April 10, 2023 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education

001are you ready I'd like to call this meeting to order I'd like to welcome you to the regular meeting of the board Monday um April 10th thank you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and Injustice For All uh roll call tonight we have all board members present we will start with our open as we always do with our open Forum so in accordance to board policy 203 a 15-minute time period is set aside to receive citizen input through this open Forum segment on the board agenda sign up sheets are available at least 10 minutes prior to meeting time at the door tonight I'll be reading the

002open and public forum rules input from students 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 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 minutes total to address the board unless an exception is granted by the board chair speaker speakers will not be allowed to verbally attack disparage or potentially defame individual board members employees or students Norway speakers use

003vulgar or profane language also speakers may be precluded from disclosing personally identifiable private data regarding employees or students speakers unwilling to conform to the 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 shall not deliberate or take action during the open Forum regarding an issue presented if follow-up 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 members retain the right to call in District administrators for information to assist subordinates deliberations tonight we have one speaker it is Katie Gabriel good evening directors

004and Dr Thomas my name is Katie Gabriel I use see her pronouns I live in Savage I have worked in academic libraries for over 20 years I have my masters in library and information science and most importantly I am a parent of two Avid readers in our school district I have a ninth grader at Prior Lake High School and a seventh grader at Hidden Oaks I want to express my appreciation for how you all are digging into a review of policy 606. based on the discussion during the last study session I have a few thoughts that I'd like to share first I encourage you to continue to rely on the knowledge and expertise of our school library excuse me and media staff they are the true experts in our district when it comes to these

005topics I also encourage you to include the estimated cost of a challenge in the reconsideration form I think it's critical for the community to Grapple with whether or not those resources could better serve our students for example by helping to fund a position dedicated to supporting student Mental Health you also mentioned that Administration recently removed a book from the collection and it sounded that might like that might have been done outside of the policy and some processes in place I would suggest that that's a very slippery slope why have that procedure and policy in place if Administration is simply going to circumvent it there was also some conversation around using age to restrict access to materials within a school library collection and I would strongly discourage that you could have two sixth graders standing next

006to each other with very different reading levels and reading interests let's not limit what they can read in their own School library simply because they're in sixth grade and not in seventh grade there was also interest in looking up what your student has checked out from the library and I get it lost books are a real issue but I would suggest instead that parents talk to their students and ask what they've checked out that week what intrigued them about a particular title that they decided to bring home you have wisely included the library Bill of Rights in your policy 606. item number seven in the Bill of Rights begins all people regardless of origin age background or views possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their Library use surveilling what someone has checked out

007from the library collection can have a chilling effect on their curiosity their intellectual growth and intellectual freedom I encourage you to stand by that Bill of Rights and support our students right to privacy and confidentiality when it comes to their Library use again thank you for digging into this challenging and extremely important work thank you that was our only speaker tonight um in the interest of all our guests time who have come tonight for Laker Pride or we're going to ask for a motion to amend the agenda to move Laker Pride above the consent agenda can I get a motion to amend the agenda so made by director bullion and a second by director Velazquez so I have a motion and a second to approve the amended agenda uh all in favor I opposed that

008passes 7-0 and we will move on to Laker Pride thank you chair Crosby board of directors we do have quite the full house this evening a lot of students to be proud about and we've got a few we'll start with trying to get the right order here so we have the Schultz Innovation scholarship from the University of St Thomas this past month we received very exciting news that five of our mind cap students were selected as finalists for the Schultz Innovation scholarship program at the University of Saint Thomas this scholarship is only awarded to 10 students each year and recipients of this scholarship are not only granted access to the Schultz Innovation program but also receive a four-year full tuition scholarship as well and we have our Min caps coordinator Miss Glenna Stone here this

009evening and she will speak a little bit about uh some or will recognize some of the students and some of their work and three of those finalists um that we're going to be speaking to about tonight is Lily Corto mahika kandula and Kailyn Buckingham and then this year two of our mind cap students were selected to receive this prestigious scholarship Grayson sprunk and some ready data data if I got that correctly I apologize and I have to tell you as a fellow Tommy myself I am even more proud of you couldn't have picked a better University go Tommy's not Johnny's my Chinese fans got to say that um but really proud of all of you and the work in representing Prior Lake Savage area schools you are amazing students and going off to a great

010opportunity at a great University and so with that Miss Stone would you want to say a few words about mencaps and then we'll call the students forward for their recognition yes so we have five of our students like you said we had 21 finalists out of 61 applications that were accepted worldwide and five of our mind cap students were either recipients or finalists so it is a huge honor for them to be up here and to get this shelves Innovation scholarship for Grayson and Smarty And then for our finalists we have Lily and Kailyn and uhika so I have their pictures down here too in Tennessee they worked with with Mr Jared Jacobs and he is not able to be here today but he's a business instructor who really helped them through this process they

011did interviews and application reviews and speeches and things to get ready for this so I'm just so proud of them and all the work they've done and they're amazing representatives of mincas great congratulations to all of you [Applause] [Music] thank you yes and why don't you guys come forward here okay stay there yeah congratulations congratulations congratulations [Applause] [Music] okay next we have our winter activities update as you all may have heard earlier this evening just before we started our activities director Jeff Marshall you can tell he's a coach as he was corralling all of our athletes out there he will update the board on winter activities and we will recognize students that also qualified for state and so with that Mr Marshall the mic is yours thank you okay well um I'm sorry just trying

012to find the presentation yeah it's a Google Slides um all right wonderful well thank you all for uh allowing me to come in and share um some wonderful accomplishments that many of our student athletes and activity folks have been able to participate in this past winter um obviously you know with the weather we have outside today we know that the winter season is behind us thank goodness we've enjoyed the winter season but the weather outside we are definitely ready for our spring season at this point so one of the things that I believe should have been shared with you is our co-curricular report here for this past winter again it's up here on the screen at this point right now and at the beginning we really just want to go through and make sure that

013we are constantly able to remind ourselves specifically why we are involved in education-based Athletics is is far different than certainly many of our club sports that are out there and other pieces that are out there so when you look at a education-based activities program everything that happens after school becomes the seventh period of the day you know the expectation is that our students when they go and they participate in our Athletics in our activities continue to learn continue to develop and continue to become not only outstanding in their Sports and in their activities but also outstanding human beings and we really focus on that within our programs and so again throughout this report we talk about the definition of success and what that means to create memories and relationships and to teach lifelong lessons here

014you'll see our specifically our different character traits that we have and this was developed a number of years ago and if you look down with the acronym Laker you'll see that as we talk about our student athletes and our activity folks looking at the moral character of what we want them to learn as they go through our programs as moral characters again we expect them to learn a love appreciation kindness empathy and respect and then when it comes to Performance again you have the Laker acronym that's there we want them to think about leaving a legacy being an advocate having knowledge enthusiasm and being resilient as they go through these programs as well included in this report you'll also see our winter season participation numbers our excuse me our participation numbers did increase from the

015previous year so those are some some figures that you can look at specifically for sports during the course of the season and at this point then we will get into actually being able to recognize a number of these students for many of their accomplishments so we're going to start with our Alpine ski team our Alpine ski team is a combination of both boys and girls they do practice together they do compete separately our girls team this year finished as Conference champions they went to Buck Hill where they competed in the section six which was probably the toughest section in the state they finished second in the section state tournament and became state qualifiers and first time ever in the history of the school where the Alpine ski team made it the state they went to

016State and they actually finished second at State as well which was a huge huge accomplishment and on the girls side we had Annabelle McCann who finished 10th Colvin rice who finished 15th and then also members of the team were Emily Reed Olivia Reed Elizabeth mccroskey and Annika Meyer and then on the boys side the boys finished seventh in section six and Blake Stout was our Lone State qualifier and Blake was able to go up and qualify and ski also up in Bologna state tournament so that's our Alpine skiers congratulations [Applause] all right uh we'll do go on to our Nordic skiers for Nordic skiing again very similar to Alpine the teams do train together and then they do compete separately the girls ended up finishing third in section one barely missing qualifying for State we

017did have three individual state qualifiers for the girls though Sophia basil Brooke Marquardt and Hannah Cole all qualified for state the boys finished second and again the top two teams do go on to the state tournament and so at the state tournament they then finished ninth and individually Tommy Simmons was fourth Evan O'Connor was eighth and they also had Aiden Aiden rossemeyer Bjorn Olson Ledger Sears Tegan Moore and Alex Krause also qualify as the teams for Nordic ski so congratulations to our Nordic skiers we also have our boys swimming and Diving team um boys swimming and Diving is unique in that you don't qualify for the state as a as a team you qualify individually but then those individuals then score points for the team at the state tournament the boys swinging diving team did

018finish 9-0 in the South Suburban Conference there were conference champs this year at the state double-a championships they finished third the highest finish ever in the history of Prior Lake took home a third place trophy from there the 200 medley relay of Ethan Coulson Owen Baudette Griffin lining and Victor Trin finished sixth in the 200 freestyle Kaden Chung finished 13th and the 200 IM Owen Dwyer finished seventh and in the 50 freestyle Victor Trin finished sixth Blake Wallin was our loan qualifier in diving he finished third in state Owen Dwyer also finished third in the hundred butterfly and Kaden Chung finished seventh in the hunter butterfly Ethan Coulson was third in the 500 freestyle the 200 freestyle relay of Victor Trin Caden Chung Owen Dwyer and Jackson Stout finished in fifth and the hunter backstroke

019Ethan Coulson finished second and Braxton helmers finished 13th and the 400 freestyle relay team of Victor Trin Caden Chung Owen Dwyer and Ethan Coulson finished fourth so congratulations to those and I think some of those guys [Music] thank you coach Marshall just real quickly I do have certificates for all the players and athletes this evening I think all for the sake of time I'll just give you the stack and then you'll distribute um as as you can Perfect all right sounds good yep moving on to our wrestling team our wrestling team was very strong this year they ended up losing to Apple Valley in the section semifinal and also ended up qualifying for State we did have two individuals who qualified for the state tournament this year Aiden McGowan was a first-time State qualifier and

020Alan kaler Alan as a senior ended up being a state champion for the third consecutive year year won an amazing overtime match two to one over a student from wyzetta and a very very exciting match down at the Excel Energy Center so congratulations to both of them our gymnastics team 2016 finished third at the section two double a meet we did have one individual qualify for state in the all-around competition that was Taryn block this was the second year that she qualified in addition coach Patrick klechner was named the double a gymnastics coach of the year so congrats foreign the Prior Lake dance team was actually able to perform at the rely Quest Bowl in Florida during halftime this year which was I mean certainly a very big highlight to be able to do that

021and to be on TV for that in addition the team took fourth in both Jazz and high kick at the section one Triple A meet barely missing qualifying for State we did have four dancers who were selected for the Minnesota Association of dance coaches AAA All-State dance team that was Lauren Beck Ali lorienzo Faith Jung and Izzy Dwyer in addition three dancers were selected for team Minnesota and they competed at the Miss dance team competition in California that was Izzy Dwyer Izzy Gordon and Ellie lorienzo and Izzy Gordon was actually selected as the Miss dance Teen USA for 2023. so congratulations [Applause] and that was this group so congratulations to all of you we will get you your certificates as well we want to do a picture okay you can all go stand right over

022there in the front there it is just impressive congratulations good job [Applause] [Music] let's make sure to publicly recognize and thank all of their coaches as well so the coaches for the Alpine ski team were Dave Everson and annia Smothers for the Nordic ski Mark O'Connor and Paige Larson for the boys swimming and Diving Joe Bollinger is our head coach for the wrestling team Joe block was our head coach for the gymnastics Patrick klechner and for dance Madison stallmer so again these student athletes would not have gotten to where they're at without the help in the support of not only their coaches but certainly also their parents and their families help them as well too so thank you foreign as you can see and here we have a lot of clanking coming in to the

023room at this point and uh we wanted to make sure we took the time and the opportunity to to uh congratulate and honor and recognize our cheerleading teams um I'm sure many of you have seen and heard the success that our cheerleading program has had throughout the years and this year continued to be no different this year the team was able to once again qualify for the UCA Nationals that take place every year down in Orlando Florida this is the largest national competition that exists for cheerleading so for them to be able to to qualify is a huge huge honor a couple weeks before that happened they did go to the state tournament which was held down at Roy Wilkins every year they started off Donna Roy Wilkins being state champs all right wow once

024again the if I remember correctly I believe um the game day non-tumbling with state champs and the JV was also State Champs at that point they had qualified for the Nationals earlier in the year so they knew that they were going in the fall and when they did go down to Nationals the varsity team ended up as the UCA national champs in medium traditional competition non-tumbling and they finished as National runners-up in the medium game day non-tumbling and JV again not only being state champs but in the JV division they also finished as national champions in the small traditional competition so congratulations to all of our cheerleaders that's a huge outstanding honor again you can see the hardware and the jackets that these are things that they won while they're down at Nationals and I

025know Dr Thomas has one more thing that he would like to share thank you so much and congratulations to all of you it's it's a great uh honor to share with you on behalf of Senator Eric Pratt he has submitted a Minnesota Senate recognition for your performance and I'll read that on his behalf whereas Prior Lake athletic teams are important to the success of our students and our community and whereas the Prior Lake cheerleading team won its third straight national title and now therefore be it resolved by Senator Eric Pratt of Scott County and District 54 of the state of Minnesota that he recognizes the significance of the accomplishments of the Prior Lake cheerleading program and its students and be it further resolved that the hard work dedication and awards of the students of the

026Prior Lake cheerleading program be recognized as an exemplary example for the community of Prior Lake in the state of Minnesota on this on this day March 21st 2023 is when he submitted this on behalf of Senator Eric Pratt and has the official Senate seal for you all as well so congratulations for all of your hard work [Applause] [Music] [Applause] games as they don't come forward and so they can line up and have their picture taken on our JV squadoo Avery Brett Karis Taylor Charlotte Anderson Dayton Nelson Hattie McGillivray jazlyn Benitez Kate kucera Lyla Kramer Lily Mathis Morgan Nemechek Peyton Johnson Piper Smith Sadie cron Miller Shelby Goddard and Willow blotsky [Applause] pyramids then our Varsity athletes were Stella Goodman Ella Arbok Lindsey Higgins Lauren Domer Carly Copeland Kendall Madsen Kyla knowerts Ella Thorson Kalyn Buckingham

027Stella deleva Lily Corto Lindsey Clark Rhys gugamos summer Shoal Payton sukup Mackenzie Henning Kylie Gerke Sadie Kettle Camp Caitlin klout and Azara Olsen [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] congratulations thanks ladies congratulations again and our head coach who was not able to be here tonight Maddie bills uh Maddie's been with the program for a number of years just her uh first year as the head coach this past year and again continued on with the strong tradition of Excellence that these girls have been showing through so many years thank you we do have one more group of students that we're going to bring in from our winter season these are students who have participated in a number of our activities and have once again experienced a great amount of success as they have continued on Within

028These activities through the regional State national and or International level of competition thank you we're going to start with our Deca program our Deca program had a number of individuals qualify for the state tournament where they did unbelievably well this year from the state tournament we did have three students who all placed high enough and qualified for the international competition to be taking place in Orlando and those three students are Smithy Dada Ben piscanic and mahika candula so congratulations [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this year qualified for the state tournament after advancing through regionals the team members included Abby leech Isabel you Bella ellert Brenna green Paige harvigold Sophia Holloway Karishma Kumar Savi Malone Isabella McDonald Andrew mceachron elody Nemeth and Alex Radcliffe and in addition to that Abby leech was named to the All-State attorney and

029the All-State witness teams as well congratulations to our mock trials [Applause] situation with our knowledgeable and the fact that we actually compete at both the knowledgeable and quiz Bowl level they are different please don't ask me how they are different but I know that they are different and I know that coach Olson would be glad to explain to any of you at any time the differences between the two but it is unique and they do have to actually train and prepare for both knowledgeable and quiz Bowl so the South Suburban Conference recognizes the quiz Bowl in Prior Lake this year finished as the South Suburban Conference champions they Advanced on to Regionals where they finished fourth and they have now since qualified for the state tournament that will be taking place later on this month

030Alex flieger also qualified for the individual player national championship tournament that will be taking place in Chicago and team members of the knowledge and quiz Bowl include Alex flieger Trevor Mong Ava bondhus Ethan figston and Sam gang [Applause] thank you both are Robotics and our speech teams they are not here tonight they will be ones that will actually recognize in the spring because they both have very large competitions still coming up here over the next couple months so if everybody wants to come on up in the front so we can get your picture well all of the all of the students help come on up and as they're doing that I want to make sure that I take time to also recognize their coaches and advisors for each one of these for Deca Jared Jacobs

031and Jenna Kilmer who run that program for mock trial our head coach is talking about Padilla and I believe Timothy Allen was here as well tonight and also then for knowledgeable Brian Olson is our coach for that so congrats [Applause] congratulations congratulations foreign so as we wrap up we just want to just say that we are extremely grateful for the student and fan support at all of our events that we're able to provide for so many students with so many different opportunities and certainly a big thank you to all those who have helped to make this happen our coaches and advisors our teachers and administrators our district office staff all of you our school board members our custodial staff our activities office staff and all of our parents and community members who continue to support

032all of our extra and co-curricular activities here in ISD 719 so thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thank you so much Mr Marshall and and again a big congratulations to all of our student athletes and uh also to the families that were here this evening the support network that you all have is absolutely amazing so congratulations again and uh chair Krause and board we have one more as our commitment to each month that we convene we highlight a school so that you and our community can understand kind of the daily happenings of our school buildings and tonight we have Hamilton Ridge who will be coming up to talk a little bit about their caring and committed conversations and I have to say you know when I go out on our school visits I think

033it was actually on the day you and I were meeting and so if you meet me on a Monday or Friday you're usually going to meet me in a school because those are my commitments and we were able to both chair Crosby and I were able to sneak upstairs to actually participate in the first committed or caring and committed conversation and this is part of the work that we have done around our Equity Department that Mr Oak has been leading and this was an opportunity for our school staff as well as two level individuals to listen to our students speak about the needs that they have as students and I have to say that I I was just absolutely stunned by the level of conversation I believe these were fourth grade students fifth grade students

034who are com fifth grade students yeah fifth grade students that were speaking that day and their ability to articulate what they need as Learners I jokingly said one student was this far away from using the term pedagogy I mean that's how deep and intellectual they were speaking about their needs and I just said that day when Hamilton Ridge comes to present would you mind really unpacking that experience and what the students were saying but also what did the staff learn from that and how does that shift adult practice in our schools because just because they're five or fifth grade doesn't mean that they don't have Solutions and and this this is what I think you all will be hearing about this evening so with that I will call up our Hamilton Ridge Group and principal

035Frederickson I'll turn the floor to you and you can introduce all that are here I will do that is there a way to get this to show our notes we you know we'll do fine with healthy notes we'll do better with them so well thanks for having us Madam chair Dr Thomas board members um we have a group here from Hamilton Ridge two teachers joined us we have Shayna Bates who teaches first grade and Kristen steer who's our Dean and we also have four fifth graders we had a team of about 12 fifth graders when we actually did this and we did do a session with fourth graders as well uh but we invited four fifth graders to come with tonight and we have Andrew Oates and Mason Laurent and Colin ring and Maddie Allen

036and they're actually going to be leading the caring conversation they're going to be acting as the adults you're going to be acting as the students but it doesn't really have to be adults and students we want you to actually go through what that experience is like to have a caring conversation um so we need your participation sitting there silently is not an option okay just just want to make that clear um so our presentation is actually going to be in four parts uh let me back up here can I get this to share technology is wonderful except when you can't get it to work the right way I think it was actually operator error so we're going to have four different sections tonight the first is why are why would we be interested in doing

037caring conversations I want to be totally upfront this we aren't the first school to do carrying the conversations we know other schools have done that so call us copycats or call us whatever you'd like but we felt it was important for our students we'll start with the why um and then Mrs Bates is going to be coming up to talk really what are they just so we understand what it is um you heard Dr Thomas say caring and committed conversations uh we actually just have shorted down to carrying conversations um then the students are going to show you what caring conversations look like so they'll be up with you and they will run the event for you you just need to participate and then uh our Dean Mrs steer will talk about how we've responded

038as a building and how we plan on responding going down the road so why caring conversations so um in the 1950s the Air Force had a problem they had better planes they had really good Pilots but they were getting worse results and they started to blame the pilots it must be the Pilot's problem well it actually wasn't the pilots they were very good Pilots so then they started blaming the technology nope it was really good technology in the 50s thinking about it now maybe make us chuckle it was really good technology at the time well they went on to blame the um blame the flight instructors it must be the teacher's problem that we're getting these worse results it actually ended up being the cockpit it was the cockpit that was the problem and if

039you think about the 1950s we were starting to fly faster than the speed of sound we were Hypersonic and decisions being made in that moment were life and death decisions and we needed a cockpit that worked and people could reach easily because if you're having to reach all the way across in these very timely decisions so what they decided to do was they did research around how can we design the cockpit for the average pilot they took four thousand Pilots they measured 140 different dimensions that might be the distance between their eyes their neck link their arm length their height their weight and they said if we take a the average of 140 things and designed it for this average pilot then it should work for everyone so I didn't put 140 here only put

040a couple of different examples of things they measured and they did this and what they found out when they were all done is how many Pilots do you think could actually fit actually zero not a single pilot fit the average cockpit um it sounded intuitive but it actually was very very much wrong um even if you took just three of those any three of those 140 elements only less than four percent of the pilots actually fit the pot the cockpit then so it was just a completely wrong premise so what they decided to do is look at what as each pilot had a jagen profile so how do we design our cockpit for this Jagged profile one person who's short one person's tall one person has long legs short legs so on and so forth

041and they started to design to the extremes don't design for the average design to the extremes I learned about this actually from a TED Talk by Ted Ted Rose if you if you're familiar with him at all but I actually looked at the research it was fascinating so they had these Jagged profiles and from this research the airport said we need planes that designed to the extremes and all the Playmakers said absolutely not it's too expensive but in the end the air force that are not going to buy planes from you unless you make it to the extremes and that's where we get things like it just we'll see our seats adjustable steering wheels all those things we take for granted were what came out of these experiments well I think our school schools actually

042are a lot of the same thinking you can go into our schools there have been years where schools designed for the average student and if you take a jagged profile of students their background knowledge their interest level their experiences their life situation if you think of a student Jacob profile 20 30 years ago that average student didn't exist just like the average pilot didn't exist so in the last few years of education we've talked about things like personalized learning differentiated learning guided small group instruction to get more of that individualized instruction it's almost like we take it for granted we use that in our classrooms today but we're still not able to tap our talent pool in schools we still have learning gaps we still have kids who aren't succeeding why is that we have

043highly trained teachers we have multiple degrees we've got lots of expertise well let's ask the kids obviously our expertise isn't pulling us let's ask the kids and that's where caring conversation comes out what if we actually ask the kids what if we actually ask the students what do you need what would we learn and how would that inform our instruction that's the why behind what we're doing because each student does have that jagen profile and the needs of Andrew are strong the needs birth Mason are strong but they're different so how do we design the school for both of them so caring conversation that's the why Mrs Bates will talk a bit why or the we'll walk development hearing conversations hi everyone um I am Shayna Bates I teach first grade but I'm lucky enough

044to be able to kind of put together our caring conversations for Hamilton Ridge and then I get to work with the fourth and fifth graders um so I'm gonna Advance this so what are caring conversations what we've talked about that it's to provide a space for student voice about important issues and then the why is to see and hear each other's perspectives so the students get to see and hear each other's perspectives and the adult as well and to build respect understanding and caring and then one way that we've been asked is how did you choose the kids to participate and I met with student or I met with the team of fourth grade teachers and then the team of fifth grade teachers and basically just asked them two questions who would you feel like

045needs a voice and who do you feel like will be an active participator and a leader in the classroom and they all submitted some names and we asked for their participation and got parent permission as well um oh so the design of caring conversations is the beginning is an educational piece so we give a little bit of background knowledge to the kiddos then we have a group discussion about that background knowledge and then we wrap up and um in our situation we didn't do three truths we just did one truth for everyone to come around and say something at the end um and then so our topic and questions for the first Hamilton Ridge carrying conversations were base built on our hopes and dreams for Hamilton Ridge Hamilton Ridge is a new school we started

046during covid and we've never really been able to come together as a community as much and so we really wanted to talk to our students especially our fifth graders about what are your hopes and dreams for Hamilton Ridge and we asked these four questions why should kids go to school what do you like best about our school right now what is one thing you hope for our school and then do you see any roadblocks to your hopes and in their board packet you'll see that we included some of the answers we I just kind of went through Mr Frederickson took amazing notes and he wrote down everything that was said and I went through and summarized it and just took a couple out I'll let you read through that on your own time in the

047interest of time but um you'll notice that there's a lot of themes that come out of it but why should kids go to school this is my favorite why what do you like best about our school and the first thing that both fourth and fifth graders brought up were teachers and staff it was that was a really neat thing to see and then you'll notice I highlighted one in purple I teach first grade so I kind of think it's a little bit like me too but um someone said I don't know who it was over here but they said um I don't know how kindergarten teachers can do it and that was just so fun to hear um and then they also talked about the design of our school at Hamilton Ridge we have a

048unique design and so it was neat to hear from our students the pros and cons and some and they even that was one of the best things I think about our caring conversations was are students brought up problems and in the same breath they brought up solutions that was probably the best part of the whole conversation then what is one thing you hope for our school they talked about the physical hopes they talked about the curriculum hopes and you'll notice that a couple things in the curriculum hopes will be presented on later when Mrs Moulton comes up and talks about our math curriculum which is we didn't even plan that I promise um and then what is that's this is actually question four but what is one thing you hope for our school um and

049then sorry oh and then what are sorry what are the Roblox to your hopes and um you'll see when Mrs steer comes up to talk more about like what we took from this and then are proactively working towards some of these problems but so now our students are going to lead you through what our caring conversations actually looks like well you saw the timetable about 10 minutes of introduction half an hour of talking we know you guys do a lot so we won't make you follow the full timetable we will ask you though to be fully participants so the students are going to be coming up and when we did this the adults were the listeners and we actually were signs it was clear we were there to listen uh we didn't really share our

050opinions we may have asked Clarity clarifying questions they're going to come up in that listening mode but they're also going to be leading it through we want to hear your ideas so they're going to come up they're going to grab a chair and they're actually going to sneak in somewhere so if you guys make room for them go ahead grab a chair slide in Our Kind board members will make space for you this is just how we did it we sat around a big table adults mixed in with the students [Applause] and I will oh wait a moment to everyone settled thanks for making space we weren't sure would work we would try to before the meeting out all right and I will pass it off to Andrew who's going to start us out where's

051we're starting with Norms uh so people are informed of how to treat others in tonight's discussion the Norms help people not feel sad or put down because what they said wasn't considered important here are the Norms we'll use tonight after I read them I'll ask you to agree to them be kind to each other ask questions to better understand each other's perspectives understand that your experiences have shaped your perspective and beliefs understand that other people's experiences have shaped their perspectives and beliefs keep names out of the discussion if you've had a chance to share see if someone else would like to share before going again honor each other by not sharing what others said are there any questions I can answer about the norms can you all agree to the Norms yes I'm wearing this

052listening tag to indicate that we are here to listen thank you I'm now going to ask two other listeners Colin Mason to start our conversation thanks Andrew yeah I don't know what do we do next we'll say so on our mic or just to you do we talk as a group or do we just say something I think oh as a group well as a group oh okay okay I think kids should go to school so that you can receive an education to pursue your dreams whatever that whatever that means for you Mission which we repeat a lot but it essentially is saying the same thing to reach your full potential and that we provide an Avenue to do that make new friends and make new friends that aren't like you and have different perspectives

053and different ideas to share because that's how we learn from each other learn about all the great things that this world has to offer and that they're all right there waiting for you to grasp them school provides lots of opportunities to things that you would never be um you would never have the experience to try or to learn so it opens your mind to possibilities I think school develops skills that you need to become successful in the future and also to kind of join different clubs and meet new people as well to get involved that people haven't talked about is to learn what your passions are to learn what really make and love and be able to experiment well because it gives you some Purpose with your days um when you said that it's to

054help kids learn um um we have a new math system that's gonna happen next year because stuff that we have in school isn't relevant as much so when you're saying help kids get to their full potential um it's kind of confusing because there are things in our school that aren't relevant to help kids grow in the future this is the young man by the way and I will say Andrew you are you are absolutely right I think even in 2023 um that there are things that are in school systems not just ours but probably across the country that aren't meeting the needs of all of our kids and that's our responsibility as adults to understand and listen and learn from you all so that we can modify and adjust because that's also what you learn

055some of these skills in schools is that learning isn't static it doesn't you don't learn something one day you never have to re go back to it learning is constantly happening and just because we're adults doesn't mean we know everything so we get to go back and redo some things sometimes so that's a very good point foreign oh I I didn't I can add my last comment so um I would just say I think one of the reasons why kids go to schools is to learn how to understand each other as human beings and learn what makes us different and special and better understand each other as we go out into society and learn how to work with each other our next question is what do you look best about our schools and I'm gonna

056go first since I went last it's hard to go last take all the good ideas so um I would say one well there's so many things that I love about our schools but I think one of the things that makes Prior Lake Savage so special are the people within our schools our teachers and our staff and just how much passion we have they have for our district so I'm constantly impressed by how many things we offer our students I have a student that graduated last year and I have a sophomore in the high school and I feel like every year I learn about new offerings and new things and I just that impresses me they're evolving yes yes they are I think what I like best is you guys maybe like what I think is

057how like the teachers make like like learning like really fun and stuff so the kids would enjoy it I like that too I like the way that they have been evolving with um activities like this that involve learning in your everyday activities and you get to see the world um through actual action and involvement uh getting outside and living and breathing what you've learned and then with each other that's something that didn't exist when I was in school and I've gone down that path in such a productive I like how the district has created spaces and opportunities for where everybody can belong themselves explore what that even means to be yourself and kind of allow you to go down that path or that path Less Traveled or not yet traveled because money is different you

058don't have to go down the same path in spaces that are open and allowing that to happen that's it's a beautiful thing what's one thing you of course I have my board hat on but I hope we have the resources to accomplish all the things we want to for our students so they get everything they need to be successful and I would just say um my hope is that every student comes to school and feels safe respected and has the resources available to help them to reach their dreams and potentials My Hope for our schools is that we continue to grow aspiring teachers and educators build the buildings energetic Minds like yourselves um I hope for all students and teachers at our school to kind of have open minds and perspectives when listening to discovering

059on ideas and listening to different opinions the question is hopes for our schools or for all schools I'm not going to be able to continue I think some of the roadblocks could be what we kind of just talked about too the same as our hopes hope that there's um open-mindedness and different perspectives that teach us all something because we can all learn from those things I'd say the one roadblock is our inability to Envision and embrace what is possible for our students and for ourselves as adults that would be a huge robot I would agree I think as adults we get we get opinions you know when we get older we get kind of stuck in our opinions that's why I love being around people kids like you see all the possibilities and make me

060less firm in my opinions and more open-minded about the possibilities so thank you for coming actually yeah Mason you want to finish your part that is all of our questions thank you for answering our ideas and questions Maddie has one last step for us thanks Mason we appreciated hearing all your hopes and dreams this last step tonight is to hear three truths from our conversation would someone like to start by sharing one truth they heard tonight open minds I heard kids are evolving [Laughter] thank you for your hard work and Time Mrs steer will now share how Hamilton Ridge has responded to our school's caring conversation thank you Maddie I get to share how have we responded I get the fun part we met after this and we looked at what could be an easy

061quick fix and there are many that will take some time to plan and solve the first thing we did is we shared our conversations with our staff at SEL meetings at built meetings and then at our staff meeting um one one concern that came up with a lot of our students was bus Behavior so Mr Fredrickson and I met individually with each bus for about a half an hour and we invited the bus drivers in and they loved that they were very appreciative and we went over expectations with the students there and the drivers another concern that came up is we don't have enough playground equipment at Hamilton Ridge so we are looking at buying some more playground equipment for our playground we also have a group of 20 fifth grade students that are Hamilton

062Ridge Rangers and they lead in our school by helping in other classrooms reading with younger students and we meet once a month so I get an opportunity you know to hear their concerns more we also involve students in all school meetings every month and we're getting Bridges next fall and as you've heard our students are wanting new more engaging and relevant math students attended the district one back when was that Mrs in March and then they are attending another one this spring and I think what we saw overall is we are reminded that student voice is powerful and student voice is impactful and we need to provide them time so that we can listen I'll bring up Mr Frederickson again well that's the caring conversation thank you give yourselves a hand for participating [Applause] chairs

063back here and turn in your listening signs and board is there any questions that you would have of us of our process or anything that that we shared tonight uh I can I don't have an answer that but if that's what you'd like for sure yeah you know we uh I would say hopes and dreams I don't mean to at all diminish the importance of listening to hopes and dreams but we also want to start carrying conversations with something that's a little more accessible we also want to go a little bit deeper into some of those conversations as well so as students feel more comfortable you can ask a bit more deeper level questions so uh I'm guessing you will hear more of our work principal Frederickson well I'm sorry I wonder when I previewed

064the presentation at the beginning I was really confused by the flight no I know now I know what's it called Jagged profile got it if I can't talk in analogies I can barely talk so Fredericks and I have some certificates if we can have the students and staff come back forward we'll have you come forward for a group picture and I'll hand these to you and you can distribute thank you um okay okay we are on consent agenda making sure I'm not out of order here and um so I need a motion to approve the consent agenda please director Atkinson in the second bye director Olstead pick someone and um tonight's consent agenda while consent agenda items are considered to be routine in nature and will be enacted by one motion there will be no

065separate discussion of these items unless a board member or citizens or requests in which event the item will be removed as a consent agenda item and addressed this includes the financials so the bank reconciliation statement from February it does not include March that will come um at the next meeting due to spring break it also includes the approval of school board minutes from our board professional development session our meeting in March on our study session in March it includes Personnel items candidates for employment resignations terminations non-renewals and that is all this is not a roll call sorry all in favor that passes 7-0 [Applause] um now we will move on to the resolution for acceptance of gifts can I get a motion to accept these gifts homemade by director bullion and a second second by

066director Velasquez and tonight's gifts are um we have a few so Westwood PTC for second grade field trip books and book bags for Westwood that was a little over a thousand Westwood PTC 4300 shed to house outside equipment um actually 4 329 there was an anonymous donation for just over 1600 for music equipment and supplies for Jeffers pond uh Alan and Catherine Jones with a fifty dollar uh donation for to combat food and securities district-wide as well as plate uh nine hundred three dollars fifteen cents for to combat food insecurities at Hidden Oaks Middle School and lastly I think it's Spiker and Company five hundred dollars to combat food insecurity Hidden Oaks Middle School all in favor sorry it's a roll call I tractor Atkinson aye aye uh last quiz I llian I that's a

0677-0 thank you we did Linker Pride so we have no unfinished business nope sorry Personnel items um the first is a district retirement and we need to do director Herman you're listed here first we'll do a motion to accept the retirement of Nancy bowler French teacher at Twin Oaks Middle School and other retirees in the list or just sorry okay I'm sorry so a motion to accept I mean by director Olstead and a second second hi director Velazquez any questions the district retirement celebration on Thursday May 18th along with many of our other retirees will be happening um all in favor hi opposed that passes 7-0 next we have a health insurance update on our health and dental rates we will be looking for a motion to approve you have a motion to approve so

068I mean I director Olstead and a second second by director Atkinson um and director Herman is here to share with us any questions or discussion on that thank you director Crosby members of the board Dr Thomas um tonight we're bringing forward every other year we go through what's called a hit a process on our medical and dental insurance um for sorry for our medical insurance this year we knew we had to make a change we were with preferred one who was bought out by UMR so we knew there was going to be a significant change in Vendor that added to the head of process so after a very thorough review of the RFP bids with the insurance committee we are bringing forward the recommendation to move forward with UMR which is a division of United

069Healthcare based on a review of our claims and data including our existing fund balance in the self-funded program we are recommending an increase of two percent to our premiums for the next school year that will continue to maintain a healthy fund balance which is an important step in achieving consistent sustainable premiums so we avoid any drastic increases to premiums for the district or our employees in the future also we're bringing forward a recommendation for a rate freeze for our Dental based on our claims and our existing extremely healthy fund balance there we are recommending that we hold a rate freeze for them and we're remaining with Delta Dental they are not part of the RFP process this year I'll put any questions um hi Emily I assume that the insurance committee Etc has reviewed this

070was there any significant change of the formulary for the PBM after moving to United Health Group so part of the the overall process to answer your first question is we do have monthly meetings during the school year with the insurance committee on the insurance committee is comprised of multiple employee group representations throughout the district that they receive anal analytics from our broker one digital on the status of our medical claims and the our Dental claims and then we also look at other offerings when they're up like life insurance different things like that but the main focus is health insurance and dental as part of the Hitta process we had three that brought forward their bids and two of them allowed us to have a carve out for our Pharmacy benefits with proact one of them

071did not UMR does does allow that carve out that allows us to stay with proact and continue to take advantage of some programs that are available through that for savings so we're going to be using proact and not uhg's internal uh PBM that is accurate we will be staying with proact as the pharmacy benefit manager okay great thank you I had sent you some questions earlier today and I appreciate you getting back to me I I can support this um and as we move forward just my larger questions and concern which I shared with you is around um any commission going to brokerage or stop loss commission or making sure we're getting the pharmacy rebates and our and our Brokers or the providers aren't so those are probably things the committee is very aware of

072and working on but I will continue to be asking those questions as we move forward of course so um we did confirm that our broker a PBM and health insurance do not have any Commission on our rebates 100 of those rebates do go back to the plan our broker does not have any commission based formula in our contract with them it's a flat forty thousand dollar fee um and there's no commission going to UMR either since it is a true Pharmacy carve out UMR does not have any Revenue attached to the pharmacy benefit thank you foreign thank you thank you director Herman okay all in favor of approving the health insurance rate and dental insurance rate and going with UMR when compassing all in favor aye okay opposed seven zero that passes um we have

073no unfinished business that leads us to new business which will begin with our annual stakeholder survey results um studor is here to present and Dr Thomas will introduce thank you chair Crosby and board of directors this evening we have director zumbush and Dr Casey uh I'll just we call her Dr Casey and I'll let her share her last name sorry you can never get it um uh to present the the findings and we are working with a student education this is a contract that was secured last spring that we actually began this past fall as an administrative team both with our senior cabinet as well as our learning leaders on a lot of leadership development work and we've been very impressed with our engagement relationship with student education and have leveraged them to really give

074Baseline assessments on how we as a central office are performing in in support of our schools and as we were looking at our annual student survey one of the challenges that we had in the past is that we were not able to Norm the result results against a national cohort if you will and so our partnership with studor is allowing us to get a more robust approach and a national normed approach that we can understand how we can compare to other like school districts across the country and there's the technical aspects as well as the qualitative aspects that both of them will speak to this evening so with that I will turn it over to Dr Casey first and then uh uh let the conversation go from there perfect thank you Dr Thomas and thank

075you board of education for having me here this evening my name is Casey blahoviak you can see why most people refer to me as Dr Casey or Casey B um and so I've had the absolute privilege and honor to support your District as a leader coach representing studor education we're a National Education firm that's based in Pensacola Florida there's about 20 coaches like myself who get to work with K-12 higher education non-profit and governmental organizations across the country in the areas of leadership development specifically as it relates to what we call organizational Excellence so districts that have really committed to every day getting better and better for those that they serve specifically in the areas of strategy and culture and I can share with you it's been an absolute joy to work with the team

076here I think this is my third or fourth visit to Prior Lake and just seeing how the team has committed as Leaders to growing and developing themselves into this work and to be better for those that they serve every single day has just been an absolute joy to partner alongside them um so we're here tonight and I'm going to invite director zumbrush to join me up here she's going to be doing the presentation by and large for you but I'm going to be here to provide any background or logistical knowledge should you have questions as it relates to the methodology of the survey or any of the results that we're sharing here this evening thank you director Cosby chair Cosby Dr Thomas members of the board thank you I wanted to start off by saying

077this is kind of hot off the press this is the very initial presentation of findings this is not the end by any means we have a lot more to process and a lot more to analyze we do have over 6 000 open-ended comments between all of the different surveys and questions that we will need to comb through over time and have a process for looking through all of that so just to level set a little bit this is our first initial district-wide look at this information we also will be rolling this out at a department and a school level and there will be a lot of additional processing that goes on during that uh that stage of the process so um just to kind of uh let you know that this is the beginning of

078multiple months of us kind of looking at this information and determining what it means this is also our first time doing this survey through Suter so there's a lot of kind of resetting and baselining and figuring out how to use and analyze a brand new survey as Dr Casey mentioned previously we had our um and Dr Thomas we administered our survey internally there was a couple of reasons why we switched that Administration and that was already kind of mentioned that we were looking for something that was normed and looking for something that had some support for us as a as a thin staff some expertise to be brought in so that we can have some additional support on that there are some similarities between our previous surveys and this survey there are some major differences

079so in a lot of ways this is kind of a reset and a baseline for future years to come we really want to make sure that schools and leaders and individuals dig into this information and use this information in school planning because that's how we get people to buy into survey processes and continuous Improvement processes over time as if they see how their information is then used for improvement purposes the surveys were administered by student education responses were Anonymous we also translated the surveys into our five major other languages other than English Spanish Russian Cambodian Vietnamese and Somali parents caregivers and employees were asked a number of open-ended questions and those 6 000 comments are between those two surveys and those three questions there's 6 000 comments so a lot of weeding through that to

080see what are the themes and trends that we can glean from that and how can we use that for our Improvement purposes the survey was open for three weeks in February and the purpose of that timeline was so that we could have the results at this time of year so we could have time to process them and use them in our Improvement processes going into the summer the student experience survey was to gain insights into students experiences of how effectively their teachers School environment and school leaders contribute to their opportunity to engage in successful learning at school this was administered at a building level so principals really chose the time and the day and the method that was best for their building and parents were given an option to opt out of the survey for

081the student experience surveys 3734 students took the survey we'll be talking about mean scores the scale was one to five so one being strongly disagree then disagree a neutral category at three and then agree and strongly agree so that would be a five and so an average of 3.86 is kind of above neutral and slightly you know below that agree level somewhere in that range and then studer also gives us responses of the top box so the percentage of respondents that responded in the highest or strongly agree category so we have about a third of our students in that top box there these are the mean uh responses by item there's going to be some green dots and some yellow dots the green dots are identified as areas of strength and the yellow dots areas

082that we want to look into for continuous Improvement so I believe my learning is important my school was one of the higher ones for students and then here the two lower ones in this was I set learning goals to track my PR and track my progress and then I feel students are nice or show respect to each other at my school so those are items that we'll dig into a little bit more in terms of that that areas for improvement also in the yellow is I like going to my school each day and then some of the positive or high-end ones I feel my family is treated nicely or with respect at my school and I have opportunities to be successful at my school so overall the average of all those is that 3.86 that

083we saw a studor also gives us an NPS which is a net promoter score this is it can be a little confusing but it's a scale from negative 100 to positive 100. anything in the negative range is something that would be a detractor or something that we would be really concerned about and something we would need to address and then the positive from 0 to 100 is broken out into three different categories and so this gives us kind of a sense of where we land in terms of that range here so for the students we got a 1.19 so a little bit more positive than zero and but knowing that there is area for growth and opportunity there was anything else about the next one sure I'll just I'll offer that this is typically a

084score that you would see most often in other Industries outside of education so it's an emerging survey that education organizations are starting to look at typically when you see a scale on 100 we're so used to looking at 100 thinking well where would average be a 50 or a 78 or a 79 like a c the net promoter score is very different so when you're looking at that number I'd ask you to really think about you want to see any score in the positive there as being a representation that your organization has more supporters and promoters than what might be considered distractors or detractors excuse me so anyone who reported on this survey a score of zero to six would be considered a detractor they may not be displaying promotion type language about your organization

085to others in their Network scores of nine or ten as responses are seen typically in this type of a survey as individuals who are out just saying Prior Lake Savage is the best place for my children to be for students to report that they want to be for staff to report that it's a great place for them to work so you're really looking again for that positive score knowing that you're moving in the right direction there so just wanted to offer that a little bit of clarity thank you and I think we'll have more context to that later in the spring when we have that education Norm data we also had the parent caregiver experience survey these are the communication strategies that we use to promote it really worked hard and on different modalities to

086make sure that families were aware of this opportunity we had 2799 parents or caregivers give feedback the district overall mean was 3.87 and similarly about a third were in that top box category um I won't go line by line just again for sake of time but here you can see green dots means the higher scores yellows are the ones that we want to take a look at for areas of improvement and here I believe there is um an error in this here um I believe that one was 16. correct yep so just call in your attention to a small transfer error that was on my end you'll notice the first number under your results is a repeat of the student number and so that was a transfer error on my end parents and caregivers are

087asked two different questions as it relates to the net promoter score the first question is listed on the bottom that you see on the slide there so first asking them How likely are they to recommend their child's school so their direct connection with the organization you see a strong score there of an 18.36 the second question that parents and caregivers have asks them to How likely are they to recommend the organization so meaning the district as a whole and the net promoter score at that point was a 16.57 it is not uncommon as folks respond to layers of organization that they are less close to or familiar to to see that score shift a little bit so most often you will see those scores more positive for parts of an organization families connecting to their

088school members of your team connecting to their school versus the organization so just a little why of that change thanks Jenny thank you and then we had our employee experience survey slightly different communication strategy but again really looking to get as many respondents as we can for the employee experience survey we had 798 employees fill out the survey the overall mean was 3.68 and 20 percent of response choices were in that top box so you can see here the employee experience survey is a little bit lower as compared to the student and parent caregiver survey and then again the the kind of top and the bottom items you can see in the packet and look at that in more detail here there's two different subcategories of this net promoter score How likely are you to

089recommend the organization is that 1.13 and like Dr Casey said that immediate work environment has a more positive response than the organization as a whole at the 9.9 so still in the positive and in the the good performance opportunity for improvement category so the next steps is Casey's staying here and will be with us in the morning for learning leaders we are going to preface this with the principles the school leaders will get their school level reports and all the details of their school soon afterwards within the week or so and then really looking to engage with learning leaders on how to process all that information what does that mean for their school what does that mean for their school Improvement planning process and then really looking to launch That Into Summer planning and build

090on for next year so that's uh it's going to take again time to roll this out throughout the course of the spring really have the buildings understand the Departments that have large enough groups they'll get their reports as well and for people to really dig in and interact with their data we'll also be going to individual schools to have meetings to talk through anything that principals would like to talk through with us so that's our rollout process it will last a couple months so we will continue to uncover findings and themes as we go through the roll-up process I have a couple quick questions in the student category where there was 3 700 responses and then you said students were allowed to opt out the rest stop out so the rest opt out no it

091doesn't I mean yeah that would have been a um like a differences in school administration and how they okay so we couldn't assume that because they didn't take it they opted out we could just no we didn't have that we know who I mean a number of who of families to opted out for their kids do we know that um I don't have a number in front of me but it would be fun oh um we had uh three students uh parents opt out formally opt out to their student um the only thing I can think of that would be different from the previous year in terms of students who took the survey is last year it was kind of in the midst of MCA testing so there could have been from building to building

092just not enough time for some classrooms to take it that's my best guess the other one I was and under the employee where it said 1.13 that was um it says more sorry I had to get back to it but it said more distractors at a 1.13 oh sure yep um where one point one nine or six was not in that thing yep so that that 1.13 is considered good performance so it's the number is accurate and that was just transferring down it should say good performance underneath there yeah thank you for correcting that appreciate it foreign just given the results that are received do you also does studer give recommendations on how to um or what kind of activities to improve in all of the areas or is that something as a district we

093work together um District specific yeah great question so my purpose for being on site not only to meet with you tonight and be able to answer questions is also to work on what we call a survey rollout process with your learning leaders team tomorrow so I had the great privilege of working on a similar rollout process with the district leaders earlier this year and we'll be modeling that same experience for the learning leaders tomorrow where they'll be looking more deeply at their individual results and connecting with members of their staff members of their student population members of their parents to understand why are our highest three items our highest three what are those things that are really working that we should continue and then identifying anywhere between one and three opportunities and just like you

094heard from your great students here earlier tonight right going to those closest to the work to ask them if you were to take this survey again and give us a strong we agree what would be different and leaders are then able to make some commitments based on that information that they capture does that help yeah I think when I was going through going through the packet um just uh I like the fact that you said one to three areas I had just written a thing um by Jim Collins he is a researcher and author of the book good to great and built to last and he says if you have more than three priorities you don't have any for every major to-do list you should also have a corresponding item that you will stop doing

095and when looking at the teachers um you know the the response from the teachers it's you know our heart obviously is for the teachers and we want them to feel supported and so however we can um you know increase that level or increase the results and how they feel I guess really if I may respond to some of that to director Boolean I'll just start with their Jim Collins quote as well uh the data as I've said doesn't necessarily give you answers it helps you ask better questions and I think a fair question is what will come off the plate um and I think that's that's a critical component that a good strategic plan a good survey like this should give you permission of what not to do um and ask ourselves because if we're

096doing it and it's not getting the results that we like why do we keep doing it so I want to just Echo that from Jim Collins absolutely true secondly um you know partnering with studer they don't have you know the magic solution they do have some case scenarios or examples that they can draw upon from other districts across the country to say hey when I was working with the district they had a similar score this is something that they were considering so there's some of that consulted consultation that can be provided but more so what Dr Casey was talking about and this is something that we've engaged with as a senior team is this whole notion of rounding and co-interpretation where we collectively make meaning of this data numbers are numbers but the story behind

097the numbers is where the solutions lie and so the conversations that we as a senior team have and that our schools and they're building instructional leadership teams and as Dr Casey said the mouth of our students we will interpret this at a school level to really understand what this data is telling us to have those joint Solutions because if if I mandate do X well I'm not at that site right but the staff and the students and the families that are there they they know that better they will be able to help come up with Solutions we'll facilitate that process for them but that's where the solutions are so it's kind of a both hand process I just want to add that to your comments thank you to that end actually so when you're reviewing

098with the learning leaders can you break this down by building or by school so that we can really kind of Dig Down deepen that and absolutely yep that's exactly what we provided to each of those leaders we will give them the same overview that you were given here so that they have a sense of as an organization whereas Prior Lake Savage area schools and then they'll be able to drill down with their individual results in a curious um thank you and um curious so the the the families and the staff were given open-ended questions so I'm I'm just curious in your opinion um why no open-ended questions from students so a couple of things primarily there's one survey that's given to all students K-12 as you determine within your system is age appropriate and so

099some students obviously age-wise wouldn't be able to write in comments there it just it has been something we've not done traditionally and is just based on the fact that not all students would be age appropriate to write in comments on there okay thank you you're welcome um so I understand this is hot off the press and um you know appreciate you putting this all together will you be coming back to give another presentation that zeroes in more on like the way we as parents answered it was there was one survey if you had students in high school versus if you had students in middle school or versus an elementary school and I would I know for myself personally my answers were different from the Middle School experience versus the high school experience so will you

100be coming back to provide that level of data for our community as well so I'll be working with Dr Thomas and his team and certainly at as his whatever support he would direct and for you I'd be happy to do that as Dr Thomas sees fit yeah and I'll just share if I can just respond to that so A couple of things one actually going back to what director Olstead was asking if you can Envision the process of a principal receiving their data tomorrow if I'm a principal I'm going back to my building instructional leadership team I'm going back to my ptc's and I'm unpacking all this data to really answer kind of like in a 5y exercise of getting to the root issue that we want to address um to dovetail off director Atkinson's

101question I would say those results are going to be best shared at the local level so what it means to you at the middle school level for your middle school student or your high school student or your Elementary student your best responses are going to come directly from the source there we will aggregate up themes for levels that will help guide district-wide Improvement so we might say we heard this generally speaking from our high school we heard this generally from our middle school campuses a little bit more diverse in terms of numbers at our elementary so we say this is our elementary kind of themes that we've heard so as a district level we now know hey this is where we need to put resources at the elementary based upon that feedback and and that's

102how we would kind of aggregate that back up to us but at that more granular granular level of Interest particularly those families and and folks who have kids in our system your school will be your best place to get that granular what is happening at my specific level and your specific school for that matter so so if I understand that correctly so will we be having another discussion as a board in a study session or whatever to further dive deeper into these results so that we can understand as a board where we need to focus our efforts yeah we'll be coming back after we've reviewed this data that will be coming back with aggregate forms of the data to say based upon our data mining and conversations with our principals and things of that nature

103here's the information you'll get more of that executive level presentation to say based upon what you saw in the totality here are the three things that we are going to recommend that we do as a district yep grounded in this total data set and then again I you know as you all have interest we can you know talk with you all you know individually as well if there's areas that you know you're intrigued by and we can definitely answer some of those areas too okay I'm gonna add under that so what I'm hearing you say is like in the elementary level the each Elementary building could have different School Improvement plans and it's going to be driven by the data that they got to look at but if we looked at it all we would

104not know the culture of that building specifically right though I mean you could have tons of strategies and actions out there okay that's what the individual School Improvement plans currently are when we report back to you for example we like when we do our quarter leads to you we're giving you aggregate information we're not going to give you you know hundreds of action steps that are happening in the schools we're going to give you that executive uh reading of here are the big themes that we have seen by level now I I was not here last year when you had your previous student surveys that were administered and how you use them but that's typically how I have been accustomed to Bringing data back when you have this district-wide we have to analyze that and

105then come to you with the big themes um and again we certainly are disaggregating you know by student levels even grade levels at the school level but we won't get to that level of detail here I'm curious how the um realizing uh Dr Casey you weren't part of this last year for the surveys but I'm curious how the response rates compared um even in general terms how they for each of the three sure and I'm going to see if maybe Christy has some thank you on that for you yeah so it was um pretty much spot on the same almost um with uh families and our staff um within like a percentage point so that one difference was with students we had a larger student participation rate this year compared to last year and can

106I ask are there are there overall themes questions that were similar that you can compare data I know obviously we're switching companies but were there any key takeaways from that that you could share as how we compared to last year versus this year so I I can share briefly and then certainly want to invite your team up um I know that we had done some conversation and looking at your previous survey my recommendation would be to consider this year as a baseline As you move forward um you know the team may be able to disaggregate some particular numbers they do have an analysis that I created around similar item types that would continue but the my recommendation would be to consider this year as a baseline but certainly would defer to any other information the

107team might want to share yeah I think one of the the reasons why we wanted to switch gears a little bit too is because we had such a long survey it was really getting longer and longer every year and it was changing every year so this way it's a little bit more condensed and as Casey said that this gives us some nice Baseline data that's something that's been really valuable when we do our community surveys our phone surveys with more sutherman and then we've we've got this large Bank of data that goes years back so it's really interesting to see I had a question several questions actually but I'm going to start with the comments you said there were 6 000 comments yeah I just did a quick calculation because I um there was three

108questions for the parent caregivers and there was three questions for the staff and so there was about um for the caregivers I believe about 1500 responses per question and then for the staff it was about 700-ish responses per so by yeah so these are open comments open comments yeah so it's 6 000 lines of comments okay ask answering three questions on two surveys okay is there do you guys have the data yet on how many individuals actually filled that out or is that somebody could have filled out all three of them and somebody not at all I'm trying to understand the level of Engagement because I from past um we haven't seen a lot of open comments and I'm not sure they were always offered but it I'm wondering if this is a positive or

109an average or a below average sign for engagement yeah so I can offer just a perspective nationally on what we're seeing from Partners um I think coming out of the experience in education for the past couple of years I can say the partners that I've been working with have been working with quite an amount of comments that are coming in individuals aren't required when they complete the survey to fill in comments but we are seeing an uptick in in comments as the surveys are coming in I can't give you a quantitative amount but I can say that a number of partners that I'm working with right now that have been using the survey for a number of years have seen more comments come in this year for whatever anecdotal reason um it's not uncommon and

110I would also say if your previous survey did not include open-ended comments if that hasn't been available before it's also not uncommon to see a large number come in on the first time as well so a couple different things to consider there because we didn't did we before yeah we have had open-ended questions in the past sometimes we've had a few and sometimes we've had as few as one but that's been another thing that's been hard for us to kind of weed through them all so is there a system for going through the comments um like kind of categorizing them and does it have to be done by an individual staff member or is there kind of a that us maybe a magic software that can kind of grasp there's there's tons of software out

111there that we can quantify all the qualitative data and bracket it by parent and child themes I should say kind of uh kind of major and minor themes and then we can also then share that on an aggregate code again we're not gonna go through 6 000 comments um we have software that will do that and then we can bracket it to say okay here are the five categories that can that continually come up um that the software will automatically place them into and then from there again that helps with our district Improvement plan um and even at a school level it can give you context around hey what's going on here well now you've got this parent theme that you can marry with this quantitative number to say ah there's the correlation that's where

112we're going to put our resources yeah and Dr Thomas if I might build on that the place that we coach teams to start is with the quantitative numbers so where are your celebrations where are your opportunities and what context can the comment offer you around those particular areas because you're hearing there's a large number of those to go through and so how can we really help focus our efforts right by back to the great Jim Collins where do we need to put limited resources and time really using comments to only help us understand the quantitative piece and comments that are helpful and productive and in understanding something deeper there as opposed to maybe chasing a thread of a small pot pocket of comments that isn't connected to a quantitative number so that's some of the

113coaching that I do with the teams as we start helping leaders dig into that so um you know one of the things that struck me was first of all is is the the items in the survey were broad obviously on purpose um you know sometimes when you go through those comments and you compare the Lexicon used in the comments sometimes they can inform and create a more specific question so you're actually coming down to something but at the same time you lose the Cadence of the comparison year over year I mean since this is a baseline year um are has that been considered of the learning uh of the the value of this so the learning in terms of your district and the team and how folks will continue to just better understand those items

114on future surveys right but also the learning of how to keep the the comparison you're over here if we're going to use as a baseline while maybe improving the language so it's a little bit more impactful so everyone's interpreting the the the question or the statement the same way I mean it you know statistically that's hard to do and I wasn't sure if that's part of the plan yeah so I can tell you our organization did go through a refresh of our item analysis for this year so the items that are on the survey that your community completed this is our first year using those particular items so they're very closely linked to survey items that we've used for over a decade but hearing from our partners around similar pieces we did make some small

115changes to how those items read each of those 15 or 20 items on the survey so our organization will certainly capture feedback from our partners if they there's questions that just don't seem to resonate well but because that National comparison is really important to many of our partners like I've heard Dr Thomas talk about it is really important that those stay static across all of our partners so that this late this spring that information can be provided to the district leaders here so it's a push pull it's a little bit of attention less personalization but more National comparison um I have one more question I don't want to hog it um you know one of the things that um that I personally am concerned about is again going back to that engagement because the surveys

116only as good as the largest population you can actually get to answer it and when I look at 27 or 2800 uh parents um considering the the size of our school and the size of our community Etc um do you is is that typical or can't do are there tools we can use to actually improve the surveys participation rate that's a great question and it may very well be one that the leaders dig into when they start to look at their individual results when they're looking at their parent population and the number of responses that may very well be a critical learning that they want to bring to one of their parent groups and talk about what's a better way for us to do this in the future and a goal might be to increase

117the number of responses next year that might very well be something that certain buildings or departments look at because that's I I you know that's something to consider as you look at the results um do we know um in not meant to put you on the spot but given the fact that we did do the survey in a couple of different languages um the top five anyway Beyond English do we know if we had what's considered I mean I don't know what's considered good um for this but response rate to the people who responded to those different languages that information is available how many surveys were accessed in different languages I don't have it on the tip of my my fingers but that could be information that may be useful particularly to those that support

118your English Learners in the community we can make sure that the district gets access to those uh in Cambodia currently um he might be able to speak to this a little bit more but a lot of these languages uh he did not feel would have an increased response rate by just sending it electronically and translated so he took paper copies of the translated survey to the family community nights and sat with them while they took the survey and then we entered that data into the survey system so um I think you know activities like that are what is going to increase our engagement by having that personalized approach to different communities and I think we found that to be pretty successful and I'm not sure we would have gotten any of those responses if we

119hadn't done that so I also think that the best way to increase response rates is to show that we're doing things as a result of the information and um just uh I think people don't like taking surveys if they don't think anything happens with the information and so just really following through on those action steps I think after year one and just showing that there are tangible things that happened as a result that is what's going to increase the response rates but definitely open to multiple modes of collecting the information through you know if schools have ideas on how to engage their families we would definitely be very interested in leveraging those moving forward thank you and I just have one more question about the the minus 100 score to the positive 100 score and

120so am I understanding it that like the negative 100 is like the worst worst store you could get and the positive 100 is the best best score you could get yes so us being at a one is like a 50 yes so like you're right at that the if you think of it like a teeter-totter is oftentimes like I try to think about net promoter score and you want it to be tipping up to the positive that means you have more promoters in your community they've responded with a higher number there than folks that might be on the lower end of that scale it's it's an in right because we think well it needs to be 50 or 75 on a scale of 100 but it's a really wide range yeah great question it's a

121scale of 200 really Dr blockowiak you mentioned that earlier on that um this instrument or even the net promoter score is being adopted more widely in education systems and that your organization has an opportunity to partner with a lot of these different uh school systems I wonder if there will be a possibility to utilize some of that information for benchmarking purposes so that we can see what's the response rate like and how how are they engaging versus us so that we have some of those opportunities to learn a little bit more about maybe what we can do differently do better or where we are really excelling yeah absolutely and so that benchmarking will come this spring on net promoter scores as well as the individual item numbers and means for all of the surveys so

122your District team will be supplied with that information the participation rate is harder for us we can report on the number of responses but districts themselves you know how many parents you have you know how many students you have so that's a harder one for us to track but we will be able to provide that normed data yet this spring okay thank you I have one more question um I actually got a lot of questions but I'll do one more um the um is there any in your history I know that this that you change language in the questions is there any seasonality in your previous experience with this about the time of year that you give it yeah that's a great question our partners range in the time of year when they choose to

123give the survey so that is um always something that can be discussed seasonality some districts like to do it mid-year to be able to to create some opportunity as they move into the winter some like your District chooses to do it in the spring where we've sort of have the whole Arc of a school Year's experience to draw off of to be able to propel us into the next school year my only piece of advice would be to not to consider not making wild swings in that to decide where it matters most for you create that Baseline in the spring if that's where you're going to choose to build off of and then continue to come back to that so that your scores are your scores right it's about your community and what you can

124learn here I wouldn't put too much Credence in a fall might earn you a higher score I would go back to what Jenny said it's what you and your team does to respond to the information you're capturing that's going to improve the experiences of those that you serve thank you yeah you're welcome any other questions comment I have one more comment um just in a recent conversation with the teacher in the district um you know she shared with me a really wonderful perspective um and she said that when teachers are they feel supported heard and validated that the building principle plays a key role in this um I'm trying to read my notes my scribbles um oh uh also a a question was actually posed for our district in that um um having a teacher

125on staff at the DSC at the district service center would be highly beneficial for teachers dealing with classroom issues when I think about you know who we are serving most it's the students and our teachers and and um I just I I'm looking forward to having a Baseline and um knowing where which way we want to go and I'm looking forward to seeing how we Implement those things thank you for coming tonight absolutely thank you next on our agenda under new business is the approval of adoption of math curriculum so the board is requested to approve the costs of the initial adoption and training as presented can I get a motion for this approval I mean I director Velazquez a second second by director bernick and director of teaching and learning Edward Dr Edwards is

126here for any questions or comments and give us a little overview um where we're at find it here and it was introduced of course by Hamilton Rich earlier yeah yeah I will thank you I was excited to be here and I am excited to be here tonight to present this but they stole our Thunder and they did a wonderful job doing so um I really do appreciate that in all honesty um uh and that was not scripted I had no idea they were going to get up here and present that uh and and call attention to our math curriculum adoption uh so that was wonderful um but we do want to share uh just a little background about the process because it has been a very robust process and um the fact that it got

127to the student level and showed up in our presentation tonight speaks to that robustness of the process as always we ground all of our work in our strategic plan and uh specifically our strategic directions and and as I Was preparing my thoughts for tonight and our presentation it truly is present in all of our strategic directions the adoption that we are bringing forward to you uh tonight in the recommendation it obviously starts with the first one an increasing measurable student learning and achievement and specifically in this case in the area of math and we launched into this study about a year and a half almost two years ago now and knew that we had stagnant performance by our students in math and I knew that we had a curriculum that hadn't been reviewed and any

128significant changes to it in over 10 years and we had some state standards that are changing in math so we knew all of those things were aligned and it was time to study what we were doing with regard to that and as the students so eloquently pointed out tonight our students are changing too and we need to be responsive to that and so we went through a process that began in essentially the beginning of last school year of the 21-22 school year and uh we followed a continuous improvement process that you have in your packet outlined here so I won't go through reading the fine print here but we engaged in that process and brought a team together and I'm going to turn it over to a key player in that but before I do

129so this team that came together and I'll get to the conclusion of our presentation here really did some amazing work over the last year and a half and pleased to come to forward tonight with our recommendation and recognize the work that so many of our folks did and the key leader in that work was our curriculum specialist at the elementary level Gwen molden right thank you um as Dan said we really took a lot of time with that pre-planning so that first stage of the continuous improvement process and I would guess about a year year and a half ago we started talking with teachers and with students as you could hear a little bit of the student Voice tonight and we started with teachers at every level so K-12 at staff meetings were able to

130give some input on what they felt like they wanted to kind of Envision with math where they thought things should go how we fit thought we could improve things we also then interviewed students about their experience with math math and how things were going recommendations they had things that they loved things that they thought should change and that kind of really is what grounded our work in this Vision so you can see it to the left the words that are bold really are coming from our student voices and our teacher voices so you can see critical thinking and number sense and engaging really popping out some of those major major Concepts that everyone had wanted and we wanted to make sure that we got in that Vision we also spent time looking at research because

131like Dr Edward said we've it's been 10 years since we've been looking at curriculums we wanted to make sure we were really looking at the most recent research and what that was saying as well so all those things kind of came together for this math vision and kind of as you're reading through it it is what has grounded us in our work throughout this entire year so it's been the foundation that we continue to come back to to make sure that everything that we're doing is really aligning with this vision so here's kind of our timeline in our journey throughout really the past year so like we had talked we kind of started meeting at that District math committee a K-12 committee last June right at the end of the school year and they really

132were working through the really the second and third steps of that continuous improvement process that we had mentioned before we met several times throughout the the summer worked on that Vision really looked at a lot of data so we pulled out any part of the data that we had we looked at the student input that they had the teachers as well as any other hard data that we could pull and then started looking at the research what is the research saying that we need to do to kind of make make our best um in July after looking at all that research and and feeling like we're headed in the right direction Elementary kind of veered off and we're ready to start looking at resources so there we looked at over 10 kind of resources just

133on paper and exploring talk to other districts and really found that we wanted to narrow it down to three that we would bring in for a presentation so we brought in Eureka reveal which was McGraw-Hill and then Bridges with the math learning center and they did presentations for our elementary math committee so through those presentations really the two that came to the surface that we felt like really aligned best with what our vision was and with what we were looking for for students and teachers were reveal and bridges so at that point we discussed and decided we were going to go forward with a pilot for this school year and talk to the committee members about piloting let them choose which resource they wanted to Pilot and then let them talk to their teammates as

134you know in elementary they plan very closely together so if they had a team of four and all four wanted to go ahead and Pilot We invited them to do that so you can see we ended up with 13 teachers who were piloting reveal by McGraw-Hill and then 24 teachers who wanted to Pilot Bridges from the math learning center so we hit the ground running in September um got all all of the materials in had some training for the pilot teachers in September in both curriculums so teachers had a chance to get some of that initial training and then also in October had some follow-up training so once you teach it a while then you kind of have some questions in the beginning it was a little bit of Star Struck so October that PD

135day we brought those pilot teachers in for more time and we also decided to start collecting some data so that self-evaluation resource tool we decided to use that really focuses on and I think it's eight mathematical practices that we know are successful with teaching students and so we really grounded ourselves in those practices that are apparent in the standards and all the research and really what we wanted the teachers to evaluate is how well do each of these resources help you instructionally with those mathematical practices so instead of evaluating how are you doing it yourself as a teacher how is this resource helping you as a teacher to meet those goals so they did that initial self-evaluation at that training November we had both resources available at conferences so some parents had some questions and

136so it was a great time heading into conferences to talk about those we had tables out so parents could view the resources teachers could also take a look at them as well and then January another PD day so we had more training for those pilot teachers so again another dip another opportunity to ask questions and really dig in they again looked at that self-evaluation tool how is it looking now at the end of the semester so how are you progressing in in those instructional practices and also on that day we took advantage knowing we had a semester in and had focus groups for all the pilot teachers so we had four different groups and we divided the bridges and the reveal teachers and had questions and we basically just let them have conversations how is

137it going what are you noticing about each resource and it was nice because they were in mixed groups so they could hear about both of the the products and hear about how things were going with students um also during that time we had a pilot panel so any e-12 teacher had training that day and they could sign up to attend a panel led by Pilot teachers and they got to then ask questions about both the curriculums you know what are you thinking what are you noticing we also had the resources there for them to look at so they had a nice session and a nice time for them to just ask all those questions that they were wondering so after that January February we really wanted we had gotten a lot of teacher voice a

138lot of teacher input we wanted to extend that to parents and students so we did student interviews so about 70 were conducted with those pilot classrooms so we had students interviewed and asked questions about how your math experience was looking now in this pilot things that they were enjoying things that were struggle and collected all that information we again had the bridges and reveal resources at the DSC so that the public the community parents whoever would like to view them had that opportunity and then we had a parent letter that was sent out to all the pilot families with an opportunity to provide feedback about their experience with both of the curriculums so I think like Dan said it's been very comprehensive and I feel like I think the committee feels really good that we

139considered all angles when we were doing this process with the pilot so that all led us into February 28th after I think we had a snow day it was scheduled for earlier um we pulled the committee together but prior to that meeting we sent out a survey with two questions one being what did you pilot and number two what would you recommend that we adopt and so this is the kind of the recommendation that came from all members so I think if you look the most staggering thing for the people at that meeting was that of the 22 Bridges teachers who responded all of them recommended moving forward with Bridges but reveal of the 12 that responded to the survey eight of those teachers recommended Bridges so only four of the teachers recommended reveal we

140also had two teachers fifth grade teachers who had the advantage of piloting both so they did some creative scheduling and had like their home room where they taught Bridges and then they had another person's home room where they taught reveal so they had a really unique perspective and were able to talk to us and really compare truly those curriculums the other I think really interesting is that in like in a team of four if you had two piloting reveal and two piloting Bridges they had a lot of conversations as well and so when that question was asked which would you recommend even though I might have been a reveal teacher I knew a lot about bridges because I had been talking to my co-teachers I had been watching them teach they did a nice job

141of also going into each other's classrooms so they really I think made an educated um recommendation with that so you can see 88 percent of of the committee recommended Bridges so after that we really pulled together and just had conversation as a committee so what are you thinking and this the bullet points here really show where that conversation went so that staggering number that we just looked at was kind of what was in everyone's heads wow only 12 of the reveal early four of the reveal teachers would recommend that we go forward with that and the really big thing which our students said tonight earlier it's engaging Bridges is Hands-On it's engaging it's fun kids loved math reveal did not use manipulatives so one grade level third grade use manipulatives in the whole semester no

142other grade level had consistently used any and they felt like the lesson design it was kind of the same thing every day there wasn't a lot of break in the routine not a lot of variation so very different and the lesson approach for the two they also felt that Bridges is much better aligned with the math Vision so we look at all those important parts we wanted Bridges really aligned well and it really met the needs of all of our Learners with very minimal need to do any supplementing and reveal teachers had found that they were supplementing early on with our current math expressions curriculum they were feeling the need to bring that in to really meet the needs of all Learners so that was another really important point we felt both resources had a

143really strong inclusion of number sense which was a strong part of our vision and we knew that both resources were going to require some training and some preparation so that really led us into the next part which is what should we consider when we implement so all of you you know as pilot teachers they had to implement what would you say moving forward that all teachers are going to need and you can see those basically give them all the support we can allow them to observe right now if we can those pilot teachers so right now we do have teachers going in and observing what does it look like how is this looking different they're looking at classroom setup just to start getting that picture in their mind of what this shift will look like

144for them they also recommended extensive professional development beginning in the summer and continuing out throughout the school year they really said that we should be cautious about just providing that one and done training that the curriculum companies provide usually in late summer but that we would need something that was repeated so that we got a couple dips throughout the school year as well to really look at the schedules just to make sure that our schedules and Elementary are supportive so that we can have Fidelity to the program and give teachers enough time to really pull together the resources learn those manipulatives and all those parts and just take care of teachers with time we all feel like it's an amazing program but we know we need to put the time into it so that they're

145they understand it and are using fidelity um and then share anything we can early was their recommendation so Bridges has been amazing it has already given logins so they can start looking at the resources now so I've had a lot of teachers who are excited to dig in and we'll continue to do so through the summer so that kind of led us to our end of our meeting which I'll let you for the drum roll your assignments which which was stolen from us earlier this evening but uh we appreciate that uh but I before I jump there real quick uh just want to make a comment about the tie back to the previous presentation around the survey results and the specifics of uh targeting you know reference to Jim Collins and his work and honing

146in on what you want to do and do it well um we actually before we uh announced uh where we were headed with the math curriculum we shared with our teachers because we also have science Pilots going on this year and uh it became as we were listening to the implementation considerations it became increasingly important if we were going to have all of our K-5 teachers implementing this math curriculum we wanted them to be able to focus their energies and time on that so we made a decision that that was what we were going to focus our implementation efforts on next year and that's what you see in these implementation considerations we would allow are obviously our teachers who are piloting science this year continuing to do so um offer if if teachers are interested

147in jumping on as well because that'll be coming out the following year but we really want to focus on our implementation and math for next year so during the math committee uh meeting then on February 28th we truly did reach consensus that all 37 members said this is the recommendation we want to bring forward so then we have presented that to our teaching and learning advisory back on March 13th and we are here tonight to present it to you for your approval and you saw also in your board packet there are some additional details related to the adoption there are three documents there for your uh two that we are looking for your action on specifically the curriculum adoption the initial curriculum adoption and secondly the training commitment which will be staff development funds will

148be utilized for that purpose and then the third document wanted to put it in there and be very upfront we are adopting a second edition of uh Bridges math curriculum the Third Edition actually will be available uh for the helped me here 20 it's for the 24-25 school year so it's next year's 22-23 um it will be available for I'm sorry 23-24 school year it would be available um that's an upcoming uh cost that we know going into this um we have not yet determined when we would adopt uh and bring on the third we want to rely on our math committee because they've been so instrumental in helping us get to this place and possibly others uh contributing to that decision-making process we had a meeting last week Gwen and I did with our

149representatives from Bridges and they said certainly either to implement uh version 2 Edition 2 for one or two years certainly up to us to decide the direction we want to go but again the point here is that this is typically a very lengthy commitment typically as we just pointed out earlier our current math curriculum has been in place for over 10 years correct so we have thought long and hard about this decision and we feel very strongly about the recommendation we're bringing forward to you tonight thank you um comments or questions from the board um I'll go first I have a question so I sat on I sit on the curriculum committee and I've been in the classroom and I've seen the implementation of bridges and I'm really excited to um to see this program

150come to come together um my only I actually have two questions um when you were researching this this particular curriculum can you tell me what studies have been done that support that this curriculum is an effective curriculum either in one in studies that have been done and then secondly are there other districts within the state that are already using this curriculum that you can look to and say wow their MCA scores are here and here ours are here so studies that support it and then as well as districts other districts that have implemented this curriculum it's a fixed studies I can speak more to the districts so I know districts we are working with um from the University of Minnesota Terry lyberg and where he's been Consulting with our district and he had mentioned that

151about over half of the districts are going in the way of bridges um just based on what he's noticing kind of the new trends the math learning center has a comprehensive report on all the studies that have been done on the effectiveness of it so you can look on their website and look at those research studies if you want yeah I'd love to see it only because recently I've learned about um you know if you think about the years and I don't want to talk about but basically the reading programs that were all implemented and the reading programs that were implemented and there really was no studies to support it and then all of a sudden these kids weren't learning and then I was like oops we got to go back and let's teach phonics

152now and so I just want to make sure this is a really big deal to change curriculum and I just want to make sure that we have there are studies that support that this curriculum is Going to Be an Effective product for our students to excel in in math so director Atkinson not to interrupt you but to support what you're saying when I was on the teaching and learning committee back when this was first introduced that I was very concerned about that because of the new press that was coming around about um phonics and bounce literacy and the whole conversation so I was very concerned because I felt like personally and this doesn't matter but personally my kids would add a positive math experience so I'm like I was like why are we re-engineering things

153in Dr Edwards knows this we had lots of conversations about it so the research piece is super key and I was really pleased to hear and to see that the math learning center right has research and data driven in the based evidence behind them and that we were concerned about that as well as a committee and I would add too that uh one of the things that we uh certainly knew very early on in this process with our teacher input was that uh first of all they had very positive response we actually before we uh were starting that visioning process from the previous school year we had Terry weiberg from the University of Minnesota come and do some work with our teachers and our teachers responded very positively and continued to respond very positively to

154his work around instructional practices at the elementary level and and what we've found in Implement in implementation of anything across time is that we need teacher buy-in and teacher support and teacher willingness to implement in order to implement a program well and I think that is one of the key things that I think comes out of this process that we underwent was that we have very strong particularly from those who have been implementing it belief in it and if if my colleague next door believes in it and is there to support me in implementation and we develop as you can see here a robust plan for addressing those implementation things that we believe we can achieve great results um you had talked about uh there was the student interviews done and then also the parent

155letter that went out um where parents were invited to provide feedback do you have any um can you share anything with the student interviews and the parent feedback from the from the family that we're giving it a try yeah we had students of course um were very fun when we interviewed them um a lot of just Hands-On love the games with Bridges so there's a lot of a game component is really strong talked about how they love that they don't have to solve it one way that they had choice and how they solve different things because that's kind of another new way that I guess this kind of is going in that there's multiple ways to solve a problem we don't have to just know one way so they loved that they love the Hands-On

156so that was really the most kind of consistent comment the parents we didn't get a ton and Jenny would probably have more specifics we didn't have a lot of feedback and we had a little bit of both kind of ends where people were saying they didn't understand like how to help with homework so based on some of those comments we know that we will also have a very probably strong family component where we'll have to do some training for families and having them come in for family math nights throughout the school year and buildings have already started talking about how could that look so that we can help families understand what this change will look like as well so a little bit of both you know don't understand the homework love the homework don't like

157the homework so a little divided thank you comment that um you know we're due for this clearly and a lot of work goes into something like this in real time and I don't know if there are any teachers here tuning in that piloted this but thank you because this is this is a lot of work and Gwen and Dr Edwards with with your teams as well a lot of work and a lot of let's try this and oh this didn't work and oh the students really love this maybe not this so much and in the middle of the rest of the things that our staff and teachers have to do during the day and so I really commend the teachers who piloted both programs because this is a lot of work and so as a

158parent thank you um and I I really respect and appreciate the fact that even the rev the teachers who piloted the reveal most of them were like let's do Bridges and I think that buy-in I think is really important because they do work together a lot and trade students for Math and and work together so much so I think that's wonderful and the last thing I'll say is that it's so customizable as you mentioned for every learner that you know it's for for the students in Sage um for the different um the different places where these students are in their math journey I think that's really important and I think that's something that the teachers really really liked about this particular program so I just want to put out my appreciation for that because I

159think that's um it's it's a lot of work to do something like this so thank you and then I step into the question um so you had mentioned that there's um an update in 24 25 and the cost is listed here of 161 thousand dollars is there any um working with the the how do you say the I don't want to say manufacturer but I don't know every call no vendor the publisher to give us some sort of break on a cost of with Implement and the reason I said is like the shipping class alone is eleven thousand dollars so you know I mean is there any negotiating where you can say yes we'll do this now but can you give us a break on the update or whatever sort of yes that attempt was

160made last week sorry I'm in business that very much uh was a kind of that was the purpose of the the call that I referenced earlier that Gwen and I had with the team uh from the vendor last week and um that and and actually we had considered um bringing this full package forward for purchase even its entirety um but based upon that conversation we determined that because we wouldn't know what year we would be implementing it we wanted to hold because we wanted to bring it back to our folks and have them be engaged in that decision making so we didn't bring It full package for your approval but there's not going to be a change in pricing if anything we might and we did ask the question will this go up in pricing

161and they certainly gave us no guarantee however they did talk about the the structures that they have in place to give us some level of assurance that I don't I feel that this is not a overly risky decision but it would be better served with getting the input from our teachers about when we moved forward do we want to spend one year in the second version or two to get more comfortable that's really the question that we want to bring forward to our teachers so it would be premature we feel to answer that question now but we did we did go engage in that negotiation process and at this stage yeah and even with the shipping costs it says like if you pay cash Checker cash you get eight it's eight percent versus eleven percent

162so that was the one that we might have some savings but yeah they're they're it does save 50 discount and the price is locked in through September 23 for the version three if we purchase now correct for the student books yep so we we could we could still make that decision um and we have time as you point out they're in that to to wait until September and we could bring our we we debated this last week we said we can bring our committee together we didn't want to rush to anything on that um so we still have that option out there for six months out um one of their deals as they give you 50 off of all the student workbooks year one of implementation so they said because we're upgrading to the Third

163Edition they would offer that again that 50 off of workbooks so that's what you're seeing on there so we're almost getting it twice so in their mind that was their break that they were giving us they also have a Perpetual license for the material which means that if we bought the online license version two the version three the upgrade comes free it comes part of it right what is the follow-on maintenance for this every year is there a follow-on maintenance at all for the not from an online perspective nope okay so the workbook teacher facing so the workbook would be the recurring cost consumables so that was the confusing part to me so we buy the the electronic license once and the only thing they're making money on then after that is the replenishment of

164the workbooks annually correct okay that's correct um and then the other thing that is on the website to director bullion's comment there's a family portion on their website that they offer to help families do the homework is that something that we considered given the last given the response to director bullion for giving parents access correct yep so I think when we adopt then they will talk to us about logins for parents so right now you have to have a plsas address and so she said when we get to that point we can talk about the parent access so whether that be a way that those documents are shared through your teacher she hasn't been specific on that but there will be a way for parents to access the materials as well and the teacher training

165costs is that also a one-time cost because then we'll train the trainer is that how we're going to do it because that's what's kind of alluded to but not specifically stated right so there's the getting started is what's included with purchase and then we have two other additional and one would be possibly during like an October day which would be a full six hour training and then the next one would be possibly during that January February day for an additional three hours that's a one time and then we're hoping that our pilot teachers because they've gone through that training this past year they'll go through it again next year can then yeah carry that load when the buildings and one more question on the price there so if we're no longer using math expressions do

166we actually get rid of that program and save that cost and what would be does anyone know the net difference between the new program versus the older so there's no cost right now with math expressions so they stopped supporting their online portion a few years ago because they moved to a newer Edition and we had the older edition and so again workbooks were the one thing and they stopped printing those as well so we don't have a cost with math expressions currently and and this is a going down a different place but part of the reason that it is a large dollar amount and we certainly have some rather pricey adoptions in the future as well so one of the things that I've been working with executive director Fredrickson around is accessing our available resources

167specifically some of our remaining Esser funds that we had identified in our initial Esser fund application for curricular resources to use for this initial adoption and allowing us to purchase those materials so that we can have them in place here for the summer which would begin already in June pending your approval here Crosby board dresses I'll just say that thank you team wonderful job I have yet to meet a publisher who doesn't negotiate and having gone through a multi-million dollar adoption in another District we were able to really negotiate pretty heavily and so if it's the will of the board that this is the curriculum that you would support then just know that we would have you know full court press on our negotiation to not necessarily paying sticker but to find out these kind

168of incentives that we can broker particularly if we're able to access one-time use dollars that need to be utilized particularly on student Improvement vis-a-vis curriculum we might be able to take advantage of purchasing in advance with some as her dollars to get the greatest deal and maximize the use of federal funds so again we wanted to make sure that we share the information with the board first based upon the will of the board and supporting the adoption then we would go forth as a team to to begin negotiations and I know director Frederickson has a history of negotiating with Publishers as well and so we've got the right folks on the team to get the best deal for our students great all right any other comments or questions before we yeah make one more um

169Bridge has been around for a long time so I had experience with it at another and when my kids were little and in a special in a specific program I loved it and what they're doing now with the gamification um and the added interaction um is is is incredible so I I personally am a fan um I'm just hoping that when we go here and one of the tools of negotiations of course is to maybe even sign a longer term agreement with them so they have the guaranteed you know cash flow for so many years in a row and of course it benefits our students to go through a whole cohort with this to make sure that we're experiencing the maximum benefit so I wouldn't have a problem with negotiating there and I'm sorry I

170do have one more question I apologize and it goes back to um one of the questions that came up in one of the workshops that I attended one of the points that was brought up is that the teachers needed to purchase a lot of things for their manipulatives boxes to put their stuff in is that that's I don't know if that's included in this or is that would that be an extra item that we need to come up with a dollar amount to support the teachers we will be supporting the teachers we're actually planning to provide some options um but that's not included because that's not it's not curriculum to the yeah that's not to the vendor that right the contract you see and it it will be at a cost um under our dollar

171amount to be part of our curriculum uh budget for the upcoming school year but we definitely have a plan to share a couple of options that have been successful by our pilot teachers so the teachers can choose which yeah and part of the purchase thing boxed items so that would be all the manipulation that's manipulatives right they need boxes to put their stuff in yeah so okay that's our next meeting in April we're going to talk about how to support that okay great good question yeah thank you um and I'm just going to reiterate what director Wallace had said that the teachers that came forward to Pilot this I mean it just demonstrates to me a true passion for learning as a staff member and I just think that that is awesome and says a

172lot about our staff so thanks to those particular teachers for sure um okay Alan are we ready to vote any other okay just to make sure all right all in favor of the approval of adoption math curriculum I opposed that passes 7-0 thank you thank you we are going to do a report only on our monthly financial report that we look at each month that director Frederickson has created and we are very thankful for so any questions or update anything you want to call it specifically or questions by the board oh thank you chair Crosby members of the board Dr Thomas you're used to seeing this now we've sent it out for last several months I think the only thing that I would um call your attention to is is we have a two percent

173increase in Revenue in the month of February and that's mostly due to Levy and interest rates and at the same time we have an expenditure increase of about seven percent which is combination of kind of filling in vacant positions and then some of our utility and services cost has gone up as well as some Capital expenditures um we still look like we're right on target for meeting our budget projections so we don't anticipate either adding or detracting from our fund balance and a significant amount by the end of the year oh it's so it's fairly in line with at the last at the study session that that difference of like 850 000 correct okay in change and fund balance okay thank you any questions or comments on their part all right we'll keep moving um

174and also uh director Frederickson um has our monthly enrollment report uh any updates on that that you'd like to call out no again you've seen this report for last couple months the difference between the October 1st enrollment and the April 1st enrollment is we're down 56 students and if you compare that with the end of the year last year in June it's a difference of 100 of 163 students less than what we had at the end of last year foreign the results and the findings of the studer stakeholder engagement survey and what potential impact I might have on our enrollment and just overall engagement definitely okay um that does not require board action so we will be moving on to the approval of recommendation for the 2023 pavement and Rehabilitation project can I get a

175motion to approve this so made by director Olstead in a second second by director bullion with greater doubles here good evening chair Crosby school board members Dr Thomas had the bid tabulation and award letter in front of you on March 27th we had open bids here at the district office we had six bidders which was pretty good I think good numbers Northwest asphalt was low on their base bid um and the rest of their numbers kind of why should we would like to award the ltfm projects 2023 payments to Northwest asphalt I have one Jim just have we used I know we've used by two the bituminous roadways and a couple of the others have we ever used Northwest yeah they're local and I think we've used on a couple different jobs Mary over the

176years okay very reputable but also as you consider that take a quick second just to think Marine Mullen and Matt Garrison for their work on these projects we're making some pretty significant improvements Twin Oaks traffic we're going to pull a pheromone off fish point for drop off in the morning worked with the city on that and five five Hawks playground huge improvements there so great great any other questions okay all in favor of approving of the recommendation for the 2023 pavement Rehabilitation project I opposed that passes 7-0 thank you thank you thank you um the superintendent evaluation procedure what you have there is our evaluation timeline this is um communication for you know for everyone but also for us to follow as a board um we are there's one you you can all read the

177details there's one change that we may pursue if um it's just an expanding of the um Point number six which is each School Board member reviews superintendent materials and completes the summative evaluation form and submits it and all that is is gives board members a little more time I know we have some scheduling conflicts during that time of people traveling and having other things going on their lives so we um Dr Thomas and I discussed expanding that but that would be the only small you know alteration that we would consider I just have a question I was new to the process are when when do we have um how do you say feedback on Fast bridge scores MCA scores like data on the students performance when does that come out their academic their academic achievement

178s those are the quarterly reports that we've been giving throughout the year so we've given you the winter to fall to winter and then we'll be doing a winter to Spring and then in the summer we'll be getting the MCA results we don't get them till summer the MCAS yeah August has won mca's game what about jasperage those are the quarter leads that we do from fall to winter and then winter to Spring okay any other questions or comments about that timeline yes so on the sixth we still have April 25th to May 5th what are we going to be expanding that to uh May 10th was the suggestion okay suggestion and that gives a smaller amount of time on another window but it that's not a problem okay um and perhaps people get them

179in early my whole body laughed at my joke okay everybody's tired okay do you have any is like a standard form I mean is there do you have any like I mean obviously there's people who've done it in the past but being new to it I'd love to better understand the process yeah so it is a survey administered previously through SurveyMonkey now we will be using qualtrex yeah um to to fill out the form and potentially revisiting um revisiting the process a little bit as we move forward cumbersome in our first year with our new superintendent yeah so I'm I'm uh I'll say that uh the the evaluation that exists here in the district that was agreed upon at the start of the school year is one that's been carried over from year to year

180um that's premised on the domains of the job description and I spoke with the former board chair Vice chair about the possibility of revisiting this and moving towards a standards-based competency-based evaluation tool that's not predicated on a job description I think it's more again going to a more nationally normed competency based approach I think is a better approach gives you better data more objective versus subjective so so that's something that the board can talk about you know as we look into next year to revise that process with the new board right the current model focuses more on the core work and the superintendents um job description versus like the goal set out by the superintendent because I mean there's two those are two very different things there's and obviously there's the core components of your

181job description but then like the goals of the disc that you've set up correct that's where I would propose moving towards that kind of a process okay that's what I want yeah I want to be clear on so thank you yeah and what I can do in an offer to each of you to perhaps set our next one to ones is show you the template um so that you get a sense of what that looks like and what's to come um and then have some conversation about what I have seen and what I would be more used to and what I think most superintendents are used to so that would be something I can offer the components just kind of thinking of a process and what it all entailed previously we had two different packets

182of information one Focus we're on the Strategic uh components and how did we as a district perform towards each one of those different strategic objectives and what were the deliverables that were tied to them and then the separate separate packet each a nice thick packet uh focus more on attainment of the job description and how the superintendent met each one of those if I remember it was two separate surveys one for each part a little cumbersome alive yeah and I will say redundantly done it yeah it's when I when I was just gonna be one is what you're saying or it's gonna be the same well that I mean no there'll still be sorry to say there will likely be two um and I think there will be a way to incorporate that again into

183a singular competency-based approach starting next year um and but again we we weren't going to change anything because that's what was agreed upon at the start of the school year and so um we're going to play that one through and then next year I think uh I think we would all probably appreciate a standards-based approach um and I I would weigh in to interrupt you but I would weigh in that it's probably okay for all of us to go through that to have a Baseline and say what yeah so where do we go from here it's to be the best we can be thank you for giving that history it helps it's helpful to understand that yeah so thank you so that's the timeline that we will adhere to [Music] um yep you will it

184all be via email so okay um with the details on the timeline um so we have a proclamation next uh for National volunteer appreciation week and I neglected to ask anyone to read tonight so if we have any volunteers I'd be more of them no pun intended okay director bernick if you would like to read that that would be wonderful volunteer appreciation week April 16th the 22nd 2023 Prior Lake Savage area schools recognizes April 16th to 22nd 2023 as volunteer Appreciation Week volunteers provide essential support to our over 8 700 Prior Lake Savage area students for their families and over 1400 employees this week we celebrate our thanks and gratitude for these essential community members whereas the week of April 16th to the 22nd is designated as volunteer National volunteer week to recognize the hard

185work dedication and passion of volunteers throughout our nation whereas thousands of volunteers here in the Prior Lake Savage area provide essential support to our students through generous donations of time money and talent whereas volunteers serve on our boards task forces and committees to help us move our mission forward whereas volunteers are motivated by this simple satisfaction of helping our students and Foster a sense of community and pride within our schools and districts therefore let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation to all Prior Lake Savage area volunteers for supporting the education of our students and declares April 16th to the 22nd 2023 to be volunteer Appreciation Week in Prior Lake Savage area schools and I'll just say on behalf of all of us here in our district that the volunteers that

186provide support for our students are Priceless and we have formal relationships whether it's professional organizations or parents or grand friends Etc they fulfill a variety of different roles we see them as noon supervisors recess support we also see them as Tutors or reading Partners we even heard about some of our older students being quote unquote volunteers for younger grade levels as well so volunteers aren't necessarily just all folks that come from the outside even some of our own internal folks are volunteering if you will some of our students but I will say that the the work that you provide is is uh significant um and that we want to encourage all from our community to look at opportunities to participate with products Avid area schools and volunteer and and provide opportunities to build relationships with

187our students and support the staff in our in our district so again a huge thank you on behalf of all the staff here in Prior Lake savagery schools for the countless hours that our volunteers provide each year thank you it is also after school professionals appreciation week April 24th through 28th we have director doll and our kids company assistant coordinator here um do I have a volunteer to read that Proclamation this evening director Alston thank you after school professionals appreciation week April 24th through 28th 2023 Prior Lake savagery schools recognizes April 24-28 2023 as after school professionals appreciation week this week we celebrate our thanks and gratitude for these vital staff members whereas the Prior Lake Savage area school Community firmly believes that after school professionals parentheses those who work with Children and Youth in

188a wide variety of program settings to provide Extended Learning opportunities during out of school hours have a positive effect on our children families community and businesses whereas after school professionals are a decisive element in young people's access to high quality relationships and expanded opportunities beyond what they have access to at school and home which they need to reach their full potential whereas after school professionals deserve appreciation and support for all that they do that results in increased social emotional skills School attendance and academic performance for young people whereas Prior Lake Savage Area Schools is committed to supporting the professionals who provide expanded learning opportunities that will help close the achievement Gap and prepare young people to be contributing citizens therefore let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation to all Prior

189Lake Savage area schools after school Professionals for supporting the education of our students and declares April 24-28 2023 to be after school professionals Appreciation Week in Prior Lake Savage area schools good evening board chair Crosby board directors and Dr Thomas thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight to share a little bit more about our what I would consider our before and after school Professionals in Community Education we run a lot of programming throughout the school year in the summer both before and after school and have a lot of wonderful people that work in our programs our largest program though being our kids company Child Care Program running our before and after school care and so I have invited Mary Jane who is our assistant coordinator for kids company to come and share a

190little bit more on their behalf thank you for having me here tonight um I greatly appreciate the opportunity to recognize and appreciate our kids company staff just a little bit about our program kids company provides quality child care for both school age and preschool children in all of our elementary schools we offer before and after school care programming during the school year full day programming on most non-school days and summer and full day programming for preschool-aged children during the school year in summer as well kids company offers a variety of ways to actively engage our children through Hands-On activities while promoting social emotional and cognitive growth we focus on choice-based learning creating opportunities for children to navigate their learning and explore their individual interests our kids company staff provides safe Equitable and inclusive environments while

191also building connections and relationships with Children and Families in our program I'd like to express my gratitude and appreciation appreciation to all of the skilled professionals that work in our kids company program for their hard work and dedication the kids company's staff professionals are essential valuable and make a positive difference in the lives of the children and families in our community thank you very much thank you and our last clamation for evening is administrative support professionals week which is also April 24th through 28th would someone be willing to read that sure we'll be happy to thank you administrative support professionals appreciation week April 24th through 28 Prior Lake Savage area schools recognizes April 24-28 2023 as administrative support professionals Appreciation Week our administrative support professionals are essential to keeping our district operating which supports the

192success of our students this week we celebrate our thanks and gratitude for these vital staff members whereas National administrators Professionals Day is being celebrated on April 26 2023 whereas our administrative support professionals serve several roles in our school buildings and district offices whereas these professionals are often the first point of contact for families students and staff and help create a welcoming environment whereas our administrative support professionals carry out essential functions to keep our schools and District operating so we can fulfill the mission of our district and success of our students therefore let it be resolved the Board of Education hereby extends its appreciation to all Prior Lake Savage Area Schools administrative support Professionals for supporting the education of our students and declares April 24th through 28 2023 to be administrative support professionals Appreciation Week in

193Prior Lake Savage area schools thank you director of Velazquez um I'll speak on behalf of many administrators throughout our district who rely heavily upon these folks they are the unsung heroes within education I have said this uh months ago as well you know when I think about the likes of our admin support folks they are the ones who keep administrators grounded they kind of give us the reality check that we need from time to time I can't see Martha right now but she's but it really keeps us on our toes and as the proclamation States oftentimes are the frontward facing individual of our offices our schools and so I cannot thank them enough for the countless hours that they put in not only for supporting entire buildings or entire buildings but or departments but also

194the those of us who lead these places I know we're a lot to manage so thank you for everything that you do and uh and and for the things that we don't know that you actually are doing as well so I really appreciate you all throughout the district thank you thank you okay um we are moving on to policy um our first reading of policies we have two of them we'll start with policy 806 crisis management policy they were introduced these were both introduced in the study session um so this is the next step for us um and so I'll open it up for any questions or concerns or comments that the board has around policy 806 the crisis management policy I'm director Crosby I have one question as it relates to 806 and it

195is on section let's see section c so additional information number two for media procedures okay so in there um it states the superintendent or designee has the authority and discretion for notifying parents and Guardians and the school community in the event of a crisis or early closure and my question is um can we add School Board in there as well as I feel like the school board should be on that list of being notified if in an event of a crisis and it's currently not listed in there I would absolutely agree it's a practice that we have currently and we can definitely make note of that in policy Jim Jim you back there are you capturing that on your hard copy as a stakeholder yeah in section three C2 C2 sorry yep I'm calling that

196out specifically yeah it's it's probably already included I know we're already doing it yeah I thought it was big kitchen yeah great and then I just had a question for my own self under e emergency telephone numbers um I know we're taking out the addresses um so the lists will contain the names of local and County Personnel who are likely to be involved in responding to a crisis situation the list will include for agencies such as the police the fire you know what I guess I guess I don't have a question about that I just some for some reason I had made a little Mark about that so I I don't have a question actually I did this like a couple days ago so yeah I did because last time I know it's included in

197here by default but um that has been missed in the past and that's you know our city leaders from our various um we don't have to mention every single one of them just make sure that City management or city leaders are included even though it includes everybody underneath them um um just making sure we don't forget to add them to the distribution list in general when right I think they're spelled out in here but I think I understand what you're saying Mary's to make sure yeah okay we've actually revised our threat protocol internally to now include uh essentially Mayors or their city managers on school-based issues that we know that will come to their offices so that was a change that Christy and I adopted this year great important other questions we had one question

198Jim and I realize this isn't probably the right policy but just given the news today like out of Rochester they had to close schools because of a Cyber attack and I didn't know if and I know that's a lot of Marcus too mostly Marcus probably but just in terms of like a Cyber attack where does something like that belong does that belong just like mentioned in here or referred to in maybe another policy it was just top of mind today because they closed today and so I just I thought since we're talking about it tonight well um to be in Rochester school school shoes today would be a crisis so I don't know if we need to spell it out in here but we respond to all kinds of crisises that are not listed in

199this policy but the real work would be Marcus and his team yes problem with the Cyber attack that it the reason why and this is speaking from experience yeah is that unfortunately your communication means also disappears so that's that's another reason why we're seeing that actually being included in this now I know we have another incident response plan in which we can kind of plan that out also but that's just something to consider for future reference um you know we we base a lot of our crisis management plan on the ability to communicate well if a Cyber attack brings down our ability to communicate then we do need a a secondary option yeah and and generally speaking that would fall under our district crisis management response in definition one section two point one so but

200it but again there's nuances to every crisis that occurs um and based upon the specific threat the location of threat et cetera whether the district building joint um but something like that would be falling under the district crisis response team okay and then I just saw one typo so under um general statement of policy under B I believe um it says the plan include I think it should be includes okay thank you I like grammar fixes got it yeah okay um other can we move on to the next policy or people thank you yeah thank you thank you Joe um policy 606 selection and review of Learning Resources Director Edwards is here uh for us to particular view of where we're at so in just a recap from our work session that was our introduction

201of the policy a lot of conversation and we did our best to track a lot of the conversation that evening live in the moment there will be a variety of iterations that will be coming back to you all on on Flow grammar Etc so we captured what we got in terms of the essence of big shifts in policy conversations from last week clearly more tightening will happen over the course of the conversation with the board but just want to give that context to chair Crosby to open it up thank you um I I would like to just kick this off with a I guess a proposal and um part of it is I've done a lot of research on this policy as it pertains to school districts across the country and I feel like the

202policy that we have in place just leads itself to a lot of ambiguous terms there's a lot of words in it and so ultimately I went back and I looked at what is the model policy for msba model policy 606 and I I I'm going to send around a copy of it for everyone so if you can just I think a lot of people have already seen it we kind of talked about it in the last study session and the fact that it is very we do have a very different so so I guess my my I understand I'd like to understand why because in this policy 606 from msba the part that I'm most concerned well there's a lot of parts that I that I'm concerned about is the general statement of policy says

203the school board recognizes that the selection of textbooks and instructional materials is a vital component of the school district's curriculum and the school board also recognizes that it has the authority to make final decisions on selections of all textbooks and Structural Materials and that's not something that's even included in our policy that the school board ultimately has the final decision and then also in this policy it states that when we're reviewing um textbooks you know we do consider what's what's appropriate for the age and the maturity of the students and we didn't have that in our policy um and so I mean ultimately I mean our policy I feel like is like a combination of policy and procedures where I feel like maybe it should just be policy and then we break out the procedures

204and I also believe that ultimately the books that are selected really should be tied back to supporting our district goals and objectives and um and so if you can't tie it back to our district goals and objectives then why does it even belong in the library you know what I'm saying so I I guess I wanted to start with presenting this policy as a model policy and trying to understand why our policy is so different and I also feel like our our policy is just is confusing and there's like I I don't know I wanted to better understand why we're going this direction I know where this policy came from but I don't understand if it hasn't been effective in the past maybe maybe I just need to understand why we're not using msba's model

205policy and tweaking that one to better best fit our district in a question because I actually brought this up we tend to conflate learning media Resources with instructional textbooks and we also know that the msba policy like we talked about in the study session doesn't even really discuss the policy or procedure regarding learning media resources in our Learning Centers which is a library and every novel every whatever is not going to have a direct relationship to a classroom some of them are just books and magazines and things like that and we did include both in here and I know one of my feedback was is we need to not conflate those we need to break them out and Define them separately so that there isn't that exact issue with the msba policy as well as

206the comment that director Atkinson just made is that something that you guys are leaning towards or do you want to I don't know if you guys want to discuss it from that point uh yeah I'll begin with mentioning and I think I acknowledge this at our study session that we had explored the potential of the msba policy and we were coming forward with a recognition or or thought anyways our thought was that that was quite um it wasn't overly descriptive the msba policy is not overly descriptive and feeling as if that was partly a desire to consider something a bit more descriptive and prescriptive and as we looked at and compared the msba policy to our existing policy it certainly our existing policy is more prescriptive and so we kind of went down that road

207if you will toward maintaining that and found another example or examples that we felt were worth considering I think that was really the nature of the direction that we were taking things because again I agree that the msba two-page policy is quite brief in in reality and our current policy and the proposed policy that we reviewed at our last session um definitely is not uh is more prescriptive and has a lot more words in it and a lot more steps in it than the msba recommended to page policy it doesn't our work considering library media materials as well as curriculum or are we only considering library and media materials because the msba policy really does focus on the curriculum piece which is not always and very rarely the same as what's in our media centers

208it States state so I think the question would be how do you define textbooks and instructional materials that's what I I was confused by that you know and so I think yeah I mean we could split hairs probably on these definitions but that's where I recall from our work session is to broaden it to learning resources because that's curriculum that's a textbook that's a library book if you will so I thought learning resources was where we were generally trying to go that would be all-encompassing and I would agree I mean that's the only question about this was the word textbooks but I feel like the policy is much easier to read and and follow versus the policy that we've put in place or that we're reviewing is just I don't know I feel like it's

209harder to follow that's why I'm bringing it up I mean I totally agree with it we need to improve the flow I think the first draft here is just trying to capture what was discussed in the last one yep agreed to that end knowing that you know we might reconfigure some things but we're just kind of going through I had a few questions about um I am on page two of the policy or 124. um under learning resources reconsideration process realizing we might tweak this language but we talk about kind of the chain of command if you will you know going to um building an Administration going to the teacher going to the media Specialists um if there's an issue that's raised and then under the next session next section excuse me um we talk

210about number one each Challenger should be directed to the building principle so my first question is aren't we forgetting a step should we be going to the teacher or the media is kind of like what we outline in number one of the section above it so I was just unless I am understanding this differently but tell me that but I feel like we're forgetting a person in there I I think that's a can be a point well taken definitely and can be added back or added to uh that yeah I can't remember if we took it out uh we did last time that wasn't previously in there and if I may just for a moment speak to that particular segment on page two that you referenced I think the intention was that was not something

211that was previously in our policy and that was something that was found in a policy elsewhere um and that was something that we wanted to increase an awareness around was that because that was something that we are doing frankly have been doing procedurally um in varying degrees and by putting it in policy making everybody aware that that's those are steps in the process should there be a concern a resource of concern and and director Olstead to to this point under the consideration of challenged like that process occurs after you've already talked to um the teacher in a reconsideration phase of the sequence so this is the next step in the sequence if after talking with the teacher and getting more context and reconsidering of that text you feel like I know this is something I'm

212I still want to challenge then I'm now going to bring it to building Administration okay I've already went through that that makes sense whoa thank you I do I want to go back to Lisa's point there seems to be a lot of policies that we don't put procedure in yeah a lot of them so I think when we head into this direction we need to say why are we doing that and I know there's reasons I just want to make sure that when we visit some more policies especially when we get our committee on policies what direction we're going to be giving that committee so I I will I will share that when we were going through the first draft or trying to capture everything that was discussed there the initial conversation actually stopped at

213G and that was policy and then everything below was into procedure so that that was actually a one of our initial drafts so so that could potentially be changed if that if the will of the board here says this still reads more it and it does administrative process then let's put that into the procedure and then have hard stop at G which then brings us back to probably where director Atkinson started the conversation tonight you know as well uh we'll be back to more of that one-page policy um that's pretty succinct and all again in in the spirit of transparency I think the robustness of this policy is is somewhat responding to I think the energy that surrounds this conversation right now compared to other policies that we've been revising now let's be very transparent

214so we thought you know in the past less is more but here we're kind of erroring on well maybe we need to do more because of the level of conversation out there not to be reactionary so I'm really careful of these words um you know and and Pander to just noise but are there is there did we need to put more in here knowing that this policy would be one that would be centrifocus probably have lots of conversation about and can I add one one I'm going to shy away from procedure right that's not our wheelhouse um I think the sentence for me sums it up that these freedoms expressed and guaranteed in the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution Constitution must be preserved in the teaching learning process in a society of diverse beliefs

215and viewpoints and shared freedoms so when we're dancing on the edge of that I think we probably want to have a pretty robust discussion around procedures I'm trying to be open-minded and open in the idea of not having procedures in here too and I I am open to that but there's a pretty serious topic yeah I've had Martha um because even on the back of this here on the back of the policy it states that oh sorry about my notebook um the superintendent shall present a procedure to the school board for review and approval regarding reconsideration of textbooks or other instruction materials when approved by the school board such procedure shall be an addendum to this policy so I guess it would be an addendum policy so my question is where do these people if

216where do these procedures live done where do they because I I do agree in terms of procedure versus policy and I do understand that I think where do these procedures live so that they would live in admin um you know that it wouldn't it wouldn't live like we would have this like on our school websites for example we would have this in the teaching and learning Department website in terms of procedures because we know that this may be something that would be exercised so that's where it would live but it wouldn't live necessarily in policy one of the so the the first litmus test that we really need to do is as we go through the procedure if there is parts of that in the policy realize that each time we want to update it

217we've got to take it back right so that's one of the first litmus tests that we need to understand and then the other thing that we need to focus on is where does the accountability and responsibility lie because with curriculum we don't approve every new textbook either and nor do we I personally don't want to nor would I want to use serp the the the qualifications of our library media Specialists and the ad hoc committee um to say that every single change needs to come to the board um um I believe that we need to have some representation but I don't think we need to be in that level of granular control not only are we probably not qualified but also it's it's to me it wouldn't be the appropriate place but that's just to

218me um and also I want to emphasize that again there's a difference between textbook and library media so if we're going to expand it like we decided to expand it even before this away from the well-known msb8 model policy can we at least come to an agreement on the on what the scope of this covers because otherwise we are confusing the two um textbooks and library media resources who don't necessarily contain textbooks and matter of fact a lot of times they don't so I just want to make that clear because we are talking two different things here yeah and I I see your point and I I would say that if ultimately as a school board we you know oversee that part of I would say I would agree with you I don't need to

219say every book that's purchased in the district but I do think given what's happened in the last couple years with the school books that have come into the district I think in being transparent I mean I wouldn't mind having access to a list of every quarter what are the new books that are purchased for the library and I don't know how many new workbooks are purchased in a year for like say our high school any idea I'm not a number I would have at hand I'm just curious like you know I mean in full transparency should there be a list posted for the school board if ultimately we are responsible for for overseeing the books that are in our district responsible for the governance of the district and the superintendent is responsible for the operation

220of the district well that's not what the policy said expand on that what do you mean well the policy right here says the school board recognizes that the selection of textbooks and instructional materials is a vital component to the school board curriculum so the school board also recognized it has the authority to make final decisions on the selection of all textbooks and instructional materials right so this so textbooks and instructional materials are actually the curriculum the district curriculum um that's not Library texts textbooks um are you saying so msba doesn't have a policy that has a good Library as I Define textbooks and instructional materials textbooks are books that are tied to curriculum so when we adopt a math curriculum we might have workbooks textbooks that come along with that that's that's the instructional materials

221Library resources are supplemental resources to enrich reading interest in Reading comprehension those types of things it's not a direct instructional material that's how I yeah and so I think we really need we need some clarification about like if if we're reviewing curriculum or reviewing textbooks or books or you know what I mean and I think we tried to do that with our last policy by calling it learning resources but I feel like in the learning resources we're more focused on books than we are on curriculum is that correct or am I misunderstanding that if I could add a comment to that um I I too was confused in the the msba policy compared to ours and being a new director I'm trying to understand when we're going through policy is msba's um guiding policies is

222that how we is that kind of our Baseline yes or and that's a baseline for many districts for many districts to start the conversation it's a template start the conversation so I I too was very confused at msba's 606 being and I read it to be textbooks and curriculum hours I feel is more based on media library and what's maybe teachers have in a classroom so I think that at the study session one of the many points that I've maybe raised was trying to understand if that included curriculum and are we is our goal as a district with our policy 606 to include all of it to Umbrella curriculum and the media resources because that in and of itself that that um clarification I think is huge well in it sorry to interrupt but I

223was I caught up after not being at the meeting but listened to it and took notes and I go back to the other 606 the original one was adopted in August of 2021 correct for the first time we had that policy in place not not the first time no I would say the most recent video that was the most recent most recent version yeah okay actually we've just been carrying that forward so you know historically that policy has been in place for a while and when we re-reviewed it we made no changes to it so it's been it's been there for oh gosh a lot longer than 2021. I'm certain it has yeah I think we'd have to we'd go back and look at when it became a policy originally and how many times it

224was revised Martha could speak to that but August of 2021 yes and I was not uh in my I was in a different role at that time and one more one more um comment that I'd like to make when there is confusion on exactly I mean if we're confused as as a board like when there's when there's confusion it just um I I feel like there's a lack of accountability um because if if you don't really know what we're covering or what we're talking about it's like you know how do we get to the root of an issue um so the yeah I know that it it seems cumbersome I feel like this one this policy in particular as far as my short stint as a director that this one you know this is we're

225doing a lot of work here um and you know starting from the very top it I think for me I want to know what we're including and I guess that was the first question that was in the study session is changing the title because our policy has already always included not curriculum but this and we we kind of mix the two when we made it a more broad statement which does confuse some of the back end procedures that were put in there um and um so that that's the first question that we need to we can go back to the msba one that's only curriculum um pretty much it doesn't cover anything in the library um and and I don't know I'd never I don't even think msba has a model policy for Library resources

226they don't and and again a couple of things to to bring to notice uh you know policy our current policy 601 .1 is aligned to msba's 606. so our 601 is review of curriculum content and instruction alternative instruction so like that's the content of classroom materials if you will um 606 for us has been the broader the other materials is that that's what that that's what that policy is about so that focuses more so on other learning resources which is the direction of the broader term and I think the other thing to to re to remember is that a lot of the templates that the msba puts out are the minimum needed in order to comply with basic rules regulations and a lot of laws but it's not it they're there as templates and then

227school districts and take them as long as you're not breaking a law you know that sort of thing then you can you can make them your own through local control so that's something to consider and and that's one of the first things that we kind of brought up at the study session um because you know most of us are familiar with the template msba policy and we had made the decision as they know I gosh I can't even remember when that policy went into a place but we've had the old one there for oh at least five or six years before it was reviewed in 2021. well and I just found out too on the bottom of the msba policy it says Crawford cross reference they have 603 is curriculum development and 604 is instructional

228curriculum I don't know I haven't read those but and like you said it has all the legal references like curriculum and instructional goals and ours is basically curriculum content and all content instruction and then gives an outline General outline for challenging anything I think what I liked about it is it was very clean it's very easy to read it's you know it's very I think I think part of the reason why we haven't had a lot of challenges I mean I know we've had challenges but maybe we haven't had people who've gone through the actual process of challenging um is that maybe there's something with the policy that's hard to read how to follow hard to understand you know what I mean so that's why I'm like the more clean and simple we can make

229it I think is is going to be better to be honest with you whether it's the process the reconsideration process and or the policy is just making it you know I think last week I had mentioned I have a policy another policy that I've pulled that I can send a copy of this to you but um it basically says says that materials must be free of pornography materials must be suited to student needs and their ability to comprehend the material presented must be appropriate for the grade level and age level and then must be considered the bright broad racial ethnical and social economic and cultural diversity of the students so just those are the four points that's it I mean that's the part that I'm concerned with is that we have almost a half a

230page of all these different things that they must be considered objectives for selection so are you saying that you only want a policy for curriculum and not for library media sources no I think we absolutely need one I mean I'm I'm actually surprised this hasn't been addressed two years prior given the fact that these book challenges have been out in the out in the country for years for two years districts have been talking about this so I'm actually really surprised that this hasn't come up in the past well it has and we chose to do the Library resources more in our emphasis for book reviews that has been out there for a while rather than curriculum and that's the first question that we have is do we want to take one policy and do both

231and try to tackle both in that policy or do we want to separate them well we we're currently well we we currently have them separated yes right but I mean do we want to merge them right because we do put instructional and stuff like that in the same policy um and most a lot of other districts don't have our version of 606 on the library media resources and neither does the msba model policy so um so we actually want to step farther but now that we've got the language merged I just I think that would be the first step that's just my opinion but and I'm fine either way I just you know the flow is is confusing in a couple yeah so maybe I just just for clarity just so that our team you

232know continues to work smarter here um versus bringing on additional layers of confusion unintentionally um is it the will of the board for us to come to you because policy 601 exists which specifically addresses our curriculum in our instructional materials is it the will of the board that you want a policy governing our Media Center materials I guess I need to just start a separate policy completely just specifically for Media Center materials I guess that's what I'm wondering or could it be combined is what you're wondering no no no I'm not even wondering that anymore okay it already is separate right now and not conflate it policy 606 I guess my wondering to the board is is should that policy for the East for the ease of understanding and because we already have a 601

233policy that talks to classroom curriculum and instruction content is 606 to be focused on Media Center content Media Center books I guess that's the wondering I have yeah I would I would agree with that yeah I'm not so sure I I would say um just to be you know transparent with where I'm coming from I actually didn't realize that 601 was correct like I didn't read them together so um you know at the study session when I asked if this was regarding curriculum I don't if that was brought up I apologize because I didn't there was a lot yeah there's a tons yeah and so um I trust what what you know the administration feels like if we if we've had a curriculum one and then we are having a media or you know the

234classroom one separate that's what we've done I I'm not in I'm not um saying that it should be changed I truly believe that um I would trust your expertise in in that you know I think if we have the curriculum and the media separate they are they right next to each other should it would it be easier for the community as a whole to have one I personally think one might be easier I think that the concern that was brought by the community last week or two is it two weeks ago yeah that concern of the the content I think that is an overarching concern so when when anything is um if there's um concern over appropriateness and what that looks like I think that concern is I mean I think we could easily blanket

235that on all of our resources whether it be curriculum and the challenges is that we have a lot of different opinions and family values and all of the things so how do we best um respect all of those values and have appropriate you know how do we Define appropriate that best respects all of those values and if we can do that in one policy I would say that would be a win for our district because we're not sending people in in multiple places I don't know again and I feel like work maybe maybe this is turning study again which I apologize for but I also think that this is a really important topic that really it deserves our our attention and kind of discuss discussion well to add on to that so if you look

236at 606 it's currently called selection of library and media materials right but when you get to the very bottom and you have the statement of concern that you'd fill out textbook is listed as one of the options right so I mean if you got to this you might think this was the only thing you might not know to go to 601.1 I agree with that confusion but I also think doing the history of it is helpful in fact our words telling us how many have been challenged is it a process is it something that's gone the way of somebody who didn't like the way the outcome I don't know I mean usually these things rise to the top because something has happened I don't mean to speak for Dr Edwards but I think what you

237just said is the original process is that somebody would take it to the teacher the principal Etc um and all you want to try to do in here is memorialize that as part of the formalized process correct because that has been the process that has been implemented quite successfully in most cases um that hasn't always been implemented and the next step in the process is the review the statement of concern which is currently in policy which I haven't yet received prior to last week so um so we've worked through that and I think that was the intent was to bring that more clearly up front this is the process if you have concerns but that was specific to a couple of uh to some media resources not specific to curriculum resources so the the direction

238of two separate policies I had Martha look and yes we we have two separate policies we weren't looking at them together we were only looking at one we may need to look at both of them to make sure that they are yeah complementary that's good enough well yeah yeah I think complementary is the way to go and or it it speaks to one because um to director bernick's point I think you said something to the fact that a family may not know to go to 601 versus 606 versus throwing a number um and so again as I stated at the work session we were 45 minutes into you know just a couple of words right so clearly this isn't resonating and by the way of the discussion at the business meeting there's clearly more work

239to do so what I guess I'm going to ask the board is for us to correct me Martha on procedure I would actually like to pull this out of queue um right now because there's just a there's a lot of different understandings of what's currently being reviewed under this policy review and I think we need to do a better job on tightening that up and pull it out of queue bring it to some study sessions not so much as an introduction but just as a true study session um is that a is that appropriate to or start over that's what I'm saying pulling it out of queue is getting it out of the white yeah yeah so I I guess my question is um with the board object to us pulling that back looking at

240601 and 606 simultaneously um I may even pull one or two of you um for some thinking as well and then come back in a work session and when we feel in a work session it's it's kind of going the direction that we all agree like yep that's what we're trying to hit then we'll kind of reinitiate the policy review protocol and just reintroduce it yeah we require D Martha on the review process is this one that needs to be re-reviewed by the board in any specific the 606 one because that's our that's ours right so I I didn't think it was I wouldn't think it is no I wouldn't think it is yeah but again we're still within two years both of those policies were adopted one in July and one in August in

2412021. yeah so we're I don't think we're in any day we're not in any danger we we literally have a year if it was a three year so so then we're fine so we've got time on our side and so versus rushing to failure if we can hold this out of Q um we'll kind of we'll kind of redress this as a 601 606 review to better understand kind of the intent of each and then I think for simplicity's sake look at bringing a singular six something to the to the board for a study session that's still not yet to introduce as a policy revision but just more of a study session topic that's important to the community right so I don't want to call it a policy review at this point my only ask

242would be is can it be at the next study session I mean I think given the the speakers that came the last board meeting the speaker that came this evening I think it's an important enough topic that I would not want to see it pushed out further I mean go April 24th because our agenda for the 17th is set I did look at that agenda and it looked short I don't know what else you know yeah we can that's a special business meeting not a work session oh that's not a work session okay all right yes sorry yeah but it's good to reiterate the policy Stone Force it's not like yeah the current policy is still stance still functioning it's just yeah and I do know um because I was on the curriculum meeting this

243evening that there are some book challenges that have come up and my only question is that When selecting committee members for that review I think it does say in the original policy that the media specialist and the administration straighter a administrator a media Specialists are included on that committee is that correct and my only concern is is that why would they be included if they're the ones who originally approved the book and they're going to stand behind their choices of why they did that versus giving a true buy a true unbiased you know they're they're basically standing up and saying hey I didn't do anything wrong here where the community is saying wait a second time out they also and I think I missed something wow you know thanks for bringing it to my attention

244well I'm challenged by that yeah and and and or they would say and here's the context for why we did X Y and Z as well so yeah I I don't want to jump to the pretense that um someone is not going to be open to uh uh have the conversation it doesn't say uh director Atkinson doesn't say or a administrator so it says one licensed media specialist three parents right and then it doesn't say these like it might be the proposed policy the current policy uh States uh one School Board member designated by the chairperson of the board two parents from the district curriculum advisory committee which is now called the teaching and learning advisory which I did uh speak to tonight at that meeting um one teacher designated by the teachers representative body

245from the building affected um by the request and then the school media specialist selected from the building associated with their request and then the director of teaching and learning Who Shall Serve as committee chair so those are the that's the the size of the committee different than the proposed but we would follow the current policy that's in place until something else is replaced with it and I mean it's there's it's not just the school maybe a specialist you know so there's representation the school media specialist in the curriculum committee I offered to be the the selected board member for that committee as well so and how is that um because I have also um volunteered to be on that so how is that committee is does it change for every challenge or is it one

246committee for a school year how is that determined I I would read the current policy to be it changes depending on the challenge where the nature of the challenge came from and when the challenge so as I read that first statement it would be in consultation with the school board uh chair to determine at the time that we need to pull the community together and um again the parents from the curriculum advisory would be identified and we would put this to the test with the current request that's on the table right and I can add that during the study session this question came up and the players who are involved in this reevaluation process would need to change because we might have a challenge at the elementary level where somebody at the high school may

247not be the most appropriate resource or vice versa so we would need to it would be an added perspective that maybe you need for that particular I mean who knows is my thought so right now we'd be foul the intent would be we would be launching a review following current policy that's in place okay should we do thumbs I mean it feels like people are pretty pretty much an agreement on it okay is one cycle enough just kind of thinking of rushing to failure no there's no we're not reintroduced right for the discussion is oh there might be full study sessions yeah they're my three times I think yeah just like we normally do yeah well if the polish out of the cycle yeah we are not actually putting it in to be approved anyways

248before the End discussion right so we can we can take our time appropriately in order to do it right exactly so we just keep this in in the work queue until it's ready for the process um can I ask a question um since we have a member of our our board that wasn't at the study session Ariana um the last time we discussed this um is this something where I personally would really like your input from a student's perspective um is can Ariana come to this study session where we're going to be talking about it is that I I don't know I I'm going off the Newbie status here but I would really appreciate Ariana's point of view on all of this as somebody said earlier tonight ask the kids and I'd really like to

249do that and I believe the proposed language of students yeah students are involved I think in the development of this yeah and I as well I mean not just the Canadian on that is that it would be at the discretion of Ariana you know in her I don't mean if if it works for your schedule Ariana that wasn't my intention yeah just yeah really works in the building so we'll go back and huddle up as a team and um as we discussed the April 24th agenda we'll get that on there and then we'll make sure that you get the invite so you can see if it works for you so just to clarify on the 24th it will be like we're starting over that'll be our first review introduction and then we'll go to the

250May school board meeting which will be just like this board meeting where we're reading it with comments I'm not committing to that oh I'm saying I I would say my what I'm suggesting director Atkinson is we go into study session and work through I think there's some big things to work through um it might take two study sessions before we're ready to reintroduce it for our first view um if we're ready by May and you all are feeling Yep this is great your team has it then it's going to go by me but I'll take your direction in terms of pace but given this is our second study session so to speak if you you know and there's a lot of things that were still unsure about so I'd rather get better Clarity and take

251the time for that versus let's go back to one study session and think that we'll have it all Crystal Clear thank you for clarifying that yeah I really appreciate um the willingness to to do that I think if we can um you know given what what you just shared Dr Thomas and your willingness for us to just kind of slow down and start from the beginning it's like what are the Bare Bones what's maybe if we start with the bare bones like what does that look like because there is a lot of there is a lot of words a lot of Direction so if we can start with the skeleton and build I think we will find ourself in agreement easier if we're kind of starting with the skeleton that we can agree on and

252then we add the layers and then I just have a question about the audit that we mentioned in the last study session Dr Thomas you had mentioned I mean there's for the last two years I've been reading I've done a lot of reading about these books that have been challenged and there's you know districts that say there's over 1400 books that have been challenged and different states different districts whatever um if we were to start some sort of audit do you have any idea or feedback where we where you would start is there like a list of books that have been consistently taken out of districts I mean there's probably just as many lists as there are books yeah no I'm just asking of what your thoughts are I would say that uh we we

253could randomly pick a book challenge list out of a hat the 20 different lists will probably give you 20 different lists and and start there you could do that I don't know the rationale as to why they're being challenged um you know and again I think that's the important conversation so when you know to director bullian's point the 20 books that you might want to look at versus what I want to look at could be a total of 40 books because we're 20 different books or the ones that you don't like I like and vice versa and I just don't think we're ever going to have the list um well I think the list that I'm referring to is straight up pornography is that that's and it also depends on your definition of pornography I

254want to point that Minnesota very context state of Minnesota has some of the strictest laws when it comes to Children sharing a naked picture of somebody of themselves on a cell phone and we even had someone come speak to us at the middle school about this and it's a felony if they do that so I just I wanted to you know this is this is a Hot Topic it's actually not a Hot Topic it's been going on for two years which is why I'm surprised that it's taken us this week for decades this is not in the last two years yeah somehow books have infiltrated the school system that are not age appropriate I can tell you one of those books that was brought to our attention is an 18 plus book and so if

255we have 18 plus books in our school district currently we have a very small percentage of our students in our high school who are 18 years old and so then we have books that aren't age appropriate and even to the point where we were in the curriculum meeting tonight and one of the attendance at the curriculum meeting said well at least it's not the Colleen Hoover book and I swallowed and I said yep those are in our library those are in our high school and so I just I think so I think I'm just gonna up to one board take a moment here to decide what the definitions are take a moment here and know we all have different opinions and we know yours thank you for sharing I think we need to stop and

256reset which was what was the suggestion earlier to revisit this policy and start over and um you know we can sit here for a long time and talk about our opinions but we need to have a policy in place that we're all comfortable with and that's we're going to work towards good everybody good with that yeah great I mean an audit is a completely different topic than a book yeah but we did talk about the audit at the last meeting and it's understandable that that would be yeah I can understand where you're coming from like I I respect your opinion um but we're right now gonna reset and we'll have more of these conversations as we review this policy thank you Dr Edwards thank you for your help um no second reading of policies and

257we are looking at the board policy approval for policy 516 on student medication um I need a motion to approve this policy please so made so I've got director bullian and director Velazquez and any questions or concerns I think we've we've seen it many times all right all in favor of approving policy 516. hi opposed that passes 7-0 and we'll move on to our superintendent report our administrator reports and start with Dr Thomas please yeah one second here so just a few things um four things actually I I just feel compelled to share and just acknowledge um the passing of one of our students and it's a very sad time in our plsas family and also the broader Community one of our middle school students died unexpectedly Elsa Aiden Welch and it's really deeply impacted

258our family and so I just want to let the family and our community know to um you know they're in our hearts and our prayers and for our community to really lean in and ban and support one another during this really difficult time and today we had a lot of support at a variety of our school campuses to support our students and our staff we also did so during spring break when staff are off but some staff did choose to come in for additional support and I just can't thank our community enough I tell people a crisis doesn't build character it just reveals the character that exists and I have seen nothing but love pour out for the support of the student and our community you know in this family so I just wanted to

259acknowledge that um in in that student's honor um the other three I would like to share is that on April 25th um I'll be starting a series with some of our realtors in the area to reinvigorate that relationship with our Realtors associations here to really promote plsas as a prime District a premier District of choice for our families also would like to get feedback from our Realtors on information that they need to assist clients while buying and selling homes in our district boundaries to really deepen and strengthen that partnership so that uh kickoff will be April 25th that will begin having those conversations on a more regular basis second I want to just announce the first annual cultural student group leadership conference coming up April 27th this is our South Suburban Conference schools plus Jordan

260Public Schools think of committed caring conversations on a larger scale and this purpose that day will be to provide personal and group leadership training advocacy skills and event management and planning for member School clubs promoting cultural and diversity culture and diversity um there will be a keynote and breakout sessions I believe this was actually a question that was asked that our last session that we had about more in-depth training for kids that will be what this session is about and uh Jeff Marshall from this evening he'll be organizing that event uh with con and other conference ads as well and then lastly I'm just reminding our community about the fish Point Road construction that actually started today Fish Point Road in Prior Lake is undergoing and that's between our two middle right by our middle

261schools there undergoing a complete Street reconstruction and sidewalk replacement that will directly impact traffic around Hidden Oaks in Twin Oaks Middle Schools Fish Point Road will be closed to through traffic from the north side of Huron Street Southeast to the south side of Timber Trail Southeast and Omega Circle Southeast Fish Point Road will remain open to middle schools from 160th Street Southeast to County 44 until mid-june uh we sent out communication at the tail end of Spring Break um and uh I can tell you from this morning our first dealings with that drop off was pretty smooth so just uh asking for patience from all involved so those are my updates thank you director Frederickson thank you I just wanted to let you all know that last Monday I had a conversation with PMA who

262is our financial advisors and we did have um some fixed rate Investments that were maturing that we have an opportunity to buy three additional CDs we so we agreed to do that we're purchasing three CDs that are 18th month the ones that are maturing we're getting about three percent interest rate on these three that were now going to be purchasing will get 4.925 percent interest so we'll see in that interest of fifty one thousand five hundred and two dollars and again we try to keep all of our CDs at about 18 months so that we can readily access that investment should we need to the other thing that I had PMA every year provides us with a general obligation debt book that just gives us what the status is of our bonds that we have

263currently outstanding and we right now have some bonds that in 2028 will drop off we will have paid them off so we are in a unique position right now that we can reinvest in some bonds starting in well 2028 to um provide some Futures improvements in our district and I just wanted to make you aware of that it will have no tax impact if we just I purchase some obviously some new bonds so we will be coming to you in the near future with some ideas for some school improvements that we can have an opportunity to invest in coming up in the next few years and then the third thing is we got our association of school business officials certificate of excellence in the mail last week this will be I think our 14th we've

264had received one since 2009 and the process to get this award is submitting your financial statements to asbo and they also have a checklist that is 41 pages long that you have to submit along with your financial statements and the application so kudos to the hard work that um business finance team put together I can't say I was involved in this one but they certainly are are very hard working and well deserved so just wanted to make you aware of it we'll hang it on the wall outside of the business office where the other ones are hanging on the wall and that is all I had for tonight thank you thank you members of the board I don't really want to follow that but I do want to say that we did have a successful

265opportunity to go to the Minnesota education job fair while it definitely didn't have the number of candidates that we're used to in the past um we did meet some really amazing candidates and um already have one successful hire off of that and some additional ones in the pipeline so very excited about that opportunity and starting to ramp up any hiring and I'll just take this continued opportunity to say our best hiring is by recruitment from within so any opportunities you have to share are openings for the next school year please do so we have some really exciting opportunities for people to come work with us and work directly with our amazing staff and students great thank you okay board reports um any board reports we'll start with Ariana thank you um today was the first

266day of quarter four at the high school I know students are excited to be back and excited to end the 22-23 school year strong um our seniors are very um excited for graduation coming up next in June um it's bittersweet but we're excited to take on whatever the future has in store for us um from a student council perspective we have our bake sale we are collaborating with Junior Optimist Club that is taking place this Saturday April 15th at the high school from 9 00 a.m until 3 P.M um that will be taking place at the upper entrance of the high school we will have baked goods from Lunds Edelweiss and a few others as well and then some of our members on student council and Junior optimists are baking Goods as well and then

267if anyone is interested in donating any Goods that they make they can drop them off at the high school um April 14th from 3 30 until 6 30 p.m so if you're interested in baking a little something you can drop it off um but yes if you're looking for any more information or updates you can follow our Instagram which is at plstudco um and our members are extremely excited to put on this event it's been fun working with other members in the school kind of branching out so we're excited to eat in this cause so yes um in addition student council is busy working in our spring committees we are starting these most likely next week since we're busy with our bake sale committees this week but these include surf and turf pickleball tournament a

268senior Sunset a golf tournament and decision day posting where you can find information on where our current seniors are headed After High School so if you're interested in following that you can find that on Instagram at PL class of 23. very busy in high school great yeah it's an exciting time yes and prom right around the corner yeah on any other board reports not tonight tonight so tonight is everyone is it bedtime yes okay it is so um a few future events our school board study session April 17th that's a special session town hall meeting on school Finance April 18th at Prior Lake High School at seven then we have our regular study session on April 24th as previously mentioned so can I get a motion to adjourn so made okay we have director bullion

269and director Velazquez with a second and all in favor aye seven opposed nobody passes 7-0 thanks everybody just kidding yeah foreign