it's really hard to make that work in a break even I I do think when we come back this fall I mean

055Matt and I have not seen any guidance where we would not be able to charge for child care again so we would be looking at at having a fee-based Child Care Program um again it might be slightly higher than what we are currently than what we had would charge in a normal year when when ratios and Sanity sanitation processes look different um but I I think that is a concern around Staffing because you need a deeper pool and um we've we've managed to be okay in the summer because we do have some subs that we are pulling from District staff that don't work in the summer that obviously changes when you roll into the school year so we've been successful with that this year but um I I worry and I worry heavy about that

056in the child care area right now um because we will have people out on a regular basis um because if again if you prevent any symptom that is one of those a covid symptom you are out until we rule that that is not that you don't have covid so you it is on average taking three to seven days for staff to find out results from that so it I don't have a great answer Ellen for how the bottom line Looks other than not very pretty thank you Jeff questions or comments yeah there you go yeah thanks for your report it sounds like you've got your new playbook uh written there and some new lingo and language which is great and sometimes you're just gonna have to maybe call some audibles as you go along uh

057but no I I think you know getting into the next because you learned a lot from last you know the last quarter and now you've got the summer and then rolling into the next semester we know it's going to be different so we just have to take for granted and I I did like your discipline of you know warning warning and then hey you know maybe it's a good time for you to leave if you can't but you know we have to do that in a kind way and also remember that uh you know as far as our community services it's a very important service that they have these are publicly owned buildings and we want to accommodate people that want to use them and have those same protocols set up so keep up the

058good word I work I appreciate your report thanks Steph and I think it was to Rob's Point people have good intentions about social distancing it's human nature to stand closer than you than it that is appropriate at this time okay thank you I know Noel uh was experiencing some technical difficulties so I'm not sure no I've got him on the phone here Julie so I'm gonna I have to allow him to talk in a different way so I'm going to push the button now and you can call on him no I know you've had some technical difficulties but welcome back we just finished that thank you um just wondered if you had any questions or comments for Aaron Bailey on her Community Education presentation no I'm I'm impressed with the with all of the complex

059issues that you're dealing with and I congratulate you what seems to be you're doing a great job to get the community uh back on stream thank you thanks Noel okay yes well thank you Aaron um as I had mentioned to you um we were we had the Community Education advisory Council and of course they were extremely complementary of the work that you and your staff has been have been doing and I know you were you're always quick to commend your staff but you deserve full accommodation as well for the hard work that you're doing so it was great to have you here tonight I think Amy really um really highlighted the best you know the one of the best um aspects of running so many programs this summer is just really the true test case

060of how we're going to navigate our way Come fall so thank you um I'm glad you're here tonight not only for this but also to publicly um tell you how much we appreciate all that you are doing and I wanted to not let you go without asking if we have a kaboom playground update because I know that just it's still rolling it's so exciting you don't have to tell tell us a lot but it's just incredible to think about this amazing play Space we will have at the Community Education Center we I do at last Tuesday at 7 A.M I ordered a we ordered a kaboom playground so we um for those of you who maybe don't remember the Kaboom playground was awarded um to the Northfield Community Education Center it's just over a 300

061000 playground we will be putting in we had a hundred feedback from a hundred staff and community members um and a vote on three different playground options and so I can um send that out to the board if you would like to see it so we have chose one of those it will be a um full pour in place surface if so if you're not familiar it's a it's a smooth rubberized surface that will be fully handicapped accessible there is a bank of 12 swings a play area for 6 to 23 months a play area for two to five years and two sandboxes for each of these areas so unbelievably awesome and we are very very fortunate um to have that receive this grant so it will be installed in mid-august there will be a

062sign going up soon that it that allows anyone um in the community in the neighborhood to see what the playground will look like that it will be installed so if you are in the in the neighborhood and want to check that out there will be a sign going up soon so you can see what the playground looks like um and like I said it'll go up in mid-august thank you I noticed yes Tom um you had a another comment your question um yeah real quick um Aaron the um if the staff gets too short we're too low that you don't have enough for like the child care do you have protocols for closing for a day or two or three yeah I think Tom what we are to determine still which we haven't fully asked

063is how many so we know we've seen in our early Ventures child care about us um we saw very few children for the remainder of the school year about 10 a day and then we've seen about a third of our normal so what we're trying what we are working through right now um is determining kind of how many do we anticipate will be back this fall we've certainly had people register for this fall but life has changed for so many people employment wise Comfort level wise all of those things so we are in the process of serving them so that our first will be determine our you know where are we really at with staff and who's coming back um we will we're going to certainly try to um beef up our sub list for

064this year I think what also gets challenging um in both Kid Ventures and early Ventures is we can't just pull any person to work in there they have to be complete the FBI background check and other certification process for license center so we can't just pull anybody and put them in those centers that is against our licensing guidance so it does get really tricky we have been fortunate up to this point where we haven't had to do that um I think a lot of it would depend on what this this fall and winter look like okay thank you very much Erin we appreciate it okay next on our um agenda is a dyslexia update from Hope Langston our director of instructional Services welcome hope hi everybody my first virtual school meal for school board meeting

065um I actually want to thank you for giving me a little break from the covid discussion and planning to uh talk about something completely different so uh tonight I come to you with some information about uh dyslexia in our schools Matt are you moving the there we go okay so these are just the items that we're going to cover in the presentation tonight and we'll start um you're and I'm guessing and I know actually the paper copy I gave you looks a little different because as soon as I sent that to Anita I was checking the national uh Center for literacy instruction and they had updated the state map but it actually illustrates again how quickly State legislation is moving in regard to dyslexia so really this this Nationwide Trend began back in 2011 when

066a group of parents mobilized in New Jersey uh because their kids were having struggles with learning to read and they formed this group called this coding uh decoding dyslexia in New Jersey and there they were trying to raise awareness about dyslexia and just about reading instruction in general um but what has happened since that time is you can see that that movement has spread across the country so right now there's decoding dyslexia chapters in all 50 states uh it's even in Canada decoding Minnesota is quite an active group uh especially in terms of um impacting legislation so uh we know and you can see from the state the the state maps in front of you that in fact as of last week you know we had uh just two states and DC and Puerto Rico

067who do not have any dyslexia legislation on their books so so this movement is strong I don't um and I think it's necessary and uh and so um this is kind of just how it has played out across the country so in Minnesota I've been watching the legislation evolve over the years and um you know what started out as every child is going to read by third grade um then became more and more stratified um and and we then use the term dyslexia in the legislation uh we have had the term convergence insufficiency disorder that has actually been struck from the legislation this year so as of in in in the 2020 year these are the legislative requirements um in the state of Minnesota and basically um what that legislation is saying is that we

068have to a screen students and B we have to notify their parents and um and we have to do that annually and that you know we we received a grace period and uh and we were sort of studying what was going on in in the district and how we were screening kids and how we were notifying parents and last year was really the time when we we really were going to in you know Implement all of these legislative requirements especially in regard to notifying parents um and we got through halfway through the year with that which I'll talk about later and then and then Kobe hit so we have to screen everybody we have to um then notify their parents and then we also have to provide alternate reading instruction and that's a key Point

069um they're saying that you know the legislation says that we have to provide something different to that child um a different type of reading instruction that that they haven't been provided in the regular classroom so in Minnesota um mde has actually given guidance on um what screeners we may use and this this is actually pretty critical for us because we are a district that uses map testing as you well know and we've been using map testing for a long time and we we um as of August of last year late August map was removed from the um the list uh from mde so they were the fifth test and now as you can see on this slide uh they are not and in fact the only test that can be given in a group format

070um is the star test and so Ames web and Dibbles are quite similar we know Dibbles we've given Dibbles um and that's a one-on-one test K through five uh fast Bridge you also may recall from our experience in the kindergarten entry pilot um and and so we did use it in kindergarten for three years and star test we were actually looking at this year Brent rouk and uh Rose Turner clear for doing a pilot of star at the middle school with their kids Bridgewater has used the star um with their Accelerated Reader Program uh but map is not there and map is not there because it does not include a measure of oral reading fluency now Lakeville um is actually purchasing the extra test that a from map and it's called called map fluency it's

071again a separate test that you have to buy it requires headsets with microphones and it can be given in a group format but it is quite expensive both in terms of the additional test cost and the um the equipment that you need to administer the test so uh we I've been working actually had a great conversation with Dr Amy schulting who is the state dyslexia specialist a couple weeks ago Vicki Weinberg um I am happy to have a relationship with her she's brilliant and she um has been the person that's been leading the tier one Fidelity grant that Mary Hansen had um had uh worked with over the past three years so they they have been a tremendous help to me just sort of navigating what the screening process might look like especially given the

072the distance learning um potential so I'm going to talk about that in a little bit um so this is Minnesota's definition of Dyslexia and I I just put it there because uh you may get asked there are many definitions of Dyslexia and in in for Minnesota this is the one that we um use and this is the one that we put into practice um so it's a it's um a phonological deficit um it's neurological in origin and so you may see other definitions but again I think it's good to be aware that this is the one that that our State Legislative legislature adopted all right so last year we knew that we were going to have to report on the number of students that were screened for dyslexic Tendencies and we wanted to be sure

073that we were in compliance with all aspects of the state legislation so one of the things that we know is a is a indicator of potential reading struggle is having a family history of reading struggle and so uh with that in mind we worked with um diff different districts in the Minnesota assessment group and it's a very collaborative group and we're all kind of addressing the same issue um and everybody shares and collaborates and so we used a five question survey um that included does your child show a lack of interest in reading or um talking and looking at books um do you have a family member that struggled with learning to read was your child recommended to repeat in elementary grade or complete an additional year of preschool has your child attended summer school

074or received private tutoring for reading um or have you been told for your student in grade one through five that your child is struggling in reading and so we actually now have this survey as part of the enrollment packets uh and we did we managed to get almost 86 percent of parents to respond via Ready set go in-person conferences follow up by the teachers it was a pretty impressive um retrieval effort uh for all K-5 students and what that gave us is really some great information about our kids in terms of their their families uh perspective on their reading and from that initial survey they so that was in the fall of last year we we went into November trying to get every last family response we had 25 percent of our families reporting a

075family history of reading difficulty um and that was for that one question we had 59 of our families who had no dyslexic risk factors at all so they answered um no to all of those questions and um and then we could match that data with the fall map data and interestingly enough of those families that had that reported no dyslexic risk factors 82 percent of those kids scored at or above grade level on the fall reading test and an additional eight percent were just below the grade level Benchmark so we knew that okay our survey is pretty solid it matched up with what actual reading um data we had to start the year last year and we were encouraged by that um interestingly we we did see that um 15 of our kids show parents

076reported a lack of interest in reading and of those kids 62 percent of them are boys um so that's something that uh we we put out in several different um places in no Northfield and then the literacy groups at each of the schools just um sort of looking at that data and and uh trying to think of ways and uh they could respond to it and action plans that they can put in place so this slide though then went into the winter and what was important to that um to that time period was um we had uh well actually so we let me re back up for a sec so the K1 two and three bullets are the fall map tests and and the family history connection so you can see that eight eleven percent

077that's awesome you know we we would think that that's fairly low um and then you see this jump up to 20 percent and what happens in second grade in Northfield is that the students move from that K1 map for primary grade tests which is very has heavy auditory support um and uh and is colorful and kind of gamey into the 2-5 test which is heavy on tax low on auditory support um and and our kids tend to if you're on if you're on the bubble um or you don't have great reading stamina you tend to struggle more with that test these lower more numbers though at the K and the one levels do indicate why map may have been removed from the the mde list of approved screeners though because what we're finding with our

078kn1 kids if they have great auditory comprehension they can actually look pretty good on a map um but they're but they have some phonological deficits that don't necessarily show up on the map at that level so that was something that again it was a it was a a great year to be able to match that survey data with actual map data and then teacher data from the classroom but those are what our numbers look like for kids who were scoring below grade level and had a family history of reading challenge so the last uh snowflake bullet was when we went into the winter map which again was optional for um for our grades except for grade three um teachers could because we're trying to reduce testing Times Winter the winter window is a window that

079is generally optional and so what we saw there was um a match of students who reported a family history and then who had a low fall and winter map test were um given letters indicating that their child was not reading at grade level and part of that letter distribution it involved a review of our own internal communication that we had been using and internal I mean programs that we were currently running how did we notify parents and we realized in looking at the reading core letter the AdSense letters and the title letters that in fact it it may be hard for a parent to interpret what that letter was meaning for them in terms of their child's reading achievement and uh and so we knew that we had to be very clear on this and

080and in fact it was very clear that you know we said basically your child and here are the scores your child is currently not reading at grade level um and here's things you can do and here's the here's what your child is getting for reading Services um so so it was a pretty um straightforward to the point letter um about reading performance and then if a child um uh didn't take the winter map we had the teacher look at all those names and we used classroom performance and the fall map um and then the family history so those so those additional 29 kids also received letters the plan was that we were going to again in the spring re-look at all the test data for K-5 students and issue letters to anyone um who did

081not perform at grade level on the the test or and in conjunction with their teacher classroom performance information so we never wanted to use one data point to tell a parent this we want to look at the the whole uh performance of that child including classroom performance and and then align it with the the other metrics we have on that student um so we're we're going to err on the side of uh notifying when the complete picture tells us it's appropriate to do so but we need to be sure that parents know um one of the questions we did ask on the survey was have you been told um and and the percentages were pretty low for uh kids who actually performed below grade level on that fall map and did not think they had

082been told their child was struggling with reading so we want to make sure that we are communicating that to families um because I think that we've learned especially in distance learning families want to partner with us on this so all right so then we are moving on to curriculum as you all know we adopted the CC the three components of the CCC curriculum being a reader being a writer and making meaning um so we just were finishing year two this past year um the being a reader which is K2 and soon to be uh third grade also they are publishing of being a reader in third grade is a very systematic explicit phonics sequence um with phonetically regular books that are also used tied to writing activities that are also aligned with the the phonic

083skill that they're working on so really a solid instructional approach that uh the neuroscientists and cognitive scientists would tell us are the best ways to teach students how to read in those early years um we also have a number number of interventions that we use both in the title one program and the AdSense program in the classroom and you can see the list of those right there I do want to point out that sips um that excellent acronym that means systematic instruction and phonological awareness phonics and sight words woo you can see why they turned it into an acronym um that actually is uh published by CCC and does align with the being a reader curriculum and so we've had really good reports on that we also use leveled literacy Intervention which is fontus and

084panel product uh Orton Gillingham we have Lisa Nelson who is trained we have Rebecca Patterson who did some training in Rochester as well Sunday which is another phonics program and then fluency interventions like helps and press that teachers may use in their classroom or or in small groups um so we feel like we have layers of support for kids who are exhibiting some reading difficulty we have also devoted a heavy amount of staff training time to dyslexia and that's both through CCC and their um their professional development and then also Prairie Creek has two level two trained Orton Gillingham special ed teachers and we collaborated with them to offer staff training in in January of Lisa Nelson also was part of that training so kudos to all of them it was a it was a

085great session um we had an additional 18 teachers attend the CCC virtual summer Institute this year last year was in person um and CCC is has ramped up their guidance for for the 2021 school year we're awaiting the very specific guidance um about what to teach in the curriculum this coming year and that's due out really by the end of July I think what is interesting um is that uh what we did the first year was CCC which was to give everyone the sips placement test and we gave it to every student K5 It Ready set go day and much to this prize we had several meetings with CCC about that and how nobody else had ever done that and you know they were going to help us and they did and they were very

086supportive and we looked at the data together and what did that tell us about the starting point for our readers um and actually that's what CCC is recommending across the country this year um due to the covid-19 impact on on reading progress so they're actually recommending to districts and did so at the the virtual summer Institute that everyone give the sips placements to to their to their students so um so for fall 2020 looking ahead um what CCC is recommending is is expanded use of the sips program mostly because that program has accelerated growth to get kids back uh get this kids the skills they need and back into the classroom with their with their core reading class so we know that there's going to be a demand for that um and then the hegarty

087phonemic awareness curriculum um is a program that uh is a very scripted sequential 10 minute a day phonological awareness program that's for students in grades K2 and I have Universal inoculation there because in my conversations with Vicki Weinberg and Amy schulting um you know they they really are saying that kind of curriculum and they specifically have mentioned hegarty is is a universal inoculation that benefits all students and you are likely to prevent future reading struggles if a student has sequentially gone through that program and so we it is it is actually relatively inexpensive that's eighty dollars a classroom um and we've seen products that cost way more than that um but it's scripted and it can be done virtually which is a big Plus in this current year so we are looking into that and

088then also looking at what what we need to do you know we didn't test in the spring MCAS were canceled we didn't do spring map because map at that point wasn't set up for remote testing but um everybody's scrambling right now and map is saying they are set up for remote testing and we'll talk about that in the assessment piece but those are all the things we're looking at right now for the fall so action planning for 2021 um we are going to have to make a decision on what to do about map at some point and let's unless map itself the company makes uh NWA makes an adjustment in their in their screening process um I was in meetings with them last year they are concerned that they're no longer on the Minnesota list

089so I expect them to do something about that we also know that right now is not a good time to introduce a new online platform for testing with the current uncertainty in our whole schooling scenario so uh we're gonna we're just hanging tight with map right now um and we will see we will look into that once we have a little more certainty about um what the school year might look like um we are in again using the resources of Amy schulting from mde and I had a long conversation with her about using that sips placement test and really where we landed is sips is not normed for anything outside of CCC so it's going to tell us that you know what gaps kids have but it's not Norm to anything um it doesn't have

090adult Norms um so Dibbles actually is normed Nationwide and so her recommendation and and I agree after talking through this with her is that we would screen everybody with Dibbles which can be done virtually um and then anybody who's not meeting the Dibbles Benchmark for their grade level they would then get some further diagnostic testing including sips but we would we would start with Dibbles which our teachers are familiar with we've done it at Ready set go day and so that's kind of where we're Landing right now if we are not able to um give a map test in the in the fall um right away so that's that's where we are for uh screening um the student needs again I think um I think their point to Universal inoculation against reading difficulty in general

091is is hugely important uh if we are able to intervene on a four-year-old a five-year-old um and a six-year-old the the time to remediate is far less than if you wait until that student is eight or nine years old uh so we really want to to um identify who those kids are and really know what the explicit instruction that they need we can provide um one of the things that we are looking at with Aaron and Sarah line um is is adding a dyslexia component into the preschool screener um so there there are tools coming out um somebody in Nadine gab who's a neuroscientist at Boston Children's Hospital has worked on a a four-year-old screener so we're kind of keeping our eyes out for that um Vicky Vicky Weinberg and Amy schulting said we don't

092need to buy that app you can just add these questions into your preschool screening process so that that is um also a possibility so we know that we this early this early instruction and early screening will pay dividends because we will have kids spending less time in intervention so we want to pay attention to that and then on the opposite end of that uh we know that we still have students struggling with reading at the middle school level and so Cheryl and Sarah Pratt and I met with um a couple of CCC folks including Gina who's their sips expert about implementing sips in the special ed program at the middle school specifically for kids who are struggling with continue to struggle with reading at that level uh and so that's something that we are putting

093into place this year and then just overall we know and are anticipating that we need to increase the number of teachers who are able to um use the sips program right now it's pretty much centralized on um intervention teachers um but given uh what CCC expects in reading loss we know we're going to have higher numbers of kids who would benefit from that program in the fall so we are looking on how we can do that in the classroom to serve more kids and then this last page is uh information that is just really helpful um for for uh dyslexia and learning about it and how to how um you can support dyslexic students in in the school um these come from the MD website which is quite comprehend comprehensive but I know that uh

094we get questions about this a lot and so I just want to have the the resources here uh in one place and time for questions excellent thank you hope um so I will um ask board members for questions or comments Tom um yes and not all of them are formed because you have a lot of information um yeah thanks for that um so a couple things um so is the um is the focus mainly K through five yes although we do know that there is a need to uh work with this kids with dyslexic tendencies in the middle school as well that they would benefit from uh one of the sips levels in particular which is written for older kids um and so since this is being implemented now we've got to see a high

095school full of kids who weren't evaluated according to this in which case uh is there any way to evaluate them or give them support and the other thing is by the time they're at that age they probably developed coping mechanisms um or um uh what was the or and and compensated for their uh reading deficiencies in other ways and I had a friend in high school who struggled with us and I so I could see what um and this was back in the you know 50 years ago um so are there ways to get help in the high school or to like do screening now of some sort or to um identify perhaps kids who are acting out in the in the high school again that uh you know there could be a lot of

096reasons but maybe it's still that reading difficulty that even though they've managed to navigate it it's still a fundamental fundamental problem that they have yeah you raise a really good point Tom and Lisa Battaglia who is our reading addsys teacher at the high school has has um worked really hard on this um over over the past four years in finding um programs that really can and address some of the particular needs of an older student who's struggling with reading um and really differentiating between what is actually a true reading problem and what is maybe some other kind of executive functioning more comprehension problem um so so she does offer intervention classes at the high school that are specific to reading kids who are struggling and reading um the other the other thing I think that

097is really important is um is Lori Warner we're just going to give her a big shout out right now because she she is really working with staff to increase accessibility to text in general and so um you know we were talking today just about when when we buy curriculum and uh we need to make sure that those texts are available in um multiple modalities for kids and so and and then we were talking about even just independent reading time um making sure that kids have access to grade level text even if they're struggling readers through um through auditory audit you know books on on what are they on now um audiobooks but they need the book in front of them as well so it's not just listening it's actually looking at the print and and

098listening as well um but but Lori is Vigilant about uh really making sure that we are looking at that and I think it's an area that we continue to work on um but that's something that Tom were doing for secondary students is not only helping them that with their reading struggle but but making sure they have access to the text that they're using in their class um and and sort of related to that uh having an experience with my kids um games video games like Minecraft where you do a lot of um typing and uh reading conversations um are there you know this is the technology generation are there other means other than a book um that would help with reading skills um well we think we we have some programs that the district purchases

099that are sort of gamey like that they're not Minecraft but um you know we had almost 200 external kids signed up for um use of Lexia during distance learning which is the program we're using K uh k four and there's also a Rose Turner clip uses the related program it's called power up and it's uh it's sort of like a a gamified way to build foundational skills for secondary students so it's an online program that's specifically geared towards struggling secondary students um so it's not always a book by any means in fact um we have found that that uh some of our some of our students love to have a goal that they they know where the bar is that they're trying to reach and uh and that is super motivating to them um so

100we are trying to mix it up and make sure that that we are providing multiple ways for kids to to demonstrate their reading skills okay great so just sorry one more quick question um so you describe a lot of uh methods for evaluating students and their reading skills and that's been going on for for years and years and so how now is dyslexia the the focus on dyslexia different than what was happening in the past well this is a very um I I read I spend a lot of time reading about this and and it can be a very emotional topic so we have we have um reading instruction that's happening in school and it's happening in colleges of Education like how to teach reading and then we have neuroscience and cognitive science studying how

101the brain learns to read and I actually just read one of the best articles that I don't know if people have read language at the speed of sight by Mark Seidenberg out of the University of Wisconsin um it's an excellent book about how the brain learns to read and he just actually wrote a new article about a need for translational scientists who actually are going to take this information that cognitive and Neuroscience know about how the brain learns to read and get it over here not only just so teachers know that information but how do they use that information to change how they're teaching reading so you are right that kids have been struggling to read but we are really at a time and this is where this dyslexia push from parents is coming is

102that this this knowledge of the neuroscientists and the cognitive scientists is over here and we need to make sure that it's getting into the classroom over here with our kids and that is really what's driving this push for State legislation and so um the state of Minnesota for example struck the words balanced literacy out of its legislation and they call it structured literacy now um and so it's really it's really marrying the cognitive and Neuroscience with what's happening in the classroom and it's not going to happen overnight and it's and and as you can imagine um we have to work with with teachers not against them right and so I I feel like CCC was the absolute best pick for us um as a district because it kind of has has both of those things

103going for it and so yeah that that's really what's happening Tom great thank you excellent questions thanks Tom Amy uh thanks hope for the presentation I had some similar questions to Tom that Tom had of sort of about the older students and how that works um but he mostly covered a lot of that but I I am still curious is dyslexia something you can learn your way out of or are you always a little bit dyslexic um that's a great question um and then my follow-up question is kind of related so let me go with the follow-up question is it safe to assume that most of the kids if they'd been through the Northfield school district and are in middle school or High School have gotten what they needed in the elementary years did not

104have issues reading well if that's not a simple answer right I mean if we look at our ACT scores and we go backwards we know about 50 to 60 percent of our students reach the Benchmark on the reading act now we believe we can do better than that right and so that's where we started moving backwards and working with the high school team like what do you think it is and they thought it was a lot of fluency issues which is why we adopted Reading Plus um in grades five through seven but if you go if you if you take our current high school students um you know that we did not have a district-wide reading curriculum right we had a set of standards and we said fly and be free teach those standards how

105you how you um see fit and and so we know that for our older kids they're yes there are still some kids who probably um are are missing some foundational skills and we saw that we actually have confirmed that um in the Lexia program the first two years that we had it we hadn't had CCC and they do this whole analysis of your District assessment data The Benchmark data and that that was the number one weakness where Northfield kids was foundational skills um and so we so we know there were some times there's going to be a gap between when we catch up from this CCC curriculum and those kids move through the system um but we put into place some pieces to Target those gaps one of them being Lexia that that would fill

106those foundational skills for kids who hadn't had CCC um so so in terms of um the older kids yes we we still need to address their needs in particular but we're hoping that as kids move through the cccc program we'll see less of that need um and in terms of outgrowing dyslexia you know I I would say I am not a dyslexia expert by any means I've done a lot of reading on it and I I would say that you um what you learn are skills that help you cope with those Tendencies it's a spectrum so you can have severe dyslexia to pretty mild um dyslexia Tendencies and um but we also know and the and the Neuroscience is clear on this that they can be explicitly taught skills that you and I might have

107gotten automatically right that once they're taught and practiced they become automatic and that helps those kids overcome um overcome the severity of the dyslexic tendencies okay so a couple of questions uh it sounds like we're trying to pinpoint the older students who might have gotten through the system of elementary school and and maybe give them some extra help I would say we are doing that both in the adsis programming at the secondary okay and then um as far as numbers go if I were to ask you how many of Northfield public school students have dyslexia would you say 187 Plus or what sort of I would say that we do not diagnose dyslexia what we do is look for diet dyslexic Tendencies and then it's up to up to um the family to seek a

108diagnosis um and and I would I will say though um one of the things that is is very clear in the research is that we don't want to over identify right we don't want a lot of false positives and sometimes what what is needed is just more explicit teaching in the classroom um and so we need to make sure that our core is strong so what looks like dyslexic Tendencies is not actually an instructional approach that that um is is contributing to that reading difficulty and that's one of the really great benefits of having a reading curriculum like CCC because we know every student is getting being a reader and it's getting an explicit instruction in those foundational foundational skills would the correct question be how many students have been diagnosed that officially and I

109don't actually have the answer to that um I know that we have kids who are coming back with private diagnoses but I don't um have that number I'm happy to look into that Amy and get back to you no I'm just I was just curious to sort of numbers wise but that you don't need to look into it I think you've given us a lot of good information thank you very much okay great thanks Amy Rob questions or comments yeah thanks hope um I guess my question as someone who teaches languages other than English that there are added difficulties when someone is trying to learn a foreign language if they're struggling with dyslexia so I'm just wondering about the impact of this on companeros and ell classes and then uh French Spanish and German in

110the high school if there are training for the teachers in those areas and other screenings and and interventions for students so we do I can speak to specifically the companeros students if if they come to their building SST um with reading issues that that we need to take a look at we do you know put into place interventions and then we do um ultimately decide if the growth is not what we want it to be we do look at whether companeros is the best placement for them and that's a you know a conversation we have the family and the SST team at the elementary school um with our El students this is where it gets very tricky and the school sites have just been masterful at working on what is typical growth um for for

111our El students so one of the things we do is look at those access scores that come in every year and the state has now normed the growth and so we know whether a student has met their growth Target or has not met their growth Target on their access test which is the test of English language proficiency and one of the subtests is reading um so we use that information and and I think this is the in our El population we need to um that's something we're going to take a closer look at this year I'm not going to tell you that we have that down perfectly because we don't um and I think we're all learning as this as we learn more about dyslexic Tendencies what that looks like in an El student um

112and so I think that's an area for growth for us thank you you're welcome Ellen questions or comments no new questions you covered so much information and I had some of the same questions that I've already been asked so thank you so much hope all right Jeff you know what uh Ellen said and uh well thank you for your research and your diligence and passion for all the work that you do all right thanks Steph no any questions or comments very informative report thank you very much I have a question if parents have reticence to have their child labor with dyslexia um I would say that parents are really invested in finding out why their child is struggling in Reading um okay and because dyslexia is now framed as a spectrum um I think that

113that it's really a a term that we know that we need to invest investigate more where the um skill deficits are okay good thank you excellent report very informative all right thank you hope thank you I I uh I agree with board members first of all thank you board members for your excellent questions and and hope for your uh really really solid uh report and such a comprehensive view of the work being done um for dyslexic students with dyslexic Tendencies so thank you and and the way that you're looking at it you know and how it's benefiting all students I think is really excellent so thank you you're welcome okay we'll move on now to our next agenda item which is the summary of the superintendent's performance evaluation so as board chair I will um

114provide the board with the summary um so we uh did the board um did uh do a summary of the annual performance appraisal for our superintendent Dr Hillman the appraisal period was um July 1st of 2019 to June 30th of 2020. um so uh for the for this annual review period all seven board members did complete the performance evaluation um there were uh 48 job responsibilities around eight major topics that were um that board members added numeric ratings and provided additional comments so as board chair I compiled and summarized all board members input for Dr Hillman evaluation um all written comments were shared verbatim but were not attributed to a specific board member so as board chair I met one on one with Dr Hillman on July 1st 2020 to review the appraisal so Dr

115Hillman received an overall score of 4.94 on a five-point scale his performance reflects his outstanding work during the school year that presented previously unimaginable unimaginable challenges his exceptional work over the past year was highlighted by board members a sampling of their comments was summarized around three key areas and certainly no surprise of the abrupt change to distance learning was commented by board members across the board under his guidance his strong and capable leadership team developed guiding principles and communicated these to the staff the board and parents these guiding principles were not just words on a page but served to shape how the district responded to and provided support for the enormous challenges it faces an institution District surveys that reflected the vast majority of students staff and parents were satisfied with how the distance handling

116this District handled distance learning isn't it so self a remarkable achievement during these uncertain times Dr Hillman has been a steady reassuring voice and leader for the community the board also cited Dr Hillman's passion and proactive leadership relating to the difficult and pernicious State of Affairs regarding race and Equity as it not only related to the school district but also to the community as a whole partnering with Equity Alliance of Minnesota to provide the staff with implicit bias and cultural competency training the formation of the district's equity and advocacy committee has made the district a leader on these important issues why these actions demonstrate Dr Hillman's commitment to ensuring a world-class learning environment for every student he readily acknowledged there is much work to be done Dr Hillman's leadership has been recognized Statewide with his

117invitation to join the Minnesota Equity partnership superintendent race Equity leadership Network so Dr Hillman has been recognized Statewide for his leadership and work on this issue Dr Hillman truly cares about his staff and students he wants everyone to feel supported and welcome in the schools but most importantly he reaches out to the quieter voices making the time to really listen to all community and members he truly excels at his job so in summary board members gave Dr Hillman an exceedingly positive annual performance he his noted high level of knowledge experience vision and passion for his worth as well work as well as the strength of leadership gives the board great confidence in his ability to tackle the complex challenges the district will face particularly in the coming school year so as board chair it was

118certainly an honor and privilege for me to be able to sit with Dr Hillman and give him the summary of board members comments and to um to provide this amazing um evaluation that that he um so heartily deserved I think board members also demonstrated or or highlighted that he has demonstrated such powerful leadership and his ability to motivate and Inspire those those around him certainly there were so many logistical things that needed to be handled but most importantly he became a trusting and caring leader and those aspects of his leadership really Shone bright I think it's also important as a board I know that we acknowledge the personal toll that the distance learning took um on Dr Hillman and really the weight of the district and the community on his shoulders and how he shouldered

119that responsibility so incredibly well and how we were incredibly proud of the way he inspired all District employees to to navigate the challenges and to keep moving forward so um it was just uh really and uh I think it's also important to note that when all of the the distance learning had to be had to be implemented Dr Hillman had only been in part way into his fourth year as superintendent so he will be starting his fifth year or has started his fifth year July 1st but I think as a super intellig pendant relatively young in his tenure as a district leader just is a testament to the work that he did for for the district and the community so um again thank you to board members for taking the time to provide the evaluation

120of Dr Hillman's work and particularly for your narrative comments that were um really important in terms of him understanding how um you know the uh the evaluation of his work this past year so I will pause for a moment and ask if board members have any comments they would would like to share I've certainly um summarized a majority of them for for this report but if there's anything board members want to add that I might have not um had as part of the report I would really welcome those comments no I have something yes Rob um I just wanted to I'm looking here at the most recent um document on consent contingency planning purposes and guiding principles for the fall and there's a you know there's a um nine items and number seven is give

121ourselves Grace and I don't think that's a standard thing on these kind of documents and I think that's really a mark of Dr Hillman's leadership that he thinks about that kind of um intangible quality that we need to deal with this situation thank you rob for that comment and the other any other comments board members would like to to add I would wish thanks Julie I would like to thank Julie for putting all the work together to summarize everything and uh summarize it but I believe in an excellent way and congratulations to Dr Hillman foreign and I just wanted to say thank you for being such an excellent captain of the Northfield Public Schools ship as we navigate through the covid-19 storm I think you're doing an excellent job leading us through that thank you

122it is my really distinct pleasure and honor and privilege and all of those things to get to do this job in this place with this group of people and so I am very grateful for board member support and your confidence as you know I never take that for granted I work hard very every day every day to make sure that you maintain and exceed I try to exceed your expectations every day you can't do this without a team and I've got three of the best with us here tonight with who I couldn't do this job without Anita Ozzie she's just she helps navigate and make sure everything stays on track and then of course Aaron and hope and our principals and all of our staff um I appreciate the acknowledgment of the weight or the

123gravity of the situation that we dealt with in the spring and what we are about to deal with but truthfully it's the 500 employees who all come together in the pursuit of our vision you see that we really focus on making sure we have Clarity of vision and everything that we do and I really think when we have Clarity of vision we adopt things like guiding principle goals and we motivate and get people around uh the work whether that be principles whether that be administrators teachers educational assistants office employees custodians the technology staff custodians everybody in the entire District came together and continues to come together because we have a laser focus on doing good things for kids so when you have a team like that it is I have said many times this is

124the best job I've ever had it's the hardest job I've ever had but it is the it's the best job I've ever had and it's really a privilege to get to do this so I appreciate again the confidence and the support and I look forward to uh getting to tackle some new challenges that we haven't had to before thankfully I like that kind of thing so we have a lot of those ahead of us all right thank you and I do want to acknowledge Anita Ozzy for her work and and helping to to uh put the appraisal form together and for recap helping with the uh uh collection of the results it's just been um much more efficient process since she's been on board so I really appreciate that as well so we will move

125on to uh our next item for discussion and Report which is policy recommendations um this is the first reading for changes to policy 401 402 and 407 that were included as in your packet Dr Hillman yes in addition to that we also have the uh Northfield Public Schools hand-in-hand preschool handbook I want to point out that you'll see in your packet that there are a number of places where it is highlighted uh Aaron Bailey director of community education-ish we have submitted this we want to get this moving and approved but there are a number of things that are still in flux so for example as you know Community Education is moving to a re renovated Greenville Park Elementary facility and so we are not sure that all the phone numbers will be the same yet

126we think they will but we're not exactly sure you will also see under safety there's some things around in a traditional and a normal time we'd have people make sure that they're dropping off and picking up each day in the classroom and preschool that may or may not be possible this fall so we bring this forward to you with the understand that the bulk of it is there however there are some things that we just need to reserve the opportunity for Change and so then when you look at the other three policies that we're looking at this evening they're very minimal changes if you look at them all recommended to you by the Minnesota school boards Association you'll see some a real basic change under Equal Opportunity Employment just changing the word gender to gender

127identity or expression to more reflect uh how we are looking at that particular issue these days you'll also look at policy 402 Disability non-discrimination Policy that is simply just renaming the department and who uh folks should contact so it's special services opposed to Student Services again very minor and then the final policy 407 that's really a technical uh change the original definition pointed to a very specific part of federal code and rather than trying to keep up with all of the changes in federal code we are simply going to the more broad term keeping it under the code of fed of the federal regulations for OSHA so some very basic some very minor changes again this is the first reading and so we'll bring it back for you the next time uh to be approved

128I'm happy to answer any questions that are on these items at this time all right excellent thank you Tom questions or comments uh no questions or comments thanks Amy questions or comments uh yes I have a couple questions or really comments um first I want to say of all of the handbooks I'd like this one the best um partly because of its length um but I think it's very clear and organized and it's just addressed to the parents um one idea I had for it is it might be interesting just to have a little box that says you know the the ideal hand in hand parent does and then have little asterisks and you know um doesn't let their child bring toy guns to school and you know it doesn't send but more positively worded

129um uh just as a parent I'm thinking so if I'm a perfect parent what do I need to do you know and sort of combine everything but that would just be an extra idea I think it's pretty complete the way it is uh I also have a question about the hazardous substance 407 and I'm just curious to know what sort of hazardous chemicals are we exposing our staff to and how many staff actually do we expose chemicals to so this is a policy that governs all of those kinds of things for example one of the areas that it would focus on would be in our chemistry area so when we're working with chemicals and and chemistry lab things like that in addition from there are from time to time uh there are items that our

130custodial Department may this might govern our custodial Department we of course have all the safety material sheets on hand we work very closely with iea to make sure that we are following all the appropriate protocols I don't have the number for you here tonight um Amy but as you see really when you look at it it's really talking about what are the definitions of those kinds of things that the policy is governing and then it's also making sure around training to make sure that people understand so I'm not going to characterize this is that we have a tremendous amount of these things but there obviously are some things that we want to make sure there's explicit Direction about how to use um and any of the notification education processes that we need to make which

131we of course do each fall okay I guess just how many employees are routinely exposed to hazardous chemicals I'm fairly confident it's extremely low if any at all right thank you all right thank you Amy Rob questions or comments I have no questions I just want to thank the other members of the policy committee especially the two students especially Jack who graduated and continued to come to our meeting so Jack Rizzo he's kind of a and he always comes with really good observations and really good additions to the policies so I'm really grateful for his participation Ellen no questions or comments and I would just Echo what Rob said about the policy committee and the student members it's been really fantastic Jeff no questions or comments no oh sorry I thought mutant all my apologies

132go ahead and all questions or comments all right thank you yes and again the policy committee time and time again just proves how valuable it is to have them reviewing and updating our policies so again this is the first reading we will approve these policies at our April excuse me August 10th board meeting so we'll move on to um operations update Dr Hillman yeah so uh you'll notice that I've renamed uh the previous five updates I had called covid-19 updates and we're now transitioning just to call it a super intense operation update that we are going to take number six as opposed to restarting uh they were formerly called the covid-19 updates so what I'm going to share with you uh briefly this evening because I'm sure there are questions is I'm going to really

133focus on the 20 20 21 planning that we're working on right now and I want to clarify one thing immediately uh as we have started to see the national discussion about how schools are going to operate in the fall we have to understand that uh state by state is going to have different ways in which decisions are made and so as we see some of the southern states who are getting ready to go back to school they go back to school about a month before we do you're going to really start seeing some of this uh heat up we saw today two very large Metropolitan districts on the west coast um make decisions to start their school year in distance learning in Minnesota when I want to be really clear about is that Governor walls

134and Departments of health and education they provided guidance for us in mid-june that I'm going to share in just a moment but they are scheduled to provide their decision for how we will start the school year on July 27th or the week of July 27th so I've received a few messages and I think there are some people under the um who believe that it's the local school district that will make the decision to begin with we have no information from the Department of Health or Department of Education that to begin with at least that this is going to be a local decision so we are waiting just as everyone else's for the week of July 27th to hear what the guidance and the decision at the state level is I will tell you that after

135the initial state level decision happens I do think you are going to see some more surgical decision making and how school districts operate next year it could be regionally where a one region might be working in one format of of the three scenarios that they have presented to us as opposed to another I do think that you will get to a point where you could even have a district by District decision with public health departments at the county level having a tremendous amount of influence in deciding what happens based upon how the virus continues to flare or not to flare and I think that we're going to see um even potentially school by school kinds of decisions so you could see some larger districts that have multiple high schools where one high school might be

136in full distance learning while the other two could be in in-person learning that's how I think this is going to evolve during the school year but to be very clear what we understand hadn't been told multiple times is that the state Departments of health and education will render the at least the initial decision and then we will move from there so as I had mentioned we have three different scenarios that the Departments of health and education have asked us to prepare for in-person instruction without strict social distancing distance learning uh we're going to call it distance learning 2.0 while we I were very grateful for the positive feedback about the emergency distance learning that we put together in the spring we know that the next iteration of this needs to be more robust uh and

137stronger which we are on track to make that happen again I think if we think about our continuous Improvement approach we know that the next version will be better and if we have to keep doing it for a period of time we will keep getting better at it the third option is a hybrid option which would include some students learning at home and some students working or learning at school so those are the three scenarios that we have been asked to prepare for there are two guidance documents that I linked to you in the update over a hundred pages of guidance for all three of these options between the Departments of education and health if you are bored at night you can read that guidance and there's a lot of information and a lot of

138detail and some things that are very clear some other things that superintendents across the state still have a number of questions on and I will tell you up front every question answered right now begets another 10 questions and so it is uh it is some incredibly complex planning that we are working through we have developed a team approach a K-12 team approach so rather than having grade level bands begin to plan for the fall so a group that would look only at elementary middle school and high school we have formed three K-12 teams because we know that parents who have children at the elementary school and at the middle school are going to expect some reasonable consistency or similarity between the approaches to the best customer ability that's one of the pieces we got loud

139and clear in our survey feedback parents wanting more consistency across the system and our three teams are working very hard to make that happen the three teams that we're working through are obviously instructional design and that is being led by instructional Services director Holt Langston we have a team solely focused on Logistics activities director Joel Olson is leading this team and his military background in the Air Force is really a strength right now as he thinks about the logistics and his team thinks about the logistics of how we would do in-person learning how we might do a hybrid model uh things to the level of do we create one-way hallways to try to avoid exposure that's the kind of work that the logistics team is doing and director of special services Cheryl Hall is leading

140our health and virus prevention team so these teams have anywhere between 12 and 19 people on them the ball got rolling by our administrative team in the first meeting or the first two meetings then we have invited a number of different staff representing all different stakeholders throughout the school district including teachers and educational assistants custodians nurses office assistants our Child Nutrition team we have lots of different people represented we have representatives from the district youth Council on each of the teams as well so they are working really hard right now to solve issues they are trying to work methodically most of these teams are meeting for several hours a week the three leaders and I are meeting twice a week with intentional our intentionality of trying to align the work that we're doing and I

141am going to briefly share as uh Dr Hardy mentioned before uh about our guiding principles I'm going to briefly share my screen here so that I can show you what we're talking about because what we think is really important in these decision-making strategies is to have a clear vision and that a set of principles that we can use when we are making decisions that we have not made before that no one has made before there is no book to go back on this even we have even really tried to study uh other nations and the work that they've done when they've returned students to school but even they have they're only a couple of months ahead of us and some of the decisions that they've made have proven to be right some of them have

142been proven to be wrong but I'm just sharing with you our purpose statement and this is governing all of our work for the fall is that the purpose of the north of the 20 20 21 Northfield Public Schools covid-19 contingency plan is to support staff in developing a seamless system of instruction and services that meet the needs of every learner regardless of the scenario we have been told to be anticipate using at least two if not all three of these scenarios during the 20 20 21 year and that we may have to pivot to a different scenario and as in as quick of a time as within 24 hours so we have to be able to have a system where you can seamlessly move from one scenario to another and let me tell you this

143is not simple right this is this is challenging stuff that we're looking at trying to make the best decisions that we can uh with the data that we have at the time we want to model relationships first I'm not going to read all of these two but we're looking at making sure that we focus on relationships first that we ensure Equitable access because when we say all we mean all we want high quality instruction regardless of the scenario we plan to provide Relentless support for every learner and staff member we're going to monitor and adjust there's nothing normal about this people call this The New Normal I am calling it The the current abnormal because this is not normal and we cannot make it normal because it will not be the last time we had

144something like this was a century ago and so making sure that we understand this is not business as usual that we are flexible and that we are willing to adjust our practices based on feedback because as you well know we really believe in continuous Improvement we want to have a reasonable level of consistency this is something that we have clearly heard in the data from our parents make it so that we can that there's some more predictability in our students working day and the kinds of ways that we're going to get information I really appreciate Rob pointing out the giving ourselves Grace um we are going to make mistakes I can guarantee it it's the only thing that I am absolutely sure about is that we are going to make mistakes and something that sounded

145great in July is not going to sound so great in October and we just have to accept that and it's not that we have to like it but we have to accept it and say that it's okay and we have to say okay what's next we will continuously improve stewardship one of the big challenges that we are going to face is the immense pressure that is happening around how we come back to school this fall we are not getting any a ton of additional money I'll share the cares act but that's all that we know that we're getting right now three hundred and eighty thousand dollars out of a 55 million dollar budget you don't have to be a whiz to know that that really percentage-wise is not a lot and some of the decisions

146that we are making we have to weigh the long-term financial implications for the district with the immediate and short-term benefit this is where some of the most difficult decisions are going to come in to be able to do some things in the fall uh will be can be very expensive right so how are we going to leverage that or balance that against what we know are the long-term financial needs of the school district remember the pandemic is going to end the final stage of a pandemic is demobilization and so it is essential that we understand that we have a short term and we have a long term we don't know when the virus is going to subside we don't know when the pandemic is going to end but we have to make sure we keep

147in mind balancing that long-term Financial impact with the short-term decisions that we're making and then finally I know this is probably not one of the most popular things Across the Nation we see a lot of discussion about whether schools or child care or not we provide child care Aaron very uh eloquently shared the processes that we use to provide child care and while public education is so much more than simply watching kids we have to accept that we play a significant role in helping parents uh work with their kids and watch their kids and engage their students during the traditional work day and so if we don't try if we try to put that off to the side all of our plans are going to be missing this key element and so while public education

148is of course so much more uh the fact is that we have to come back that we do play a key role in child care as we're looking at these plans I believe we have to acknowledge and understand that and so I just wanted to share those with you because what I tell our administrators is that these guiding principles if you if you have to make a decision that we don't have time to fully get into and you can defend to me that you use the guiding principles to make that decision I will back you every time right because we have said these are the things that are important in making decisions that people have not made in the past and so I appreciate their dedication to this and and their work with it and

149we have all agreed that these are the principles that we're going to use when we're making these decisions so I want to share with you just a handful I'm going to share four problems that we're trying to solve and I'm going to share them at a high level and then I'm sure you will have questions about them so when we get into the nitty-gritty of these kinds of things the number one issue for nearly every superintendent in the state right now is if we're an in-person mode or we are in hybrid learning how are we going to get children to school the current guidelines for the Centers for Disease Control say we could fit 13 students on a 77 passenger bus that was a dramatic pause if you don't have to be a math wizard

150to know that that is going to be very difficult right we normally transport around 3 000 students a day excuse me you think about the multiple tiers that we would have to run to get people to school and we know that it's an issue now the good news is we are trying to think creatively we are working with Benjamin bus Benjamin bus is represented on our Logistics team generators they're a director of safety operations and our key contact as a part of our Logistics team they've been working through how Transportation could work in a number of scenarios we are hearing there are some mitigation strategies that would allow us to increase the capacity of students on the buses but we uh Jenna and I are meeting this Wednesday to go through what we've discussed so

151far and to try to troubleshoot and brainstorm how we can make this make this work trying to think as creative as creatively as we possibly can Aaron described the health screening and Aaron was talking about not uh you know uh several dozen children right but we're not talking about 4 000 students a day being Health screened at the door even if we're in a hybrid mode and we have half the students just by way of example and you have 2 000 students in a day you can just imagine that trying to do an individual health screening of every student at the door is logistically challenging to say the least so we are really exploring the feasibility of one of the CDC options which is to do a self-reporting uh screening much like what community services

152is piloting for us this summer we're looking at a variety of things we're really trying to see if we can find a system that would like your dentist text you and says hey remember you have an appointment are you coming yes or no we're trying to find a text-based system that people could be prompted in the morning they could answer the question it would go into a database that we would then be able to check as students come in to make sure that they've completed the health screening of course that also has its drawbacks right so we know that um we know that that will be a challenge no matter which way we go on some of these things there are problems with them that we will solve and problems that frankly we will not

153be able to solve given the current circumstances face coverings uh all of the guidance that we're seeing does say that any kind of in-person or hybrid scenario will likely bring some kind of face covering for students and for staff as they're here we know that the emerging research and uh there's more than emerging research around face masks and their ability to to prevent transmission of the disease we also know that the a face mask is not something that is for everyone so we've been working hard with Rice County Public Health and the Department of Health to try to create a menu of face covering options that people are able to utilize we are looking at offering a multi-size mask from windcraft out of Winona Minnesota so a local company that we're trying to work through

154very inexpensive at 2.25 cents a piece we are also looking at face Shields so there is emerging research that face Shields provides similar protection and the Department of Health prefers those for younger students who may not be able to handle having the mask on or could soil The Mask or infect it not infect it but not make it as effective by touching it and moving it so we are looking at some face Shields from a company out of South St Paul and then we are also looking at some that have almost a glasses feature that you can use to put on especially for adults and high school students so we're looking at ordering quite a bit of these we're not that's we're looking at some kind of face mask for every student that we would

155offer to them we're going to have less than one per person of the face Shields as an option we can always look at getting more if we need to and then of course a gator which is almost just like a scarf that you can pull up over your your nose and your mouth as an option that people could choose to use if they wanted to or a bandana is something else and so as we continue toward the Year we're looking at having these things available because if we do have people in person which let's also take a moment every educator in this District would prefer to be back with kids since September 8th there's nobody that would say oh I'd prefer to be only online there is everyone in the world would like us to

156be back we also want to make sure we're back safely and that for the students and the staff who are here we are able to make sure that we provide what the reasonable person would say is the the best level of protection and so we're really working through those face covering options because we think that that's going to be something that is going to be necessary to be able to get people onto campus if that is what the governor and his departments choose to do we also are working on survey uh looking at people with underlying health conditions so we know that we have around 16 percent of 400 staff 16.8 percent of around 400 staff members who completed a survey who indicated they would not be comfortable uh coming back at all face to

157face in the fall and when you get to it it isn't because they don't want to be with kids or they don't want to be here it has to do with either an underlying health condition that they have that puts them at greater risk for if they were to be infected or they live with someone who has an underlying condition and so we also have students in that case through the first 800 responses that we had from our student survey nearly a core order have said they would be uncomfortable coming back and anything but distance learning and so those are just just four of the problems that we are trying to solve and so we will continue working with this we will continue moving forward we uh have as you know we've gotten high ratings

158for our communication with both staff and with families we sent a family update out last week we'll most likely be back into that Weekly mode of some kind of update each week I will send a reminder out about the student survey tomorrow and then give families a little bit more of an update as the week goes on so those are the items around covid-19 I'm not going to get deep into all of the work of each of those teams because we could be here for another four and a half or five hours trying to get into that what I want you to know is that our people are committed to putting together the best plans that make sense for Northfield people are going to hear about a lot of different plans in other cities and

159we are all working together so I am meeting right now with two groups of superintendents uh weekly or bi-weekly and there are school districts to our North and school districts to our Southeast everyone is coming together to try to problem solve this but what what you people think that every school district is similar and is not true um there are issues in other districts that we don't have and issues that we have that they don't have that we are all trying to problem solve we're doing it collaboratively but some of these issues are things that have to happen in a specific school could be facilities it could be the way that they've transported students it could be a number of other kinds of impacts on their community so we will continue moving forward doing the

160best that we can to create the the most robust plans possible our goal is to have what I'm telling our teams we want to have what I call 90 plans done by July 24th this means that we have enough of the plans that we can explain to people what we're looking at then when we know which option we're going to use to begin with in the fall we prioritize finishing those plans based on the one that we're going to start with and then go from there and provide staff training and a number of other things one piece I want to share with the board that I did not include with in the report that I just want you to think about a little bit we are we are getting strong feedback from our instructional team

161about the need to do something different at the beginning of the school year so one of the things I'm going to most likely ask you to consider at our next meeting is authorizing us to take what would have been the first traditional week of school so September I think it's 8th 9th 10th and 11th that Tuesday through Friday right after Labor Day week and we have a have a concept where we would like to meet face to face if possible or via video conference with every single family in the district this is for a variety of reasons number one we want to make sure that we are able to explain to them our plans face to face or individually so we can best support them the other piece is it's an opportunity for us to

162really dig into what how has the uh the pandemic and other kinds of societal issues like the murder of George Floyd how have those things impacted their family since we have last seen them that is going to be really critical for us to try to create relationships as we start the school year so thinking about using those first four days rather than having direct instruction trying to meet with every single family to be able to have this interactive dialogue so of course at the elementary schools it would be somewhat similar to Ready set go day in that kind of concept at the secondary they wouldn't be meeting with every teacher but with a designated teacher who would be able to interact with them so I just want to share that with you for your pondering

163if you will because we think that this is a really important way to support the social emotional learning of our students and our families coming back finally I want to give you a brief update on our anti-racism work as you know we've talked about this quite a bit this summer we will continue to move forward working tirelessly to eliminate systemic racism period and we are working with the city of Northfield the Northville healthy Community initiative me me and them later this week we are looking at trying to create a broader Community Coalition of organizations to work together because we know that the Northfield promise example has shown us that if we are all working in the same direction and if we're not duplicating Services we can really accomplish great things we also know that we

164have talked about the equity Alliance of Minnesota work I'm not going to reiterate that I do want to share with you the immediate action that's happening in the summer that our high school in English and social studies departments are reviewing their curriculum they're looking at making adjustments this summer as part of a longer term effort for making sure that our instruction includes more diversity in authors and has a wider perspective of History so ensuring that we listen at this moment in history for ensuring that people see themselves represented in the curriculum and we cannot look people in the eye and say that that is the case right now so we are starting this longer term process with our English and social studies departments at the high school and that is immediate action that is taking

165place this summer then I want to share with you just briefly we are working to develop what I'm calling an anti-racest framework with three action areas that we're going to be focusing around the first is symbolism and we have to understand that symbolism does play a role in reinforcing racist stereotypes and narratives in our society we have to look at systems Behavior so systems things like our curriculum hope Langston talked about a system when she talked about the system that we have for identifying dyslexic Tendencies and then intervening to assist those students we have to intentionally look at our systems to make sure that they are anti-racist and that they are providing Equitable access and support for every child not for some children and it's real access not just perceived access and then the final

166area if you will is individual Behavior we all have a responsibility for our own individual behavior and making sure that we recognize that we all have our own biases and we all from time to time have some kind of racist thought as part of if you read the research about it most people engage in that from time to time but you need to make sure that we're able to talk about that and that we're saying it is it is um it is not it is something that is is normal for people to to have those kinds of thoughts we need to understand how to interrupt them and how to interrupt them for ourselves and for others and so if we don't recognize that we really can't go forward in a number of the other things

167I'm not just talking about book clubs or things like that with individual Behavior or talking about really helping ourselves deeply reflect about the work that we do and how that we are making sure that our individual behavior is contributing to A system that is explicitly anti-racist I'm also proud to announce with you this work that Bridgewater Elementary principal Nancy Antoine has been appointed to a national task force on race and Equity uh she's been named by the National Association of Elementary School principles Association and she will be working on this at the national level so you know that we are dead set on making sure that we have a world-class learning environment for every student and a world-class learning environment is anti-racist we have oceans of work galaxies of work to go yet but we

168will not stop and we'll keep moving forward to make sure that every child feels seen and valued and that they actually have access to what our cons what the Declaration of Independence says which is the pursuit of life liberty and happiness and so that is the work that we're doing and we will continue to work on that relentlessly um I I it's going to take a long time but we will continue to work on it so two very important things that's my report for this evening I'd be happy to take any questions excellent thank you Dr Hillman um Tom questions or comments um yeah I'll try and be brief um uh thanks for the work on the racism I know it's uh Challenge and um something that's going to take uh persistent commitment um so

169just a couple things um I I like the first week plan of meeting with all the families I think you know the kids are just coming back from school it's not a very productive time anyway and given we don't even know what that's going to look like and what it looked like in the fall I think that's that's a good plan to get everybody just um grounded again um and then just two things so if less people take the bus maybe more families drop off especially in the area around the roundabout that could cause construction or just traffic difficulties so I don't know if that needs to be at least considered and then the second thing would be um you know to have a supply of face masks or Shields or whatever could you would

170it be worth pulling the families to see how many could provide that on their own and then just make up the the difference so where we don't end up with a huge supply that doesn't get used yeah Tom I appreciate both comments thank you uh the transfer what you described is probably the next layer of our uh seeking uh family feedback you know as I mentioned we have around 200 students who have indicated distance learning would be their only preferred option at this point and that's only through about a fifth of our students reporting uh so we know we're going to have to probably look at some kind of distance learning only track for people who want that for the whole year so that's something that we're working on so we could have a group

171of students who are in distance learning the whole year and uh other groups who are going through those three different scenarios depending upon what the public health condition is so as we get our handle around that hopefully in the next week that's going to give us some more information about transportation and thinking about what we could do there are some other tools that we could consider we are we are just looking at because it's due diligence you know what would happen uh how would it impact our transportation if we expanded the walk radius around our schools right right because we are allowed to go up to two miles uh trans or required to transport students two miles and Beyond as you know we do much better than that because we think it's important when we

172get into that kind of thought process we run into some Equity issues around some populations that we know have really benefited from having some Transportation within that two-mile radius so we're really looking at all of those different things together and then Tom on the face mask and those other pieces I I think we're at a point where we would need to say that if we are expecting if we expect people to do that as we at least have to provide them something so we were initially looking at uh because we're concerned Jim call Seth is outstanding our buildings and grounds director and he has ordered stuff before other people even knew they needed to order stuff so I can tell you we got plenty of soap and hand sanitizer we're in great shape uh with

173that we've got a great cleaning and disinfection plan uh that Jim and the team have worked through but the issue is if we don't get some of these things ordered fairly soon we we could be in a case where we might not be able to get them into to begin with the school year so we're going to lower the number of face Shields that we're ordering and at uh just a couple of dollars a piece we think that the face masks are a good um having them on hand is a good insurance policy should that be the way that we need to end up going um so again about the so if if you widen the uh the walking radius more people may choose to drop off their kid and um again in the roundabout

174area that where the construction is still going to be going on at the beginning um that could cause problems I don't know if we would need to work with the city or just at least think about what what that could look like when all of a sudden you got twice the traffic that were were used to and we have worked extensively with the city on that day we were involved and be able to help create the detours and Benjamin bus has been part of that process as well looking at that so uh as you said we don't know how far they're going to get before the start of the school year um and so we will be working with families to let them know what the appropriate uh ways to bring their child to school

175are great thank you um Amy questions are answering yes um well Matt after you're talking about eradicating systemic racism I felt like I should stand up and give you an standing in the Ovation because it was very inspiring everything you were saying and I'm really glad that you feel so strongly on that topic and you're really working to um to help the school district treat everybody fairly and equally uh I guess my question is um do you know when the roundabout is supposed to be finished yeah so we know that we understand that the roundabout the latest it could be done would be early October I believe is what I'm recalling uh though we we know that they're making good progress there was a lot of complications to begin with they I think most people

176would have said why didn't they just start earlier when we didn't have students on campus I think people don't realize the amount of utility work that had to happen along Division Street and that work had been being planned for months so for example there's one local Communications provider that had to relocate all of their equipment from one side of the street to the other and if they had completely disrupted this particular service that they provide to people folks wouldn't have been happy so it's a very thoughtful process in which they go about doing it so we will we will not know um we do believe it will go beyond the beginning of the school year we cross our fingers that we keep having great weather for them to accelerate and be done early um but

177we know that they'll understand the latest it could be would be October all right that that will be very messy to have that happening when school starts but but that's also total completion of the project so you know it is it is possible that the intersection itself could be opened earlier and there may be some finishing pieces around it what I'm talking about is the finished project great thank you Rob questions or comments a couple things um first of all uh one of the things that was on Aaron's list was flexibility flexibility flexibility and I'm I don't want to see a situation where we decide that we're gonna have students and teachers come back in person and have a teacher have to decide between protecting his or her health because of it um existing you

178know conditions or teaching I mean I don't want someone to have to decide I'm gonna have to quit because I can't do this thing that I'm being asked to do so I I think we really need to have options available for people depending on their circumstances regardless of what the final outcome is yeah Rob that's something we're we are working on diligently and it's not um I wish it was a one-to-one you know right now where we knew oh we have these people who can't come back and hear the students it works out perfectly so one of the things that we are looking at is uh if as we provide as we look to provide one track of distance learning can that track of distance learning be provided by the especially the teaching staff and

179potentially educational assistants and other folks who aren't able to come back and we put that that group of people as the team you know who are going to do the distance learning component now while we would all love that to work out perfectly we understand we still have to follow teacher licensure rules we are thinking creatively of some ways that we could do especially at the secondary that differently that part we are still um I wish I could tell you that we had that all solved now but that's still part of the process that we are developing at this point of how to do that completely online distance learning component for families we would also want to have flexibility for those it's possible some students might want to start in distance learning and say oh

180wait semester time I want to come back now we have to have the flexibility you know for that as well so we will do everything that we are able to to be able to provide people who are not able to come back and who are able to show that we are going to need to require some kind of physician Physicians note that you know this that you're not really eligible to come back we need to make sure we have that level of understanding and then we will work with people to provide them meaningful work to do that now in a worst case scenario Rob we would of course support people with a leave of absence in terms of we would not want someone to resign because again we know the pandemic is going to end

181it is possible Rob that there could be a circumstance that even despite the best effort and I think we have a history of working with people and trying to meet their needs the best of our abilities but there does come a point where we may need to offer to people a short-term or even a year-long unpaid leave of absence uh should they need that now there are some federal programs to help folks in that circumstance we will do everything that's reasonably possible you know to try to avoid it and it's the balance between we have to run this very unpredictable school year and we want every employee to be with us and come back you know if you're not able to be with us in person during the pandemic we want you back when it's

182over so Molly Visa monari chart director myself and and hope Langston uh and Cheryl Hall special education uh Department we've been working on how how can we match these things up to get the most to try to meet as many needs as we possibly can great um and then I wanted you to talk a little bit I've heard from so many parents that you know what they're dealing with really is uh increased levels of anxiety and depression and that the mental health toll of this situation has been huge I mean not even factoring in the education loss that that kids are really dealing with some difficult issues and it seems like I mean the county is not really equipped to deal with mental health issues we've seen that even before this happened so it it

183ends up being something the school has to um provide services for so I'm just wondering if there is kind of a mental health crisis plan or something to to help children deal with everything they're going through well rob you know we do have a we have a crisis plan that addresses mental health kinds of things but not on this level not on what you're describing so that is part of the reason that we're we're considering this first week of just meeting with parents right to be able to create that and to be able to make sure we can take an inventory of what is necessary we're also looking at what does our first face-to-face or online instruction look like there are a lot of things that we're gonna have to be intentional about how we

184try to process and as you all know I'm a big believer in Maslow's hierarchy of needs to make sure that we have that base strong before we really are able to start to get into academic content so that is something that our instructional design team will be looking through as well as you may remember all of ours I I'm fairly certain all of our staff have been trained in youth mental health first aid and so while that is not a clinical piece at least our people do have most of our people the last training was I think two years ago and we do recertify every so often so you know we do have a large chunk of our staff who have had that youth mental health uh first aid training again that doesn't mean that

185they can intervene but it does provide them the opportunity to be able to do some triage we're also going to be working with our students supporting students program you know of course that has been really highly rated by our students and at the end of the day we are not equipped to handle clinical mental health issues either as our own staff now we have great Partnerships with something like Fernbrook as we've talked about before where Fernbrook is providing some services in our schools what we know is that when we have a really strong relationship with kids which we Endeavor to every day they will talk to us and then we are able to make those connections to be able to help people if we are not able to help them in school with our team

186of school psychologists and school social workers and counselors we will certainly connect them with other resources if it's beyond what we're able to do uh I say this many times that we teach children first and the academic content second and so this is what we're going to have to focus on to begin with our instructional design team has a great plan they're intentionally looking at saying how do we narrow the content that we teach during the year to the things that are the most important because of the unpredictability what are the standards what are the content areas that we really have to make sure that we get done and that's done intentionally so we are able to try to work with the whole student and not just saying oh we're back we're right back to

187complete academic content some kids are ready from that ready for that right away lots of kids are not and can I ask one more thing please so some states like New York um have kind of gone in a more granular level and so for example my old home county of Tompkins County has had no cases for quite a while so they're at a different you know risk level so they can open up a little bit more um and so I'm just wondering if Minnesota has thought about that and if Rice County ended up having going for like two weeks or something without any cases that it would be it would move the schools into a different position of having kids back or whatever yeah I'm not a I'm not a betting man rob as you

188know but I would say that I do think you are going to see uh I think there might be an initial Statewide Direction and I think that that is going to evolve into some more region by region uh county by county and School District by School District uh decision making again with public health departments being the the real driving factor in that but I do think you will see that as we go on I I do think we will end up seeing something like that I don't have any inside information I've not been asked to serve on any of the governor's uh task forces or anything but my gut hearing some of the things that I've heard in the super intense cause leads me to believe you're going to see some more granular decision making

189begin to happen thank you thanks Rob for the great questions Ellen say one comment and one question and my comment is just thank you for um putting at the Forefront the the justice and Equity piece with anti-racism work you know that it's we're not just looking at a pandemic but we're we're still keeping that on the Forefront so I appreciate that Dr Hillman um my one question it it sort of piggybacks a little bit on what Rob was getting at and what you just alluded to in terms of differentiation across the state being potentially something that will come arise and then your suggestion um which I really like about these these early meetings and a concern is just um whoever is facilitating these meetings with families being on the receiving end of you know everyone

190has different opinions things are becoming even more divisive under these circumstances and you know we've already seen in the spring where you know the way our district chose to do things in other districts chose to do different things that people have opinions so I guess I just my question is how to best equip whoever's facilitating this meeting so that they um are not on the receiving that that it it falls into the purpose that you want and it doesn't end up in a receiving end of you know and having that sort of a morale issue um unintended yeah so I think there's a couple of things Ellen that we'll focus on number one is we will make sure if if this is the route that we end up choosing to go and I do think

191this is something I will be bringing back to you for formal consideration at the August uh the first meeting in August excuse me um is really providing the why up front to our families and really explain this is the purpose of this meeting uh what we know is when we provide people with a clear and compelling why they will often come to the table ready to discuss what we asked to discuss uh we'll you know we can also make it very clear that you know um you know the people that you're meeting with you know aren't in the decision-making position and so we ask that you know we actually have a we actually have an agenda for the meeting already created thanks to Hope Langston and her instructional design team and then of course what

192we would coach our uh teaching staff on is that you know if we would always give them uh some resources where they could direct people and then if we can't come to if that doesn't work we always have our administrative team who are always willing to step in and help out with these kinds of discussions thank you Jeff yeah thanks for all the the feedback um you know let's keep focused on being experts in education and we don't necessarily need to be experts in covet I I love to uh I love your uh the current abnormal you know I don't like that phrase The New Normal no this is a season it's a it's a weird season but it's a pandemic and we're gonna get through it so you know whatever happens this year is

193going to be different than Rob had some great questions and same stuff that I had to ask too but you know it's just uh you know I get back to the you know the Playbook and of course I'm a football guy but you know you get back to the Playbook and then call on audibles I mean every every administrator every principal every teacher is going to be you know and like you said starting out in September it's not probably going to look the same or what we're doing in the end of October so I think that we all you know work together on that and just uh um also extremely concerned about the mental health issues and that the consensus is that people do want to be back to school and I think we do

194need to be in communities and we need to especially kids we need structure and we need all of that stuff so I think that you know we're moving that way and I think what well I think we lost Jeff there for a moment uh with Grace keep moving forward thanks Jeff no question I'm not a medical doctor right and I do have a doctor but I'm not a medical doctor you don't want me making those medical decisions no questions or comments cool and the parents is excellent and and I think it's going to develop into a two-way street so that there will be some ideas that will be shared to the parents and parents have some concerns or share with the district and that will be a I think a very positive outcome secondly uh

195in my opinion and my notes I think starting in the fall is going to be devastating to our budget and to our fund balance and I don't think we can adequately predict what the impact is going to be and I I think we have to look at that our our goal is to educate children we can't run out of money but our goal is to educate children and uh and that's what we have to do and the community has to understand that and I think they do so you know thank you Dr helmet thank you Noel all right well thank you Dr Hillman for for this this update and and really just highlighting just a few of the challenges they are you know I I don't know it's it's daunting and I know that we

196are so fortunate to have incredibly smart dedicated and um passionate Educators who are not only the team leaders but also members of these critical um planning teams and um with you at the helm we we understand we will navigate the challenges as best we can so um thank you thank you um okay so we'll move on now to you the financial update I think Noel gave a nice precursor to the topic of the financial update so Dr Hillman yes I just have a verbal update for I'm going to keep it very brief considering uh the time you know in previous meetings that we have spoken with you about uh the grid the valve murder story of our Director of Finance has put together looking at the different pressure points as a result of covid-19 we've

197shared with those with you those in previous meetings obviously the transportation discussion that we've had if we could even if we even had the ability to increase the number of buses I'm not sure you could find the drivers to do that that comes at us pretty uh substantial cost but I'm not sure one piece of data with you for tonight that is just an example of how we have these unknown costs that will come at us so we just paid a bill for sixty seven thousand two hundred and seventy eight dollars in unemployment let's just say that that's more than what we normally pay um by quite a bit now we have statutory Authority when we put together the levy for the fall we will let we are able to Levy for all of our

198unemployment costs but this is just and as you all know we were able to keep everyone employed through the end of the school year at their regular hours in some cases we did have some people due to some circumstances where they needed to request an unpaid of leave of absence that was something that unemployment could cover we also are responsible when so if someone has more than one job and if they were furloughed from another job we have partial responsibility for the unemployment even from that other job so unemployment is just so this is just the one data point tonight we've shared numerous with you at previous meetings um but this is something that Val texted me and said you need to make sure you share this with the board because it is highly unusual

199compared to what we normally pay for unemployment our employer portion of unemployment insurance and so we will Levy for that in the fall but this is just the this could be just the beginning of that so I offered that piece of data tonight as our financial update along with the other things that I think you heard me talk about uh during the update on our preparations for covet 19. or for the fall not preparing for Kobe but for the fall semester okay thank you I will run through board members if there's any uh questions um regarding the financial update Tom no nothing passed Amy ask Rob a pass Ellen nothing passed yes pass and Noah no question okay all right thank you um we'll move on now to approval of the consent grouping as a

200reminder there were a few items in the table file that were to be added to the consent grouping um is there anything anyone would like to pull from the consent grouping for separate consideration can I just ask a question sure um on the memberships are we still a member of the Chamber of Commerce yes it is um I don't believe that that is one that requires board approval so I actually just I just approved that purchase order today so you're not seeing it in this because I that does not necessarily require on an ant you'll see some of these organizations require on an annual basis that we take action okay thanks we're a member thanks Rob so um anything um anyone would like to pull from the consent grouping for separate consideration um is there

201a motion to approve the consent grouping so moved moved by Rob is there a second by Amy we have a motion and a second so Anita we will do a roll call vote please bronyak hi gurwitz hi Hardy I verson hi Richard aye Quinnell hi drop moan oh hold on I gotta I got a mute no forgive me excellent motion carries thank you we'll move on now for items for individual action we do have three items this evening um because there are individual uh action items for individual action I will ask for a motion and a second prior to asking questions or comments so is there a motion to approve the Master Lease purchased agreement for 450 each iPads cases and Logitech crayons at a total cost of 173 542.36 motion time moved by Tom

202second second by Amy thank you uh questions or comments regarding the iPads uh to ensure a one-on-one ratio for K2 what K2 students I will run through the uh board members again Tom questions on this motion pass Amy no questions Rob no questions Ellen Dr Hillman can you remind me again of how this um the timing of this goes with some of the other obligations yeah so uh we're proposing this so that we can finish off one to one in K one and two which we know we are able to make work during distance learning by having family supplement with their own devices as we worked through it was not quite the case where we realized we needed to do this to be prepared for the upcoming school year the first two years of the

203lease we would pay for from the cares act money so the first two forty three thousand dollar payments would come from the cares act when we were again about three hundred and eighty thousand dollars we're reserving some of that for Saint Dominic because there's a there's a question of whether that money is intended to be used with parochial schools it's uh there are several states that have sued the federal government determining that so we're reserving some of that but basically we'd commit about eighty six thousand dollars of this to pay for the first two years of the lease the last two years of the lease would be paid for out of our operating capital budget which we'd be prioritizing of course to make sure these leases are paid now the thing that we have in

204our advantage is at the end of this lease so in 2024 December 1st 2024 we make our final purchase on the Sibley lease lease purchase agreement so that the orange hallway at Sibley that lease expires and we're paying that lease out of our Capital dollars as well so even though we're adding to the operating Capital we are able to be thoughtful because we know we'll be able to get those dollars for the year after this lease ends back from the Sibley lease payment back into the operating capital budget uh we feel that we're in very good position there's a lot of other districts having to buy much more than this um it's fairly small these devices as said we'll go to staff members the staff members devices will go to the K12 students to make

205sure that all students have the exact same device because of course we can't purchase the same device we did just a couple of years ago thank you Jeff no questions or comments thank you no no questions no comments so we have [Music] them we'll conduct a roll call gerwitz hi Hardy I Iverson aye Richard aye Cornell hi drop one hi okay excellent motion carries thank you our second item for individual action is uh regarding our fiscal year 2020 audit engagement letter uh and business associate agreement so is there a motion to accept the 2019-2020 engagement letter from Clifton Larson Allen in the amount of 23 700 plus other expenses so moved moved by Ellen is there a second second by Amy all right so I will ask board members for any questions or comments on

206the motion Tom Bass Amy no questions Rob no questions Ellen no questions yes no questions no no questions okay thank you we have a motion and a second no no questions or comments so Anita roll call vote please Brainiac I gerwitz hi Hardy hi Iverson aye Richard aye Quinnell hi drop moan hi excellent motion carries okay our last item for individual action is one we need to do every year to so that the board can conduct a business on a um gov a federal uh federal holiday um so is there a motion to approve the following resolution regarding Columbus Day whereas Minnesota statute actually I think in the interest of time board members have the uh resolution regarding Columbus Day with the language from um the state so I'll ask for a motion to approve

207this resolution so moved moved by Rob is there a second by Amy second by Amy so we have a motion in a second are there any questions again I'll run through board members uh any questions regarding the resolution Tom pass Amy no questions Rob no questions Ellen pass Ellen oh I'm sorry Jeff Jeff no questions and Noel no questions okay excellent so we have a motion at a second um this is a resolution uh but we will obviously conduct a roll call vote as well veroniak hi gerwitz hi Hardy Iverson aye Richard aye well now hi Grandma hi excellent motion carries that does um conclude all items for individual action um we are at a time of 9 55 we do have a few items for information I believe just in the interest of time

208if there's a motion in a second so that the board could um move past 10 pm if um at this juncture it would probably be for only a few minutes so is there a motion all right there's a motion by Amy that we will be able to continue past 10 p.m and there's a second by Jeff so um let's ask for a roll call vote on the motion um oh I'm sorry Anita I'm conducting the roll call vote for you I apologize the interest of record-keeping we will have Anita conduct a roll call vote broniak I gerwitz hi Artie hi Iverson hi Pritchard aye Quinnell hi drop moan strap mode bye okay all right motion carries thank you board members again we will only be a few minutes past 10 but there's a couple items

209that we want to be able to um provide all information and allow for times for uh time and opportunity for questions or comments so uh we'll proceed with items for information filing for school board um Dr Hillman uh did you want to provide a brief update on that as it the July 28th filing um date approaches yes and so what we want to make sure that people understand is that the information I'm going to share is also on our school district website we do have four board positions on the ballot in November we are a school district that does not run a primary election which is why our filing dates are a little bit later than some other governmental agencies uh filing for school board is from July 28th through August 11th and it's in

210the district office um we have to have the Affidavit of candidacy filed in the office of the school district clerk and the two dollar filing fee paid prior to five o'clock on August 11th uh candidates should contact Anita 507-663-0629 to arrange an appointment to file you of course in our circumstances right now we're not able just to have people walk into the district office so they need to contact her to arrange an appointment to file now candidates can also file electronically or mail their Affidavit of cabin to see what the filing fee um to the district office and of course this information is both in the packet it's also on our website Anita is there anything else that you'd like to share as the as the person who is accepting those and working through that

211and no sir you've covered it all okay so that we we have four slots open and uh we will be running our um filing period from August or excuse me from July 28th to August 11th uh in basically what the Secretary of State's calendar says all right excellent thank you and I do want to um specifically thank Anita for her work on this and giving full consideration to how we're able to to conduct this process in in the midst of some restrictions as a result of the pandemic so we appreciate your um really good thoughts about how this can work and work well for um anyone who is considered considering a run for school boards so I'll just pause for a moment if their board members have any questions regarding the process we'll be using

212for filing for school board every question yes Rob um well there when for example when people uh filed for city council the city website had an updated list during the filing period of who had filed will there be a list so you can sort of see who has filed in you know from day to day during that period yeah I mean we I don't think that we've done that in the past but uh there's there's no reason that we couldn't do that okay yeah we'd be happy something we could easily put on the website Rob it's not a problem at all actually Rob ice Lee as someone um does submit their candidacy as a matter of public record and um in the past I know that the local media has always has typically um in

213some years contacted on a pretty consistent basis who who has filed but in the era of the pandemic and so much news out there that I think it's a great place for the district to have that at on the website so thank you for that idea okay um last item for information is construction update number 29 Dr Hillman yes I will be brief here I do want to share a couple and I have a couple of pictures to show you that I think you'll like to see um so I do want to start out by saying we did have uh the first positive covid-19 case for a subcontractor I'm not going to get into the details of where it was at or that kind of thing but what I want you to know is that

214we've told you before that Knutson construction was uniquely situated to address this set of circumstances because of their long history of working at Mayo Clinic uh Jim culseth and myself receive immediate phone calls from from Knutson they had a very clear plan the protocols were implemented successfully that particular site was shut down for one day canoes and paid for someone to come in and do the disinfection and then we continued the following day with a new crew from that different uh from the affected subcontractor so that is just I mean we're hopeful that um these kinds of things are limited did you know however we know that we have had that first one that the protocols that Knutson promised would be in place are in place if you drive by Sibley lately the parking lot

215surface was completed uh late last week it's kind of interesting to see that uh we know that ceilings are uh the addition the terrazzo in the cafeteria area C 95 complete only they only have to polish yet the ceilings are complete in the new edition uh they're working on interior renovation drywall will be completed in the renovation portion next week at the new Greenvale Park the air handling units serving the West half of the building were officially turned on on July 6th and anybody who's been working on the building especially last week was happening that that was turned on and they're currently getting ready through the startup procedures and I'm going to share with you the metal the glass folding door and the media center was installed installed so I'm going to share with you

216a photo that's not the one that I'm going to show you here about see here should be this one can you see can you just give me Rob can you I see you on my screen do you see the glass door there on your screen let me stop my screen share and share it again just to make sure you can see it because it's pretty cool here we go now you should be able to see that and so that is uh right outside the media center so it will create a a barrier so you can't get into the media center after hours but you're able to see it there's that small living room if you will right outside the soft seating so I thought you'd appreciate seeing that photo of the of the glass wall

217going into the new Greenville Park Media Center so pretty exciting in that particular part and then finally we have all of the underground work done with the slabs being poured back at the Community Education Center drywall and other finishes are going to start next week so a lot of really good things happening one thing I want to update the board on just to give you a heads up is that we are still on track with budget but we are as any good contractor is uh we in our project last project oversight committee and we'll be talking about this again tomorrow what we have is an issue of where our contingency is being used which is what contingency is there for and we are foreseeing the possibility of needing to ask you to consider um levying

218for some of our additional Authority you know we're not saying where it's going to happen of course I'm just wanting to make sure that you know that there's the possibility as we get into Longfellow if there are contingency needs there we may need to use some of our remaining Authority you recall that the bond was passed for around 41 million dollars and we were able to get such an advantage with the interest rate if you recall that we only needed to issue bonds for these projects of around 39 million dollars so we have two million dollars more uh bonding Authority that the voters gave us the authority to do however we do not want to use all of that Authority so we're going to be talking to the project oversight committee tomorrow and at our

219next construction update uh next month I will give you another update what we are looking at doing is if we have some specific pieces that would need to be done at Longfellow we have the cash flow capability to pay for those things and then we would be able to actually as a board you'd be able to authorize um selling those additional bonds for the exact amount of how much we needed to spend above what we currently have Authority for so I'll be really clear I'm not saying that we're going to need it but if you remember all the way back to when we approved the 39 million dollars and selling 39 million dollars worth of bonds there were questions by board members on this video call about would that be enough and what would happen

220if we came close and if you recall I said we have not seeded that bonding Authority we would have the ability to come back later I think this does two things one it would allow us to finish the projects in a way that we could all be proud of secondly it's going to we are not going to test it's very very much going to be the case that we are not going to tax at the full Authority that the voters gave to us and with one of our core values being stewardship that's a great story to share so that is your construction update for July 13th excellent thank you questions comments Tom um so I wonder with interest rates even lower could we refinance and get a better deal on any of our outstanding loans

221so you know we have an excellent uh relationship with Ellers Incorporated who are is our financial advisor uh and uh you remember Joel Sutter he's come to you before you many times Joel is actually retiring uh at the end near the end of the summer Jeff Seely also from in Barbie Doyle uh from uh Ellers they are constantly watching that market and they are looking to see there's it isn't just like it's it's it's akin to refinancing your house but if you recall we have already refinanced our debt several times over the years they will let us know when they think there's a financial advantage for us to do it um and they are looking at a fairly regular based Suite where we get an annual report from them to be sure but I just

222had a conversation with Jeff Seeley a couple of weeks ago and we're not at that point yet because we've refinanced the debt so many times but when we can we will I guarantee it it's one of the things that Val lives for is refinancing debt Amy yes I have a question um so we're getting into our contingency funds are there any large expenses in particular that were unanticipated that's causing issues or is it just kind of a general everything's costing a little bit more than expected yeah I'll give you one example uh that I can do tonight so there was an example of that Sibley Elementary where uh in the specking of the boiler there it would that the initial boy that it was specked was not the exact same as all of the other

223boilers that we have in the district and so far I think it was fourteen thousand dollars you know we were able to get the same boiler across the system that's really important because now we have to or less parts we have to invest in less training for different kinds of Maintenance things like that uh so that's one example of of what we've been looking at in terms of some it's it's we haven't had anything one really big thing it's been more things like that Amy and what our measuring stick is if this investment will give us operational return on investment those are the things that we're prioritizing so we chose not to do part of a of an existing parking lot adjoining uh not doing an additional overlay because that's something we could do later

224that wasn't necessarily a return on the investment for doing that right now but something like that boiler that I mentioned there's a return on that investment because efficiency having people only have to have so many parts be able to operate any of our custodians who understand our boiler system on being able to work on any other boiler that's the measuring stick that we've used thank you Rob questions or comments uh nothing thanks Ellen foreign no questions Jeff no questions and no no questions thank you okay excellent so that's our construction update thank you uh Dr Hillman for that um so that concludes the agenda for tonight's meeting with the exception of future meetings so those uh for the month of August were um are Monday August 10th and Monday August 24th both at 7 pm

225we will determine the format I.E location of those board meetings as we get closer to the date so everyone enjoy the next few weeks we only have one board meeting in July appreciate everyone's work tonight and their patients that we work through a number of issues and went a little bit longer but it was an extremely productive meeting and lots of great questions and discussions so much appreciated and of course we will look forward to a time when we can all be together again and in the meantime we will all take care and stay well so with that I asked for a motion to adjourn motion moved by Jeff is there a second second time second by Tom we have a motion and a second Anita if you'll conduct a roll call vote for adjournment

226please bronyak hi gerwitz aye Hardy I verson aye Richard I Cornell hi drop mode hi excellent motion carries we are adjourned thank you everyone