001with their surrounding community to be successful in today's and tomorrow's society. Heather, can you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance. Thank you. And then when you're ready, can you call roll? The following board members are present at the district administration office. Gina Acevedo. Here. Natalie Copeland. >> Here. Zach Dorholt. Diana Fenton. Here. Shannon Haws. >> Here. Heather Weems, here. The following board members are not present. Scott Andresen. The following cabinet members and staff are present at the district administration office. Superintendent Dr. Lori Putnam, assistant superintendent of secondary education Dr. Jason Harris, assistant superintendent of E-5 learning Nikki Hanson, executive director of finance and business services Amy Skalicky, executive director of human resources and general counsel Tracy Flynnbo, executive director of operations Matthew Boucher, executive director of special education Danny Mare,
002director of community engagement and communications Tammy DeLand, director of research, assessments, and AI integration Donna Roper, media technicians Paul Novak and Gordy Scott, and the custodian on site is Emerson Beemer. Thank you. Uh then I'm looking for a motion uh for to approve the Board of Education meeting agenda. So moved. I have a motion by Diana, a second by Natalie. Heather, can you call vote? Natalie Copeland. Yes. Diana Fenton. >> Yes. Shannon Haws. >> Yes. Zach Dorholt. Heather Weems, yes. Gina Acevedo. >> Yes. Okay. And then we have the consent agenda. The consent agenda consists of non-controversial items the board adopts routinely without debate and any single member may remove an item from the consent agenda by requesting removal at the time the consent agenda is moved for adoption. On tonight's consent agenda, item A,
003approval of board minutes from March 11th, 2026 and March 18th, 2026. Item B, approval of bills and other financial transactions in the grand total amount of 3,376,298.56. Item C, approval of personnel staff changes. Item D, acceptance of grant awards and donations. Item E, approval of quarterly expenditures for board members and item F, call for bids Apollo renovations and additions bid package two. Um at I have a one um asked to for Natalie Copeland is recusing herself from um item D. Does any other board member want to remove an item from the consent agenda? Okay, so I'm looking for a motion to approve approve A, B, C, E, and F. So moved. I have a motion by Diana, a second by Natalie. Uh Heather, can you call vote? Diana Fenton. Yes. Gina Acevedo. Yes. Shannon Haws.
004>> Yes. Heather Weems, yes. Natalie Copeland. Yes. Zach Dorholt. Okay. And then we have um item D, um Natalie recusing herself, looking for a motion to approve item D. Second. I have a motion by Zach, a second by Heather. Heather, can you call vote? Heather Weems, yes. Diana Fenton. >> Yes. Natalie Cope Oh. Zach Dorholt. Gina Acevedo. Yes. Shannon Haws. >> Yes. All right. Thank you. Um we have one information item tonight. It's the LEAF, Local Education Activities Foundation report. And here tonight to join us is Charlie Eisenreich, LEAF president, and joining him is Tammy DeLand, director of community engagement and communications. Great. It is my privilege to welcome Charlie Eisenreich, president of the Local Activities and Education Activities Foundation, and a face that is pretty familiar to almost everyone around the table, I think.
005So, welcome, Charlie. I'm going to pull up the uh presentation. Charlie is going to present for us tonight LEAF's annual report. All right. I think we're good to go. Well, uh good evening, everybody, and and thanks for allowing me to be here tonight. Uh uh I don't miss board meetings, but uh um uh I'm happy to be here tonight to do the uh the annual LEAF report. Uh uh something that's near and dear to my heart. As you can see on the on the screen, uh uh we are certainly uh looking forward to presenting the information for 2025. Uh and you know that uh LEAF is a strong contributor to providing those that access and likewise the opportunities for our students all the way across our district. Uh from the the little guys in the
006in the PK all the way up to our seniors in high school. So, really proud to be here, really proud to be able to share this information with you tonight. I would draw your attention to uh kind of our new slogan uh that was came up from our our PR committee uh recently. Uh rooted in student growth. Uh and so again, I think that fits well with that whole idea of access and providing opportunity uh so that students can grow throughout their time in District 742. So, uh this is our 2025 LEAF Board of Directors. As you can see, a very dedicated group from a diverse background. Uh it's so good to have the various experiences all working together to support our students and staff of 742. Uh while this list includes our Board of
007Directors, uh there are other volunteers, many, many volunteers serving on subcommittees such as our grant committee and finance committees, bringing further expertise to those areas. So again, just a very dedicated uh Board of Directors as LEAF normally has had throughout their years. Uh as many of you are aware, uh our biggest focus in 2025 was to continue the effort to provide activity fees free of charge for any middle school student wishing to participate. Uh and we succeeded in raising $100,000 to ensure uh these fees are paid for not only this school year, uh but through the remainder of 2026-27. Um you may have seen the the wonderful video that was created by none other than your district media folks. Uh but for those that haven't seen it, um let's play it again. Um and for
008those at home as well. >> [music] [music] >> This year, Saint Cloud Area School District 742 and the Local Edu- announced [music] LEAF's dollar commitment activities fees participating District 742 [music] middle schoolers over the next 2 years. The idea came about when school district leadership [music] and the LEAF board were brainstorming student needs for LEAF's annual Learning Renaissance fundraiser. [music] LEAF has historically focused on supporting district [music] activities such as funding the after school activities bus and providing physicals for athletes. >> [music] >> But we asked ourselves, are there still barriers, even perceived barriers, that prevent [music] students from signing up? Middle school is a critical time [music] for kids. Exploring activities and interests in middle school is essential for students to develop as athletes and participants [music] later in high school. LEAF's generosity means
009all activities fees for every middle [music] school sport or other activity are waived. Give more students more opportunities to learn and grow. And we know that students who participate in activities excel in the classroom. >> [music] >> We are 742. All right. Let's let's move on here. So, as as you probably have heard 2025 was a very successful year for LEAF. Our academic and activity legacy funds grew substantially, uh mostly due to our generous donors, um now totaling over 400 unique donors that we have. And of course we had some exceptional investment returns through the Central Minnesota Community Foundation. Uh, this allowed us to award $283,000 in grants to classrooms and activity programs across the district. So we're super proud of being able to fund nearly every request that was out there. Maybe not their
010full amount request request. Uh, but again just be able to uh, impact our classrooms, impact our activity programs for much needed access and opportunity items. Okay. Uh, here you can see a combined revenue for 2025 came in through events such as our annual high school golf tournaments. We started a new little event this year called beer beer anthropy which was a fundraiser for adopt a classroom. Uh, you can see that our public support totaled over $330,000 which includes that adopt a classroom, the middle school activity fee fundraisers. And if you combine all that with our investment returns, revenues came in just under $750,000 for 2025. So again a nice year from a revenues perspective for LEAF. Uh, then we get to the the expenses because you can't have this happen without spending a dollar or
011two. Uh, the expenses for 2025 totaled just over $430,000. You can see the program services. So that includes all of those activities and academic grants that we award out. So we take the money in and then we pay it back out. So technically the pay it back out portion is an expense. So I don't know. I think that's a pretty good expense when you come to think of it. Um, we also have other flow through funds that would exist in there like our feeding 742 kids and some of the the homeless student funds that we have. Um, we have fundraising that mostly is coming out of our golf tournament expenses there and some of the software that we use for our uh, keeping a track of our donors and everything that they do for us.
012Management in general would be salaries and other stipends and insurance, meeting costs, rent, things of that nature as well. So that's a picture of our expenses for five. Um, getting back to more good news with with the 2025 grants. Here's a breakdown of all of the activity as well as academic grants for 2025. You can see that the activities grants was our largest grants that were awarded in a plethora of areas from elementary to middle to high school programming as well as our adopt a classroom grants totaling just over $70,000. So again another nice year of being able to return uh, the money that we do raise from our donors and other supporters right back into the classrooms as well as to the programs serving our district. Uh, we've we had some exceptional uh, thank
013yous I guess returned back to us. We get these you know, I wouldn't say all the time but when we do they they really come from the heart from several various folks that get these grants. You can see a little comment there from a McKinley uh, teacher receiving social emotional intelligence grant along with the South that yearbook advisor. Um, we provided some new cameras. And so kids weren't going around with their cell phones taking pictures. And it changed the makeup of of how that yearbook was was delivered. Uh, and then of course from our our middle middle school activity fee um, just that quote at the top um, from one of our parents of district 742. You know, this has been a blessing to us. Thank you for making the decision to provide feel alleviation
014and thank you to the patrons who have paid for this initiative. Um, we even got some ink from superintendent Harris over here too. So nice work on that. Thank you for doing that. So again just good feedback from our folks receiving those grants. Um, one of the things that has been kind of a point of emphasis and you've heard me say this already in recent years is our focus to providing access and opportunities for students in the district. Uh, when you think of our continuous initiatives like adopt a classroom which by the way totaled a new high of 287 classrooms awarded this year. Uh, and we're going to we're going to shoot for and reach that 300 plateau next year. I'm pretty confident. Uh, our participation fund again remarkable with paying for physicals for students
015where parents that can't afford them as well as just those little odds and ends little equipment things that can't fit into families budgets. Uh, we continue to fund some of the new initiatives out there such as feeding with the district pantry here as well as 14 pantries in all of our buildings as well. So just again so grateful for our donors, our volunteers and then also the district staff who make all these programs possible. You know, with that good stuff happening with LEAF um, we got to celebrate, right? So we took this time this past Monday night to celebrate our successes and give out awards to several deserving donors, volunteers and district staff. Here you see the incredible list of folks recognized at our annual event. Uh, you know, we had like Peggy Carlson. You
016know, if you don't know her by now you probably haven't been paying attention cuz she is extraordinary. Just a great volunteer, great giver from from a charitable perspective and certainly a giver of her time as well. So we definitely wanted to recognize Peggy for everything that she's done for LEAF throughout the years. And then you can see some of our donors, our other staff, teachers in the classroom as well as some other folks that have still involved with LEAF but have perhaps left the the school district in other endeavors. So again it's it's these these folks that really make a difference. We had a nice crowd on hand. Just a good evening all around to celebrate and award some very deserving people. So one of the things that we want to continue to do is
017to to move ahead with purpose. We're not going to rest on our laurels. We want to do more. We want to reach more students, provide more access, more opportunity that's so important for that student growth. Um, our recent discussions have centered on being more strategic and intentional with our current donors while fostering new relationships as well as working very strongly to develop even more powerful relationships so that we can expand LEAF's outreach even more. So again we're we're focused on what we want to do. Starting next month we're going to be meeting with our current some of our uh, very prestigious donors and working with them to really share in this experience with us. So we're hoping those numbers that I shared with you earlier we can we can surpass those in 2026. So once
018again on behalf of the LEAF Board of Directors I want to thank all of our donors, our volunteers, the district staff that is so crucial in making this happen as well as any supporter for all they've done to make LEAF so successful in reaching thousands of children across the district. Um, we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, one more. There we go. You can find us on social media platforms. You can contact us via email as well as regular mail or do it the old fashioned way and just give us a call. Um, we we love to hear from you. We love to uh, get your ideas, your thoughts. And again thanks so much to our donors and our supporters and everyone. And thanks for allowing me to share the LEAF experience with you tonight.
019All right. Thanks for joining us. Does anybody have any questions or comments? And then if you found this at your spot too. Anybody have any thoughts? Yeah, you'll see more specific numbers in that in the uh, year annual report. So Okay. Well, thank you Charlie for joining us and presenting this. Good stuff. Really appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Okay, then moving on to into our discussion and action items tonight. We first up we have the resolution proposing name staff for non-renewal. Joining us tonight is Tracy Flynn Bow, executive director of human resources and general counsel. Good evening Chair Haas, board members, Superintendent Putnam. Um, I'm here tonight to present the resolution relating to the non-renewal of probationary teachers. This is an annual part of our staffing process. As we've talked uh previously about our
020staffing process, at this time of the year we're making that tentative staffing plan for the 26-27 school year. And if we have do not have an identified placement for any of our probationary teachers, it's we're required to um propose them for non-renewal at this time. Uh several of the folks uh each year that are on this list often reapply for positions and maybe hired later in the spring or summer as positions arise. Um in this evening's resolution, there are 14 teachers being proposed for non-renewal as probationary teachers. And I'm looking for a motion to approve that resolution. So moved. Second. Okay, I have a motion by Natalie, a second by Diana. Was there any discussion at all? Okay, Heather, can you call vote? Diana Fenton. Yes. Zack Dorholt. Natalie Copeland. Yes. Gina Acevedo. Heather Weems,
021yes. Shannon Haas. Yes. Thank you. Um and then Tracy Flynn Bow, executive director of human resources and general counsel is staying right there and she is presenting um approval of tentative contract agreements. All right, I am pleased to be presenting a tentative agreement with our clerical unit. Uh this uh agreement was ratified by the unit last week and uh is being presented this evening for final school board approval. The clerical group represents uh about 64 employees in our district and the um two-year contract uh provides for the following financial terms. In year one, there would be steps for eligible employees, a 1% increase in hourly wages retroactive to July 1, 2025. The district uh insurance contribution uh to single plans would be increased to $640 per month effective October 1, 2025. Uh the caps that
022you've approved previously on the EME contributions and uh the family medical leave statutory contributions of 0.44% um for wages. Uh you can see in the in the summary sheet that that would place our new starting rates for our class one clericals at $16.89 per hour, for class two, $18.57 per hour, class three, $20.53 per hour, and class four, $22.10 per hour. In year two of the agreement, it provides for steps again for step eligible employees. Uh we also made an agreement to eliminate step one of the salary schedule and add a new step five. Um it increases the longevity rates to match other contracts. Um this group has been kind of the target for those um non uh licensed uh employee groups. And so the only level that's changing in this group is that 25-year
023level going up to two $2.90 per hour. Uh again in the second year, we would see an increase in the single um contribution to the health insurance plan going to $660 per month, an increase in the insurance contribution to the family plans moving to 1193 per month, and new starting rates for class one at 1772, class two, 1948, class three, 2145, and class four at 2296. The total two-year cost for this agreement is 7.58% and I'm looking for a motion to approve the tentative agreement. So moved. Second. Okay, I have a motion by Diana, a second by Heather. Any discussion? Okay, Heather, can you call vote? Heather Weems, yes. Diana Fenton. Yes. Zack Dorholt. Yes. Gina Acevedo. Shannon Haas. Yes. Natalie Copeland. Yes. Thank you. >> One more group, our newest group, hopefully will be
024coming in early next month. Okay. Those are for the next one. Will you give that to Heather? Heather, will you pick that and um give it to Gina? Okay. Um so the next up is another action item. It is remuneration. Um [laughter] for uh board members. This is tabled from the January 5th, 2026 reorg meeting. Um where Jan printed this out, you have in front of you, one of the action items at the reorg meeting is um we tabled number one there, which is the monthly compensation, but passed all the other uh outlined um items that you have in front of you. Normally, what we've done in the past um practice has been to take the average salary settlement and um make that um adjustment to the monthly compensation for board members in uh showing
025of goodwill that we're all in this together. And um at that time for January, we didn't know what that average um amount was. So now that we are all but one done here, the year one salary settlement um average is 2.45%. So um it would be considered then um if we are interested in taking that adjustment, the 2.45% and adjusting that to our monthly compensation. Um and that would require an action on our part. So does anybody have any uh does Would somebody want to make a motion and a second and I guess I'll then I'll open it up for discussion. Okay, I have a motion by Natalie, a second by Diana. Did anybody have any discussion or thoughts on that practice and do we want to do that again? Okay. Um let's Heather want
026to call vote on that action then. Zack Dorholt. Yes. Gina Acevedo. Yes. Natalie Copeland. Yes. Shannon Haas. >> Yes. Diana Fenton. Yes. Heather Weems, yes. Okay. Thank you. Um then the next one that we're on is That was all of our action items tonight. Um first discussion item, we have the assessment plan update and joining us tonight is Donna Roper, director of research, assessments, and AI integration. >> [snorts] >> Good evening Chair Haas, Superintendent Putnam, members of the board, colleagues, and listening community. I'm happy to be here this evening to present the district-wide biennial assessment plan. Um tonight's uh presentation is just a brief update of our plan for the 26-27 school year. And the message that you're going to hear from me tonight is pretty straightforward. Um it's really about updating our about streamlining
027really our assessment system, our district-wide assessments, reducing unnecessary or duplicate uh testing, duplicative testing, and then just making sure that the assessments we are keeping are the ones that best support teaching and learning. And so you'll notice we have a nice little picture and a quote to the lower right that says, "We assess not to label, but to launch." And so we're really um looking closely at making sure when we evaluate our assessments that our learning and teaching um team and others are at the table giving really good input about the effectiveness and usefulness of these tools. And so I'm going to go through this pretty quickly. I'm going to briefly ground us in the purpose and guiding principles. I'm going to move to our summary slide so that we can see the full set
028of changes at a glance. Um and then I will let you know what's staying and what kind of our next steps for implementation are. And so um [clears throat] obviously, our goals are to follow state statute and state laws and we did have some changes to um what is required for assessment in the 26-27 school year. And so as we took a look at um adding things that were required, we also wanted to look at reducing redundancy and um and then keep keep the things that we know are working to help us identify those really important student needs that we can address with some of the new um letters training and the science of reading instructional strategies that our staff are getting. Um when you know, an assessment is not adding value in our system
029and or if it overlaps with another comparable tool, it's really important for us to look closely at the purpose and the use. Um and so that's really what this team got together and did. And tonight these are the results of all of that really good work. Um I'm going to take us right to the summary at a glance. This is kind of the high level um picture of what happened throughout the the look at our assessment plan. You'll see there are really four types of changes. We're adding a few assessments where they're required. Um we're adjusting some schedules where we can reduce some of the testing burden and we're removing a redundant tool and then replacing some of our secondary tools with options that are better aligned to instruction. So this slide really reflects that
030overall direction. Um and I think what you'll see is for example in um kindergarten and first grade we're adding a 1-minute oral language screener if you will. It's a sentence uh 1-minute sentence repetition task that our kindergarteners and first graders are going to use um and be with. We are um adjusting some of the early numeracy assessments um to reduce some of the burden in first grade that we uh identified. Um we will keep FastBridge um uh as well as um continuing to do i-Ready in kindergarten so that we're shoring up those number sense skills um early and as as really as early as we can. Um if you look at the grade four and five you'll see that we are adding the CAP T Read Basics. We did give that assessment this year and
031staff found it incredibly useful and so we are going to be giving that again in the fall and in the winter and in the spring we'll do what we call a gated screening process where we will only give it to the students who um who are identified as still not meeting benchmarks. Um in grades four and seven we will be placing that stamp um which is our immersion programming Spanish um language assessment and that will be um something that we're going to look at closely this year to see if the if the purpose and use of that is really adding the value that we that we want it to and we may continue next year or the following year with fourth and seventh grade. We'll just we're going to see how that goes but this
032is an adjustment that we're making. Um I believe last year we did it in two, four, six, and maybe eight, right? Which is if you think about our kids that are in immersion who are also potentially EL, who are also in fifth or eighth grade, they're taking a lot of tests. So it was really important to us to look at the experience of the learner as we made some of these decisions. Um at the CogAT is being removed. This is a really costly uh assessment in terms of time as well as money um and the team there um felt that they had all of the measures that they needed. They're using um multiple measures by the way. Um they've got in-class assessments that they give as well as standardized tests to identify kids for enrichment
033services and so um make I want to make it really clear uh the gifted and talented and enrichment programming is happening. It's just they will no longer use the CogAT to do their um identifying um process or um at secondary we will be replacing the STAR Reading assessment with CAP T Read Basics and um again the team really felt that this was a much better um test. There's there's actually several tests, six subtests that are given to these students and it really informs the letters the it informs the reading instruction strategies that our teachers are getting really good at as they go through their letters training and their science of reading training. So um I'm super excited that we actually have aligned measures to the actual instruction that um is happening as it relates to
034improving reading instruction. And then for math um we will be adopting some new secondary math curriculum and we have looked at the assessment inside that curriculum and we will be using um that assessment as our universal screener for math in grades six through 12 for next year. So that's some exciting work to come um and looking forward to seeing how how teachers feel about using more um tightly aligned assessments to their instruction. Um so what's staying the same of course are all the state required assessments. So just keep in mind we still do MCAs in grades three through eight, 10 and 11. Um we still have the ACCESS test. Those will continue. Um we will continue to progress monitor and um look at how we are identifying students for reading, math, um and language support.
035None of that is really changing. We will just continue to be looking at and monitoring the data um and doing those really effective strategies to intervene um as we go. Again, gifted and talented stays, CogAT goes. Um we will also be giving families access to the results in new ways that I think are um broader in the sense that they can see results in a video, they can hear, they can read it. Um we will be sharing results in conferences um with families as they come in. So sort of a multimodal approach to trying to give families as much information as we can about how their kids did and where where they can find the information. Um again, I think just making sure that we are clear on the roles and the purpose of the
036assessments that we're giving um is ongoing work that we will continue to do with teams and teachers and community as well. Um and then just being committed to making sure that our um students with disabilities, our English language learners as well, that they also are assessed and looked at very closely um throughout the year. Uh for next steps um obviously this spring we're going to adopt a new curriculum and that will um happen and begin right in the fall. So with that adoption there will be a lot of work that needs to happen with communication and training and so we will be doing some professional development over the summer with some of our assessments to get our new teachers up to speed and just make sure folks have what they need to be ready in
037the fall. Um we hope to um have our plan published on the website by the first day of school. We will um certainly be communicating with families about when testing is happening and all of that good stuff. Um and again these are changes that will go into effect in the 2027 school year. And um this is you know we would like to just bring this to you every other year but it looks like we will be back next year because there are some decisions that the state has not finalized on yet. One of them being the um new kindergarten assessment has I believe 16 subtests that are being identified in a different tool called TS GOLD. So once they um give us that information we'll look at what those are, we'll look at what we're
038currently doing, make sure that we are not doing redundant testing on our kindergarteners and then we'll be back with those changes next time. Um and so I leave you with that um and I welcome your questions. Thank you Donna. Does anybody have any questions on this? You're a quiet group tonight. Okay, thank you very much for joining and presenting this. We appreciate it. Okay, moving on to um our next discussion item. We have Matthew Boucher, Executive Director of Operations joining us uh presenting proposed revised board policy 533. This is a second reading um of the wellness policy. >> [clears throat] >> Good evening Superintendent Putnam, Chair Haase, and board members. Appreciate the time to come back in front of you as we pull up the policies on the screen. We're actually going to go over
039three of them tonight and they are second reads. Um so we won't cover them in a whole lot of detail. I believe you had a chance to review them also. Um and Thank you. As we pull it up I'll just quickly remind us that the uh the policy 510 um primarily simply had some adjustments to the MSBA model policy, primarily within the introductory paragraph. We aligned the language to the new model policy there and then a couple of places where we added guardian in front of parent where we had historically just listed parent. Um were the primary changes and then there was one other change lower down where we aligned to our current practice around instead of giving recommendations of food that would be safe in the classroom, reminding that we actually don't do that.
040All right. Any questions or comments on that one? Okay, thank you. That will be back on the consent agenda for next time. Then we're going going another second reading. We have Nikki Hanson, assistant superintendent of E5 learning, for proposed revised board policy 510 second reading for school activities. Good evening, Chair Haas, Superintendent Putnam. For our second read of 510 tonight, there were very minimal changes in language proposed with no refinements suggested from the first read. Um you can see those minimal errors there or changes proposed changes there in yellow and would be happy to take any questions that you may have. Okay. We're all good on that, so that's coming back to the consent agenda. And then you have one more for us tonight, proposed uh revised board policy 599 second reading. This is the
041in-district transfer policy. Yes, for uh in-district transfer policy 599, we do have some language changes to match our in-district transfer application process, so you can see those highlighted there. Um the one refinement that was suggested from first read is highlighted here in blue on the screen, and that was just some language to read more clearly. And so that proposed language change um states transfers are school specific and reset during transition years, kindergarten, sixth, and ninth grades. At these levels, students return to their home attendance area school site unless a new transfer is requested and approved. Sixth graders at Kennedy K-8 Community School are exempt from this requirement. Um so that was just some language that we cleaned up to read a little bit better here in our in-district transfer application policy. Any questions? All right,
042thank you. Uh then we're moving on to the reports. First up, we have the superintendent's report, Dr. Laurie Putnam. Thank you, Chair Haas, members of the board. Um and this evening I want to give an overview um from the Westwood fire. Um in the wake of the recent fire at Westwood Community School, our local partners moved with incredible speed to ensure our students remain safe, engaged, and on board and supported. While our educators transitioned to remote learning, the community stepped in to bridge the gap for child care, nutrition, and physical activity. The moments following the incident required a high level of coordination and emotional support. We would like to extend a sincere thank you to our district administrative office staff, community education staff, and Apollo High School counselors. Their immediate response to Westwood Community Church
043right after the fire was vital in facilitating a smooth and supportive parent-student reunification process during a chaotic time. We would also be remiss not to note that our Westwood staff, well, I've said it numerous times, deserve an additional shout-out for their incredible work as well. Uh during the first 2 days of the closure, students maintained academic momentum through e-learning choice boards. Uh these boards, prepared in advance for school closures, allowed students to engage in curriculum-aligned activities independently from home. Following the initial e-learning period, we transitioned to daily instructional support from April 8th through 10th. Monday and Tuesday were used for planning and materials distribution. >> [snorts] >> Learning access was provided through both digital opportunities and physical materials to extend learning. Engagement with the digital learning opportunities was very high with some of the lesson
044video lessons receiving over 100 views. And you can imagine when you have our it's two and three section uh classes at Westwood, and so that really shows the level of engagement of our students and their families. Uh to bridge the digital divide and support hands-on learning, physical materials were made available for pick-up at the District Welcome Center and Westwood Community Church. Materials were also distributed to the Boys & Girls Club to reach our students there. These resources included activity packets, supplemental books, and hands-on learning supplies. Community engagement with these materials was strong. 40 families accessed resources at the District Welcome Center and three families accessed resources at Westwood Community Church. And I want to give a special recognition to our learning and teaching team and Nikki Assistant Superintendent Hanson uh for their really quick work
045in putting together this uh this plan and those materials, so thank you. The Roosevelt Boys & Girls Club served as a critical anchor critical anchor for working with our families, providing free emergency child care for 94 Westwood students. The Great River Children's Museum provided an extraordinary experience for our students, offering joy through hands-on learning interactive exhibits that encourage critical problem-solving. Uh the GRCM welcomed 132 Westwood students over 3 days. An additional 84 student uh Westwood families were granted free access, and 34 members served as chaperones. We are uh lining up a free field trip for Westwood PK students on Thursday, May 21, and those activities supports were facilitated and provided by Christine Hollingsworth and the dedicated staff there. >> [snorts] >> Um I just have to tell you some of the quotes were, "It was
046fun. Playing outside and playing with water was awesome." That was a first grader. "The boat racing was the what with the water part was a lot of fun." I don't know if that entails, but that was a fifth grader. And a fourth grader said, "I like the climbing and cloud area best because I really like climbing." And then just a few other uh recognitions um to uh the food security uh remaining a top priority um in addition to breakfast provided by our nutritional services department, so thank you to Matthew and Shera um and uh Sarah. Lunches for the museum trips were made possible through the Park Event Center, Jet's Pizza, Custom Catering, and Costco. Supplies for student activities were provided by SCRAP, the Saint Cloud Recycled Art Project shop managed by Jennifer Pence Cover uh
047along with various private donors, and the Westwood Community Church served as a satellite point uh for distribution for food boxes, and that was supported by Trobec's and the Initiative Foundation. Uh the Saint Cloud Area Y generously opened its doors to our community, providing free access to open swim and open gym basketball. Uh we are thrilled to report that 166 families uh took advantage of that opportunity. Um and I want to say a thank you to the uh for those who uh in our community who volunteered and gave us financial assistance. Uh the success of all of these programs relied heavily on local hands and hearts with volunteer support. A special thanks to Gina Acevedo, Diana Metz Old, Glenn Palm, Becky Colburn, Claire Court, Susan Farrag, and Greg Reichsted, and then the Saint Cloud Rotary who
048put forward a $1,000 challenge match to serve further community donations. So all of that came together in a weekend. Right? Imagine that. Um and so we just uh wanted to celebrate all of the community, our staff, our volunteers, and the many people who made this uh an incredibly positive experience for our students and families uh despite what could have been um a really um hard and challenging event. Um I think we're coming out of this stronger, and as always, I am so grateful for this community. So on behalf of all of us, thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, then we have the Board of Education Standing Committee reports. I believe that we have two for tonight, Achievement Integration Equity uh Board Committee Chair Diana Fenton. Thanks, Chair Haas, Superintendent Putnam, and members of the
049board. The Achievement Integration and Equity Committee meeting met this morning. The two items that we discussed of this morning, we had done a Roper presented the recent published 2025 graduation rate data. And she also presented on the assessment plan changes that you saw tonight at the board meeting. Thank you. Actually, we have three reports. Uh Finance Audit Board Committee Chair Heather Beems. Uh the Board Finance Committee met on April 6th of this month. Um we talked about the Board Finance Committee community member. Laurie reported this that past practice has been to have a community member serve on the Board Finance Committee. However, there is no law, MSBA recommendation, or district policy that would require this. In addition, we do not have a community representative on any other board committee. It was also noted that there
050is a community finance study group that any interested community member can join, and there is no limit on to to how many people can join that group. The committee recommended that we eliminate the Finance Committee community member position, which is currently vacant. Secondly, we discussed cashless ticketing for events. Amy presented a recommendation to move to cashless ticketing for athletic events starting next school year. A number of schools have made this change in recent years, including Willmar, who has a very similar demographic as our district. Eliminating cash sales creates efficiency, saves administrative time, and reduces the risk of misappropriation. There's also a financial incentive to make this change because the new ticketing platform that our conference is moving to next year provides a rebate to to the district for all online ticket sales. Families who are
051unable to utilize an online payment option can still use cash to purchase tickets or passes in advance from the activities office during the school day. Thank you. And then we have Personnel Negotiations Board Committee Chair Natalie Copeland. Thank you, Chair Haas. Board Personnel Committee met on Tuesday, April 14th, and covered four topics, including the option for up to 5 days of extended pay for Principal Scholarud for 25-26, 26-27, and 27-28 school years to support his leadership of the Apollo renovations and Apex construction projects. The committee also reviewed the licensed staff non-renewal process and recommendations that were voted on tonight's at tonight's meeting and the upcoming administrative hires for assistant principals and coordinator openings. Finally, the committee reviewed Dr. Putnam's evaluation results. Dr. Putnam asked for feedback on two items, continued delegation of board policy and
052development duties to executive staff, and her role in providing board development activities and opportunities for members. That was all. Thank you. Then we have a future agenda items. Uh the the May 6th board meeting topics will include community partnership update, summer projects update, approval of tentative agreements if any, policy readings and school updates. At this time, does any board member wish to suggest a future agenda item? All right. Um oh, this is so exciting. >> [laughter] >> I'm looking for a motion to a- adjourn tonight's board meeting. I have a motion by Heather. Do I have a second? >> Second. And second by Natalie. All in favor, say I. I. Opposed? Meeting is adjourned 7:22 p.m. Have a good night. Are you speaking out there?