001foreign right good evening welcome to the regular uh school board meeting for Richfield public school so this Monday October 2nd 2023 and 7 P.M I call to order this meeting uh here in the room uh there's director bracky director paulus director Bank sculpture director tencin director Carter is not here today and I am also very glad to be welcoming back to all of our student reps chindaloa and so thank you for joining us also at the table uh Sports secretary Cassandra quam superintendent yonowski to my left and there's a staff in a community members joining us today so thank you so much and if you join in uh via YouTube We're welcome as well um is anyone ready to review and approve the edge I mean not review but approve the agenda I'll motion the
002agenda with an amendment um my understanding is that we don't actually require a closed session this evening so if we could strike the closed session uh the agenda without item eight oh okay I will second that we have a motion for an amended uh agenda eliminating item a closed session because we don't need it today uh the Motions by director Hansen and second by director bracky all in favor please say aye aye any opposed [Music] all right so there are three items today first I just want to offer again that excited welcome back to our two student board reps so Jim de Lou and Pauline Paula has agreed so generously on Friday extremely early in the morning to represent Richfield public schools at the association of metropolitan school districts she will be on a panel
003talking about how school is going and she'll be sharing her perspective with probably about a hundred people in person and another 100 people online give or take and so we're excited that she was willing to do that uh service thank you so thank you Paola thank you Jim delu and happy to have you back on the board um we are looking for currently um a junior or two and so the high school team is working together with student government um and interested Juniors to see if there are those who are interested in applying and following through um so we are also continuing to try to add at least one or at most two more members to our board so we are anticipating the possibility on October 16th or on the 30th to have an additional
004student board rep or two but with that we're excited to have our veterans back you're back all right we have two items and presentations on the agenda beginning with marketing and communication at our marketing team and then it'll be followed up with the second and final installation of superintendent goals before later in the in the school year where we report back on progress so with that I'll turn it over to director of communication and marketing Jennifer Valley and her partner digital Communications specialist Laura otterness so take it away Jennifer thank you are you ready for the most exciting presentation of your year yes so I'm so excited to be back here I know I only get to come here annually but I do have the pleasure of seeing all of you all the time out
005and about at different Advanced activities so I don't feel like I miss you but I miss you it's all good I'm back well um slide two so this is our team um what started as just me four years ago um grew to include Laura otterness here as our digital communication specialist and we now have a part-time enrollment coordinator on our team as well Carlene Shively um who's not here tonight but we're gonna talk about her anyway um so up there is a little bit about what we all do I will let Laura introduce herself and talk about her role hi Laura I know most of you um I primarily manage our websites so we have our umbrella website Richfield Public Schools each of our schools also have a website with all of the information needed
006for our families um additionally I manage all of our social media pages so each of our schools has its own Facebook page we also have District Facebook LinkedIn Instagram uh X formerly known as Twitter and additional um Google and education specific sites as well um I also take the lead on a lot of our video production product projects and a lot of our smaller in-house videos for various schools and topics um I also launched and continue to manage our staff newsletter twice a month um and that was came about two years ago while everyone was still working remotely uh and during the pandemic so that has been a really nice um way to communicate with the majority of our staff here at Richfield new one and I started a new one so I know you
007were all waiting so desperately for Wednesday for the next one um I know it's your favorite thing you don't have to tell me that's me yes we also started we also sent out an additional staff newsletter that will be doing monthly that is a benefits newsletter it highlights all of the benefits that our staff have access to in retro Public Schools um partnering with the human resources team on that and just trying to share all of the things that staff might not know they have access to with different highlights and blogs and and whatnot each month so and then um Carlene is as we mentioned the third member of our team she worked primarily with enrollment and in event planning and she is super super awesome so if any of you stop by any of
008our booths lately pen Fest or unity in the community things like that you probably saw her there because she coordinates a lot of those for us very grateful for her and then I do all the other stuff that didn't come up that's not as important I do things um so this year I thought I'd mix it up a little bit and give you some of the accomplishments that we've had um in the last year kind of based on our annual report to the people who read our annual reports um so I selected some of our goals and just wanted to highlight some of our accomplishments from them um one of the things that we pride ourselves on are is being storytellers and telling the story of Richfield Public Schools we have certain goals and metrics
009tied to that one of them is to create 18 profile stories that highlight the diversity in our district we actually came out with 38 Original Stories last year that's on average one a week one a week during a school year so it's kind of a lot 19 of those met that criteria and we and that doesn't include the profiles we did on seniors we did 16 senior stories last year as well celebrating the class of 2023 and then I just pulled out some of our top stories as some examples of some of the the things that we've written but really if you go to the district website and click on that news section you can keep hitting load more and load more as long as you want and see a lot of that original content
010so really just telling the story sharing the stories celebrating our students our staff our successes um we also tied into that have a goal of positive media hits and wanting to increase those by 10 every year we started this goal 2122 so we had our Benchmark was 27 articles and we have met our goal the last two years and I included some hits from the last year as well that were some of the really fun stories that we were able to tell in the larger media Outlets but we also have of course the sun currants and NPR and the Star Tribune different things like that but we were pretty excited about being able to share the broader Community with some of the successes that we've had here another big part of what we do is
011we work with the schools to help with their family communication our families are our biggest shareholders in this district and we just want to make sure that they feel like we are communicating as a whole in a way where they feel like they know what's going on and they're comfortable with all of the information that they're receiving so a big part of that was last at the end of last school year we launched parent square and we have worked through that and continue to support the implementation of getting everyone to use it use it correctly use it well and we've had some really wonderful feedback from families hearing that this platform has made it easier for them to digest the information that they receive we also promote our brand and style guide so we like
012as everything to be as consistent as possible as we communicate with families from elementary to that High School level so we have a brand and style guide we maintain and continue to share and we house it on our staff intranet as well with our colors our our fonts and anything else logos anything anyone might need to create a branded and consistent product yeah it makes noise that also includes a style guide component where we standardize the way in which we communicate and Laura does a great job highlighting things from that in that staff newsletter that she mentioned as well so we continue to kind of push out little Snippets you know did you know this is how we do this this is how you do that so again trying to standardize things and then we
013also have communication guides that we pull put together so every two years we do a communication specific survey to our students in middle school and high school to our families and to our staff just specifically related to communication the last one was two years ago and we asked a lot of really great questions that helped us make the decision to go with parent Square because we learned what was and wasn't working with our current platforms but also helped to inform our schools and our teachers about what our families and our students wanted when it came to communication how frequently they wanted to be communicated with how they wanted to be communicated you know is it texting emails phone calls the types of messages they wanted to receive so that was really helpful we made communication
014guides then for teachers and schools at both Elementary and secondary as well as district-wide and we continue to share those and train folks on that and this year we'll be doing a survey because that's two years and we're going to ask a lot of questions now relating to parent square and how it is or is it working what people would like to see done differently so those continue to be really helpful information directly from our students and families and we had a great response read on those as well um we have continued to grow our social media since um 2018-2019 this has been relatively consistent year to year the thing that I always love to point out is at the beginning of a school year you have this inevitable bump in followers because you have
015new families new age groups coming into your schools what we're not seeing is losing those followers at the end of school years when their students are leaving so we have a lot of really engaged community members who continue to follow us continue to support us on our social media platforms even after their students have moved on from that school and graduated and I think that's really cool um so these are just some of the numbers um but our Facebook Instagram Twitter and Linkedin have all grown and we've we've had a very specific goal in making sure that our content is not only reaching a lot of people but engaging people as well on social media so whenever you see some of the more in-depth statistics that we continue to take each year it's really a
016focus on not how it passed their screens as they're scrolling at nine o'clock at night but that they actually stopped and they read that content and they interacted with it in some way so those are some of the more specific goals with our social media but all in all it has continued to grow and I would also like to give a huge shout out to the people at our schools who work with me to manage their school Pages they do an absolutely fantastic job they work with their co-workers to get pictures from other teachers and Outreach workers in the school and they share them with their families and that's really what families are on the school social media pages to see is their kids learning and having a great time so they've done a really
017great job and I am very happy to work with them and support them in that work and then I thought it'd be fun to just brag a little bit no I'm not gonna sit here and read all this I don't need anybody at home watching on YouTube to read all this but I wanted you to all read it in your board packet so these are just some experts from excerpts from the staff survey but it's always nice to know that the work that you do is appreciated and I was really heartwarming to read this because sometimes the things that we do are really behind the scenes or get covered up with one negative comment on Facebook and get married so um so I just threw that in there because it just gave us some warm
018fuzzies so we'll um looking forward some of our priorities for this current school year is to engage a broader community Through the publication or republication of the your school's print newsletter hasn't been in print for a long time one went out this summer we're going to do those probably quarterly and then the monthly digital newsletter so bringing those back and making sure that we're regularly consist communicating with our broader audience and not just our families that are currently in the district we are currently supporting clear and effective communication around the referendum questions so that is a priority at least through November 7th we are updating and implementing a new enrollment marketing plan we are still in the research phase of this one this is a very comprehensive plan to last us for several years it
019goes through all the different RPI components so research planning implementation and evaluation so we are in the research phase we hope to wrap that up at our team Retreat this month and move into the implementation phase but pretty excited about that and we're doing the same thing for HR we're working on an HR marketing plan again with all of the levels of detail in that as well to ensure we are attracting and retaining top talent here in Richfield so those are some of our big goals for this next year um and we also wanted to tutor horn was won some Awards this year sorry sorry okay okay there you go um so we won two awards from the National School of Public Relations Association one for our enrollment guide and one for our one page
020at a glance calendar so threw that in there um and that's that thank you any questions questions how did you get to be so good [Laughter] I was born this way I learned from the best yeah [Laughter] I'm just honored to be in Richfield it's very easy to tell Amazing Stories when there are amazing Stories happening every day in our school so it's an it's just a great place to be I love I love being part of it I love celebrating just a question um so last year your goal was to create 18 profile stories that highlight diversity in our original so um this year what's your new goal and how can we as students and teachers and staff members how can we help you reach a bigger and better goal for this year okay
021I haven't set my goal yet for this year I'm working with Mr after to set up my goals for this coming year so that goal will continue to be there it'll probably be a higher Benchmark number um I think one of the things that helps is when I get responses when I when I'm reaching out to students for example I have a survey coming out tomorrow to a bunch of students who participated in the AP program so we're doing a a feature story on um AP but I don't want to say anymore because it's embargo until tomorrow um so I just need people to respond so the best way that students and staff can help me is when I do these little requests for quotes and feedback and interviews so you say yes and it's
022not painful I swear I think I think two students if anybody is watching this don't be afraid to brag about yourselves you guys are awesome and uh we want to hear about it so tell someone tell us share your story and we're just here to help uplift and and create those stories and share them with our community because you guys are already awesome we're just here helping show everyone else that thank you okay um I so appreciate that you shared the comments from the staff survey because I think it is such a mirror of what my own experience is but also perceptions have been which is just the Leaps and Bounds that this particular area of our organization has grown um over the last five years in particular but when I think about where we
023were eight years ago when I first joined the board like it is a radically different world and I'm so grateful for that um the question I had it was also related to students um I assume that direct communication with students really is the primary responsibility of each individual school but are there ways that you work with them or ways that you support them and thinking about how they are communicating with and engaging with students most effectively so part of that is in the surveys okay and training people and what it is students themselves have said they wanted students responded from the middle school high school and rsf I don't get anyone from SEC respond so making sure that teachers and staff and faculty are aware of what students are saying that they want to hear
024about and then kind of that how often piece so sharing some of those best practices um it's kind of a big one okay that's helpful and I will say what prompted the question was looking at our social media platforms and that Tick Tock is not on there it is not I am also not on Tick Tock but I know that people much younger than me tend to hang out there more often and so it that's what led me to think how are we using different platforms and different channels to really engage with our students in the places where they spend their time higher to do good work on Tick Tock takes a lot more time and effort than some of the other social media platforms so it has been a conversation we've Revisited periodically but
025thus far we have not dipped our toes in that water we have bookmarked the names though didn't we yeah we saved all of our names just in case yeah so every school all of that um but we also um we do look at the demographics of who takes in our social media content by platform and we found that students are primarily on Instagram a lot higher than anything else so we use the different features of Instagram so posts reels and stories and we use those interchangeably to share information but I would say generally we tailor a lot of Instagram towards a younger crowd even our younger parents as well and then in Facebook the the Instagram of my childhood has uh kind of gotten a little bit less for our younger generation and more for
026um the Millennials yeah I wasn't gonna say it but so yeah we do we do look at that and and try to keep that in mind when we're communicating based on what we're communicating and who the audience is of what we want them to to see that so that's great thank you I have no questions just appreciation along the lines of crystals just just real serious appreciation for how far we've come and over over my tenure on the board and I'm so excited and yet I still see things that we can do and it's not a knock there's a lot to do but once it's really the effectiveness that we've shown at things that we used to think were Baseline and we've proven they they can be with the right people doing it and that's
027great and so now we want to scaffold off that and build so thank you for the size of your team though holy crap do you cover a lot so yes mad love mad respect I want to say thank you for all of these and also for uh some of the other very or sometimes very internal things the support that you provide to ensure that I don't well I must be for myself I'm sure we all go through it uh when the community wants to know something and I whenever I want to make sure I'm giving the most accurate information ah Jennifer's there to to help uh and so appreciate that and I know you also uh take a you know your time to watch these meetings live even that's commitment your viewership's night drop by
028half that's right thank you thank you both and thank you to Carly Carlene yeah yeah so I think our communication team does a great job I think the historical perspective is important um I believe it was about 2018 when we added Communications at all um and so we did not have people who were doing this as a job this was additions to other people's jobs prior to that and so you can certainly see the difference when there are professional Educators trying to cover an area they're not trained in the same way in versus people who are professionals at communication and so you can certainly see that in their outcomes so congratulations to our team for their great work thank you both I mean as they hinted they have not finalized goals because how it works
029um as you all know is we come here and give the tacit finalization of my goals our management team actually meets a week from Tuesday and all of our management team people have drafted um goals but have not finalized goals either and so we'll we'll come to a finalization of mine tonight and that will be the key that allows our management team members to finalize their goals from proposals into final action and similar to me um there's breakdown similar to the same way for teachers in the same way that qcomp for our state of Minnesota um 35 related to student achievement or specific data process goals 35 percent and then individual performance so for me that's my evaluation but also there are formal evaluations of all of our staff um and so we took feedback
030from board members and did some refining and adding some detail in a couple of areas and So within the achievement measure I'm continuing on with the work we did in covid for common assessment growth and then also Gap closure because we also look at demographics in every single area that we look at and so increasing the number of student scoring proficient on Fast bridge and then also the students scoring proficient on the 8th grade local reading assessment um and those are sort of those guide posts from A literacy perspective to continue that that progress forward uh graduation rate Gap and closure the unscientific 1.7 point gain trying to get us to that 90 point uh 90 grad rate hurdle um and continuing our movement forward as one of one of again and we've talked about
031it often one of the only um reasonably large districts in the state of Minnesota with no gap between white students and students of color something we're very proud of and something we are recognized across the state of Minnesota for for one of the things that we've achieved another thing that we are also widely recognized for um and you saw it in U.S news and World reports you may be seeing something in an embargoed report coming up in a day or so about CIS and AP and the work that we do to have our students gain college credits so we want to continue that progress we moved from 325 to 368 students gaining college credit but we want to continue that by Five Points further and then we also want to continue to decrease that Gap
032and so we want to make sure that our our classes and are representative but then also those students who are achieving college credits are representative of the wide diversity and and backgrounds that our students bring um so we want to keep making making gains in those areas uh we added detail in fast Bridge one of the questions of a board member um from our last meeting uh so really looking at third grade reading and eighth grade MCA um as standards-based assessments uh to make sure that we are closing gaps and all of our teachers have been trained in fast Bridge they had an initial training in the use of that data to improve instruction and intervention and then we'll actually be following up in the coming month month and a half with our PD and
033our professional development days how to continue to train our management team actually is being trained a week from Tuesday and then our teachers are going to be trained in the coming weeks and months on how to really use that data to really Target our student needs and to help accelerate accelerate growth for all of our students in reading and math so that summarizes um those achievement-based goals and then moving on to our process goals and we are seeing one edition so it was seven at our last meeting but we did not have effectively share information about the referendum with the community um something that obviously is a goal and despite it being now 36 Days believe it or not from the election or five weeks and one day we have been vastly invested in a
034wide range of community meetings so we wanted to make sure that we were adding that in regard to superintendent goals ham and then continuing to refine some of those other areas by adding measures again based on board input and board feedback uh so deep in stacked usage of data and guiding decision making I'm really looking at what are we doing in that area um and so Dr D and Dr Clarkson and their teams um survey staff to ensure and support that data is being used um in their ongoing training so it is called prepfest which is a deep dive into Data by building data by District they've trained uh professional learning community facilitators in each of our schools at every single grade level we've trained in the use of fast bridge and fast bridge data
035and then we are working on building level teams in regard to behavior data to meet twice a month about what is our data show and what are areas that we need to focus on and continue and improve and this will be a focus all year long as each of those eight goals are across our organization we are working with the Department of educate or uh sorry we are working on the Danielson improved rubric so we did do that training something again we had talked about most of this at our last meeting and we are just beginning as of today those full teacher evaluations and so we are beginning to dive in with our teacher evaluators on the new Charlotte Danielson rubric to make sure that uh we're improving we're improving our evaluation processes and we're
036deeping in its connection to equity which is one of the big steps forward in the new Danielson rubric um we do continue on with standards-based grading um we have moved um out of synergy um successfully into digital gradebooks for standard-based grading and Reporting at the elementary level and we continue to redefine at the high school aligning to both equity and rigor discussing what is standards-based grading and how does that impact helping students be supported in putting their best effort forward to to achieve standard in each of their classes looking at that literacy curriculum pilot again 42 of our classrooms at the elementary have launched either Benchmark advance and Benchmark Adelante they're working with instructional coaches on The implementation they're working in their professional Learning Community teams and the teaching and learning team is beginning to
037informally gather feedback and we'll gather feedback in December on a large system-wide scale of how are things going with our Benchmark pilot implementation we have uh begun new classroom visit procedures so all of our administrators and instructional team members have been in classrooms we have agreed on language of what it looks like and so there have been classroom visits with feedback occurring in the first month of school and they will continue to be those as we move forward and not just the evaluative process but also the presence and support of instruction what's happening in classrooms how do we appropriately give feedback to all of our staff um as you remember we talked about professional development for me and how do I focus on continuing to develop myself professionally in my 10th year of the superintendency
038previously it had been things like finishing up my doctoral program being on the Pell speed board this year I have registered for the Minnesota Equity professional development superintendent Equity Institute I am also partnering with the University of Minnesota I typically don't agree to be a superintendent licensed Mentor but I am currently working with um one strong professional towards getting his superintendent license he's actually in the he's waving to us from the audience right now so that's Dr Samuel jigsaw he is the executive director of Higher Ground Academy in St Paul he is actually leading a over 1 000 student education system to some amazing and impressive results and I am fortunate to be able to be his mentor which helps my professional growth and his all at the same time and so that is something
039as I document and share with the board things that I'm doing for my own professional growth so we're excited to have uh Dr jigsaw here with us today he's been with us off and on um at cabinet in a wide range of other meetings including at Spartan foundation and Optimus In This Very Room earlier last week so we're spending a lot of time together and he is getting to know that I talk fast like this in the morning in the afternoon and also in the evening do it I have sugar okay um all right and then um sharing information about the referendum and so we added this after feedback since there are approximately 40 events occurring in the fall which I have helped organize from a school district side we have had a wide range
040of community members in the vote Yes group who are doing their own organization that's not my role my role is with our admin to make sure that we have people and presence and are sharing information at events so we've partnered with our communication department and our consultant for our Communications we have published referendum and voting information at the website we've presented information at a wide range of community meetings and events we have a very large approximately 10 page mailing coming out between October 8th and October 12th there's actually two required mailings to send out within a particular window we have combined them and are hitting them in that exact window and then there are additional mailings phone Banks and and other options to make sure that we are sharing information to the Great greatest extent
041possible um and then last but certainly not least I'm continuing the improvements at Ridgefield middle school and so we had a conversation about that at our last board meeting uh making sure we continue focus on the fact that we've made some very significant progress have positive outcomes in just about every area in our last school year um while focusing on RMS and then continuing that momentum to make sure we take equal steps forward or even more significant steps forward from a behavior and culture climate perspective we had a building-wide training on Catalyst which is a de-escalation engagement Strat set of strategies and then conscious discipline which is really about our adults being able to put their best foot forward and we we did that also within our training and also that has become trained across
042the district then through our advisory system-wide Behavior expectations taught to all our students and then we're also going to continue on with repeating and Recycling and renewing to continue some of those trainings as things continue to move ourselves forward um with that summary of each of those components evaluation for me occurs in spring and summer and so we'll revisit these goals either later this fall or in early winter to note progress areas where we are doing the what doing um how we would like ourselves to perform and areas we'd like to continue improving and then as we get into the spring we'll take data from parent and staff surveys as you all do feedback also from my direct reports and board members and then the evaluative closed session that we complete not only my goals
043but the overly evaluative process so with that we are setting goals my goals which align to our strategic plan and then our management team will follow with their goals which will be set amongst the management team on on the 10th of October I will pause and open it up for questions or comments I'll just tell you Express appreciation for the the detail that was added and the clarification of things that came up at the last meeting I really didn't have a lot to add then and I think it's pretty comprehensive covers the whole scope of activities that we have as a district and I don't know if of course others will have to chime in if we agree but I think it it does cover you know not just it's not just knee jerk alone
044it's it's its goals and things that will pull us all in in the same direction in a positive direction in a lot of ways so I'll second that and uh just reflect on uh you know one of the things we talked about at um at our last board meeting was the challenge of um both seeing the whole district and being able to focus in on specific areas in productive way and I really think you've kind of hit that balance so thank you for thanks for that I agree I I think everything we discussed is reflected here and I agree with Tim's point about the the sort of holistic and aligned nature um of what this reflects for our district so I am very comfortable and glad to see that we've landed on these at going
045uh both uh Crystal and team it was just not long ago that we were talking about feedback from last year in really just seen feedback Incorporated it's really encouraging and I look forward to seeing what the year brings sounds good and then just um to bring it all back together on that overall summary of things start with our strategic plan connected to my evaluation areas to focus on becoming my goals and then nested within those are goals of management team members who also are built in those same areas and so we end up aligned through and across our entire District it's a nice funnel yeah that's it well like since since chair Cole has to implement it and actually manage it more more directly and she seems comfortable with it I'll I'll move that this
046is emotional this is not a no this is just a superintendent report there's no official motion there is just the did we hit where where the feedback is incorporated um and then we were just moving forward we just moved forward excellent all right transitions us to our one Commendation and so Richfield Public Schools would like to commend RMS staff member Katie Stevens for participating in the Department of Education assessment committee this last summer developing quality assessments is a lengthy process requiring the work of many people so mde Department staff testing vendors and teachers and stakeholders across Minnesota so Katie Stevens put her voice forward on behalf of Richfield public schools and so mde and Richfield appreciates Katie for bringing her knowledge skills and voice to the table at mde so thank you Katie we appreciate
047you representing us at the state level all right thank you we now move to the consent agenda this is a space in our meeting where we pass General regular items all together so this is a time for uh questions uh pulling an item out if anyone chooses from the board or just make a motion to approve it foreign agenda as presented I will second [Music] Bank sculpture all in favor please say aye aye and games chair votesai and the consent agenda is approved and we now get to all business our the first item policy 583 about Luna resources correct so we took a meeting or so break as we reviewed this um with Dr tensing's input with our attorney and with our medical professional team we made a couple of adjustments and so if you
048look at general statement of policy District staff to be expected accept in circumstances described in section two E-1 and then we worked our way through to add a little bit of extra language into e you'll see such plans will seek to balance the individual right to autonomy and Healthcare decision making with the district's capacity to implement the plan in good faith and so we're acknowledging that people might come to us with DNR um orders and that we would like to in good faith and we just can't guarantee that that is the case and so so these would be students with IEPs or 504s and so what we have also added is the superintendent or designee must be consulted to determine our capacity to fulfill that and so basically we would be much like we've done
049in multiple other areas things come up to the superintendent to review if these are things that we can manage or cannot and so it would get um it would get a review at the highest level of our organization and so those changes were made to make sure that we were aligning to share our goal to support and respect parents but also what can actually be done in the most appropriate way so we have this for the board I'm hoping for a passage today so I just want to express just gratitude for cooperation and collaboration throughout the process I think that um I really do feel that we have come out with I think a much stronger policy in my opinion and I'm pretty happy with the outcome recognizing that um really recognizing I think the
050Nuance that would be part of a conversation like this and we're fortunate that we've never had to do it in our district but if we do I think we're going to be much better prepared and so I'm really happy with the outcome I thank you for that was that emotion that could be emotion I think the other thing that'll be really that I'll ask my fellow my peers on the board to be thinking about as we look at I think it's actually really um serendipitous that we're looking at our medication policy at the same time and so I think it it sort of underlines how um a modern School District with the responsibilities that we're taking on really does take on a little bit more than than just teaching and that's um and I think
051that our policies are reflecting that and our sort of really having that that thoughtful approach to um you know forming policies that are oriented around doing the right thing by our students and so anyway I'm pretty pleased with that so I'll move the policy as amended all second okay no more questions governments we have emotional by Mr tencent in a second by Mr police uh all in favor please say aye aye aye in your post and policy 583 is approved and now we have policy 108 Hasting prohibition all right so nothing could make me smile more than the feedback we received from our students so we brought this to a group of rhs students for reviewing feedback and they basically shared that they don't believe any hazing has happened in Richfield for decades um and
052so yes right that is a well that is a student perspective students um and so that's wonderful and we have a policy um and the policy basically states that we do not tolerate that type of behavior um and so it is always uh good when policy and verbal feedback that we receive is in line that is not to suggest there aren't other Behavior incidences that happen but as they were defining hazing our students this was actually a learning experience for the students in the group because they had not um they had not seen that as something that was significant while acknowledging other Behavior situations that definitely occurred um in the world so you will see um the same updates that we had they are basically based on branding we do have those for a second
053read there is also that uh small removal of language in definitions around physical brutality to make that a much more wide-ranging um well not feeling like it was reduced number of behaviors and pretty much those are the changes in for second reading so you'll you'll get that second read tonight and over the next couple of weeks and we'll have this for passage on the 16th of October um okay question okay I don't know if I can ask this because of like confidentiality but were any of those students a part of sports teams or any like clubs or activities there were students on Sports okay yes yes and they did identify there are Behavior incidences there are inappropriate things that happened but the students that at least shared their voices here didn't feel like there were
054some as hazing is often like a physically aggressive horrifying initiation to a sport they had not had experiences with that great question yeah and again where I also want to say yet they also were able to say there are Behavior incidences um that definitely occurred in those situations thank you for bringing this back with that really really important context well I will move the policy your second reads just that awkward pause to see if there is we'll do this is there anything else before we move on to gender inclusion read too I want to say I felt that way too Mr tense yeah okay I thought it was pretty good it's good so yes I thought it was pretty good so it wasn't just you all right so then we are on read two um
055also a policy that went by the safe and supportive schools and just as a reminder so because we have a set of policies and the board's Vision has been together student voice there are now two Committees of students there is a more ad hoc group of high school students um who are reviewing policy as their assignment and there is the ongoing safe and supportive schools group who has multiple assignments but one of them is to also review policies I mean it's just because the reality is to get the voice we wanted we weren't able to basically occupy the entirety of the safe and sort of schools committee time and so we have gathered two groups this one was by safe and supportive schools you'll notice a whole set of different language components and so again
056we we talked about these at our last meeting um some of the things that were cutting edge language like assigned gender is no longer a terminology that's used um gender non conforming is now terminology you'll see definitions around gender expression gender identity non-binary sex assigned at Birth um and so you'll see us having changed those definition you will also see rules around names and pronoun usage and then also just clarifying um dress code which is no longer a gendered policy when we change dress code and so um you will see another set of language updates in there also I'm just realigning to the things that have happened in the past five years and as we talked about at the board we were one of four the first four in the state of Minnesota to have
057a policy and so now we are one of there are 30 40 50 school systems that have gender inclusion policies now we believe um and now we are making significant updates as as things continue to move forward so again read number two and we took some input from director Palace in between meetings if there are any other um and just around language and and making sure that we are reviewing everything and so we'll see if there's any other input here or in the next couple of weeks and we'll have that for a third read at our next meeting the point I brought up was in definition F of for transgender um I asked it as written it says it describes an individual whose gender is different from the gender that traditionally corresponds to the sex
058assignment to them at Birth and I said it appears as though for clarification it would be describes an individual whose gender either expression or identity is different just for it Loops back to the other definitions but what do we mean when we say gender and and I think what we mean is a a an individual is transgender if they're either their Identity or their expression is different from what we would expect I wouldn't or or if there's more and I'm missing it that's okay too but I'm open to considering that how that would be right and so we are reviewing right we're reviewing the language components to make sure um that each of those pieces um are in alignment with definitions and language to follow which is why we do three reads it is so
059helpful even just seeing how the definitions have changed in uh you know the the relatively short amount of time that we've had this policy because I remember definitions being one of the things that we adjusted based on student feedback when we first passed it so it's great to see the continued Evolution and growth as we do this um I should have thought of this when we talked about this at our last meeting but uh I I believe at least in previous years there has been an active lgbtq plus group at the high school and I wonder if we can thank you for the money Yes actually I was supposed to also add to the conversation where I'm getting the look from Cassandra good yes this is we have a it's called The Glow group at
060the high school and this is going uh past them before the next meeting or before we bring it back for the final reading yeah just um and maybe you said this and I'm sorry if I missed that where did these definitions come from whatever it is that I'm looking at um gathered student voice particip partnering with the Department of Education and then working with people who utilize the appropriate language on a regular basis okay and if there is input or perspective this year certainly send that to us okay right so these are these are the terms or or definitions that continue to come up further in the policy for the the folks to whom protection is afforded right so yeah no I get where where yes we're coming from on this I just yeah if
061there's language reviewer questions Yep this is the time to do that before read three yes absolutely great anything else all right then we are I believe at 584 yep first read of student medication um and so this is just a first read um and it just describes um that part of our role as schools is at times to help students with medication so this sets out the requirements and how we or how we do or how we do not um share medications with students the methodology the rules and the regulations um and so this is again just for a first read for the board you will see it prior to our next meeting with some updates so uh I got some feedback from the superintendent the the thing that struck me about this policy which
062I was just kind of curious about is we do make a sort of specific call out on inhalers for asthma and so I was kind of curious to know um about some other classes of medications that would potentially be self-administered the the big the big one that was in my mind was students who have an insulin pump or other Diabetic Type 1 diabetic students who are potentially self-administering insulin and was very gratified to learn that we definitely have an approach that I think is medically quite sound in terms of working with those students through the 504 plan and really the um it's that 504 the use of the 504 plan to tailor our medication administration to the health needs of that individual student which I think is kind of the key piece of this um
063as I'm guessing that the reason that asthma medications are called out is sort of an accident of history but I don't have any problem with it um it seems reasonable um so I'm happy with how this one is planned and then to add to that in our second read you will see naloxone in there which is something that is new um that is new from the state and is expected to be in schools Statewide um okay so I know there are some differences in how like school like different um different like institutions do it like I know for like the high school like the nurse can't give medications that I think like the only like either like students have to have them on the have it on them or like the Health Resource Center so
064does this policy like list out like what the different rules are for like different ages of students um it does some of that it's something that we can definitely look at and make sure that it that it creates that Clarity for our students and their Clarity for our health folk some of the feedback that I got from the health staff relative to the insulin question um I think might help you with that so if you think about a you know a really young child who's getting insulin difficult thing for a kindergartner for example to manage on their own so our typical approach with our Healthcare staff is that in that situation the healthcare staff would be monitoring the kids sugar and administering the insulin for them once you hit middle school high school your people
065are becoming more independent more encouraging self-management of the health condition and so those 504 plans allow that flexibility to to then sort of be what would be happening in a situation of a student with a glucose with a uh insulin pump for example and a continuous glucose monitor is our staff would just sort of be standing not literally standing by but being supportive of the student doing their own self Administration but all this is then under the sort of auspices of that specific plan that's directed by the student's physician okay yeah or did you also mean if a student says oh I have a headache do you have something for me yeah something like that too both like where a student in grade nine or above can use non-prescription pain relief on their own so
066that that part is already in here but but could the student have that provided if they did not bring it themselves and I'm getting a a no from Dr Clarkson so that's it towards your question yeah yeah they know but we should make sure that it's clear and that it's spelled out in a way that everybody kind of no so we'll re yeah [Music] a little well it is what it is but like a kid carrying that could be unsafe for others um who may have access to it so if I'm working you know have I don't know a bottle of Advil with me and how safe does it have to be because I know when we talk about the policy of our substance abuse like we talk about all the types of not over
067the counter uh things but right so generally obviously it is a challenge if one student has a medication and is sharing it with somebody else um those are things that that we can certainly review I will never dare to say my send my kids you know to school with because I'll be too scared but that's just maybe I'm just I don't know I mean I mean it definitely can provide some very unique and challenging situations and and they're definitely challenging to navigate but that's what our health team does our staff and our counselors actually engage in conversations around medication students should have or should not have on a very regular basis with our students so I Echo your concerns anything else on this otherwise we can also take any feedback and input over the next
068couple of weeks and again first reads so it'll be back for a second read at our next meeting um before hopefully looking for passage depending on October 30th all right I will keep us rolling and jump us into the resolution appointing election judges so we are fortunate to have our city work together with us and they help support us with election judges and so this is a resolution so um whoever moves it this will have to be a polling of the board but you'll see in exhibit a the list of those who are volunteering or being paid to be election judges on November 7th 2023 they act as clerks the election count the ballots cast submit the results of the school board for canvas and the matter provided for other school district elections so you'll
069see a very large list one and almost a half page of people who have who are who are willingly stepping forward how to serve the community as election judges as we continue on with things like approving a ballot approving polling sites and also approving election judges some of the many duties that you all have in the election process I have recused myself as an election there are districts specific questions on the ballot which I think is generally a good practice so I would be thrilled to move the resolution appointing election judges since I don't get to actually act as one this year I'll second we have a motion by Miss Bracken a second by Mr police as a resolution so Mr police hi Miss Bank sculpture aye Mr tencin hi Miss bracky aye and share
070both Sai and the resolution uh is approved and I want to accept my gratitude with everyone stepping up to volunteer uh it could be a long day uh without any you know everyone who volunteers to to do this work there's a lot of names I recognize who've definitely done it before but a great appreciation for them coming back and and huge appreciation for anyone for who's a first-timer yeah there has to be some on there and might as well use this to put in a plug for being an election judge it is a great experience and it is a community service and I highly recommend it what are the requirements that you remember gosh actually inaccurate but the city provides all of the vetting and extensive training actually yeah you have to do it like
071a three-hour training class it um you are you are well prepared because it's a really important responsibility and it's more complex than you probably think um when you think about all the machines that are used throughout the course of the day and the way that you're interacting with members of the community all right thank you okay and that brings us to donations all right we have one ah took my microphone off we have one donation the RPS Sunshine lunch account received a donation of a hundred dollars from Jenny Smith of Richfield and an anonymous donation of a hundred dollars so thank you all for donations to the sunshine lunch account I'll recommend or move that we approve these donations with gratitude I will second I have Emotion by Mr tencent in a second by Miss
072bracky all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed and these donations are accepted with gratitude thank you and here we are with Advanced planning legislative update uh so just again there is an election um November 7th there are School Board seats up and there are two referendum questions up um and so that is precisely I believe 36 days from today um so five weeks and one day the Tuesday following the first Monday in November um and so we just want to remind people at every opportunity that voting is an important civic duty so we are hoping people all go out and exercise their right to vote materials that the district has put together to share facts and information I think are really really well done uh and I appreciate how every piece of
073literature is bilingual so just wanted to publicly share appreciation for that because I think it's incredibly clear and useful thank you the presentations what I've been um across the district um it there's almost no questions at the end like everything's is covered the graphs are very helpful and very positive uh yeah the two things we've seen um that have gotten pretty significant feedback from an information perspective there is a graph that shows us that 1100 and most of the surrounding districts at 2200 and that seems to get a response from people and then often the question is how did it get like that and the answer is because we have not asked we have not asked the community that's not where we went we were not in a position where we felt that need and
074now we do the other piece of information that seems to be unique to people and their understanding is is that property taxes related to schools have gone down significantly and so people are paying fewer dollars in property taxes than they were in 2018 for a similar priced house and so well people's property taxes have been going up and it does not break it down super cleanly on a property tax statement um uh given the rise in house price from an average of about 235 to about 335 000 um or that is that is the growth in our house of that price um it's been about 140 fewer dollars is being paid um in school-based property taxes on that home um and so that is also a unique piece of information that people seem surprised by
075and seems to have a pretty significant impact anything else get the information and questions from board members I have two um one it did the the donation popped an idea in my head Rob the the RPS Sunshine account and with the the conversion of the state level to free launch for all I was wondering where where that would go specifically and how we would use it um of course we have we have unpaid amounts from prior years and so just cool I don't need an answer now just something I thought might if you have an answer there are actually two components so one is the historic debt is not wiped out um and so looking at how to retire um long-term um lunch debt um and the challenge is other pots of money are not
076allowed to be used by Statute to to cover that um and so that's one of the two options um and then the other reminder which is there are still Foods available on a la carte and people who want seconds or double entrees and this can support those opportunities for students and so that's those are the areas that we look to for the sunshine accounts there's snacks too right here yes a la carte is I agree it is my son is like oh I get them I have a wall of frozen yogurt receipts yes it would be great if there was no charging at all um but double entrees come at a price and obviously some of those a la carte extra items come at a price also um free overall lunch option free overall breakfast
077option but to increase or or to get some of those off menu items all right thank you and the second item is actually uh relating to to the high school so my my child is a senior and just wanted to mention this week we're excited to say to hear um the direct admissions program releases their their list this week and so the direct so you know just want to highlight that that our school is in second year as a district or in high school chosen by the Minnesota Department of or office of higher education to where where students will find out this week that they more or less will be at gained admission should they choose to formally apply but there would be guaranteed admissions up to up to 50 schools in the state um
078a mix of two-year four-year public private and so for a lot of seniors and there's two in the room I mean there's aspects of that where I imagine that will be affirming um exciting and and comforting so very very happy to see that this you know they still have to apply choose to apply they're still financial aid we're still paying for it after that um but the question of will I get in or should I have considered this school could actually be be spurred quite quite forward so that I think that's uh the fourth or fifth so it's amazing hmm I imagine we'll have some release on that thank you I also have a happy thanks um the first is because I follow the Minnesota Department of Education on Twitter I learned that today is
079School of custodian and grounds recognition day in the state of Minnesota and so just wanted to publicly appreciate our team who do amazing work to keep our buildings in just incredible shape and condition and that was true before we did all of our facilities projects and it is true now and so just huge appreciation to that entire team and then the second thing is just a request to come back to something that we have talked about a few times before which is for our student board members whether there is a way to do some sort of credit or scholarship or compensation for the work that they provide on behalf of their peers and behalf of our district and so I know some various things have been explored and so I would just love to come
080back to that and know what options may exist yes and we had approached uh we had agreed to approach Spartan Foundation to examine the possibility of scholarships this will be exciting to both of our students in the scholarship application process um the Spartan Foundation examined through history um are board reps and determined that uh they were already most likely receiving scholarships from the Spartan Foundation um and so when you come to the process of of application this is a separate aside word is you're very likely to end up with a Spartan no guarantee because I'm not on the board I'm Spartan Foundation scholarship based on what's happened historically um and so what that does is it has also then left us um looking um and this actually happened relatively recently looking for other ways to
081do that and so we'll go back to the well and try to figure out other methodologies to create a site we did do looking at the credits that did not seem of significant interest um because our board reps tend to graduate with more than enough elective credits and so that wasn't necessarily a great option so looking at some form of of stipend or scholarship also is is something we're looking for thank you right uh suggested for future agenda items so we're not meeting with Best Buy now we're not doing the study session um we had that tentatively scheduled for the 18th of September um they were not it was the time gone where has the time gone uh we canceled that at that time they were not prepared for a public conversation just yet um
082and so they have been working out um to determine if there are ways to support their requests without negatively impacting taxpayers um and so we're kind of at a pause where I have shared the board perspective of no negative impact to taxpayers and Best Buy is working under that expectation and trying to figure out how that would work until they feel like they have something that they're pretty confident in they didn't they weren't ready for a public conversation got it excited for that okay any other agenda items suggested no uh or questions okay great uh future meeting dates we will meet again October we have another meeting this month it isn't it yes we just as a weird reminder we're having three October meetings um because we only have one in November uh because we
083can't have one the first Monday in November it has to be within 10 days of the election um and so there's actually three in October 16th and 30th two weeks later on the 11th of November but that is the only November board meeting we have [Music] for a regular board meeting with public comments at 7 pm and then again October 30th at 7 pm for the regular board meeting and with that um just let's just adjourn this meeting at 8 10. all right thank you thank you everybody foreign