April 24, 2023 School Board Study Session

001foreign study session for PLS on this Monday April 24th um our study sessions do are open for public comment um and I'll read our open and public forum rules this evening staff parents and community members and major decisions can be a valuable form of assistance to the board open forum is an opportunity to address the board at least 10 minutes prior to each meeting a sign up sheet will be available at the meeting site for individuals to sign up to address the board only those whose names and addresses appear on the sign up sheet at the time of the meeting is called to order shall be permitted to address the board up to five speakers shall be provided a maximum of three minutes 15 total to address the board unless an exception is granted by

002the board chair speakers will not be allowed to verbally attack despairs or potentially defame individual board members employees or students nor my speakers use bunker or profane language also speakers may be precluded from disclosing personally identifiable private data regarding employees or students speaker is unwilling to conform to your rules or time constraints may be told his or her privilege of speaking has ended board members shall listen respectfully to issues brought to them by the community but not engage the individuals during their time the board members shall not deliberate or take action during the open Forum regarding an issue presented if followed by Administration is necessary the chair shall request that the superintendent follow up on the matter when the board chair proceeds with the meeting audience comments are no longer in order however the board

003chair sorry the board members retain the right to call in District administrators for information to assist the board payments operations thank you for abiding by these rules and tonight we have two speakers for public forum the first is Sarah Anderson here to talk about inappropriate library book review last month I both attended a spoke at my very first school board meeting I read a pornographic excerpt from a library book and received a warning tonight I want to offer ideas for improving the review process the Department of Justice has federal laws on obscenity Minnesota chapter 617 has many statutes on obscenity and two separate ISD 719 documents address sexually explicit material and obscenity policies 525 and 506. a conundrum is we have many books in our libraries that violate all three levels of laws and rules

004thus sending students mixed messages about what is appropriate in a school setting this is not about censorship or Banning it is about removing pornography from our school libraries it is asking for age appropriate enriching literature and no pornography at any level the process doesn't need to be so complicated and drawn out here are some ideas we would like a form that is advertised and once completed doesn't bounce back for indecency as has happened to at least three people so far we would like a full audit of books and school libraries an article in the Prior Lake Americans stated that each review will cost the district three thousand dollar three thousand dollars however you can use community members and parents who are taxpayers in our school district we suggest no one who approved the books beyond

005the committee be a teacher's admins or media Specialists how can we be assured of a variety of values if the members are all districts selected we suggest resources are utilized that have already done reviews on books there are many of them online we would like full transparency with parents accounting of which books were reviewed and or removed if some questionable books are not removed we would like warnings on the books and require parental permission for some ages or topics the school's purpose is not to teach our children about sex acts it is to help them become adults who can be successful in society literacy and math scores could be improved let's provide better resources to shore those up let parents deal with the sexual things they want their kids to know why are we just

006striving for the lowest common denominator let's have higher standards let's protect our most vulnerable population by not allowing things that will sexualize or groom them that's not what public schools are for don't take the easy political way out of this situation please stand up and be leaders for our community and its morals ethics and values we have another speaker tonight that is Katie Gabriel and her topic is policy 606 and book challenges here Crosby directors Dr Thomas my name is Katie Gabriel I usually her pronouns I live in Savage I've worked in libraries for 25 years and most importantly I am a parent of two students in our district first I want to wish everyone here happy National Library week and today is also right to read day so the American Library Association has declared

007today a national day of action where they ask all people to fight back against censorship and to defend protect and celebrate your right to read freely tonight I'd like to talk about words that have been used in conversation around policy 606 and about books in our schools starting with discretion and censorship I fully support parents and Guardians using discretion as a foundation in setting expectations with their students about what materials they engage with but when one family's discretion begins to limit the books that my students have access to in our Public Schools that's when we're stepping into censorship I think we also need to talk about pornography and my hope is that you all get clarity around the legal definition of that word and how it's applied to written material especially books a book cannot

008legally be labeled pornographic simply because it has explicit scenes or language within its Pages or because some people find it uncomfortable to read the item claiming books to be pornographic or vulgar is a tactic being used by groups around the country in an effort to remove from our schools books that are written by and about lgbtq plus individuals and people of color pen America recently updated their report banned in the USA and their data shows that of the Books banned in the previous year 41 explicitly address lgbtq plus themes or have prominent characters who identify as lgbtq plus and also of those books that were banned in the previous year 40 percent have prominent characters of color these numbers are staggering and taken in the larger context of the publishing industry in our country which

009is still dominated by white straight cisgender authors and characters these numbers should be bringing us to our knees to toss around the term pornography and other similar terms without shared understanding of the legal definition seems irresponsible we as a community are better than that and our students deserve better than that so I call on all in our community to defend protect and celebrate our students right to read their right to intellectual freedom and for all of us to fight back against censorship in all forms and let's try to make every day right to read day in our schools that concludes public forum for this evening and we'll move on to our study session purpose that event at Dr Thomas thank you chair Crosby board directors tonight as we do with all of our study sessions

010is our opportunity to bring topics to the board for deeper discussion to allow board to really provide perspective of their governance and direction that Administration can go tonight we do have quite a full agenda specifically we'll be looking at our outbound survey results as our first conversation topic I would say between now and January 12th we'll just always have a standing budget topic um that I'm sure will be filled we'll be talking a little bit about our district life liability insurance and brokerage protocols um we'll be speaking a little bit about the superintendent evaluation give you our annual Wellness report from Food Services nutrition and Food Services uh we have our compliance vote for uh American Indian Ed this is an annual function that we do each year we've got a couple of proclamations that

011we'll cover uh this week or tonight and then in policy we'll be providing a brief update as to the next steps with policy 606 and then a second read of policy 806 and then the board policy of 203. as our agenda for this evening thank you um with that we are Guided by our work in terms of District governance and policy and our board working documents that's in the board packet associated with that and tonight the highlighted item um even though we are obviously looking at budgets as well as part of our agenda and working document but the highlighting item is under enrollment with operational oversight so we'll move into that topic actually as we go to oversight of operations and Morris Leatherman is here to present the outbound survey results thank you um tonight

012we'll have Peter Leatherman from Morris Leatherman with us I I think this conversation tonight is one that we discussed a few months back as we are trying to understand uh the outflow of families who are choosing not to attend Prior Lake Sagittarius schools and unfortunately seems to be occupying quite a bit of Peter's in his team's time these days as K-12 and public traditional K-12 education seems to be the attendance conversation seemed to be a big one so tonight we'll have him walk us through the findings and then open up our questions with the board I'll turn the floor to you Peter it's a pleasure to be here with you this evening to go through the results am I blocking the kids if I move there I'm in the spotlight you're going to Blinded by

013the uh all right just a review with everybody what we undertook we spoke with 250 randomly selected parents who were not sending their child to the Prior Lake Savage Area School District average interview time was 10 minutes not response rate was five percent the results are projectable to plus or minus five percent in 95 out of 100 cases and the interviews it took us a while the experience are busy they've made an adverse decision against the district so over half of these uh interviews were conducted by appointments so when it was convenient for the parent to take the survey not when it was convenient for us to get the survey if we look at some of the demographics of the of the profile of these parents 29 were 18 to 34 year olds the largest

014section was 48 35 to 44 year olds being 48 and then 24 over the age of 45. uh Median on this one comes in roughly the typical parent that's made these decisions about 38 years old how long have they lived in the community 47 have been here for 10 years or less 53 over 10 years you're a little bit atypical on this one with outbound surveys typically uh the majority about 60 percent have been in a district for less than 10 years the relationship the connections aren't in the community which is one of the reasons that they make the decision to go elsewhere 16 indicate that they have preschoolers or infants in their household the ethnicity 69 were white uh 16 African-American six percent Hispanic Latino four percentage of Pacific Islander three percent multi or

015biracial two percent Native American you follow the typical pattern that we see with these parents is that they're Highly Educated UH 60 percent were college graduates that includes also a master's degree or postgraduates uh only six percent were high school graduates or less in some uh some college experience at 34 percent um and then finally 68 had they either had attended or a family member had attended the district in the past typically that's a 50 50 split uh with these sorts of help on surveys but that's also being driven by you have a lot more people that have been in the district for longer periods of time um so you they have they do have a connection with the district uh females outnumbered males by 12 and then you can see the distribution of the

016where they chose to send their child in the sample 35 sent them to a charter school 34 percent of other public school 27 percent of private parochial option and 5 homeschool we started out asking in these off on surveys um some some questions about the home school district so what do they like most about the Prior Lake Savage Area School District this is open-ended they can tell us anything um and what what these parents focus on 20 talked about the variety of programs 18 mentioned facilities and buildings 15 good teachers 14 safe 12 good academics 12 broad curriculum and then some idiosyncratic in the scattered you actually had very few people say nothing keep in mind this is a group that made an adverse decision that nothing is typically 15 to 20 percent you know

017one in five folks can't think of anything if we if we collapse some of the categories though the one thing that people in this group about a third are pointing to is the type of programming variety of programs in the curriculum 32 are actually thinking about what they like most about the district is what's being taught in the schools if we ask what they like most we always ask what the biggest challenges facing the district um and keep in mind this is open-ended also one in four point to large class sizes and we're going to see this as a theme throughout the survey but then also potential strategies and solutions within it and what these parents are looking for declining quality is a concern among 18 lack of funding 15 in discipline at 12 now

018keep in mind they could tell us five things what we're coding is the number one thing they say okay we're going to go more in depth with the individual things and items what else comes into play for teachers uh Safety and Security issues open enrollment diversity races of all of those sorts of things but four of the four of them add up to about 70 percent of this sample being the concern the class sizes the quality funding and discipline are we allowed to ask questions yet you know or do you want me to wait there are so many charts let's just do it as we go so what is your question just get it say hey what uh so we don't get to the end of all 25 and we go back sure that was

019my 100. um how is quality defined when when you say declining quality and equality could mean so many things the quality of the energy the academic quality the education being taught and this is this is a Statewide issue um that even parents in the school district have a concern folks have not shifted from favorable to unfavorable the shift is gone from excellent to good um and so districts I was just at a district before I came here and they've had since the pandemic a 30-point drop in the excellent rating folks haven't gone into the unfavorable it's a softening they're just concerned about the overall quality of the academics of what's Happening especially when they hear news reports about Proficiency in math reading and those sorts of things impacting people's perception thank you so yeah just

020raise a hand or call out to me yes there's this one little blip at the bottom scattered idiosyncratic um if it's a lot if it's less than two percent I just collapse them down into a category so on open-ended that's actually a very limited amount of scattering sometimes sometimes people are the people who are just all over the board um but yeah that they're just idiosyncratic that doesn't account for more than two percent overall how do they rate the quality of Education in the district uh 50 rated good nobody rated it excellent and 50 rated report this is actually a higher rating than we typically find in outbound uh with outbound parents typically they're about 40 percent favorable to 60 percent unfavorable they've made the adverse decision your these folks in your District split 50

02150 on the quality of the education now how we're going to go through three of these how do they compare Prior Lake to other public school districts now keep in mind you have three primary pieces of this sample being private and parochial charter and other public so you're going to have a self of you're going to want to validate your own opinion of what you've done okay so compared to other public school districts 27 say the district is better 17 say it's worse the 17 saying it's worse our primary those are sending their children to other Public School District options okay those that are saying better um it's it's focused actually on Charter School parents all right now what about in comparison to Charter Schools charter schools have a more mixed perception regardless many parents

022that actually send their children to Charter Schools have concerns within that is especially involved around programming uh compared to Charter Schools 36th percent say probably like this better twenty percent worse 36 percent about the same what about compared to private school and Home School uh third 25 percent say better 38 say worse 20 about the same 18 percent unsure overall though these parents really do think there's a competitive Advantage as a whole versus other public and Charter Schools where private and parochial and homeschooling offers even better quality of Education in comparison how do you make that observation during the survey like how do you make the observations you know just like the comment that you just made during when when the surveys are taking place or they um just like someone calling and asking questions

023or are they a survey like where it's sent and they they fill it out themselves we only do telephone surveys okay so it's someone talking to someone exactly okay because when you when you're making the observation or when you're qualifying the observations it's the way that you're speaking um is you know it is well-rounded and understandable for us to receive I'm just wondering how how you gather the information to come to that observation how do we get I mean yeah literally so we do it old school like we don't robocall there's nothing electronic my phone is push buttons um and we're also old school they fill out the survey on paper there's nothing I hate more that when I get a survey and I hear clacking of computer Keys drives me nuts um and so

024then my uh we take it and we data enter every single survey into the computer and I run it through the system and so then it collapses down the results into the overall results like this but then I can take the data and I can look at Charter School parents versus private school versus other public school I could look at different all sorts of different demographics that the computer can slice it nice and forward because just to make an overall observation I mean there's a lot of slides so I would assume that means that there's a lot of questions being asked to a lot of questions and I'm just thinking you know what's the average time frame uh survey because yeah it was about seven it was there left 10 minutes yeah yeah it's on

025there yeah 10 minutes thank you foreign we asked folks uh we went through a list and we said these are reasons that people give to selecting a school which is your the most important to you which is the second most important and which is the least important all this chart is a raid the dark blue is most the light blue is second and then the red is least important and when we sort it this way if we look at the top two that one leads the list a number of students in the classroom 28 say it's the most important factor but you can see that as a secondary factor it's not there okay about 30 percent total if we look at academic programs and offerings 21 say most important but as a secondary exams 35

026so that is the number one reason people make for selecting a school 56 then we have like five in the middle kind of all statistical tie test scores cultural responsive teaching student Behavior preparing for College and Career graduation rates that faith-based reputation of bus transportation so really these folks in their decision-making matrix it's number of students and academic programs and offerings on the flip side which is least important keep in mind that you have about two-thirds indicating that they're not sending their children to private parochial so faith-based curriculum is not important to almost a majority followed by bus transportation okay Peter on this slide particularly the academic programs and offerings being the kind of the driving reason for primary and secondary but one of the first slides when they were asked what do you like

027most about Prior Lake Aboriginal schools it was the academic programs and offerings so I'm wondering how we make meaning of those two competing results right because you had 32 percent that pointed overall that that was what they liked most about the Prior Lake Schools but that leaves 68 that said something else and so it's it's kind of that inflection in a sense so that 68 percent are much more focused and they don't get that that's not what they think about when they think of the district yeah I mean there is always in in surveys there are there are things that you go okay some people see this in value it some don't um and that that's always the thing going through the one thing we don't have is a control here and we talked about

028this with cabinet because we don't have your current parents um and I wear their attitudes and opinions are I have seen districts um one District as an example the primary reason and this was before the pandemic approximately about probably 2010. um the district the main reason parents were not sending their kids to the district is they the inadequate level going back to the basics shall we say okay but then when we survey the current parents the current parents valued kind of that non-traditional basic program and curriculum so it was one of those things that the district made the decision to try to go back to the basics your potentially alienating or your folks that your current parents on that situation this is their experience and you're also going to see at the end where they're

029getting their information that's driving their ad of opinions and attitudes okay it is Word of Mouth yes can you just I just want to clarify I know you said this is when you said number of students who said classroom yeah that is correct it's not total number of students in the district number of students specifically in the classroom okay [Music] a couple questions on is how important is it to attend a school with many races and cultures 39 say very important 33 say somewhat important 28 it's not two or not at all important this is typically what we see with this group typically 75 to 80 percent it is important on this one how important it is to attend a school with one racer culture one percent say very important 18 say somewhat important and

03081 say not too important this is actually on the lower end I've done some in districts where they have very um especially with modern academies and those sorts of things where that is a value within the community and that culture uh to attend the race so that uh this is very much dependent especially on the type of charter schools in a district going through and reading a description and saying does do you agree that this description applies to the Prior Lake Savage Area School District or do you disagree does it prepared students for Life 82 say yes 15 no students succeeding at high levels 71-28 effective teaching practices 79 to 19. supporting student needs has the most disagreement and we'll go a little bit more in depth on the 65 percent say yes 30 say

031no technology leader 7819 excellent teachers 79-18 creating successful individuals 8317 partners with family 7323 and then or 70-23 and then offer an extensive array of opportunities 84 to 14. overall this Nets out that your parents are much more this group of parents in your District are much more have higher levels of agreement across the board than we typically see and we saw that also we didn't have an adverse reaction on the quality of Education you know it was a 50 50 split they're not hostile they're looking for something else so then we're going to try to find out what they're looking for which of these so the description of the district going through and saying which is the most important description and which is the least important to jump out supporting students needs and effective

032teaching practices over a majority pick those two aspects then we have three with ten percent roughly students succeeding at high levels partnering with families creating successful individuals what is the least important not surprisingly post pandemic being a leader in technology is not a badge of of of anything that people really are interested in and this actually applies for parents also it's not the most important thing to parents with technology what was the age of the decision to enroll in another education option this is what we found post-pandemic before the pandemic in most districts these parents have made the decision by the time the child was five it was typically 50 to 60 percent where five years or under they've made the decision the pandemic has made the decision Point all over the board there's no

033consistency and we see this in District after District okay when we then asked when was it decided 82 percent made the decision during the pandemic so that's what's caused this change in the age of the decision where it used to be simple for districts in a sense that if you want to stop people from making an adverse decision you focus on when they're young at building that connection with the school district the current situation with the current situation with all these different uh points and there's not even sometimes there'd be a blip okay when the the transition from elementary to middle or from middle to high school districts don't even have that now it's all across the board they'll pull their kids out at any point uh in the process not waiting for some sort

034of natural transition open-ended what was the reason for sending their child to their current School um you don't have one reason you don't have anything that hits 30 40 percent where you know one in three parents are coalescing you only have two that hits double digits in the low teens smaller class sizes and then a convenience to a job or daycare then we go down to faith-based education too much bullying wanting more diversity family and friends attend personalized education better academics program offering smaller schools problem with the teacher more Sports opportunities focused on achievements they have previous District better teachers teaching morals and about his child not succeeding there's really not one clear at the top of the mind now once again they could tell us five things we're coding the first thing so that's

035why we go through and we've created a list over the years of doing this and we go through and ask people on a four point scale with one being the least important four being the most important what was how would you bring each of these factors in your decision what's the rate on the chart is those that send four the most important factor in their decision personal attention by teachers in meeting individual learning needs of students and this is the challenge for every school district in the Metro and actually the state because the concern on class sizes is always there but when people talk that they have a concern on class sizes with our research they're you know their concern isn't going from 28 to 27. it's going from 28 to 15. okay and really

036that's not feasible with building space or anything so it's how do you personalize education in a time where you going from 28 to 27 to 32 to 31 is a distinction without a difference people are actually in many surveys that we do will pit class sizes versus programming and say it would cost x hundred a thousand or x million of dollars to lower class sizes by one instead of doing that the district could invest in personalizing education mental health supports those sorts of things even a majority of parents support that investment rather than cutting class sizes by one and so that is oftentimes at the top with the personal attention and individual learning needs what comes in below that then lower class sizes basic academic skills character development than the size of the high school

037the reputation of the high school more challenging religious based and odd on the list but that's those are the two primary dark drivers in the most important factor for choosing to send their child elsewhere give us a question yep so back on I don't know which slide it was but the reasons for selecting a school and the faith-based correct face faith-based curriculum came up as not an important issue yeah and then here on the next one that other one go back one four it shows that it is sort of at the top I mean so can you help me understand the once again it's eight percent here and it was 45 on the other one so really it's this is telling you and then this backed up here with religious values traditional morals it's that's

038really important about 10 of the parents that are going elsewhere and it's a non-factor for the remaining 85 to 90 percent of the parents going elsewhere now we went through a list and asked folks to compare the Prior Lake Savage Area School District with their current school this is this is kind of set up like a stoplight green the district's better red the district's worse yellow it's all about the same um and so we're looking for competitive advantages and disadvantages on this one though you see that even though they might be a saw favorable towards the district they don't see a lot of competitive advantages with the district there's only one one that hits double digits opportunities in sports at 12 6 Music Theater Arts two percent variety of courses access to technology and what

039percent quality teaching staff well where's the major competitive disadvantage because the personalizing education with this group of parents 62 say it's worse than we have five or six at about a third indicating worse responsiveness to student needs teaching staff academic achievement basic coursework and character development with student Behavior but it really these parents it's focused on that personalization the responsiveness to students at the individual level instead of the group level how would they describe the Prior Lake Savage Area School District average this is open-ended they can tell us anything average at 24 17 at large class sizes below average then good academics good teachers uh really there's no brand in the minds of these folks uh you know if there was one in four it's saying it's average there we go a lot of discussion

040on curriculum um nowadays and this pretty much follows through with what we see from districts when we do these outbound surveys the parents are not leaving with concerns about curriculum per se we've seen the reasons why the parent parents that have the most concern about curriculum stay in the school district okay but these groups bless you 92 percent indicate no they do not have concerns five percent had different concerns from CRT to math not challenging enough but nothing more than the one percent uh level so I just collapse it down and then three percent were unsure are there any circumstances that would cause you to enroll your child in the Prior Lake Savage Area School District now now we've gone back to where we were on pre-pre-pandemic before the pandemic once folks made an adverse

041decision they were highly unlikely to send their kids back it was typically 80 to 90 percent they're done the first two years of the pandemic and doing outbound service though because it was kind of a fluid situation oftentimes a district like the the parent wanted in person the child the district was virtual or distance learning at the time and so they made the decision but they had a willingness to come back with the district went back to shall we say normal so we would see about 40 to 50 percent of parents saying yeah I would send my kids back when things go back to normal now we're back to where we were pre-pandemic they've made the decision and they're pretty much not willing to change their minds 84 say no three percent indicated that they

042would come back for secondary school primarily K-8 private and parochial four percent scattered and nine percent were unsure and then finally where are they getting their information and this is where you don't have a lot of potential fact I mean and once again all the research I do is public opinion this isn't a test for folks and so this is based on what they're hearing and what we find more and more especially with outbound surveys uh with parents but actually with parents themselves and with the community as a whole as traditional news sources while away newspapers those sorts of things the Grapevine is alive and Lush with many varietals and specifically with outbound parents 77 percent say friends and family are a major source of their information 57 major source and then it drops off

043precipitously so are they looking at District district information uh 38 District websites uh that's pretty much it you can see social media of their parents but this is the this is the age we're in where people are getting their opinions from the Grapevine and just the district I was at before it's interesting if we continue if we did not ask it on this survey but we follow up and ask folks how would you prefer to receive information in the metro area now there's much more proclivity for people to say I like the Grapevine uh where before people didn't want to admit it it was much more like outstate Minnesota where they say yeah that's just how we've always done it we've kind of had this uh the the Grapevine is alive and Lush and it's

044actually not becoming preferred by people as opposed to any sort of traditional news sources so I'd be happy happy to answer any other questions you have so how did you come up with a number of two people like was that is that based on a percentage of a total or like can you help me understand how you come up with that number right we actually because it's it was limited I can't remember to begin off the top of my head it's a was around a thousand twelve hundred families um a 250 there's we have a small sample correction um anytime your universe is under 2 000 you don't have to speak to as many people to get a margin of error typically we'd speak to 400 people to get plus or minus five percent but

045because the universe was so small we could do a small sample correction so that it's going to sound odd say save money for the school district we don't have to talk to 400 people we can only talk to 250 and get the same margin of error and so the 250 then it comes down to a cost benefit you want to go to plus or minus four percent and I just don't see any benefit in recommending that to a client apologies if you said this at the very beginning so these people attended at one time and left or sprinkled in there people who have never attended prayer relations two-thirds had had they or members of their family had experience in the district one-third had no experience in the district whatsoever and that's not saying that their

046child that they pulled out that experience it's just they have experience in the district but these are all parents that have taken their children out so a parent themselves could have gone to our district as a student yes that's the connection that's the connection we don't necessarily know whether or not of this sample if the students of these families ever set foot in our district well actually I could cut the data with when they decided to enroll the age I probably could come up with a pretty close approximation how many of those fan were if you live here you got to pay the taxes and the funding those were two factors that are completely out of our control to a certain degree and actually to a lot of our degree um so it made me

047immediately think that maybe people will answer that way we're open enrolled these were minor stag from the these were residents residents resident parents yeah so did they did you did any of them that you talked to also said they're moving out of the district physically that we didn't really ask that question um I have another question out of the aggregated results is there a way to kind of quite into especially since the percentage not returning are so large what do we actually have control over to change it would be the top two and once again it would be the the personal attention by teachers and individual learning needs I go back I give the example on these going back 20 years with when Jesse was governor and a lot of districts had referendum and he

048just came out and said whole District's accountable they're not accountable and almost every referendum failed and we did focus groups and went out and asked people what does it mean for a district to be accountable if I had 12 people around a table I had 12 different answers and it's also the same with meeting individual learning needs and personal attention by teachers if you have 12 people around a table you'll have 12 different sets of expectations on what it is so what districts need to do is just like they did with that accountability I'm sure there's some place in in this building where there's a report that says the district's accountability report districts Define what accountability was 20 years ago and now it's probably time you have to have an Express to people what do

049you mean by individual meeting individual learning needs being responsive personal attention by teachers those sorts of things that's what's going to be required in this new because the the lowering class sizes you know like I said you're not going to by lowering it by one or two that's not going to change these people's depression okay on on the concern of the of the attention by teachers and individual learning needs but I would say using those two points and starting at that basis to create a grant what does it mean off of this District knowing that it'll be unique you know this is um thank you for this data and I think your last point is very well taken and that's something that we really uh kind of unpack quite a bit as a senior cabinet

050team around our identity our brand hot you know from a market driven culture how does our product buy compared to the next competition District if you will um and kind of the analogy I say is Target and Walmart offer very similar products and it's usually customer experience that drives them to come back to that store and so with this data on one of the slides it talks about 84 percent of the people aren't going to change their mind so you know from a value proposition uh in the district that's that that you've worked with this represents less than one quarter of our our of our enrollment give or take you know roughly about a thousand or so families um so with 84 saying they won't come back is it worth that versus the inverse of

051why is you know 95 or whatever or whatever 80 is coming to our district and staying with us yes in that sense if you understand what the current parents value and everything like that in a sense but that's not to say yes 84 are not coming back the key is moving forward how do you make people stop from making the adverse decision in the future okay if you have this is a touch point and this is why these parents are making the decision how can you stop so instead of bringing them back you stop the future from from the future and then have the potential with marketing and branding to bring people in you know that's going to be the differentiating factor in the future because every District's facing this right facing these issues right

052now and it's one of those things as you as you brand I I mean I don't like the word but in a sense but um you don't brand around a specific you know we're A Fine Arts making this up we're A Fine Arts District well if your kid's not into Fine Arts then you might look for a different District you kind of don't brand around a specific program in a sense it's more big picture and there's clear themes on how to differentiate yourself um because with the with those stops too you know it find it for parents so they understand what the expectations are you know in partnering with that relationship I'm thinking no but because you kind of came through when you were talking how this may be compared or and I don't want

053to do it's not fair to compare to other districts necessarily but having do this for a living so is there anything that stood out to you as whoa this is really unique to Prior Lake savagery schools or um and not anything that's like whoa this is really unique you know I pointed out some of the key differences and everything I would say what I've seen um if I go back in the past this past school year this one is up higher this partnering with families and once again when I go to school districts and school boards I kind of go what does that mean what is up the green part or the red part the green Parts lower than normal and then the fact that you have more people saying that it's not important to

054them um you know multiple districts this that's actually the number one thing is this partnering um with with the school district and the parents and everything so that really is that that just surprised me with all the outbound surveys I've done over the course of this school year where where you are different uh you have less people saying that's most important and three times the amount of people saying it's not important a lot of districts that parents are looking for this relationship should always say transactional what have you your folks are not as concerned with that as other districts that's probably the most unique thing but no I mean it really is going back to that previous start those top two are pretty common throughout these outbound surveys foreign next steps for the admin team

055is to look at this data also look at the parent component of the studer data these are families that we do have and then look for parallels within that to really begin to combat and set district-wide strategies as to how we address the families who are choosing Posas and into Peter's point you know kind of stop at these from getting thrown into the river so that's part of our aspect of kind of catching on both sides so more to come from admin as we reconcile this data set against another student thank you thank you okay we'll move on to our budget planning updates [Music] cheer Crosby okay I think um so uh two weeks or so ago we came to the board to share the identified and or emerging needs that senior cabinet you know

056put forth part of this conversation I think it was about a month or so ago maybe a little bit more than a month ago started with you all with regards to some of the positional support in the district and then two weeks ago it was more around the departmental support and you know I don't know how else to say it or how many more times I can say it these are needs that our staff have brought forth that they believe will really bolster the district to allow our students and Community to really experience a thriving atmosphere and we are also mindful that the financial context that we are dealing in right now is really challenging and a lot of unknowns and so I just want to be clear with the board and our community as

057they continue to track this conversation um and I said at the very first night there is no expectation that everything that I was identified would actually make it across the finish line but we would be remiss as a senior team not to bring forth what we believe it's going to take to become that Premier District of choice it's similar to a vision statement we set this out there for what we strive to attain for our uh learning communities but our mission is going to have to be more mindful of how we actually get there um we have we will be meeting with the senior team tomorrow no sorry Wednesday to bring further prioritization to the priorities that we brought to you over the past couple of weeks and we are requesting a meeting with the

058board to share that re-prioritization on May the 1st and as I stated a couple weeks ago part of me making requests of the board during the budget cycle to add additional times but starting this Wednesday we'll be making offers to individuals or two by twos of the board to come in and or phone conference with us to walk you through some of the re-prioritization factors between now and the first if you can and and if you'd like and then on the first we would prepare to bring forth that re-prioritization of the priorities and then still plan to come to the board May 8th with a a preliminary budget then from May 8th until June 12th is where we hold our breath and kind of Watch What Happens legislatively and some of those nuances that will

059continue to find their way through the legislative process and see ultimately what comes across those final votes um there is uh I believe tonight the Senate meets I believe it's tonight I think the house met last Friday Thursday or Friday we are seeing some unfortunate inconsistencies from what we've shared with you all when this whole process started and those who have interacted this closely you know welcome to the rodeo it it's a bumpy ride um and I've set her from day one and I'll continue to say it respectfully that I I am I'm concerned with the legislative process and where things may ultimately go um just my intuition as I'm hearing from our local lobbyists within professional groups and talking with folks in other districts and throughout the state uh there's significant concern that um

060there are mandates in the legislature right now that will find their way to local school districts completely unfunded and we try to put all of our assumptions that we know into these budgets um but I just I don't trust that we're not going to see more things coming across that would potentially have some significant impacts and you take that balance with what I'm sure will be a very large legislative celebration of the biggest investment in K-12 education but a lot of that investment will have to be pulled back from the base funding formula to cover a lot of these unfunded mandates that may make it across the finish line so um I am very open to be proven wrong and uh but I'm also being very realistic and uh cautious at this point so I

061share that as as an update with the board um I think some bigger uh pieces of concern um our conversations around uh class size mandates coming into uh the policy uh or the legislative process the paid family medical leave uh components are some bigger potential price tags that could come our way um I think there are some other local control conversations that are occurring that may not have a fiscal price tag but we'll have a significant managerial price tag if you take a look at some of the um uh discipline conversations and policies that are coming in having lived through that in another District that's a real Challenge from a management standpoint so it might not just be dollars but it might be local control that's relinquished and having to abide by sets of rules

062that might have some unintended costs that we can't quantify at this point so those are just a couple of things that are front and center for us the three of us in our respective professional groups are really dialed in in in tune with what's happening we have all written letters on behalf of our professional groups to really again push and we've gotten emails I'll say this too emails from our community here and Community who's watching this take back you've asked on several occasions what can we do I would reach out to your local elected officials but also those officials who are controlling the bills because I want to also be clear many of our local elected officials don't have the majority vote to influence the level of change that we may need to see so

063I would encourage our community to reach out to any and all of elected officials to really drive home the fact of do not put in unfunded mandates that are passed down the chain to districts and do not relinquish the ability of local control those are the two biggest things because the nuances and the specifics to the average citizen might be you know too much in the weeds but if you can advocate for those two big buckets that would spare a lot of autonomy and I think resource here for Prior Lake savagery schools so open it up to the board for do you know and maybe I'm not sure what it says today I could have looked but where the special on Cross subsidy conversation since today the house approved a reduction of 50 percent the

064Senate hasn't obviously voted yet and then after the Senate finishes their work the next step is the there will be a joint committee to iron out the differences because there is different in what the Senate's proposing versus the house so they have to come to agreement before they could send the final bill to the governor I think the thing that I struggle with most when I hear you describe this and when we listen to our different associations advocating in our legislative platform that we're advocating for and and it's allowed and it it is not at all what's happening and this is what Public Schools is commuting communicating and saying there they need and so I get really confused about if public schools are saying this is not what we need we need this and nobody's

065listening I'm not asking for the answers I'm just saying there's a fault in the process yeah you sure that yeah we share that um also from a timeline standpoint in drifted bullion I think this was on our last call um with C uh they anticipate May 22nd I believe as to be the date of the session to be concluded I've also heard that May 12th could be a date that Administration don't know what that means I don't know if that's the governor or whom if they're not included by them may take over the process to bring closure so I've heard mixed reviews on that as well in terms of timing nonetheless the one thing that seems to be clear is that the governor committed to not having a special session sounds like we're on track

066for that which would be great but realistically I I do not anticipate this thing coming to a close on the 12th I think realistically the 22nd is probably their earliest we're going to see this thing come across you know the the Senate seems to be a little bit closer to what the schools are wanting um not 100 but a little bit closer than the house um do you think that's going to be a good pull to bring it back down to the common denominators could could be could be I'm rolling the dice just like you might be you know um I this is a very you know the trifecta or whatever they're calling you know the shared power um you know like I said too much of the same isn't necessarily going to get us

067what we're looking for it's not a good thing and and so um they're not all on the same page even though they're kind of all politically you know aligned by party it clearly shows that doesn't matter um you know what matters for us and what we Advocate is what matters for our kids irrespective of party lines um but yeah we're we're really unsure it was really challenging on our just attending the C committee meeting last week um being new to this whole process and listening in and trying to you know uh Dr Thomas and I connected for a bit afterwards and I just said to him I just feel like they're just setting us up for failure and he he was like you know you're right you're um they there is so much talk about

068all the money available with the Surplus and all that and all the all the money going to education yet when when everything is dissected out it doesn't add up and what that does is gives the opportunity for us as a district to look bad um because things just don't come out like they play I mean even listening to the State of the State and there's just inconsistencies right and so you know again as a new person in this Rodeo if you want to call it I mean that's what I feel like is happening that it's that it's like they're setting us up for failure and I think they're their intentions are good with all of the different bills and all of the different things but it doesn't equate at the bottom and that is I

069don't have any answer but I just I'm like okay this doesn't seem good I would agree that calling as a school board member as member as as parents of a district as Administration to the the controlling party and by the way I I did talk to two senators today not from our district because they were going wire in school supporting this from the Hawaii thing you know and we got into it a little bit um because there's there's a huge disconnect between what's happening at the ground floor and all these ideas that they're that they're kind of spinning around with there's a huge disconnect with reality here um and um why they're not getting the support and I was kind of surprised with the ones that I talked to their lack of knowledge it was

070it was surprising I mean I've seen it before but I mean this is such a huge issue well and I would just had a meeting Friday night with a couple of electeds and um they are also talking about the tenure of our electeds this go around is very very young so a lot of the history um I'll just yeah I I guess maybe rationale or reasoning is maybe not as present as what we've been accustomed to and and that's another factor that I think is playing into all of this that there's just um a lot of unknowns right now or uninformed electives that just don't have the depth of knowledge that maybe the previous sessions did once I talk to her senior level and and they but they weren't on the education committee they're now

071like tonight being brought into it and you know it was such a struggle in the past I don't know five to ten years actually to get any funding through for education and now that they have the money they're not really understanding the responsibility of of long-term engagement with us and and they don't understand why now they're all of a sudden before they were getting pushed and push and pushed and now they don't understand why they're not getting the support from the the school board associations from a lot of the education associations Etc but allow we thought you guys would be loving this and instead you're telling us and there is a lot of confusion but the two that I talked to were senior members they've been around for a long time they just aren't on

072the education policy committees in mind that we do have we have a split District have represented host representative and Senator and then we also have 55 which represents part of our district as well so we do have um representation that we can reach out to yeah I feel like it goes back to the when there's more than three priorities you have none and that they have so many that yeah yeah and I think Amy to your point the the intentions of many of these bills I you know I I don't question the intention I just you know all the the level of uh complexity in the details and what this ultimate means and how it actually plays out is is yet to be seen or you can get called in the question um but again

073you know we we will be bringing forth um a budget to you again given our last conversation um here at the tables um that the team has gone back uh with a different focus with your perspectives again plan is to begin sharing that out with you all um you know one-on-ones two by twos uh and then coming you know with any kind of questions not looking for votes or anything just kind of informing and then on the first uh come back to you uh with a revised prioritization um so for me it'd be helpful as I was thinking about the teacher positions particularly that we talked about it would be helpful for me to understand um where that investment would be and um three elementary teachers just being more specific like where does that position

074fit in and then when it comes to some of the other spends that we had talked about it's helpful for me to understand like how much of the increase that we're asking for is it above and beyond the current budget that that department is receiving already yeah so that's you know the percentage of the increase to the current budget we can get that and we'll also be doing our cut line from some of the positions that we previously talked about we'll also be trying to categorize and sing kind of funding streams as well so you have a better sense of that flow let me come back to you all any other comments how that schedule is going to work well first well first yeah the request is uh starting this Wednesday Wednesday ish uh start

075to open up opportunities for any of you to meet phone in whatever so we can kind of walk through and also get some of your ideation in this process you know a couple of points that several of you have brought up over the past several weeks May 1st we would uh have another session to share then publicly a revised prioritization of the identified needs or emerging needs within the district um to get any final feedback from the board for us to bring a preliminary budget to you all on our regularly scheduled date of May 8th and then from May 8th to June 12th is kind of that Hiatus where a lot of things are happening legislatively but who knows maybe in a couple of weeks we'll be done with session May 22nd um but between

076May 8th and June 12th like we have been we may be requesting a formal work session or study session with the board trying to Target that Monday and or continually offer those one-on-one conversations so that we can kind of be briefing you until we get to June 12th we'll be closely watching just to see more legislatively because internally we will have identified and re-prioritized the needs to the point where we believe this is what it's going to take to be able to support our students and and bolster the district it'll be more so watching the political landscapes summarize May 1st be the first prioritization of the already prioritized items and that will be the first discussion um are you asking the board then to start to whittle away at the approvals of stuff that we

077know we're going to do if there's if there's things on the first that you're saying yes this is absolutely something that we want you all to continue the direction on it'd be good to know that or if there's things that you're saying this is something we absolutely can't really get behind you know pull back from that we'd rather ship that to the or just take it off the table so that we can get to a May 8th of our preliminary budget because I I can't imagine Administration and addition departments just sitting there waiting all the way to June 12 to be able to plan so being able to whittle away at that list would be good so that's what that's what we'll complete by the eighth and then like I said the 8th then to

078the 12th is more so watching the legislative changes not so much the internal pieces that we've had discussions on thank you next on our agenda is the district Insurance Brokerage it's a it's a informational only discussion item of Tammy yeah I'll tee up the topic and then let you jump in okay so as as we've been going through looking at um our services uh providers for a variety of things from the district this came up in terms of conversations of looking at are we getting The Brokerage support and services necessary to be competitive and ensure that we are getting the best return on our policies for those identified by our current brokerage and it's been a while and we've been using you know the the same brokerage for for many many years really just kind

079of an annual re-adoption of that relationship and so the question as we've been looking at a variety of internal measures within the district is this the process that the board wants to continue to use or is does the board have an interest in us to go out and RFP for brokerage type services that really affect millions of dollars of various liabilities et cetera insurance policies for the district so that's generally the context and Tammy if you want to add any nuances to this yeah our brokerage firm we meet with them every year they come in and depending on what policy we're discussing they'll make a recommendation for the insurance provider that they feel is giving us the best rate for what we're asking for so it's like things like liability or Automotive or cyber security

080and we have been using the same brokerage for many years from what I understand so it's in the grand scheme of things it's probably time to do it so it's just to make sure that we are getting the best thing for our buck if you will so that would be your recommendation yeah certainly move forward and crafted the RFP to send out I like the idea of going out to the RFP my concern is is timing and the workload for the staff to be able to do a good job at it considering everything else that's going on uh and if we do look then we're then obviously we want pricing to come in in the early fall from from them because decisions have to be made in a timely manner for enrollment um how does

081that work with the ability to do an RFP and get all that work done and uh the very short period of time given the other number of changes typically then RFP would go out for six weeks you would give an opportunity for people to respond to it and then do the bid opening so yeah we are kind of pushing new timelines is normally the new insurance will start July 1st we are pushing it for next year but certainly for the 25-26 we did have everything for sure in place and ready to go quite get there by July 1st we have Arizona missions you know insurance what type you know I believe so I can go to check I think there is okay do we use multiple companies for different yes so okay so you're basically

082you need different Brokers it would be the one broker who would kind of their their role would be to collect all of the different insurance policies site which insurance company would best be suited for us for the different categories and it has changed I know our cyber security is different this year than it was last year I've just spoke on that last week and at our Sac remotely and they just because it's not covering it's over and expensive and they're not covering anything anymore if something were to happen yeah they denied you'd lose it and then you also lose all your premiums because the insurance companies are kind of broke there I think we should I mean I'm not for that that's what I was asking about Eno because a lot of people are using

083the professional liability you know as a as a stop Gap from Heaven Tech [Music] the broker okay yeah like your own if you're going out yeah finding new health insurance or whatever not health insurance I just want to make sure that we can do a good job with it because that's a you're building a relationship broker I have no problem going out for rfps but I am also worried that that work will take away from other things and if there's anything we can do to to ease that and still get the RFP out delegate some stuff or do whatever is necessary then then I'm all for it well in timing it may not hit for this cycle but if we can then maybe this is something that we look into for next year's cycle and

084going for a comprehensive bid for brokerages but we'll keep you posted as to what our internal capacity can be okay thank you yeah I'd be much more comfortable for the next cycle yeah it's too short of a time frame all right we will move on to the superintendent evaluation so um the process has been outlined and all board member has seen it as of the last meeting or study session and um so tonight we will be as board members handed a confidential packet which is Dr Thomas's self eval and obviously that's not to be shared due to data Privacy Law and then we will also receive a link uh for us to give our feedback and then we'll follow the rest of the process which includes a closed session and a summary to the public

085yeah I'll walk through some of that as well um again this is the template that we've had that we've been that we've maintained since I started the board has used for the past several years um let me see what am I driving this thing here we go um so again this is the timeline you all have seen this timeline but essentially you'll be given um a packet of artifacts evidence whatever you want to call it it's quite thick documents that you've seen before I think will work uh uh potentially maybe with qualtrex to digitize everything so that there will be a portal because of Google you won't have a Google account that we can share on our shared drives internally so I apologize about the death of trees but it's there for you as evidence

086and we can talk about you know a different format for next year um again centering everything on our current strategic plan this is the current and sorry this one we move this over from the shared into this PDF this little blue box drops I apologize about that but this is a three-year plan that I walked into that the board had put into place back in 21. so again this is what you know I've been following since arriving here in plsas pretty straightforward in terms of the agenda that the board has set and you have your roles my role plus some of the public facing components uh in January uh that was this was my mid-year and these are the three goals these are the competencies and so when I talked about doing a competency-based uh

087evaluation in the future this is what I'm talking about but in this cycle my goals are set to the to the competencies or Minnesota standards and so there's three that I chose three standards that I chose to focus on you don't boil the ocean and do all eight I mean you do all eight but you focus in on setting goals in a couple of different areas and so tonight I'm just going to go through some updates with you all I'm not going to walk through every single bullet um because I covered probably 90 of this during the mid-year but a couple of changes and things have emerged since mid-year that I want to just be uh transparent about so this goal here around the school district finances the only area that I would say from

088a stoplight protocol a red yellow green everything is green minus the second point this point is something that's still in development did not get this multi-year financial forecast model to fruition so this is something that will carry forward the work will continue we've got good protocols in place but we will deliver this multi-year forecast model this new model for you all starting in the fall of next year so this is the one area that I coded myself I'm still as yellow because it's still in development at the time of submission um this goal here communication and Community relationships uh and I should preface a lot of this is rooted in some of the operational work too but everything here and my goals that I identified actually came back as green so everything I set to

089accomplish in those initial goals last fall were completed in this standard standard number six again met all the goals that I identified I put this uh last bullet in a highlight because we'll finalize an actual review cycle with the new curriculum team that was established this year and that cycle will be kind of approved through that that committee so I didn't want to preempt the committee's work so I just kept that one as a point that you know Dan and I will continue to work forward on that so that will be one of the things to finalize as we go into the new cycle starting July one but all that now is on a regular Cadence and we already have others in the queue currently science is actually the big one so that's that's coming

090forward right now the operational plan so again this used to be a lot of priority work and again not to say it's not priority but a lot of this drove the central office departments and so we subordinated that into the operational management plans for the priority areas of really bolstering the academics for the district and so just a couple of points of note here tonight that haven't been covered in Prior um we have the the first bullet here new HR and payroll Transitions and learning systems to document you know the proficiency and the growth of our staff so that's something that is new since mid-year have been a series of contracts that have been settled since the last time I reported on our operational plan for the district last fall or last January and that's

091what you see there in the second highlight and then third is also the the education campaigns and benefits for various employee groups within the district that's another aspect of our HR operational goals that we accomplished since we updated you last in January uh Business Services um again just a couple of the highlights are the things that have happened since January clearly the town hall meetings were were new for us as we kind of went into the budgeting season um the dashboard is something that the finance committee is um kind of finalizing in terms of what we want to be public facing this will be an iterative process they saw a glimpse of it to I don't know about a month ago um and kind of played around with some of the functionality and got some

092feedback from the group um we'll be launching this this fall and know that what we launched might not be the final version based upon user feedback from the community so more to come on that but that that is new work that kind of kicked off since January we have a new ticketing system to purchase tickets uh also to kind of monitor the amount of cash and unnamed individuals carrying two and four uh the bank in a bank bag um and then um also man doing a tighter system of position control uh ensuring that budget codes and dollars are in budget codes to post for various positions and to ensure that we are not duplicating or uh fattening our staffing roster unnecessarily and so this is something new that we will continue to perfect but this

093will be a formal process that we want to make sure that we have in play for the next Staffing cycle to ensure that we are closely monitoring to ensure that staff aren't just continually be added and no one really knows why and what purpose this position exists and then lastly just an extension of our monthly finances and the enrollment reports which is a standing board agenda item now that we started to do I think just after January early Sprint Child Nutrition Services nothing new to report on accomplishing the operational goals set forth this year so everything is in green there uh Equity inclusion again everything in green the equity Summit hasn't occurred yet so at the time of submission didn't want to preempt that and so kept that in yellow at this point but that

094is all slotted that we'll be hosting on the second Equity Summit again and I believe Lakeville is the latest districts now have registered and be participating in this conversation as well uh technology uh the the only two areas that have changed since the last operational mid-year report is that we've migrated uh into a cloud for our Skyward and HR software programs and then um without divulging much I'll just say we continue to strengthen our protocols to mitigate cyber threats in cyber security risks we know that a very large District in the Metro was hit and there are some other smallers that didn't even hit the media but we're aware of that had similar so we wanted to ensure that we're doing everything we can to not be next in line and again because of security

095won't go into the details of that publicly um teaching and learning uh at the time of submission of this one I kept I actually the second bullet should have been quasi yellow because May 8th is when we'll bring the actual reviews to you all so at the time of submission for the eval um it wasn't um you didn't have the document so that will be coming to you on May 8th so it's again in transparency you just want to make sure I call that out and then the only change here was the Laker online to continue for 9-12 dropping the middle school which we've been talking about for the past couple of weeks in terms of the budget assessment evaluation and continuous Improvement I would just say that you all know we've adopted the math

096curriculum thank you for that and as we go into the implementation protocols we do have some measurement and planning and measurements in place for those who are in the pilot but I kept this yellow because we'll be broadening that out and that has yet that work has yet to really take hold until we have folks with curriculum hand and then we start evaluating the actual implementation of the math quick it was officially starting next fall so again in transparency kept that one yellow but again all these I anticipate to be green as we just cross the natural calendar line student Support Services again everything that we set from an operational goal standpoint within the department nothing has changed since the mid-year January report communication the only thing that will be changed will officially take place

097tomorrow and that's our reestablishing our commitments with the Realtors association and local realtors in the area I anticipate doing a series of these over the course of the year and make this just more of a formal reconnection ensuring that Realtors are getting you'll have a copy actually of this deck in your packets so you'll kind of get a little advanced screening of tomorrow if you choose tonight but this is our opportunity to ensure that we are partnering with Realtors to effectively tell our story and as they're selling homes in our district to ensure that They are promoting the district anything from those positive press points and or something as simple as donating jerseys as you know new home builders decorate and Stage their houses that we have PL gear I mean there's a variety of

098things that we can do to really strengthen that relationship so that's the one area that's changed or that's growing since January operations Transportation health and safety again a lot of this work has been conversations that we've been having with you all year nothing to update from January we add the same iPod some of these are hyperlinks and I apologize not all these links are accessible by you and that's why you're getting the printed documents so um so you'll be getting those in your packets so with that that is my quick overview of the operational updates my professional goals that were set in the fall and reminding that you will get a survey link to go into the qualtrics that it's a confidential link for each of you to go ahead and complete that and then

099you'll have my self-reflection and then you'll have a stack of artifacts to review that really highlight a lot of the work under my leadership this year that we've accomplished together as a team so with that I turn it back to you all if you have any questions and if you have questions also in as you're reviewing things feel free to reach out to me individually as well hello in on our document it says May 5th but we've got some people traveling for a week so the review period was also shortened so that we would stay on that yeah so we'll we'll make 10 to the 12th we'll do our summary so that we can make sure to have our closed session May 22nd um and and between the 12th and the 22nd with Dr Thomas

100that is all I have sure thank you okay um next on our agenda is the annual Wellness report review and it is a report for review only no board action is requested assistant director of Child Nutrition Services Anderson is joining us for that tonight thank you foreign good evening uh chair Crosby fellow board members superintendent um Thomas thank you for having me here it's this evening uh so tonight in your board packet you have the student wellness policy policy 514. um this policy is overseen by the Child Nutrition Services Department um as advised by the Minnesota Department of Education um we have a triennial a review that um analyzes and goes through the policy every three years and so this year we were not under review so no policy changes have been made or suggested

101so the policy kind of remains as is yeah yeah any questions or comments well we have our experts here one question um I know this is you know overall wellness and Child Nutrition but um the instruction of physical education include focus on students and stuff like that is is I know that's Wellness but isn't that in our curriculum thing for PE anyways isn't that kind of repeat um yes I think it's a standard uh language that we include in the student wellness policy and so that's why it's addressed um but it's just addressed very broadly and not specifically because you know that's why yeah okay yeah thank you yeah yeah I'm just kind of curious yeah any other well thank you yeah [Music] sure and sweet thank you thank you um next on our agenda

102is our annual compliance vote for American Indian um ad and it will be prevent presented by director Oak tonight great thank you good evening everyone um so every year according to the American Indian Aid programming um our APAC which is our American Indian parent advisory committee uh we'll have to hold a vote uh to say whether or not uh we as a district have met the needs of American Indian students in our district here for the past six years and this year is no different the vote has been not a concurrent in discussions leading up to the vote um the Apec committee did stress that they've seen great improvements in our programming this year as well as late last year however um they feel like it's too soon to move into a vote of concurrence

103given some of your feelings and experiences they've had in the past years hope if I may also just add I actually attended the APAC meeting that was set for the initial quote where they requested additional time and I think it's important to note something that director hope mentioned in that there's a history of voting non-conference and that was brought forth by the group that night um that many leaders of the past have gathered as a group to essentially vote non-concurrents based upon you know things that have happened um and and uh and you know I shared very explicitly with them that night that the right thing is the right thing and with no disrespect it you know whether they voted for or against concurrence we in this District do not need a vote to tell

104us the right thing to do for kids and so that was our Assurance to them I also pushed for a greater reciprocal accountability and that as director Oak stated there was a positive regard given new leadership in The District in the direction that folks were going they liked to see that um but there were other parents there that evening that also made note of their accountability as parents um I also really expressed uh the desire for APAC to meet with us to really get grounded in data to not necessarily be driven by emotion or historical narratives of practice in the past but that we need to have accountable metrics that we as a district but also they as a community can uphold to ensure that we are delivering the best for our students that also

105was well received I think maybe a little bit shocked that some of that flat truth has just brought forward to that conversation that even if I have to be honest I think that if I read the non-verbals in the room but nonetheless I think it was a great meeting to have the request to extend was to get some additional data but also very impressed with the amount of families from you know a couple years ago starting off with you know three to five families that would be there to you know close to you know 30 40 individuals that evening so great participation and I think these are the accountable conversations we need to be having with one another to really strive for what is best for our kids so just wanted to add that that

106context from my vantage point that evening any questions and the paperwork here says that there's written recommendations for improvements to the board those are we so that is required as well annually if there is a vote of non-conference they um the impact committee will need it to write a letter um to the board um it's not ready yet I said that if I asked for a month extension to get that done and I'm going to turn it in May that is usual as well um they do want to go back and get input from all of their committee members and as well as parent of native students who are not on the committee also and I would say that evening director Oak you actually presented the findings from the previous vote of not concurrence and

107the actual work that went to kind of bring closure to those concerns and address those concerns appropriately so that was also shared that evening it was also going down when we would have an opportunity to see what those specific efficiencies are with respect to the most recent voted plan concurrence if I recall over the past several years it hasn't been the exact same area so we're seeing a progression seeing a tightening of it if you will so that we continue to hone in on what exactly those expectations are and continue to improve last year there were there were three points that we did meet um as a district here on the three requests were for us to um share with them the budget of the aiee in a monthly report of where our spending was

108and that was shared all they also asked for traditional programming which we've been able to offer as well with the introduction dance group traditional medicines in the native community and also providing opportunities for parents to attend the Minnesota Union Education Association conference which was just held this past week there was a new finding that we learned from the the conference there is that going into next year the state will look at requiring districts to set up a plan with reachable goals sort of like our a i Grant so that way it's not just a vote so that doesn't change the the concerns that are expressed in you will be voting and looking at the specific plans that were put in place for that year I have a question does the non-concurrent vote impact funding in

109any way or is it just uh it does not it's more based on programming it's more based on programming it allows us to connect with our families and partner with our American Indian parents um there's a structure that allows us to do that the vote whether it's concurring or not concurrent does not affect our funding we just need to meet the compliance by having it done and then turning in both the vote and the letter to to mde and more I am a career who's been non-concurrent I think this is the most positive response even though it's non-concurrent and the relationship is two-sided as Dr Thomas pointed out um one year of change does not erase you know historical relationships and and everything like that it takes time so I'm looking forward to next year

110and hoping we can make this a better good relationship Cadence and uh and a habit of of a good relationship so um I'm not surprised by the continued vote and non-conference but I am incredibly uh uh just uh optimistic about building continuing to build a relationship and making it as best oh yeah I am too um with the addition of Freddie here as our American Indian Head uh coordinator he's added phenomenal programming to to our district here in such a short amount of time he's only joined our team since January and with that he's met with every student and at every one of our schools and introduce programming in the native culture that I I myself have been pretty to learn a lot from as well I would say as you're looking to redo your

111Equity advisory committee the members of the committee perhaps There's an opportunity to invite member members of the community as well to be a part of that any other questions can you repeat um Jessica asked when the the when the list is supposed to come with the vote of um are they just the parents just needed the time okay so when you receive that then will that be distributed yeah that would be distributed and um in the past at least I've only been a part of it last year and a patch here okay thank you all right well thanks for joining us tonight for any thanks for coming yeah um so we have some proclamations tonight and if I've got the first is national teacher appreciation and that would be interesting thank you National Teacher Appreciation

112Week May 8th through 12th 2023 highly Savage area schools recognizes May 8th through 12 2023 as national teacher appreciation week our teachers are essential to the success of our students this week we celebrate our thanks and acknowledge the impact of teachers on our lives whereas national teacher appreciation day is being celebrated on May 9 2023 whereas teachers make public schools great and whereas teachers work to open students Minds to ideas knowledge and dreams and whereas teachers keep American democracy alive by laying the foundations for good citizenship and whereas teachers fill many roles as listeners explorers Role Models motivators and mentors whereas teachers continue to influence us long after our school days are only memories therefore let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation to all prior League Savage Area Schools teachers

113for supporting the education of our students and declares May through 12 2023 to be teacher appreciation week and Prior Lake Savage area schools can't say enough it just doesn't exist in this world I'll handle after Thomas I'm sure you have something lovely to say you know I'll I'll just say that teachers have a thankless job and they put in countless hours to do what they believe they are called to do in this world and thank them enough for their commitment to serve in in K-12 pk-12 education to really affect the lives of future Generations you know Ariana is about ready to be a living example of the power of teachers you know as she walks the stage in a few weeks and goes off to college to really affect change in this world and I

114think those of us who are far removed from where she's at might not always remember the classes or the books or the tests well maybe the test if you but usually we can always refer back to a teacher that really was positively impactful for us in our pk-12 experience our college experience whatever teachers make a world of difference literally so thank you to all the Posas teachers for making a difference for students like Ariana and thousands of others as well as making a difference for yourselves as colleagues and I'm a better person and a better leader because of our teachers so thank you to all of them we have a couple more proclamations tonight the next is the Child Nutrition staff appreciation week or a national school lunch hero day would anyone be interested thank

115you um Prior Lake Savage area schools recognizes May 1st through the 5th 2023 as Child Nutrition staff Appreciation Week our child our Child Nutrition staff are committed to supporting our children by providing nutritious and home-cooked meals to our more than 8 700 students this week we celebrate our thanks and gratitude for these essential individuals whereas the school nutrition Association declares May 5th 2023 as school lunch hero day to highlight the different School nutrition staff make for every child who comes through the cafeteria whereas Prior Lake Savage area schools has 24 full-time 56 part-time and 16 substitute Child Nutrition employees as well as a Child Nutrition director Child Nutrition assistant director Child Nutrition support specialist and a Child Nutrition coordinator whereas Prior Lake savagery schools Child Nutrition staff serve approximately 1 million fifty thousand I'm sorry

116to make zeros 50 000 meals every year averaging 6 000 meals sorry uh whereas Child Nutrition staff are essential workers dedicated to Preparing Distributing healthy and delicious meals directly to our students all while providing a warm and welcoming environment whereas Child Nutrition staff strive to serve fresh locally sourced Foods whereas Child Nutrition staff keep parents and students informed of all menus allergens nutrition and food descriptions by updating the online menu and mobile app whereas over the past three plus years Prior Lake cyberger schools Child Nutrition staff have been able and willing to quickly adapt to support the nutritional needs of our community throughout the copen19 pandemic therefore let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation to all Prior Lake Savage area schools Child Nutrition staff for supporting the nutritional needs and

117success of our student and declares May 1st through the 5th 2023 to be Child Nutrition staff Appreciation Week in Prior Lake Savage Area School thank you yes thank you Lisa oh you're welcome um board of directors and superintendent Dr Thomas thank you so much for recognizing and uh staying in the proclamation for our Child Nutrition team um our school lunch heroes are truly a magnificent Bunch not only do they work relentlessly to put Foods on the plates of our community's children but our children communities told me sorry but they brighten their days while they do it they truly do make connections with with each and every student we love the angle of the student relationship that we have because we get to see almost every student every day and even though it might just be

118a short 20 second connection we often get them from pre-k or kindergartner kindergarten all the way through fifth grade and then we get sixth through eighth grade so we get these relationships that do actually form well-type bonds and let's you know admit that school lunch or lunch time is one of the most favorite times for kids so and we love that um even though we've been extremely short staffed they've continued to work tirelessly to cook home cooked from scratch meals they process vegetables that come from our neighboring Farmers unprocessed and they do that because they really truly believe that it's important to feed our children Whole Foods and to teach kids where food comes from so thank you very much I'm extremely proud of my team and I appreciate your Proclamation thank you yeah many

119of us have had the chance to work on the on the in the lunch line in the short staff environment and it was kind of eye-opening I mean for sure and we all talked about it how it's amazing how the lunch and play like they know the kids I can't even believe it they see so many they know their names they know if they're having a good day or bad day and I'm going three seconds how did your words are very true and I think they do a great job of theming the food also for different different days and in the year too so it's real fun for the kids as well I would say if you're so inclined during that week if you want to join me or any of our campuses I will

120be serving I believe Tuesday of that week at Westwood I hope so if you would like to sign up for a Time to show your appreciation feel free I was supposed to do it on Thursday which is Minnesota day and clearly conflict with a stride program so we have more Proclamation for National Nurses month we have direct drive students Support Services but first we will read the proclamation with someone like to do it thank you I'm ready Harry like Savage area schools recognizes me first through fifth 2023 a sign language interpreters Appreciation Week mm-hmm sorry this is so much I'm flexible big mistake all right sorry thanks for the break probably like Savage area schools recognizes Maine 2023 a school nurse appreciation month her school nurses provide care and support from far more than 8

121700 Prior Lake Savage area students this week we celebrate this month we celebrate our things and gratitude for the essential staff whereas the American Nurses Association declares may as national nurses month with May 6th specifically dedicated to School nurses whereas Prior Lake Savage area schools schools nurses excuse me provide comfort and care for our students and staff help maintain and administer student medications provide families with immune immunization information assist with health screenings make sure students with chronic health conditions are able to safely attend school reach out to parents Guardians about health concerns and develop individualized Health and emergency care plans whereas Prior Lake Savage Area School nurses work with children parents staff and medical professionals to control and prevent disease whereas Prior Lake Savage Area School nurses work to ensure the health and safety of

122each and every student let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation to all Prior Lake Savage Area School nurses for supporting the health and education of our children and declares May 2023 to be school nurse appreciation month and Prior Lake Savage area schools thank you um I'll just say a couple things on behalf of myself and Kate Kyle our health services coordinator who couldn't be here tonight our school nurse and Health Services team play a really vital role in addressing chronic health conditions and improving opportunities for students across the district in order to be successful in school uh we administer medications not we because I'm not a nurse but our nurse and health Team administers medication they provide assessment and care to injuries they provide you know supporting unexpected emergencies and

123you know we were talking about big numbers with meals um we don't do 6 000 a day but our health offices provide Care on average to about 650 students every single day throughout the district so that they have a big role and their offices are always very busy with students in and out and they coordinate with our social workers counselors teachers administrators to remove barriers that students have in order for them to be successful and we are very grateful for this small of individuals thank you thank you as are we um and our last Proclamation is sign language interpreters thing well it is sign language interpreters day and I'll say a couple things here we don't have any in our district right now but we're grateful for them but we do have some ASL teachers

124that I think Dr Thomas wanted to honor because it's pretty awesome that we are able to yeah I would say you know as as a district it's really important that we mitigate any barriers for our students and families to interact with our district and so whether it's a language barrier by way of a foreign language or if it's one here of ASL that they need interpreting to be able to connect and communicate to have them available as resources is significant and huge for us but also you know probably I think it was my one of my first school visits to the high school and stepped into the ASL classrooms uh at the at the high school and what a value add in terms of uh students ability to be able to participate in ASL as

125a language and learn that skill and I've heard nothing but amazing things about those two staff and really appreciate them for adding value to our students lives for all we know some of our students who are taking ASL might be our future sign language interpreters one day so I just appreciate that pipeline development of our staff and their commitment to ASL here in Pride Lake Savage area schools thank you thank you that um we did not read that Proclamation no I wouldn't finish reading that yeah yeah do you mind doing it since you started I'm just not sure if it's a day or a week or a month you can sign it too yeah I would like you to sign okay I'll start where I left off no I won't I'll start again apparently sandwich

126area schools recognizes May 1st through fifth as sign language interpreters Appreciation Week for sign language professionals are essential to supporting the success of our deaf engineering impaired students this week we celebrate our thanks and gratitude for these vital staff members whereas National sign language interpreters day is being celebrated on May 3rd 2023 whereas a sign language interpreter allows students who are deaf or hard of hearing to understand the spoken language from their teachers peers and administrators whereas these professionals use their unique skill set to ensure that all students can access the learning being delivered whereas our sign language interpreters carry out essential functions so we can fulfill the mission of our district and to the excess of success of all our students therefore let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation

127to all Prior Lake Savage area school interpreters for their hard work a daily breaks down language and communication barriers of our students Thursday May 1st through 5th 2023 to be sign language interpreters appreciation week and Prior Lake savagery schools thank you thank you lots to celebrate in May as we move on in our agenda we're under board governance policy now and board policy review we have policy 606 function and review of learning resources on the agenda and um okay um yeah Dr Edwards and several others are at the national bar conference today so but just as a brief update actually at our last board meeting that kind of moved into a work study session as well it was very clear that this policy given its scope really needs its time to go through kind of

128starting back at square one because I think there was a lot of misunderstandings and interpretations of the directions that we are going and so I just wanted to uh formally share that you know until we go through and rectify I believe 606 and I'm blanking out at 600 or 601 601 and perhaps others six hundreds as a as as a group is a group that really kind of got off in terms of its sequence and also how it was organized when they went from an alpha system at msba to a numeric system so that's kind of how this whole how we have two different policies according to you know who brought msbas last month of six um so we will be going back to the square one with this policy in bringing in 601 into

129the conversation and until then the current policy stands and the internal management protocol also stands and just as a briefing to the board this is really why I wanted to share a couple weeks ago we had [Music] um actually I would say late fall or early fall there was an inquiry from the community about a certain book there was no formal process brought forward and Dr Edwards and I worked with this Community member father to work through some of the concerns that were brought up in that book and subsequently there have been a couple other titles that have surfaced namely a couple from last two weeks or so ago and just letting you know we will be initiating our internal protocols to review those three books that were called into question last week based upon

130the priority of when it was last checked out there was a book that was checked out I think a year or so ago the others have been checked out for almost 10 years so we're starting with the one that was most recent and initiating that internal protocol so I just want the board and the community to know that if there are concerns brought up in a formal manner we are taking that forward and again we're starting with those three so more to come on those titles and what we find at those titles and also more to come as we go back to bringing in the 600s to the board kind of reintroducing them kind of as a slate I opened it up for any questions there was some discussion right last time about policies procedure

131so I'm guessing that that's going to be that's kind of what you're talking about too or in terms of like yeah we have an interesting so one and like all of that yeah it's kind of correct well well I think that's a couple of things the question was were we going too much into procedure with the last iteration of the 601 policy um I'm sorry 606 policy um and I think the question was um uh what's the scope of 606 versus the scope of 601 are we focusing on learning resources which we try to Encompass kind of both together are we talking about library media materials are we talking about curriculum you know so those are aspects that I think needed further clarification and we just found I think ourselves on multiple fronts last time

132to really kind of redress that and bring it all together as one package to talk about them totality versus independent policies independent of one another based on the information that you just shared regarding the books that have been brought up and uh you mentioned a Community member whether it be last fall I feel like there was a Community member since I have been a director that has um brought a book to question and that it was shared at a board meeting study session or board meeting that that book had been removed from the Middle School am I correct in that that is correct but the current policy that allows for us to pull materials if we deemed appropriate to review that because it might not be a formal review process and that one in particular

133as you know we looked at that context we we took action on that specific book and that wasn't actually not a formal review or uh or process that was more of an inquiry from a parent I think you know when I in just you sharing about the three books um you had I feel like you just mentioned that one book you're gonna um review based on the most recently seen about a year or so ago one year to ten years um I'm just curious we've heard from different community members and we've kind of heard the you know both sides right we've heard um just the desire or the the what the desire to have all books like that removed from our from our district and then we've we've also heard you know not to censor

134in balancing those um in balancing those requests from the community I'm wondering um there's there's something that I I think about often and when I think about just like profanity being used uh profanity I believe there's policy against profanity and in our in is there am I Am I Wrong is there policy regarding you know expectations on profanity and I'm wondering if there's ways to simplify how we um because it is a very and it's an emotional um it's an emotional topic people feel strongly one way or the other and I think that one thing that I think about as a parent and and as a director I think if there were if there were certain titles such as the ones brought to us if they were if all such titles were removed from our

135district it's not removing them from their access at a public library maybe it's I just don't know that much about libraries but I'm I'm wondering if we're making a fight where there doesn't need to be a fight because I feel like the libraries that we um you know the the books that we have in our libraries are educational in nature and there are a lot of different topics that are you know maybe supported by one family over another so why are we finding ours and forgive me but I'm just wondering if if this is if yeah I think that's a fair question if I have to be very honest I think that's a very fair question um uh what is the fight um on the table especially when you said this one though some of

136those books not even have been checked out for 10 years wow well and and this was something that we processed with Peter as well uh you know in our conversation with him as a senior cabinet it's like okay this is not about book bands and all that kind of stuff that's driving families out of districts it's actually something very different you know um so I I think in in Emily I know you've kind of spoken to this in the past around government speech in freedoms with government speech this this policy is going to have to really be thoroughly vetted with legal counsel to have a the best understanding of kind of what the argument on the table is um and I'll be very clear like I was you know several weeks ago or whatever months

137ago um you know I want to ensure from as the superintendent speaking for myself um I want to ensure that the resources we have readily available to our kids are appropriate for their viewing their reading their their interaction with Etc and I know it's a fine line between what I might deem to be good for kids compared to maybe what you know Jared Crosby deems good to get and everything in between that's what we hear from our community that we heard from two of our members this evening and so again with the we did get a formal submission to question a book The Three um I actually reached out to the to a community member who's who has these books checked out under their student's name asking can we get them um and we have

138since ordered copies of one of the books the most recently checked out book so that we can start that process and again I I know this is kind of a weird place to be when you have community sharing that isn't it ironic that I'm submitting these forms and I can't get them to come through because our filters block it and why do we have you know so I understand that that's that's get the the perceived hypocrisy of that if I may be so bold to use that term here um but again know that our intentions are to ensure we have appropriate materials in our in our schools and that our students are accessing so we will start because we have the formal process that came through um that was probably more of an edited submission

139by this community as this parent and so that's where we'll start but until I just want the board to know in the community to know that we have a policy currently on books that's in effect um although people may interpret it differently we are going forward in this process given what we've heard through public comment and what we're getting through formal submission um and I do want to share that you know talking with Marcus and his team I am very interested in finding a solution to be able to you know if all of our books are digitized to be able to screen something you know as a first pass if you will on on certain things um and and again I think we're going to have to look at context because context matters and that's

140what I shared that night too um so I don't know a long way of answering your question if I answered the question if I didn't please let me know well um you know I think that my biggest question in in that is again like because I like things super simple and I feel like good policy um good policy there isn't really great right it's it's easily understandable regardless of what your personal point of view is sure and so that's why I'm just I'm curious and I don't expect an answer right now or right here but I just feel like if we have profan if we have expectations regarding you know the non-use of profanity in our district from teachers and staff members administrators then isn't that a simplified um and I know that there are

141I mean books probably in elementary schools that you know use what may be deemed profane language and so I understand that it is a very touchy you know again it just goes back to you know where the the public school system is to educate and then we also allow and um understand that people's Family Values are what they are and they're they're free to to have them so how do we best protect and respect all across the table and you know I know that it's not as easy yeah I think this is where we're gonna have to get strong legal guidance on on this language because again to your point our job is to ensure we are fostering literacy skills and the best way to engage a young person in Reading is to give them

142content that is excite excited you know they are excited by so whether it's trucks if I'm a kindergartner kid and you know flowers or if it's you know uh philosophical science if I'm a high school kid that's my genre of interest and those are the books that I like to get into you know if I want to work for the CIA and I want to read stories about you know so I mean again I'm I'm hypothesizing here but if there's a story about a serial killer right Jeffrey Dahmer or whomever is that appropriate in a school context if that excites me to read and one day I want to be you know an attorney or a CIA or whatever and tracking this kind of profile of person to prevent them from occurring in this world

143again right like that's my interest so those are the nuances that we're gonna have to I think Wade through from a legal standpoint to really make sure that we have a policy and I agree that's very simple because clearly it wasn't you know it was still muddied and so I think you say clean is clear as kind as somebody likes to say I love that there's kind of watching the trend to navigate this that's why so so thank you and I would just like to add contacts to um a couple points you know I had a Community member approached me and questioned you know how can my student get suspended for searching for porn on my iPad but yet then go to the library and read what's considered pornography so I do think we need

144to look at um our policies and make sure that you know if kids are getting suspended for important then we shouldn't have the materials in our district um and then another note I had the chance to visit the media center and speak with the media specialist and I was the information that I rece received was that so many of the books that are in our library are used to enhance the curriculum so if a ninth grade teacher is saying to the students go do a project on X they need to be able to go to the library and pick out books to support their subject and so I wouldn't say that there's um and even the media Specialists validated that kids are not going to the library to read for pleasure so if there is

145that desire to read for pleasure then having access to the Scott County library or Barnes and Noble or Target or wherever to get those books so ensuring our resources are being used to support the materials that support our curriculum that feed up to our strategic goals and objectives of our district I think is incredibly important yeah I think that and it's to Foster the love of reading you know that that is our job as educators so I hear you and I would add that yeah there is still going to be that appreciation for literature that there are plenty of kids who probably go and you're right a lot of our teachers are sending kids down to do research if it's you know pull the kids that many of our elementary kids are going because they

146want to get their favorite picture book or they want to get their favorite you know theme books or you know story lines whatever I would just like dad putting into this process um I think I heard Dr Edwards say the last meeting that we haven't had a lot of book challenges so well I love it to be simple I appreciate the patience of going in um because I don't want to diminish the attention this topic is getting but I would like to say I'm happy kids are reading and we're talking about books because I don't see that very often when I go out to eat I see a lot of kids in screens with their parents so I love the topic of books and I'd like to be able to have these dialogues you say

147it's you know everyone has a strong opinion but I think that is a lineal process on what people think you know I do my little bit of research too and I asked my kids my kids did you check out books at the library and they're like where's the library so and they are college educated so I'm just saying I do appreciate the the time we're looking at it and I know it's a lot but we have to be patient with the process yeah you can't just all of a sudden like pound a gavel and be like boom yeah I think the two of you also bring up the whole notion of you know not to totally change the topic but digitize curriculum or digitized materials so the actual physical sessions of books you know particularly

148are secondary folks might be more online that they're checking out books versus younger readers who are more tactile and that kind of people who are looking for those books so different conversation but in the same vein of you know possibilities of what we need to do all right sure that is all I had on Optimum I wanted to show a comment um accessibility I'm just thinking of Barnes Noble or the Central Library System those aren't always accessible for uh single parent or when there are accessibility issues just trying to get to and from not having access to books that excite our readers excite them and interest them we won't get them to come back for more that is especially exciting for me as one of those who that was my my own if I wanted

149to go to the library it was a bus ride it was a walk and checking my time to make sure it got there before it closed and then got home before the light came on yeah director it's the last visit it's you bring that point up because right now I have access to students to just click click and get a book from Scott County as well as it was just added on the Middle School site um which as of like April 18th there was language added that we are now partnering with the Scott County Library which is a good thing but it's also a concern because it does open up a whole array of books that are in the Scott County Library that now how do we um how do you control like that that

150aspect of it they have access to any book in the Middle School web is not relinquished to a library so I mean so there was something on the website that said the students were giving an opt-in to be able to access the Scott County Library so it might be something that we look at as allowing the parents to opt in or opt out of having access to that Scott County Library as well so I'm glad that you brought that up director any other comments from sorry I wouldn't be interested in if he has anything to offer but we have a student sitting at our table tonight so I would love to hear her perspective yeah obviously I think all students at our high school have a variety of different reading levels so I think the

151variety of books is a great opportunity for different readers to grow in different areas of reading and I do think though that if like a parent does have a problem an issue with a book that may be not appropriate for their child um to read that they it definitely should be reviewed given or like brought to the board or the committee that reviews that um but I think a lot of students um just have a variety of different reading levels so the different books I think people enjoy as well obviously all all parents and families have different opinions and beliefs so I think it's up to the families it helps them are they'll the families are kind of able to decipher what their kids have access to this too I love love getting students yeah

152I'm sorry I appreciate your perspective as with all our policies I think the the biggest thing that resonates with me like I said with all our policies is leaning on legal to understand you know what would let them guide us in that policy work it's very important um I wish I was an attorney for so many reasons um okay any other comments I think we will be coming back to this at some point uh no first reading on policies second reading of policy uh for policy 806 crisis management policy there were some minor language changes regular changes edits were on that document as suggested yeah no it's all legible in there so we're here I just had one question Jim can I have a question yeah okay you can have two okay and um under

153the definition number four we crossed out um uh the support staff who review and maintain we crossed out and man and maintain should I read that okay number four under definition it says building crisis response team comprise the building Administration and support staff who review and man and maintain the school crisis management plan trained staff on Emergency Response performance in it okay so we crossed out and maintain and I just was curious why we and it is total semantics but I I that's I just that was my note I was just curious why the maintaining of it um because in this whole crisis management world and the world we're living in I'm thinking you know it's it's changes a little it changes it fluctuates maybe and so the main the maintaining I was just curious

154why what is specific to the um building crisis response team the maintaining is actually done through the district crisis response team oh okay okay perfect does that make sense yeah that make that absolutely amazing yeah thank you yeah thank you it's a great reason very last sentence in there bullet kind of makes that point that they make recommendations to the dcrt yeah and then we'll change the plan accordingly okay and I did read that but it was PR I was probably lost in the okay acronym or the abbreviation yeah there are a lot yeah thank you thank you any uh we'll move on to superintendent relations okay thank you informational items [Music] yeah yeah and then um yes I didn't my board book is an updated sorry so a future agenda items do board members

155have any features on there I'd like to I don't I don't know if I make a motion here because we don't make emotions here right um it's up for discussion to add policy to our discussion um or it would be our next board meeting I believe um for review and discussion um it's the policy the 491 policy is the mandatory covid-19 vaccine for testing and face coverings for employees and given President Biden's recent ruling of the covet Health Emergency ending on May 11th of 2023 I think it's relevant to bring that forward at the next board meeting thank you um any any other future agenda items [Applause] I have a procedural question I guess is that um I can't I'm sorry I can't remember because this is new to our procedures can a board member

156within our policies just suggest and then it gets added or is it a thumbs up thank you majority maturity okay so thank you um so if we're looking at adding policy 491 to the next board meeting for review and discussion do people have questions want to discuss and then we can do a thumbs I don't have it in front of me when is it supposed to be June review of June all the 400s okay July yeah and it's okay it's in effect when there's an emergency order which there is not right now that's why I'm asking you to bring It Forward yeah and the policy does say that it doesn't go into effect at all unless there's an emergency order and since there's an emergency order it's not really in effect at all right now

157and a lot of districts who have this policy as we did they've already dropped it so it's more just cleaning up the work of this policy versus doing it when we're in the process of doing budgets and all the other things there is since we're reviewing It Anyways in the next cycle is there a reason to bring it forward sooner because it's not even in effect so you're touching May versus July right that's what we're talking about okay I guess well they just told us for an interview in July we'll start the next cycle and the 400s are part of that cycle so that one will come up um right after the it'll be part of the next cycle right after we get done with the end of this year I guess my concern is

158it's not in effect other school districts have pulled it so why do we have it still up on our website well it's not in effect but then it says it in there that it's only in effect when there's an actual emergency and since we don't have any declared emergency technically it's it's just paper right now an emergency ended so that's why I'm asking for it to be pulled off and to for us to review it my question is um with adding having this policy added to the next agenda item being the fact that it really isn't in a in effect it is the process just that we vote to have it removed to remove the policy or is it a elongated process such as first reading second reading like how does that go because if

159it's a simple um you know we just add it to the agenda and then we are taking a vote on whether we want it to want to remove it or not I feel like that's a simple ask and I'm I wouldn't be against that but if the pro you know I'm just so I'm asking what the process is of adding it to the agenda um the current the current process would go through this the four steps no we can just remove a policy you can just remove it okay with one with vote Yes with the majority vote got it okay I'm gonna give a thumbs up to bring it I have a question then are we so we're out of the is that policy reusable if we go into another pandemic or do we have

160to rewrite it anyways so covid-19 is and we don't have to go through the four-step process that would be happy right which we wouldn't enjoy either but it's pretty straightforward um sums people sure okay good so we'll add it good um moving on to other we put the point of order for that man um this uh I just want to make sure I'm uh understanding correctly we're gonna be bringing it Forward um on May 8th as an action item to remove correct thank you foreign policy 203 at the end uh under other um coming out of our board development session we had a lot of discussion around Norms which is School Board operating Norms as the policy and we have a lot of um uh probably some clarity that we could use and add to

161that policy particularly because we're a relatively new board to be exceptional with you and so we have not proposed any changes to this but this is just bringing it forward it was suggested by married to add it to um study sessions so the next step will be ideally we would have had it in full disclosure here ready with some proposals but we weren't right yeah so at the next meeting we'll bring it forward with some additional language as a starting point for us to discuss and introduce it then one thing that has been brought to my attention with this policy is the question around I believe it still reads in this policy and I apologize where it talks about during a work session um open to public forums oh I'm sorry let me how to

162conduct meetings number six under 6.1.1 how we conduct meetings so during work sessions we it talks about how we discuss how we're doing our work sessions like we are this evening and then we talk about work sessions may also be a time for either a listening session with the public on issues as prescribed by the board or open to public feedback after the meeting limited items discussed during the work session and I know that we have talked about that in the past so I'm just wondering if that's something that you know we should look at me as we brought this policy forth now I think we should that's one of the edits already and I think in the past that's been used as um when you you know like goal boundary changes you know or

163like like that's how I recall it being used it gives the board a little bit of flexibility and an opportunity to get community feedback but yeah we that's language we can look at well we also change the whole Forum process also so so that one was up for yeah the fifth piece was I think allowing the board of flexibility than that but right yeah but also the language in there was based upon after now we're doing the forums I was just gonna first and then oh at the beginning right yes yes and whether it has to be on the agenda or off the agenda I think there's always that conversations because I know this policy while we looked at it what it was approved December 12 2022 um I know we've talked about some things

164in our um training board development on changes that we wanted to bring forth on this so so yeah and we'll we'll bring it forward with some suggested language it's not you know it's a starting point for all of us to work from all right thank you [Music] I will