001good evening everybody the september 14 2021 regular meeting of the isd roseville area school board meeting is here by call to order before we get i really appreciate everyone masking and we also really appreciate everyone asking properly i know that it may be a pain but even when you go to restaurants or bars these days they want you to do that and and even get your address and phone number for contact tracing so i know some folks even in the back that don't have it over your nose if you could please put your mask properly up over your nose and mouth together we'd really appreciate that we do have some vulnerable people here from a health perspective mr halsey could you please put your basket over your nose thank you sir we won't continue unless
002people are properly masked that's our policy we pass it we do need to follow it within the board meetings within the building so we really appreciate your cooperation with that clark kentucky please take the role our pleasure director anderson here director true here sherbrooke here director shaw here treasurer here and kirk johnson's here thank you do you have any agenda adjustments man up superintendent thank you do we have any announcements or comments from fellow board members or staff i i have one brief announcement it's just an announcement of of appreciation congratulations to directors chu and anderson and johnson and actually myself too who are going to be delegates at this year's msba annual delegate assembly for those who don't know msba minnesota school board association every year holds an in-person two-day event where we gather
003to determine what we want to lobby the state legislature to do for schools in the coming session and our district which includes us mounds view north st paul maplewood oakdale and white bear lake has a total of six seats available to go to that here out here way of typing it out here because we don't know what you're saying at all so they can view it is there a way to set up a viewing could you go out melissa and help them to get where they need to be to see that thank you someone's coming around the corner anyway uh and there are six seats of those six seats actually four of us on this board uh were elected to uh uh do that so this should be very well represented with msba this year
004so thank you very much congratulations to all of you uh with that we'll go to community input as you may know once the pandemic began we did initiate a process by which if folks couldn't attend a meeting in person or even zoom in they would send a letter to us and we would read that so i'm going to start tonight's community input by reading the letters that we received tonight for community input and then we'll proceed going through the list of folks who have signed up to speak tonight given the number i think we will try to limit the speaking tonight to about two minutes if possible i i don't think ever in my experience it's taken more than two minutes for anyone to get through what they want to say if you're almost to
005the end we'll have a little leeway but i think clerk johnson will be able to give you a signal when there's about 30 seconds left as the live speakers start but with that i'll move into the letters uh first thank you so and these are no particular order um first letter is from carolyn halverson on sexton avenue in roseville minnesota dear school board members feel free to read this aloud my name is carolyn halverson i'm a roseville resident and parent of an elementary age child and a middle-aged middle school-aged child attending two different schools within the district i wish to express my overwhelming support for the school district's equity vision framework it is important to me that we are teaching culturally relevant content and it is being utilized through an equity lens for all of
006our learners at all ages thank you for putting forth an equitable education curriculum and please know that this family wholeheartedly supports it you have some um non-wearing masks oh we need to wear masks folks we can't proceed without masking it is our policy and all the buildings and all the areas so we do have maps available for folks if you didn't bring one we've got one okay thank you thank you next letter from dina wassenberg 1446 california avenue west in falcon heights dear roseville area schools board i'm ready to spread to express my support for the social studies curriculum in isd 63 and its honest age-appropriate portrayal of racism and its impact on people both current and historical i would also like to express my support for the roseville educators who signed on to the
007pledge to decenter whiteness in the curriculum as a white person with white person with white children in the district i want my children to thrive alongside the students of color in their schools the legacy of racism in our community is real and is still felt and expressed today i would do my children no favors by keeping them ignorant of these facts i want my children taught the full depth of u.s history its horrific flaws and its idealistic beauty i want my children to learn that patriotism is not the claim that our nation has achieved our ideals but is putting in the hard work of moving toward them i thank the roseville educators for helping teach this lesson next letter from theodore tessier uh midway center 1450 energy park drive uh dear school board i have
008made a career of teaching anti-racism to college students it surprises me how many of my students over the years have lacked critical thinking skills regarding the history of oppression genocide and racism in this country it is because they were not taught the full history of our nation please reject any attempts to further ignore the facts and contribute to the further dumbing down of our students next letter from brad white 1742 eldridge avenue west der roseville school board i am a roseville resident former brim hall teacher and of two students at brim hall yesterday a neighbor called to invite us to the school board meeting this afternoon saying there would be public comments sharing concerns about critical race theory i'd like to share some brief thoughts last night at dinner i said the following to my
009nine-year-old child quote tomorrow some people are going to the school board meeting from what i understand they think kids should not learn about problems based on race or how things are unfair between people based on race they want schools to focus on being kind to each other no matter who they are what do you think about that my nine-year-old replied verbatim transcript well i guess i can kind of understand that it can be scary to talk about things like george floyd's murder or things not being fair for people because they are black but it's also good for me to know about those things too we drove by where george floyd was killed yesterday on the way to piano lessons i remembered about what happened after he was killed i felt still very angry about that
010it shouldn't have happened to him most kids are curious and would ask things like what happened here when they drive by and sometimes we talk about why why there are more black people or white people in different neighborhoods or in different jobs and i think our teachers can help us to talk about things like this unquote we moved to roseville for the opportunity for our kids to attend diverse equity focused schools as roseville parents we are grateful to partner with educators in helping our children learn about past and present inequities so we can all share a more free and just society we are grateful for thoughtful school-based conversations focused on understanding and equity so our kids develop the moral courage skills and understanding to end those inequities rather than scale back any of those conversations
011or efforts we ask the district always keep students at the center persist through opposition and double down on the important work until the equity vision is realized for all roseville kids next letter uh i just found out about tonight's board meeting where some will present regarding critical race theory in roseville schools i'm unable to attend the meeting in person do the previous commitments i'm a mom of school age kids we just moved to roseville in late july i want to register my support of teaching critical race theory in roseville schools as i consider it to be a fundamental part of american history that continues to influence society today largely to the detriment of people of color sarah rudolph 1955 height street was next letter from amy perkins 904 brenner avenue in roseville i'm writing to
012express my support of and gratitude for the intentional work being done in the roseville school district around equity and social justice if the events of the past year and a half have shown me anything it is that i have much to learn about how we build communities that are safe and welcoming for all i also know that despite my best intentions i do not have all the words or knowledge to do this job alone i want my children to learn a more complete story of the united states i want my children to be able to recognize avoid and interrupt behaviors that belittle and dehumanize others i wish for more understanding more security more acceptance and less fear i don't want my kids to have to play catch-up like i am at age 47. the history
013of our country just like a person is messy it is filled with beauty tragedy honor deceit love and everything in between just as we still love family members who have made poor choices and helped loved ones turn over new leaves so too should we study our own flawed history past and present i fully support our district's efforts to teach students a broader fuller and sometimes more painful version of our story than has ever been told before i believe in lifting up the voices that too often have been ignored or silenced my son and daughter attend emmett d williams first and third grade since the death of george floyd their principal dr wilson and her talented staff have led the students through some of the most inspiring uplifting and focused character building an unapologetic discussion around
014race and bias that i've ever seen in a school i taught myself for 16 years in minneapolis so i'm not just referring to the four years i've had a child at emmett because of her public stance on decentering whiteness having joined a large group of principals who have formed a coalition to make good trouble dr wilson and others are now under scrutiny from groups that seem determined to prevent schools from talking about the darker side of our country's history i would like to express my public respect and appreciation for dr wilson's work and vision we need more leaders like her next letter this is from anita mcdonald 1925 gluck lane in roseville i'm a parent of my three children who are now teenagers and have gone to school in roseville since they started kindergarten at
015brimhall elementary while i want to assume good intentions from those at the meeting accusing our teachers and school staff of teaching critical race theory they are posing a great threat of harm harm to our children and harm to our teachers and staff i believe they are misled by being triggered by the term decentering whiteness they seem to take this to mean villainizing all white people this is not what it means decentering whiteness just means that the curriculum needs to be broadened to include the perspectives of those who are not white and whose ancestors did not come from europe i have not heard any examples of students in roseville being taught in our schools anything excuse me that could reasonably be interpreted as all white people are bad teaching about slavery jim crow the genocide of
016indigenous peoples in america is teaching factual history i want my children to learn the facts of our history that is how we as a people can put our current world in context and learn to be better it is also how we can improve our understanding of each other and our backgrounds regardless of race our teachers are professionals who have the knowledge and skills to be able to teach about these challenging topics in an age-appropriate way the statement that is being referenced is making the important point that even white kids are not served well by their schools if they are only taught a limited and biased narrative of our history i strongly support education that prioritizes equity this improves education for all kids we all benefit regardless of race and background next letter uh from maureen
017smith 1145 ryan avenue west in roseville i'm writing before tonight's school board meeting to express support for the roseville school district social studies curriculum and racial equity work i also support your mask mandate i live and vote in roseville and even though i don't have children in the schools i always vote for schools i am proud of the way the roseville schools honor diversity we know that many school boards across minnesota and across the country are coming under attack for teaching critical race theory and supposedly teaching hate i know that isn't true at all people are believing lies it isn't easy these days to serve the community i want you all to know i appreciate what you do next letter this is from carrenza fisher 2049 western avenue north in roseville as a parent of
018three parkville park view students i'm deeply thankful for the board's choices about protecting our unvaccinated kids in schools with masking and vaccination and or testing requirements we are three generation households these measures protect my children's grandmother as well as the rest of us as well as all connected to one another in community just as much as in households also i want to write in support of equity education i am a parent of three children and i believe my children do need to learn that there are different kinds of privileges and discriminations in the world both historically and today we can empower them with choices to make about how they access their own privileges and notice both ways they might discriminate and even be discriminated against at times while i do try to stay tuned to
019these kinds of learning opportunities at home i believe it is necessary for any democracy that there is honest and complete retelling of historical events in public schools as well as awareness of the effects of those events on the families of today and individual children that are in the classroom teachers staff and community members in general must develop awareness around various kinds of trauma including racialized trauma that affects the children and parents or schools district work with on a daily basis being honest about the history of the land on which our institutions are built gives children an opportunity to think about their own future choices allowing children to understand one another better through equity education benefits absolutely everyone and i believe it helps build a better system that includes and listens to more people res mana
020manakam the author of my grandmother's hands has worked with a wide variety of institutions locally and he calls the work generational it will take many generations to really honestly deal with racism and other forms of trauma inducing marginalization i am thankful for every student in my kids classrooms as i know each student in those classes is teaching all the others something valuable as our children grow and change together in public education it is always my hope that roseville school board will hold fast to the vision of equity education in the face of all adversity as a parent i will do my best to stay aware and tuned into these issues to offer my support in a variety of efforts towards equity next letter this is from kerry gala jella jelly galley kerry galley 777 level
021avenue roseville i'm writing in strong support of equity education in roseville area schools i'm a 31 year old resident of roseville a parent of two adult children who spent all their k-12 learning years in this district who is grateful for the well-rounded education my children received and that all our students deserve i'm also a godmother of 8th grader currently attending roseville middle school my children have grown up to be kind socially conscious justice oriented critical thinkers my godson is headed in the same direction and is a student of color each of us individually and together as a family frequently volunteer and participate in supporting equity and justice our entire family understands that structural and systemic racism exists in current modern-day u.s society we believe there is no reason to keep that hidden or a secret
022and then in fact our community and society will have the opportunity to improve and better care for each other when we do in fact teach in great appropriate ways the history of the facts and the solutions in our k-12 schools it is imperative that roseville schools continue to teach equity-based lessons and provide culturally relevant teaching in support of the broad and diverse student population we are fortunate to provide a learning home for it is imperative that district 63 accurately teaches the history of this country especially the absent narratives that i never learned during my k-12 education again part of the oppressive system that kept those narratives hidden i think it is important to be aware that if there is opposition to equity and education expressed at the school board meeting this is driven by a
023political campaign spreading misinformation this political campaign is worth investigating related to its funding sources and its motives i am excuse me could we please thank you i am not part of any broad political campaign or initiative here i am only an individual concerned community member in roseville however i am not going to apologize if dominant white culture in roseville is offended shamed or confused by equity education i strongly support all of you in ensuring that equity education and all the elements that encompass that remains a solid part of the curriculum teaching and educational experience in roseville schools next letter and i have three more uh some hans jorgensen at 2796 virginia avenue my two children went through roseville school district and graduated with an education that impressed me we want all kids to have an
024education that imparts honesty about who we are integrity and how we treat others encouraged to do what's right in short we want equity and education sadly some misguided leaders across the state have started to stoke fear in the suburbs and greater minnesota and block efforts to implement age-appropriate ways to tell hard truths about our country's past and present in order to prepare our kids to create a better future i want to let you know that i support the school district's commitment to honesty and education through the social studies curriculum because their children all need to be able to grow into justice and open-minded perspectives that show the historical effects because of race and gender is the framework we need to bring about educational equity and i appreciate your support of it thank you for your
025service to our community please stand firmly on the site of equity so all of our children regardless of race or background we have every opportunity for growth and effort and for growth and opportunity next letter deborah mosby mosby 935 sharon street west roseville i am so disappointed to have to write you this email i was raised in roseville and i came back to roseville to raise my children once living here again i heard the term racist roseville many times in my ignorance i had never really paid attention to what was really going on i found out that there were racist covenants found in mortgage agreements undue attention paid to people of color shopping in our stores and a general message of unwelcome given to non-white people living in and visiting our community this and the
026fact that in my upbringing in schooling the history of non-white people and their oppression in this country was totally whitewashed i am just sick hearing that there are white people in roseville who want to continue the tradition of ignoring the real history of this community and of our country how can somebody want to be against equity i find it disgusting please take a stand against racism in our schools and send those who would deny equity to our kids and adult citizens on their way next letter from natalie lee height 1160 maple lane west in roseville and the parent of a fourth and first grader edw i want to share my strong support for the roseville school board and superintendent lake's commitment to educational equity i could in-depth share my own experience as a student in
027the st paul public schools in the 90s where equity was not part of my education and the negative impacts of that on my life instead today my comments are about the positive impacts of equity as part of our students education that impact includes kindness compassion and understanding characteristics that make our community stronger i would also like to share my very strong support for mandating vaccinations for school staff we actually did distance learning the entire year in 2020 because we didn't have a vaccine and we did not feel comfortable sending them in person this mandate would make us feel so much better about our choice of sending my children to school this year thank you those are the letters we've received in a way to give us total minutes at least since all the people didn't
028show up with so much time is there people who bothered to show up and prepare and we're told ahead of time well we'll we'll go for two but if you will on a case-by-case basis if you're like right in the middle you know but no more than three please and frankly i think what everyone will realize is that two minutes is an awful long time i i believe it was about eight or nine yeah 13. [Music] please i'll just state uh every one of these letters is everyone that we received we didn't not read any that were asked to be read this is the entire population so what there it looks like that there are the the main the main um topics oh i'm sorry oh is there yeah we need masks we need to
029mask yeah we need we need to to mask up yeah we can't continue unless folks mask up properly over their nose and mouth i'll check one more time sure ma'am and you in the back could you please ask sam ma'am could you [Music] she's not wearing it oh are they complying uh folks we're not going to continue unless everyone who's in the building is masked properly well melissa's passing it along yeah melissa just let them know we we can't continue unless everyone in the building is of course your rules in here so yeah we it's our policy that we have to be masked everyone in the roosevelt area schools buildings whether it's the boardroom or the hallway or anywhere the buildings must be masked properly which means a mask ward that covers both the nose
030and the mouth and that's our policy that's our requirement so we maybe we should go outside our meetings are live streamed and broadcast on ctv and uh north channel 18 so we need to do it in this room i mean you got to figure something different also on the district you guys are all smart people figure it out so we're okay okay all right all right thank you thank you out there for either masking or leaving whichever you did so anyway it looks like the topics are crt equity education or related to vaccinations mainly there are some folks who signed up that did not put what their topic is so we'll we'll save this to the end so i'll just start from the top and the first one actually says that they want to speak
031both about crt and vaccine so that's fine so we'll start with carl crump carl if you could come to podium and just state your name and address for the record thank you very much can i take this uh i'd we'd rather have it on please yeah we do have vulnerable people here from a medical perspective thank you so my name is carl trump i live at 1589 roselawn avenue west here in roseville and um i guess i just want to start out by saying you know we've got this we're masking properly and then we've even got the shales in between but you're sitting back from the table and just to point out the obvious is when you look at each other there's no shield in between you not between you not you not you i
032mean you don't even follow your own policies so i just thought i'd point out the obvious for you to start with um i thought i'd also point out covet cases in the u.s total cases in the u.s 40 million total deaths 643 of those 643 deaths 94 have had almost three comorbidities so you're talking about 40 000 people died from this with no comorbidity kids 1 through 14 total deaths that's point zero zero zero zero zero four and we're doing all this masking and all of this other stuff for this you gotta be kidding me some people can see that and maybe out towards the audience so they can see this silliness i'll tell you that well thank you i thought this was my time maybe it's maybe it's not though current vaccines were developed
033for the original coronavirus we're currently experiencing the delta variant is that correct well the current vaccines are worthless against delta variant so why are we mandating vaccines when they're completely worthless this is absolute silliness i bet we've got a lot of i'll bet we got a lot of bachelor's degrees master's degrees jd's and phd's here and we can't figure that out you got to be what safety precautions were taken for sars and mers i haven't found any same deal zane virus what precautions were taken and then the other last thing i'll end on we're in the middle of this coveted pandemic and since the school board seems to be making awfully big decisions in order to keep everyone safe makes me feel that school board really does care about kids teachers and other employees i'll
034give you that i'm wondering how many funerals for roseville students the school board has attended or how many flowers have been sent or how many cards have been sent i'm wondering if i can get an answer to that and since we're in a pandemic i'm guessing this is really a big number so if it takes some time i can wait till next week to get that answer do i still have 16 seconds 13. and this critical race theory this is racism straight up again and the school board is all in favor of teaching racism in school what in the world is going on thank you very much thank you next bill please please please thank you next up uh bill fritch for fritchey i'll pass past thank you sir next up vince dahl or dalla
035d-a-h-l-e thank you sir i think you just state your name and address for the record thank you vance dawley valencia lane thank you uh i'm going to speak to the crt um i can't say that i know much about the curriculum in the school regular attendee of a local church i think the uh and i had my kids basically through the parochial school system so they're indoctrinated in in morals and integrity of uh racism and and equal equality uh i have experience in the navy as a as my hat demonstrates uh that was uh desegregated in the in the in the 40s under truman i thought there was equal opportunity for all races in the military i didn't experience that i my career was as a registered nurse so i learned to uh i worked
036with a broad spectrum of i worked at the minneapolis veterans home i worked with a broad spectrum of people from all walks of life and we i got along just fine with them including lots of experience with uh you know i had to learn learn about my own understanding about racism and and uh i worked very well with the with women so there wasn't any uh bias in might in my uh career toward denying someone the opportunity to advance my son is a is a major in the u.s air force and a pilot the reason he became a pilot or was able to was because he was magna laude at bethel college no small defeat you have to demonstrate some sort of abilities to advance to that level to be selected i hope the critical
037grace theory does not deny kids the opportunity to advance forget about ceremony for achievement that's irrelevant but you do have to prove yourself about your abilities to get somewhere and we can't deny children the opportunity to excel in the schools and uh to to do otherwise would be a a real i think we'll push back uh the equality in our races back uh to the civil rights era in the early 60s thank you next also on the topic of crt is constance growing another neighbor hi so as you speak if you could just say your name and your address we appreciate it thank you very much my name is constance gruen i live at 2680 oxford street north number 128 and this is my neighbor and mostly my friend who lives same address apartment number
038for unit number 123. this is ilsa ahmed hi i'm from roz down straight and i'm a junior and i just came here to um address the issue that we're having around the community and uh i just just like need to like i need to know the truth everybody like is like i feel like it's concerning me and it's concerning everyone like i know because well we're learning in school a lot of things but we're not i feel like they're not addressing enough about the history of racism and how people uh you know respect each other and i feel like there's just too much hatred going on out there between each race no race is better than the other so i feel like we need to address this because my school and i'm concerned if you
039go in the wrong direction we might end up like having less educated lessons and we won't have our lessons learned so i no races no is um better than the other and it has for all the equality that we have is much more important than saying oh i res my our own policy it's about we and not just one person it's about as the whole community and as the whole pla whole community and the whole environment not just one person it's more we and less eye thank you next also on the same topic alex alex landath landeth a-l-e x-a-l-e galtier avenue 2863 galtier street roseville great hey hi is it alex no no no no no that's why is it alex hello yeah alexi lyndra oh alex alexey and lend radio yes couldn't read your
040writing here sir and could you please just state your name and address again formally uh alexis landretti and i look at 2863 galtier street roseville minnesota thank you am i good to go yep all right perfect so uh the more and more i'm listening the community members right now speak i want to be abundantly clear i graduated last year all right i have an acute understanding of everything right now that is going on in schools and crt is not an issue all right i took one college class in a lit class and that was the only time i heard anything about crt and that was to the u of m so when you come in here and you don't have any idea about what's really being taught and you disrespect our students of color it
041makes me sick i have no idea what it's like to be a person of color living in minnesota and having to deal with this ignorance i'm not going to stand for it in my schools my taxpayer dollars go to fund all of this and i'm sick of it so if you guys can please as adults act like it for once and step up and do something i would appreciate that that's all i have to say thank you for listening next up also it looks like on the same topic is mia and glenn mcdavid hi you signed up to speak sir sure it's up to you signed up come over to the podium if you could please state your name and your address then my name is glenn mcdavid i live at 340 brooks avenue west
042rose here in roseville both of my kids went through the roseville school system um maybe lead a little closer to mike yeah thank you thank you thank you my name is glenn mcdavid i live at 340 brooks avenue west roseville my two sons both went through the roseville school district i have read and heard a lot about critical race theory and a full discussion of that would take hours and hours the one point that seems inherent is that racism is built into the constitutional and legal structures of our country from the beginning and having some red history uh from the three-fifths thing in the constitution and then on out history strikes me as brood beyond reasonable doubt racism really is built into the history of our country and that ends that unpleasant fact of history
043needs to be taught thank you [Applause] next aiden thompson oh mr thompson if you can state your name and address hi i'm aiden thompson my address is 2936 ontario road thank you um so hello i am a former ros and parkview student i'm a vietnamese american um i think it's extremely important that our as a former student just from my experiences i think it's extremely important that we value teacher we value educating or we value teaching our students about the mistakes our country have made because we are like uh sorry sorry i think it's very important that we teach about the mistakes that our country has made our country has made which such as things like segregation and the various racial injustice that has happened so then we don't make these mistakes in the future
044there was another thing sorry i think it's extremely important i don't i don't really have anything else to add i just i think we need did you're done um i'm nervous okay i think we need to make our make sure that our schools are more equitable so everyone feels welcome because as a person of color i know that not everyone i know feels that way but i know i i've met a lot of i've had a lot of teachers though who do value these things and i think it's important that they stay working at the school yeah i don't have anything else to say now thank you next is jim valentine jim valentine jim ballentine if you can set your name and address please thank you good evening my name is jim valentine b is
045a boy my wife marva is in the cheap seats she taught here in the district for about 20 years we live at 1893 north snelling avenue in falcon heights the best kept secret in the state of minnesota three of our kids all three of our kids graduated from the high school across the street i don't know what the curriculum this uh would look like i haven't seen it i don't even know if the school's using it i don't know what's in it but i would be very surprised if one of the resources did not include material authored by professor ibram kennedy professor kennedy has offered authored several books one of them is entitled how to be an anti-racist kennedy said quote the only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination he also said the only
046remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination critical race theory magnifies differences it magnifies grievances and it divides people dr martin luther king took a different view i heard dr martin luther king preach in at the riverside church in new york city it was awesome i was in the cheap seas i was a teenager in the basement my dad sat next to coretta scott king right up in the second row the title of his sermon that morning was a knock at midnight i listened it to it this morning you can listen to it on the web i urge you to do so here's what he said everybody needs the bread of love in america the white man must learn to love the black man the black man must learn to love the white man because we
047are all tied together in a single destiny we must learn to live together that is the basic need in this country but listen we must not turn around and react to the hatred we have faced with the same kind of hatred you never saw one problem of tyranny be by substituting a new tyranny might ruin i urge you to adopt martin luther king's philosophy his philosophy was at odds with kennedy's philosophy can these philosophy divides and i urge you to reject it let me urge you to teach the students in our district to love their neighbor a couple of practical suggestions challenge tough time got it thank you three minutes thank you you've got over three minutes [Applause] uh next is bruce ona bruce ona ona if you can state your name and address please
048thank you yes i'm bruce ona 534 level avenue in roseville minnesota can you hear me through this yes okay well that's pretty good i'll try not to go hoarse by speaking loud all right where's the clock oh there's the clock could you start it over so i haven't started yet sir sort of you started he says i started um i'm going to start off with the transgender toolkit so the transgender toolkit is discriminates against students clearly obviously and legally those who believe in medical science that a boy cannot turn into a girl or vice versa are saying they can't believe that sorry you can't believe that in this school really we can't believe in medical science i see what is this some sort of cult that's based on beliefs and not science it also violates
049those who believe in dna science guess what you can take hormones puberty blockers you can have irreversible surgeries and guess what your dna does not change according to conservative sciences according to a liberal scientist you can't change your dna so when you tell kids that you have to call this boy a girl because that's their preferred pronoun you are telling them you have to lie you have to violate your conscience you have to validate medical science you have to violate biology because we tell you to because we're the boss or the experts oh really are you the experts i think not and on top of it all there's healing for gender dysphoria so the american college of pediatricians says 85 of kids with gender dysphoria resolved by youth if they are affirmed for who they
050really are at or encouraged their mentor their talk they're showing it in love of course love right treat others as you want to be treated uh as far as crt well we had a civil war in this country hundreds of thousands of white people died partially to save the blacks from slavery and i'd like to say i appreciate that they did that and the price they paid the democrats voted for slavery they should pay the reparations gladly also my child is trans so thank you for invalidating her and i'm right here i'm validating her for how god means and i love her thank you thank you sir no problem thank you you can talk but all these thoughts the next step okay we'll keep moving next up is uh janet is there a janet rice
051singer out there janet reisinger no we'll we'll table janet reisinger for now uh gene morrison good evening again if you can state your name and address sure i'm jeannie morrison and i live at 2149 rosewood lane south in roseville my husband and i had three children and they all went through the roseville school district i'm just going to be brief because most of this has already been said at this time when there's so much turmoil about whether or not to teach the truth about our country's history i want to support the board and the staff of roseville area schools i'm appreciative and encouraged to know that roseville continues to be committed to filling in absent narratives and that they stand for education that is equitable for all this is not something new it has been
052their ongoing commitment to quality education it's alarming and very sad for all of us to learn that slavery was at the heart of our country's early prosperity and that the land on which we all live was stolen from indigenous people but acknowledging truth is vital to moving forward in a more loving world thank you thank you next up uh bob gopal or guppel bob gopal bob geppel gopal bob gopal good evening thanks for giving to the roseville board for again certainly to say your name and address oh i'm sorry bob goldball 2991 payne avenue little cannon thank you uh thanks be given to the board for granting an open forum as i said my name is bob gopal i've been a resident of little canada for 37 years two of my children are graduates roseville
053high school i'm a retired vocational career-based learning teacher with 45 years experience across three school districts after my previous district sent me into early retirement i was proud to join the staff of what was previously known as 5's fairview alternative high school and that's it for the last it was my my last nine years of my career since retiring on my own terms i've also volunteered a little canada elementary to math fifth graders when i was growing up in evanston illinois i remember that history was the subject of least interest to me first there was one history teacher who daily mispronounced my name instead of gopal he called me gospel and i was asked if i knew what it meant all this in front of 45 fellow high school juniors that was a shame well
054mainly history seemed welded to the past and failed to connect that past to the present discussions on manifest destiny what would drive expansion of our country didn't waste time covering the effect on native americans chinese workers mexican neighbors my field history changed one day in 1966 when my buddy michael pulled me out of school and midday we headed downtown to join the march for open housing in north evanston soon i was holding black hands singing we shall overcome i had no idea what redlining was i had no i no idea why the black neighborhood basically stopped two blocks south of the house i grew up in suddenly a connection was created that stays with me today and beyond now let's quickly jump forward 50 years later to 2016 where i was at my desk at
055five during lunch a cry arose from out in the hall and there was a fight downstairs in the cafeteria by the time i got down there round one was over there'd been a dispute over somebody butting into the lunch line and black and asian students had lined up against one another to settle the affair what one what one student nearby me called a race riot you make your own decision some of you may be aware of this maybe you've forgotten it commit all the other kinds of issues that have come on but for the staff this was a moment of reckoning and remember to this day black student blood flowed in the bathroom i answered okay oh sorry thank you it goes faster thank you uh next uh fatima lawson fatima lawson fatima lawson good
056evening again if you could say your name and address thank you good evening thanks for the honor mr chair superintendent board members good evening my name is fatima lawson i'm an educator proud educator and i've been a resident of roseville air school for 29 years my four daughters went through little canada elementary runs and ras and they're productive citizens today because they learned a lot although there are just so many things missing in the curriculum when they went to school but fortunately we did our best to teach them a whole lot of things that schools could not teach them due to the lack of the well-rounded education and if you look at our minnesota department of education goals we have the desire to make sure that our education to our kids are well-rounded the world
057is closing in ladies and gentlemen we definitely need students to know their past the present and the future and i'm here to support the roseville area schools for their bid in making education well-rounded we have nothing to fear we have nothing to hide our students our future need to know what happened and critical risk theory in no way is divisive it's just telling the truth about what happened and they say that knowledge is power if they have that knowledge they definitely be powerful and they represent the united states you know on any platform in this world we do not want others to tell our children what it is about what their history is about them we want them to tell it from their own perspective so thank you very much for giving me this opportunity
058to speak thank you [Applause] good evening again you can set your name and address please good evening my name is maura brink my address is 1795 simpson street good evening board members superintendent lock thank you for having us i am a very proud roseville public school parent of a fifth grader and seventh grader and i want to share one of my most memorable stories with you two years ago i walked into my fifth grader's classroom and i saw a display of authors and historians and the prompts were whose story is being told whose perspective is missing now contrary to what some people would say this is not teaching critical race theory this is teaching critical thinking i want my own children and i want all children to be able to make informed decisions and i
059want them to hear multiple perspectives and i want them to be able to change their perspective when they learn more the beauty of roosevelt is in our diversity now i have to scroll up sorry i had some of it thinking about um i want you to know that i am also an educator and i know that people show up when they are upset it is rare when people compliment us i am here tonight to say thank you thank you to each one of you for your service thank you to each one of you for your commitment to racial and gender equity it is why i keep my children in roseville public schools two weeks ago i went to the rams middle school open house and as we were leaving my daughter said this place is
060such a vibe mom you've gotta buy you've got a vibe you have more people supporting you than you do against you so thank you for your work thank you for commit your commitment to equity i appreciate what you do daily [Applause] uh next we have bridgette sabo bridget sabo you guys should state your name and address would you begin please certainly my name is bridget sabo my pronouns are she and her i live at 1746 elbert street in falcon heights i'm the parent of two roseville area students one at parkview and one at raws and i addressed the board today to express my wholehearted support for roseville's commitment to equity in all aspects of education i send my white like me students to roseville area schools with the hope that they will learn fundamentally i
061want what they learn to be true the truth of america's history is hard and complicated and racist denying that racism does not just harm the students and families of color which it certainly does harm it harms all of us because if my white children do not learn the realities of the past they will have no context to envision and build a better future if my children learn nothing else from their time in the roseville area schools i hope they learn to think to critically evaluate what they hear and to have a framework to analyze its accuracy i want them to be challenged and to question and to grapple with hard truths i want every student in our school system to have a voice and to have power i want their truths and their experiences to
062be celebrated and elevated and supported as my truths have always been i want my children to learn that we are not all experiencing the same america and to think deeply about what they want to do about that i also want to applaud the roseville principals and administrators who signed on to the declaration of support for our bypoc students and families i could not be prouder to see roseville names on the list of leaders who are committed to equitable education and honest conversations i close with a quote that is meaningful to me on this topic when you are accustomed to privilege equality can feel like oppression next uh the list is alan how was that and helen again could you state your name and address when you begin thank you hello my name is alan wasick
063i live at 1620 highway 36 west and so basically i just first wanted to state that i still have not gotten a follow-up in the situation regarding the brim hall principle despite requesting one we have not received a reply on that so just want to follow up on that but so i just want to basically give everybody here just a brief little history about what critical race theory is critical race theory is an offshoot of critical theory it comes from the frankfurt school which is a european school back in the 1930s which was blatantly marxist it is a critical theory it's basically designed to divide people up into a press versus oppressor convince people to hate the existing society so that way they can tear down the existing institutions and societies and then replace it
064with marxist ideologies critical race theory is one that talks about reframing history it when they talk about reframing history they're talking about only looking at the bad side of america now we saw in the segment decentring whiteness i want to point out that you are equating an ethnic group with the ills of society you are equating an ethnic group with the ills of society and when you take a look at history what happens when you start teaching children to do that by basically encouraging them to disregard european authors european artists european histories solely because they are white saying that we need to exclude these people from our curriculum just because they happen to be white that is a dangerous path to go on and the seas of it are very ugly furthermore we keep hearing
065today that america is systemically racist today i got a few questions for those if america is systemically racist in 2021 why is it that according to the united states census bureau nigerian americans have a higher median household income than caucasians why is it that asian americans are the top performing ethnic group in this country how is it possible that we elected a black president twice we have currently a black female vice president we have numerous black billionaires such as oprah winfrey lebron james numerous millionaires and successful black people throughout this history how is it possible that when covington catholic high school boys simply stand while a native american man is banging a drum in their face they get smeared as bigots and hate-filled people with no due process at all and yet when jesse small
066left thanks i hate crime everybody accepts it without question for months on end before it is exposed does that sound like a systemically racist society to you and furthermore if we are a systemically racist country why is george floyd's killer in prison right now because guess what the system worked he's in prison right now yes and furthermore the george flake incident is an isolated incident according to the statistics of all places the washington post a total of 15 unarmed black men were killed in all of 2019. now even if you assume that every single one of those incidents was justified which it's not that is a very isolated incident now i learned all about history i went to public school from kindergarten to 8th grade and i learned all about slavery jim crow and all
067the dark sides of our history but i also learned about the exceptionals in order for our children to be able to have a well-rounded education they need to understand that the thing that makes america unique is not the racist history but rather the anti-slavery and the anti-racist history fought with a bloody civil war passing civil rights legislation and electing a black president twice thank you very much for your time [Music] [Applause] uh next on the list is he just signed it as mark o but by the email address it might be mark olivier or mark oliver mark olivier the people who got here at five o'clock to sign up in line first you're not using that shoot so i'm putting that i'm going through the sheets thank you um next on the sheet is george
068shardlow chard bowler if you could please state your name and address as you start um george charglow 2812-36 avenue south of minneapolis um good evening my name is george sharplow i'm a 2005 graduate of roseville area high school i am testifying today because roseville public schools made me the person and the citizen that i am today if you went back in time and removed my experience learning from institutions like mary peterson steve beckmeyer and amy darlene i would still be here but i would simply be a feebler scholar and a less thoughtful citizen than i am today um i'm not affiliated with any organization i'm simply a son of roseville and it's not just any word that a goofy kid with cerebral palsy gets to be on student council and run cross country join the
069speech team and do theater be mainstreamed in the classroom and get to do independent studies about the audible autobiography of malcolm x but this isn't just anywhere this is roseville it's a special place so the question before us is how should a special place educate its young for all the reasons that i've mentioned questions of pedagogy and inclusion in this district feel deeply personal to me i feel a debt of gratitude and a consequent sense of obligation to the next generation of kids at the margins that's why i'm here american history itself is a chronicle of systemic critiques we do not enshrine the names frederick douglass and elton sinclair elizabeth katie stanton and fannie lou hamer malcolm x and martin luther king because they embraced the status quo and left america the way they found
070it we remember them because they incited radical change in the face of systemic injustice it is completely unreasonable to ever ask teachers to deliver this curriculum out of context and without critical reflection it is borderline cruel to ask them to do so against the backdrop of white knees on black necks and buildings on fire what i love about my education at roseville public schools is that it did not teach me what to think taught me how to think it did not ask how i felt it asked who i was to become i come back these days to judge speech tournaments sorry and all these years later and i can tell that work continues these are really great kids these are really smart kids they don't just see the chaos have okay thank you [Applause] uh
071angela byrne angela byrne i'm short uh can you see your name and address please sure angela byrne and i live at 1894 chatsworth street north here in roseville thank you curtis um i am really upset that i have to be here tonight i am missing bedtime with my seven-year-old who is a trans child at harambe she's in first grade i purposely chose to put her at harambe because principal smith was principal at the time and he came to back to school night to talk about all of the cultural competency programming that was going on at harambe as a magnet it is a magnet school we elect into it we were thinking about going to the district school until we heard him speak we could not turn down that kind of cultural competency programming and we
072chose that school before we knew our child was trans so i am thrilled that she is in a place where 80 percent of her classmates are global majority students i am thrilled that her out of school time uh programming did a protest for george floyd around the school to teach children what it's like to have civic engagement i am so proud of her she knows to shout george floyd's name she knows to see her classmates for who they are she understands that she has privilege that other students do not she understands that she is loved for who she is and that she is a full child in her full gender in her don't you shake your head at me and these people here invalidating my child and the other children that are classmates of my
073child make me absolutely sick and i am so disappointed that people are here to question the board and question this curriculum when you guys are working so hard to continue to further this curriculum there is still work to do we still have a lot of work to do and i appreciate the work that you guys are committed to and i will be here continuing to push for more equity in education and to make sure that these kids are taught the truth to see what we are up against and to make sure that none of the children that my kid goes to school with are left behind because my child will be fine my child is a well-resourced white kid she doesn't need to know she doesn't need she will be fine i want her to
074see what the other children experience i want her to see all of that so she can grow in both her critical thinking and her empathy thank you very much keep doing what you're doing [Applause] i can't read the writing and can please state your name and address please my name is coffee kofi i live in shoreview i have three boys tour what's your address please build schools can you stay your at your home address 3248 victoria street thank you i have three boys two in roseville schools one might one of my kids have special needs he's in a different school my friends from the exodus movement are here to support me at the exodus mn.org and also i started a group called roseville united and there's a lot of us here tonight i'm here to
075ask the district to stop promoting critical race theory and black lives matter people who support crp say people like me and people who are against cr crt are racist that's their only defense yet crt is racist it tells kids of color like my children that they will never be able to make it and white kids they are inherently racist when i was a little kid i had recurring dreams about the kkk when i was seven years old and now people who look like this are being told they are racist in this school and it is absolutely appalling and you might say i'm from people's we don't have crt we do have crt in this school i see it every day my kid said they're already started with it he's already miserable about having to start
076school last year you gave my kid an assignment to read an article out of scholastica kids entitled making our voices heard that told him he would face racism in every facet of his life from education to the workplace to health care he showed me this article because he found it very discouraging in the middle school after george floyd's killing they sent out an email and they actually segregated kids by race to talk about it in the email and said we will have a group for whites for blacks for asians for hispanics i couldn't even believe it that we're going back to segregation after all we fought for in in middle school you segregated kids of color by having the kids of color stand up and the white kids stayed out and you offered kids of
077color ten dollars to give away all their personal private disciplinary information to an outside organizations and i've also heard from teachers here that you have a policy like minneapolis that discourages teachers from teaching from disciplining kids of color because the as the isaiah group says disciplining kids of color is a pipeline to prison well i have to tell you something not disciplining them is the pipeline to prison telling them they don't have to be accountable that they're saving animals they're not like white people who can behave we have lesser standards we don't think they're truly equal i don't think you think we're equal and it's appalling to me systematic racism does not exist we used to have systematic racism it was called slavery and segregation and we fought alongside each other to end it it
078doesn't exist blm said they're fighting for the liberty the liberation of black people we are free breaking news we are free thank god almighty we are free at last this movement makes black people delusional it blames white people for all our problems when everybody knows they're not our successes belong to us as do our challenges and the wonderful thing is we can do better for ourselves we don't have to sit around and wait for some white savior to come around and help us and i wish roseville schools gave that message it seems like i don't think you will though because you guys love it you want people love that you need black people to be victims to cleanse yourselves of your unjustified white guilt well do it some other way get a friend get a
079therapist don't use my kids in conclusion i hope you find i can i just say my last sentence in conclusion i hope you um i hope my kids find your racist messages unbelievable because they see me their mom who was raised by a drug addict and suffered abuse as a child become a lawyer if i was inundated with these ideas i don't know where i'd be today [Applause] uh sarah wright sarah wright you'll pass okay thank you uh lindsay stafford lindsey stafford hi lindsay um you state your name and address yeah lindsay stafford i live 3639 minneapolis so diverse i love it i love diversity i do um but i have a little bit of a problem with um you know taking topics of our past slavery and that sort of thing trying to compare
080them to things that are going on today we can't always compare apples to oranges so i just want to start by saying that i wanted to share an incident that happened in the classroom last year end of my son's classroom he was in fourth grade last year surrounding the dante right incident start out i want to start by saying that i teach my son accountability taking responsibility for actions rather than making excuses actions have consequences life is about choices respecting authority whether it's me teachers elders respect respecting officers who put their lives on the line every day to get criminals off the streets so after the dante write incident my son came home and said that his teacher said there are no accidents in murder which i thought that's a really bold and very opinionated
081statement to be making in a classroom both my parents are teachers they know better we don't make opinionated statements like that in the classroom after probing a little bit it's clear we had a problem asked him what each person involved in this dante right situation could have done differently each person in that situation what they could have done differently to avoid the outcome and i emailed his teacher and i said what happened that day what did you guys talk about she responded by saying the cause of death of dante wright was white supremacy culture included a video that painted officers out to be the bad guys out to get the black people so i had to sit there rework the entire message that y'all uh gave him that day and put me in a situation
082where i had to look my son in the eye and i had to say your teacher was wrong your teacher was wrong my daughter is 22 years old she's a 4.0 student at uw river falls not once in her whole public education i have to sit there and say your teacher was wrong so you know that's what's the problem here this is creating mistrust between students and teachers it's creating mistrust between parents and teachers i do not trust what's being taught in our in our schools now to our young impressionable students i no longer trust that by blaming the dante right incident on white supremacy culture you are contradicting the values i'm trying to instill that people are people we don't classify them into categories accountability we do not make excuses for poor choices respecting
083authority that includes officers who put their lives on the line for us making smart choices to avoid poor outcomes by bringing racially charged topics into the classroom racially charged topics of today into the classroom you're creating division not only between races by singling them out but between parents and teachers between students and teachers do you want that thank you [Applause] next is kathleen neidiger a broken record again name and address please as you begin okay um my name is kathleen neiger and i live at 1180 greenbrier and little canada before i get into my speech i want to say real quickly dr michael osterholm who is a minnesota region's professor in the division of environmental health sciences stated just three weeks ago on fox news sunday program quote we all know masks really don't work
084if people in minnesota walk us outside with a mask on and still smell the smoke from the northern minnesota brush fires it is pretty obvious that the mask doesn't work i hope that's unquote i hope as you discuss mass tonight you will consider this statement from a prominent minnesota medical expert secondly the roseville area school website states that educational equity is creating is quote creating an equitable learning environment for all i submit to all of you that that statement is not accurate how is it untruthful here's how what is taught divides children into two groups one is the bad group and the other is the good group how is that an equitable environment for learning your race re-education programs teach children that they are defined by their race not as individuals it teaches children to
085eventually hate each other and hate their country critical race theory is not free a free speech issue it's a compelled speech issue i oppose racism whether it comes from the klan or from critical race theory educational equity adopted from critical race theory teaches that individualism rationality and hard work are racist this is an insult to hard-working american families of all racial backgrounds we must prioritize excellence which inspires people from all racial backgrounds to achieve their potential the goal needs to be diversity without division i would like to ask each one of you individually before you cast your vote to implement this curriculum what research did you do because there is far more information against this curriculum than for it was your vote an ignorant vote thank you [Music] uh next is kathy ramen kathy ramen
086um we're here she's here and again could you state your name and address thank you okay it's kathy vermont i'm um my name is catherine 1161 lori road west i'm one of the co-founders of do good roseville it's an all volunteer organization that exists to do things that have a positive impact on our community um i'm here even though i don't have kids but i am a taxpayer and i do support our schools and because i was a kid in school a long time ago and it was until i was 57 years old and met new friends via my work on do good roosevelt that i started to learn how much i didn't know about her country's history and how that has impacted the lives of all the people in our community makes me very
087sad think of all the time that i lost one of our first programs was to view the film series race the power of an illusion i was shocked at how little i knew about the history of our country an indigenous friend told me what a teacher told him as a young man history is told from the perspective of the conquerors that statement has stayed with me and i see it play out over and over again our former police chief attended the series and wrote in his newsletter that he learned several things that he did not learn in high school in college and one comment is in his head was that after the third video was i thought we were a better society than that rather than look the other way he took those learnings and
088said he was going to share them with the police leadership knowledge is power over the past few years dugan rose has hosted dozens of programs about underrepresenting groups and last year we hosted a series of conversations called talking about race most of the people were my generation and what i can tell you is that what i heard over and over again was people telling me they only knew one version of history and learning from other perspectives changed how they reacted to things happening in our community and beyond it wasn't easy for anyone but they kept coming back week after week they were hungry to learn to talk about it knowledge is power i wholeheartedly support our school board's commitment to equity education if we choose to teach with only a single view of history one
089side of the story first of all would be choosing to talk to and for only half of our community perhaps even more important teaching history from many different perspectives gives kids the opportunity to decide for themselves what they believe and we will raise a generation of kids who will be critical thinkers so that hopefully they will not be stuck in the partisan mess that we are in right now this is not about shaming people with a history they were not directly responsible for when we know better we do better i choose to trust that kids are smart enough and strong enough to be able to handle the truth of our country's history and with that knowledge they will be able to solve the big problems that our country faces let's give them all the facts
090thank you next up aaron azer again name and address please my name is aaron azer i live at 1329 drinker avenue minnesota before i get started i want to thank the board and all the teachers and staff of the roseville area schools this has been one heck of a year and a half and you've done a great job with what you have so thank you very much for that i'm going to start positive today and normally i would just speak to the board but since there's so many of us here i'll dress the whole crowd there are things we all agree on we want roseville area schools to be a place where every child can grow to pursue their dreams no matter what they look like or where they came from we want to prepare
091our students to be critical thinkers future leaders and good citizens we want our kids to have content that is meaningful challenging and engaging and honest teachers want that parents want that and most importantly and they haven't been talked about that much kids want that they want to have discussions they want to ask questions they're curious they really are i know because i'm also a teacher not here but in another district students must have the lessons and guidance to honestly face and understand our past and present including tragedies and triumphs of race in america you can't teach minnesota history without mentioning the dakota massacre you can't teach to kill a mockingbird without giving the perspective of tom robinson and the role of racism in the courts our kids are much smarter and they're much stronger than
092we give them credit for and i believe wholeheartedly in the students potential to meet new challenges and have an honest reckoning in how it makes them feel they may feel discomfort that's okay that's how you learn they may feel sadness but when we try to edit or distort our history we are doing them a disservice we need to work together in real ways to heal our communities and create brighter futures for our kids all this bickering aside our students are grieving right now they miss a full year of school without their friends without their teachers and they're so sad about it they're struggling with their mental health they're struggling with social anxiety just like a lot of us are and they're super confused and anxious about the fact that we're all bickering about masks and
093crt they feel sometimes like the world is crumbling around them and anything that we can do to help them so that they can have meaningful dialogue and navigate this crazy world that's the right thing to do thank you [Applause] next is deb barr helgen deb hi again could you state your name and address please hi i'm deb bar helgen 986 tiller lane um i'm a roseville area school foundation board member and a parent of of um the district my kids went to parkview and now probably i still have one in the high school the roseville area schools foundation shares the roseville area district's equity vision of an equitable and respectful learning environment for every student every family member and staff member regardless of race gender gender identity sexual orientation socioeconomic status ability home language religion
094national national origin age or physical appearance in fact we adapted this vision as our own the roseville area schools foundation adopted this vision because we believe in it and we know that equity is about building a welcoming and inclusive learning environment we know that equity is about creating a sense about real belonging in the schools and we know that equity is about setting up all students for success roseville area schools has a really very bright future i think we all can agree with that our foundation believes that the district's equity vision believes in the district's equity division and we are here to support it fully and we thank all of you for that and then speaking as a parent i want our school district to continue to value diversity and have a curriculum that's inclusive
095with a focus on on helping students become critical thinkers and good citizens so thank you for listening to all of us here today and i thank you for your for your vision thank you ben park good evening sir if you can state your name and address please benjamin park i live at 1417 skillman and uh first of all again want to say thank you to all of you this is not easy so i appreciate what you're doing appreciate you listening to everybody so i'm the parent of three children pre-k through fourth grade and i'm also a former student graduated in 1998 from roseville area high school also went to rams also went to brim hall i was a kindergarten at brim hall so yes all my education life was through the roseville school districts and
096here's my story i'm just going to give you my story right now i loved it i had a great time this is 25 plus years ago right and everyone was so kind the teachers the staff the principals when i went to the principal's office because i got in trouble he was still kind and respectful and helped me to grow there are people that i walk by in this hallway who shape the person i am today who encouraged me to try things one at the time you know 25 30 years ago roosevelt was very different demographically i didn't see a whole lot of faces like mine uh on stage or in front of people and aside from the two sisters who went before me and graduated and uh there were people who reached out and who
097gave me opportunities and who tried they were so kind and i had a great time uh one one event stuck out though that i think is uh applicable tonight or relevant for tonight i was in my senior year in high school having a blast made great friends had great teachers and i was uh watching myself on this video of a of a drama production and i saw myself and i was shocked because i looked so asian my eyes just looked so much narrower than the people i was with i felt ugly inside and i'm not blaming anybody everyone like i said everyone was so kind so respectful no one i would not call anybody a racist but in the system in the culture in the whole atmosphere there were things going on that people probably
098didn't even know they were doing at the time so why here's the question why am i back here why are my kids going to these schools again i'll tell you why my wife somehow got a job a temp job at rams and she started working there for the assistant principals then she started working at edgerton and she began to see what the district was doing about equity she began to see the hard work that you all and your predecessors have been doing to build a better school district we started to read and we saw we saw the words on paper but we also saw that it wasn't just words it was action so keep it up keep doing what you're doing we're buying in and uh i want to encourage you to keep doing what
099you're doing thank you um monica gallagher monica gallagher monica gallagher okay my name is monica gallagher i live in 1837 lauderdale also part of your school district our little village over there um so we've heard a lot of great perspectives tonight from students and other and people associated with isaiah i'm here kind of tangentially with isaiah it was a little spontaneous but i guess i'll offer one more perspective because there might be some people here that are interested primarily by self-interest and maybe even narrow self-interest sometimes that's part of our agenda um in addition to hopefully some more communal values that we're here for um i've been at the same job that i love for 20 years i just had the chance to hire someone new on and be part of the hiring committee we
100serve the community we're a community organization one of the main things we were looking for among the persons we're hiring can you help us connect with new communities of color can you connect to help us connect with the diverse community that we serve and that can mean a lot of different things thank you for example do you know something about the history of the amer african-american people in the hamlin midway or frogtown neighborhood their successes their achievements maybe why they're a little wary when someone who kind of is in the role of kind of a social worker like i am why they might be wary of me and why i might have to work a little harder to gain their trust and that's okay when we went to hire somebody for a great livable wage
101job this is one of our criteria if someone had come off and they all happened to be white applicants that you know maybe we didn't do a good enough job on our recruiting or who knows but so they were the same that way but if they had walked in and sounded kind of tone deaf or kind of 1950s or kind of not with our progressive multicultural society they wouldn't have gotten a second interview that's not who we are our funders demand we are progressive our funders demand we serve the whole community our funders demand that we look outside a little bubble of saint mary's high school in o'meal nebraska where i spent my first 18 years i mean i've learned a lot since then thank goodness i hope to learn a lot more living here
102in the twin cities but in terms of hiring and jobs those are the people we're out looking for and who our funders are demanding we look for so let's educate those people please and i am a parent of a roseville student next is jessica kearns my name is jessica kearns 1550 larpenter avenue west in falcon heights i have two kids in the roseville school district one is at rams and one is at brim hall they're both black male students so basically what i want to talk about is the crt curriculum first of all nobody that's gotten up here especially those opposed to it have actually gave any kind of educated definition of what critical race theory is i haven't heard anyone have a really good solid understanding of what it is and what it it
103teaches so maybe a lot of you after this meeting can start there doing some research some google not just watching fox news please do some real research thank you um so i'm gonna just read off a little information to educate the room about crt from some black scholars directly from some articles that they have written and i will give them credit to who they are of course um so first from a black educator named let me get his name anthony farag in the professional journal for educators he's a black educator some critics have argued that crt's efforts to highlight and analyze the role of white supremacy in u.s history politics and culture only serves to heighten racial divisions however a thoughtful use of crt can in fact be a unifying force providing opportunities for students
104of every race and ethnicity across the u.s to wrestle with the ways in which racial oppression has held all of us back and to understand that racism will only continue to hamper our collective progress as the world becomes more globalized and connected the point of crt isn't to assign blame to one group of students but to enable students of all races and ethnicities to have informed productive conversations about the forces that have shaped and continue to shape the society in which they live for example many of the anti-crt people that are here today come from the education we have now which is very whitewashed had they had a better more well-rounded education from kindergarten up they may not be as divisive we all may have more of a shared collective understanding than we are now
105to say that this will divide us it's already showing that the people who don't even understand what crt is are already dividing us because they don't have an understanding of what it is and they didn't have any education like this growing up so they're afraid of it they don't know it they're not familiar with it they don't even have a good understanding of what it even is i haven't heard it and that we've heard many people speak another common attack on crt is that it is grounded in a marxist view of the world but the two movements the two movements focus on completely different aspects of society cr basically marxism is about capitalism that's a political system racism is not a political system my children are upset that there's not crt in the school and
106they're black boys they're upset that they didn't have any conversations about george floyd in their sports thank you ladies and gentlemen please please please real classy you can have conversations elsewhere this is the board meeting thank you next is michelle wallace michelle wallace michelle wallace good evening if you could state your name and address as you begin please certainly my name is michelle wallace i live at 2468 hamlin avenue north in roseville i am here to support the board and the teachers for teaching equity education i have three points first of all we need to teach science we need to teach facts and i am against censorship as to the science science tells us that race is a social construct there is no biology behind race secondly as to facts facts are things like the
107tulsa massacre the dakota massacre the japanese internments you know all those things in history that happened redlining all of those things happen and we need to know about that i was a history major in college and i didn't learn about any of that until i was in graduate school i felt cheated by our educational system for not knowing that history we need to teach the facts and third my point about censorship what the people that want to defund critical race theory are asking is that certain ideas be censored and i am absolutely opposed to that thank you next is paddy holmes paddy holmes here patty holmes you could formally set your name and address please paddy holmes i live in falcon heights at 1635 garden avenue um thank you for the opportunity for all of
108us for everyone here to be heard i appreciate that i appreciate the board listening so conscientiously tonight i want to say just a few things i want to be brief i am a very patriotic person you should know that about me i am also a very religious person and those two things lead me to believe that truth is what we should be after we should be teaching truth to our children i wish that when i was in public education in the 60s and 70s that i had been taught the truth and that i didn't have to learn hard lessons later in my adulthood about the true about what happened to people like was mentioned in the the by the last speaker um so if my children choose to come back to rose they went through
109those roseville schools if they choose to come back to raise their children here i hope that my grandchildren are able to hear what really happened in that age in an age-appropriate manner that that those lessons are taught to them thank you thank you next is justin hebert justin hebert no one gets it right thank you is it hebert or hey bear it's hubert heyward thank you sir if you can state your name and your address please i'm justin hebert my address is 2200 midland grove road i went to school here in roseville graduated in 2000 my mother was actually a former teacher started in 1973 through i've got three girls here in the district [Music] facts are they are three little brown girls i myself was uh born in chile under a dictatorship in the
1101980s and i was fortunate to get adopted into this country i love it here but that doesn't mean i love everything that's going on here um i want my kids to have the same opportunity as yours i want my kids to play with your kids nobody's born racist and um even if i disagree with say that man there if he had kids that got it well very long with mine i would have no problem if they played together um i wouldn't want my kids to dislike your kids at all i wouldn't teach that to them period my parents uh came here from michigan like i said in the uh 1970s my mother was a teacher in suburban detroit during the race riots and here we are today in 2021 we're still dealing with that stuff
111it's terrible the other thing is if you don't like the critical race theory or anything like that being taught moved to a third world country where i was from i found uh i found my family in chile and uh boy they live a hell of a lot differently than we do here i'll tell you that right now there's about 15 to 18 of them in one house and uh my older sister i'm actually the oldest she's about two years younger than me uh so she's about 37. zero education can't read can't write never went to school she was a stay-at-home child cleaned the house took care of uh chores around the house so the opportunity could be uh the limit here in america for these kids if they um if if proper hands reach out
112and teach them and uh no matter the color gender sexuality doesn't matter well bleed the same color her bones are all the same color too so i just i love the roseville district i love roseville and look forward to my kids going through the same system and um that myself and my mother ultimately as a teacher did so and uh both my folks are white i don't love many differently thank you thank you um chris orvis chris orvis sir chris arvis one once going twice going three times no chris orvis i'll quickly recall mark o mark olivier or oliver and a quickly recall janet reisinger or rizzinger uh everyone thank you listen i should have said this at the beginning too after you get home this evening and over the next couple of days our
113head nurse has asked that if you do experience any symptoms or are tested positive for kovid then definitely let us know because we'll need to then get hold of folks who are here tonight to do the contact tracing procedure and let everyone know of that so if that does occur please just look up and send it to the official district site or to superintendent like and or administrative assistant here with that information if you would thank you very much we've completed all the speakers who've signed up this evening so we appreciate your all coming whatever side of whatever issue you're on i think it shows active passion obviously about our schools and and care that we that we do things in the ways that you think is right so we appreciate your coming um i
114think what we'll do is before we go continue with agenda we'll take a five minute recess uh that'll give a little break to folks and everyone can stay for the whole length of the being it's a public meeting we're your elected body uh but we'll take a five minute break and those of you who do want to go then you know you can have a few minutes to kind of head out and and do it at your fashion so we'll we'll break for five minutes and then reconvene thank you uh good evening we'll uh come back into order please and i learned during the recess there was actually an additional speaker who had tried to sign up but the sheets weren't there so we're going to call the actual real final speaker of tonight mr
115ezra young so if you could stand at the podium and sir please state your name and address for the record thank you my name is ezra young i am at 2491 i have been a student of roseville school since i was in preschool i am in 9th grade i am a white presenting vietnamese cisgendered male i firstly want to cover uh critical race three to inform people critical race theory is not a subject covered in our school district we are taught critical thinking we are taught to form our own perspectives and we want to be taught the real history of the united states this does not mean that we are trying to eliminate history we are trying to inform ourselves on the real bloody and racist history of our country the fact that we are
116wanting to be taught equity and critical race three the fact that we are wanting to be taught equity and critical race three thinking offends you then you should think about that regarding uh systemic racism in our country it is apparent that this exists the fact that we had a black president or the fact that we if it convicted a single cop for the murder of a black man does not completely eliminate systemic racism i think people need to know and hear from people of color in our community and in our country white people need to listen to people of color i'm not seeking credit i'm not trying to make myself a white savior i'm clearly stating that it is smart to listen and teaching equity hurts no one it is education uh people should do
117their own research they should inform themselves i'm not saying that listening to one person of color should be able to form your own opinion you should be able to check different sources you should be able to take yourself out of the bubble of social media and look at educational sources and learn from multiple medias that's all i really have to say thank you thank you [Applause] with that move on to the consent agenda in a motion to approving consent agenda less gifts so moved a second thank you uh all in favor of a hearing no discussion all in favor of a proven consent agenda signified by saying aye aye opposed passes and then once again we have some gifts this evening uh director anderson could you please share those with us i'd like to take
118this time to um thank our community um the following individuals and organizations for their generous gifts and contributions to our schools um edie a felt i am sorry if i'm mispronouncing that a monetary gift a school supplies to be used at brim hall elementary i'd like to thank prince of peace lutheran church school supplies and grocery gift cards for students in need at central park elementary michael fitzgerald a monetary gift for the girls track and field team at roseville area high school the raw's girls and boys soccer booster club monetary gift to be used for transportation at roseville area high school like to thank jing jing nickel a monetary gift for the raw's athletic programs at roseville area high school i want to thank susan timpson for some children's face masks for students to be
119used for collectively through roseville area schools rose point senior living financial gift and some school supplies for students in need roseville area schools like to thank corpus christi catholic church school supplies for students in need at roseville area schools saint rose of lima catholic church school supplies for students in need roseville area schools saint christopher's episcopal church school supplies for students in need rules of large schools mary stroning a violin for students in need roseville area schools and we'd like to thank the mcguire agency school supply for students in need roseville area schools thanks again to our wonderful and generous community thank you todd and again we meeting after meeting week after week month after month the generosity of our community towards our students is just manifest this is wonderful so thank you all for
120sharing your your gifts with the district uh there were no retirements tonight so with that we'll move right into the uh not reports and non-action items and it looks like first up is the first day of school report which will be shared with us by assistant superintendent melissa sonic assistant superintendent sonic the floor is yours all right thank you hello for chair bogota city superintendent lake and board members our principal benky and i are excited to be here this evening and share our first day of school report as students return to school the energy love and sense of community that they bring in our schools can be felt all over tonight we'll share a bit more about the first day of school in the roseville area schools our welcome back started with open house there
121are some live action shots too behind you as we visited different schools for open house you could feel the excitement and the life in the buildings as we welcomed families back from excited hellos to signs and messages to one-on-one family meetings you could see the connections between students families and staff schools also approach this with covert mitigation strategies in mind some schools had families come in at different times based on their last names little canada had their open house outside as you can see central park met with their families one on one throughout the week but the common thread was really the joy and the warm welcome i'll share a couple more examples so this is kennedy as i visited central park i stopped in maria la's first grade classroom where she was meeting with
122the student and family i really this wish this was a video instead of still shots i asked kennedy if she was excited for school and she literally jumped up and down as she replied yes and i ran into a teacher as i was leaving the classroom and i said she is ready for school to start and the teacher looked back at me and said warmly and we are ready for her but enough for me let's hear directly from one of our students here is central park second grader at the mall [Music] what do you think is gonna be the most fun thing about this school year recess and lunch okay we're glad you're back too uh the first part she asked me that you didn't get to hear it she said how do you feel
123about being back at school and he said it is the best day ever and so in his wise words it really is the best day ever and now let's transition to um pre-k uh yesterday was the first day of pre-k and one pre-k student i recently ran into in the hallway um stop to talk to me and he looked at me and he said one time i was four and i was like right on man me too me too so it's fun to have those conversations with kids as they come back into the school we're going to highlight a couple of different uh grade areas and we'll start with pre-k our early childhood programs took what they learned during distance learning and really used it to welcome families back in different ways they offered several
124evening times that students and families could come to the school to experience a tour from a staff member pre-k also did one-on-one meetings with the family at the location of the family's choice so where did these meetings take place front yards driveways parks coffee shops you name it as tammy reese said we brought schools to fam school to families instead of families coming to schools during these meetings our teachers learned about the student their students they asked about children's favorite things the family's hopes and dreams and they created space for families to share anything else that they wanted their teacher to know they use this time also for social and emotional learning for both students and families really focusing on connections and relationship building teachers also shared with families covet mitigation strategies to help families
125know some of the things that we are doing in schools to keep students as safe as possible teachers said things to students like i will be waiting at school for you when you get off the bus and when one student drew a picture for their teacher their teacher said i will put this up on our cl in our classroom and you will see it hanging up when you come in on the first day so that's a little bit about pre-k and at this point i will turn it over to principal benke to talk a little bit about elementary school thank you thank you it's a joy to be here this evening and celebrate with you our first week of school and so we all transitioned to our in-person learning the first day of school for
126grades one through six was wednesday september 8th teachers really did appreciate that and thursday was september 9th for our kindergartners so when asked how did we welcome our students back here's just a couple examples of how we created community and building relationships as we welcome our st some of our students back for the first time since march of 2020. at falcon heights one way there that we are creating that sense of welcome and belonging is by having each person's picture taken by their wings with an invitation to come soar with us so these photos will be displayed in the halls all year one thing i'm seeing though is more use of these videos and ultimately gaining more of an understanding of that what did we learn in distance learning and bringing to our classrooms i
127share the video come start with us falconers we're so excited to see you i'm mr kruger and everybody's gonna get their picture in front of the wings looking cool can't wait to see ya i'm told that invitation extends to school board members please do stop by we'd love to have your photos oh shame on me i should have stopped you will you stop by another way at falcon heights that we are working on building that's as a community is that we have a process that we're calling clubhouse by class names so another um way is in the classrooms they're doing team names and across our grade levels teachers have also had identified as teams so our sixth grade team is a middle school wannabes and other names can range from the dragons to the ancient
128ones harambe um has music playing outside to help the students presence be celebrated there are also several morning intercom announcements of welcome and a chance for sharing about being a community that hopes and heals together there are practice time slots for their classes to come to the cafeteria to reduce that anxiety and the unknowns and specific adults that are out there to welcome kids and phone calls home to the parents who were nervous for their kiddos schools are being thoughtful on how to welcome our students and families these are just a few of the examples of the way their schools are welcoming students back after the last 18 months of coven and all that came with it all right we'll transition now to middle school and what you see here on the images that you
129see are what students at parkview saw as they entered the building again lots of love and care that really made an impact i also have to say i'm a grown woman but when i walked past some of these and read you were loved i was like oh thank you so we'll start with rams and then circle back to par q at rams as you know seventh grade students only attended on september 8th this supporting welcome supporting students and welcoming them back helping students learn the building and really get to know other seventh graders and just reduce that overall anxiety the hallways at rams were filled with welcoming supportive staff helping students get to class and learn the building the first week curriculum set in all classes focused on community building and lessons in their advisory
130class also focused on support and relationship building so you can sense a theme here right rams also held an open house for rams families as well as a virtual town hall again bringing in some of the things that we learned and used during distance learning with us to help us stay connected to families in different ways at parkview many of the 7th and 8th graders were in the building for the first time since the renovation and we're happy to see and explore new spaces and classrooms and meet the media center as a school they are also reading on the book and doing activities around the book called a place inside of me a poem to heal written by zetta elliott seventh graders also excite excitedly started their ipad setup at park u on friday and
131overall kids were happy to be back at school and like true middle schoolers see their friends now we'll transition to high school um so you can see some pictures you know what's coming right curtis um we'll transition to high school grades 9 through 12. so you see images here from fawz and roz as as well as principal hester and band director danelle dancing with the pep fest band at the first football game so we will play a little clip of that [Music] all right i hope you enjoy that i know principal hastert was thrilled that we were playing that this evening a little bit more about razz uh freshmen and sophomores started school together on the first date now this is typically just for ninth graders uh but 10th graders were added this year as
132you know this was to to support our 10th graders as they transitioned to ra's similar to how they would have been able to do last fall had we not been in distance learning the hallways were full of leaders and staff helping students upperclassmen greeted students outside handing out lollipops the sidewalk was covered with messages of welcoming and belonging there was also a virtual pet fest as well as a class meeting for the graduating class of 2023 which is pictured here students also had the opportunity to get to give their class schedule a go and spend some time in each class when sophomores and seniors joined the next day they brought a sense of calm and leadership to the building principal hester is also modeling the same relational approach with staff their mantra this year is
133love laugh and learn in that spirit you see pictured here at a ra's staff dodgeball game and next on to fairview at fairview staff gave students building tours so they could learn more about the residents of ambetu taicha education center student services staff also modeled how to create a name story and all students then created their own name story and advisory class they held an all school circle and staff met with students to really incorporate student in voice and upcoming events and this was to ensure that our events are really what our students need them to be students also got to know each other better and found common interest to foster again connection in that relationship building and last but not least there was some team building activities in the gym using pool noodles proving
134that you are never too old to play games with full noodles so to close us up i could not be more proud of our schools our leadership and our staff we are ready to be who our students need us to be we are ready for the 21 22 school year what you see pictured here was a visit to a kindergarten class at parkview and i said give me two thumbs up if it's a great first day of school and you can see by our students who know us best assessment it seems to be pretty great questions or comments regarding the first day thank you very much excellent looks like it was fun uh curtis they say as far as ross went lots of crazy energy and i was actually a little a little canada just
135after you guys were there um really great to see all the kids um running around and enjoying themselves um i really do i just really do appreciate um the the the different buildings um using lessons learned from the pandemic um in particular i love the idea of uh uh the phone calls home to two parents um especially those those parents of the kindergartners those you know i remember my my my first run running off to kindergarten was completely ready to go boom on the bus gone no no cheers no nothing you know we're like so um it's uh and a little cannon actually did a a um actually the little kind of pta diddy um uh a coffee afterwards so after you've dropped those kids off you're good coffee and kleenex yes you can just
136go to the side like you know you can't look in the building but you can come over here and you know you know cried out so um thank you yes kitty sounds like it was a really very incredibly smooth uh transition back to school after such a long period and it's really exciting to see the various things do we have any feel for where our students counts are roughly i know it's nothing is official until october first but were did we come in roughly where we were expecting our students the numbers to be that is a good question do you mean a comparative of how we've been in school years past well comparison to what we're planning on yeah in terms of students well sure you can give additional comment for about 50 students under
137our staffing projections so that gives you an estimate and the majority of those students we're missing are the elementary levels compared to the secondary levels thank you other questions thank you okay thank you good to be back thank you thank you very much uh next up we have the graduation and post-secondary report by director student achievement jake von delindy jake good evening thanks for having me on the show also yes very much so thank you for having me tonight so this is a report of our graduation percentages for the 2020 graduating class so i just want to reiterate that this is the 2020 graduating class not the 2021. so this is a few years behind yet and graduation always behind we typically receive data for graduation in late february or march um this year because
138of the pandemic there were interruptions that we received the data later from mde um and it was at the end of the school year of 2021. so just a reminder this is 2020 2020 data a few of our areas that we talk about within the roseville area schools for our strategic plan really meet the goal of our graduation and career and college readiness and the the main one obviously is to expand that support for college and career readiness a few of those areas that i'd highlight up there is just to expand our internship and job shadowing opportunities to include community members expand opportunities for students to learn about and experience careers by participating in programs such as best prep construct for tomorrow workforce solutions and junior achievement and expand our job training opportunities for adult
139basic education students in high needs areas such as technology medicine education and language interpretation i highlighted these areas because we are trying to expand beyond just our college readiness we know that students have choices when they're finished and graduate from our schools and there had been a historical push for college only as the direction that that students would go and so to continue to make sure that our students are ready for college or career is what we're tasked to do so we do have other areas that we are working on with our strategic plan which is to improve learning for students of color american indian students english learners students receiving special education services and our pre-kindergarten learners we will continue our professional development for culturally responsive competent teaching and we will make sure that we
140continue along with our other strategic plan area to improve communication and genuine engagement with families and communities especially with our underrepresented communities and the last one there is to make sure that we're continuing our support for our social emotional development of students as we know so many students were impacted through quality 19 and so our graduation data is broken into two sections so it is our we will talk about our district data overall and then also our roseville area high school data as well as the second part of our of the presentation will be on post-secondary information around college development development developmental course enrollment and then folks entering the workforce so looking at our data it is always based on the four-year cohort format so there is data that we do have that looks at
141the five six and seven-year data but this is primarily focused on that four-year accountability data that the state requires we do have a number of students that do go beyond those four years but they are obviously they're um because of this four-year cohort they are not included in that data okay go on so our district data does include all of our students that go to roseville area high school and fairview alternative high school as well as our roseville alternative learning center so this is data that compares roseville area schools graduation percentages to the state of minnesota roseville is seen here in light blue and minnesota the statewide in dark blue the all students group continues to be above the state and roseville's percentages is are 88.1 percent and 83.8 for the minnesota statewide percentage we
142increased over two percentage points from the previous year which gets us to the highest graduation rate that we've seen with that new calculation that system for the state which changed in so all of our student groups outperformed the state graduation percentages so i want to say that again to emphasize it that all of our student groups outperformed the state graduation percentages i think it's significant because we have we have not seen that in the past and with some that are more significant as well with our hispanic black and multi-racial students that were eight to 20 percentage points above that state average so looking at our data this slide shows our student groups based on a five-year trend some areas that i want to key you in include our multi-racial students who increased by more than
14311 percentage points from the previous year in blue we have students with an iep who increased over seven percentage points from the last year and more than 10 percentage points since 2014 which isn't shown but that is the light green our all students rate has increased over last year but also has increased five percentage points since 2014. asian students who have increased from 70.9 percent in 2014 to 90.7 this year in that darker green and our black students have increased over six and a half percentage points from last year but have increased from 73 in 2014 and they're at 85 now this is data that's life-changing for our students and i'm proud of them and their families and our educators for making that graduation happen by all means necessary this slide just represents the numbers
144of students in those groups to give you a little bit of context for that previous slide and provide some more context for those for those percentages just to note that these um numbers represent the number of students who graduated again in four years this slide shares and compares roseville area schools to our statewide graduation data and to eight comparable districts in 2020 roseville had the second highest graduation rate of our comparable schools only one other school district besides roseville saw an increase in graduation in the in 2020 and all others stayed the same or decreased this puts us just past our percentage in 2018. and this data includes all of our schools as well that provide diplomas including rosa roseville area high school fairview alternative high school and adult basic education and we're going to
145move to our from our district data to roseville area high school data and you can see that we had an overall increase for us all students group above two and a half percentage points going from 88.9 percent to 91.4 our students at raz who identify as multi-racial graduated in four grad all graduated in four years that's a hundred percent graduation rate which i've never seen before most of our other student groups saw increases as well and to give you those numbers behind those percentages you can see that our numbers have graduates decreased slightly from the numbers in 2019 but they are fairly consistent with the rest of our numbers so just a summary of our graduation data our four-year graduation rates increased from 85.7 percent to 88.1 percent and the district continues to outperform our
146minnesota statewide average of 83.8 all of our student groups outperformed state averages the largest increases were shown for asian black multi-racial and special education students and the graduation gap between white students and our our students of color and bypoc students continues to narrow for roseville area high school we continue to show a high four-year graduation percent for all students our graduation percentages improved over the previous year performing better than most comparable high schools and almost every student group improved over the previous year and multi-racial students had a 100 percent graduation rate so we're going to move into some post-secondary data so what happens with our students after they graduate from roseville area schools this data is provided to us from the national clearinghouse database and this is for roseville area high school and incl includes
147students who enrolled in college either a two or four year program after high school graduation the data looks at students who entered college at any point in their first year after graduation starting in the fall of the report only includes groups of students that have 10 or more which is why we're not able to report our numbers for american indian students please remember that 2020 was a difficult college experience for students as the pandemic was continuing which resulted in large declines in our student enrollment the all students group percentage decreased from 77 to 67 percent our largest drop ever since we have tracked the data we don't have the statewide comparison yet but that data will be interesting to gauge our decline against unfortunately we did see decreases for most of our student groups with
148the highest decreases for our students who are hispanic asian or have an iep black students did have an increase of three percentage points but that was after a decrease from the previous year of six percentage points if you look at two years after graduation rate the rate does go up in in a range from three to four percent so we'll may see a slight increase as we look at our data from next year for students who might have deferred so these are the numbers that we look at for students that were enrolling in college over time this is looking at our developmental course enrollment so these are first this let me just say that this data set is provided by the minnesota statewide longitudinal education data system or sleds which is a partnership of the
149minnesota office of higher education the minnesota department of education and the employment and economic development the most recent data for this report is for 2019 and is still considered preliminary so it could change slightly the data is looking at the percent of students who enrolled in college who need to take a developmental or remedial course during that first two years at the college level before taking a call a credit-bearing course in that college counter-intuitively we hope to see these numbers decline as the as that trend would show that our students are more prepared for the college courses our district has shown um has continued to show a decrease in the number of students required to take developmental courses over the five-year trend from 27 in 2015 to 18 in 2019 moving us closer towards the
150state average we saw decreases for our asian students and students who qualify for free reduced-price meals and unfortunately we did see an increase in our hispanic and english learner students and now this this set of data is also provided by sleds and this this data shows that the fields where students went into after high school graduation it represents about 16 percent of our high school graduates that went into the workforce after graduation you can see that the highest percentage of graduates went into the fields of trades transportation and utilities as well as leisure and hospitality the other number the other areas had numbers this year that were too small to report and the next slide shows the numbers of students who enter those workforce percentages this slide shows the percentage of black indigenous and people
151of color compared to white students and where students go after graduation the trend from 2016 shows a decrease in the opportunity gaps between our student groups with more bypoc students enrolling in college over the years so looking at our post-secondary data for a summary we could say that our college students for college enrollment students attending college decreased from 77 percent in 2019 to 67 in 2020 and due to much due to the pandemic we also don't know how that's going to compare to the state average yet most of our students student groups decreased however black students had an increase of three percentage points with our developmental courses in college the number of students required to take developmental courses continue to decrease over the previous year and by five percentage points and nine percentage points since
1522013. our hispanic students and english learner students showed increases from the previous year and our students entering the workforce we had about 16 percent of our high school students enter the workforce after graduation and the highest percent of students continue to go into the fields of the trades transportation and utilities as well as leisure and hospitality so i am ready for questions from the board 100's but uh um you know i i will say you know every every year you get to present these numbers and i poke i'm you okay and i got it i got nothing for you this time uh this is these are these are really great numbers um i'm looking forward to seeing what happens um next year because um i i wonder how many of the the kids that decided
153to uh take a year off before you know going to college um or did they decide to do something else you know so i'll be really interested to seeing what that what those combined numbers look like but um last thing would be and definitely nothing for today but i i i i would love to um if you can come back sometime and let me get the numbers okay and so we can actually like track the i know i don't everything's based on four year graduation but we know we have kids that graduate in five years to see what those numbers are also so thank you great presentation other questions when you go up those five six days exactly that's that's a why when i see it so sure rose yeah i was just uh thank
154you for the report by the way i was looking at the workforce entering the workforce do geo then kind of look at the data and then track it back to where the students um what program the students were part of because you know we have all these career pathways program like what is the correlation with what their opportunities were versus what they ended up with and where can we do better like in education i worry about that right if people are not going into education but then going to education right after high school it's more it's probably more like a educational assistant and not not the four-year say teaching or something so so it's really interesting to kind of look at how how how those that data in the school translate to the data here
155and what can we do to improve on those pathways yeah so just interested in that we can we can definitely pull that and see yeah and then it does take some factoring back of work because we can get those individual student names but then it's looking back at what classes they took so it is a little bit of a um it takes a little bit but we can provide that if you'd like it doesn't have to be right away but it's just something i'm always interested right when we get data like that how does that correlate to what we are providing right um and their attention is the pathway because students could finish high school and not name education as their choice yeah their pathway to right right so thank you thank you very much
156other questions comments kitty um one of the things i know in our in roosevelt that we had higher graduation requirements than the state requires in terms of additional courses and additional electives that they need to have has do other districts tend to have those higher requirements as well or is that something that is unusual to have additional requirements beyond the state requirements to be able to graduate it really depends on the number of credits that are that are offered and yes i would say we do have more we would we do expect that students have more credits that they would need to earn than the state wouldn't require um and compared to uh our comparables that ours was higher when we did this we did this maybe five or six years ago something like that
157where we looked at multiple um surrounding districts as well as our comparable districts as well as just districts um that we wanted to see what they were doing and we did find that we do have one of the highest credits required and definitely above where the state is so i think that shows a that we're getting students a well-rounded education and getting a lot of those um a lot of those different areas where we have expanded especially in our college and career pathways that is pretty exciting and giving students those opportunities to seek those courses that are out there that we have that we offer that are well beyond a lot of our competitive school districts i'd agree with jake and i'd add another driver of the credit requirements is the schedule building schedule so
158we offer 15 credits per student per year and so that allows us to have a higher requirement for electives there's only a handful of schools in the metro that are on a trimester schedule right well i just thought that's very interesting because when you look at it we have higher graduation rates but yet our requirements are higher um so that was just something that struck me as i was looking at the day and i think a lot of it comes with our pathways as well students are interested in what they want to do and are able to take those courses that they're that they have some interest in as well so when you're when you're feeling like there's relevance in what you're doing you keep doing it well thank you for the excellent report it's
159very informative other questions i have a quick one um so on the post-secondary report uh will the state will we get state data because it's hard to know how good we're doing and what was you know pandemic influenced or not if we even fought on if they will in the timing on that yes they will and typically it's it's it lags a little bit behind what we get so i'm hoping sometime this year we'll be able to get that and report that great yeah if you do maybe just share it with us and we can see and then my only other final comment is i agree with with curtis and other cliffs on the board this is one of the things that it's all about right and so it shows tremendous progress and what's exciting
160is kind of related what i just said it's not just that our rates of on the graduation report are up but they're up in comparison also to the state which means that if you if you're trying to factor out influence of the of the pandemic it wasn't skewed or weird i mean it may have been but it would have been skewed or weirded out for the whole state and so we're still comparatively better that's very exciting so to me it suggests particularly in the the rates of the of the non-white students whatever we've been doing let's keep doing it because it's right at the heart of what we've been hoping to do with all equity visions yeah it's exciting we had a principal meeting today and many of our principals talked about how important especially
161our secondary principles how important that graduation diploma is to our students and how many opportunities that affords them just beyond here and how proud the parents are and you all get to see it as well as you go to the graduations um how proud our families are of their students when they're graduating high school thank you very much thank you with that we'll keep going let's to the next topic of business is the operating loving referendum update and director communications josh collins will lead us through this josh welcome thank you chairmanship board members if you'll indulge me for just a moment while i plug into the system here maybe everyone can join me in thanking uh wayne powers for his tremendous technical work today and helping us uh work through any of those logistical challenges
162okay thank you very much for uh for that so today i'm just going to orient you uh as board members but also the members of the public who might be watching on tv or streaming or in attendance today of the information we have available about our operating referendum this november of course as you all know having passed it we have on the november ballot uh two questions that we'll be seeking to both renew and then increase our operating referendum if you go to our website and go under our district we have operating levy 2021 you can also reach that on any of our school web pages by just looking for this block our students our community our future vote november 2nd that will take you to our operating levy page so i want to start
163with showing you an informational video that we have recently produced which should help educate and inform people about the referendum itself and i'm going to go ahead and play this for you sound okay that looks positive doesn't it in roseville area schools we have a long and proud history of providing strong educational programs a talented caring staff and a shared vision of excellence our parents give us high marks on the return on their investment in our schools to maintain the education our community expects and our students deserve our school board unanimously approved placing two school funding requests on the november 2nd ballot question 1 would renew our existing operating levy before it expires with no tax increase to residents this renewal would lessen but not eliminate major cuts in the future and it would not
164allow us to address key areas identified by our community that impact our students after a year of planning and review the school board determined that renewing the levy alone was not enough question two would increase our levy for the first time in 15 years with a net tax increase of 22 dollars per month for the average homeowner the additional revenue would fund key areas such as lowering class sizes investing in student mental health maintaining academic programs expanding career pathways to better prepare students for various careers after graduation and helping maintain our overall financial stability operating levies are an important source of local revenue for schools the vast majority of minnesota school districts have voter approved levies to help pay for important school operating costs including academic programs classroom materials and staff but our current levy
165is among the lowest of comparable and neighboring school districts why are these requests coming to voters now there are multiple reasons state funding has not kept pace with inflation for nearly 20 years critical special education programs cost us nearly 10 million dollars more each year than we receive from the state and federal governments and we've already cut more than 8 million dollars from our budget in the past eight years if these levy requests fail there would be significant cuts across the district staff would be cut at all levels academic and support programs would be cut and fees would increase the district's financial health would also take a big hit leaving it exposed in case of any emergency our job is to provide the best education possible to prepare our students for life after high school
166because we believe our students are vital to our community and our collective future please learn all you can about these important votes and be sure to vote on or before november 2nd [Laughter] so that video is on youtube uh it's viewable with captions also in spanish on our website here you'll find a summary of the questions that are on the ballot we also have so people can look in closer detail some of the data that was mentioned in the video about how our opera our voter approved levy compares to other districts you can see and look more closely again at how that state funding gap has been created over the last 20 years and then we have some additional information here we have downloadable fact sheets posters bookmarks we have a sample ballot and i'm
167just going to go ahead and open that and this shows as you all know the language that goes on the actual ballot itself is quite complex and is very strictly regulated by the state so what we have created here is some plain language explanations of what that somewhat complex ballot language includes so we have that information there and then we also have voting information so if you're wondering how to vote that you can vote early in person you can vote early by mail and then we also provide access to where the county elections are taking place we do have a tax impact calculator so you can go here and you can see as we mentioned the median household the uh impact is 22 dollars per month but if you are interested as a property owner
168in the exact impact of your own home you can click on the online tax calculator and here you'll be able to put in your own information and see exactly what the impact will be for you as a homeowner cool well uh we also have a q a we know and this grows and is updated as we find out that there are additional questions from members of the community one of the most common misunderstandings is wait a minute didn't you come to us in 2017 and we've seen these beautiful updates to our facilities and and our new building i bet to techa yes we did we went to voters in 2017 for a bond bonds are for building levies are for learning we spell that common uh question here along with many others and then we
169also have a dedicated phone number and email box for anyone who may have questions so we do welcome those questions from the public to please take a look at this please share this with your friends and with anyone who may be interested with that i'll be happy to take any questions oh i should also maybe just add dr lake has been busy visiting uh groups to present on this so she'll be visiting city councils she'll be visiting community groups we've talked with staff and buildings and basically anywhere there's a congregation of three people or more dr lake will there be if she has not already she will be soon our team yes exactly thank you questions thoughts from my fellow board members frank a quick question that came up when i was talking to a
170constituent are there other of our comparable districts that we have there and we show ourselves as low on that list are there others going up for a new levy uh chair babushevsky director shot uh great question yes uh there are a number of districts uh anoka hennepin has three questions on the ballot this november uh i know there are a number of others and so that is a very common thing in minnesota over the course of time a lot of the funding has shifted from state and federal sources to that local levy so it has become increasingly uh critical for communities so unfortunately that does mean the local tax burden does continue to get impacted but that is somewhat uh something that we're seeing really across this whole state thank you other questions comments i
171think it's um i wanted to say a special thank you to josh and your staff too for also making sure we've got all this information on the website but we have had it in 623 today i think we should mention that that goes to every household is that right yes again 623 today goes to uh every household within the district it also goes to our uh non-resident families so it is you know whether you have a child or not or a student you should be getting that and that has had information about our financial challenges for quite some time some time ago thank you for including that thank you other questions kitty if there's a group that would like to have somebody from the district come and talk about the levy and explain things um
172how would they go about uh getting that arranged sheriff obashesky director goggins thank you that's a great question an important one the best way is for someone to come right to the website and to email levy2021 at isd623.org uh let us know if you've got a group that you'd like to hear more information and we'll be in touch thank you other questions i i just want to thank you for all the great information and great resource for our community all in one place and all the pdfs that you can download great job thank you very much you're welcome thank you do you take questions from the community at all no not really right but well afterwards if you want to you know some of us may be around thank you or email it to us
173uh curtis okay i'm just going to uh echo director 2 here i i am famous for volunteering you for things and um this you know don't just put on the website yeah i'm asking it um this is great i i particularly love the the youtube video it's concise um um i i did notice that um the the video of the school board members that um didn't quite make it but okay you know i'm gonna it's on the cutting room but no it's um i i love everything about it i love all the information you know in one place easy to find and um really great job with the video so hats off to you to you and uh and your team are the questions i have two josh one is kind of related to kitties
174if someone does want to dig deeper into you know maybe even use of funds more detailed budget i know that our business director sherry thompson i believe is available to answer those questions is that right so someone could go to the website check on staff send an email to sherry thompson who's actually standing in the back of the room and asking should be very happy to follow up with a detailed question that digs deeper than even some of these numbers okay great thank you sherry yes and then the other question uh you know i did mention uh vote november 2nd or before because we do early voting i think early voting actually begins people go down to ramsey county this friday right is early this friday yeah that's right great and so is i was
175kind of listening that's on there too how to get an early ballot i think you did say that right yeah so folks can vote even early as as this friday if you know great wonderful other final thoughts questions we're good thank you sir and yes thanks for your time thank you yeah uh with that we're ready to move into our action items and the first one is the potential approval of a resolution providing for the stale sale of general obligation school building refunding bonds and will be led by sherry thompson mr turkish sherry thompson yes good evening so we do have a resolution for you before you this evening we do have some bonds that were issued in 2013 and those are actually they they will come up for call on february 1st of and
176working with ellers our municipal financial advisor and looking at that we have realized that we could save the taxpayers money there are only four years left on those bonds however if we can reduce the levy by right now our conservative estimate is about 33 000 a year over the additional four years we would like to do that so we are asking you to approve or to authorize the sale the sale will take place in october so we would come back to you at the october 12 meeting that would be the sale date and if the results aren't you know to your liking you always have the option um you're not uh um obligated to do that if for some inter reason interest went up or something like that so and this would go into effect
177for taxes payable in the next calendar year the 22 year which is our fiscal year 22-23 and i'm you know including that because that's about the same time or that is actually on the same timetable that the renewal of the operating lobby would come up or the author and the authorization for additional authority so that would help to reduce that levy a little bit so that's what i have thank you any questions for sherry kitty um i'd just like to clarify sherry that if this goes through the the the benefit is to the taxpayers directly that the district doesn't have any benefit outside of doing our fiduciary responsibility and the benefit directly flows through yes thank you for that clarifying a point um a point because it doesn't impact so much our budget any savings
178go back to the taxpayers you're correct well i appreciate the diligence because you brought this is the second one even this year yes where you've been able to refinance to save our taxpayers uh money and i greatly appreciate the rigorous tracking to make sure we take advantage of those opportunities thank you thank you and we've um actually as you know we work closely with ellers our municipal financial advisor they've been very good partners with us and tracking that are the questions for sherry without entertain a motion and second to approve the resolution providing for this sale security i move that the board approve resolution providing for the sale of the 2 million 585 000 general obligation school building refunding bonds series 2021 b as presented thank you second seconded by rose any further discussion amongst
179the board hearing none all in favor please say aye aye opposed come on go to it sherry thank you very much thank you uh with that our next item a we're hearing a recommended resolution requiring staff vaccinations or regular coven 19 testing and it looks like superintendent lake will be highlighting this for us this evening yes sir and i have three guests roosevelt schools leaders all asked to join me before we move through the resolution three very important guests our district hogan coordinator and lead nurse deb legend our director of business services sherry thompson director of human resources lisa chang and as we move forward our universal masking requirement i'm going to actually read into the record our resolution for requiring staff vaccinations and then we will field the questions as government 19 case rates
180have increased during the summer the centers for disease control and prevention along with minnesota department of health and the minnesota department of education continue to emphasize the importance of vaccinations as a tool to help stop the colga19 pandemic research has demonstrated that vaccines are safe and effective at preventing serious illness the covet-19 vaccine is currently only authorized for people ages 12 and older as a result there is still an increased risk of coping 19 transmission in school settings according to the cdc cover 19 vaccination among eligible students as well as teachers staff and household members is the most critical strategy to help schools safely resume full operations therefore district administration is recommending the adoption of a resolution requiring all roseville area school staff either to be vaccinated against covid19 or to submit to regular covid19
181testing the district will continue to strongly recommend vaccination for eligible students in addition to the mitigation strategies we have implemented this school year thank you thank you questions for and and then the folks are just going to introduce who we are right yeah so any questions for jenny or the team or i i have a question i just want to know um how how are staff and teachers responding to a mandate like that have we have we asked you know for some input from our staff and and teachers just wanted to understand you know where they stay in touch with the leadership so um working with emr our union president teachers union president they did say that our teachers are open to that and they are open to the alternative of weekly testing if they
182haven't gotten vaccinated they like the options and other questions kitty i'm assuming we have no um knowledge of how many teachers would be affected by this we don't at this point in time have knowledge of who is vaccinated who is not is that correct correct kitty we have not gone um we have not sent out an acknowledgement form we're still working on that we'll continue to work on that uh before october 15th from there we'll make a determination based on the acknowledgement forms and the research that we are doing now in terms of weekly testing and what type of weekly testing we'll be doing working with deb and of course with sherry on what that will look like in the next coming couple weeks other questions i can provide a couple more comments too that
183may ground us so they will require vaccinations or weekly testing for all school employees and that will include bus drivers and all outside staff who have direct contact with our students that may include student teachers or reading core americorps those folks any direct contact with our students so just wanted to provide that clarification thank you frank yeah i just wanted to comment that we've we've received uh some some mail about this uh questioning it and i wanted to to clarify or to ask uh deb to clarify um you have you have vaccinated people and we know that there are breakthrough cases and we know that in fact vaccinated people with breakthrough cases can transmit the virus however the impression i have and i would like to get clarification on this if if it's available is
184that that's at a lower rate and that if there's still a higher or there's a there's a lower rate of transmission less risk of transmission in a vaccinated individual than in an unvaccinated individual infected with a disease correct and the the last mdh webinar they addressed that that because i've seen a couple different sources it probably depends on whether you're looking at minnesota data or you know regional or national but um at the beginning of september it was 0.25 percent of breakthrough cases and people who have been vaccinated so that would you know and again you have to tease that apart by people who have been vaccinated have virus that they could test positive it does not necessarily mean that they have illness in symptoms in some cases they do but then the symptoms are
185less severe however for those people who are unvaccinated there's a hundred percent chance that they're going to get coveted so it stands to reason that if you are unvaccinated you are at much higher risk of bringing covet into the schools unless you're doing active testing it's a layer of mitigation to have two choices that you would either be vaccinated or you do testing to see if in fact you are positive so that we're not bringing positive cases into our school and spreading it among particularly our unvaccinated uh students under 12 and then we also have other people with underlying medical conditions and things like that thank you for that answer yeah that's not true i mean that's not true the sir you're out of order we we this is not for a public conversation it's
186not true so i mean you can you can say it but it's it's wrong multiple studies that show it's wrong yeah so could i just add a couple comments as far as our partner organizations um dr lake had mentioned our transportation contractors i mean we work closely with them uh we have been very fortunate in the opening of school that we haven't faced some of the challenges that our neighbors have as far as transportation we need that to continue so that you know we can again as another way to for mitigation we offered the vaccines to our drivers last year as well as testing just as we did even though they work for our contractor we treated them as employees as far as having those opportunities all along so um we will be meeting with
187those with the contractors we not only have centerline who transports the majority of our students we have daily you know we have uh bands we have aids on our on the vehicles so we'll be meeting with them in short order too and laying out the expectations they have received a copy of the resolution but we'll be meeting with them to talk through some of the logistics of how this actually looks going forward thank you sir what a great opportunity to thank all of our transportation drivers yes and your office as well for coordinating that a smooth start to school other questions i i do have a question i i've been reading um up on this myself and i do wonder whether like on our covet 19 page do we actually have research you know because
188the research is is keep evolving right there's more and more studies that are coming up do we have that listed i didn't check recently that might be a way to kind of make sure that we have a little bit of collective understanding of what is going on just just a thought well the health department does regular um they had been weekly webinars now they're every other week so there's sources there there's also sid rep um doctor holm he has a weekly podcast he has great information johns hopkins is also a great resource they have a daily feed that you can get all kinds of information so those are the sources that we are looking at we look at public health officials um where um you know it's well researched and and they you know they
189look at the the country and beyond of all the data because the data is evolving right right and we do have a roseville area schools cool bid 19 faq that we maintain and is is updated weekly and we can ensure that we have some of those references and the resources that you've mentioned yes that would be great yeah so the people go to roseville because of our interest in the community here there's some other sources that you talk about could be could be you know could be found right there oh that would be a great idea sure yeah questions i have one and so um it's simply a choice for a staff member to acknowledge and show vaccination status or agree to the weekly testing we're not requiring that they attest to a medical or
190religious exemption it's simply a choice and so it's kind of the safety valve for folks who feel like they don't want to be vaccinated even if it's simply for whatever reason then they can go that option so it's it's it's okay right and then the date the effective date is again is i think you alluded to just time to get in place of logistics around how do you put in place the two hour window to allow them to do it all that kind of stuff and how do you do the tracking and all of that yes okay because i know some folks might wonder well if if we do approve this why not just do it right away but right away really is pretty much that date just to give the staff time to put
191the logistics into place and to get it up and running other questions for our guests uh do we need to read the whole resolution this time michelle or uh i don't know that we need to read the whole thing mr clerk maybe is your call it is important we decided to do it with the mask one because it was so important i know it's kind of a long multi-section resolution but i guess uh this chair would ask you mr go ahead and read the whole resolution uh as the form by which you would then move it um i know we're already very late but um i just think it's so important so key and it does have some nuances and details and it could be of interest to folks who are listening not a problem
192my pleasure the coven 19 infection rate has risen during the summer of 2021 on a national statewide and local basis and whereas according to the centers for disease control and prevention cdc over 19 vaccination among all eligible students as well as teachers staff and household members is the most critical strategy to help schools safely resume full operations and whereas according to the cdc vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to the endocoped 19 pandemic people who are fully vaccinated against cova 19 are at low risk of symptomatic or severe infection a growing body of evidence suggests that people who are fully vaccinated against cova 19 are less likely to become infected and develop symptoms and are substantially reduced risk from severe illness and death from cova 19 compared with unvaccinated people and whereas according
193to the state of minnesota staff who access the workplace or provide public service outside of their homes on behalf of an agency without vaccination pose a particular risk of cova-19 exposure to themselves their colleagues and to members of the public additionally ongoing community transmission of the more transmissible delta variant of clover 19 in minnesota especially among unvaccinated individuals presents a continuous risk of infection and whereas the federal government yeah the federal government the state of minnesota and ramsey county have all made the decision to require that employees to either be vaccinated against cover 19 or submit to cova 19 testing on a frequent regular scheduled basis and whereas pursuant to minnesota statute 123b o2 subsection one the subdivision one the the school board of independent school district number 623 has the general charge of the
194business of the district the schoolhouses and of the interests of the schools thereof and whereas the school board concludes that requiring all staff either to be vaccinated against cova 19 or to submit to regular coping 19 testing is in the best interest of the school district its students its staff and the communities it serves being resolved by the school board of independent school district number 623 rosebury schools one the school board requires either a the current staff to be fully vaccinated against cover 19 and to provide acknowledgement of full vaccination in the manner designed designated by human resources starting october 15 2021 or b all staff who remain unvaccinated are not fully vaccinated and or have not provided acknowledgement of full vaccination as detailed above to submit to mandatory equivalent 19 testing at least one
195time per week satisfactory verification of compliance with the kovid 19 testing requirement will be designated by human resources designations will include no less than allowable testing options testing resources how to submit coven 19 test results and what to do if results are negative or positive the school board recommends that two the school recommends that staff be provided two hours of pay time off for the day they receive their coven 19 vaccine travel and vaccine time and the full next day off if needed due to any due to any after effects and that staff must be sorry and that staff must admit acknowledgement of vaccine otherwise time will be considered as an unexcused absence three any staff member who does not comply with the requirements of either paragraph 1a or paragraph 1b will be subject to
196disciplinary action consistent with any applicable collective bargaining agreement 4. any staff member who presents or submits a false misleading or inaccurate acknowledgement of full vaccination will be subject to disciplinary action consistent with any applicable collective bargaining agreement definitions a fully vaccinated means either two two weeks after the second dose in a two dose facts copin 19 vaccine for example five zero modern or two weeks after a single dose global 19 vaccination for example johnson johnson staff who do not meet these requirements are not fully vaccinated this definition shall include any vaccine that has been approved fully conditionally or on an emergency basis by the food and drug administration or the world health organization b staff means all full or part-time roseville area schools employees six blessings employees hired after october 15 2021 shall either provide
197acknowledgment of being fully vaccinated within 45 days of higher pursuant to paragraph 1a or submit to weekly testing pursuant to paragraph 1b all newly hired staff that do not provide acknowledgement of being fully vaccinated upon hire or remain unvaccinated must immediately submit to weekly testing until acknowledgment of being fully vaccinated is received by human resources seven this resolution shall be effective immediately and shall remain in effect until rescinded superseded amended or otherwise acted upon by the school board staff may be subject to additional attestation vaccination or testing requirements under federal state or local law the school board will review this resolution as necessary in light of changes to case rates guidance from the cdc guidance from the minnesota department of health and or the minnesota department of education and any other applicable authorities and may
198amend accordingly as warranted thank you do we have a second uh kitty thank you moved and seconded okay discussion anyone have anything to to say kitty i was just going to say that i appreciate that the staff has been looking at opportunities to improve the odds of us being able to keep students in school because we all know how critical it is to have the students in school and so i greatly appreciate that we are moving forward with masking with this items so that we are not having our students have to do distance learning or some other option to extend applause so thank you bye thoughts um i'll just add you know we've received a lot of communications about this as you alluded to earlier frank some pro some against i think the pro from
199community members has really centered on um health issues and reducing risk mitigating transmissions etc and and the the against have largely centered on um you know individual right issues and frankly i i don't i don't see this as a balance between those two in my own opinion to me this is a public health issue we are charged and one of our primary duties is to maintain the safety of our student body and our staff and our visitors in our buildings and you know it's not that it supersedes individual liberty or choice it's not even the same discussion to me it's just it's a primary duty we're public body republic organization that this is the basic thing we need to maintain and you know facts and rates and numbers change week to week and depending on
200the source even sometimes from the same source they lead to a different conclusion so i look at this as saying i don't care what the federal government says i don't even care what the cdc says i don't care what the state says i care i guess what i think we would feel collectively as a board today you know as our decision and so i i'll i i'll just signal now i intend to vote to approve this resolution and it's based on my belief it's not because i feel that you know i'm cow towing to any other authority or whatever it's what i really believe we need to do to just maintain safety in the schools and i think that especially with the ability for staff to opt out of the vaccination but submit to the
201at least weekly testing and you know i'd even encourage it to be more frequent you know excuse me sir please don't interrupt our meeting thank you they carried the same risk sir sir please put your nose up you know sir sir you need to put your mask on appropriately over your nose please thank you very much uh you know some of you know i work for a large healthcare organization we've mandated vaccines yeah um and so i trust kind of their interpretation of the science also i have to admit that and um we don't even allow it just to be a free opt-out you have to either attest to the fact that you have a health condition or a religious reason to not get the vaccine so um there's no uniform consensus from all these
202other sources i think to my mind we just have to do what we think is best and i'll vote the way i think is best and then we'll see how it is so curtis um i i don't have a lot more to say but what i'm gonna say is that um you know as a parent of a uh a kid who is still at rosebury schools um i'm going to feel a lot better if i know that their teachers are and staff are are vaccinated or being tested on on a at least weekly basis so and my company like yours as as as mandated vaccines in fact we actually can't even we can't go near the building um unless you show your card so um i've got a deb um you know i mean thank
203you all for bringing this um before us um you know i i think i think it's the right thing to do and you know for any number of reasons so thank you roll call on this or we should do yeah yeah sure let's do that yeah mr clerk could you do a roll call vote in this one on the record director anderson i vote i director true aye sherborough chelsea aye director shaw aye excuse me treasurer atkins aye clerk johnson votes eye thank you resolution passes we look forward to having a safe schools for our kids and our staff with that move to the next action item which is which is which is which is a resolution limiting open enrollment for grade nine and that is also assistant superintendent sonic melissa once more thank you
204good evening enrollment in eighth grade for the 2122 year has exceeded capacity we have capacity of around 600 students and currently have 606 on my last count so given this fact the administration recommends limiting open enrollment effective september 14 2021 for the 21 22 school year as detailed in the resolution as you know limiting open enrollment requires annual board action therefore should the need to limit open enrollment arise in additional grades the administration will bring a similar resolution for your consideration so again it is the recommended that the board approve the resolution limiting open enrollment in grade nine for the 21-22 school year thank you questions so it's a food problem so do we know why that is the case that is a good question why are and what does the trend mean right in
205terms of um for the future yeah we're certainly seeing an increase at secondary um in terms of our grade levels that are closed to open enrollment so some nice increases there i'd have to look into further around the trajectory of the why to get to answer your question better but i can circle back to you and get more information because i mean something to think ahead right the kind of like okay it is because some of the choices we have we have one of the best high school you think about career pathways i mean there are many reasons that i would like to think right why this is increasing and so if that's the case how do we then be ahead of the game to think in the future how do we accommodate that and
206i will say our numbers are going up at both ra's and fos as well so i mean let's go back to our first day report with some of the wonderful things that you're seeing and that's in the schools that's great yeah and i'm actually not surprised right if i think about the graduation we went to and and i taught in an alternative school and i know what that kind of school mean for a lot of students so if we are doing a good job that's a good good problem again right and so again kind of looking you know looking ahead a little bit as to what does that mean and why is this happening can we collect some data around that so that we can really plan for the future in terms of enrollment that
207is good for the school right before the district and we do have an enrollment report coming up i think earlier mid-october as well it's a good problem just happy to hear that yeah any other questions thank you very much move and second i move that um that that uh this is being voted on it is recommended that the board approve the resolution limiting open enrollment in grade nine uh for the 2021-2022 school year thank you moved by director chu second seconded by johnson uh any for this question among us as board members seeing none all in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed passes thank you very much thank you uh with that we do a study session tonight so um oh do we do do we do that okay uh board reports do
208we have any board reports tonight recognizing the time uh anything essential that we want to share can you have one or two things i don't know just leave them okay great i'm gonna leave my thing great yeah okay well i just had to say something just really quick about the harambe open house because it involves you okay all right just real quick i had an opportunity to attend the rambe open house on september 1st outside beautiful weather very festive love the music that was going on wonderful vibe positive energy to families instead of returning and i spoke at great length to a sixth grade teacher by the name of mara who had your daughter years ago [Music] uh so with that let's take our our 10-minute break and we'll do 10 minutes and then come
209back to the study session okay okay great you